#Great Western Main Line

[trainmaniac]

Close-Up of a GWR Local Train by Michael Alford Via Flickr: A local train awaits its next turn of duty at Box.

[mjalford98]

Unwittingly celebrated World Heritage Day last Saturday with a trip to the Swansea Model Rail Exhibition, from which I've been sorting & editing footage and uploading with the ultimate view of creating a YouTube compilation, so time now to feature the first model railway to have all footage taken now uploaded.

Box Station is an N scale model railway built by the Swansea Railway Modellers' Group, the original subject matter being a station on the Great Western Mainline between Bath and Chippenham. The nameplate of the signal box is now preserved at the National Rail Museum. Some of these videos I have slowed down from the original running speed as seen on the model last weekend so as to give a more realistic appearance.

It was also here that the Rev. W Awdry, author of the Thomas the Tank Engine books came to watch the trains passing through, as he lived nearby, and he himself relates how the stories were inspired by hearing the freight trains passing by night, banked by tank engines who would push from behind on trains too heavy to be hauled up the gradient by the main locomotive detailed for the run, and imagining the different puffing patterns of the different sized locomotives as being them talking to each other.

[ask-cloverfield]

back when Mandalorian season 1 was first coming out I was really hoping for a The Great Silence style ending

[doctor--malpractice]

How dare you keep all of this in the tags

(´･ᴗ･ ` )

[merp-blerp]

A Gaylor/Kaylor Interpretation of "But Daddy I Love Him", Despite It Being Obvious, 'Cause Happy Pride

Overblown Analysis Under the Cut ↓

"I forget how the West was won // I forget if this was ever fun // I just learned these people only raise you // To cage you"

The opening line is a reference to a film called How the West Was Won (1962). I'm not well-versed in this film, but I know that older American Western films and the American cowboy aesthetic in general often represent male masculinity, and by extension, male heterosexuality, romanticized into picture-esque imagery of wealthy, cis, white, straight manly men ruling the West through violence. All this despite the fact that historically, many cowboys (not just boys/men, of course, so cow-folk maybe, if that's even a term) were broke queer people, often people of color, trying to survive. Similarly to Taylor, these individuals have had their queer history erased all for the sake of marketability and giving a general audience a more traditionally palatable and relatable portrayal of reality to consume. (For more on this topic, Kaz Rowe has two great videos on queer cowboy history and the queerness of cowboy movies, if that interests you.)

With "how the West was won" not being capitalized like a film title, it seems clear that while she's referencing the movie, she's not directly talking about How the West Was Won (1962). I think this line might hark back to "Cowboy Like Me", a song about Taylor (and her lover) swindling the public into assuming they're straight and the industry "rich folks" into thinking they'll abide by their rules forever. If she continues to beard and swindle she'll win the hearts of the general public more and more, or the hetero "west", but she forgets what the benefits of doing that at the unknowing cost of her happiness were. From my perspective, if Taylor forgets how the West was won, she's saying she forgets what the long-term value of hiding her queerness with straight narratives and beardings had in her mind once upon a time. She forgets if she ever found the beardings/stunts fun in her youth because she has now learned that "these people", likely industry people who have had hands in her career, only closeted her for their own money benefits, not truly caring about her at all.

"Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best // Clutchin' their pearls, sighing, "What a mess" // I just learned these people try and save you // 'Cause they hate you."

I think many songs or moments in TTPD are Taylor envisioning/anticipating what could happen if she were to come out. Obviously, the main source of bigotry against queer people is warped religious beliefs, so the "Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best" are homophobes in this reading, but considering Taylor's fanbase and the feminine names chosen, they could very specifically be swifties who are overprotective of Taylor. Swifties who do deplorable things in the name of protecting Taylor's honor, such as doxxing gaylors online because they disagree with them and see suggesting Taylor's queerness as immoral. These types of swifties will often call the act of speculation on Taylor's queerness "gross" and lean on the reasoning for that being that speculation is invasive, even though Taylor herself has never commented against speculation of her queerness in any way when she very well could if it bothered her. Therefore they have no actual clue if that's how Taylor sees it, it's just their homophobic opinion that the suggestion of queerness is gross and they project the opinion onto Taylor as if anti-speculation should be universal when it's not nearly that simple. They see the act of the Taylor sexuality discourse existing as a mess.

If Taylor is queer, seeing that a number of her fans find queerness disgusting would produce incredibly negative feelings, whether it's anger or sadness. While I don't think every anti-speculation swiftie has these particular feelings towards it (it's complicated and could have a post of it's own), some hetlors hate speculation because they know that it could be correct. If Taylor were out as queer she'd become a "queer thing" they couldn't enjoy the same way anymore; she wouldn't be their mirrorball anymore, and that's terrifying because for many that's Taylor's appeal. If she's queer she's no longer this bestie, big sister, twin from your dreams type of artist to hetlors, she's this "other" that belongs to "others". This subsection of fans try to defend her because they, consciously or not, hate the idea that an assumed "straight" woman could actually be queer and unlike them. And therefore they indirectly hate her. The real her. They'd rather have the brand Taylor Swift because they can relate to it more, so they don't want to see her. "You needed me, but you needed drugs more" (from "COSOSOM"). They try to "save" her from being seen/out 'cause they hate her.

"Too high a horse // For a simple girl // To rise above it // They slammed the door // On my whole world // The one thing I wanted."

Both the "Sarahs and Hannahs" and "Elders" exhibit a sense of superiority Taylor feels like she can't rise above by being simple. Many anti-speculation people see their opinion as the politically correct thing to do. Therefore it's superior to speculation in their eyes, despite the fact that speculation can be a critical step to finding other queers and even can be used as a form of coming out—letting people speculate. They're on "too high a horse". The attempted Lover coming out was very simple, with Taylor flagging rainbows without an obvious showing of potential contempt she had for the industry that closeted her, unlike TTPD, which exhibits much anger towards it. But the simplicity was partly why the coming out attempt didn't work. Taylor's general fandom still viewed her flagging as nothing because she didn't say anything and harassed gaylors while the SBs foiled the biggest part of her plan that would've freed her. In "I Hate It Here", Taylor mentions that she only "rise(es) above" her closeting in her fantasies for now. Instead of getting to come out, her closet door was slammed shut. Her identity, her whole world, was still in the shade of the closet.

"Now I'm runnin' with my dress unbuttoned // Scrеamin', 'But, Daddy, I love him' // I'm havin' his baby // No, I'm not, but you should see your faces"

The title of the song is pretty unanimously agreed to be a reference to The Little Mermaid (1989), which of course came out the same year Taylor was born. Arial yells this at her father when he discovers her hidden interest in the human Prince Eric before destroying her collection of human artifacts.

It's worth remembering that Arial in the film says that she is 16 years old, the same age Taylor was when her first album was released. Arial is still at an age where she would still be under her father's thumb, as she's a child, even if she doesn't feel like one. Meanwhile, Taylor is now in her 30s. She should not need her father's permission to have an interest in someone. The whole scene Taylor paints with these lyrics seems comical, Taylor running after and begging her father as her clothes come undone, maybe because she was caught in the act of making love to this "him", or she's going erratic and ripping her clothes off. Then she screams that she's having her apparent lover's baby. The story becomes more and more soap opera levels of dramatic till Taylor pulls the wool from over the listeners's eyes and reveals that it was all a lie once the facade becomes too crazy to believe unless you're gullible. It's easy to see just the "No I'm not" as a direct response to simply "I'm havin' his baby", but I think it's a response to the whole first half of the chorus. She's not a teen girl begging to be allowed to date, she's an adult.

"You should see your faces" directed at the listeners could be Taylor teasing about the shock on their faces at her wild story or the fact that it's a lie, but it could also be Taylor mocking the look of enjoyment the listener gets from her fake story, which represents her real life beard narratives. The dress unbuttoned story getting crazier and crazier seems to mirror how the real-life bearding narratives get more and more fantastical, at least in my opinion. With the current "Tayvis", Taylor is selling a high school fantasy of the popular cheerleader-type girl getting with the football boy, even though Taylor has never truly been the popular cheerleader-type in reality; she was a bullied nerd during her actual schooling days and has always portrayed herself as separate from the "cheer captain", instead being "on the bleachers" in "YBWM". Then there's the Joe vs. [Rat-dacted] narrative, where Taylor was reportedly head over heels for Joe for 6 or so years, with him not caring that she was famous and seeing her for her, till they suddenly "broke up" and the narrative changed to him stifling her. Then it changed again to her actually being deeply in love with [Rat-dacted] the whole time instead, with Joe simply being an elongated rebound type of relationship. And it gets even more confusing when you try to attach the original [Beard-DJ-dacted] → Tom Hiddleston → Joe Alwyn narratives into the mix. It's all just unraveling into less and less sense. Yet the Sarahs and Hannahs probably don't question a thing because the narrative is still straight, so what's there to ponder?

TTPD's first ever easter egg was "red herring", which is a tool meant to mislead the audience in storytelling, but an attentive audience member might be able to see past it, especially in time/hindsight. The dress unbuttoned story is a red herring to distract from the real story Taylor illustrates in the next half of the chorus, especially when the song is titled after the lie portion of the song. And by extension, in her whole career, all of Taylor's beards, many of the he/him pronouns in songs, lyrics like "your buzzcut and my hair bleach" in "Dress", and songs like "London Boy" and "So High School" are thinly veiled red herrings that keep up the surface appearance of straightness to distract yet invite the listener to dig deeper into the true queer stories in her music once noticed.

"I'm tellin' him to floor it through thе fences // No, I'm not coming to my senses // I know he's crazy, but he's the one I want."

Taylor now tells the listener what she's actually doing. She's telling her lover to run away, presumably along with her, especially with the song's end depicting the lovers returning to "town", but more on the ending later. The lover is still masked by he/him pronouns, but the story is still the truth. (While I do think the "he/him" in this song is in actuality a "she/her", it is interesting to view the first half of the chorus using "he/him" as a part of the red herring Taylor is telling.) In the lie, Taylor begs for her father's permission to love, but in reality, and in a lot of her music throughout her career, Taylor disobeys any disapproving peers and flees with her lover. They could either be fleeing out of the closet, or fleeing away from disapprovers. "Floor it through thе fences" reminds me of "And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences" from "Peace". The phrase "swing for the fences" means "to make a big effort to do something that is very impressive or important, but is difficult to achieve, especially if there is a risk of failure" according to Cambridge Dictionary. Both coming out and being in a glass closet can pose many risks. So Taylor telling her lover to floor it or rush through the fences could mean to run away quickly or have the double meaning of taking a big risk, like coming out or flagging when they should be closeted, along with herself doing the same.

The recurring storyline of running away and/or disregarding naysayers has appeared in songs like "Love Story", "Run", "Call It What You Want", "Speak Now", "MAATHP", "Down Bad", the unreleased "Better Off" from as far back as 2005, and so much more. Going against the grain is her reality. In her music she was never "Scrеamin', 'But, Daddy, I love him'", or just pleading to be accepted, but always running away, dreaming of an environment where she could be accepted, and refusing to come to her senses and just letting the cookie crumble passively. But her beards don't reflect the stories in her songs beyond the surface-level red herrings. The first half of the chorus is the flimsy public narrative, and the second half is the reality.

Taylor's lover is described by her as "crazy". Asylums are a recurring theme throughout this album. Historically and culturally people who were put into asylums were often dubbed "crazy" and mistreated rather than receiving the help they might've needed if they were truly in need at all, as some people who were put into asylums weren't even ill, just perceived as such, similar to queer people who are seen by homophobes as ill when queerness is natural. In this album, asylums represent the industry that raised Taylor and treated her like she was crazy. In the song "TTPD", both she and the lover call themselves crazy, so she and the lover are both in the asylum or industry.

From a specifically Kaylor perspective, Karlie Kloss, particularly in the years before meeting Taylor, has always seemed "louder" than Taylor. And not quite as disciplined in keeping her straight narrative(s) up properly (i.e. Kar recently posting an anniversary pic about being with Josh for 10 years when it's supposed to be 12 years by now. But who has she allegedly been with for 10 years as far as the public's known for sure...?). Through my interpretation of Tay's music, it seems like Kar is Taylor's driving force to potentially come out, as her albums up to 1989 seemed more keen on staying caged and being okay with it, but albums after that have felt like attempts to at least claw on the closet door. Being in a committed relationship with someone willing to be loud might risk Taylor's safety in the cage, so being with someone as "crazy" as Kar is a risk, but she's the one she wants.

"Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid // Tendrils tucked into a woven braid // Growin' up precocious sometimes means // Not growin' up at all."

Taylor mentions growing up precocious in at least 3 different songs on TTPD, this, "The Bolter" and "I Hate It Here". It's definitely something we're supposed to pay attention to. In "You're Losing Me" Taylor mentions being a pathological people pleaser, which lines up with her talk of trying to be the perfect "good girl" who didn't force herself onto people since childhood in Miss Americana. Often, AFAB people who behave this way are told that they're being very mature by being quiet, whether it's quiet in general or quiet on world issues instead of speaking up. As someone who also grew up precocious, it was always easy to get told you were doing a good job by just sitting pretty and never expressing anything. But these traits might begin to backfire the older you get as you suddenly realize that you never got to be a child, but you also weren't really an adult when you were called "mature for your age", so you might end up regressing in a way or just confused on how to actually be an adult properly.

If you're like me, you believe Miss Americana was originally meant to be a coming-out documentary, or a documentary meant to explain Taylor's journey with her sexuality, released after coming out, before those plans were foiled. Her early developmental years are likely a part of why she isn't out yet. She wants to come out in a very specific way that's more than "just saying it". Especially since theirs a lot at stake with her coming out the bigger she gets, the more employees she has to make sure get paid, and the more she has to protect her family. She can't be a "simple girl" and "rise above it" at the same time because the situation is way more delicate now than it was during the Lover era.

In Miss Americana and "The Archer", Taylor mentions feeling like she is stuck at the age she got famous, 16. If we see the lie of the first chorus representing her flimsy bearding narratives, then she could mean that she never grew up into being openly queer. Since she began writing songs, Taylor has always written her songs with the knowledge that one day they could be publicly heard. Even unreleased songs that are very queer-coded like "Welcome Distraction" still have he/him pronouns, just like the ones she writes to this day. Songs that don't have romantic he/him pronouns or are about a girl have always had plausible deniability, such as "Angelina" or "Question...?". Even if it's just a bit of that plausible deniability, heteronormativity makes it really easy to hide when you do it as well as Taylor does.

The mention of braids calls back to "Seven", a song in-part about childhood. Tendrils can be a part of a plant, which reminds me of "Please picture me in the weeds // Before I learned civility", which could be interpreted as Taylor being more wildly queer in some way when she was young before learning how to act straighter for her own good. Tendrils can also be stray pieces of hair, or metaphorically queerness, that was hidden in a straight, rigid braid. I also think this has to do with "Peter", a song I believe to be about Taylor apologizing to her inner queer child for taking so long to come out; when Taylor began hiding her queerness in her music, I'm sure she thought it would just be till the world was ready to hear her truth some years down the line. And if the song "Change" is anything to go off of, she might've been optimistic that that was soon. "I thought it was just goodbye for now // You said you were gonna grow up // Then you were gonna come find me". But here we are over 20 years after she began writing songs and she's still writing in the same closeted way, for now. The southern drawl (if that's the phrase I'm looking for), or her choice to use words cut short like "Runnin'", "'bout", and "ain't" during this song's most tense moments make this feel like her younger, pre-pop self-speaking up finally.

(As a bit of an extra tidbit, these lines really remind me of lyrics from "Welcome Distraction" that I think are meant to be, "A life and a plan and I wasn't gonna stray // Swore I’d never let a man in my way", but I get different results when I look up the lyrics due to its unreleased status. Younger and current Taylor possibly singing similar lines really expands on the never-growing-up aspect of this reading.)

"He was chaos, he was revelry // Bedroom eyes like a remedy // Soon enough, the elders had convened // Down at the city hall // 'Stay away from her' // The saboteurs // Protested too much // Lord knows the words // We never heard // Just screeching tires and true love."

The "he" being in actuality a "she" is the reading that makes the most sense for this song overall. With all the religious imagery in the song, religious elders would not object in this particular way so hard against a guy and a girl wanting to be together. It makes the most sense when Taylor's lover is thought of as another woman. If the lover is a woman, she would definitely represent chaos for Taylor, not necessarily because of her personality but through the way Taylor wants her and the trouble that want could cause. The lover was not a part of the plans laid. But the lover is also the celebratory feeling of being in love, and the celebratory feeling of pride you get from being queer once you've found someone who you can be yourself around and be proud of yourself with. Revelry.

If we think of the "elders" being the SBs specifically, than them meeting each other at the "city hall" could be them coming together to steal Taylor's masters, which recked her plans to come out the same day the news broke out.

Since I'm personally a late-stage Kaylor, I see the saboteurs saying "stay away from her" as the perpetrators and believers in the Kaylor feud, spreading the never-confirmed rumor that Karlie betrayed Taylor as if it's fact and being overprotective of Taylor by demanding Karlie stay away from Taylor since she's a "trader".

Alternatively, the saboteurs could be telling Taylor to stay away from Karlie, as even though there have been other rumored relationships with women Taylor has had, Karlie has always been the strongest suspect and the most well-known since Taylor was never really able to keep the straight facade up as well as usual around Karlie (i.e. Kissgate). I doubt this reading of the line a bit more purely because the lover has been constantly dubbed "him" through the song and it'd be odd to switch up here, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I'll move on with the former interpretation for this reading.

"Protested too much" is a reference to Hamlet by William Shakespeare. In the context of the play, Queen Gertrude says this as a reaction to Hamlet's play trying to weasel guilt out of her and mainly her new husband for marrying so soon after the original King's murder. When the queen in the play says she'll never remarry after her husband dies, Gertrude tells Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks", meaning she thinks the queen in the play is putting on a front that shouldn't be believed. If Taylor believes the saboteurs are "protest(ing) too much" it could mean that she believes that they aren't being honest about their stance against the lover. That their hatred for them and calls for them to go away would falter if time were to prove their stance wrong. In "Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus", Taylor says "If you wanna tear my world apart // Just say you've always wondered", which I take as Taylor knowing that when she comes out, despite the strong rejection of her planting seeds to her truth right now, people will say that they had always suspected that she was queer once they feel socially safe to do so post coming out. If the lover in this song is Karlie, then it's not hard to imagine the saboteurs suddenly backtracking their hate in order to praise Kaylor and Karlie after Kaylor becomes publicly cordial again.

With "Lord knows the words // We never heard/ // Just screeching tires and true love" Taylor and her lover ignore the saboteurs's hatred and carry on with their love. Or they ignore the hypocritical words of "praise" for their relationship that'll come when they come out. I'm more inclined to believe the former due to the mention of "screeching tires", a car reference. I mentioned in my "Champagne Problems" analysis that vehicles often represent the closet/running away from the public for Taylor, so if she and the lover are enjoying "screeching tires and true love", they're making the best of their closet as they run away from the rest of the world for the time being, like how they do in "Paris".

"I'll tell you something right now // I'd rather burn my whole life down // Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moanin'. // I'll tell you something 'bout my good name // It's mine alone to disgrace // I don't cater to all these vipers dressed in empath's clothing"

I believe Taylor is gearing up to come out, reveal at least aspects of her reality, and expose the harm the industry has done to her and maybe even others. This line syncs up perfectly with the "Burning Lover House" theory, with Taylor eliminating all the red herrings of her past albums and telling her truth. If Taylor's career and good name goes down the toilet due to her being herself, it'll be her doing and she wants to be in that much control of herself. The "vipers dressed in empath's clothing" are the fans who harass and harm people like Karlie all in the name of defending and "empathizing" with Taylor, even though Taylor has never okayed that behavior and has spoken against it. The vipers pretend to empathize with the situations they think Taylor's been in and her music, but their behavior shows they don't truly see eye-to-eye with her and what she stands for. She's done catering to them.

"God save the most judgmental creeps // Who say they want what's best for me // Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I'll never see // Thinkin' it can change the beat // Of my heart when he touches me // And counteract the chemistry // And undo the destiny // You ain't gotta pray for me // Me and my wild boy and all of this wild joy // If all you want is gray for me // Then it's just white noise, and it's just my choice."

Taylor calls out the "judgmental creeps" who hurt people in the name of her. Her asking God to save the "judgmental creeps" could be sarcasm, but I also know Taylor's a Christian (and maybe catholic. I know she grew up catholic), and as a queer Christian, I know that I tend to fully see homophobia as practically an illness, like how homophobes view queerness as an illness, and hope homophobes find it in their heart to overcome those ailments. I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor felt the same way.

The creeps "Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies" that Taylor will "never see". Doing something sanctimoniously is doing something in a performative way, calling back to the saboteurs protesting too much, being hateful only because it's so normalized in the community, and who are likely going to do a 180 once their hate is no longer in style for the times. If Taylor will never see these soliloquies then she could be saying that she'll never give them the time of day, the "words we never heard" from earlier. A soliloquy is a speech that's said when alone without listeners (they're also famously associated with Hamlet so that ties back to "protested too much"), so these creeps are essentially arguing with the wall, as Taylor turns a blind eye to them no matter how much the soliloquies are made to empathize with her or impress her because they do none of those things.

The creeps think their hateful soliloquies will change Taylor's truth. They think if they pretend Karlie doesn't or never existed in Taylor's life in any way and harass Karlie, then it'll change the reality that they secretly or unconsciously know is true, but it won't. The saboteurs and Taylor's closet-ers can't change who she is and what she has with her lover. If the Sarahs and Hannahs only want the straight, beard-narcotic-giving, grey Taylor Swift™, then their pearl-clutching just becomes white noise to Taylor, and it's her choice to be in screaming color, dazzling in the daylight.

"There's a lot of people in town that I // Bestow upon my fakest smiles // Scandal does funny things to pride, but brings lovers closer."

In my "I Look In People's Windows" analysis, I viewed the "town" as a metaphor for her tour locations and fanbase. Since she's of course performing on tour, Taylor's happiness could definitely be faked if she had to make it. She can do it with a broken heart and her fans wouldn't even notice. The amount of people inside the stadiums when she tours is massive, so it really is a lot. And if her beard is at the stadium, or "in town", she can give them all the fake winks and nods she needs to keep up appearances as the time to come out approaches. "Scandal does funny things to pride" has a double meaning. Scandal can take a shot at your ego or sense of pride. But queer scandal can also make you want/have to hide your urge to be openly queer and proud, as older queer celebs like Rock Hudson had to completely deny their queerness if rumors got out of control for their own safety. Still, scandal, or hardships, can bring lovers closer as they persevere through it.

"We came back when the heat died down // Went to my parents and they came around // All the wine moms are still holdin' out, but fuck 'em, it's over."

I like to see this and the incoming chorus as Taylor predicting the wake of the coming out. She'll burn it down, things in "town" or the fandom will be chaos, and then she and Karlie will return/publicly reunite in the afterglow of it all once the fandom's shock wanes. The narrative of this song is that Taylor and her lover ran away, disobeying Taylor's father figure rather than begging him, but when they return her family accepts everything. Taylor is still seen as at most a "PG-13" artist, accessible to children, so their parents, the wine moms, could still be upset once the heat dies down, wanting Taylor to be a sanitized image for their kids to look up to and still pearl clutching at her queerness. But fuck 'em, the pain of the closet is far behind her and her lover now. It's over.

"Now I'm dancin' in my dress in the sun and // Even my daddy just loves him // I'm his lady // And, oh my God, you should see your faces."

The lie is now gone, as Taylor gets to be joyous with her lover in the daylight, out of the shade, with her Dad accepting. She's possibly surprised by that, with the use of "even". She still mocks the creeps's outrage and shock.

"Time, doesn't it give some perspective? // And, no, you can't come to the wedding // I know it's crazy, but he's the one I want."

As mentioned before, the vipers suddenly backtracked their hate, as time proved their actions wrong, but no matter how much they might kiss up now, Taylor for the rest of the song continues to mock them with the post-chorus and outro. Especially with "Tayvis", her fans have been invited to vicariously and happily experience her "relationships" through her, despite her constant singing of private relationships and disapprovers. But the majority of her fans are not invited to her real relationship, the one she truly keeps private. No, they can't come to the wedding.

I like how "he's crazy" changes to "it's crazy". Taylor knows that the post-coming-out situation will be crazy, especially if she plans to expose an awful, buried side of the industry in some mass coming out with others as some theorize. But she wants her lover and the things that come with the freedom.

Thanks for reading!

[wastingoxygensince1983]

Thai GL: A Perfect Imperfection.

Is not a secret that Thai GLs have overtaken my life.

We have dozen of incredible beautiful and talented women in an industry where the focus is the love between women.

After so much pain and withdraw in Hollywood and the west; It feels like a gush of fresh air.

This blog has multiple posts praising these shows, their intentions and the majority of things they do in it.

So please don't take these list as complains or hate. Is more like a wish list for the industry to improve.

The first and more important thing for me to the industry to improve is the structure of the schedule. There's so many shows is impossible to keep up. Some shows are announced but we never find out when or where or how we can watch(where the heck is the last case you bastards). There's also the issue that in the last month we had mostly 6 shows to watch in a week but now it feels we have less(if we consider the access to mate and petrichor an issue). I know there's different networks working in this but something that helped regulate this thing would be great. I get to watch some shows I sadly skipped in this year so there's a plus but it would be nice to give the support they deserve when they are airing.

I don't have a problem in how messy the stories they are. After all I grow up with the 90s telenovelas from South America; but I hope these shows reconsider how the structure the balance of the stories according to the number of episodes they have. A lot of story lines felt like they rushed them and there were some finales that felt fumble because they didn't gave them the enough time to breed and they took so many time in things these shows probably can skip.

I am full aware that part of the idea of loving women and only women now is somehow translate to hating men: Is something that sadly we can't escape. So making most of the villains men that think they are love interest is a THING in these shows. I don't think we can't escape this. But somehow some shows really give so much screen time to these men and their stories. Not sure if it is because the companies that make these shows are also the ones that make BLs and they want to bring the fans of these actors. I feel the shows could use the male villain if they want and still give less focus; because some stories suffer a lot(what I mentioned in the last point) like.

There's a serious issue around side characters and relationships in these shows. Is amazing to have a cast where the majority of the women are queer and there's actually relationships in there. After having basically one relationship in our western shows is such an improvement. Some of these side characters and relationships are even better than the main ones. BUT we have basically zero screen time or their scenes are cut and don't have the impact they deserve. If they want to balance the stories having the last episodes just drama and the main couples separate; in those episodes the side relationships could step up and in that way they balance what we watch. I don't know there's so much to do with this.

I love the fact that we are having yuri stories adapted. Is very nice, some of these stories deserve that for years. I wished the industry realized first that there's more than what we called "toxic yuri". Not a problem that the stories have toxic elements, but it would be nice to have more variety in this aspect. And also, would be great that the industry start creating their own stories and scripts.

I don't want to go deep in this one because there are way more reason for this that I don't want to touch for possible hate , but I feel like it would be very healthy for everyone involve if after a number of projects the fixated couples could change. We have so many talented actress and is super nice to see them act together in different projects for improvement in their chemistry and be able to have different scenarios; but we are really missing on having other couples that could shine too.

Again the shows and the industry is amazing so don't take these as complaints. I am just having hopes for next year and the future of Thai GLs.

[disneyparksattractionstournament]

Disney obscure songs tournament matchups

Substitutiary Locomotion vs So Close

To Be Free vs A world without fences

The Sweetest Sounds vs Fearless

It’s Fun to Be Free vs As long as there’s christmas

There's a great big beautiful tomorrow vs It’s what’s inside that counts

Pericles of Athens vs Carrying the banner

Elena of Avalor Theme Song vs Ain't No Doubt About It

Forget About Love vs Color spectrum song

We've Just Begun To Dream' vs Boo Bop Bopbop Bop (I Love You, Too)

Stories vs Great Outdoors

(We Used To) Listen to the Land vs Little Orange Bird

High adventure vs I miss you

Riddle diddle 123 vs One Little Spark

Make me look good vs The world will know

Diggin' in dinoLand vs Trick or Treat (for Halloween)

Destino vs Ballad of Davy Crockett

The Best Time of Your Life vs Petey’s king of France

Destiny vs The Song of the Seeonee

Space Angels vs My Lullaby

Happily ever after vs Let’s Go Back to the Future

Canada (you're a lifetime journey) vs Whistle Stop (Ragtime Demo)

Once and for all vs Why Me?

Come little children vs In the Space Between

Blue Milk Surprise vs Universe of energy loop/theme

Magic Journeys vs Le Festin

Queen of Mean vs The Bear Band Serenade

One Dance vs Junkyard society rag

Wherever You Are vs Naked mole rap

He lives in you vs If I Never Knew You

Can’t back down vs Morning report

We've Come So Far vs Rolie polie olie theme

It's a Kick vs The Mickey Mouse Club

Humiliate The Boy vs Scrooge

Boo to you vs Minnie’s Yoo-Hoo

Tomorrows Child vs The Apple Song

Eglantine vs Night falls

Baloo's Blues vs Quit Playing Games With My Head

Kitchen Cabaret vs One step closer

Love (Robin Hood Version) vs Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim

Wishes vs Oo-De-Lolly (Country Western Score Demo)

In a Heartbeat vs Call Me, Beep Me

Your Side of the Line vs Promise

It's Gonna Get Weird vs Dig It

Extraordinary vs I'm Walking Right Down the Middle of Main Street U.S.A.

Remember the magic vs The Man With The Golden Touch

Follow your heart vs Evermore

Own the night vs It’s on

John Henry vs On this magic night

Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful vs We go on/Illuminations

If you had wings vs A Step in the Right Direction

Making memories vs Not in Nottingham (Prince John version)

The Spartan Anthem/Spar OTC Fight Song vs Disney Sing-Along Songs Theme Song

What’s My Name vs One Good Man

Talespin Theme Song vs Fantasmic! Main Theme

Next stop anywhere vs Snuff Out the Light

Midas Curse vs Follow the compass of your heart

Surprise in the Skies vs Welcome To The Forty Thieves

Paul Bunyan vs Grim grinning ghosts

One of Us vs Beneath the Laughing Sky

Passamaschloddy vs Shadowland

Phantom manor overture vs If we were a movie

A Whale of a Tale vs Brothers All

Chop away at my heart vs Eating the peach

The Apple Dumpling Gang vs Suitcase And A Dream

[the-ninjago-historian]

New Article! Scrapped Season Concepts!

We've all heard of the scrapped Cowboy inspired season of Ninjago. But few know there was many more ideas that were ultimately scrapped! Today, we'll be looking at this scrapped season, along with many other abandoned concepts from Lego Ninjago artist Matt Betteker! And try to unlock some of the mystery behind them! Let's go!

1: The Dawn Of The Devourers, Lloyd vs Pancho, The Race, and Adventure

Clearly inspired by Western movies, this epic adventure seems it would have pitted the Ninjas against a Great Devourer riding band of outlaws, (One of which is named, Pancho) in search of perhaps some sort of treasure! This concept is extremely interesting, since it shows the existence of multiple Great Devourers! One of which looks a bit like Wojira! This season also seems to take inspiration from Incan civilizations, going by the jungle tomb-like building in the concept Adventure, and the Incan style Pyramids in the background of Lloyd Vs Pancho. Overall, this seems like it would have been an epic season. I can only imagine what the concept titled, The Race would have looked like animated. I honestly wonder why it was scrapped.

(I love the little detail of Cole manning the guns and Wu driving the wagon. Good father and son teamwork. Lol.😂)

2: The Lightning Temple and ThunderTown

What are these concepts for? Who's to say. It could be a very early version of Prime Empire. Going by the circuitry style painting on the temple in the concept called Temple Of Lightning, and the overall lightning themed atmosphere. OR, it could be an early design for the Island of the Keepers. Whose to say? But either way, it's a really cool concept and I'd love if they could reuse it some day.

3: Clockwork, The Ancient Ones Return, The Gold Army Meets Fibo, and The Gold Collector

This concept looked like Crystalized, Master Of The Mountain, and Hands Of Time all rolled into one!!! The gold and white color palette seems incredibly similar to Shintaro's. Meanwhile, clockwork patterns and style are reminiscent to Hands Of Time! And last but not least, the floating island looks almost like the Crystal Kings from Crystalized! This season would have had all sorts of crazy stuff! The main villain, (Known as The Gold Collector,) seems to have been very interested in two things. Gold, and Clockwork stuff. And it seems he or she would have been collecting gold to perhaps bring back the Golden Army shown in the artwork The Gold Army Meets Fibo. Who is this mysterious Fibo? A time traveler perhaps? Look at the flowing swirls of clock styled energy surrounding him. Very intriguing.🤔

If Ninjago had a steampunk inspired season like this, I would have been thrilled! It's to bad this concept was abandoned. But I would love to see what fans do with it!

4: Hunt For The Lava Hammer, and Cole Lava Blade

An early version of Master Of The Mountain, or something else? Going by the mining style machines and side characters in the backgrounds of both these pieces, this could have been a mining themed season centered around Cole. Even Cole's outfit is designed to look like a mining or construction outfit. Almost reminiscent to Lego City's Volcano Explorers line.

5: The Dragons Tribe, and Hunt For The Elemental Shurikens

There isn't much to say about this one. As we can't really take many clues from it. But going by Lloyd's outfit, and the lush green plant life, I believe this could be an early version of The Island. What really interests me is these Elemental Shurikens. What are they? Unfortunately, it doesn't say. But I'm sure they would have been interesting! Also, look at that dragon guarding her nest. The patterns on her are beautiful!

6: The Journey of Lloyd

All these piece were under one title. The Journey Of Lloyd. How mysterious.👀 So what is this collection of concepts? Just by looking, you can tell this was no ordinary season. The muted color palette and the more mature atmosphere all seem to point to something bigger. Was this perhaps a scrapped version of the Ninjago Movie? Or something else? Perhaps a Lloyd centric story, in which he goes an epic adventure all his own! Whatever's is was, it looks amazing. The love how much more mature and darker it feels. Surely a concept worthy of a nail biting, heart racing, action movie!

7: The Dragon Mask

A single concept amongst the others caught my eye. It didn't seem to fit with any of the other concept seasons. What is this dragon mask? It could be an early version of the Dragon Forms seen in Crystalized. But whose to say? Still, a very striking design! Feel free to comment your theories about it!

Want to look at the artwork straight from Matt Betteker himself? Here's his Art Station account with the exact art pieces we went over today.

Thanks for reading everyone!

[visit-new-york]

The Great Blizzard of 1888, Madison Avenue and 40th Street, New York City.

The Great Blizzard of 1888, a winter tempest that battered the Atlantic coast of the United States from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine in March 1888, left an indelible mark in history. Inflicting over $20 million in property damage in New York City alone and claiming the lives of more than 400 people, including about 100 sailors, the blizzard was a catastrophic event along the Eastern Seaboard.

Following a mild winter, a convergence of a western snowstorm and a southern warm front gave rise to one of the most severe winter storms in American history. The onslaught commenced on the night of Sunday, March 11, with New York City accumulating 10 inches (250 mm) of snow by Monday morning. The storm persisted, eventually enveloping the city in a 22-inch (550 mm) snow blanket, while other regions experienced staggering accumulations of 40 to 50 inches (1,000 to 1,250 mm). Relentless high winds, coupled with temperatures well below freezing, intensified the perilous conditions. New York witnessed winds averaging 40 miles (65 km) per hour, gusting up to 80 miles (130 km) per hour, resulting in the destruction of power and telegraph lines and colossal snowdrifts reaching heights of 50 feet (15 meters).

Despite the escalating weather, many New Yorkers unaccustomed to blizzard conditions attempted to navigate the city for work. As the situation deteriorated throughout Monday, workers found themselves stranded on the streets, trains, elevated transit cars, and at their workplaces. With closures affecting shops, government offices, courts, Wall Street businesses, and even the Brooklyn Bridge, people sought refuge in overflowing saloons, hotels, and prisons.

The profound impact of the blizzard led survivors to gather annually until 1969 to commemorate its anniversary. Recognizing the vulnerabilities exposed by the storm, officials implemented measures such as placing power and telegraph lines, as well as public transit, underground. The Great Blizzard of 1888 became a transformative event that reshaped urban planning and disaster preparedness in the years to come.

[trainmaniac]

'Vacs' on tour by CJ Rich Via Flickr: 50007 'Hercules' and 50049 'Defiance' power through theirold stomping ground of Maidenhead on the Great Western on 29 July 2023 with 1Z50 Ipswich - Paignton

[wifelinkmtg]

There's "spaghetti western" and then there's whatever the hell this Chef Boyardee shit is

Hello! and welcome back to Wifelink. We're talking about Outlaws of Thunder Junction today, Magic's second product in a row set in a version of Nevada, and let me tell you something: I am not impressed. The mechanics are uninspired, the setting is undercooked, the story is overstuffed, and to top it all off the whole thing smacks of settler-colonialism. AND they yassified Vraska, the monsters!

WE WILL GET TO THE HOT WOMEN, BELIEVE YOU ME, BUT FIRST I AM GOING TO COMPLAIN SOMEWHAT, AS IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS A GAMER

The mechanics we've discussed elsewhere, and I will skim over the main storyline except to say that very few of this Big Villain Heist Team-Up gets enough spotlight to justify their inclusion here beyond getting recognizable names on cards, and that Rakdos' presence on the plane alone ought to be an apocalyptic calamity. I appreciate Jace & Vraska going full blackpilled accelerationist, stealing a baby, and aiming to destroy the multiverse & start over (a novel hybrid of Raising Arizona and Doctor Strangelove,) but I also know, sure as the sun rises, that whatever happens with their villain arc will be a underwhelming let-down.

What I actually want to complain about, though, is the setting. Thunder Junction ain't real, and I don't mean it's fictional, I mean it's plywood facades on a backlot. It's the set for a cowboy film. You feel me? This ain't a plane, it's a god damned sound stage.

Lemme go over the facts: we know Thunder Junction has been settled for a bit over a year. A year! - and yet there's multiple towns, multiple railways, and an honest-to-god metropolis. Less than two years and we already have ghost towns! This is not the product of a bunch of people on various planes all individually deciding to seek a new life in the off-world colonies. All of this represents a staggering quantity of people, material, wealth, and labor, being moved between planes, directed and organized - but by whom? For what reason? How, even? The story is totally uninterested in these questions.

One of the few silver linings to the way the Phyrexian invasion storyline ended was that the Omenpaths had a lot of interesting potential! Different planes would come into direct contact with each other for the first time ever! Different technologies, different philosophies and religions, different kinds of magic colliding, coming into conflict, adapting and adjusting to each other. And after a couple of sets where the interplanar contact was limited to one or two particularly adventurous individuals, we finally get to see what interplanar contact at scale looks like here in Thunder Junction... and it just looks like a John Wayne flick. Did people not bring their culture with them? Is there a big rack of hats and boots and dusters right where people step off the Omenpath? Shuck off those old Ravnican rags, kid, get changed. You'll spoil the aesthetic. I mean, it's baffling.

Luxurious Locomotive (art by Leon Tukker). This is one of the few man-made parts of this plane that I can look at and know where it came from: this is a Kaladeshi design. More of this sort of thing would have made Thunder Junction feel more like a real place and less like a Sergio Leone joint.

There's a side story, No Tells, by Isaac Fellman, which I quite like actually: it's about guilt and betrayal and the inevitable regrets of having moved into a queer housing co-op, and one of the things that makes it great is that we know where Yuma came from (New Capenna), we know why he left (the limitations of "be gay do crimes" as praxis under capitalism), and we know what he brought to Thunder Junction with him (cocktails, pool tables, and his co-op's emergency funds). Fellman has written nothing else for Wizards and doesn't play Magic, and even so he's done more to make Thunder Junction feel like a real place situated in a real history than the rest of the story team combined - which goes to show, one, that we should only let trans people write magic story for the next decade or so, and two, that what I'm asking for in terms of worldbuilding is not unattainable, or even that difficult.

And all of this ties into the colonialism, right? Thunder Junction is being colonized, and asking questions about who benefits, who's sponsoring this breakneck settlement of the plane, what they're after and so forth would require the story to take a good hard look at the process of colonization itself, and Wizards is flatly unwilling to engage with anything that thorny in their products. So, just as Ixalan involved a limp-wristed slant reenactment of the Spanish conquest of the Americas - but it's fine because they're the bad guys and they're technically not even trying to colonize Ixalan and they don't win anyway so no one gets hurt! - Thunder Junction is attempting to present a Disneyland version of Western colonialism. Untamed wilderness! Bringing civilization to uninhabited deserts! How cool and heroic these hard frontiersmen and -women are! I'm told they brought in Navajo cultural consultants for the Atiin, a fantasy equivalent, and I hope those folks were well compensated! The Atiin seem cool, and the one Atiin character we spend any time with is well-written, but the Atiin are not indigenous to Thunder Junction. They're not being colonized. And if there weren't anybody being colonized, I'd probably still dislike the colonial vision of a wild land inhabited only by animals, just waiting for us to shape it to our will with railways and violence, but there is in fact a native race of sapients on Thunder Junction, and these cactus folk get no voice in the story, so if they have some kind of opinion on the rapid colonization of their home and the clear-cutting of their cactus forests, we don't get to hear about it.

Prickly Pair (art by Brian Valeza) Too much of the extremely-limited presence Thunder Junction's only indigenous sapients have on the cards is devoted to cactus-based puns like this one, which is pretty distasteful given, you know, the colonialism.

I'm talking about colonialism not because I think that replicating colonial myths in fantasy fiction is an unethical thing to do - although it is - but because you can see, right, that Thunder Junction's lack of verisimilitude is intertwined with the colonial vision of the world at play here, yeah? The story wants to have cool cowboy shootouts and train robberies and it does not want its cowboy fantasy to be complicated by uncomfortable realities, so it has to avoid all of the basic worldbuilding questions that would tell us who the colonization benefits and how they're profiting off the plane, and in the end we're left with nothing but an empty aesthetic, like a duster hanging off a scarecrow, blowing in the wind.

ANYWAY SO WOMEN

To be honest, under the circumstances I'm not really feeling like giving the fine women of Thunder Junction my usual more elaborate treatment, so we're going to lightning-round this shit, which is at least thematic.

Blood Hustler (art by Anna Pavleeva)

Vampire MILF.

Rattleback Apothecary (art by Loïc Canavaggia)

Snake MILF.

Wrangler of the Damned (art by Michal Ivan)

Cis lesbian haircut, good with a rope.

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds (art by Ryan Pancoast)

BIG

[artist-issues]

Will you be watching the Mufasa movie when it comes out? I personally don’t think I can handle it. They already demolished Lion King in their Live Action version so I don’t trust them to do right with this one.

I think I might just for one reason: they added more facial expression to the animation.

If I had to expand on that and say “I’ll go for two reasons,” it would be “this is a new story, not a remake.” There are different dangers to adding-on-to an established story, and I prefer those kinds of dangers to the ones that come when you’re trying to re-tell something that’s already been perfectly told.

I’ve said in other posts before, they changed The Lion King’s Main Point from: “Remember who you are: a King takes responsibility for the care of others.” to:

“I have self-worth.”

Which, you may notice, is pretty contradictory. It’s another one of those “let’s capitalize on a franchise everybody already buys into by re-telling it—and while we’re there, retelling it, let’s completely take back the message that the original had, and give it a completely new message based on whatever the current culture thinks is ‘correct.’”

So, selflessness out. Self-obsession in. Responsibility out. Self-validation in. Self, self, self.

Anyway.

That’s the danger of remakes. They use a “retelling” opportunity to “remake” everything that made the original good. And by remake, I mean, erase and make-worse. I digress.

This new movie won’t have those same sets of dangers. They can’t exactly ruin the original origins of Mufasa, the character, in the same way the ruined Simba—because there’s never been a really canon story about Mufasa and his brother.

(What I mean by that is, the original The Lion King film did not spell out Mufasa and Scar’s relationship or backstory in great detail within that film. The printed media and fan theories and even The Lion Guard versions of events, which came later, I don’t count, when it comes to evaluating this new movie.)

But, I will say this. It looks like, from the trailers, Mufasa and Taka aren’t blood-related. That raises my eyebrows. Why are they doing that? The fact that Scar is Mufasa’s brother in the original makes his betrayal and motivation for killing him and trying to kill Simba much more impactful. Why take that away? Also, it makes it look like Taka was supposed to inherit some sort of leadership role, and maybe choosing to adopt Mufasa winds up putting events in motion that rob him of what was otherwise his rightful rule. So that sort of further justifies Scar’s bitterness later on.

All of that is dumb. You should not make a prequel that weakens every story that comes after it. See Star Wars.

I’ve also said: Mufasa, as a character is the ideal Strong, Selfless Father/King. And he specifically states that he got his ideals from his Father, and clings to them because of a heritage, something Outside of Himself. He’s not special. He’s not the Chosen One. He’s one in a long line of good, strong men (Lion, whatever) who pass down valuing others as more important than themselves. He submits and obeys those ideals. He is the opposite of “getting my way all the time.”

Do you see why it’s important that Mufasa did not come up with those values himself? He has to get them from an authority figure who came before him. He has to be submitting to someone—even though he’s a King.

They have a high chance of ruining that.

Because it’s not very popular right now for the Western Culture to say “give your life up for others! Sacrifice your interests for the big picture! Submit yourself to someone else’s authority and wise advice, whether you feel like it or not!” But the powerful truth is, that is what Mufasa is, as a character.

I already outlined how in this post.

So this new movie has new dangers. I might go to see how it handles them. Because if they could listen to people enough to make the lions’ faces move more animatedly, maybe they have stopped and thought about how to make a good story that fits in with the original Lion King’s values. Maybe it’ll be a fix-it for the 2019 movie.

Not likely. But I’m going in with an open mind, even if I watch the trailers with skepticism. So we’ll see!

[themotherofhorses]

paloma: first meeting

— simon "ghost" riley x oc!silentdove reyes.

summary: he's not annoyed, per se, but ghost is just not really in the mood to chit-chat with the american airman scurrying around the base. at best, he tolerates them.

(or the first exchange between ghost and his montanan woman.)

warnings: none, aside from explicit language.

note: okay, so despite this being an obvious OC-insert series, i invite anyone and everyone to read it :D this is actually my first time tackling an OC-insert fanfic (as well as writing ghost) so im still trying to get the rhythm of things.

dividers by: @saradika

paloma (masterlist) | main masterlist

[2021] 

Simon Riley won’t ever admit it — never aloud, anyway — but every time he steps foot on American soil, he feels more akin to a wolf draped in sheep’s clothing. 

In his mind, he sticks out like a sore thumb. He is not a hero, really; unlike the lot teetering around the military base he is currently stationed at for the next five or so weeks, he is less flesh and blood, and more a phantom. Or something along those lines. Actually, that could explain why there is such little traffic aimed his way. But he doesn’t particularly care. His schedule lacks the room to voice any complaints. 

Right now, his main concern is doing his job, and doing it right. 

Two weeks back, Price had him fishing out his passport tucked away inside his bedside table. “Fancy a two month getaway to the States?” Great Falls, Montana, to be exact. High west, nearing the border of Canada, and surrounded by land he’s only ever seen in those silly ass spaghetti western movies. 

The view is nice, he’ll admit. Beautiful, even. Exhilarating. He now understands why they refer to Montana as “Big Sky Country.” 

Malmstrom is much smaller than he imagined, and homier too. The Air Force base is nestled within the city’s east side, offering its own museum and park. He’s quite grateful for the latter; the trails allow for his nighttime walks when the nightmares prove too shitty to sleep. 

Great Falls is pretty as well. Price would like it, maybe Garrick too. He knows the two are big on history, and almost every inch of the city is drenched with some memory belonging to the old frontier days. 

Upon arriving, the yanks provided him with his own private office, housed in the back of the 341st logistics readiness squadron. It’s nothin’ fancy, really, just a wee room furnished with a dark mahogany desk, two windows, a steel cabinet, the Montana flag to his left, and the American to his right. 

Again, he’s not one to complain. Something’s something. 

Earlier, one of the higher-up airmen, a Staff Sergeant Benson (he believes is the name), had handed him a folder jam-packed with a shit ton of mission statements — logistics, strategic planning, reports of previous global concerns, and reviews of the base’s Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. All the documents are dated in a time range varying between two months ago to 0800 this morning. 

In the back of his mind, he can already hear Price chuckling.

“Have fun, Simon.”

Bloody bastard. 

So now, Ghost sits hunched over the desk, feeling a little too damn big for it. All the paperwork is strewn about messily around him, with sticky notes, a pen, and some other random shit of his. No one has yet to visit him; until that happens, he feels little need to remain organized. 

His boot taps against the floor. “—Initial efforts to clean polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from launch facilities at Malmstrom AFB are ongoing but seeing success…” Ghost reads under his breath. PCBs? That’s nice to hear.

“...after PCBs were detected on surfaces in launch facilities at all three of the command’s missile wings.” 

PCBs. Polychlorinated biphenyls — man-made and highly toxic, consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine atoms. He clicks his tongue, shaking his head as he flips onto the next page.

“We know they’re present on what appears to be otherwise pristine surfaces, due to the survey—” 

—a sudden knock interrupts his reading. 

With a curse on his tongue, Ghost sets down the report. He quicks a sneaking glance at his watch. 1342 hours. He’s due in a meeting at 1700. 

“Come in.” His voice sounds low and raspy, the two words sounding more like a growl than a greeting. He’s not annoyed, per se, but Ghost is just not really in the mood to chit-chat with the American airmen scurrying around the base. At best, he tolerates them.

(In his mind, they’re all little Graves, ready to stir up a headache.) 

The door slowly cracks open.

“Lieutenant Riley?” A female voice calls out — soft and cautious; Ghost’s chin drops against his knuckles. “Apologies for the disruption, sir, but I have some additional paperwork I need to drop off with you, at the request of my superior.” He grunts, and the airman then steps into his office, quickly shutting the door behind her before meeting his eyes. 

It is entirely unlike him, Ghost knows, but his brain almost short-circuits right then and there. Two dark brown eyes, framed by thick lashes, peering up at him. Shit. He’d always thought brown was such a pretty eye color on a woman, but hers stretched further across common compliments. 

Both of  ‘em — they held no animosity, no uneasiness or fear, nothing. 

That, itself, is quite fucking bizarre. He’s not used to that.

Ghost is .... well, Ghost. He knows the mask he is always donning on his face isn't exactly a sign of welcomeness. Just his mere presence is enough to startle the living shit out of rookies, baby recruits, wide-eyed sergeants, and the like. There is something inherently unnerving when you are unable to get a good reading of the person you're standing across from.

She’s brave, he thinks. Or merely oblivious to who he is. 

“Here you go, sir,” the airman says while placing the packet of new documents down on his desk. Her lips are shaped prettily, plump and shining with a fresh layer of gloss, and across her nose is a splatter of faint freckles. Under a different circumstance, maybe he would’ve taken the time to try and count them all.

Ghost swallows hard, incapable (for what feels like the first time in his life) of mustering up an appropriate reply. “Ah, thank you, ma’am.” 

The airman's brow lifts.

“Reyes,” she then corrects him with a kind smile, gesturing to the name badge sitting above her right chest pocket. Sure enough, in bold military lettering, reads Reyes. “My name is Senior Airman SilentDove Reyes. I am actually a cryptologic linguist analyst here on base; but sometimes I run errands for others, when not needed for a translation, of course.”

There is a slight chirp in her voice that Ghost picks up, along with the way she casually rocks back and forth on her feet. She seems awfully young, no older than 22, possibly 23, but even that's cutting it; a kid, compared to him. Maybe 5'7, with dark hair pulled back into two tight braids that fall at her belted waistline.

A stark contrast compared to him.

He's oddly curious now — about her age and first name and those long braids and why she stands before him, calm, collected, and sure — but he knows damn well this is not the time nor place for any questions. Both of them are on the clock, and it is likely she’ll need to report back to her supervisor soon. 

He offers her a curt nod. “Well, thank you again, Reyes,” he states, keeping his voice flat. 

“You are welcome, sir.” She turns to leave, but when her hand latches onto the doorknob, Reyes glances over her shoulder at him, “—oh, and Lieutenant? If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

–

The successful cleaning came after a bioenvironmental team at Malmstrom AFB …. Malmstrom AFB .. consulted with engineers and ….. and medical experts on the cleaning …. cleaning processes and– 

–and agents most likely to effectively remove the chemicals…. 

He knows his mind is wandering off, in desperate search of that pretty senior airman from fifteen minutes ago. “Bloody fucking hell,” Ghost grumbles, leaning back in his chair. His head lolls back as he blinks upward, studying the ceiling overhead. The texture is popcorn, a creamy color, with a simple fan jutting down. One light bulb, probably a recent replacement. 

Fuck. He doesn’t need this shit. Not one bit. 

Five more weeks and he’ll be gone from here. 

Ghost rechecks his watch, feeling a bit peeved at the time. 1411. He has several more hours until he can leave all this work shit behind for the evening, and maybe catch a short walk before hunkering down for the night. He doesn’t like sitting down for too long; it causes him to become restless. Agitated. Overthinking.

He doesn’t want distractions. He doesn’t need ‘em. Distractions ruin work ethic; clouding up the mind while fucking up all sense of responsibility. Price will have his ass if he – somehow – becomes compromised. And he'll never hear the end of it from Johnny. 

Settling back into the paperwork, he decides that he won’t allow himself another second thinking about all that – the American airman and her pretty brown eyes and high cheekbones and first name. 

Something tells him that’s easier said than done. 

[fairuzfan]

I saw your post about the Henna Night, hope it's ok for this comment from a Palestinian living in Diaspora who spent her child/teen/young lady years living in Palestine. Every village/city/family in Palestine of course does things a little different than others, this is my own experiences from going to like 100 weddings, lmao. Imo there is simply no Wedding like a Palestinian Wedding, it's the cultural backbone of our society gatherings. I personally hate when people compare a Henna Night to a Bridal Shower bc it's not interchangeable at all, but I acknowledge that westernization as well as accommodation's of Palestinians living in Diaspora has lead to people comparing Henna Night/Bridal Showers and have interjected Bridal Shower stuff into our tradition. Imo Henna Night is way more fun than the actual Wedding, I always loved going to those more. So the Bride's side of the family prepares for the Henna Night by inviting close family, friends, and usually women from the Groom's side as well. The Bride's family spends the day before or the day of the Henna Night preparing Henna Platters. As well as small bags of candy & small bags/cones of Henna paste as things to give to guests. Depending on the wealth of the family sometimes there more stuff but those are the main things, but usually there is always something to give the guests like tea, coffee, sodas, and sweets. During the Henna everyone wears Thobes, it's so beautiful to see the different styles of our Thobes. The Bride looks so beautiful in a Thobe/Headdress, I love it. The Bride's family also prepare platters of Henna decorated with flowers that (usually) the old woman/matriarchs will have the honor of carrying it on their heads (some dance without holding onto the platters with their hands! so iconic) as the women dance in a circle around the Bride. The grandmothers, or whichever woman with a good strong voice who Zagreet (idk how to do transliteration) but its singing where the lead singer will call out lines like "Heeyee this girl is the most beautiful in the world! Heeyeee we have come to celebrate her happiness! Heeyyeee may Allah's blessings fall upon this most gracious girl!" the lines are always made up on the spot so the singer has to have a sharp mind, the singer will also make up lines singing about the Bride, her smarts, beauty, personality, her generosity, or the generosity of her family, compliments to the Bride's mother, etc. These are always ended with the Ululation (trilling sound) that all women make at the end. During the Henna Night there's lots of singing, dancing, music playing, it always takes place at the Bride's Mother's house so its just such a cozy feeling of womanhood/family & bringing in the women of the new groom's family into the circle. Old women sitting on cushions/chairs with their canes, someone has a tubla (hand drum) & is playing, little girls in their thobes running around, teens showing off their thobes, the Bride's family, sisters, cousins, aunts, serving sweets & drinks, the Bride being celebrated. Continued...

omgggg i love reading this so much thank you.

yeah the bridal shower is not a great analogy because bridal showers in like the us are... not at all a celebration i feel like of the women the same way henna night is. you're right weddings are the cultural backbone in a way that i think a lot of nonpalestinians dont realize because of how many traditions they use throughout the whole ordeal.

[gartenofbanny]

Andrealphus's first appearance in Unhappy Campers was probably the most mediocre introduction in all of Helluva Boss thus far. Andrealphus had no build-up aside from a single line Stolas said in The Circus.

Instead, Andrealphus has been moreso built up as a character outside of the series entirely. Tweets made by Vivziepop releasing his design and describing his role

This is one of my main issues with Andrealphus's introduction as a whole. He wasn't introduced within the series itself but on Twitter. Keep in mind that he is supposed to be a major antagonist, and usually antagonists who are major have introductions within the series. But maybe he does have an introduction within the series with dramatic effect behind it..right?

Right?

When Western Energy released 13 seconds into the episode, Andrealphus just appears.

No entrance, no in-show introduction, no explained role, just nothing. Andrealphus just appears as if he's always been in the series. This is the worst villain introduction I've seen in Helluva Boss because there was no introduction within the show.

It's like the writers had no idea how to introduce him within the show and just tweeted who he is and what his role is and called it a day. That's not how any character introduction works because they're essentially spoiling their audience. Instead of building him up within season 1, giving the audience something to theorize and talk about, eventually paying off with an appearance they just do "Hey, here's this character that will appear in a future episode! Let us explain to you who he is instead of letting you put the pieces together yourselves!"

So, I'm going to bring up one of my favorite introductions to an antagonist in fiction. You all have heard of Dragon Ball Z, right? Well, here's how one of the main antagonists, Cell, was introduced.

Words can not express how much I love this introduction, why it has a great build up, and how it's fucking terrifying. But I don't feel like explaining right now.

So now that you all watched the video or have already seen it, Lets try something different. Remove the majority of the video, immediately cut to Piccolo facing Cell with Cell already absorbed the last citizen of the city and Piccolo about to fight Cell while screaming his name. That doesn't work because two things are missing.

And that is the build-up and

ACTUAL INTRODUCTION

This is why Andrealphus's introduction into Helluva Boss is mid (if you can even call it an introduction), Andrealphus had no actual introduction within the series aside from a throwaway line a couple episodes before and no actual introduction within the series either. Andrealphus just appears in Western Energy, and the episode acts as if like the audience already knows who he is and what he does.

Newsflash, we don't. Well, we know who he is, but that information was given outside the show. Because for some REASON, Viv and Spindlehorse write their characters outside of the show.

-Insert Millie thread reference here-

Am I expecting Helluva Boss to have Dragon Ball Z's level of writing? No, it's Helluva Boss, lmao. But I did expect it to have a decent villain introduction, especially when the villain is really major. Helluva Boss has had pretty decent villain introductions and twists with Martha and Striker. Hell, in my opinion, the DHORK Agents had the best introduction thus far, but it just fumbled the bag with Andrealphus.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Andrealphus's introduction sucked and he's honestly just painfully boring as an antagonist overall, but that'll be a topic for a different essay. That's all I have for today. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you all have a great one! ❤️

[braininatankwithalaptop]

I've just been having Undertale Yellow thoughts and I'm just filled with specific angst thoughts on the endings. Because no matter what

Clover is alone.

Clover either drags their dying body to a wall to die with dignity, they're betrayed and killed by someone they thought was their friend after he killed Clover's chance to have a family, or they leave the underground empty and unable to connect to others (remember, LOVE means distancing yourself to more easily hurt others).

Sure, in neutral and pacifist, they briefly travel with Martlet and sometimes Ceroba, but they're either short lived or under false pretenses. Martlet tries so hard but ultimately does little to protect Clover, and Ceroba initially just tries to lead Clover like a lamb to slaughter. She does connect with them a little during the journey, but I feel like it's overshadowed by her plan to kill Clover. Clover at the end of a hard fight and betrayal is faced with an alcoholic widow begging them to kill her. That's rough.

I feel like in the pacifist ending, Clover's main reason to giving up their soul isn't because they really love the monsters, they're just extremely empathetic and care about the injustice dealt to monsters as a whole. The lines in the whiteout don't call to feelings of friendship or camaraderie that Clover experienced, but of how the monsters are suffering trapped underground, and they need Clover's soul to escape.

Frisk gets to end the Pacifist story with a loving family and all of monsterkind knowing their name. Clover's story ends in a tragedy as they can't connect any further with these people who might be the first in their life to care, and no one else would know as four monsters hold a funeral in private.

And ultimately how much does Clover's actions matter? Either they sacrifice themselves, or they have to kill everyone else to survive. There is no option between because Flowey is the arbiter of what happens and no neutral run is satisfying to him. He terrorizes Clover for funsies and then starts everything over again. Clover only gets the pacifist ending because of a whim from Flowey.

No matter what path is taken, Clover's story is ultimately a tragedy. They got to have some fun as a cowpoke, but it seems their story took more after The Great Silence than most other western media.