#I feel like this articulates my issues with other dramas much better than any comments of what they lack

[incandescentflower]

I love many things about Century of Love, but I had to pull the scene where Ju asks about Trai looking like Dr Third because it was a perfect example of the narrative creating an obvious question and not having the characters pretend like it doesn't. (screenshots under the cut because the post is long) They don't have an answer, they make that clear, but that doesn't matter. The question has been put out there for us all to consider.

I have been personally been driven crazy recently by shows ignoring very obvious viewer questions so this was really satisfying. This is clearly because this narrative knows where it is going and is intentionally directing it so that viewers would have these specific questions and then they show the characters grappling with it.

This is another factor in the "Is Vee actually Wat or not" question, but I also liked that even Tao, the person with the most knowledge of this situation is like - hey, there are things we don't know. If Vee is Wat and Dr. Third is Trai and they never find a reason for it in the narrative, I still won't be annoyed because it has been made clear that there isn't some sort of clear mythological formula here, and maybe not all events have a clear explanation.

If a story lamp shades it, I can take a lot. I don't even really think this is a question that won't have any answer. I think it might. But I just appreciate that this story is intentional and aware of how the viewer will engage with it and it's nice to see as a counter example to some things that have made me feel absolutely gaslit when the narrative in other dramas never acknowledge it.

[sixteenthshen]

i need help

I read a post on Zhihu last night - “How to evaluate the finale of Word of Honor?” The top commenter’s writing just killed me.

Heavy spoilers for episode 33/34. There’re no spoilers for the episodes after that, but I can’t guarantee this if there are replies.

The rest hidden behind a cut. 

I don’t need help explaining the finale or the happy ending, bad ending whatever it is, I’ve found my own way to come to terms with it. But I can’t accept what happened in 33/34 and the lack of follow up on the core of the issue, and that’s blocking me from enjoying the “HE”. To be fair, I think I may be a bit hormonal? Because this is really making me feel like crap. 

-----

This is a comment made by a Chinese user on Zhihu: 

I only want to say; the show might as well have ended when A-Xu jumped down the cliff after WKX. Even though it's a bit lame, at least the soulmate feelings were still there.

The grand finale basically destroyed the soulmate bond built up over 20+ episodes. The essence of it is gone; all of the "candy" and "knives" feel like they've been stripped away.

I've written so much about WKX & ZZS and how they were both falling for each other, saving each other. And now it all looks like a big joke.

It turns out ZZS's soulmate is ZZH, not WKX. The mountains and rivers in the world can't compare to meeting my soulmate. Since my soulmate is gone, I might as well die. (Play on the quote from the drama, instead of why should I live, it becomes I should just die)

(The poster starts talking to ZZS directly - referring to him as you) You're really a mistreated (tortured?) concubine, aren't you? Once you decide to give your whole heart, whole person away, you somehow always end up meeting some fake evil bastard (reference to Farewell my Concubine, basically that ZZS always ends up being suckered)

When you first fell into Prince Jin's trap, it's because you were young and not yet wise to the ways of the world, and believed in the grand words of your cousin and got conned into the world of politics. Sinking into the dirtiest, muddiest of marshes.

You plotted tirelessly for 18 months, suffered through 18 months of pain from the 7 nails, and finally exchanged it for 3 years of freedom. But when you met WKX, you fell right back in again.

Heraclitus said, "You cannot step into the same river twice" <<(I think this person mixed up the meaning of this quote, cause it doesn't fit, but basically intends to say people shouldn't make the same mistake twice)

The first time you stepped into the river, you got away with only half your life. The next time you stepped into the river, you nearly lost your life 4x (under YBY's sword, when you jumped off the cliff to your death for love, pulling out your nails, exploding the mountain to cause an avalanche + suicide), in the end you became a living dead person on Changming mountain.

I don't know if I should call you a living dead man, anyway, in my heart, once you pulled out the nails from your body, cutting off any other alternative you had just to help WKX take revenge… while WKX came back from the dead, and worked with everyone present at the scene to give the performance of a lifetime, you were already dead.

What a mockery, a farce.

You gave up everything but in the end, you were nothing more than a spectator.

He wanted you to give him face, to let him go home to explain things. You quietly stepped aside and gave him the stage. He wanted your baiyi sword to demonstrate his family's sword technique, to prove his identity. You gave it to him without a second word. He cut Zhao Jing's arms and legs tendons, crippled his martial arts, finally took revenge. You were happy for him despite everything.

When Mo Huaiyang accused him of being the Ghost Valley Master, he openly admitted to it and said the entire first part was just an act. You stood in front of him, to protect him. Said he is your shidi, and stood with him without any reservations.

But he had secretly already reached an agreement with Ye Baiyi. He knew YBY wouldn't hurt him, but you didn't know and yet you still shielded him. So terribly afraid that YBY would hurt him because of his identity. 

Everyone knew this was part of the scheme he laid out, everyone participated in his scheme. Only you didn't know. Only you foolishly believed that he wouldn't be alright without you, that he needed you to help him take revenge. That he had his difficulties so he couldn't confess the truth to you, as long as he did, then you would be the first to know everything. That he was your soulmate. This word "soulmate", if said enough times, it would even be real. In this life, right up until the end, we can't even fully understand ourselves, how do we talk about others?

----- 

the source is the top voted answer here. I like this poster a lot, she shared some great things throughout the course of the drama, 3 of which were the base of poems-related posts I’ve made here. I was doing fine before, but in the course of translating this answer for a friend, I made myself feel worse.

She later forced herself to look at it from WKX’s perspective and wrote a piece on it as well, but it... was very forced and I’m not too sure she even believed it herself. She ended that part with - “this made her feel very keenly that no matter how similar two souls may be, in the end, they are still two souls. He isn’t you and he will never be you. You can work endlessly and tirelessly to be closer, but your souls can never meet.”

I... I’m too sad to translate the WKX part in order to be fair to WKX in this post (if I feel better about it, i will later? but it didn’t make me feel better at all tbh) 

Can someone who can articulate well and believe that what WKX did was right, please help to make me understand episodes 32-34 from his perspective?

My main issues are:

We never got a proper 1-to-1 discussion between WKX and ZZS over the issue. At first, they were celebrating as a group, I can accept it. There wasn’t a time or place.

But when ZZS went back to his room early and sober, when everyone else was still drinking and having fun, I felt so bad for him.

When WKX came into his room, looking for ZZS when drunk, I know it isn’t supposed to be like this - but I can’t help but feel he didn’t dare to talk to A-Xu 1-to-1. Instead he went when he was drunk to spill his heart. It can be thought of as sweet, because the first person he thinks of when he’s drunk is A-Xu... but I can’t help but find it very selfish, because it leaves A-Xu with no way to talk about things. If you’ve ever talked to a drunk while sober, you would understand what I mean, it’s a one-way conversation, you can’t get anything through.

But that conversation left A-Xu with enough guilt that he can’t come clean to WKX about what he did. How can he tell WKX that he pulled out his nails, and is about to die. To take away WKX’s happiness, when Lao Wen just told him about how happy he was to have him in his life?

Lao Wen had 0 intention to be cruel, but it ended up being more cruel. And this lack of a proper discussion between the two of them, makes me call into question the whole thing about soulmates. I believe Lao Wen loves A-Xu the best he can (with his somewhat emotionally stunted self), but he’s not putting himself in the other person’s shoes to care for them. 

Love =/= care. And by not caring enough in this matter, I feel it’s thrown him into OOC. Where is the WKX who cared so much for ZZS at the start? Where is the tenderness? 

The drama never properly addressed why WKX faked his death and not tell A-Xu. The only reason they gave was that A-Xu was heavily injured (through Wu Xi). WKX just admitted he was wrong (and should drink). That’s all.

Thankssss. 

Please don’t preach to me about the happy ending or talk about the finale. I personally can’t resolve 32-34, I have found a way to accept the ending as long as I can accept these 3 episodes.

I may not be able to immediately accept your POV but I will force myself to try to find something that fits. I want to keep shipping wenzhou :( 

[iamanartichoke]

I haven't watched any of the Loki episodes yet (I'm procrastinating) but I keep seeing vague stuff about some big chasm between how Tom sees Loki and how apparently a lot of fans see Loki. Could you give me some specifics? Other than Loki mentioning his interest in sexes other than female I've heard nothing that could cause this kind of discourse.

I don't know if I'm the best person to ask, as I know others have articulated it much better than I can, and who may feel more strongly than I do that their Loki and Tom's Loki don't align so much anymore. Not tagging anyone bc of reasons (but feel free to comment/reblog if you wish to talk about it).

But, I do know a decent amount, so I'll proceed to write five thousand words try.

My understanding overall, is that Tom has always spoken very eloquently about Loki as a complex, fractured character who was functioning from a place of deep pain as opposed to any real villainy or evil.

(cut for length)

He was never saying any of it as an excuse for Loki's actions but as an explanation of where Loki was coming from and how he ended up in that place to start with. This mostly refers to the 2011-2013 era Loki, before the "reboot." Because so many fans viewed Loki the same way - as complex, as broken, as coming from a place of pain - there was validation, I suppose, in knowing that the actor who played the character (and whose performance was largely responsible for the character being so enigmatic and appealing in the first place) shared this view.

After the reboot with TR, Tom seemed to lean more heavily on the "god of mischief" aspect of Loki - he'd often say that his job was to have fun bc Loki was always mischievously having fun. While Loki had always been funny in a snarky, sardonic kind of way, and the "mischief" he'd get into was always just for fun and relatively harmless, after TR he was more silly-funny or slapstick funny ("funny") and his mischief was framed as a little more malicious (such as using magic to trick and then stab Thor when they were children).

So it seemed like a big departure from the previous Loki that Tom always spoke so eloquently about, and I think it's notable that when promoting TR, Tom didn't really delve into the psychology of Loki much at all when he'd talk about the character - just the "fun." So there was that. At the time, people figured it was bc he had very little control or say in what the director chose to do with his character.

Now, though, Tom has a lot more creative control (although I don't think he actually has all that much, certainly not as much as some people think he does, tbh), but while he's once again talking about Loki's psychology and identity issues and trauma and whatnot as context and backstory, he also still seems to be leaning into the "god of mischief" parts and the silly-funny parts. The show furthermore has yet to address what Loki experienced with Thanos in between Thor 2011 and Avengers, has failed to address his identity crisis after discovering he is Jotun (a throwaway 'I was adopted' line doesn't really count), etc.

So there's a lot that Tom has spoken about in Loki's story that is very much not being included in the series. Furthermore, while Tom discusses Loki's complexity when doing press, he has also said things that imply he has an idea of humiliation being a core aspect of Loki, or that Loki is someone who constantly needs to be knocked down a few pegs, or that he thinks he's profound but actually isn't, etc. I know in the past he's also made comments about Loki's mental health and how Loki might go about recovering from it, but his perspective on that whole area didn't ring true to a lot of Loki fans who also suffer from mental health issues.

So all of these things together, to some fans, makes it seem like Tom's current idea of Loki - whether it's bc he wants to do something new, or has changed as an actor, or whatever the case may be - is still a departure from the 2011-2013 era Loki and, thus, does not align with their own interpretation of Loki. Hence, a chasm appears.

^^ All of this is for context, which I tried to give as objectively as possible. Now, as far as discourse about it goes, I can't speak to that very much. Nobody that I know is angry at Tom or "betrayed" by Tom or feeling anything negative toward Tom as a person. They are, however, feeling that they may need to re-evaluate how much of Tom's interpretation they put stock into as they engage with the character, and kinda where to go from here. But I can't emphasize enough that no one acts like this is Tom's responsibility or that Tom somehow did them dirty. I also can't emphasize enough that there's nothing wrong with Tom's version and he genuinely seems to be enjoying what they've created here, and that's fabulous. There's no wank about that, at least not that I've seen from my fandom corner.

So that's the situation from the tumblr side. However, because Tom has been the "face" of the Loki series all this time, and because he's been hyped up as having so much say and influence and ideas to contribute, a lot of people got the idea that the Loki of the series would be exactly the Loki that Tom wanted to play. And when, inevitably, the show went in directions that people didn't like (my understanding is that this is mostly coming down to shipping nonsense, which I'm not even going to touch), Tom was blamed. And that's where this "discourse" is coming from, as far as I know. I don't have any real first hand facts, but people are saying that Tom's been getting death threats on social media from fans who are outraged about the Sylvie thing, or outraged about how the bisexual component is being handled, or whatever. Since this is pretty much par for the course in fandoms, I believe it.

But it seems like the shipping nonsense has gotten all tangled up in the dissatisfaction in the aspects of Loki's story that aren't being told, and in the difference in Tom's comments about Loki now vs back then, and it just ends up being a recipe for discourse, wank, and drama. So to answer your question, the chasm between Tom's Loki and some fans' Loki is the result of ... *gestures at massive wall of text* this.

[fallenrepublick]

So my ex bf used to prefer romance and drama movies while I prefer anything sci fi or fantasy. And now I'm curious. Pros and cons of watching rom coms with Maul? 😏

Oh god I feel like everything I write here is gonna double as both... Also pretty much the only rom-com in English I’ve ever watched was Love Actually, so forgive me if any of this sounds weird

Pros:

He, surprisingly, seems to like rom-coms. When you explained the plots to him, you seemed excited and interested enough that he was willing to watch practically anything.

He seems genuinely interested in the plot, and asks questions about the nuances of the characters when he needs it. He may ask even if he doesn’t need it, just to hear you excitedly explain things to him.

When you’re watching, he’ll hold you close to him, rubbing lightly at your arms when romantic things happen in the movie.

He always tells you nice things about the movie after it’s over, explaining what it was he enjoyed about it, just as he does with every other movie.

Every so often you’ll look up at him, wondering what’s going through his head, and you’ll see the face he makes when he’s concentrating, eyes engrossed in whatever’s happening on screen.

Cons:

He doesn’t hesitate to criticize the character if he doesn’t agree with a decision they make or something they say. He doesn’t understand why it’s so difficult for many of them to articulate certain things or explain an issue. The characters’ bad decisions frustrate him to no end.

During romantic scenes, he may become more interested in you than in the movie, his hand gradually moving further up with the full intent to distract you.

He comments often on how some of the women in the movies could do better.

He has created detailed lists of why certain movies are better than others and is ready to defend those opinions to the death.

[heereandthere]

~A Massive Thank You to @bemorechillmusical~

As I’m sure all of you know, today marks a bittersweet ending to a glorious journey: “Be More Chill” has officially finished its 5-month Broadway run. I’m really sad to see it ride off into the sunset so soon, but I’m also really proud of everyone who has made this show what it is today and helped so many people get out of very bad places. This show means so much to so many people, and though it’s disappointing to see it being taken away, it’s remarkable that everyone made it this far.

Thank you, “Be More Chill”, for introducing me to theatre and helping me find a place where I really belong, for guiding me to an outlet for the stresses of the world. This show helped me discover that the root of my issues was having no way to project by introducing me to the world of drama because “it seemed fun”, which led to some of my fondest memories. I now volunteer frequently at my local theatre, and, since I was also helped in figuring out what path I want to choose in life, I have wild dreams of making my Broadway debut.

Thank you, “Be More Chill”, for being there for me when I felt the most lost. When I first found this show is when a lot of emotional issues began to worsen for me, and I remember very fondly how BMC became, much like theatre, an outlet for all of those problems. I was having difficulties with my friends that I didn’t understand or could articulate properly, which made Michael’s story, in particular catch my eye; “Michael in the Bathroom” always helped me with a healthy cry, and flashing back to songs like “Two-Player Game” always put a smile on my face when I needed it.

Thank you, “Be More Chill”, for changing my life with only one performance and making a birthday I was secretly dreading one of the best ones possible. This was the very first Broadway show I had ever seen and, thanks to my amazing family, I was able to see it on the day I encountered a very big birthday that would change the course of my life. I was terrified of this day and, honestly, there was a part of me that just wanted to hole up in my house for the weekend and let it come and go. But, I wound up doing the exact opposite, and for those two hours I spent watching Jeremy’s story play out, I was convinced that things were going to be perfectly fine. The fears I had about fighting for my spot on Broadway and the troubles that would come with it dissipated, and I felt completely comfortable in my skin for the first time in I didn’t know how long. Being at the Lyceum made everything feel perfectly alright, and, in the words of the wise Evan Hansen, it gave me a reason to believe I’ll be okay.

Thank you, Will Roland and Jeremy Heere, for teaching me that, no matter how much I may dislike myself or how bad my anxieties get, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel and the best person for me to be is myself. There will always be voices in my head telling me ridiculous things, but there’s only one me, and I need to embrace this me and enjoy life while I still can.

Thank you, George Salazar and Michael Mell, for making me smile when I needed it most while also showing me that it doesn’t matter whether or not the world is watching. You taught me that self-love does not equal narcissism and is pivotal to living your best life, and that the condescending looks from your peers don’t matter as long as you’re being your best self.

Thank you, Stephanie Hsu and Christine Canigula, for teaching me that a little weird in this world is a good thing. It’s okay to be quirky, especially when things seem the worst, and oftentimes being odd is the best way to be. Times are confusing and scary and I may feel pensive about letting my inhibitions go, but sometimes letting loose and making some of the most obscure noises known by humankind is what can do you best.

Thank you, Katlyn Carlson and Chloe Valentine, for teaching me that confidence is possible, even when it feels like you have to fake it. Other people being self-confident and happy is not a comment on me and my progress, and even if it may take me a bit longer to reach that station in life, if I can break away from that negative mindset, I’ll be able to achieve a pure confidence in myself one day.

Thank you, Lauren Marcus and Brooke Lohst, for teaching me that I’m strong and deserve better than to be walked all over. I don’t have to take toxic behavior on the chin and wear it, because my mental health and feelings are just as crucial to care for as anyone else’s. I am no one else’s toy, and no one has any right to use me and expect me to stay when they hurt me.

Thank you, Tiffany Mann and Jenna Rolan, for teaching me that my voice matters, too. I shouldn’t let people take advantage of me for one exclusive thing, no matter what it is, and that friendship is a two-way street of effort. I’m important despite what the behavior of other people may lead me to believe, and I’m allowed to leave relationships if they’re toxic to me. I’m allowed to speak out against what I don’t believe in.

Thank you, Gerard Canonico and Rich Goranski, for teaching me that I do have a say in who I want to be. No matter what mold society tries to place me in, it is possible for me to break that and fight to be my own person, with all of my quirks and peculiarities in the mix. If people don’t like who I really am, it may hurt, but that’s okay because as long as I’m living my best life, it doesn’t matter.

Thank you, Britton Smith and Jake Dillinger, for teaching me that vulnerability isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t have to suppress my thoughts and feelings for other people, and it’s okay to open up about what’s bothering me. I’m never alone, no matter how barren my life feels, and it’s worth it in the long run to confide in someone, anyone. It’s okay.

Thank you, Jason Tam and the squip, for teaching me that my inner voices are intimidating and controlling, but don’t define who I am, as long as I put up a fight. I don’t always have to listen to what my brain tells me because, even if it is an extension of me, there are times when it’s wrong and irrational, and so if I assert myself and keep my true self in mind, it’s possible to deny my mind the luxury of hurting me.

Thank you, Jason Sweettooth Williams and Mr. Heere (and, of course, Mr. Reyes and the Scary Stockboy), for teaching me that sometimes you have to defy what your emotions tell you and stand up for your loved ones. It may feel like my problems control me, but it’s always okay and even encouraged to stand up and fight back, especially in the name of those you care about. Recovery is possible.

Thank you, Cameron Bond, Troy Iwata, Morgan Siobhan Green, Anthony Chatmon III, Joel Waggoner, and Talia Suskauer for working so incredibly hard on this show and in memorizing all of your roles, prepared to go on at a moment’s notice. You’ve fought for this just as hard as anyone else, and you deserve all of the respect and credit in the world for the times you’ve stepped up and absolutely killed it on both the Signature and Lyceum stages.

Thank you, Ned Vizzini, for creating a book that would come to inspire so many in such a great way, and for giving us the courage to stand up and be ourselves through the whole ordeal that is adolescence. This musical and this community wouldn’t exist without you and your work, and you laid the groundwork for what all of this would become. None of us would be here if it weren’t for your creation.

Thank you, Joe Iconis, Joe Tracz, Stephen Brackett, Chase Brock, Beowulf Boritt, Bobby Frederick Tilly, Tyler Micoleau, Ryan Rumery, Alex Bosco Koch, Dave Bova, Charlie Rosen, Emily Marshall, Michael Aarons, J. David Brimmer, Amanda Michaels, and every other intern, backstage worker, and stage managers for creating a show that has made me laugh, cry, and felt like I’m where I need to be, for creating a show that has helped me find a community of amazing people, both locally and online, and helped me feel like I was a little less alone. I know there are thousands of people just like me who say these same things, but I have no idea where I would be if it weren’t for this show, and I feel like I’m a better person for having found it.

Congratulations on an amazing comeback and a fantastic Broadway run, and I wish every single person who ever worked on this show the very best. It’s been an honor watching you get where you are today. I look forward to seeing you guys making theatre headlines once more very soon.

~Sincerely, Me

[letamreviews]

The Point

I made this profile because I decided to finally start blogging. Not about philosophy or politics, though, just movies (and maybe series) because fuck it.

What to expect:

Articulately used swear words, somewhat controversial opinions/topics, and overall decent formatting at the least. I’m far less likely to review mainstream movies or anything that’s got plenty of reviews already unless I feel an urge to do so (e.g.: Mortal Engines, Them That Follow, Gemini Man, etc.)

Content: Primarily, reviews. Secondarily, thoughts and essays. Tertiarily, data (uninteresting info to most).

Genres: All kinds, baby, lemme tell ya. My favorites are probably drama, documentary, and thriller. As of today, below are my general genre stats according to Letterboxd:

Action - 308

Adventure - 203

Animation - 86

Comedy - 158

Crime - 116

Documentary - 68

Drama - 368

Family - 41

Fantasy - 122

History - 31

Horror - 117

Music - 15

Mystery - 72

Romance - 69

Science Fiction - 224

Thriller - 235

TV Movie - 2

War - 30

Western - 18

Format: I’ll say what I have to say, make a list of things I liked/loved about it, and use tags to get certain things across (feeling rating, race/lgbtq+/gender/etc. tests it passes/fails, categories it belongs in, where I saw it, etc.). I expect the tags to keep the blog from turning into a complete scroll-down. Expect (somewhat) long reviews unless they’re “mini reviews”. The first paragraph should give you the gist of my thoughts, though.

Spoilers: I’m so anal particular about spoilers that I’ll give a fair warning before I say anything that I feel would be even a slight spoiler and label it as such (slight, minor, moderate, major). Usually, I give the spoilers their own paragraph. I try not to include any type of minor spoiler in the tags. If there be any in there from here on out, I’ll make the first tag “spoilers in the tags.”

Disclosures: If there’s anything that I feel impacts my review in a way that would affect its credibility or reflection of my own thoughts, I’ll mention it in its own paragraph at the bottom. Such things include attending/watching a Q&A, talking to the cast, and discussing the movie with an influence group before writing the review.

Review System:

Star Rating: SR is 1-10 stars, with 10 being the highest. Bear in mind that this is intentionally used as an “objective” score. What’s going to tick some people off is how I go about this. Are you ready?

Did I enjoy it?

Yes? 10 stars

No?

How much did I not enjoy it? -x stars

Did it do anything so well that it deserves stars back?

Yes?

How well? +x stars

No? +0 stars

Total score: x stars

Now you know. I have no intention to explain why I gave the individual ratings, though.

Feeling Rating: FR goes like this: I quit it, I did not like it, I like it enough, I like it, I really like it, I love it, I fucking love it. It’s the subjective part and entirely based on how I feel. In other words, how the media impacts me. This is subjective as hell because I fully allow my personal biases to take over when it comes to this part. Biases include my experiences, demographic, beliefs, etc. If you’re curious to know my FR for something that I haven’t reviewed yet, venture to my MUBI lists. If it’s not in there, ask me.

Examples of Review System: Human Lost (2019) is a recent CGI anime released in the US (before Japan for some reason). In my review, I gave it a rating of 4.5/5 and “I like it.” It has obvious flaws, especially being “some teenage shit”, but I still stuck by the matter of how much it could be enjoyed, especially for the age group I think it was designed.

Them That Follow (2019) is an American film that plenty of people didn’t care for (for some reason). In my review, I gave it a rating of 5/5 and “I love it.” Even without any mentioned problems in the review, it still didn’t get the highest feeling of “I fucking love it” because it didn’t hit me that strongly. So far, none of my reviewed movies have. Example of Review System Failing: I was so disappointed by Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum (2019) and bothered by some of its characters that I initially gave it a 3/5 rating. Watching the Q&A with the director and cast led to me better understanding what the director’s intentions were with its main character. This earned it half a star. I officially gave The Beach Bum a rating of 3.5/5 and my first “I like it enough.” The problem with this is that I let my personal feelings get in the way of deciding how enjoyable the movie was. Then again, it can be argued that the movie itself accomplished the feat of bothering me that way and therefore earned its SR. Meh.

Thoughts on People Taking Rude Issue With My Reviews or Ratings:

Why do you people think I care? Why do you feel the need to say things like "bad movie" or "lmao" at someone's love of something you don't like? What does it do? Does it make you feel like you're better than someone else because of the fact ya don't like something they love? All it does is make you look like a prick and people you're talking to think less of you as a result. Do me a favor, same with anyone else thinking of doing something similar, kindly FUCK OFF — Arielrocks5 (comment on her Alita: Battle Angel review)

About me:

I’m told I like everything. I don’t think it’s true, but I mightest well warn you. My philosophy is “the more you enjoy the more you enjoy.”

If you’d like to see my portfolio up ‘til this point, venture forth, fair traveler, and behold... my stuff.

[walterisaacson-blog]

Holbrooke in Heat

A review in the New York Times

Walter Isaacson

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

By George Packer

608 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $30.00

​Richard Holbrooke was a large man with gargantuan appetites – for food and women and movies and acclaim and, above all, diplomatic and undiplomatic maneuvering – appetitesthat struggled to feed an outsized ego that was matched only by his insecurities. As the last great freewheeling diplomat of the American Century, his turbocharged zeal and laughable lack of self-awareness earned him fervent admirers and fevered enemies, including a few longstanding colleagues who fell passionately and paradoxically into both camps. In fact, Holbrooke himself was caught in this duality of being his own most fervent admirer and worst enemy (although when someone once commented that he was his own worst enemy, a national security adviser he had worked with snapped, “not as long asI’m around.”)

​I doubt that any novel, not even one coauthored by Graham Greene and F. Scott Fitzgerald, could have captured Holbrooke fully, and I certainly thought that no biography ever would. But now one has. George Packer’s Our Man portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory: relentless, ambitious, voracious, brilliant, idealistic, noble,needy, and containing multitudes. It’s both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy, with Holbrooke strutting and fretting his hour on the stage.

​Perhaps intentionally, the book emulates the rollicking cadences, lapidary character descriptions and exhaustive reporting of The Best and the Brightest by Holbrooke’s close friend David Halberstam. (Packer on Halberstam: “Jewish and middle-class, with thick-framed glasses and big hairy hands and violent gestures and moral certainties, with his gift for dramatizing everything, including himself.”) Informed by complete access to Holbrooke’s intimate diaries and letters along with more than 250 interviews, the book overflows with the trait that was Holbrooke’s saving grace: an in-your-face intellectual honesty that is not tainted, as Holbrooke’s was, by being manipulative. The result is so bracing that Our Man not only revitalizes but in some ways reinvents the art of journalistic biography.

​Packer pulls no punches, and the complex shadings of the all-too-human personalities – including Holbrooke’s widow Kati Marton, his lifelong frenemy Tony Lake, his patron Hillary Clinton and his nemesis Barack Obama – are painted with vibrant complexity. They will likely wince but then nod as they read. So too, I think, would Holbrooke himself, who died in December 2010 when his heart exploded from the strain of unappreciated diplomatic exertions. I can almost hear him howling at Packer from the grave, berating him for the brutalpassages, and then, after realizing how brilliant and brilliantly he has been portrayed, pouring on his flattery and ham-handed charm. (Full disclosure: when I was a journalist, I fell into the camp of his alloyed admirers, and he would do all of that to me, albeit while looking over my shoulder to see if there was someone more important to flatter and berate.)

​Packer establishes a Holbrookian intimacy by talking directly to the reader at times. “Holbrooke?” he begins. “Yes I knew him. I can’t get his voice out of my head.” And a few pages later, “Do you mind if we hurry through the early years? There are no mysteries here that can be unlocked by nursery school.”

​The key to the mysteries, instead, begins with Vietnam. When Holbrooke arrived in Saigon in 1963 as a newly minted foreign service officer, America was not yet waist-deep in a quagmire. His role as a rural affairs advisor was to help win “hearts and minds” in “strategic hamlets” as part of the “pacification” program, before napalm and Zippo lighters had imbued those words with an ironic and then sinister stench. He and his colleagues read Graham Greene’s Vietnam novel The Quiet American, but they did not yet fully appreciate Greene’s deft description of his title character: “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”

​Holbrooke was among the first diplomats to harbor doubts about the war. “I sometimes think this first year in Vietnam was the best of Richard Holbrooke,” Packer writes. “His ambition still had a clean smell, and youth was working in his favor – physical courage, moral passion, the boundless energy and enthusiasm and sheer sense of fun, the skepticism, the readiness to talk straight to ambassadors and generals.”

​In Vietnam Holbrooke became best friends with Tony Lake, a fellow foreign service officer “who kept his ambition more tightly wrapped,” a talent that came naturally to someone born into the WASP establishment that Holbrooke hungered to join. The intensity of their friendship and then their falling out provides one of the many wrenching plots in the book. They play tennis, invent games, party, smoke pot, and travel together. But when they return to Washington, Holbrooke’s social-climbing among the Harrimans and Alsops of the Georgetown elite turned Lake sour. “Friendship with Holbrooke had acquired a whiff of the instrumental,” Packer writes. Eventually almost all of Holbrooke’s colleagues, even the admiring ones, came to feel used.

​Also at times abused. With his appetites, Holbrooke couldn’t help himself. In one of the most egregious examples, he decided to pursue a romance with Lake’s wife. “Holbrooke’s betrayal,” Packer writes, “would stay secret from almost everyone, while the acid it released would take years to eat silently at the bonds of youthful ambition and Vietnam and tennis and American greatness that had held the two men together.”

​Holbrooke’s compulsion for cheating on or with women – and also Packer’s willingness to report with gusto the psychological and physical details involved – would seem shocking were these passions not so interwoven with the neediness and drive that was at the core of his professional life.Holbrooke was perpetually in heat. Chapters recounting feveredstatecraft are interspersed with those chronicling Holbrooke’s three marriages and multiple affairs and romances, including one with Dianne Sawyer, all featuring the same detailed reporting and sharp personality portraiture.

​The most intense and intensely described relationship is with his last wife, Kati Marton, who gave Packer exclusive access to his papers. A vibrant reporter and writer of nine highly-acclaimed books, including an extraordinarily powerful memoir of the family betrayals and secret love affairs that accompanied her parents’ escape from Nazi and then Communist Hungary, Marton’s career ascended during periods when her husband’s languished. This was not a recipe for marital harmony. Each has dramatic affairs, but they were tethered by ambition. “She became what he never had,” Packer writes, “a climbing partner.”

​The peak of Holbrooke’s career came under President Bill Clinton, when he shuttled around the Balkans cajoling Bosnian warlords and Serbian war criminals to make peace. His work culminated with three weeks of negotiations in November 1995 at an air force base near Dayton, Ohio, where he pushed Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and others into a peace agreement.“Let’s given him his due. He ended a war,” Packer writes. “Diplomacy is not for the short of breath.”

​True to form, Holbrooke personally led his own lobbying campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote letters extolling his accomplishment and pressed others to sign them. He also repeatedly found excuses to travel to Oslo, where he made a point of meeting several times with the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. “He campaigned so hard for that Nobel Prize that that’s probably one reason he didn’t get it,” President Clinton remarked.

​He also did not get the other prize he wanted. After Dayton, Clinton passed him over for Secretary of State and gave the job to Madeleine Albright. Even though (or perhaps because) they agreed on most major issues, Holbrooke’s contempt for Albright, which mixed sexism with rivalry, oozed out regularly. On the back of a menu card at a lunch she hosted, he jotted his unfair opinion of her: “MKA – very articulate, even eloquent on values – weak on process, policy + diplomacy – uneven, unpredictable – charming + mean – insecure – her biography was her career – very strong will.” In this universe, particles of like charge are destined to repel each other.

​When Barack Obama was elected president, Holbrooke again lobbied hard to be Secretary of State, but the incoming president became allergic to him. Obama, who took as much pride in telling people he hadn’t read their books as Holbrooke did saying that he had, was disdainful of Holbrooke’s compulsion to flatter and be flattered. When the president called him Dick at their first meeting, Holbrooke stopped him and, as Marton had instructed him to do, asked the president to call him Richard instead. “If Holbrooke had tried to repel him in their first minute together he couldn’t have done a better job,” Packer reports.

​Instead, Obama recruited Hillary Clinton to be secretary and Holbrooke’s erstwhile friend Tony Lake to be National Security Advisor. Bravely defying intense resistance from the White House, Secretary Clinton appointed Holbrooke as her special representative to handle Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unlike the no-drama Obama crowd, she understood that what made Holbrooke a handful also made him effective.

​Holbrooke’s tenacity as he whirled relentlessly through the region might have, if he had been given time and support, allowed him to cajole and browbeat the prideful warlords there like he had done in the Balkans. But it soon became clear he was completely lacking in support from the President.

​Obama thought that Holbrooke was “disruptive,” and Holbrooke thought, as he told a young woman he had an affair with, “Obama has ice water running in his veins.” The problem was they were both right. When Obama made a surprise trip to Kabul in November of 2010, he didn’t invite Holbrooke aboard Air Force One or even let him know about the trip in advance.

​Exhausted by his missions and drained by his tumultuous commuter marriage with Kati Marton, Holbrooke woke up anxious on the morning of December 10, and barreled into the White House, sweating and pasty-faced, to make yet another effort to wrangle a private session with Obama. He was rebuffed. He then dashed to the State Department for a meeting with Secretary Clinton. Suddenly, his face turned red, his legs collapsed. An aneurysm in his heart had burst, ripping a hole in his aorta. When he arrived at the trauma bay of the hospital, the doctor told him to relax. “I can’t relax,” he replied. “I am in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Three days later he died.

​His multiple memorial services were packed with friends and enemies. Marton later took pride that she had choreographed the one at the Kennedy Center so that Obama had to sit through two hours of testimonials. “I could never understand people who didn’t appreciate him,” Bill Clinton said in his eulogy. “Most of the people who didn’t were not nearly as good at doing.” At aservice a few weeks later in the U.N. General Assembly chamber in New York, Tony Lake, with a gray beard, sat alone in the balcony, feeling conflicted as always.

​The overriding theme of Holbrooke’s life, detailed with unnerving accuracy in this book, was ambition. He was relentless in forcing his way into meetings to which he wasn’t invited and clambering into motorcades where he wasn’t manifested. During the Carter Administration, when Holbrook was an assistant secretary, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s personal secretary had to send him a memo. “Henceforth, you may not insert yourself as a passenger in the Secretary’s car unless this office has specifically approved,” it said, adding that the security detail had been given instructions to enforce this edict. As Packer notes, “Holbrooke, undeterred, had the memo framed.”

​“Ambition is not a pretty thing up close,” Packer writes. “It’s wild and crass, and mortifying in the details. It brings a noticeable smell into the room… Because of Holbrooke’s psychological mutation of not being able to see himself, and maybe not give a shit anyway, he let us ogle ambition in the nude.” Lurking in this description is a more subtle point. It wasn’t just Holbrooke’s ambition that hobbled him, it was his inability to cloak his ambition like the more polished members of Washington’s striving elite.

​The difficulty in writing biographies of grand players, as I know from trying to do it with Steve Jobs, is to be honest about their rough personalities while guiding a reader to the conclusion, which is as true for Holbrooke as it was for Jobs, that their unvarnished drives were part and parcel of their true greatness. “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,” Jobs once said. “I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right. Maybe there’s a better way – a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words – but I don’t know that way.” Or as he put it more poetically: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

​In corporate as well as government realms, leaders often prefer, as Obama did, teammates who are low-maintenance. But as Packer shows, there can be a payoff for those able to harness a Holbrooke. “Don’t forget that inside most people you read about in history books is a child who fiercely resisted toilet training. Suppose the mess they leave is inseparable from their reach and grasp? Then our judgment depends on what they’re ambitious for – the saving glimmer of wanting something worthy.”

​Why such a mammoth book – and such a long review of it – about a mid-level diplomat whose only major achievement was helping settle a war in a faraway place with unpronounceable names? Because if you could read only one book to comprehend America’s foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past fifty years, this would be it.You have to begin in Vietnam, as Holbrooke did, and understand that U.S. involvement there was a complex mix of sincerity and blindness and idealism and hubris. Likewise, our subsequent involvements, including Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan, have involved good intentions, outsized ambitions, and a deficit of humility. Just like Holbrooke. “Our confidence and energy, our reach and our grasp, our excess and blindness – they were not so different from Holbrooke’s,” Packer writes. “He was our man.”

​Our man, our man in full. “I still can’t get his voice out of my head,” Packer concludes. “One day I know it will start to fade, along with his memory, along with the idea of a life lived as if the world needed an American hand to help set things right. By this point you’re familiar with its every failing. But now that Holbrooke is gone, and we’re getting to know the alternatives, don’t you, too, feel some regret? History is cruel that way. He loved it all the same.”

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, is the coauthor, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men and the author of biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci.

[sarazanmai]

Stuff I loved in 2018.

Its that time again. The end of a year and a look back on all the stuff I enjoyed. Honestly I almost wasn’t going to write this because I feel these posts are a lot of effort with very little reward, but there was a lot I experienced this year that I think was interesting and worth sharing. So let’s go.

Roger Ebert once said “artistry can redeem any subject matter”. While I’m not sure any subject matter can be salvaged through an artistic eye, it can certainly help. If someone approaches a certain material with a clear vision and purpose to what they do they can create something truly fascinating. The Monogatari series is a very strange one. Its told in a non chronological order, there’s characters who say they’re one thing and reveal themselves to be something else, there’s a lot of references to other anime, the visual style changes sometimes radically, its incredibly meta, some moments of fanservice have a deeper meaning to them while others not so much. Me personally I think the series goes through periods of being brilliant as well as periods where it just is not up to the same standard as before. That said I kind of like that, I like that you go through so many different moods and style shifts. Not everyone will like that, some will get frustrated with the weaker seasons, but for me I think it all comes together and really made for something I won’t forget. I watched the entire series within a week and then later in the year I rewatched it all barring “Koyomimonogatari” which is one of those weaker seasons in my opinion. Despite its bulk, despite its tendencies, the Monogatari series just kept me hooked.

There comes a time where we all must accept certain truths. One of them is a lot of you don’t really understand mecha. I still see all of these reviews and comments claiming that mecha before “Evangelion” were all just light fluffy Saturday morning cartoon fare with little substance. This could not be further from the truth. The Gundam franchise from the very beginning was serving what I am going to refer to as a human element. It was not this soulless creation who’s only goal was to sell model kits. Whether it was Amuro’s PTSD from piloting the Gundam or Kamille and his tragic romance with Four or Char’s true motives during the original series there was always more going on than just giant robots shooting things. This isn’t even taking into consideration other installments like “War in the Pocket” where its a story of war from the point of view of a child and soldier. I have not watched every Gundam anime, I am sure there are some that were just there to exist as another installment in the franchise and didn’t necessarily push the franchise or genre into new areas. But what I have seen in “Mobile Suit Gundam”, “Zeta Gundam” “War in the Pocket”, “Unicorn”, “Iron Blooded Orphans”, and even the polarizing “ZZ Gundam” which I admittedly dropped were all very interesting and very unique experiences. Tomino really hit on something when he created the series and now we’ve come so far that we have a franchise so massive and large it needs an entire wikipedia article devoted to its cultural impact.

Once again, mecha that came before “Evangelion” were still displaying that human element many critics are convinced wasn’t there. In “Macross” its very prominent to the point where it feels like a driving force to the entire show as well as its film “Do You Remember Love”. We spend as much time with the characters and their developing relationships as we do with the mecha battles. The emphasis on music and culture as something that can create a change in the world is one of the themes synonymous with the franchise. While there certainly were times in the show where it leaned a bit into a comical area, I didn’t mind this. It was a show aimed at a younger audience and was trying to communicate these themes on their level so at times things can be a bit silly, but I appreciate what is being said so much that it does not feel like an issue. The heart is still there, the human element is still there. And more complex and serious sub plots are there too. Regardless when it comes to the film “Do You Remember Love” and the OVA “Macross Plus” things were certainly approached with a more mature voice, bringing the franchise to new places. I watched this prior to any Gundam anime in an attempt to get a better feel for the mecha genre. I wanted to expand my tastes and I’m very happy I did because not only did I love this I also want to really explore the genre now more than ever.

With the release of “Lupin III Part 5″ this year I was really turned onto that franchise. I ended up getting this massive itch to explore it when that anime wrapped and while not everything I found was a masterpiece it was a worthwhile endeavor. There’s something to Lupin the character and the series at large that manages to be both fun while also evoking a sense of coolness in spite of his goofiness. It was interesting to go through the various TV series and the movies and some specials and get a sense for how its evolved through time. Rewatching “The Castle of Cagliostro” I really enjoyed it a lot and other installments like “The Fuma Conspiracy” and “The Hemingway Paper Mystery” were hugely entertaining. I really liked “Lupin III part 4″ and “The Woman Called Fujiko Mine” too and the original “Lupin III” anime. I can still hear that voice singing “Lupin...he’s a nice man...but he’s cool...”. And objectively speaking green jacket is best jacket. I feel like this is a series that has undergone so much evolution through the various people that came in to work on it that there’s bound to be something that appeals to somebody. You just have to find it.

I spent a lot of time ignoring “Gintama” and its a bit of a shame that I did because this is a really fun series. Despite how long it is I really didn’t feel like it took me a terribly long time to finish it. And even though its goal is more on the comedic side of things, the series surprised me with how strong of an emotional punch it can provide. The cast of characters is one of the most likeable and fun that I’ve seen in a while and the seiyuu cast was very impressive. Everyone plays their character well and I get the sense they really enjoy working on it. Akira Ishida in particular seemed to really get a kick out of playing someone as ridiculous as Katsura when so many of his other roles lean more serious. And of coarse everyone loves Tomokazu Sugita as Gin. His voice just feels so right for a character like this and it was great having him for something this big when in other anime I’ve seen him in he’s only around for so long. I’ve also got to give the series credit for its female characters. There’s a really sturdy amount and they’re all occupying their own place in this world with distinct identities. This is something that makes this world feel more alive and expansive. Kagura is a character I need to applaud for the fact that she wasn’t there for some sort of lolicon fanservice or to have a really awkward crush on Gin or Shinpachi. No she just cares about food and her dog. What a queen. Speaking of Shinpachi he was the MVP of this series, good boy. And there’s our Shinsengumi boys and of coarse Gin himself, so many great characters. I am sure a lot of people look at how much there is to “Gintama” and get nervous at the size of it, but there’s really no need to. When it clicks with you then there’s no putting it down.

“Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju” might be one of the greatest anime in recent years. It takes you through so many periods in this man’s life and the people around him and manages to hold you the entire way. Once again Akira Ishida is someone I need to give major credit to. He’s a very talented seiyuu and in this anime his performance was so impressive I was almost beside myself. Given the performance style the series is built around the cast all needed to be really great at reciting these stories and articulating them. And for the scenes where the characters are not on stage, when the interpersonal drama comes out, everything just hits in such a powerful way. I can’t remember how often I cried during this anime, but it never felt like I was being manipulated. It all felt as if it came through organically and easily. Even more subtle scenes like a character finding out he’s having a child hit on just the right emotions. If you are in the mood for a fantastic character driven drama this is absolutely one I’d recommend.

Speaking of character driven drama “Sangatsu no Lion” is another one to tune into. It initially presents itself as a very intense and dark story, but as the viewer stays involved you find that this is not about wallowing in self loathing but healing. The family that has taken this very troubled young man in and helped him navigate through his mental illness is so likeable and endearing. You find yourself wanting to see him get better and hope that these girls, as well as the other shogi players, find happiness for themselves too. Its not always simple though. There are ups and downs to the characters and their arcs, but it never feels bitter or angry. It feels like reality. Over the coarse of its two seasons it manages to do what so many other shows about a character with depression fail to do. It never feels exploitative or like it has no sense of how to handle such a topic nor does it feel hopeless. As difficult as things in Rei’s life can become you know deep down this isn’t the end of the line, things can get better. It also does a very good job at holding your attention whether you understand the intricacies of shogi or not. You’re told what feels like the essential basic rules to the game and you aren’t thrown into a state of culture shock if you’ve never looked into the game before. I feel like what we have here is a modern masterpiece and more people have been watching it and celebrating it as a great achievement and that makes me so happy.

“Galaxy Express 999″, pronounced “three nine” because why not, is quite the space opera. I watched every episode of the original TV series as well as the two films directed by Rintaro and while they have some flaws or areas that did not age well, they’ve remained famous for a reason. The TV series did a really great job at pulling at your emotions and showing you different worlds. Some felt similar to others, but then there’s so much creativity in other areas. The concept of a space train was inspired by the popular Japanese children’s book “Night on the Galactic Railroad”, which would receive its own anime adaptation, and what Leiji Matsumoto did with this inspiration ended up taking on an identity all its own. You really feel for this bond between Tetsuro and Maetel. You spend so much time wondering just who Maetel is and what her goal in all of this could be. She’s kept just vague enough where I feel we were told all that we needed to. Tetsuro is someone I’ve seen reviewers describe as a little frustrating due to his naivete, but he’s a child. It makes complete sense for him to place his trust in the wrong person or make a mistake like he does. Masako Nozawa, the future voice of Goku and all his male relatives barring Raditz, voiced Tetsuro and I think she really brought a strong likeability to the character. We feel for him and also have a lot of fun seeing him travel through space. Its hard to say what version is stronger, I’d argue the show but know its not easy to recommend something that hefty. Whether someone watches the films or the show or both I think they’re still getting something great out of it.

And they say you can’t sum up a show in one image. So “Madoka Magica” what are we to do about you? Its kind of hard to explain, but I rather purposefully chose not to watch it for this long. Mostly because I was tired of the hype and the fandom basically pulling an “Evangelion” and acting like no magical girl anime or manga prior to this served emotions. But its presence never really died, this anime is almost a decade old now and people still care. And while I don’t regret not tuning in while it was running, I am very happy to have experienced it on my own terms. It gave me one of my new favorite characters with Homura, its visually stunning and marvelously directed. the music is so enchanting, and the story really is good. I think the show from start to end was a great watch and really kept me going and the bittersweet nature of it did work for me. As far as the movies go I did watch “Rebellion” and while I think its good it does complicate what the message to the series is in my opinion. Either way its just the same as “End of Evangelion” where I don’t see it as canon. I think the big question a lot of people have is if this lives up to the hype and I’m not totally sure how to answer that, but it is an anime worth your time all the same.

This will be easy. I have a review already written out for “Slam Dunk” so if you want my more expanded thoughts there you go. This really is a fantastic anime.

Last year I watched the movie “A Silent Voice”, but failed to put it in my year end review out of pure laziness. I am not making that same mistake again. “In This Corner of the World” is a film I am very grateful to have seen. Its a very interesting take on a WWII story. Not that we haven’t had movies about the war from the perspective of a civilian before, but there is something to the way its approached through our protagonist that feels especially powerful. She experiences so much during those years and tries her best to keep living with keeping her family alive as her main motivation and eventually is met with tragedy. Its produced by a studio called Mappa who’ve gained a lot of attention for “Yuri on Ice” and this year’s “Banana Fish. I did not like those anime very much, but I really loved this film and have to applaud them for trying different types of stories. I hope the projects they have lined up for 2019 are as enjoyable as this. I’ve heard the director has an interest in releasing an extended cut and if that happens I’ll be very interesting in seeing what it offers.

Again I will not make the same mistake twice. “A Silent Voice” was directed by a woman named Naoko Yamada. She also directed “K-On” and “Tamako Market”, two series that made it on my post for last year. She has an incredible talent and in my opinion is the director in anime to watch. After the success of “A Silent Voice” a lot of people wanted to see where she would go and what she gave us is nothing short of amazing. “Liz and the Blue Bird” is a film more people need to pay attention to. Those who’ve seen it adore it, fans have given it very high scores and glowing reviews. But I think this movie needs even more attention beyond that because compared to movies like “Doukyuusei” this feels like it made a smaller splash in the community. Yamada’s approach to love and drama is so effective without being forceful, you really feel for these girls and the longing between them. Yamada is a director who cares deeply for respecting the emotions of her characters which is why she has successfully created so many famous emotional scenes without them feeling melodramatic or feeling staged. This is especially clear with this film where she manages to communicate everything we need to know, but in very few spoken words. And the animation as one expects from a Kyoani project is just lovely. It also manages to work very strongly with its blue toned color palette. So many people make these blue toned movies look dreary, but not here. Things still have a brightness to them and even a warmth. I feel very lucky I was able to see this movie this year when so many anime films take so long to be made available elsewhere. When it reaches the US on bluray I am definitely buying it.

When it comes to the seasonal TV anime for the year, this was my favorite.”Sora yori mo Tooi Basho“ or “A Place Further than the Universe” is a very interesting installment in the “cute girls do blank” genre of anime. Here its cute girls go to the arctic. It sounds like a weird premise to a show, but when you see it put into practice its impressive how much you feel invested in these girls and what they’re doing. Its directed by a woman named Atsuko Ishizuka who was once identified as one of the great talents at the famed studio Madhouse. I think, like Yamada, she manages to work within these character heavy stories while avoiding any unnecessary melodrama. A lesser director would have made some scenes so cheesy or so over the top sad and that can take you right out of the experience. At first I was unsure of how big of a hit this anime would be given how many huge shows came out this year, but its managed to top the bluray sales in Japan for quite a while now. I feel really happy it became such a success. People say the cute girl sub genre is played out and that if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, that is not true. Sometimes you need a talented director, an off the cuff premise, and you can get something fresh out of a genre that sometimes over saturates the market.

“Pop Team Epic” is an anime the like of which we’ve never seen before. And we will never get it again. A lot of people have said that in order to understand or get the jokes you have to know what it is they’re parodying and that really is not true. This isn’t referential humor like in “Gintama” where the impact of the joke relies on you knowing that material. If you don’t know "Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” you won’t get it when Gin references Joseph and Caesar’s training with Lisa Lisa. Here the approach to the comedy is so surreal that if you don’t know the reference it just registers as a bizarre thing they did. Sure I know they referenced things like “Hikaru no Go”, but someone who doesn’t would just think its “Pop Team Epic” being weird again. And if you do know what they’re referencing then you know the layers to the joke. The anime is also in a lot of ways very visually strong to the point of being almost avant-garde. It was expensive and time consuming to make even if people don’t realize it. All of these different animation styles, the mixed media approach to certain scenes. They even brought in Miyo Sato, the woman who does the paint on glass animation for “Mob Psycho 100″, to work on the show for a few segments. To a lot of people this show was a meme, but in a lot of ways I think it was doing more than that. We’re not going to get another season or anything out of it, but I’m happy something this strange was able to exist and grab hold of such a large scale audience.

I have an in depth analytical review out for "Berserk”, if you would like to read such a thing there it is. However it does contain spoilers. My unspoiled and condensed opinions are that its fantastic, with gorgeous art, well developed and amazing characters, and tons of soul. Its very intense and not exactly for everyone, but its definitely a masterpiece. Unfortunately it also has a very foul fandom which turned me off reading it for years. I genuinely expected my review to garner a lot of negative feedback given how this fandom is, to my surprise this never happened though. If you can remove the toxic fandom from the equation, which is surprisingly easy to do, then you’re golden. Also this is a romantic manga and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise because they’re cowards.

“Golden Kamuy” is fantastic as a manga. I watched the anime too, but I feel like that works best treated like a companion piece to the manga. I’ve best described the plot as “One Piece” meets “Silence of the Lambs”. This is also something that probably comes closest to evoking the same kind of strangeness that “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” has. The best way I can put it is that characters will say things that are weird, but nobody acts like they’re weird. There is also a lot of information fed to the reader about aspects of the Ainu culture and hunting and weaponry. At first it feels as if you’re being given a lot of information on topics that aren’t going to be important, but they end up having more significance than you realize. The same applies to the characters. I was surprised at how many characters I expected to be left behind were made relevant later on. And they’re memorable. Sugimoto, Asirpa, Shiraishi, Ogata, Tsurumi, Tanigaki, even that little girl Osoma was memorable. One thing the story really excels at is how you have a large amount of characters chasing the same prize, but with their own reasons. Nobody loses sight of their own motivation, some we still haven’t learned their true gain in all of this, and we see how this effects the flow of the plot. For such a large cast this would under a different writer feel very cluttered, but not here. And visually the manga looks amazing. Noda’s art is a little odd at first, but when you really look at it he’s got a lot of talent. Everyone looks distinct, the backgrounds look great, the animals look good (we’re not gonna discuss the anime’s CGI). If I had to recommend just one I’d say the manga as the anime does skip material, some due to networks being incapable of showing such things others honestly feel skipped because they wanted to streamline the plot at the expense of characterization and world building. I do still recommend taking in both as this sort of bundle deal though because the anime really is entertaining and has such a strong seiyuu cast it would be a shame to pass it by completely.

Takehiko Inoue is an absolute master at this stage in his career. In an interview with Akira Toriyama he was called someone with a real sense for manga and its amazing to see how he went from “Slam Dunk,” where he had not yet drawn a bare foot, to something like “Vagabond”. The art in this manga is deserving of all the praise it gets, its so detailed that it just leaves you stunned. The story also shows just how on point he is as a writer. I’m sure through the many movies and shows about Musashi Miyamoto a lot of Japanese audiences have a certain way they tend to view him and then here comes Inoue offering a different approach to the man. One where he is still working towards an enlightened state and trying to reign in an animalistic rage. Working in themes of being the strongest under the sun, what it means to live for the sword, how these choices effect the people left behind, its really fascinating stuff. There’s even an entire long stretch of chapters where we break away entirely from Musashi to focus on a young Kojiro and his adoptive father, its a very sudden break away yet it doesn’t feel random or jarring. I think because Inoue knows how to craft compelling characters so effortlessly it made that shift in focus work as well as it did. Its one of the most successful manga in terms of sales and with good reason, its a masterpiece. This is one of those manga that currently is on an indefinite hiatus and I can only hope Inoue is able to finish it. And if for whatever reason he can’t then at least we can say we got what we got.

Behold your new shonen king! Not Izuku, not Hinata. Open your arms for the next great shonen! “Dr. Stone” is a manga that at the moment doesn’t have the largest of audiences, but everyone I know who’s read it absolutely loves it. And with the anime being released next year I can only hope that will be the push that people need to experience it. The story is focused very heavily on innovation and discovery which feels so fresh compared to a lot of things Weekly Shonen Jump has been producing as of late. And the level to which things have been thought out really impresses me. In recent chapters it was revealed that in that period of time humanity was petrified the terrain has changed drastically and the maps from the past are now worthless. So that means finding a way to survey the land and get a better sense of the world. Its so exciting to read this sort of thing. And the characters are so fun. Senku is a very interesting character to place at the center of this story. He’s a genius and approaches things as logically as possible, sometimes he can be a jerk and self serving, but he’s always going to do what he can to further civilization because he just loves science that much. Chrome is a really funny character to bounce off of him. We recently were introduced to a new member of the cast that has great potential. I like Asagiri. Its written by the same mangaka behind “Eyeshield 21″ and while I have not read that I can say through this manga that he’s really got a great sense of story telling. I also really like Boichi’s art, he pulls out some hilarious extreme faces and also some really dynamic scenes. Next summer can’t come fast enough because I am so hyped and ready for this anime to start.

“Kimetsu no Yaiba” is another manga that will be getting an anime next year and I am extremely excited. If I had to compare it to anything I would honestly say its like if “Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood” and “Hunter x Hunter” got crossbred. Its mangaka Koyoharu Gotouge really feels very influenced by Yoshihiro Togashi in both her writing as well as some of her character designs. Togashi actually said this manga along with “Dr. Stone” is one of the ones in recent years to read which I’m sure made her thrilled to hear. I feel like this is something that does a lot of the things people generally want to see in anime and manga. You have a strong sibling dynamic at the center of the story (and it isn’t one of those relationships), there’s female characters that are involved with the action and its treated like a real fight, there’s themes of family that are always really endearing, aesthetically its very beautiful while still being able to pull off a more intense body horror style moment, fanservice aside from a couple moments is at a minimum, and it is also very funny. There’s a lot of personality to our main characters as well as the Pillars that we have gotten to know and it doesn’t feel crowded. She knows when to use a character and when to keep them out of a certain arc. She also has a lot of respect towards Nezuko who I feel another writer would have shoved aside in favor of her brother. But Nezuko is shown to still retain her autonomy in spite of her predicament, she fights and is sometimes vital to defeating a demon, and the more recent events in the story show a lot of potential for furthering her as a character. The anime is to be released for the spring and its made by Ufotable, based on the PV we have at the moment this show will definitely be gorgeous. I am very excited for what they’ve done with this material and I can only hope other people will be watching too because I do not want this to be a series people sleep on.

“Revolutionary Girl Utena” is a masterpiece. I have frankly a really complicated opinion of Kunihiko Ikuhara. A lot of people think he can do no wrong, I am not one of them. There’s things that happened with “Sailor Moon” that I know weren’t his fault, but there’s also things that happened during S where he had the most control over the project that still bother me. I can never know for sure if these were his ideas or things Toei forced onto him as he did leave the show because of a lack of freedom to do what he wanted, but that said when he really commits to a project he can produce something amazing. He has said many things over the years regarding Utena and a big takeaway from them is that he does not want to tell us what to feel, he wants us to decide for ourselves. I think what Utena fundamentally is about is deconstructing romantic tropes, analyzing chivalry, and the lies men tell women. The series gets more complex and symbolic as it progresses until we get to the movie “Adolescence of Utena” where its refusing to hold your hand any step of the way. Unlike with “End of Evangelion” or “Madoka Rebellion” the “Adolescence” movie is not an attempt at a different ending, but more of an alternative retelling of the story. Its a pure visual masterpiece and a movie that I honestly think deserves to be seen with or without the TV show. That said I would strongly recommend both of them as not only is it one of the greatest shojo ever, it is also Ikuhara at his finest. Moo.

[mredlich21]

Bit of a controversial one, sorry if you like it, but I just don’t! And if you also don’t like it and have a hard time articulating why, maybe this review will help you.

Okay, I’ve talked about all the important Devdases, all the good ones that are closely related to the novel and deal with the ideas of hidden tragedies and casual disasters and all those cool things.  Time to deal with the one that is just really really really pretty!

This might end up being my shortest Devdas post of them all, partly because there is less to discuss and partly because I already said so much in my previous posts about the novel and the other interpretations and how this one relates to them.  But on the other hand, it may end up being the post that is most read, since the Bhansali Devdas is the one people are most familiar with.  At least, English reading people who might find my blog.

Here’s the problem with Bhansali’s Devdas in a nutshell: it’s too pretty!  And here’s the best part of Bhansali’s Devdas: it’s so pretty!  So, there’s a conflict there.

Or not.  It can be pretty and still a bad film, because a film should be more than prettiness.  Really, the problem with Bhansali’s film, and this is true for most of his movies, is that if you removed the prettiness, there would be nothing else there.  Get rid of the costumes, the songs, the make-up and jewelry.  Get rid of the elegant dialogue and gorgeous stars.  And, what’s left?  Is there anything at the core of the movie, any soul to the story or the characters that can support this whole pretty pretty infrastructure?  Generally, no.

I love Khamoshi, and I love Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.  I think they had really interesting things to say, and the characters made me believe in real pain, not just poetic romantic pain.  When (SPOILERS) Manisha’s little brother dies in Khamoshi, or when (SPOILERS) Salman loses Aishwarya at the end of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, (SPOILERS OVER) that felt like it was more about these characters and how they felt, than about Bhansali standing back and saying “Now, if I make this happen next, I can paint this pretty picture about it.”

(Also, this song is better than anything in Devdas.  Especially the opening and closing. An old woman trying to cheer up her grandchildren and hide her own feelings while the piano she loves is sold to raise money for the household, that makes me feel something)

I can understand Bhansali’s temptation to make movies that are just about the pictures, because his pictures are really really pretty.  But I wish he would stop trying to hang them on top of characters and story, because the story and characters always ends up getting short shrift.  If he just went full MF Hussain and did movies that were abstract loosely connected concepts just in service of the images, I wouldn’t mind as much.

(pretty!  And ultimately meaningless!  Besides providing us with a moment of beauty.  Also, a more realistic vision of the life of a prostitute than anything in Devdas)

Devdas is where Bhansali first switched over for me to feeling like he started with the images and dialogue he wanted, and filled in the plot later.  And, unfortunately, when he filled in the plot, he decided to use the same names for his characters as in the novel Devdas, and lift a few images from Bimal Roy and Barua’s earlier versions.

Or maybe he started with Devdas, with the loose outline of a boy and girl who had a push-pull relationship since they were neighbors as children, almost got engaged as adults but it fell apart, and then he went on to be an alcoholic who hung out with a Tawaif who fell in love for him, while she went on to marry a rich widower.  And then the boy died lying in front of the gate of his childhood friend.  He kept that outline, but then built and built and built on it, until it was basically hidden.  Feel free to ask in the comments, “was this bit in the novel?  Or this?  Or this?”  But really, you can safely assume NONE OF IT was in the novel.  Or any previous version.  90% of the plot is a complete invention of Bhansali.

That wouldn’t be such a problem, I mean Kashyap also invented all kinds of things and made a bunch of crazy changes, but Bhansali’s changes show that he missed the point of the story entirely.  The point of the story is too look past the surface, that the disgusting alcoholic may be hiding a kind nature that makes him too weak to fight for his own rights, whether it is his inheritance or his true love.  That the boring matron, beloved by her children and her charities, might be hiding a passionate nature that once would have done anything for love.  That the glamorous Tawaif may be hiding a practical sense of money and tender nursing skills.  And, most of all, that the most boring everyday story can hide a certain beauty.  The beauty isn’t supposed to be right there on the surface wopping us in the face all the time!

(Wop! Wop!  Wop!  THEY ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND DRAMATIC AND PERFECT LOVERS OF ALL TIME!!!  BOW DOWN IN ENVY OF THEM!!!)

Devdas is supposed to be a drama-less tale.  A poetry-less tale.  No one besides Dev and Paro even knows their hearts were broken.  That is their tragedy, that they are awkward and unable to convey their emotions.  That they don’t want to make any issues or cause concerns for their family, so they never tell anyone how they feel and keep it all inside.

(Bhansali’s Paro.  Not exactly keeping her feelings to herself.)

Now, if you only saw the Bhansali version, did you get any of that?  Here’s some other things that were important in the novel and the previous versions: Paro is so beloved by her new family and children, that her son is even willing to break with his new wife over a perceived slight to her; Chandramukhi is good at her job, but is a somewhat average Tawaif, a little over the hill and small time without much in savings, forced to economize when she gives up her career because of her love for Dev; Dev by halfway through is such an unpleasant addict, begging his brother for money, dangerously thin, and full of nervous energy that his old friends find him kind of gross and only Chandra can put up with him.  Did you get any of that either?

Back in my first post, I broke down the 5 important points, as I saw them, from Devdas the novel that were carried through into the most important Hindi Devdas adaptations, Barua in 1936, Bimal Roy in 1955, and Dev D in 2009.  Here they are again:

Childhood as a time of innocence and happiness and promise, although already over-shadowed by personality flaws that will ultimately destroy them.

A failed romance that never even really starts in adulthood, truly over before it began, before they can fully grasp what they have lost.

Chandramukhi as a figure who starts as a one dimensional fantasy, and slowly becomes more solid and practical and “real” than anyone else, the only character to talk about rent and groceries and money.

Dev as a figure who becomes not just tragic, but kind of gross.  He is described in the novel, and somewhat played in the ’36 and ’55 and Dev D films, as being ill, unpleasant to look at, with sunken eyes and cheeks and an odd demeanor.  In the novel, after death, his body is half-burned, then pecked by vultures and then fought over by dogs.  It’s not exactly a lovely “dying with his hand outstretched!” image.

Paro as a character who becomes kind of sapped of life.  She is good and generous and charitable, but she also retires to become the sort of dowager of her home, on her wedding night she tells her husband not to worry about their age difference because “Women age quickly”, which is exactly what happens to her.

(Chandra, having given up her career now that love for Dev makes it feel empty, is living on 20 rupees a month and struggling to get by with the bare minimum, while Paro has grown old before her time, is the respected dowager of the house, beloved by her grown children and only interested in her charitable works.  Two women who would never make you think of romance or tragedy are hiding their secret in their hearts, never to be spoken or even hinted at, while society overlooks them.  That’s what this song makes you think of, right?)

So, basically every point there is missed by Bhansali.  I think it’s that point 1 where he lost his way.  The novel, and the Roy adaptation have this bright shining beautiful view of childhood, and their passionate connection, and long days spent together.  It is the loss of that, the loss of their beauty and passion and faith and love, that is like 70% of the novel, and the films.  The romance happens so fast, it is over before the realize what they have lost, and then the rest of their life is spent slowly discovering how their lives were forever changed.

But Bhansali just really liked the idea of the beauty and passion and love and kind of got stuck in that mode and couldn’t let it go.  It would be like if someone made an adaptation of A Christmas Carol and just made it about Scrooge going around being cheap and miserly for two hours, and then ended.

But, okay, I’m going to try to set aside what this adaptation could/should have been, and deal with it on its own, as though it were an original story.

And you know, I still don’t really like it!  Ram-Leela is more or less an original story, and I don’t like that.  Same for Bajirao.  I just don’t like Bhansali!  Well, latter-day Bhansali.

Here’s my problem with Devdas, setting aside the missing the point of the source.  I never get a sense of these people as characters who, like, go to the bathroom.  Or get hungry.  Or sometimes just don’t feel like talking.  They are all perfect all the time, like it is their life’s goal to be beautiful and charming and clever.  Isn’t that just kind of shallow?  To have no purpose in life besides beauty and “loooooooooooooooove”?

I know this sounds like a silly complaint, since isn’t that what all romance characters are like?  But, no!  They aren’t!  Especially not in Indian romances.  Romance isn’t just about “looooooooove”, it’s about what that love means for society, how it can break up society or make it stronger, how it can shake people up and give them greater goals, how it can make you a better deeper person in ways unrelated to your love story.

Like, Sultan!  That film laid it out very clearly.  He cared what Anushka thought about him, which made him look at himself and care about how he was seen in the world, which made him into a better person.  It started with caring about her, making a connection outside of his regular circle, but it lead him on a journey to making a better world.

Devdas, not so much!  Dev himself just drinks and drinks and drinks and never really gets any better (or worse) than he was in the beginning.  Paro is beautiful and faithful, and that’s kind of it, start to finish.  Chandra is lovely and elegant and “fun”, and that’s all she is, start to finish.

(She’s wearing slightly plainer clothes, and doing it with a different purpose, but she is still dancing and singing for men just like before.  She isn’t struggling for money and only dancing when she has to, in order to survive.  And saving Dev through careful nursing, and paying for his expenses and financial support)

Okay, I have to do another novel/other versions comparison.  Not because it “should” have been like the novel, but just to give you another example on how this could have worked for the characters, how their broken hearts could have made them better people.  In this, Chandra saves Dev’s life by “distracting” him, the doctor tells her never to let him be bored.  So she is even more constantly fun and amusing than she was in the beginning.  In the other versions, she comes back to the city after living in a village just to find him, and then nurses him back to health through, you know, nursing!  Messy, unpleasant, unpretty nursing.  In the end, Dev goes from seeing her as just a distracting, a fake woman, to seeing her as noble and generous and enduring, and with a depth at the heart of her that no other man has been allowed to see.

Paro goes from a flighty flirty passionate woman who is always getting into fights, to one with great compassion and generosity.  Once she loses Dev, she doesn’t want anything for herself, which makes her incredibly generous both to strangers (through charities and so on) and to her family, being wise and compassionate and giving to her new daughter and sons and daughter-in-law.  Her broken heart turns her into a better person.

(She dresses plainly and gives all her jewelry to her daughter and daughter-in-law.  She tells her daughter to think of her as “just another servant” in the house.  She gives so many clothes to charity, her daughter-in-law is forced to take control of the household accounts.  Yeah, that’s what I think when I see this picture)

And then there’s Dev.  He slowly loses all the fight in him.  In Bhansali’s version, he walks out of his house after a huge knock down drag out fight with his family over money.  In all the other versions, there is no fight.  That’s the point.  He signs away his inheritance without a second thought, because he doesn’t want to cause a bother, to demand anything from anyone.  It is the same reason he never calls for help from Chandramukhi or Paro at the end of his life.

(A man who lets his inheritance go through just not caring enough to ask for it, slowly fading from the lives of all who knew him.  Or, not)

But in Bhansali’s version, “love” makes no real change in any of these people.  They suffer for it, sure, in the most cinematic and dramatic fashion possible.  But this suffering never teaches them anything, and they never seem to really fight against it, instead they glory in it.  It’s selfish, really.  Enjoying their misery with no thought as to how it affects others or why they should try to be better.

And boring!  Who wants to spend time with people who are all “Dev Dev Dev” “Paro Paro Paro” “Dev Dev Dev” all the time?  Get some other interests, for goodness sake!

There is one thing that Bhansali really nails, the song sequences.  Because song sequences are all about evoking one solitary emotion to the nth degree.  His songs convey what he is too unimaginative to evoke in the rest of the film.  Well, some of them.  He also falls into the trap of conveying the same thing over and over and over again until I have had surfiet of it.

(Right there for the first 2/3rds of this song.  And then by the end Paro is holding the lamp out of the paliquin and Shahrukh is helping to carry it, and I am thinking “Oh just GET OVER YOURSELVES!!!”)

Oh!  That’s what I am thinking of!  Twelfth Night!  Now, in case you don’t remember the original play, Viola is in disguise working for Orsino, who thinks he is in love with Olivia.  But the point is, he isn’t!  He is always swanning around, asking for the musicians to play on “if music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.”

Orsino thinks love means being miserable, playing music, reciting poetry.  But Viola knows it is something different, it is about actually doing something, making an effort.  This is her suggestion for how to court Olivia: “Make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house; write loyal cantons of contemned love, and sing them loud even in the dead of night; halloo your name to the reverberate hills, and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out ‘Olivia’ O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth.”

By the end of Twelfth Night, the lovers have been sorted into fools and fakes, and real loves with successful stories versus fake loves that ended in a laugh at how silly it all was.  Orsino ends up with Viola, not Olivia.  Olivia ends up with Sebastian, not Viola who she thought she loved, mistaking Viola’s love for Orsino for love for her.  It is that second half which is missing in Bhansali’s Devdas.  These are all fools!  Terrible shallow fake fools who would rather play music and wait for their love to die away, than make an effort to be happy.  But Bhansali’s film never seems to recognize or acknowledge their shallowness, or invite us to laugh at them.

I have some other problems with this film, like the fetishization of Indian history in an almost “Look!  It’s Colonial Calcutta Disneyland!” way.

(Bhansali’s idea of prostitutes/courtesans in colonial Calcutta, versus PC Barua’s version as someone who actually, you know, hung out with high class prostitutes in colonial Calcutta)

Or the way it was packaged and sold to the west as “the” Indian film, as though this pretty people having pretty problems in olden times is all there is to the entire history of Indian film.  And this is in a year when Company came out!

(The “other” break out hero of India in 2002.  Less dreamy romance, more gangster struggling for survival and afraid to let any weakness show, even love. And also the “other” break out director of 2002, less about big dreamy expensive scenes than brilliantly filmed dirt cheap and dead simple)

Or the way it minimizes the female characters even more than the male, making Chandramukhi into yet another prostitute who just does it for, I don’t know, fun?-instead of economic necessity.  And Paro into yet another rich socialite who only cares about her broken heart and never considers using all her wealthy to do any good in the world.  And that’s not even talking about how all the older woman in the film are shown to be short-sighted, petty, and status-focused.

(Meanwhile, that same year, Jaya Bachchan in Koi Mere Dil Se Pooche is encouraging her daughter-in-law to remarry even if it means she has to kill her own son.)

But, as I said, very pretty!  A very pretty film.  I could watch the songs over and over again.  And have.  I only hope I still can, now that I know the movie that surrounds them.

(Thank goodness, Madhuri is still wonderful)

  Shahrukh Day Once More! My Least Favorite Shahrukh Film Bit of a controversial one, sorry if you like it, but I just don't! And if you also don't like it and have a hard time articulating why, maybe this review will help you.

[moreracquetball]

Youtuber AU Headcanons

(Lowkey inspired by a post by @whizzerbrowne who brought the idea to my attention and it has since dominated my brain). Let’s just get started:

(This got way too long, yikes. I had to include a read more line)

~ Three Youtubers: Jason, Cordelia, and Whizzer.

Jason

Type: He’s one of those younger, newer youtubers. He started when he was nine, and he talked frankly about stuff like divorce (bc his parents were going through a divorce at the time) and being an introvert and being autistic and being Jewish and dealing with a difficult relationship with his parents. He has trouble really talking to people so it was like really easy to just sit in front of a camera and start talking at them. Side note: this was totally Mendel’s idea as a therapy exercise that actually worked, okay? And (as we’ve seen in the musical), Jason has this raw honesty and wit to him that is very funny and real to watch. As he’s gotten older, he’s started talking about other things - like not such heavy topics. He talks about the things that he’s hyperfixated on (baseball, chess, the emoji movie, etc), and though his content is pretty erratic and all over the place, people just love his commentary and he’s amassed millions of followers in just a few years??

He also vlogs /a lot/, which is how his audience got to know Trina, Mendel, and Marvin.

Trina - Everyone literally adores her. She is v nervous and awkward in her cameos in Jason’s videos, but she is also very honest and vocal about her opinions and calls herself the Cool Mom even though Jason’s like “Mom, you don’t let me stay up past ten even when it’s not a school night” and Trina’s just “A Cool Mom can’t still care about your healthy and well-being??”

Mendel - As a one-off, Jason asked his followers to submit questions to Mendel the Psychiatrist for a collab idea with his stepdad, and his pieces of advice were kinda off the wall and funny and it quickly became a series and one of Jason’s most popular series ever. Some people are convinced Mendel is just playing a character so Jason has to be like “no he is actually like this. You have to believe me.” Also: Mendel gets a snapchat that everyone follows. He uploads grainy pictures of like trees and makes puns and constantly spams his story with pictures of Trina with captions like “look at how pretty she is” and “how did i get so lucky” and “rare photo of an actual goddess.” 

Marvin - Tbh, the audience’s reaction to Marvin is a little more mixed, esp at first. Jason had talked a lot about his difficult relationship with Marvin and his “Draw My Life” video did stir up some contempt for Marvin’s selfishness. But like, over the years and through small snippets of cameos, it is generally believed that Marvin has changed and grown up a lot and is like an amazing (but dorky) dad. His cameos in Jason’s videos are the best bc it shows how eerily alike those two are and at one point Marvin briefly talks about internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity and hints at the stuff that he is’t proud of, and everyone - no matter their outward opinion of him - has like a little crush on him. Also, the videos with Marvin and Mendel both?? Their petty arguing gets like millions of hits every time.

Jason also totally does all the trend/tag videos but also has like that sarcastic, almost ironic vibe at first but he ends up really sincerely liking it. 

Jason also does like monologues of his thoughts and opinions while also doing mini skits in between and he is iconic and a jack of all trades really.

He is very articulate and seems so mature but like any hate whatsoever does get to him a lot. He’s learned how to deal with his self-doubt and ignoring the trolls better than he had when he first started, but every once in awhile it still gets to him.

Also??? Remember that Roast Yourself Challenge trend??? Jason did that, and it was on the top page for like a solid week. He went too hard and too real.

Cordelia

Type: Totally like Hannah Hart’s Drunk Kitchen, are you even kidding me?? That it totally Cordelia. She drinks and talks about current events and makes really bad food puns and it is Everything. She also branches out after awhile and starts doing like satirical how-to videos. Lowkey once she tried to make a wry, parody version of a beauty vlogger how-to and she ended up having so much fun with it and her after make-up looked ballin, so she starts doing make-up tutorials, too.

She’s also very very proudly gay and out. Like, her username is literally lesbiancaterer. But she still gets like comments on her videos saying “are you straight?” or “her boyfriend must be a lucky guy” and it just makes her go “????? How could I ever make this clearer?” (once, in a collab with Marvin, one comment said “ahh, her and her bf are such #relationship goals” which then launched a very satirical, very deadpan boyfriend tag video with her and Marvin that made it abundantly clear just how fucking gay those two are).

Charotte first got introduced very very early in her videos bc once during a drunk kitchen, Cordelia cut her finger with a knife and called for her girlfriend and Charlotte went into complete Doctor Mode and started treating her immediately. Cordelia is a little tipsy at that point and starts blatantly flirting with her and calling her “my doctor” and that video’s comment section is just keysmashing and the phrase “my doctor.”

Cordelia does not try to hide her relationship in any way. She and Charlotte have done all those cute couples tags and Charlotte is the star of Cordelia’s social media and vlogs. Now they are #relationship goals.

Cordelia actually got into Youtube bc of Jason and everyone was like lowkey shocked when it turned out that these two popular but different youtubers knew each other and cameo in one another’s videos a lot and Cordelia is like “he is literally my godson, guys. Ofc I’m gonna be around him and support him.”

Whizzer

Type: Ohhh boy!! Whizzer is def the kind of youtuber that has been around on the platform since circa 2007 - are you even gonna try to fight me on that??? He is a fashion channel (also has like a series of the youtube version of fashion police) but also like a major storytime channel bc he’s been around and tells the craziest but realest stories of all time. He is also quickly considered The Gay Icon^tm of Youtube.

He is definitely one of the biggest youtubers on the platform but he also lowkey feels too old to still be on here and has that like Shane Dawson kinda feel of like keeping it real about youtube drama and rebranding himself and learning from stupid old videos when he was still like a shit 20-something that was lowkey problematic. 

He stans so hard for Britney Spears and Carly Rae Jepsen and he got Carly in one of his collabs and he could not stop smiling and fangirling and he is literally all of us.

He is very, very vocal and honest about his sexuality and sexual history. He has a lot of Body and Sex Positivity videos and speaks very bluntly about the importance of self-esteem and body image and safe sex.

(One of his most popular videos is the one with him candidly speaking about having HIV and he talks about his mistake with unsafe sex and all the terrible stigmas around the topic. He talks about how it’s both a physical and emotional struggle, and he also talks about treatment and awareness and prevention and seeking emotional help to combat depression).

He arranges a collab with Jason bc they are alike in that they always speak candidly about issues and struggles and have like the exact same sense of dry, almost scathing humor. Whizzer meets Marvin bc Marvin is like “Jason, there is no way you’re meeting a strange man who you met over the internet. I am definitely going to be the one that goes with you.”

(Awkward moment when Marvin and Jason get to Whizzer’s apartment, and Marvin and Whizzer’s profiles light up with one another from one of those websites like Grindr). Whizzer has like lowkey commented on Jason’s videos before with lewd comments about his hot dad, but like this is so not what Whizzer had been expecting?? Yeah, at the end of Whizzer and Jason’s collab video, Whizzer puts like a small blooper reel and it’s him continually flirting with Jason’s dad (who’s behind the camera) and the Internet suddenly has a new fave ship.

(Marvin and Whizzer totally messaged each other and hooked up like the next day).

But like, they keep the budding relationship very underwraps bc they both really don’t want it to affect Jason’s channel and neither really think at first that their whole arrangement will go anywhere close to serious because Whizzer has never been in love or had a steady boyfriend and Marvin cannot hold a relationship either even after his divorce.

But of course they fall in love, and of course the internet knows something’s up. Whizzer keeps vaguing on Twitter about the new man in his life with weird tweets like “I can’t believe I’m deliberately sleeping with a man who UNIRONICALLY knows every word to Allstar” and “get you a man who always sends that courtesy ‘thank you.’ text after you send him a dick pic.” And when Whizzer vlogs, he always makes sure to keep the camera trained on himself but you can see that his eyes are always looking away as he’s like smiling at someone who does not want to be on camera. Also, Jason’s weekend vlogs have cameos of Whizzer in them now.

They mess up when in one of aforementioned Jason’s vlogs, there’s a grainy clip of Marvin and Whizzer in the background and Marvin kisses Whizzer’s cheek. The internet loses their minds

(After nine/ten months of dating, Whizzer and Marvin abruptly break up and neither really acknowledges it. However, weeks after their break up, Whizzer decides to make a story-time video about this fucking asshole boyfriend that broke up with him over a chess game. He wanted it to be like both petty but also very funny because that is such a ridiculous story, but like when he’s editing it, he notices himself being like on the verge of tears in some parts and being overly bitter and tense, and he never uploads it and he realizes that he isn’t over Marvin like he had said he was).

(However, Whizzer does end up making a story-time video later about how Jason’s baseball game brought him and Marvin back together).

After they get back together, they’ve worked out their issues and are couples goals now and they do not hide their relationship and Marvin makes cameos in both Whizzer and Jason’s videos/younows and it is incredible.

Through Jason and Marvin, Whizzer and Cordelia meet and they become best friends. They collab all the time and they complain about queer struggles and they talk about their relationships and get drunk on camera and be weird, loud idiots and those videos get tons of views.

And Whizzer gets candid about how he’s always felt like alone in the world and hasn’t really had the opportunity to rely on anyone but himself but through Jason and Marvin, he meets Cordelia and Charlotte and Mendel and Trina, and even though they might not get along all the time and some people are closer to other people, they’re all his family and he never thought that he’d really have one that close before. It’s one of his most vulnerable videos.

The most successful videos on all three’s channels are the collabs of the three of them together: Jason and Cordelia and Whizzer. And they become like one of those Youtube cliques that collab all the time and tweet about each other’s videos constantly and always hang out with one another at all the events like Vidcon and Playlist Live. 

[chimerafeathers]

just wanted to write out a bunch of My Hero thoughts/opinions because idk anybody else who watches it (or who would want to), but i don't really want to get into deep enough into the fandom to see the #drama

so, a bunch of random shit in no particular order:

- this is more about my relationship with anime in general but.... i always feel like i need to put a disclaimer on My Anime Opinions because of the perviness and fanservice and sexualization. it’s frustrating because the “shounen” genre (and yeah i know it’s not exactly a genre. whatever) caters to my interests in so many other ways!!! big, flashy battles, cool powers and magic systems, huge emphasis on The Power of Friendship, cheesy humor, great animation, everything is all kinds of HYPE and EXCITEMENT and FUN....but since shows like this are targeted towards teenage boys and often made by horny men, there’s also Boobs and token pervert characters that serve as an excuse to show More Boobs or Fantasize About Boobs. and the women��s powers are either “look i’m a girl!!!” (there were a couple of women early on in hunter x hunter whose powers were....sewing and vacuuming?? seriously??? and then another one later on who was an older woman who chose to make herself look like a little girl as her superpower??) or “what’s a power-related excuse to make these costumes As Skimpy As Possible” (cough cough Momo and Hagakure cough cough) or even having NO excuse (what the fuck, Bubble Girl, i know it was a fan design contest thing but that never should have been accepted it makes no sense i--) and that’s. really damn tiring and annoying. mha hasn’t quite crossed the line for me yet overall -- meaning my disgust with grape trash and other gross tropes hasn’t outweighed my enjoyment of every other aspect of the story and characters, and i hope that never becomes the case. (i tried to watch 7 deadly sins on netflix and??? the main character gropes an unconscious woman in literally the first episode with no consequences???? no fucking thank you!!!!! i’m OUT)

- anyway if anybody reads this and has any show recs that hit that Good Shounen Hype vibe with good animation, fantasy/sci-fi/superpower elements, but minimal (or nonexistent??) Creep Vibes, please send them my way. i know there are a bunch of good slice-of-life or comedy or drama shows that have queer themes and sensitive storytelling but man.....if there’s no magic or dragons what’s even the POINT

- on a related note, god fucking bless every “AU - M!neta M!norou Doesn’t Exist” fic on ao3, and everyone who makes every member of class 1-a queer in some way or another, so i can get my cool powers and great characters and dramatic plots without the threat of disgust and frustration

- also i just read the School Briefs series and while there were entirely too many chapters/sections that focused on grape trash, it WAS mentioned that Tiger of the Wild Wild Pussycats is canonically a trans man (who hasn’t been killed off!), and Shinso Hitoshi became the only man at UA I respect with one line: “He’s gotta be expelled for sexual harassment one of these days, right?”

- seriously, if shinso’s transfer gets approved i would literally rather have grape trash expelled than whoever ends up being the traitor (if it’s a hero course student. i honestly don’t really care about traitor speculation/theories).

- and yes “only man i respect” includes aizawa and every other 1-a boy who just!! lets shit happen with barely a comment!!! again, bless every fic where grape trash gets expelled early on or at the training camp because Hey, What He Does Is Fucked Up Actually and maybe someone who consistently disrespects and violates his peers’ boundaries and privacy shouldn’t be accepted as a HERO without getting some behavioral therapy first???? same kinda goes for bakugo too though, they really need to address his anger issues and beef with mido beyond “let’s force them to team up in high-stress situations even though this boy basically tried to obliterate the other one on, like, the second day of class. they’ll probably work it out!!”

- and on the subject of bakugo! i really fucking can’t ship him romantically with mido as their history and relationship stands in canon. (this is not meant to shame anybody for shipping it, i just want to articulate why it’s a notp for me personally. expressing my opinions is the point of this list.) i can see the foundations -- mido obsessed with baku, baku constantly frustrated by yet aware of mido, both of them being drawn to each other and tangled up in each other’s ideas of what it means to be a hero. but. baku made mido’s entire childhood hell. rejected and abused him for something he couldn’t control, ostracized him from all of his peers, mocked his passions, crushed his dreams, told him to jump off a roof. of course mido still clung to him--baku’s strong and smart and talented, and he was the only friend mido ever had, the only friend he had left, the “hero” he could see in his own life.

but at UA he has other friends, other heroes, people who support him and believe in him. it’s his chance to step outside of baku’s shadow and see his own self worth. and it’s baku’s chance to see how wrong he was, and outgrow his anger and prejudice!! see others as his equals instead of his inferiors! but it’s gonna take years for that to happen for both of them, and while i can see them becoming partners and friends who can finally talk to each other on the same level, and work together better than anyone because they know each other so damn well after everything they went through....i think they need to do that healing and growth separately, for the most part.

and like...okay, disclaimer, i am fully asexual and aromantic, so while i love reading shippy fics, there are some things i just cannot fucking understand or relate to. the whole “sexual tension between people who hate each other but can’t stop thinking about each other” or “arguments turn into make-out sessions” thing is just beyond me. if i hate a person i Do Not Want to be around them! at all!! so the idea that baku treats mido like that BECAUSE he’s attracted to him?? incomprehensible.

and on mido’s end, no matter how much he respects or admires baku, or even if he was endlessly infatuated with/attracted to him when they were younger, why the FUCK would he want to stay with someone who made him feel like dirt for so long, when he’s finally surrounded by people who love him fully and unapologetically? i want him to have more self-respect than that. i honestly, truly want to see baku grow and develop to the extent that he and mido can stand on the same level as equals. i want to see mido unashamed and unafraid, i want baku to apologize and mean it, i want mido to forgive him, i want baku to become the kind of hero mido always believed he could be.

but to me, that depth and complexity of relationship (while very very very good!!) is NOT the same thing as a romance, and turning it into one feels wrong when the foundations of it are just....baku tormenting mido, while mido had nothing and no one else to turn to. (his mom is great, but a parent is not the same as a friend, and she was literally the only person in his life who cared about him while baku and his cronies were beating him up and ridiculing him in front of teachers who turned a blind eye.) if they had been equal rivals from the beginning, with mido able to hold his own physically, socially, and/or emotionally instead of being left bruised and battered in the dirt every time, then sure! rivals to lovers, have at it. but for me, there’s gotta be that give-and-take.

i haven’t read shippy fic for those two and i’m sure there’s a lot of great stuff!! i’ve read platonic bk//dk-centric fic by writers who DO ship them and write mostly shippy stuff, and their take on that relationship is great and engaging and everything. but i feel like, to me, even when the growth and development of their canon-based relationship is handled really well, it’d feel wrong to me as soon as it turned romantic.

- .....which is one of the reasons why todo//mido is my JAM. bonding over shared loneliness and trauma, respecting each other as rivals right from the beginning, the contrast of chatty and sunny mido with quiet and calm todo, hurt/comfort on both sides, navigating their relationships with the people who have hurt them so much in the past, the capacity to be gentle and tender with each other while remaining passionate and dedicated rivals, growing and healing together, that good good Pining because neither one of them believes that they deserve the other, all of it!!! now THAT i can relate to and understand and see as the basis for romance. mido changed todo’s whole damn worldview in ONE FIGHT after todo spilled his whole tragic backstory to mido in their second conversation.

even so (and again, this might be ace/aro me not relating) i kinda roll my eyes whenever a fic emphasizes how attractive they find each other right away (especially on todo’s end, when mido is consistently described as plain or unremarkable). worst offenders are when they ~just so happen~ to be EXACTLY each other’s “type.” like, alright, sure, i gUESS.

it’s just so much more interesting to me if attraction follows affection instead of the other way around? especially in the context of canon events. but whatever, love at first sight’s just not my thing. never has been. and i like the idea that even though the start of their friendship is so chaotic and rushed in some ways, it still takes them time to get to know each other and come to terms with their own feelings. (slow burn slow burn SLOW BURN)

- okay those are all my more sincere/serious opinions

- i know canon is like “stop being such a crybaby :/” but mido crying all the time is one of my favorite things about him and i hope it never goes away, at least not completely

- some fics have mido getting growth spurts and getting really tall, and it’s an anime trope that getting taller parallels character growth/maturity (like Ed growing up in FMA after being short and mad about it was one of his defining characteristics for so long) but again......i just want him to stay short....please let my boy stay a small overemotional nerd.... hori please i’m begging you

-  it’s hilarious to me that the “dabi is a todoroki” theory is present in almost every single damn fic where that character makes an appearance. personally i have no stake in the theory (wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true, wouldn’t be disappointed if it isn’t) but i feel like it’s never gonna die even after his identity is truly revealed

- apparently shinso/kami is a decently popular ship and i.....have no idea if those two have ever interacted at all?? did they talk to each other in the show or in the manga or some side story and i missed it? are they popular JUST because they parallel eraser//mic to some extent??? or is it purely a case of “those personalities would be fun together--SHIP TIME”?? idk i don’t get it but it’s funny

- back to School Briefs, there’s a neat Kendo-centric chapter during the school festival that ends up being an introspective on kendo’s relationship with her own gender and the idea of performing femininity for the beauty pageant and it kind of rules??

- there’s also an entire chapter from the pov of koda’s bunny during their first couple days in the dorms. apparently koda can’t understand animals, he can just control them by talking to them!

- in shinso’s chapter he overhears the dance squad talking about the sports festival and he hears mido talk about how useful and great shinso’s quirk will be for hero work and shinso’s like “!!! thank you???? finally???” and then resolves to get stronger and make it into the hero course before they meet again

- during the school festival when mido ran off to make eri’s candy apples, iida and todo were like “is he running into trouble again?? can he PLEASE tell us where he’s going? we would track his phone but he never brings it with him anyways!!! what are we supposed to do about him!!!!” and then they found out what he was doing and went “oh ;u;”

- School Briefs in general (minus grape trash sections) were exactly the kind of “slice of life but there are superpowers” fluffy nonsense i always crave, would recommend

- also hilarious: baby mido in fic (especially de-aging fic) is often either a) the Most Precious Sunshine Child in Existence, even villains can’t help but adore him, or b) the most obnoxious, borderline-creepy, whiny little brat in existence, No Wonder Baku Couldn’t Stand Him. i imagine the “reality” would fall somewhere in the middle and it’s always a little jarring when authors so solidly fall on one extreme or the other lmfao

- just bnha fanfic things: “is this an intentional use of All for One vs One for All or was it a typo/mistake on the author’s part??”

- that’s all i’ve got for now yall i love these characters

[imagining-supernatural]

Promises Explanation

Hey everyone, I’m going to do something that I really don’t do and open up about my own battle with depression under the cut, but first I wanted to highlight a few of the replies and reblogs that Promises has gotten, because even though I wrote this only for me as a way to cope with a bad weekend, I shared it to touch other people.

@thevioletthourr​ replied to I Can’t:  This really made my heart ache. I think many people including myself know how it feels like to think you’re a burden to someone and how it feels to be lonely although you’re not alone. I hope you write another part where the reader gets better but I understand if you want to leave it like this. You chose all the right words and made me feel so many emotions all at once. You’re really an amazing writer!

@sumara62 replied to I Can’t:  This is more than just an emotional hit; this speaks to the heart and soul. Fact is, there are many out there for whom this is all too real; the only difference is that most cannot articulate those thoughts and feelings. Thank you for doing so in a way that reaches more than a few. I hope you add a postscript to this; I would guess there are more than a few who would like to know what becomes of her…..

@theoriginalvicki replied to I Can’t:  Oh man I gotta know she’s gonna be ok. Please is there more coming?

@nanie5 reblogged I Remember: I don’t wanted to look stupid or trying to bring attention towards me. But this, this is what feels like when I feels usesles, pitty or a weight for anyone who I know and love. I am still fighting if I should delete it or whatnot. But, I just want to let you know that y'all have a friend in me. I might not understand some language but I will learn.I am very sorry if I make anyone uncomfortable with my expression. That wasn’t what I planned for. I just feel, I just want to let you know what I was thinking and feeling.

@nanie5 I hope it was okay that I included this. I know you were thinking about deleting your reblog, so just let me know if you want me to take this off as well. It’s a very personal thing to share. But I’ve thought about your reblog ever since I read it and it really touched me how you offered a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, and your friendship to anyone who needs it. 

I don’t let you guys know just how much your comments and reblogs mean to me on my stuff often enough, but I couldn’t let these replies pass by without letting you all know that I really do appreciate it when you read my stories and take the time to give thoughtful comments like this. Especially on stuff like this that truly means something and deals with real issues. It’s always nerve-wracking to post something this dark, but I love that it touches people other than myself. 

I guess that’s the beauty of the Supernatural fandom. Whether its within the storyline or about the actors who play the characters, there is so much support.

There won’t be another part. I’m not going to continue this story. I hope that you all imagine a happy ending in your head, but this is all that is being posted on my blog.

So now I’ll get onto the personal stuff under the cut. Do NOT keep reading if you’re easily triggered. If depression or talk of suicide triggers you, stop right here. Just know that I’m okay now and most of it is in my past. If you ever want to talk, I’m here.

Opening up about my own battle with depression is something that I never do. It’s easier online than in person, and I know that it’s something that I should work on, but anyone who has fought this battle knows that you can’t do it just because you know you should. 

And I usually write about other people’s stories, fictional characters, and so this is way out of character for me. But after seeing the responses that this series got, I just want you all to know that you aren’t alone in what you’re feeling. And if it takes me opening up first to help anyone feel more comfortable talking about their own experiences, then I can deal with my discomfort. 

First off, I just wanted to assure anyone who might be worried about me because of this series that I really am okay. Most of the time I’m happy and loving life. There are only a few times that the depression comes back and blindsides me, but that’s only for a few days. I was just hoping that writing this would get it out of my system sooner this time.

In fact, I struggled with the question if I should even post this story. Not only so that no one would be worried about me, but also because I knew that there wasn’t happy ending (and there won’t be. I’m sorry everyone, but I’m not going to write more for this one). And when I was in my deep depression, I often sought out stories like this that would make me feel validated, like I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. They would put my feelings into words and make me feel the depression, sadness, and loneliness more acutely and strongly. But those stories always had happy endings and for those few minutes, I felt that maybe I could make it through. They brought me out of that deep pit for a brief moment of time. But this story doesn’t have that kind of an ending, and I didn’t want to make anyone worse off because they were expecting a happy ending and didn’t get it.

But it’s still important. Stories like this that shed light on the battles that some people face, that might help you understand why your friend is pulling away, that showcase the darker side of life, and, most importantly, that open a dialogue between two people are so important. 

Like I’ve said, I don’t talk about my battle with depression. There are only two people that I’ve admitted it to. Two people that I’ve actually said (or rather texted) the words “I’m feeling depressed right now” instead of the usual “I’m tired” excuse. I’m sure that other people have noticed, but they didn’t confront me about it. So my battle has mainly been one of silence.

I started feeling depressed during my freshman year of high school. My dad had just gotten laid off of his job after a lot of workplace drama, and I remember coming home from school and seeing him cry. My dad never cries and I love him so much so it wounded me to the very core. I don’t blame him. Not at all. Some of us are just wired to empathize very heavily, and some of us are wired to focus on the bad in life. It’s not a good combination to have those wires crossed.

A funny thing about depression is when it comes on gradually, you don’t really realize how far gone you are until someone points it out. You just kinda think that this is how your life is meant to be and there’s nothing wrong. Because everyone feels this empty, right? 

Well, I had a friend and we communicated solely through texting except for the few times a year we would be in the same city and we could hang out for a few hours. It was after a few months of only texting that she texted me and asked if I was doing okay, because even through text she got the feeling that my replies were emotionless and numb. She could tell through text that I was just going through the motions.

That’s the day that it really hit me how depressed I was. That’s the day that I realized that depression is a wide range of emotions. It’s not just sadness and loneliness. It’s not just suicidal thoughts and crying yourself to sleep. It can also be nothing at all. Feeling nothing. Looking forward to nothing. Going through the motions because that’s what normal people do.

I’d like to tell you all that I started working on it then. That I started getting better. That the promise I made to her that day, “I promise you that no matter how bad it gets, suicide is never an option for me” was one that I always kept. And I’d like to tell you that feeling that empty was my lowest point.

But I can’t.

I had years of rollercoaster emotions. Each low point was lower than the one before, and the highs seemed to get lower as well. I have a stutter, and my views on that really messed me up. How was I supposed to get a real job and be successful if I can’t even say my own name? I’ve lived with constant headaches, and in my junior year I got a bad concussion which made it so much worse. I had physical pain, emotional pain, and psychological pain. That’s not really a recipe for recovery. 

I picked fights with my best friend just so I would have an excuse to leave her life and stop bringing her down (thank God she didn’t let me leave her alone). I spent my nights laying in bed, imagining the most horrible scenarios in my head. I nearly stopped talking. I stayed locked in my room more often than not.

And eventually I regretted making that promise to my friend about never considering suicide, because I broke that promise. It was never really a serious consideration, but as soon as I started imagining what I would write in my goodbye letters to everyone, I knew that it was broken. I wish I would have talked to someone. But by then I was back to hiding the depression from my two best friends, but I was better at it. One had so many problems of her own, and the other was finally over her own depression and seemed to be getting her life back on track. I couldn’t add my crap to their lives. 

I had a good life, which made the depression worse. I had a supportive family, good community, amazing teachers, and I wasn’t bullied even with my stutter. What did I have to be depressed about? I couldn’t answer that question, which made me feel like I was faking. It made me feel like I just wanted the attention, so I stopped calling any sort of attention to myself. 

Then I went to college and the first year was bad. I had great roommates, we had good times, but it was the first time I lived away from home. I started speech therapy which helped my stutter, but it made me face some things that I didn’t want to about myself and why I do what I do. But I didn’t have the willpower or resources to make the changes I needed to. I just knew what I was doing wrong and all that new knowledge did was give me more ammo against myself. It was definitely a year of change, and not all of it was for the better.

And I remember the drive home for the summer. Everything was packed in my car and I was driving up the canyon, headed home. There is a very distinctive moment that I’ll never forget on that drive. It was this feeling of peace, but not the good kind of peace. I was half-convinced that I was going to get in a wreck or something and I wouldn’t make it home. And I was okay with that. I was at peace if I died that day because then it would all be over.

Back then, that didn’t scare me. Feeling like that, like my life was about to end, it was comforting.

It scares me now, but I was fine with it on my drive home, so much so that I was almost disappointed that I made it home safely. I spent a long summer recovering from that year at college. 

In the two years since then, I’ve been getting better. I’ve done a lot of soul searching and I’ve made a few changes in my life. Small changes, but changes nonetheless. I stopped being so critical about the world. And eventually I stopped being so critical of myself as well. I’ve started to get more comfortable with who I am. I now accept things that I can’t change, like my stutter, though I’m still working on it. I’ve spent a long time getting myself to like who I am. I found a major in college that I love, I found a job in that major (which is amazing when you’re still going to college), I have so many wonderful friends, I’ve been accepted to grad school, and I have this blog which, believe it or not, has probably been one of the biggest helps over the past year and a half. 

But most of all, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to be completely better. I’ll always have a little bit of this depression lingering. When things go bad, there will always be a part of me that jumps to pills, or to the idea of running away and starting over. There will still be nights that I feel worthless and inconsequential and I will cry myself to sleep. There will be those days that I just want to stay in bed all day and not talk to anyone. There will be those days that I Remember. That I remember those days that I Broke my promises to my friends to talk to them when it got bad. That I Can’t face the world.

And that’s okay. 

Some days, it’s okay to not be okay.

And that’s okay.

Because those days will get further and further apart. I will go longer between backslides into depression. I will spend more time smiling and happy and laughing. I will find more reasons that the world is amazing and bright and full of possibilities. 

I don’t talk about my depression. I don’t open up about that part of my life. I don’t like spreading that kind of negativity. But I realize that it can help other people. If you ever need to talk, I will talk to you. Anyone who already has knows that I’m super awkward, but I am here for you. I didn’t share my story to get sympathy. I shared it so that you will know that I’ve been there. Our stories might be different, but we’re still fighting the same battle. It’s a battle that no one should have to fight, and especially one that no one should have to fight alone. I want to help. That’s why I write. I hope my stories offer an escape, I hope they offer you some solace, and I hope they make you smile. 

My ask box, messages, email is always open. I want to help you get through this I want you to be able to say, “I’ve spent every damn day fighting and I’m done fighting. I’m ready to live.”

Because I am. I am so ready to live.

Update On My Life: 2 Years Later

[cassiopeiassky]

Stars

Prompt: Hey Cass... So I recently got mugged (the asshole took all I had including some stuff with sentimental value AND had the nerve to assault me) and I was wondering if you could write something about that. I'm sorry if the requests are closed, I really don't wanna bother, but I just feel like shit and completely powerless. Thank you for reading this anyway and I hope you know how much your writing makes me happy 

Nonnie, I am so incredibly sorry this happened to you.  I hope this makes you feel a little better ♥  I’m also sorry about the lame title - I couldn’t come up with anything better and I wanted to get this posted for you today (((hugs)))

Reader x Bucky

Word Count: 5349

Warnings: Language, depiction of a mugging, assault/injuries, as much fluff as I could possibly cram in

Carefully keeping your grandmother’s bracelet from dangling into the paint, you squeeze just a little more cyan acrylic onto your palette – you haven’t quite accomplished the perfect shade of purple that you need for the shadowing on your painting.  Blend...a smidgen more magenta…blend again...there.  Finally satisfied with the result, you absentmindedly chew on the end of your paintbrush as you contemplate your next move.

“Hey Strawberry, can I steal some of your cadmium red?  I’m all out,” asks the handsome blonde seated at the canvas next to you.

“Didn’t you just buy a ginormous tube last week?  And wasn’t that the second tube this month?” You swivel in your chair to face Steve directly.  “Do you eat it?  Does it fuel your patriotism?”

He turns to you with a sheepish smile.  “I, uh, I kinda left my paints out last night…again…and Buck stepped on them. Again.”  Steve pauses as you laugh. “I don’t think we’re getting our damage deposit back.”

“Steve, I think that was established months ago with the compressed charcoal incident,” you quirk your eyebrow at him as you hand him the paint, hoping to hide the flush creeping up your neck at the mere mention of Bucky’s name.

 You’d met Steve a little over a year ago at an evening community ed drawing class much like this one.  You needed an outlet for your emotions, and he needed normalcy after saving the world on a weekly basis.  The two of you hit it off right away, and it didn’t take long for him to start acting like your older brother.  When he found out that you walked to the class, he’d insisted on walking you home at night. All that time spent walking and talking had turned into a deep and abiding friendship.  

A few months later, he moved into your apartment building with Bucky – their apartment was just one floor down and two doors over from yours.  Living in the tower had proven to be too much for his friend, so they opted to get an apartment close enough to the tower to be available when needed but far enough away to give Bucky the space he craved to focus on reestablishing his identity as Bucky Barnes.  It surprised you that they’d want to live in your part of town, but Steve insisted that the low-profile area was exactly what they both needed to keep themselves grounded.  

Steve kept promising to introduce the two of you (he kept repeating that his two best friends should know each other) but it just hadn’t happened.  When this class had started you still hadn’t met the mysterious Bucky, but Steve swore that it would happen soon because he’d convinced Bucky to take an astronomy class that was held at the same time as your painting class.  You’d insisted that you didn’t want to intrude on their time so you’d be taking yourself home from here on out, but Steve firmly informed you that he still had every intention of walking you home.  Besides, you lived in the same building.

You could take the man out of the 40s, but you couldn’t take the 40s out of the man.

You were sketching some ideas in your book when you heard Steve speak; he sounded concerned, so you looked up.  “Over already?”

“No, but they’re going up to the telescope.  Too many people in too small a space,” muttered the most beautiful man you’d ever seen in your entire life.  “I’ll go up later, after everyone else leaves,” he looked down as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

You were staring.  You knew you were staring but you couldn’t help it, especially when those incredibly intense blue eyes looked up and focused on yours.

You heard a snicker before the sharp elbow made contact with your ribs.  “Close your mouth,” Steve hissed in your ear.

“Oh my God,” you babbled to yourself, “I’m – hi – you must be – uh hello –“

In your peripheral you could see Steve facepalm before he made the introductions for you, since you were clearly incapable of putting together an articulate sentence.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you, Bucky.”  Good for you, you finally managed to get out something coherent.  Fuck, even your toes were blushing.

A shy smile made its way across Bucky’s face as he maintained eye contact.  “It’s nice to meet you, too.  I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said softly before he bit his lip.

Considering your blatant awkwardness during the first five minutes of your acquaintance with Bucky, it actually ended up being a pretty fantastic night. He’d stuck around to watch you and Steve finish up your painting class before deciding to make his way up to the roof to take advantage of the telescope while no one else was there.  

“Would you like to come with?  I can show you some of the seasonal constellations, if you’d like.”  Bucky’s voice was unsure and timid, but there was a resolve in his eyes that made you smile.

“You should!” Steve encouraged (as if you needed any encouragement to gaze at the stars with Bucky).  “Then you’ll have both of us to walk you home!”

“I’d love to,” was your red-faced reply.  At least you didn’t stutter that time.

 That was almost five months ago, and it had immediately become part of your weekly routine.  It didn’t take long for Bucky to start joining you and Steve on your other outings, and soon the three of you were inseparable when you weren’t working and the boys weren’t training or somewhere across the world.    

The only problem (if you can call it a problem) is that you like Bucky, and not in the way you like Steve, which is how you find yourself blushing at the very mention of his name.  And if you’re completely honest with yourself, which isn’t very often when it comes to this subject, you actually passed like about a month ago.  

Steve knows, oh God does Steve know, and the not-so-little shit never misses an opportunity to tease you about it; he’s actually taken to calling you ‘Strawberry’ because of how you’re perpetually blushing around Bucky.  Steve used to call you ‘Doll,’ but he started using a different nickname right around the time you’d met Bucky because he started calling you ‘Doll.’  That, and Steve thinks he’s funny.

“You should ask him out!” You sigh inwardly at Steve’s comment – you hear it pretty much every time you see him.

“Shut up, Steve.”

“You should!  I’m telling you, Strawberry, he really, really likes you, he’s just too chicken to make the first move.  It’s been a while since he’s put himself out there like that, but he really does like you.”  He’s enjoying this way too much.

“Well,” you begin tartly, “if Bucky is too scared to make the first move, then maybe he’s not ready to date yet, and that’s perfectly fine!  I’m not going to push him, Steve, which is why the ball is in his court.  The last thing I want to do is make him uncomfortable around me; his friendship means too much.”

He huffs dramatically as he squeezes some paint on his palette before returning the tube to you. He’s such a goddamn drama queen sometimes.

Your phone buzzes, and you curse as you check the display.

“What’s wrong?”

It’s your turn to huff and be dramatic.  “Oh, there’s an issue at work that I need to take care of before I go home tonight. You guys are going to have to enjoy the stars without me.”  You start packing up your belongings; you hate to leave in the middle of class, but the sooner you get there the sooner you can leave.

“Do you want us to come with you?  We can find something to do while we wait,” he asks, ever the gentleman.

“No, I’ll be fine by myself, but thanks for the offer,” you smile as you gather your brushes.

“Hey, why don’t I take care of clean-up for you – it’ll save you a few minutes, and then you can get home earlier.”  You nod your thanks at his offer, but he continues, “Strawberry, are you sure?  It’s no problem at all for us to walk with you.”

“Steve, it’s only a ten minute walk from here, and then another ten minute walk home.”  You wave away his concern as you shoulder your bag; it’s not as though you haven’t make the trip by yourself before.  “Besides, Bucky loves gazing at those stars, so I don’t want to be the reason he misses this week.”

“The stars aren’t really the reason why he goes up there nowadays; there’s something else he likes to gaze at,” he wiggles his eyebrows dramatically as he finishes his sentence.

Goddamn it, here you go again.  Your ears are burning this time.

Steve starts laughing and holds up his paintbrush, currently coated in the vibrant red he’s now using.  “Hey look, it’s your face!”

You snatch the brush from his fingers and quickly smear a thick stripe across his forehead and down his nose.  “Oh look,” you chirp sweetly as you give a very shocked Steve his brush back, “It’s your face now, too!”

You’ve left Steve Rogers speechless – gold star for you!  “Tell Buck I said hi, will you?”

Steve nods from behind the rag he’s using to clean his face.  “Text me when you get home and we’ll order food.  We gotta continue our Deadliest Catch marathon tonight if we want to get caught up before the next season starts.”

“Aye aye, Cap,” you salute, and you head out.

***

You sigh as you shut down your workstation for the second time today.  Crisis averted…for now.  You’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.  Stealing a glance at the clock, you see that it’s much later than you’d thought; you’ve been here for three hours.  Oh shit.  Glancing over at your work phone tells you that you have 7 calls that were automatically routed to voicemail since it’s after hours.  Uh oh. Pulling out your phone, you see that you have four missed calls and seven texts from Steve, and just as many from Bucky.  You focus on the last two, sent just a minute or two ago and only seconds apart:

           |Bucky: If I don’t hear back from you in 5, I’m coming to look for you

           |Steve: WHERE ARE YOU

You quickly text them both, apologizing profusely for not answering; you’d forgotten your phone was on silent.  Then:

          |I’m on my way, I’ll be home in 10!  It’s Chinese tonight, right?  Order me some fried wontons, and then you can yell at me all you want.  I’m so sorry, guys!!

Throwing on your coat, you grab your bag and shove your phone into your pocket before heading out into the night.

You’re about halfway home when you feel it; someone’s watching you.  You look around, but don’t see anything out of the ordinary in the yellow glow provided by the streetlights.  There are a few other people on the streets, but no one strikes you as particularly threatening.  

Still…

Should you have had Steve and Bucky come for you?  No, that’s silly.  You’re a grown-ass woman, pull yourself together.

Inexplicably unnerved and incredibly uneasy, you find yourself pulling out your phone to call one of them when it happens.

Hostile hands pull you into the dark space in between two closed stores and slam you violently against the brick wall.  “Ouch…what…what the fuck?” you manage to get out before you take a hit to the face, causing your head to smack the brick behind you once again.  Your vision explodes into thousands of white lights, and you have to concentrate to understand what your attacker is saying.

“Shut up and give me your bag!”

You blink desperately, trying to make the man in front of you come into focus, but you just can’t.

“Give me your goddamn bag!” he starts pushing your around, trying to physically remove the bag himself. You don’t realize that you’re still holding your phone until it rings, causing you both to jump, and you swipe to answer before he can take it from you.  

“Bucky?” you find yourself crying out before the assailant hits you again and knocks the phone to the ground.

“Don’t you fucking dare go for that phone,” the man growls, and he pulls a gun.  A fucking gun.

You freeze as your breath catches in your chest – you don’t think you’ve ever been so terrified in your entire life.  

“Bag.  NOW!”  You jump at the harsh sound of his voice, and hastily hand over your bag.  “And now the coat…that’s a good girl…” You start shivering immediately in the chilly evening air, but he doesn’t care.  “And your jewelry – the thing on your wrist.”

“What?”  Please, no.  Not your grandmother’s bracelet…it’s the only thing you have left of her.

He raises the gun again. “Do I really need to repeat myself?”

You quickly shake your head, fumbling at the clasp to remove it before he hits you again.  He rips it out of your hand, swoops down to snatch your phone, and then he’s gone.

Breathing unevenly, you lean back against the brick before looking around the dark area.  Is it safe to leave?  Is the man just around the corner, waiting to hurt you again?  Is it really over?  You gingerly put your fingers to your face…fucking ow…and then to the back of your head.  Dammit, you’re going to need medical attention. You know you need to move – you need to do something – but you’re rooted in place by fear and pain.

Then you hear it; the sound of running footsteps and your name being yelled frantically by the two people you’ve come to trust most in this world.  

You can move now – they’re your safety.

You take a deep breath before pushing yourself off the wall, walking back out to the street and under the artificial lights of the lamps.  Bucky nearly collides with you before he sees you.

“Oh God, Doll, what happened?”  He pulls you close, and you can’t stop the tears from coming.  “Hey, we’re here now, you’re safe, you’re safe,” he soothes as he gently rubs your back.  They obviously got your call and got there as quickly as possible – Bucky didn’t even pause to grab a coat.

There’s a set of gentle hands at the back of your head – Steve.  “Buck, we need to get her to the hospital.”  A brief pause, and then, “Tony, we found her, she was attacked and mugged…yeah, we need a car…okay, let me know what you find.”

“Steve, hand me your sweatshirt,” Bucky murmurs over your head, and a few moments later something warm is draped over your shoulders.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you walk alone.”  You don’t have to look to know he’s running his fingers through his short blond hair.

“Steve, it’s not your fault,” you mutter into the crook of Bucky’s neck.  

He just puts his hand on your shoulder as the three of you wait for a ride.

***

As far as hospital visits go, it could have been worse.  Apparently arriving with two of the Avengers gets you star treatment, especially if Tony Stark calls ahead.  You haven’t met the guy, but he seems nice enough.

One concussion, a black eye, a split lip, and 15 stitches to the back of your head later, you can finally head home.  Neither Steve nor Bucky left your side through the whole ordeal, which is probably the only reason why you don’t combust into a teary, hysterical mess when the police arrived to take your statement.  You actually do fairly well, until you get to the part where the bastard took your grandmother’s bracelet.  A new bag and coat can be purchased, more money can be earned, and credit cards can be frozen, but that bracelet is irreplaceable.

You’re not so sure you’ll ever get your confident independence back, either.  Helplessness isn’t a feeling you enjoy, but it’s currently swallowing you whole.

At least the doctors don’t admit you – you really just want to go home.

“Alright, Doll,” Bucky begins as he leads you through the front door of your apartment building, “we can stay with you or you can stay with us; your choice.”

“I’ll be fine, Buck.” You hate the sound of your voice, so small and weak, and God, you hate accepting help from others.

“Nope, the doc said you need someone with you for the next 24 hours,” Steve reminds you, “so you’re stuck with us, Strawberry.  So…your apartment or ours?”

It’s a losing battle, and you know this.  Besides, you really don’t have the ambition to argue.  “Yours, I guess, that way you guys can sleep in your own beds and I’ll just take the couch.”  You purposely ignore the set of matching snorts – apparently one of them will be giving you a bed and taking the couch.  “Let’s just stop at mine first so I can shower and get ready for bed.”

Thank God you’d given them a spare key to your apartment, or your day would have just gotten considerably worse.  

“Alright Doll, Steve’s going to run to the supermarket for some frozen pizzas since the restaurants are all closed. I’ll feed your cat while you’re in the shower, and then I’ll text your boss to let her know what’s going on, that you won’t be in tomorrow, and that you don’t have your cell.  Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, I should be good. Thanks Buck.”  You offer a weak smile that’s more of a grimace as you go into your bedroom to gather some comfortable clothes.

Showering helps, to a point.  The back of your head is too tender to wash your hair, so that sucks, but at least the rest of you is clean.  Standing in front of the mirror after dressing, you see for the first time how bad you really look.  Without any makeup to hide the blooming discoloration, you can clearly see where you’ve been hit.  That fucker really did a number on you.

You don’t exactly know when the tears started to fall, but your cheeks are wet and it’s becoming harder to breathe so you lean your back against the wall.  Your next breath comes out as a sob before you slowly sink to the floor.

The insistent knocking you hear makes its way through your consciousness only a moment or two before the door opens.

“I’m sorry for barging in, Doll, but are you -” Bucky stops short when he sees you curled into a ball on the floor.  “Hey, come here,” he whispers as he sits next to you and pulls you into his lap and wraps his arms around you.  “Shhh…it’s gonna be okay…you’re okay, you’re safe, it’s gonna be okay,” he soothes as he slowly rocks you back and forth.

“Will it, though?  He didn’t just take material possessions from me,” you sniff.  

“I know, but Stevie and I will help you get it back, okay?”  Of course Bucky knows exactly what you’re talking about – you don’t need to spell it out for him.  He gently pulls back from you, tilting your head towards his.  “I know what’s like to feel helpless and hurt, to feel like you have no control.”

You nod – you know he does.

“But I also know that you can heal, and that you can rebuild.  It’ll take a while, but you’ll get there.”

You nod again, and take his word for it.  Bucky knows exactly what it takes to get better – he works on it every day – so if he says you can get better, then you can.  Simple as that.  God, you don’t know what you did to deserve these guys, but you’re incredibly thankful for their friendship.

“Thanks, Bucky.”  You wipe your tears away, press a kiss to his cheek, and smile a genuine smile for the first time since you left your painting class.  “You’re amazing.”

Is…is he blushing?

“We, uh, we should get downstairs before Steve burns the place down.  He damn near succeeded the last time we had frozen pizzas.”

You reluctantly pull yourself away from his hold.  “You replaced the kitchen fire extinguisher, right?”

Bucky rolls his eyes as he stands in a single fluid motion and then helps you up.  “Yeah, for the third time.  There’s no way we’re getting our damage deposit back.”

You laugh, and it feels good.  “I think that’s already been firmly established, Buck.”

You run into your bedroom to grab your pillow, and join him at the door to go downstairs to his apartment.

It’s a good thing you left when you did.  You notice immediately when you enter their apartment that something smells slightly off.

Bucky makes a beeline for the oven. “Shit!  He did it again!” he calls out, and you quickly grab a pan for Bucky to slide the pizza out on.

Steve walks into the kitchen at that moment, and looks between you and Bucky with a confused look on his face.  “What?”

“Steve!  How the hell do you manage to save the world on a regular basis when you need Bucky to save you from yourself every damn day?!” Seriously, you want to know.

“What do you mean?” he asks – you cannot figure out how, but he’s genuinely confused.  Blond roots run deep in this man.

“Goddamn it Steve, don’t act like you don’t know!  How many times do I have to tell you that you have to remove the cardboard from the pizzas?”  Bucky is livid.

At least Steve now has the grace to look sheepish.  “Sorry Buck. At least you caught it on time.”  

The last part of his comment earns another glare from Bucky, which sends you into a fit of giggles. They don’t seem to mind, though. In fact, they both seem pretty happy to see you laughing.

***

You don’t remember falling asleep, but you obviously did because you’re being gently woken by Bucky.

“Hey Doll, just checking on you.  Are you feeling okay?” he whispers into the darkness.

Oh, right – the doctor said you needed to have someone wake you every two to three hours for the next day because of your concussion.

“Yeah, Buck, think ’m okay.”  Your voice is thick with sleep, and he chuckles.

“Alright, go back to sleep.”  He snugs the covers tighter around your shoulders, and then you dream of him kissing the top of your head before he leaves the room.

You wake only marginally more the next time he comes in; enough to register that you’re in his room and in his bed.  When did that happen?  You’re too sleepy to think too much about it, though, so you drift off to the smell of him in the sheets.

The last and final time you wake it’s from the sunlight coming in through the cracks in the shades. You roll onto your back and stretch, wincing as the back of your head rubs into the pillow.  Damn, that still hurts.  Opening your eyes isn’t a treat either because the bright sunlight stabs into your brain.  Ugh.

It’s tempting to stay in bed a little longer but you don’t want to displace Bucky any more than you already have, so you force yourself to get up and go into the living room.  You’ll just wake Bucky and tell him to go to bed, and then you’ll take the couch for the rest of the morning.  You stop short at the sight of Bucky sleeping with his face buried in your pillow because it makes your heart clench; God, you care about him so damn much but are too afraid to lose him to actually do anything about your feelings.  You’d enter a romantic relationship with him in a heartbeat, but it needs to be within his timing, not yours.  You will not push.

Too awake at this point to go back to sleep and unwilling to wake him since he seems so peaceful (your mind’s running at full speed now, and your thoughts of Bucky do NOT need to be compounded by going back to his bed), you decide to make breakfast.  It’s the least you can do for them after everything they did for you yesterday, and you know very well how they both feel about waffles.  You have to run to your apartment for a few of the ingredients, but return before anyone wakes up.

You’ve got coffee started, sausage sizzling on the stove, and most of the waffles done when Bucky comes stumbling into the kitchen.  “Just when I thought I couldn’t love you any more, you go and make waffles.”

You were in the middle of spooning more batter onto the waffle iron (the one they’d purchased when they learned that you knew how to make homemade waffles) when he speaks, and you freeze at his words.  Were you supposed to hear that?  Although you’ve known Bucky to be a pretty physically affectionate friend (Steve warned you that if Bucky ever got comfortable with you, that he might get kinda touchy-feely from being what his shrink referred to as ‘touch starved.”  It took a while, but he totally did), he wasn’t one to say overly affectionate statements with the single exception of your nickname. “I…you…wait, what?” you turn around, completely taken aback.

He blushes a furious shade of red, but doesn’t stutter or avoid eye contact when he quietly answers, “I think you heard me, Doll.”

Of course Steve chooses that particular moment to waltz into the kitchen.  “Okay, not that I’m complaining, because I love your waffles, but why is the concussed one making breakfast?”

“Well I couldn’t just stay in Bucky’s bed all day, could I?” you squeak as you turn back to the waffle batter and iron.  You could have, oh, you totally could have, especially if he joined you but that’s not the point and someone please say something because this silence is so awkward and you really just want to ask Bucky what he meant and if he really meant it and what does it mean and oh GOD your mental commentary really needs to STOP.  Gee, you’re not flustered at all, are you?

It suddenly occurs to you that it’s too quiet.  You narrow your eyes as your hands pause over the waffle iron - you can just tell that they’re doing their silent communication thing behind your back.  

“Well, I think I’m going to shower before breakfast.”  Steve’s announcement is unnecessarily loud and his exit is painfully conspicuous.  

Swallowing hard, you move to the stove to turn the sausages – you’re not Steve, you don’t burn things on a regular basis no matter how distracted you are.  Once that’s done, you have nothing else to do until the currently cooking waffle is done.  There’s at least two minutes left.  Two…long…minutes…

You jump a bit at the feel of gentle hands on your head; the soft chuckle by your ear tells you exactly how close Bucky is to you.

“Sorry Doll, I just want to take a quick look at your stitches.”

You stand patiently while he examines the back of your head…wait…did he just drop a kiss into your hair?  When you feel his hands on your shoulders, you turn immediately in response to his unspoken request.

Once you’re facing him, Bucky gently brushes your hair from your face and tilts you toward the light so he can look at your eye and lip.  The way his thumbs are running along your lower lip and your cheek are incredibly distracting; this man will be the death of you and he doesn’t even know it.  Does he?

“You’re gonna be black and blue for a while, and I think the swelling will probably peak sometime today, but you should heal up just fine.”

You smile at his tender touch; you know this side of Bucky Barnes quite well, so much so that sometimes you forget that most of the world only sees a deadly former assassin.  

“I have something for you!” He rushes off.

That was…random.

You turn back to the food, removing the sausages from the heat and taking out the latest waffle before refilling the iron.  

His hurried footsteps let you know he’s coming back – he must be really excited about something, because he hardly ever makes noise when he moves.

“Okay, I know this doesn’t replace what was stolen from you, and that wasn’t my intent, I actually bought this about a month ago.  But maybe…I don’t know…just…here.”  He all but shoves a small box into your hands.  Bucky isn’t always a man of many words, but he isn’t generally awkward; that’s usually your specialty.

You stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  It’s not your birthday, it isn’t Christmas or any other holiday…

“JUST OPEN THE BOX ALREADY AND PUT HIM OUT OF HIS MISERY!”

“SHUT UP, STEVE!” you and Bucky yell at the same time.

A long moment passes as you and Bucky stare at each other before he finally gestures at the box.  “Please open it.”

“Sorry!”  You open the box, and your eyes grow wide at the sight of the lovely silver bracelet resting inside.  It’s got three charms – not the kind that dangle but rather the kind that fits around the chain.  All three silver charms are star shaped with a star shaped crystal embedded in one side; two of them are a rich, vibrant purple, and the stone in the center charm is clear.  “Bucky,” you breathe, “it’s beautiful.” And perfect.  The darker stones are your favorite shade of purple, and you generally only wear silver jewelry. Buy why is he doing this?

You look up at him to find him staring at you apprehensively.  “Flip over the two purple stars,” he chokes out; the words are barely more than a whisper.

You turn the first one, and bring it closer so you can read the tiny words etched on the back.

I wished

Taking a shaky breath after glancing at Bucky, you turn the second.

You appeared

“I, uh, I’ve been trying to give you this for a while, but I just couldn’t work up the nerve.  Last night was a kick in the ass,” Bucky pauses to swallow and run his fingers through his hair before he takes one of your hands in both of his.  “I could have lost you, Doll.  Things could have been much worse, and I would have wasted all this time.  So what I’m trying to say is, will you be my girl?”

A painfully wide smile plasters itself across your face.  Well, what do you know, Steve was right.

Words have escaped you, so you just look up at him and nod.

“Yeah?”  He sounds so hopefully incredulous that you can’t help but giggle.

“Yeah.”  There might have been more for you to say, but you don’t get the chance because he softly presses his lips to yours, careful to not press against the cut in your lip.

“It’s about damn time,” Steve mutters as he walks into the kitchen.  He removes the burning waffle from the iron, grabs some sausage and the syrup, and takes his breakfast out to the living room.

Bucky breaks the kiss so he can clasp the bracelet around your wrist.  

“Thank you,” you whisper.

“For what?  Was the kiss that good?” he smirks; confident Bucky is back in full force.

“Well, that too, but also for the bracelet, and for being here for me.  I don’t think I could have gotten through last night without you.” Your voice catches on the last part, and he pulls you into a gentle hug.

“Well, you’ll never have to know.  I’ll always be here for you, Doll.  We’re gonna get you through this.”

Yeah.  It might take a while, but you’re going to be just fine.

Tagging:    @rogersxbarnesx  @hellomissmabel  @beccaanne814-blog  @howdoesoneadult  @laurenwhitehouse-blog  @musichowler  @nykitass  @danimuhle  @iwillbeinmynest  @sebbytrash @4theluvofall  @shifutheshihtzu  @iamtal  @passiononfire  @jade-cheshire  @flowercrownsandmetallicarms  @lostinspace33  @gingerrootknits  @callmebucky-doll  @learisa  @sammedrano  @hardcorehippos  @knittingknerdy  @vaisabu  @widowvinter  @amrita31199  @bellenuit45  @agentraven007  @sarahjeaniejean  @canumoveyourseatup-no  @unpredictable-firecracker  @omalleysgirl22  @crazyliraz  @shamvictoria11  @kaaatniss  @lillian-paige  @ladylizzieofdarbyshire  @sexyseabass1231  @the-hidden-seeker  @denialanderror  @nea90sweetie  @candyrogers  @ijustwanttobepartofyourworld  @k-nighttt  @almightyunnie @srgtjamesbarnes107 @kimistry27  @maryvmassakre  @mghtiestheroes  @givemethatgold  @manders2487  @fvckingbuckyandsteve  @themistsofmyavalon  @movingonto-betterthings  

[ecotone99]

[UR] ‘Vaguepost’

It was one of THOSE posts on social media. The ones where it’s obvious the person is upset but you have no idea why. The clues are scarce and the details are vague or nonexistent. Traditionally, the term ‘vaguepost’ has been applied. The poster wants to vent about something that has made them very sad but for whatever reason, they do not feel comfortable spelling out the circumstances. Maybe they are going through a breakup and are trying to be deliberately obtuse, to avoid outing the person who caused their pain. Either that, or revealing the facts would cause more issues.

Either way, the vast majority of the people reading those vague posts have no idea what’s the matter. In most cases, the posters do not even want advice or real solutions. They just want to vent and gain some general sympathy. I guess I was too clueless for that. It just seems like pointless drama for its own sake; most of the time. I assumed those who knew the vague-poster better than I, would also know the secret details. I usually let those go, or just offer a polite ‘thumbs up’ but this particular one seemed to have more to it than an appeal for pity. There really seemed to be legitimate pain in her words. It moved me.

Like many online ‘friends’, I didn’t know the woman who posted it very well. I had chatted with her years earlier in a discussion group and liked the substance of her thoughts. It was enough to reach out and send her a ‘friend request’ back then but honestly, I only knew the scant details she offered about herself in passing. I’m not even sure if I would recognize her if I passed her on the street and yet, I was moved by her short online statement.

I must have read and re-read the post a dozen times. Then I went to her page to read the preceding posts (to see if I could glean the meaning of the most recent one). Nothing. Honestly, I had no clue about why she was so sad. There were no obvious precursors to heartbreak or personal tragedy in the earlier messages. It was a mystery that I kept coming back to. I like to fix things. I enjoy finding solutions to problems. It gives me an ego boost to set things right again but in this case, I had no tools to work with.

I debated keeping my mouth shut. That would have been the prudent thing to do. Then I waited for others to make comments which might shed more light on the true source of her problems. There were only a handful of well meaning, general sympathy comments offered by her friends. They were just as clueless as I was. They were also fishing for details in order to offer up real help but none was forthcoming. It seems that my friend was going to be tight-lipped about the source of her deep woes.

At that point, I could have left well enough alone and waited for my friend to recover from her mystery source of depression. That’s what I had done a hundred other times when similar situations presented themselves. Instead I sent her an instant message. It wasn’t read. Probably others had also sent PM’s to no avail. Part of me wanted to cease contacting her with that. I’d made an effort to reach out to her. I didn’t even know her if the truth was told but I’d still made an effort to show that I cared. I started putting my efforts into other things.

I assumed her real life friends were taking care of things. They actually knew her. They were surely aware of any deep relationship problems or personal issues she had. I reassured myself that there were far better people in her life, to be there for her than me. Minutes passed. I’d almost forgotten about it. The rest of the world had already moved on but I couldn’t shake the nagging worry I had. It was something I didn’t even want to articulate. There was no specific reference to harming herself or anything like that in the message. It was just an underlying tone of true despair that gnawed at me. It was what was not said. My sense of unease intensified.

I checked my earlier IM where I’d reached out to her. It still hadn’t been read. I don’t mind telling you, it wasn’t easy for me to let it go AND it wasn’t easy to keep contacting her. I’ve always been about ‘minding my own business’. This was way outside of that. I went on her profile info and looked for a phone number. Most people leave that field blank. They don’t want it to fall into the hands of spammers or crooks. Amazingly, there was a number in the field. I jotted it down quickly but dialing it was a different story. I wrestled with the potential risks. I struggled especially with the awkwardness of speaking to anyone for the first time. I’d already made a couple sincere efforts to help. Most people would accept that as ‘enough’ and not cross any more social boundaries. I was one of those people too; until I pressed ‘call’.

It rang and rang, and rang. Nothing. I let it keep going. Voicemail never picked up. I was tempted to hang up but figured if she wasn’t there, then it wasn’t annoying anyone. I switched over to the IM app. My message had finally been seen. I assumed the call had drawn her attention to it. It was still ringing. I typed ‘That’s me calling you.’ Finally she answered. Her voice was distant and hazy.

“Hellllloooo?” Although I had never heard her voice, I could tell she was very drowsy, or deeply disoriented. She sounded drunk or drugged.

“Hey Emily. It’s umm Jake. I just wanted to check on you. Are you alright?”

“Uhhh hi ‘Jake’. Jaaake whoooo?”

She was obviously confused by my unceremonious introduction. I explained that we were ‘friends’ from an old, defunct discussion group. From her responses, I could tell she was really out of it and incapable of rationalizing anything. There were huge pauses and gaps in her responses. I asked her what was wrong and she began to cry and sob. From what I could gather, it was relationship problems. ‘Marco’ has cheated on her with someone and then left her when she called him out on it. At least that’s what I gathered from her slurred speech and incoherent narrative. I asked if she had been drinking but I already knew the answer to that. What I really wanted to know was if she had taken anything else besides that. I was worried she had taken some sleeping pills or painkillers. Eventually she explained that she had downed a whole bottle of pills. I couldn’t make out what she said they were, but with alcohol, it was probably a deadly cocktail.

She kept saying she just wanted to ‘go back to sleep and sunbathe in the beautiful light.’ Unfortunately I knew what that meant but I did my best to keep her engaged with me and talking. Then she would get quiet and nod off again. I would have to yell or make odd noises to get her attention back. This went on for several minutes while I tried to figure out what to do. I had to keep her talking while I tried to find the 911 call center for her town. I’m not much of a multitasker but I managed to explain what was going on in an email to them. I listed her full name and phone number. Only time would tell if they would get my message in time and take it seriously.

I figured if she threw up, it might minimize the effect of the pills dissolving into her system. I started describing anything I could to gross her out and make her stomach feel queasy. If I went for too disgusting though, she’d just hang up. I had to find the right balance. I guess she was already nauseous. My little ‘pep talk’ did the trick. I heard her vomit and then there was a knock at her door. My hastily typed email had been received by the emergency medical center in her hometown.

They immediately went to action and started performing life-saving measures on her, right there in her bedroom. One of the EMT’s picked up her phone and asked if I was the one who’d reported it. I explained that I was alarmed by the tone of her social media post and decided she needed some help.

“She definitely did.”; He agreed. “There’s an empty bottle of sleeping pills in the bathroom but we have her now. It could have easily killed her with all the alcohol she also consumed. You’re a good friend, Jake. We’ll get her to the hospital and stabilize her. Bye.”

I didn’t hear anything for a couple days. I admit that I did an internet search in her hometown to see if there were any updates. In the end I decided ‘no news was good news’. I kept reminding myself that she and I were not really close; and despite my sincere effort to help in her time of need, I might never hear from her again. A good deed was its own reward. On the third day, I received a call from a number I didn’t immediately recognize. I just assumed it was a sales call but I answered anyway. Turns out, it was Emily.

“Hello Jake. It’s... Emily Brown. This is so embarrassing. I want to thank you for calling and checking on me Tuesday. Words can’t describe how much I appreciate what you did. I don’t remember much of what we talked about but if you hadn’t stepped forward and made that extraordinary effort, I wouldn’t be here now. I was deeply depressed. My boyfriend had dumped me after cheating with another woman and I couldn’t ‘see any light at the end of the tunnel’. While my own friends.., you know what I mean... while ‘they’ either rolled their eyes at my post or just offered some empty sympathy, you actually found my number and called me. I’m deeply touched. You even emailed paramedics while we talked! I don’t know how you did that but I’m eternally grateful. My doctor has me on medicine and it’s already helping me feel better. Thank you so much for reaching out and keeping me talking until they arrived. You literally saved my life.”

I attempted to downplay my role in her dramatic recovery but it did feel good inside to know my emotional instincts had been correct. She really needed a friend and I had been there for her. The ‘vague-post’ was a passive cry for help that too many others dismissed as exaggerated or insincere. I guess I’ll always examine the meaning behind the words, as well as their unspoken implications. Sometimes it’s not what is said, but what isn’t spoken that is most important.

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[suggers-got-dingled]

I saw you & your friends defending Jack and WOW it doesn't matter that it was 5 years ago, he should've known better and a 15 year old knows right from wrong, he should be held accountable for racism and homophobia. I've seen so many white people defending him like they have the right to forgive him when they're not the ones offended by what he said. I was a fan of his and knowing he said slurs about people with my colour skin breaks my heart, white girls forgiving him doesn't help anything.

I literally have no idea why you’re bringing this to my tumblr account which is specifically a fan account, anon. You could have confronted me on Twitter and I would have happily had a reasonable conversation with you!

I don’t want to bring the drama to my dash but I have no choice to have it out with you here so let me try and clear the air (under a cut) as best as I possibly can…  

first things first: in no way did I ever defend him specifically or make out as though his comments were acceptable in any way???

my exact tweet was ‘What is it with the calling out of problematic tweets from the past lately?! I’d hate to think someone recalled what I said when I was a naive teen with no diplomatic influence because now as a better, mature, more educated person I know I was in the wrong!’

which means I’ve been there, I’ve been an ill-informed teenage moron with a tendency to use offensive slurs because I didn’t have the leverage nor the maturity like I do today as a grown adult with respect and morals

it was normalised in my school and society in general, heck even in my family! but now there’s been a huge increase in social awareness around these slurs, offensive language and bigotry, we’re openly speaking out about these issues and that’s important

a brilliant tweet I quoted articulates it a lot better than I can: “You can’t compare tweets from 16 year olds from 5 years ago to today. Although it’s still unacceptable, internet culture and society in general has changed so much with regards to political correctness and offensive slurs.” 

15 year olds NOW would 100% know not to converse with this type of language because it’s publicly acknowledged to be deplorable, but trust me we’ve come such a long way in 5/6 years compared to how it used to be!

it’s all part of growing and evolving as a person, admitting your errors, accepting you were in the wrong but changing the way you thought and expressed yourself, taking that distasteful behaviour, apologising for it, and using it as an example of why you are continuing to try and be better

he absolutely should be held accountable for gross things he’s said but in these circumstances, as a way to use that against him to kick him off a TV show??? I’m just not sure I entirely agree that’s fair dismissal 

because honestly if my fucking idiotic views and opinions and what I said when I was 15/16 on social media when it was ~cool~ to use indirect discriminatory vocabulary without ever realising the damage it can have played a part in hindering the direction I take today as a 24 year old I would be absolutely in the shit 

and I aren’t saying he shouldn’t be called out for being derogatory and that he shouldn’t be made to address his tweets (from what I’ve read he already has) I’m saying I don’t think there’s one of us in this world who hasn’t made a mistake and learnt from it

especially when there’s contestants still in the show who also have tweets of the same nature, and when there’s people (can you call them human?! probably not) like Katie Hopkins and Piers Morgan spouting bile online and still making it to the top 

I don’t know what Jack’s like, I wasn’t a fan of him, I haven’t been a victim of any of the targeted slander directed to those susceptible to oppression, I don’t have any right to say how someone may feel and I cannot be held to decide if him candidly using racist and homophobic words can be forgiven

but what I do know is that me and many others who were in the same boat back then currently try their damn hardest to make the world a more honourable and equal place now

what I do know is that I feel the anger and the upset some awful people in the public eye can cause, I empathise, I protest, and I speak out about it 

what I do know is every single day I’m informing myself and reflecting my beliefs and my attitude on to others and gaining understanding from the people I surround myself with 

(you literally wouldn’t even want to know how many arguments I’ve caused by standing up to disgusting remarks made by my often disgusting family, don’t ever think I’m that type of person because god I will oppose with all my might until they step out of 1940 and wake up to 2017)

(and remember that time when me and the girls had beef with Danny and got so much abuse directed to us by other fans because we really didn’t agree with his borderline biphobic comments and that tweet about Trump being elected) 

look, I genuinely apologise if it offended you and I’m truly sorry if you’ve been affected by what happened tonight but please also take a closer look at what I was trying to make a point of

your prejudice is the perfect instance as to why those inconsiderate, horrible tweets and Facebook statuses we all used to write?? absolutely do not exist anymore. I’m for and never against, and I’ll continue to work on improving myself to amplify this statement!

you sending me this message has already made me reconsider what I said and I hope we can reconcile without any resentment whoever you are 😊

[blackpjensen]

Pros & Cons of Announcing Price Increases

Did you raise prices this season? With rising costs from suppliers, an increase in rent, employee wage increases, an underbid job or add-on services, serving higher costs to the customer is sometimes inevitable. How do you handle price changes with your customers? Some contractors find that taking the time to acknowledge price increases before the new invoice arrives is beneficial to the relationship with the customer. But, be wary. Commercial clients may react differently than residential clients to price changes in a contract without a warning. This LawnSite member is looking for advice on announcing rising prices.

ATL123: I have an apartment complex I’ve been mowing for many years without a price increase. I’m raising prices 10 percent this year, as my crew’s wages have risen to the point where the margins are thin now. I usually just mail the contract at the end of January and the complex signs and returns it. I rarely talk with anyone unless there is an issue. Should I just mail the contract as usual or should I add a letter explaining the price increase? Or a phone call? What would you guys do?

BigJlittleC: Do what you usually do. Send renewal with price increase.

lawntennis: Send the renewal with the price increase. Don’t explain, justify or draw attention to the change. No other business apologizes for price increases. Price increases are a fact of life. They won’t ask why.

Utah Lawn Care: Let them know and give good reasons why you need to increase prices. Start the work as usual unless told otherwise.

RedSox4Life: Face to face is a good idea, but may be impractical. Maybe plan to include a letter along with the first or final invoice for the year/season?

brianslawncare: I had a high-end development for years that consisted of 10 1.5- to 2-acre homes. On the third or fourth season, I raised the price without telling the development — I just put it on the bill. I raised it three dollars and, wow, what an issue. Let’s say I don’t have them as a customer anymore. I dropped them because there was too much drama, and I had a hard time getting paid. You’d be better off telling them upfront.

ShowCaseLawnCare: I wouldn’t raise prices more than a few dollars unless it’s something you’ve underbid or something you don’t want to do. You don’t want to lose good customers over a few bucks. That’s just my opinion.

jc1: We raise prices about every two to three years. We have never sent a letter, card or phone call notifying them of an increase. We mail or email invoices. Customers typically expect prices to change over time. Don’t go up too much at any one time. Rarely has anyone called, commented or complained.

McFarland_Lawn_Care: I’m increasing prices as well. Some were underpriced. Most have expanded their lawn areas. I’m going to write letters and say that we have re-assessed each property and priced accordingly. I’m also going to add that a part of the increase will be for added benefits for our employees who work so hard to keep their properties looking amazing. I think that’ll go a long way. This depends a lot on your clientele and your relationship with them! I have mostly residential and medium to high-end customers, so relationships are important and upfront, honest pricing is the best. We have agreements signed so whenever there needs to be an increase, we send out new agreements reflecting the updated price for signatures. If you feel a reason will help, then include one. If not, don’t sweat it, move on and be prepared to lose the price shoppers. No big deal — it’s a good thing! Feel free to message me for more info or advice on wording — glad to help as much as I can.

Darryl G: I just increase them these days and they find out on their invoice. Depending on the customer I may put a note on it alerting them to the increase and ask them to contact me if they have an issue with it. I used to send out a “happy spring” letter every season with a new agreement and a note that they may see small increases in their rates. I don’t bother with agreements at all anymore since most of my customers have been with me for many years and know the routine of how I do things. It’s to the point it’s just assumed that I’m still their lawn guy unless they tell me otherwise and I bill them as I see fit.

GRANTSKI: As far as raising prices, last season I just put the new prices on the first bill. No complaints. But I only increased a handful that were underpriced and they probably expected it. I had an idea to raise rates across the board but add an extra service: maybe a complimentary spring fertilizer service or something else that’s low cost and that all customers will appreciate.

Quick Clips

According to the Small Business Administration, there are three primary cost factors that every small business needs to determine when charging for its goods or services: labor costs, material costs and overhead costs. But, you can’t ignore what your competition is charging, either, says Judy Guido, an industry consultant based in Moorpark, California. “If you can articulate what your value is worth, you can command higher fees,” Guido says. “You need to prove to your customers why you are worth that extra 20 percent. When my clients are doing a good job, they stick out like a sore thumb separating themselves from their competition.”

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