#I tried to find it but I don’t have Twitter and I can’t remember exactly what it said

[javsobsessions]

I know I’m holding on way too tightly to That tweet, but given that the intro quote in episode 1 AND the fact that Emily is the one saying it, I really hope think there’s going to be something focusing on Emily/her past this season.

[lemonlover1110]

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬

Satoru Gojo

[Chapter 15] Ren The Cat

← Previous Chapter - Story Masterlist - Next Chapter →

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x f!Reader

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

“Satoru, can we talk?” Shoko exits the bathroom, and she luckily bumps into Satoru. Satoru shakes his head, his eyes falling on you as you run out of the place. He’s about to run after you, but Shoko stops him. Her hand goes to his forearm.

“What the fuck are you doing? Why the hell is she running off?” Satoru sounds irritated, and Shoko knows that if she lets go, he’ll stop you. He’s about to push her away, and she knows that he’s much stronger.

“Let her go. It’s an emergency.” She says, and he furrows his brows. An emergency? Like what?

“Someone better be in the hospital.” Satoru responds, and this wave of guilt hits Shoko. For too many of her actions, the biggest of all is her hiding his son from him. She shouldn’t care, it’s none of her business.

“Satoru…” Her heartbeat races, and she’s about to stop herself from talking. She shouldn’t, it’s not her place. But you’re not speaking up ever, and Satoru deserves to know about the existence of his son. “She’s going to see Ren at the hospital.”

“The cat? Why the fuck–” Satoru begins but he’s cut off. The next words that leave her mouth, leave him dumbfounded.

“Ren isn’t a cat. Ren is her son.” Shoko blurts out. Satoru feels his blood boil at the mere thought of you being with someone else. He’s confused though, why would you hide the fact that you have a kid? Shoko tries to read his emotions, but she can’t. It’s hard.

“Who’s the father?” Satoru asks, wondering if it’s someone he knows. It doesn’t click in his head quite that second. Shoko gives him a moment to think about it, but it doesn’t occur in his head. Shoko has to tell him,

“I don’t think you get it… Why would she not tell you that she has a son?” Shoko feels like she’s dumbing it down. Satoru isn’t an idiot, but a million thoughts run through his head. He shrugs. “Ren is her son. Your son. She’s leaving because you have a son together, and he’s in the hospital.”

“You’re lying. She would tell me. She wouldn’t keep that from me.” Satoru answers, and Shoko lets go of him. He goes chasing after you, but you’re gone. He’ll just stop by every hospital nearby, until he finds you. He’ll remember the name– Either Ren has your last name, or his. He’ll ask about either name.

“Satoru…” You stand up from your chair, and you watch as tears well up in his eyes as he takes in the scene. Shoko wasn’t lying– Ren doesn’t have his last name, but one swift look at the kid and he realizes that is his son. That’s his spitting image.

You stare at each other, frozen in time. Your heart feels as if it’s in your throat, and your mind chases a thousand miles per hour as you think of what you’ll say next. What can you say? You weren’t exactly preparing yourself for this moment, you thought this would never happen. How fucking stupid.

While Satoru feels betrayed. Utterly hurt. He’s always thought the best of you; you were damn near the perfect woman. Yet you’ve betrayed him in the worst possible way. You hid his own flesh and blood from him… For what?

But Satoru isn’t going to argue, not when a little boy that he just met is in pain, and the kid is calling him daddy. Satoru rushes to Ren’s side, pressing a kiss on his forehead. Satoru isn’t quite sure what to say, what do you say to your son? A kid that’s probably almost five, a kid you just met? 

“He has appendicitis, he has surgery in the morning.” You inform him. Should you tell him to go back to his event? And deprive Satoru and Ren from this sweet moment? You have no option but to sit back down and watch the scene unfold.

“I’ll be by your side, buddy. Everything’s gonna be okay.” Satoru’s finger pushes Ren’s hair out of his face. Satoru takes in the little details of his son’s face. Ren has your nose, but apart from that, he looks just like Satoru. Tears stream down Satoru’s face, and his voice breaks, in disbelief that this is happening, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier, Ren. Your daddy is here now.”

You feel nauseous, tears streaming down your face as you watch them. Guilt for the last couple months that you’ve kept him hidden when Satoru was right in front of you. But you didn’t. You could’ve defied Mrs. Gojo’s orders, but you selfishly didn’t. You watch as Satoru kisses his son’s forehead again.

If he could, Satoru would hug Ren so tight that he’d nearly leave the boy breathless. But he can’t. He’ll do it next week though, when Ren is better. 

The sweet moment is interrupted by his ringing phone, and Satoru takes it out. His mother calls, and he’s about to pick up since he has this news; she’s a grandmother. For a moment he stares at the phone, and he realizes something. You’ve mentioned Ren the cat before and his mother knew. His mother fucking knew. That’s why you’re working with her, because his mother knows that she has a grandson.

He declines the call, instead he focuses on his son. Grabbing his tiny hand, and taking note of every crevice. He always swore that when he had a baby, he’d look at every finger and toe individually, and he’d count them over and over again. He can’t believe he missed that.

There’s a smile on Ren’s face as he looks at his father, finally meeting the man that he’s been waiting for. 

“Granny!” Ren shouts when his grandmother comes to sight. Your mother, who happily walks in with food but drops the bag when she sees him. Satoru looks back at your mother, and it’s like she’s just seen a ghost. Satoru walks over to her, and wraps his arms around your mother.

She isn’t sure what to do as Satoru hugs her. This isn’t the same little kid that would come running to her after an injury, the man that hugs her is the father of her grandson. A man that’s left many unattended wounds in her daughter. Satoru pulls away, and goes back to his son.

Your mother looks at you, watching as you silently cry. It seems as if more tears stream down your face when Satoru asks, “So how old are you, buddy? Sorry for not knowing.”

Ren puts up four fingers, excitedly replying, “Four!”

“Nice to see he isn’t in pain anymore.” Your mother comments. Your hand holds onto Ren’s, and you rest your head on the empty space of the mattress again, listening to your son and his father talk.

Ren is taken in the morning, and Satoru assures him that he’ll be there right after surgery. Neither of you slept a wink last night, and you hope that while you wait you can sleep for an hour or so. You doubt you will though since you have a lot to talk about. So much to talk about. 

When you’re left alone, you sit in silence for a minute. Both of you gather your thoughts. Until Satoru finally clears his throat, “So you faced me everyday like that? Like you weren’t hiding anything. You were planning on keeping quiet about my son.”

“I tried to tell you when I was pregnant.” You answer, and you take a deep breath. That’s not good enough. Not now, not when you’ve been seeing each other daily. “And then… Mrs. Gojo didn’t want me to tell you.”

“And why the hell did you listen to her?” Satoru slowly begins to see red. His own mother did this to him. He has no trouble believing you, it does seem like something his mother would do. “You had no problem looking me in the eye while hiding him.”

“She gave me an opportunity that would make my life easier, I would obviously listen to her.” You respond. “You started over with someone else, I feel like I’d ruin everything if I’d come out of nowhere with a child.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. You don’t care about that, do you? You’re just scared I’ll take Ren from you.” He says, and maybe Satoru remembers how you are. 

“I struggled with him for so long, the last thing I need is for you to take him from me. You have no right to take him from me. I don’t care if you can financially support him better than me, he’s my son.” You get defensive, and Satoru’s hand goes over your own to reassure you. He squeezes it, feeling tears well up in his eyes again. He hates that this is how you think of him. It’s not unwarranted.

“And I won’t take him from you, but at the very least I deserved to know. I deserved to know I have a son.” He’s clearly upset, and his emotions reflect in his voice with every word that leaves his lips. “Do you know how hurt I am? You hid my own flesh and blood from me, you know better than anyone how badly I wanted to be a father.”

“I wanted to tell you, Satoru. I tried to tell you. But then I realized you had other priorities, and I understood that I didn’t need you by our side. And I’m sorry that it happened like this, but you’re partially at fault for the outcome.” You answer, standing up from your seat. You need a breath of fresh air and a shower. You begin to walk towards the door, and it opens before your hand goes to the doorknob. You’d be terrified of her at any other time, but not now. You take a deep breath,

“Mrs. Gojo… Your son is here to speak with you.”

[moonfeatherblue]

Here's the notes from our lovely brainstorming stream so all the wonderful MacGuffins don't need to trawl through the VOD to write their incredible gas-phase-state-telekinesis-related stories ~

I haven't tried to tidy them up, so they're a mess, but they're exactly what we finished with. So very much looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! Remember, use #MacGuffinsUwrite to share your work here on Tumblr or over on Twitter to make sure I can find it to read out on March 16 (or another nearby date if for whatever reason the 16th doesn't work out) ~

Brainstorming

“Gas Phase State Telekinesis”

Random Thoughts

Oh no, so many hyped-up electrons

If you think cats are hard to herd, wait till you try sub-atomic particles

Air-bending/Wind Elemental Magic – except applies to all gases, not just air

Same level of control as air-bending/wind elemental magic, or does gas phase state telekinesis have to be more concise, more subtle, etc?

Could the soul be considered a gas (if that’s true, there are many, MANY potential evil applications)

The word ‘chemistry’ is derived from the word ‘alchemy’, borrowed from Arabic, ‘al’ being Arabic ‘the’ – symbolism??

Silly/Cute/Annoying Uses – Various Shenanigans

Moving the gas particles of unpleasant body odours to other individuals to pass the blame…

Mess with barometers (very annoying to meteorologists)

Mess with various other instruments of measurement

Show off making miniature tornados

Turn neon signs on and off

Push someone’s sneeze back up their nose…

Have fun with helium (surreptitiously get in people’s systems and bask in the rising voice)

Creating gas light shows

Choreograph kite displays

Keep knocking the wind out of someone’s kite…

Make a laser pointer?

Make own bubble of ideal air pressure/weather/etc

How Could This Work

Mind can generate wells of low/high pressure to push/push gases, gathering and moving, like weather patterns – less controlling the gas and more creating force to move the gas?

Does the mind affect individual gas molecules? Very difficult because so spaced out and they’re moving so fast

Can you pick out and differentiate between different gases in the same area and affect only one type?

Can you control what the gas is by controlling/changing its elements/atoms in its molecules e.g. creating water by combining hydrogen and oxygen

Mix and match atoms to create the gases you want?

Innate understanding/sensing of air pressure?

Could plasma be considered a gas?

Difficulties/Limitations

Seeing/senses/finding gases to control (besides oxygen/all the gases that make up our atmosphere) – how to wrap your mind around them

Is there a way to learn how to sense different gases – e.g., smell; colors

How much can they move/what’s their gas load limit/how specifically can they grab, e.g. individual molecules

Are some telekinetic people naturally more gifted? Can they train to improve their limits?

A gift that requires A LOT of discipline to be able to do anything – lots of gas telekinetic people who are never discovered/can’t ever do anything because they don’t have the discipline

Can you control the speed of the gas – those who are very good could probably move as fast/slow as they like, but those less skilled are more cumbersome

Can only people with gaseous telekinesis use products made with/requiring gas telekinesis, or is there some way to imbue the telekinetic power in the items/make the gases stay in place?

HOW TO IMBUE WITH THESE POWERS/MAKE IT SO THEY DON’T DISPERSE OR DISAPPEAR

Everyday Applications

Official flag blower – so flags always flapping majestically

Filling sailboat sails, etc

Lifting flying machines before mechanical planes existed; flight would have been around a lot sooner;

Official gas checker

Applications with windmills, turbines, etc – electricity production

Gas works – can transport gas without containers; can easily load containers

Manual control of gas stoves

Using gases as a mode of measurement

Firefighting – can remove noxious fumes; can suck oxygen from a space so there’s no oxygen to burn (must be sure the space is empty)

Medicine – doctors, nurses, pharmacists; improved resuscitation

Sensing high oncotic pressure, finding lung punctures, etc

Applications in alleviating the symptoms of asthma

Operation of various medical scanners that use e.g. helium

Can this be used to circumvent certain diseases; is there a way to safely grab the air around viruses, etc, in the body and pull them out without depriving the body of oxygen?

Chiropracting – popping joint gas

Gardening applications – help regulate plants; create perfect atmosphere for plants in greenhouse

Applications in perfumery – the gaseous state of perfume is what gives it its aroma; also other fields of smell

Applications in natural gas mining

Radon – control radon to treat cancer, etc

Make your own water when thirsty

Everyday alchemy – could we make gold from anything by messing with elements while gaseous and then letting them reach solid state?

Blind uses of gaseous telekinesis could use their abilities to sense the world around them

Gas merchant – can sell concoctions; perfumes and poisons and new elements…

Lamp selling

Using self-made helium to make things float – childcare applications?? Keeping kids entertained; venturing into the realms of normal telekinesis

Demolitions expert – safe controlled explosions

Applications with sound – diminishing sound, making it louder, etc; if we’re messing with gases, it could affect sound; knock people out with sound? Break glass with sound – amplify a normal volume enough to break things?

Play an ENTIRE WIND ORCHESTRA

Projectile guidance – messing with air resistance, etc, ensuring projectiles hit their targets

Making gases denser or lighter

Criminal Applications

Waft gases into spaces to knock people out and clear the way for crime

Explosions extraordinaire – blow up anything you need at any time; need to carry what you need; be able to store in whatever size containers you need

Suck the air out of lungs

Moving other gases in the body to cause problems

Create air bubbles in blood

Give someone the bends

Get-away driver with hot-air balloon (probably too silly…)

Pop eardrums

Subtle poisonings

Radon – control to cause radiation poisoning

Nuclear bombs (please no more detail)

Make a vacuum and explode a person due to differences in pressure

HOLD AN ENTIRE PLANET HOSTAGE by threatening to deprive of oxygen

Make a person breathe pure nitrogen so they don’t notice they’re asphyxiating and they’ll simply pass away after a few minutes

Arson

BIG Applications

Affect the ozone layer (for good or evil)

Affect the weather – cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons; tornados

Reduce effects of wind-based natural disasters?? Could that kill you??

Reduce some effects of wildfires

Carry own oxygen supply into space, keep it around you, wrap with ozone to survive the void of space; possibly extend to others; huge applications for distant space travel; require many different things working in synchrony, creating atmosphere with enough pressure (so we don’t explode…), correct mixture of gases to allow natural breathing; need to continually produce ozone; lots of training involved, one of the most highly-skilled jobs in existence; lots of young gas telekinetic people dreaming of doing such a cool job

Grab the air around airborne viruses/bacteria to move away/towards populated areas (for good and evil); use in war scenarios, pandemic scenarios

Help end world hunger by creating perfect atmosphere for growing crops

Can capture radiation and store somewhere safe/send it out into space

Help solve water shortages

CREATE MORE OF GASES NEEDED IN THE WORLD AND/OR CREATE NEW GASEOUS ELEMENTS

Pollution control – boost gas containment; bubble and send into space; is there a way to change the bad gas into good gas?

Rescuing planes, etc, that are falling

Terraforming inhospitable planets to make the air breathable

High-Fantasy Quest-y Uses

Transportation – controlling a hot-air balloon

Equivalent of air-bending/wind elemental magic

Uses various gases as weapons – physical or chemical

Carry bottles of gaseous poisons and attack using the fumes

Control dragon breath – make a dragon swallow its own breath

Combine gases with other magical properties e.g. pixie dust

Are there certain smells that can dispel evil spirits, dangerous magical creatures?

ALCHEMY

Projectile guidance – messing with air resistance, etc, ensuring projectiles hit their targets – our archer would never miss

 

New Industries??

Making hoverboards, etc

Personal heaters/coolers

Controlling giant mechanical steampunk-style suit??

Floating platforms – revolutionise city designs

Superhero/Supervillain Uses

Create uplifts of oxygen to slow/prevent people from falling

Flight?

Affecting air pressure (what are the uses for affecting air pressure)

Clearing noxious fumes

Light generation

Use of gases to distract enemies

Use of gases for battle support/medic uses

Uses gases to help circumvent obstacles e.g. moving helium under an object so it floats

Uses gases to make things float (let’s make our own helium)

Exploding people

Making explosions

Projectile guidance – messing with air resistance, etc, ensuring projectiles hit their targets – perfect aim

[cherrypeaking]

good morning~ how’s my beautiful woman doing? 🥺🩵 i hope you slept well~

i took a preemptive pain killer to drive my cramps away but somehow my body didn’t get the memo so my cramps started coming at full force 😭😭 it was so bad that i tried to get up and run away from the pain but you can’t run from the pain if it’s in your body 😭😭😭😭 so now i’m laying in bed trying to recover djshhss

i’m looking back at our conversation from earlier and it’s so wonderful that we’re so comfortable around each other 🥺🥺🩵🩵 it had me yearning to be by your side already 🥺🩵

aaah i can’t stop thinking about you baby i want to hold your hand and kiss your knuckles >//< i wanna do a bunch of romantic stuff with you 🥺🩵🩵 it’s so funny that we both related to anti romantic so much at one point and now look at us 😭😭 we went from anti romantic to hydrangea love hehe 🤭🩵🩵🩵 it’s funny but it’s also so beautiful and it makes me so glad that we took our time with each other 🥺 i would’ve waited however long for you~ i knew i only wanted you before you even asked what we were djshhs 😳😳👉🏾👈🏾🩵 you’re a lot braver than you let on honestly!! i know you get shy and nervous a lot but you’re so brave to me baby 🥺🥺 so brave and strong and powerful~ i admire you so much 🥺 my baby’s simply the coolest~ 🥺🩵🩵

(taehyun as THEE baby star 🥺🥺⭐️⭐️ i couldn’t choose one pic of tyun or one jirachi pic so here’s a rare 4 pic collage :3)

in other news, i think twitter is back up now so i can go back to tagging you in cute stuff :3 but that app is on its last strike with me idk how much longer i can take the muskrat screwing it over and changing things that never needed to be changed :/ but ultimately it’s okay if i leave twitter bc i have you and a perfectly loving community here on tumblr dot corn 🥺🥺🩵🩵 and as much as this site has its own problems the love and community i’ve found here is worth more than anything any dim witted ceo could mess up 🥹🥹🫶🏾🫶🏾🩵🩵

i love you so much my love~ as always, i hope you have a great day!! i’m here rooting for you my love, my little fairy princess 🥺🩵

P.S look at our themes side by side we’re literally so cute 😭😭😭🩵🩵🩵

my love 🥺🥺🩷 getting to read your ask really made me feel better… and talking to you ultimately… like i told you i woke up from a nightmare but i feel way better thanks to you 🥺🥺🩷 i just had my caramel coffee~ it’s funny that even though you don’t really like coffee, my caramel coffee always makes me think of you 🤭🩷

hmhm :(( i feel like it happens to me too like some period cramps are so painful all you can do is sleep it off?? i’m so sorry like why do we have to go through this :(( im so glad you’re feeling better… mommy deserves kisses and tummy rubs 🥺🥺

i loved our conversation as well >\\\< it was so cute and just like you i love that we get to communicate and feel comfortable to share everything 🥺🥺🩷

mommy 🥺🥺 i would love that so much… i do get lots of romantic thoughts about you my sweetie pie 🥺🥺🩷 please i do find it so funny cause antiromantic was basically my jam i was thinking no bye i’m not going for relationships anymore 😑 and then i met you 🥺🥺🩷 it’s so cute that you think that i’m brave >\\\< i was actually very excited and nervous and anxious and trying to know exactly when i’d be ready 🥺🥺 i want to live what we have to the fullest and that’s when i decided to ask you out 👉👈🩷 to me you’re really the coolest and strongest, my girlfriend is the best 🥺🥺🩷 i remember you were saying the same, no more relationships or maybe just one but then i’m done and i was thinking omg so true queen and then- FHSBFBDB 👉👈🩷🥺 i love you my crystal gem 🥺🩷🩵💎

MOMMYYYYY MY TWO BIGGEST COMFORTS (outside of you~) 🥺🥺🥺 they look so so cute my love 🥺😭🩷🩷 thank you so much 🥺🩷

tbh same :( i feel like i’m gonna be there for much longer unless that rate limit thing is indeed temporary… what sucks is especially for txt content and translations it was really good to have access to twt… i’m happy twitter hasn’t really been on my mind ever since i came here and met you my love 🥺🩷 our cute little community is very much loving and caring and i love being here, way more than there~ so if i had to leave i know i would stay here despite the lags hehe :3 🩷🩷

i love you so much as well mommy 🥺🥺🩷 you’re my queen~ my garden fairy 🥺🥺🩷 im always rooting for you too my love, thank you so much 🥺🥺🩷

PLEASE OMG LOOKING AT THEM SIDE BY SIDE THEY ARE SO CUTE OUR BLOGS ARE SO CUTE 🥹🥹🩷 this tyunning concept is really top tier and we sport it so well as tyuntwinz 🤭🩷

[alolanroy]

2023 media thread

Blood(originally from twitter)

2023 media thread! Copied over from twitter since it’s getting worse by the day. Scores 0-10 aren’t on the American grading curve, but more like ‘irredeemable bad’ to ‘changed my life’. Most things will be a 6-7 if I liked it. Negative = ironic.

Knives out (6/10) and Glass Onion (8.5/10). I prefer glass onion not only because it was a nice tight watch but also how oddly topical it was. Tate was arrested the day I watched this and Musk is on fire. Hopefully a prelude to more real mystery movies.

Wakfu: I’m grasping at straws for nice things to say. Not really pleasing to watch in French and some of the worst dubbing since gundam Age in the first seasons. The story feels like a pantomime and I question the standards of who recommended it. 1/10

The Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa: this shirt is a cognitohazard to anyone who has used any kind of software. Each frame has so much wrong with it the human mind buckles into maniacal laughter. The grandma is the same VA as savathun. -9/10

Elf bowling: honestly kinda disappointing. Might be funny with some good company. I feel like the character Tom Kenny voices says something offensive but my memory just dumped everything about it. -2/10

Sound and Fury (2019): One of the greatest audio-visual experiences I’ve seen in a while. Not all sections were created equal though. Fucking watch it. I will say no more. 9/10

Lego Star Wars holiday special/summer vacation: Not good in the traditional sense but interesting because they give some of the characterization missing from the sequel trilogy with a dose of kid friendly robot chicken energy. Interesting to me at least. 6/10

Bleach Arancar Arc: Do I regret watching the anime? Yes. I could examine how stretched out this this was even with the filler removed all day. It is DIRE. Any sense of tension was destroyed and if I wasn’t sick I would’ve dipped. 4/10

Kamen Rider Black Sun: on a technical level I appreciate the movie. Good music, sound design, suits and it looked impressive for the budget it must have had. However, this might be the first toku I find actually offensive. No joke, it tries to recall George Floyds murder. Wtf.

Gundam witch from mercury S1: this is exactly what I needed and I’m waiting with baited breath. Nice to see the writing shine where ibo was dull. I’d buy the kits if I could 9/10

Knife or death: a perfect watch over some home cooked hotpot. The combination of gruff and warm hosts gives the show a ‘guys being dudes’ energy in a wholesome way. My only gripe is that as it goes on, it gets less diverse and loses some personality. More weirdos please. 7/10

Star Trek Prodigy: not particularly interesting on an episode by episode basis, but most treks have rough first seasons. Despite being a children’s show it’s more watchable than Picard or Disco, which is a low bar for me. It has trek spirit but it’s not made for me. 5/10

Astro Boy 2009:threw it on while I was cooking. Just as bad as I remember. I have some story boards for this for some reason. I don't know why. Speaking of not knowing why it feels like a 30-minute shows worth of content when it's over. It's strange. 3/10

Six String Samurai: I'd be more into this if the vibes were new to me. Unfortunately, I'm seeing this in 2023, so it reads like a Fallout New Vegas mod. In stark contrast to Astro Boy, this feels like it stretched on for hours and the kid ruined a lot of the cool moments. 3/10

Avatar 2: Not bad. Nothing groundbreaking, but great looking and drew me in for a sequel that was like 15 years late. I can't believe I was actually compelled by some of the characters. Avatar 2 was supposed to be a joke... 7/10

Shin Ultraman: this movie unashamedly embraces the fun Showa era energy like nothing I’ve seen. It’s funny, cool and is clearly a labor of love. It’s episode format makes me yearn for a tv continuation if it can maintain the constricted, but slick production and writing. 9/10

The men who made Ultraman: I get the sense a lot of the stuff in here should be taken with a grain of salt since it’s a dramatization, but man the peak behind the curtains on how creative and dangerous the special effects were then. Even the little things we take for granted 6/10

Vampire Survivors: I think by hitting 40 minutes I can kinda say I’ve ‘beat’ it in a sense even though there’s tons more content, but I need to add it to the list at some point. Good game with deceptively smart design to be a mobile game w/o the predatory garbage. 8/10

Rush Hour 3: Fun enough but I can feel the 2000s reliance on cringe humor and the stink of post 9-11 bigotry begin to set in. I had a few good laughs. 6/10

Loaded weapon 1: An absolute blast with the kind of cast you don’t see anymore. Again, Shatner is underutilized as a comedy actor. My final take: Sight gags are a lost art. 7/10

Spelunker my 2: I don’t really get the appeal of this game. Even with sprint switched off of default, movement felt oversensitive and deaths came only when my character did something I didn’t intend. Maybe I should’ve been on controller but this left a bad taste 3/10

Kill it With Fire: I appreciate smaller concept games like this, but as a recovering arachnophobe, this didn’t invoke as much of a response for me. My SO had a blast though. 5/10

A Few Good Men: Man. 8/10

Magic Lizard: ‘this feels like one of those adhd TikTok’s with an infinite runner game and family guy in the corners’ - @SuperheckDX this thing oscillates between middling slapstick to animal abuse. Genuinely disgusting for a moment (if you know you know) -3/10

SpongeBob in Tehran: enough of the jokes translate but the visual absurdity wears off pretty quick. -6/10

Webtoons I won’t dignify by naming: Trying out random Manhwa that caught my interest was a fun policy for a bit but I’ve been seriously burned. I could tear apart why even the best in the field have issues with long term storytelling due to issues with distribution. Im done 0/10

Puss in Boots the Last Wish: Being overhyped did this movie a disservice. The animation was fantastic, but there’s not much else here. I didn’t find it particularly exciting or funny and the musical number didn’t hit. I really it lacked that ohmf. Definitional 5/10 on my scale

Tangential, but Puss’s arc mirrors Kirk in Wrath of Khan. Do what you will with that.

Dwarf Fortress: disclaimer I didn’t play too much of this game but I appreciate its system rich nonsense. I’ll probably revisit it later since the unintuitive UI isn’t helped by most forum discussions not being for the steam version. IE idk how to make a horizontal door. 7/10

Entropy: Zero: Short sweet and to the point. It uses all of its creative ideas and remixes existing assets like nobody's business. A few stumbles like a turret stealth section that soft-locked me, but I appreciate a game that doesn't waste my time 7/10

Entropy Zero 2: I cant remember the last time I was this consistently exhilarated playing a shooter, maybe Titanfall 2. It delivers good writing, action, varied gameplay, gags and emotional beats. It caches the checks valve wrote a decade+ ago at their standard. A must play 9/10

Donbrothers The Movie: New First Love Hero. An absolute farce with almost no toku action. Needless to say it’s fantastic. 8/10. Will likely give any MMPR fan an aneurysm. The foreshadowing is clever…

Bionicle Mask of Light: I wouldn’t say it’s good since I’m an adult and have more tempered nostalgia, but I derived a lot of enjoyment watching it through the lens of knowing the lore and it added a level of dramatic irony. 5/10

Farscape S1: In its best episodes it delivers on a wacky premise and great puppets, at its worst it has pretty template episodes. The crews dynamic seems to be still finding the right balance of adversarial and friendly, and sometimes it just makes everyone seem like an ass. 6/10

Shadow of the Vampire: I might need to marinade my opinion on this somewhat. First impressions are good but part of me wishes it shied away from the come comical elements since the darker tone is interesting. Just made we want to see Nosferatu 8/10

Movie night speedrun Backstroke of the West: Surprisingly good joke dub -5/10 Marmaduke 2022: bizarre -1/10 Agent Revelation: what did they have on Dorn. 2/10

Movie Night Roundup: Alone in the Dark: false advertising, It was bright and I don't think anyone was alone. Made to be riffed on. -6/10 Fist of the North Star 1995: A total snoozefest that failed to hold our attention. The only fun was realizing Dante Basco was in it. 2/10

Pinocchio a True Stroy: We nearly watched a second dub with more generic voice action. Sadly this is basically unwatchable. 0/10 Waynes World 2: A weaker comedy than the original, mostly because it uses a recycled B plot. Nevertheless, a good palette cleanser. 6/10

Farscape Season: I appreciate the more serialized storytelling and multipart episodes. I appreciate that they are kinda figuring out the characters, specifically John going into his Joker arc. However, there were a few stinkers. 7/10

Record of Ragnarok S1/2: This isn't a particularly good adaptation, but the first fight should get an award for the most baffling adapted shounen fight. It truly put its worst foot forward. Otherwise pretty mid and doesn't make me feel particularly excited about the manga.

Vengeful Guardian MoonRider: On the plus side, it looks great and has a clear love of 90s anime and tokusatsu (Hakaider particularly). However, it just felt frustrating because of issues like an awkward walljump and a lot of cheap damage caused by the small screen. 3/10

Super Mario Bros(1993): people lied, this movie kicks ass. The bizarre mushroom kingdom is wildly entertaining, funny, internally consistent and inventive with how it remixes elements from the games. It’s not what the 2023 one will be: safe. 7.5/10

Return of Ultraman: I see what they were cooking. Not a lot to judge here but the way they stretched what they had was impressive. 7.5/10 Eragon: Laughed out asses off when playing Star Wars music. It synced perfectly at some point. But there’s nothing else to work with. -3/10

Aura Battler Dunbine (I): I'm splitting this up into three parts since I have distinct thoughts. The first third is relatively weak and fails to set up the factions (no idea what's up with house Given). However, it makes up for it with appealing classic fantasy aesthetics. 6/10

Dunbine (II): The middle chapter has a sharp improvement across the board. The politics and tactics begin to fall into place as the mech designs improve. The reverse Isekai arc with Garalia (my beloved) is a real standout. Bummer the Billbine sucks. 8/10

Dunbine (III): The final third speaks to me. The undercurrent of resignment and desperation pairs well with a massive shift in the mechanics of combat. While the repetition can get straining, the interjection of real-world interaction makes it work 8.5/10

Dunbine: I enjoyed the heck out of this series and appreciate the interesting ideas and aesthetics of this world. My only complaint is the way it approaches writing women. Its otherwise rad cast of mostly women gets tanked by Elmelie. Took me out of it. 8/10 #dunbinesweep

Farscape season 3: once again this season is an improvement over the last. Less crazy creatures, but more interestingly shot, especially towards the end. It makes the budget-friendly episodes go down more easily. I continue to enjoy John’s arc of just getting weird. 8/10

The thought that someday, someone will feed My Dinner with Andre with thousands of other contextless content into a machine learning algorithm fills me with a deep sadness. 9/10

Knife or Death Season 2: Overall pretty fun, but I felt that with the increased size of the episode order, they ran out of interesting contestants. You can only see so many redknecks in a row, and the finale was a bit of an upset in a b ad way. Season 3 needs some changes. 6.5/10

Donbrothers: This may be the funniest, most satisfying, and unapologetic show I have ever seen. I don't think any sentai can compare to it after, mostly because there hasn't, and can never be anything quite like this again. 10/10

Dunbine Neo Boston Well: phenomenal art and visuals but it kinda falls apart in execution. Eventually, you notice how little is animated and the Ovas have little time to explore its owns story let alone the amazing glimpses of this world. Good character design. 6/10

Destiny 2 lightfall: this expansion was so bad I think it broke the spell destiny had over me. It’s a bizarre swerve in story and aesthetics that is utterly betrayed by the most grating dialogue that was mixed in a way that hurt my ears. 2/10

Season of the seraph: a pretty middling season with some interesting mechanical tidbits, but not a lot to latch on to. It lacked the week to week narrative drive that kept me engaged. Now it feels like the content kinda ends in like 4 weeks. 5/10

Kentucky Fried Movie: slow start but pretty funny. The Enter the Dragon parody was a gas. We need more formless comedy chimeras. 6.5/10

JJBA:DIU 2017: what do you get when you remove the style, humor and pacing from jojo and try to take it completely seriously? Something that should never get it’s trilogy finished -3/10

Garzey’s wing: this thing lives and dies by it’s comically bad dub. Otherwise it’s a pretty write ova with a neat few ideas bot no real ending and would be an unsatisfying watch. However. The dub is hilarious. -6/10

Pledge this!: National Lampoon’s fell OFF! Idk if I can forgive @roflcopterbtw for putting this on the wheel…-3/10

Street Fighter: the legend of Chun Li: Firstly: why are you white. Secondly: if you want to see a better version of this movie, watch snake eyes. 3/10

Kingohger: first impressions: the first episode alternates between obscenely good looking and abysmal in was that is bizarre and completely preventable. They really didn’t have to do primarily cg environments. Writing is halfway to doing something cool but wiffs.

Onegamart: it’s like if a really well themed line ride kept going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going… 8/10 that was cool

Movie night roundup: Barbie the Princess and the Pauper: Concerningly well produced as a musical. Its a campy kids movie with comical CG. What more can I say. -6 Shrek the Musical: We were ENTRANCED by Farquad's costume! I can't say I agree with some of the decisions tho. 6/10

X-files S1 & S2: I find myself more compelled by the episodic mysteries rather than the serialized storyline. Maybe since the alien conspiracy feels a little one-note so far. The real treat is spotting famous actors and the occasional rising star at a higher rate than usual.7/10

X-Files S3 Vibe check: After a few real bangers, Ep12 and 13 were a 1-2 punch I didn't need after a stressful day. The hard dip in writing quality, bad drama, and cheap CW drama feel couldn't cover up what was clearly an anti-drug episode that no one seems to talk about. 2/10

The Man Who Laughs (1928): Essayists have already dissected this film on my behalf, but there’s something interesting here. Oddly enough it’s really obvious The Joker directly homages this more than I think it owes Taxi Driver. 7/10

G-Saviour: under the thick layer of low budget Canadian production and generic execution there’s some surprisingly cool cockpits sets and fight scenes that would’ve made for a good movie. However it isn’t and we never got the iterative sequels it wanted. 5/10

Welcome to Sudden Death: as Die Hard clones go this is a surprisingly fun watch. The reversal of the black comedy relief archetype and some genuinely cool but blue ballingly short martial arts sequences make this an entertaining 6/10 in the best way possible

John Wick: in all honesty this didn’t set my world on fire. I think it’s relevancy has more to do with it signaling that action movies could be cool again rather than the ‘secret world of assassins’ shtick I can’t see myself getting into. 6/10

John Wick 2 Electric Boogaloo: A marked improvement over the first for me, and a lot of that comes down to more creativity, bombast and actually being able to see the fights in this one. The secret society element was less rote than I assumed it would be. 7/10

John Wick 3: I think the missing ingredient might’ve been building up strong opponents. While an improvement, the movies deadly combat means each enemy gets one fight, so they don’t get the opportunity to develop. More bombast was welcome. 7/10

John wick 4: holy fuck in the goddamn. You know the movie is fire when 20 minutes later I say ‘John wick had a nunchuck, how tf did I forget that’. The last three are almost invalidated by how hard this executes on everything they both had and lacked. 9.5/10

AVGN movie: this one’s an oddity, it feels like a throwback to the golden age of early internet reviews despite coming out in like 2014. This is a realization of the channel Awesome movies but with competency and production. The gags and effects made me smile. 6/10

Trigun Stampede S1: Anime of the decade. Never before have seen such expressive 3d cg anime, let alone for tv. while it undercuts some of the charm of the original with its rush to the knives plotline, it makes up for it in its own identity. 9.5/10

The Future is a Dead Mall and Line Goes Up: I knew it was dire but wow. Line Goes Up aged particularly well. 8/10

X-Files S3: A real mixed bag, as mentioned earlier, this contains some of the best and worst episodes of television I can remember. While some parts of the serialized story are improved by getting interesting resolutions, my faith was shaken. 7/10

Pitch Black: Enjoyable as a thriller with a neat grimy version of space travel. it Tickles my fancy 7/10

Chronicles of Riddick: I guess this universe has a Warhammer 40K faction. I think the end result is cool, but I see why people think it was a weird pivot 7/10

Riddick: Just another cool thriller, liked the more survival elements at the beginning. 7/10

The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi (1979): One of the most impenetrable films I've ever tried to watch. I can't help but feel I lack the cultural context for this as a parody, but the visual absurdity and direction sell it. 7/10

Robot Ninja: Perhaps I'm just a sucker for the 'artist spiraling into madness' trope but this movie has an interesting take on it. If anything the Ohio shoe-string budget energy kind of enhances the delusion and unreality of it. Very critical of the comics industry. positive 5/10

The War in Space: I'll admit I talked with my friends through this one, but the model shots and excellent space suits caught our attention. Effective final sacrifice but overall it was uneventful in a 70s toku way. 4/10 (the captain had Leonard Maccoy energy)

What's up tiger Lily: The specter of Woody Allen haunts this film. While historically important as the first notable parody dub, the space jokes (which mostly land) and lousy 60's dancing interludes kill the energy and just make me want to see the original. 4/10

Skyrim SE: Since Skyrim is kind of a Super Game(TM) I'm breaking it up since some parts of it feel totally disjointed.

Skyrim (main quest): I assumed the Blades quest chain would be on the level of the Mages College in terms of importance. I appreciate its attempts to intersect with the civil war plotline but it felt over in a hurry. The final dungeon is a joke. 4/10

Overall, having the focus on melee combat against a pretty bad enemy variety makes the game feel like a slog. It does manage moments of brilliance, but the half-baked questing feels more like frustrating writing. Base game is a mess with potential. 6/10

Skyrim: Saints and Seducers: It kinda sucks how this DLC was plopped in without any consideration. I mean yay free content (I wouldn't have paid for it), but my animosity comes from stumbling into the strongest weapon in the game on my blind playthrough, trivializing combat. 4/10

Tron: Half the fun of this movie is trying to contort the metaphor of the grid onto my understanding of how these systems actually work, like naval admirals watching Battleship. The Wendy Carlos score is really unusual and has wormed its way into my head. A charming 4/10

Passenger 57. Die Hard on a plane. No Notes. 7/10

Batman and Robin: As a 60s Batman enjoyer, I cannot overstate how much of a joy this was to watch. The costumes, the set design, the pitch-perfect acting, the architecture, the cheeseball writing..never have I seen more camp with such ambition and budget. 8/10

Skyrim: Dragonborn: this smaller, denser island shows what Skyrim can do. Stealing from morrowind gave this place a lot more character and it was refreshing. However some bad bugs and dragon controlling being a complete mess…It was an 8/10, but man 6.5/10

Skyrim: Dawngaurd (vampire): not great. Besides careening down the main quests chain without noticing the 8 radiant quests(the vamps aren’t fun to deal with). Mechanically, vampirism sucks. I never found switching forms to be anything but cumbersome and it wasn’t any better…

Vampire and dragon attacks killing NPCs is a cool idea but having that happen when you’re doing the main quest is just confusing. Adding the Vale and the soul gem dimension is neat, but kinda shallow. Each felt like other dlc they condensed.

The saving grace really is Serana, which was further advanced by an incredible mod that has me wanting to restart and take the dawnguard path. Until then…5/10

X Files S4/5: Once again there were a few bangers, but I'm starting to get the creeping feeling that the atmosphere that made the series unique is beginning to get lost. I wouldn't say many of these are terribly tense or mysterious anymore6. 5/10

STEALTH(2005): Look, I'm of two minds about this thing. Yes, it wastes a lot of time. Yes, the DOD clearly inserted a 15-second scene that minimizes the interesting sci-fi of the movie in a ridiculous way that had my friends both booing and laughing at the movie...

BUT HOLY SHIT ACE COMBAT MOVIE REAL!!! The last half really leans into being a bombastic action and sci-fi thriller. I can't think of a movie that had a more left-for-dead character and 'the loyalty switching is nearly at gundam levels' -@SuperheckDX 7/10

Bright Memory Infinite: I'll give it credit for a surprisingly fresh twist on character action, but it's over just as it gets good and I feel like it learned the wrong lessons from the early 8th gen CoD era of shooters. Worst double jump in an fps to date 5/10

X-Files S6: I'm not sure how, but a shark was jumped at some point between seasons. Immediately the average quality went down and the episodes felt much less engaging. It still managed to surprise me (Aliens in the Klan???) 5/10

Lobsteroids: it serves video game fmv vibes. -4/10 No.1 of the secret service: fun action and a Dracula assassin make up for having a plot I couldn't follow, but I'll give them points for a bravely anti-climactic ending. Just a good B movie bond. 6/10

ZOE: 2nd Runner MARS: I'm not gonna sugar coat it, this fucks. The remaster really shows how strong the art direction is by sharpening it up and it looks and plays divine. However, the translation and dub are incomprehensible. It's like what people say about Tomino's writing.8/10

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3: I don't think this movie was great, the jokes didn't quite make me laugh and there were some wasted opportunities, but the emotional core worked. I feel a good sense of closure from this over the MCU in general. 7/10

X-Files S7: Nah: 5/10

Azure Striker Gunvolt 3: I never got around to putting this on the list since I was hoping to finish the 2nd character playthrough, but that never materialized. 

This game has sparks of good. Good voice acting and a few creative level concepts that sell the team’s energy. The gameplay loop of tagging and teleporting is married well with the well tuned directional aim. Its also up to Inti’s bar for visual flare.

However this is all in spite of everything else. The translation makes some bizarre choices that make Joule is immediately grating, mostly due to the choice to never shut up about fetters (you could just call them seals...). The timeskip is truly bizarre since it abandons all the plot threads for a more or less identical setting, just with apologism for the evil conglomeration which Gunvolt is okay with working for now (despite being turned into a dog for some reason.) Worse, Joule is immediately the most mechanically bloated character in a 2d game, having too many features at once in addition to the (also expanded with her abilities) Gunvolt style switching. Less is more, if they had settled for GV with the flashstep or simplified Joule individually it would have been more fun to control. If they were going to give players so much more combat capability, it would’ve been nice to have enemies that could actually fight back...6/10

Kamen Rider Geats × Revice: Movie Battle Royale: Who put battle royale in my previously battle royale-free battle royale Toku show...AND it crosses over with the first battle royale Kamen Rider? I’m gonna be real, Revice nostalgia was coming on stronger than I was prepared for with this movie. I hope we see more Seeker in future material and the Ryuki cameos were heartwarming (except Ouja’s suit had a prominent pot-belly for some reason.) 7/10

Revice Forward: Kamen Rider Live & Evil & Demons: I miss revice... Making Demon Hiromi a Vergil was an interesting choice 6/10

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, This is really the best version of a Illumination Mario movie we could get. It has fantastic sequences with 80′s pop music replacing the perfectly timed and funny soundtrack for what feels like a quota. It didn’t really make me, as an adult laugh or really engage much with its emotional stakes one they entered the mushroom kingdom. (I kinda liked their whole failing plumbing business) They tried to do something with the core cast, but without doing anything really memorable, save for good performances in spite of the material. Chris Pratt isn’t awful. It should be deeply meh, but it has enough colors and the occasional humor to make it work. If anything I would like to see the midpoint between this and the 80′s one 6/10

However, the pattern recognition part of my brain would have lit up like a Christmas tree if you put it in an MRI. I’ll admit that even a cynic like me soyjacked a few times when I saw something from Mario 3.

Telefrag: Listen, I don’t like beating a dead horse...but I see why it’s a dead game. bad feedback and tutorialization make matches with only one bot by default and fast ttk even less interesting than they should be. 2/10

Eagle Flight: It’s amazing how Ubisoft finds ways to ruin their own games with corporate nonsense. On startup within steam VR, I had resolve the bugged out multiplayer launcher installation while having to repeatedly switch from my VR headset and my keyboard. It left a sour taste in my mouth for an admittedly neat and good controlling game. There were a few instances of inconsistent button prompts in menus as well. The promise of flying through the air like an eagle is realized but did it really nead assassin’s creed collectible and map mechanics? 4/10

Sierra Ops: I occasionally see moments where what this was supposed to be shine through, but overall the writing could use an aggressive editing pass to allow it to capture the excitement of a space opera by tightening up the interpersonal stuff. I usually love this stuff when its concise, but the relationship drama comes across as bloated and ends up sinking the whole experience. An hour and a half of half vague meandering disengaged me for the cool declaration of war moments. Even longer until the game properly starts. It did grab me once or twice but mostly I found myself skipping and it still felt long. The gameplay is neat enough to begin with, enough to get me to the halfway mark but only having two possible other small ships in your controllable battle group kinda kills the exciting strategy and large scale warfare the premise promised. The more mechanics it ads the worse it plays unfortunately. Mostly because the mecha can't be ordered and must be actively controlled, destroying the gameplay flow. I also encountered a broken feature for the long range bombardment at the start of the third chapter where it only worked once. The only youtube playthrough that got that far had the same issue but never noticed.

I don’t think this thing is going to complete its 10 chapter plan, but with the >2 chapters I played. 2/10

Fast X: I feel hard judging this harshly since it is supposed to be part one of a duology(trilogy?) but I feel like the rubber is going to hit the road once we see the payoff to the setup. As it is, I can’t say it was mind blowing in comparison to 6-9 since some of the action sequences were deliberate retreads. 6/10

Rocky: A lot of times I find the movies pop culture upholds as classics are divorced from the actual quality of the material. This is one of those cases where I was blown away. I can’t think of another case where a character was so soulfully portrayed in every small minutia of the performance, direction and even set design. While I usually dislike the dirty look to a lot of 70′s film (I’ve watched a lot of movies that should’ve stayed in the 70s) the filth of Rocky’s world sings in every character. In the first 10 minutes I knew I would ride or die with this lovable loser. 10/10

My Friend Pedro: Interesting gunplay ideas that feel made for twitter clips. However I never quite felt the flow. The real enemy is a tedious and artificially extended playtime fattened with too many puzzle platforming segments that add nothing. Ultimately the ‘lol so random XD’ humor got old real quick. It had the energy of a Deadpool cosplay in the 2010s who didn’t know when to quit when he was ahead. 4/10

~~~Random Half-Life/Portal mod roundup~~~

Thinking with Time Machine: Its primary mechanic is interesting but cumbersomely executed. The puzzles are more a pain to pull off than solve and the writing is bad fanfiction tier. I encountered multiple repeatable crashes between levels. 3/10

Requiem of Science: It starts out as an uninspired series of levels and escalates into a baffling gasps of creativity that make no sense and have no real context. Random mashup of Black Mesa and Aperture assets? Kinda weird. Egyptian pyramid with a trap involving 15 consecutive headcrabs? What? It’s really just a series of random source assets combined with maybe your 3rd attempt at a doom wad in high school. The story is...bad. The protagonist is named Genry Freedom and it has spongebob beyond writing. 2/10

Snowdrop Escape. Too many straightforward puzzles and gunplay felt nonthreatening. I never felt challenged and this thing has essentially no story, not that I could hear it half the time. I’ll put this in my ‘bad multiverse media’ pile.  2/10

Rexaura: Good puzzles and fresh mechanics but the writing and story didn’t wow me. Competent. 5/10

Entropy Zero: Uprising: Encountered a gamestopping bug, but the pretty normal content didn’t give me the energy to continue.

Logistique: The puzzles weren’t as hard as they were dull. but I appreciate the effort 3.5/10

Portal Stories VR: can’t really say much other than I was trapped halfway through the floor and it had unity’s kinda bad movement. 2/10

The Lab: Neat gimmicks but only two were worth more than 4 minutes of my time. 4/10

Aperture Hand Lab: My controller didn’t have the haptics to progress, but it was pretty funny while it lasted. 5/10

Entropy Center Demo: Look we all know this is a portal fangame. Puzzles were neat enough with the rewind mechanic. I can’t say it has the wit that makes portal work yet just from the demo, but I hope it adds that X factor it needs. 6.10

Justice League: Putting aside my bias for the cast, which is peppered with some of my personal favorites from TV, This is a solid show. By most measuring sticks this measures up, but people like me who know too much about comics can get waaaay more out of this. It’s confident enough to show a haranguing news anchor wave around a copy of ‘Seduction of the Innocent’ assured both kids and general audiences understand its criticism of moral panics while respecting comic book fans to use their brains to catch the specific callouts to real world history. It has ham and it has heart. from the goofy golden age callbacks to the Christmas special with sharp character writing. I miss the dedication to creating quality entertainment with its material. 7.5/10

Shin Kamen Rider: Full disclosure, my experience with this movie was colored by a pretty rotten day. The first fifteen minutes were gold. There was energy. A snappy camera, brisk exposition and flare to the action. It replicated the tricks that made the original show work but dialing up the visually absurd elements to contrast with a more serious tone. I’ve heard some folks had bad screenings, but I had the pleasure of a few sporadic academic chuckles to add ambiance. Shoutout to the sight gag where the cyclone motorcycle is following Ichigo during a dialogue scene at a polite distance. The whole thing reminded me of Anno’s earlier live action take on Cutie Honey. However after the first act, I got the sense the film was petering out. Perhaps the format of adapting a handful of episodes risks getting tired, but by the start of the third act I was checked out. I don’t check my phone in theaters. I checked my phone, looked up how long the film was and questioned if I wanted to stick it out another hour. Worse this is the first movie to physically hurt my eyes. The penultimate battle is in a pitch dark tunnel with abrupt flashes of bright light that caused me to recoil, even cover my eyes after a few minutes. 3/10. That time he did a flip was cool, but I regret staying.

Rocky II: This should’ve been a cash-in sequel. It repeats the beats of a first film that needs no follow up. Rocky’s arc was done, do we really need another with the same beats? Second verse same as the first but a little bit more production value and pretty dang good. I’m giving it a 9/10 so it must’ve done something right. The melodrama of pregnancies and unemployment and comas didn’t have me, until it did. This movie waited to switch back to southpaw and didn’t let up after that. 9/10 

DragonHeart: It’s a kids movie but it does have that childlike wonder and innocence you don’t see in fantasy movies these days. If I think the dragon looks good or bad depends on my mood at the time 6/10

The Master Demon: I’ve seen low budget but this is something else. We skipped most of it. -3/10

Battleship: It really didn’t have me, and then it did. This movie needed another few weeks in the editing booth because opening you ship action movie with some boner comedy shenanigans doesn’t bode well. Gimme a tight 90 cut and we are in buisness. There is no doubt in my mind why this is a favorite in a lot of navy households, because this is somehow more hype than Top Gun. 6.5/10

Justice League Unlimited S1-2: Fantastic. Perfectly constructed. It operates metatextually as a commentary, even a refutation, of many of Alan Moore’s works and opinions on superheroes. As someone who enjoys the odd comic book, the intertextual game of ping-pong that is The Question (voiced by Jeffery Combs, who better?) is an absolute joy to see. Adaptations like ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’ show a clear love for the character driven aspect of capes and cowls that you don’t see anymore. It more thoughtful and nuanced than it has any right to be, and talks up to any audience with more respect than I’ve seen out of superhero media (outside of maybe Gunn’s movies). Even the most die hard modern comic book fan should loop back to this for a shot in the arm of hope. 9/10

Justice League Unlimied S3: there was a third one I guess 7/10

[it looks like a few of the things I added got lost so quick lightning round]

Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves: Hey! Thats pretty good! It’s a charming and fin fantasy movie, don’t see those as much as we should these days. Best of all it really captured the energy of someones unwieldy campaign. Hope a sequel has a completely different party. 7.5/10

Bumblebee in 4K: Each subsequent viewing I can deconstruct this into its component movies more and more, but ‘steal from the best!’ 7/10

Mikadroid: It was fascinating and had a unique atmosphere. The obvious symbolism of a 80′s Japanese bubble disco built on top of a ruin of fascist superweapon is a treat. Great costume and model work where it counts, but it undercuts itself with poor momentum and a monster that is shown in a few unflattering angles. Spotted a classic Ultraman actor so I’m happy 7/10

LoZ Cartoon E1: annoyingly competent 4/10

Kappa Mikey E1: I see why this wasn’t good enough for 2000′s MTV. In spite of it all it was actually a little funny -5/10

Mars Needs Moms: The implications will tie your brain in knots while the actual story is so bog standard it numbs your mind at the same time. The aliens were clearly somebody’s fetish in production. -4/10

Dune 1984: I’mma be real with you chief. this isn’t great. Sorry Mr.Lynch, they can’t all be winners. Nice Cameo though. I will come to the defense of character inner monologues though, but having them whispered doesn’t work. I wasn’t wowed by the special effects but the weird set dressing had a charm. 5/10

Across the Spiderverse: I might need more time to digest it, but within the first 10 minutes I had to stop and think if there might be other animated movies that look this good. Not even close. I think the beats hit me differently than some others, but yeah, no doubt. It’s great. Anything else would be nitpicks I will withhold till the second part. 9.5/10

Oh wait, Unlimited SpiderMan didn’t have a prominent role: 0/10

Heavy Metal L-Gaim: It pains me to say this, but I couldn’t finish it. Individually, each episode delivers top notch cartooning with expressive and goofy animation that really sell the wacky cast. That is, when we, as an audience, can get it. The plot lacked forward momentum and enough of it felt dull that I dropped it a few times. I skipped to the end and found a backloaded finale with a soggy final note. The vibes are top notch, but it can only take you so far. 6/10

Rocky 3: I though a shark was jumped when Hulk Hogan showed up, but they had me. They fucking had me. 8/10

Wolf Tracer’s Dinosaur Island: this had to have been a tax scheme or something. -4/10

Skull Island: I got nothing. No real emotional response. Nothing. It was there. It was inoffensive. But I gotta point out that at this point, Kong’s survival rate for plucky kid companions is pretty low. 5/10

The Italian Job (2003): A fun enough heist movie, but now I want to watch the original to compare 6.5/10

Transformers Rise of the Beasts: Just because it’s CGI action slop doesn’t mean it can’t have heart. Putting aside my predisposition to like this, it was a decently constructed version of what these movies are. It was coherent, funny and well made. My only gripe is that at the end they do something just kinda weird, but you know what? Who cares! Besides that one moment, the movie had my suspension of disbelieve right where it needed to be to have a grand old time.

As a Transformers fan? There was fanservice. I was a fan, and I was served. ‘Subversion of expectations is kind of a tainted expression, but by reversing a few familiar bleats was a nice variation on a theme. They could’ve easily messed it up, or gone too far, but so much as a few notes of a leitmotif made me a hair shy of spontaneous combustion. The credits stinger? Dumb as hell, but you know what this movie earned it, and My entire friend group was popping off. 7.5/10

Rock 4: This doesn’t quiiiite live up to the premise of ‘Rocky destroys the soviet union’, but it tries. however I felt more like I was watching an ad for the album. Kinda like Netflix shows that are desperate to make the next big TikTok dance after Wednesday performed well. 7/10

Farscape: I gave the last season a fair shake and found it kind of unwatchable. 2/10

Half Life Alyx: Oppressive. Immersive. Possibly the last VR game I’ll ever need to play until they make a sequel. This could only be by the virtue of being the only vr game that actually feels like a real game, but it is far more than that.

MyHouse.pk3: I kinda ruined this for myself a little since I blasted through the non-spooky wad version a few times confused about what the fuss was over. However the creativity and magic to make this work is astounding. The final beat was pretty cool. Short and sweet. 7/10

(Lost a few of my entries due to an edit error, these’ll be shorter than my original thoughts)

Black Mesa: A triumph of game remakes. While Xen is a more total reimagining, the rest of it really makes me appreciate how ahead of its time a lot of the original Half Life was. I often found myself suprised when reviewing the original, sections I thought were added in were in fact there since 1998. Genuinely gorgeous at times. 9/10

Devilman 2004: How do you make Devilman Boring? If you have seen any 2000′s Japanese b-movie, you have seen this one. Its got all the halmarks, minimal action, camcorder grade early digial picture quality and a lot of high school non-drama for some reason. -2/10

Bloodshot: This movie goes hard than it’s redbox-grade appearance would have you believe. It weaves this deception into its intentionally genre generic setup in a way that makes tired sci-fi tropes feel exciting. Its costumes and CG fights feel like they outmatch what marvel pours millions into. 7.5/10

Barbie Princess Charm School: The things I watch for our movie night’s wheel. It’s competent, but not as funny as the last one I watched. -5/10

Rocky V: It’s very 1990, though I feel like the energy is brought down by the cheap contrivance to reset rocky back to the streets TM. I will say that the emotional beats with Micky hit hard, and I appreciate having the fight at the end be out of the ring. Refreshing, but I think this was a good place to end it. 7.5/10

Andromeda S1: An efficiently produced show that takes star trek (in all but name) into an interesting new status quo. I did worry at first that it would fall into the bad habits of white savior storytelling and some cheesy sci-fi concepts (nietzschean? really?). However I can’t contest that I had a good time and there were enough fresh episodes to keep me happy. 7/10

Movie Night Speedround

Alone in the Dark 2: this is clearly a movie they just retitled. 4/10

Jupiter Ascending: Can’t rate since I might get back to this later but it at least looked neat. -4/10

Nick Fury Agent of SHEILD: Good casting but this sure is a TV movie. -4/10

Nutcracker and the Four Realms: This was more fun when it was an actual ballet production for 5 minutes. Generic late 2010s Disney twist and fluctuating production value. Morgan Freeman is a clockpunk father cristmas. 6/10 

[moongothic]

Used to keep a dream diary on main, then kinda stopped, if I had a noteworthy dream I’d just ramble about it on Twitter. I don’t think Twitter’s going to explode but I think I do want to collect some of my favorites down into a post so don’t mind me, just gonna copy&paste some nightmares here into a big ol’ post

From December 26, 2021

Oh yeah, I had a nightmare last night... I was playing BOTW but it was like, a horror game (also nothing like BOTW but okay) And it was like stupid fucking scary okay

Like a lot of the horror was tied to like scary monsters that I can't remember anymore so I can't even describe what they looked like/why they were scary But basically the game was put into two halves, a more lighthearted openworld section, and then "train sections" 

Through out the open world, there were traintracks running all across with trains running across the lands, but the trains were like. House-sized. On the inside. And while you could spend most of your time playing just exploring the world and enjoying its beauty... ...to progress the story you had to go catch a train and explore it and like, Do Stuff there. And the train sections were in full-horror game mode, with unkillable horrifying monsters roaming the train/houses and chasing you while you tried to desperately rush around and find... ...things to progress the game. And sometimes you just had to bail out and jump out the train because it was Stupid Fucking Hard to get through the train sections and it was also Fucking Scary (like, I can't even put into words how scary it was)

Oh and just as an extra kicker, although the open world sections were actually really pretty and wholesome, sometimes you'd get really horrifying reminders that you couldn't keep on avoiding the train sections forever and you'd have to get to them if you wanted to beat the game

Like I was exploring this beautiful ruin of a house (taken back by nature) that had no roof or walls left, I was looking a couch with some old bags on it, I circled around the couch when suddenly I could hear a phone ringing and saw something had set on flames on the couch

I rush to figure out what's happening and realize a small handbag had appeared on the couch and is burning, and that the ringing is coming from it. I quickly rummage the bag and find an old cell phone and as it rings, there's a message on the screen that says something... ..like "a call for a beautiful person" (I can't remember what exactly but something like that). I pick up and the previously otherwise gray background of the cellphone turns into this gory, bloody, twisted image of some pope/priest looking old man, and a voice comes through. I can't remember what the voice said exactly, but the raspy voice just came in to remind me/the player that they can't keep on running forever, the trains are waiting So yeah. I wish I remembered more about the nightmare so I could describe it more in detail to just... ...truly get the horror across to y'all, but alas, I can't remember enough to describe it more, but on the flip side, I'm glad I can't remember more than that 'cause it was fucking scary okay

From April 8, 2022

I had a dream last night about... IDK the dream had a whole fucking plot and a half and I can't remember much of it, but it was all taking place on a massive cruise ship, where there was some Monroe/Madonna-esque celebrity who was meant to do like performances etc

Also she was a mermaid? And for some reason there were people after her head. So during dinner some folks came up to her to interview her and chat since she's a guest of honor and all, but there's a few people she didn't really vibe with, and she straight up asked them... ..to be honest and tell her if they were after her head. And they admited to it, they were here to take her life. Now, before things could escalate naturally, the ship started sinking, so naturally chaos fucking ensued.

Sadly I can't quite remember what happened here, either the mermaid performer took the opportunity to hide in the ship from the assassins as it was sinking, OR it was the assassin who decided to flee and wait for an opportunity to get the mermaid

There was also just. A lot of story happening in this part, I can't remember enough to describe any of it, like there was one part that was like an OW game, another part had some alien horror imagery, there was other shit I forgot, it was a lot

But all of this shit was happening as the ship was sinking/had sunken. The ship was kind of holding up as if it were a submarine, but it was very much stuck within the ocean, everyone on board being trapped and having hidden around the ship, waiting for rescue

In the end, a rescue crew did come and they managed to pull the ship to the surface, allowing the people to escape, but doing so made the ship lose whatever structural safety it had, so once they were done the ship started sinking again, this time filling with water

Pretty much the last thing I remember from the dream was from the POV of the mermaid, who continued to hide on the ship until last minute, when she realized she had to flee from the ship now before it sank too deep and she wouldn't be able to get back to the surface

((She's a fucking mermaid it's not like she could've drowned??)) So as the ship started crashing into the waves head first, I could see a massive glass window on the front of the ship shattering into a million pieces, and the mermaid jumping right into it, because... ...the easist way to get to the surface would be by jumping out the ship through that broken window and just swim up while the ship sank down. It was one hell of a visual, jumping into a sea of glass shards and avoiding all of them IDK it was cool and I wish I could remember more

From June 5, 2022

I had a nightmare last night where when I went to take a shower I realized one of the lights in the shower wasn't working (IRL there's only one light in our shower), and it was ominous but I was like "maybe everything's fine ahahaha" But it wasn't. There was a fucking ghost

There was the ghost of a witch there. I couldn't really see her, but I knew she was standing right next to me as I showered, in the corner of the shower, as the light flickered. And I was fucking terrified. For good reason too, because she started attacking me

I was fading in and out of conciousness as this fucking ghost was beating me up (in like, a demonic entity kinda way), and I knew she was like, trying to take over my body. I eventually passed out and when I came back to, it seemed everything was okay and maybe I had dreamt... ...the attack or something, but when I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I could see these symbols/writing right under my eyes-- so the attack was real and I was being slowly taken over Naturally I freaked the fuck out and not knowing what else to do... ...I went on Discord to ask friends for help (because Dream Me figured I knew someone who'd know what to do-- like the person has seen Some Haunted Shit IRL but IDK if witch ghost possession would be something they'd know how to handle djsfhkjsgh)

As I try to get help in a panic I also spot this fucking... massive... I can't remember if it was a spider or a bee or somehow a cursed mix of the two, BUT IT WAS BIG, like, the size of 2-3 PS4s on top of each other, and this thing just showed the fuck up in my room

Needless to say, that was also scaring the shit out of me (although it looked kinda funny, like a weird plushie), so I tried to find a jar I could catch it with but didn't have anything big enough-- a friend from Discord showed up (????) and just kind of dealt with the thing... ...and just as I thought things could get a bit better, I could hear my dad yelling angrily and asking what happened To The SpiderBee Thing. And, upon realizing it was now dead, he was horrified. Appearently the SpiderBee was like a guardian entity and would've protected me... ...from the witch ghost. But now it was gone, and I was like extra fucked. So yeah that was. Probably the worst nightmare I've had in a while, ngl

From February 9, 2022

OH YEAH I HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT ABOUT A NEW KINGDOM HEARTS It was BBS style game with multiple stories, but like post-3. And like. With the entire cast. There was 10+ campaigns for each fucking character. It was a lot.

  Anyway I think I was doing like Terra's campaign and got to the end, only to find out that I had to do multiple playthroughs to unlock his True Ending. In fact, I could see how many more playthroughs I had to do to unlock the ending, it was like 2-3 or something (It was like, in general, I think I could do literally any campaign and it would've counted up to unlocking it, it's not like I had to replay Terra's thing specifically to unlock HIS ending)

But, for some fucking reason, while I could see how many playthroughs Terra needed, I could also see how many playthroughs Ventus and Aqua needed. Ventus was like fine, 5-10 playthroughs or so To unlock Aqua's True Ending you needed to play the game 4 Million times

The absolute fucking despair I felt when seeing the 4 Mil number with the lil KH Crown next to it... Even in the dream I was like "Nomura I love you but what the fuck"

From August 6, 2022

Had a nightmare last night where, like... I was playing/in BOTW, and Honey was there with me. We had to go take shelter and rest at a house during the night, the house conveniently looking like. My home. And both my parents were there, just chillin'

Anyway, during the night I notice a red glow outside, approaching the house, and realize it's a devil with massive horns and who was on fire (not like "ow I'm burning alive help meee" but like, emitting the fire, demon magic) And I was like "oh shit oh god we need to hide"

So I and Honey tried to hide in places where the demon wouldn't be able to see us even as it was peering into the house, and I figured as long as it didn't spot us it'd be fine, besides, enemies should give up on attacking me during the night, right?

Well. My mom didn't seem to notice the demon. And she just went into the kitchen to do something. While the demon just stared at all. And I was like "oh, maybe it's okay because she's like an NPC" No, the demon got angy, and started attacking the house

So, at that point I grabbed Honey and fucking ran. Yes I left my parents behind, because?? They were NPCs????? And thus invunerable?????? Anyway after a bit of running I could hear extremely loud stomping coming from behind me, and like.

Appearently. The fire demon had, with its magic powers, fused the burning house with a two-eyed Hinox. And now the giant, burning house on legs was coming after me But since it was a boss fight, it had like, a set route it would follow

Appearently we were in like a small town built near some cliffs that spiral inwards into a bay. So the monster followed a path right next to the cliff, avoiding the town itself, and made its way into the ocean. While that was happening though I was scared out of my mind for Honey

In the town, as the monster was making its way, I found this kinda abandoned shack with a cupboard, inside of which was a basket. I was so scared of something bad happening to Honey that I put her into the basket inside the cupboard, telling her to wait for me there. She seemed extremely compliant and undestanding for a cat. But, yeah, I needed her to wait there because I was scared of her getting hurt, and I knew I wouldn't be able to protect her while I'd have to go fight the House Hinox (because the boss fight had to be done) 

So, I go back out and follow the two-eyed Hinox to the bay, where the rubbles of the burning house have now fallen off it, and the ocean is cooling it off. Except its cooling it too much, the Hinox starts turning blue as its freezing, and it's now starting to notice me

Naturally I start shooting arrows at it while it's now still slow from the cold and back away as it starts following me back out of the bay, up the way it came into the town. At this point I'm starting to figure out what the boss fight mechanic might be here

Burning two-eyed Hinox goes down the hill, into the ocean to cool off, cold Hinox follows me back up to fight me, rinse and repeat But before there's any time for the repeat, I notice the Hinox wants to go kind of, into the town (where as before it had avoided it)

And more specifically, it's heading right in the direction of the abandoned shack, where I had left Honey, where she's still waiting for me to come pick her up once it's safe And then I woke up So yeah, shit was scary

From June 15, 2022

I had a dream about mom last night... She was just here, helping me, dad and my brother get ready for a funeral (my great aunt's husband's funeral?), she was being kind of bossy like always, and everything was fine

But... then I realized mom's dead. So she shouldn't be here. And that fact had just... entirely left my mind, like I wasn't questioning how my mom was here for most of the dream, and neither were my brother or my dad. So I went up to my brother and pointed out that mom's dead... ...and he too kind of snapped out of it, and got kind of angry. So he went to her and furiously started questioning her like "who are you, why do look like our mom?!", and... she was just... kind of quiet... Like she couldn't say, but we all knew her deal

It was in that moment I kind of realized my mistake in pointing out that mom was dead... My brother stormed off and I looked away from her, and we were all quiet for a bit... Until I looked back to where she had been, and, yeah, she was gone. She had vanished into thin air

I even asked my brother if she just vanished and he confirmed she just faded away, still clearly frustrated. Mom had come to visit us, and she could only stay as long as we weren't aware/didn't point out that she was a ghost, essentially.

Soon a phone started ringing and I went to pick it up; nobody was speaking on the other end but I knew it was mom, so I just started crying and apologizing to her for ruining her visitation like that I woke up crying

From March 24, 2022

Had a nightmare about a  going off where I desperately tried to go hide in our basement with Honey even though I knew were going to die probably and like It was actually distressing

From January 16, 2022

Last night I just... Like I haven't had /many/ weird dreams recently, but last night I speed dreamt like three, extremely distinct, bizarre dreams in rapid succession, it was like wild, like my brain was trying to compensate for the lack of weird dreams or something

First dream I befriended a some teen who was living with his parents on top of the hill across us (it's just forest, nobody lives there). The family lived in a large camper van and I found out that his family was extremely religious, with absurd standards on how to live... ...and the parents were constantly belittleling him and making him miserable because he wasn't living up to the standards. Like, the dad was absolutely terrifying. So I came up with some weird plan to get to know the parents (with my dad) and somehow like, outsmart them?

So they'd stop being abusive and realize how deep into their weird religion they were into? IDK, it was weird, and the dad was terrifying, thanks. Second dream, I can't remember how it began but from what I do remember, I was in our home, which was bizarrely dilapidated

As if it had been abandoned for a couple of years. My parents were sleeping in their bedroom and I was just. I got a power washer?? Or something?? And started destroying the house, the powerwasher cutting through electric wires and breaking shit??

And after having wrecked some havoc I then went into the basement and started preparing a ritual to Leviathan?? A demon?? With the intent of asking him to destroy our home and "burn it down" (but like, with water) (logic would say "flood it" but this was a dream so no logic here)

And through out this I was feeling just extremely destructive (in like, a selfharm-y way), kind of having second thoughts but also being like "YES, DESTROY EVERYTHING, WRECK THIS HOUSE, KILL US ALL" kinda way But then I got stuck because I realized that if I wanted to have... ...this entity do this task for me, I would have to offer up something for them in return, and I was like. What the fuck do I give to Leviathan. What is the pact I'm making.

IDK I think the dream started changing after that 

I think I had some short transitional dream here where I was shopping at an odd mall or something but I can't remember, the final third dream about about like, these aliens that had come to earth like 100-200 years ago, they tried to blend in by pretending to be sailors

Only they ended up sailing to some weird, extremely paranormal group of (oddly tropical) islands kind of south-west from Wales/England? The island used to be lived but their peoples disappeared, the islands had like proper (period accurate) towns but nobody was there, and parts.. ...of them were sinking into the ocean, creating a muddy trap where the aliens' boat got stuck. But it turned out the people on these islands were still there, they had just transformed into like, these things that looked like... Baby gnomes/trolls or some shit.

And appearently when new people would arrive onto the islands, it would stop/reverse their sinking and the aliens were trapped there, so they like. IDK somehow turned the place into a resort or something? To attract more people to come, while they waited for an opportunity... . ..to leave by building a new spaceship or something I can't remember it didn't make sense (like the islands were also supposed to be kind of a secret so too many people wouldn't flock there) (and nobody else was stuck there, just the aliens and the original inhabitants)

IDK, it was just. A bizarre fucking collection of dreams man, it was weird (and I really hated the demon one, it was unpleasant)

From October 23, 2022

I saw so many weird dreams last night... First one I was going to a convention but I had for some reason only put on a white top, and while it was stretchy enough I could easily pul it down to cover the booty area, the white fabric was kinda really see-thru, and I was in public

So I was like, okay, I need to go buy some clothes, and conveniently I was at a mall, so I was gonna go do just that But the dream transitioned and I got lost in the mall which had transformed into... either a hospital or a university, I can't tell which, it kinda felt like both

Regardless, I was lost as shit, jus trying to get back to the mall-section of the mall so I could get those fucking clothes, and as I was trying to find my way the dream transitioned again as I stumbled into another area, this time kind of outside the mall, where there was... ...just a bunch of construction happening. And the construction was being handled by some self-hating GamerGaters (no, really) who started harassing me as I was just trying to find my way out of there??? It was. Not a good time.

I can't remember if it was before or after that string of dreams but I also had a dream where GG's Piemon became like a reoccuring character and was put into the opening IDK I think that was the highlight of my nightmares lmao

From July 13, 2022

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention A few weeks ago I had a dream where I died, and went into the afterlife. It was just... Our home, but, brighter, softer, cleaner, kind of like an ideal version of what we would've liked the house to be (it wasn't JUST the house, it was its own realm)

(Like a mirror realm, and I was at the mirror realm's version of home) And I met mom there. And I was like asking her where I was and she told me that if I was there then I was dead, and I was like "oh gosh darn it I didn't mean to die!"

IDK I died in a silly way in the dream though I can't remember how or why The realm was like, vaguely connected to the living world, where if you kind of focused hard, you could maybe interact/appear to the living (if they were in the same area)

IDK, I can't really remember much. Mom was kind of indifferent and cold, I was just, like, IDK I was dead so I kind of threw in the towel because literally nothing mattered anyway (but in a "but it's okay" kinda way??) It was odd. Slightly comforting though

From July 9, 2022

So first I had a nightmare where I was cleaning my face, picking at some scabs on my cheek, near my left ear, when I noticed there was like. Mold. Growing on my cheek. And I cleaned it away and found really bad scar tissue under it.

But it just kept going. I ended up finding a fucking POCKET IN MY CHEEK (actually you could kinda poke a finger through it (not like into my mouth but outside)), that had been disguised by this mold that, at a glance, had looked like regular skin. 

And this pocket in my face, was also covered in (less human-skin-like-and-more-like-fungi) mold. And I realized my cheek was hurting. And it was all probably covered in bad scar tissue under the mold. So that was unpleasant, NEXT NIGHTMARE:

I think I was biking home when I realized I was being followed/stalked by some car but I managed to get away from it become some people distracted the van. So I got home but later realized that the van had parked on the road next to our house

And as I was trying to use the Internet I realized the people in the van had gotten into our wi-fi and were hacking my computer, messing with my files and sending me violent threats. Naturally, I was fucking scared and had no idea what to do because they were in my computer

Like I was going to beg for help on Discord but realized they'd probably either make sure my message didn't go through, they'd change the message entirely or then spam the Discord with weird messages that could get me banned from there

My last idea was to just. Disconnect the internet. Unplug our routers etc. And I did, and without the wi-fi the hackers couldn't access my computer anymore. And the van then drove off, but I couldn't catch the licence plate on time to report what happened

Two nightmares in one night should not be allowed like this

From October 10, 2021

Okay so. I had a nightmare last night, and. It was really fucking gross, like really really fucking gross, and, as much as I'd like to try to just forget about it, it's just haunting me. I need to get it out of my system But it's really fucking gross. Trying to hide it in a thread

Okay so the nightmare kind of begins with me in a shower. It's a public shower? I think? Because there were a lot of people there?? (But it kinda looked like our shower??) I can't remember if I could recognize the people or not, but there were people there, hanging out, showering

For some. Bizarre ass nasty reason I decide I need to poop, and instead of GOING TO A TOILET LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING I decide to do it over the drain. When there's people around. Jesus christ what the fuck

But that's not like. Even the worst part. No, the worst part is that my rectum, the literal tube of flesh that connects to my butthole, just starts falling out. Literally just leaking out.

It's like a tail, but it's coming out of my asshole, and it's literally an internal organ. And there's like a good 20-30 cm of it (8~12ish inches) Just like... the fucking visual of it is... it's still haunting me, it was so awful

Now I don't remember how this dream transitioned into the next scene, but next thing I know I'm in our living room, wearing my bathrobe, getting to "the new laptop my mom bought" (no such laptop exists in real life) to desperately try to look up what's happening and what to do

Now, this would be fine and dandy, but my dad is home with "his girlfriend" (no such girlfriend exists in real life), they kinda wanna hang out but since I have my rectum falling out of my ass I'm not in the mood for it, I'm just trying to hide it, so I request to be left alone

So they go in the kitchen (the kitchen and the living room doors are at an angle where you can kinda see from one room to another), using my dad's laptop. So on top of the severe physical discomfort, I now also have to deal with the emotional discomfort of there being... ...people around as I try to Google what to do. And I just couldn't type for the life of me. I was so fucking distressed that everything I tried to write into the search bar came out wrong, adding to the entire panic. On top of that, I realized I didn't even remember what... ...the rectum was called in English, so I had to check it on Google Translate, but I couldn't get to Google Translate, even when I'd search for it correctly, the only websites that'd come up in the search results were these shady, virus-infested websites that MENTION Google Translate

On top of that I think my dad and """the girlfriend""" start banging in the kitchen while I'm panicing It was a bad time. Like. That nightmare is gonna haunt me for a while, and I'm gonna be afraid of pooping for a week (YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I COULD SEE THE THING HANGING OUT)

[ruminate88]

Making a list of ways my exes tried to devalue me and my self esteeem.

Ugh let’s start with Jake:

Jake praised me at the start. Said what a good singer and rapper I was. Acted impressed with me. Asked to write a song with me. Accept the whole time we’re on the phone trying to come up with “lyrics”, he seemingly doesn’t like any of my ideas. He was making me feel intimidated like he’s smarter than me. Also, eventually he started making comments like, “I don’t want you to go to Hollywood. You’re too good of a girl and they’ll mess you up.” Basically was trying to act like “my father” and was bossing me around. I told him he doesn’t get to decide what I do, that I can go do whatever I want. Jake was like being pushing saying, “No. You are never going to be famous.” Finally whenever Jake exploited my private photos on his Twitter, he made me feel so humiliated and ashamed. I felt so nasty and he created all these fake accounts to tweet me/attack me. 🥺🥺🥺 Also would show up after every break up I went through, trying to get back into my life and especially after Andrew, Jake was trying to make me feel so bad for being with a younger guy yet Jake was supposedly younger than me too!!! (Not exactly sure how old he lied about his age and birthdate!! I kept googling trying to find the truth.)

Now Cody:

Cody originally said “he’s obsessed with me” but then sometimes when I’m talking to him he would act like “uh… what are you talking??” Making it awkward. Another incident was when a band we both like but he liked them more, retweeted a song cover I did. I thought cody would be so excited but instead he said to me, “I don’t understand why they retweeted that….” 🤨🥺 Jealous much?? If that had happened to him, I would’ve been sooooo hapoy for him. I brushed it off at the time but looking back, he couldn’t stand for me to get the attention he probably craved. Also anytime I shared my music with him, Cody told me my voice sounded “just okay on slow songs but not on fast songs.” 😝 He made me feel bad and worse, I “trusted his opinions”. Why, idk. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve been working on bettering my voice ever sense. He does NOT get to decide if I’m a good enough singer or not. Also when he was trying to dump me suddenly, he was trying to convince me I’m “too old for him.” Even though he originally said he was obsessed with me, so in love, now he’s making me feel bad cuz I’m older than him. 😝🤨🤣

Lastly, Andrew:

Anytime I poured out my undying love to him or questioned his behavior, he acted scared. My feelings literally scared him!! 🥴🥺 Yet he would never break up with me. Weird… After we broke up, that’s when he was super critical. Making me feel like a dirty girl after he initiates flirting me with and coming on to me. Downplaying our relationship, acting like sorry but I was just too stupid and he pretended/tricked me. So he makes me cry and he can’t handle it. He says to me, “If I am hurting you so much, then stop caring about me.” Never heard anything more hurtful in my life!! 😭😭😭 Him downplaying me being depressed. Telling me “You’re too beautiful to be depressed.” As if I have no feelings ever. I’m just a shiny toy. He said to me, “God wouldn’t want you to be depressed.” 🤪 That man never talked about God once the whole time I knew him. Weird. Then when I’m suicidal, after we had been arguing so much, he’s telling me “I need to better myself, I am not well and I need to get professional help… ” Tells me I should look at my life and want “better”. Really!????? Just making me feel so bad about myself. 😑

Those are just the negative comments I can remember. I am sure there is more… I know they were only wanting to hurt me because it makes them feel better about themselves. Did they really mean the things they said??? I’ll never know… All I know is, I’m getting better at my singing/song-writing. I’m not a bad person. I wasn’t perfect, I shouldn’t have showed my nudes to either of them but don’t tell me “you’re obsessed or in love with me” then I won’t think it’s “love” when clearly it was just sex. Can’t trust them. They are judgmental because they want to be superior to me. My love is foreign to them and scares them. 😓 Well, with Jake, I didn’t want a relationship with him so he was angry at me because he couldn’t dominate me or keep tabs on me. My feelings are valid, I am NOT crazy, I am not perfect but I had innocent intentions to find love with Cody or Andrew. I tried not to hurt Jake even though I kept friend zoning him. I’m sorry Jake. I have so much love to give and I’m allowed to make mistakes. Andrew was trying to make me believe I have to be “perfect”. Jeeze 😑 (he probably believes he can’t do wrong)

[papirouge]

I noticed from your previous answer with that screen shot of twitter, that racist ped0’s picture of that blonde girl at the table reading is exactly what they’re looking for. They want the innocent virgin who is sexual who looks like a girl but she has just underwear and a little shirt on - so it’s sexualized. Western men in general are exactly the same insults they angrily project onto their women. They claim that western women are all whores who only care about money and hate men. MEANWHILE those men ARE the hyper sexual whores that obsess over tinder and dating apps for hook ups, only chase money and hate women. I’m from a country that a lot of ugly western men believe is perfect to find a wife because we’re suppose to be all anti feminist but it’s the opposite. Nobody genuinely likes the idea of a western man as they aren’t seen as good people, just hypocrites who allow school shootings (mainly american men are this) so why do they think that everyone else in the world will believe they are good people who value life. (It’s funny so many will say they are pro life too but when normal people say how they never fight back against school shootings or mad shootings at all their only response is “my rights…” So I guess they believe in super super super later term abortions and if that abortion is preformed with a gun and an incel)

I see too that passp0rt bros are mostly western black men because (dark skin) black women are “too masculine” now with jobs and financial security. To them, it’s very feminine to allow the man to financially abuse you,, then have them blame you for being abused because you failed to pick better. I remember one male specially that tried to date my friend. He kept trying to talk to us but all he would say would be how he’s glad he left the usa, how he hated that the women refused to take responsibility.I know I should have just ignored him but I immediately asked “what do you mean” and he goes “well back home, if a girl was wearing slutty clothes and got raped, she doesn’t get told that she needed to dress better because men can’t control themselves” he also brought up how women needed to be told it’s their fault for getting abused. (he said other examples but he was really focused on that topic.) so I told them first that women aren’t mind readers that can see the future of all the men she meets. And second, there’s a lot of muslims that come to this continent, all the women cover up and they still get attacked. And if a man tried that here, before the cops come that man would get hung by the neighborhood. He tried to act surprise and said I needed to calm down because he was joking etc etc. then he made some comment how even here in my small country that feminism had infected us. I told him to leave in my language but of course, he didn’t understand and tried to follow my friend and I more. He got stopped by some other guys and I never saw him again. I hope my country limits single male travelers like that for a while. I don’t mind single women travelers or women’s traveling group since they never cause an issue. It’s always a man that tries to mess with locals and assume we will love him for having a western passport lol

I always it was very interesting to see Westerners lecture Muslim about being oh so much more respectful of women's & children's rights, but then make a 180° and sex barely legals and call "woke" women speaking jo about rape ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

And yeah, we all know incels are love projecting and that they are the sex obsessed "whore". As far as I know, it wasn't women who rushed to buy a young man bath water. Men are outnumbering women in dating app. When they go oversea (passeport bro) they do it for SEX (not marriage or buy a family).

There's a whole rabbit hole about the Black manosphere but I'd say they are extremely dangerous. There's a reason why Black women get feminicide'd at disproportionately higher race than other women. A Black woman recently got hit WITH A BRICK because she rejected his advances. And you what? BLACK MEN DEFENDED HIM. Saying that the woman had to have an attitude, triggered the dude somehow.... And mind you: they are the same men gaslighting Black women dating White men they are "sleeping with the oppressor" when the biggest oppressor of Black women are BLACK MEN. That's how psychopathic Black men are ; saying we are too ugly and masculine and that they don't want us, but when we do where we are actually wanted, they start calling us race traitor. Damn if we do, damned if we don't.

I hope the foreign creep that bothered you and your friend got kicked back to his country and banned him from applying to a visa for life. Scrotes need to understand the world isn't their brothel.

[reviewsthatburn]

KAIKEYI by Vaishnavi Patel is Fantasy/Historical, with queer character(s), marketed as Adult. Kaikeyi transforms herself from a princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most-favored queen. Told in First Person with Single POV.

THE WICKED BARGAIN by Gabe Cole Novoa is Fantasy, with queer character(s), marketed as Young Adult. Mar is the only survivor of a ship lost at sea after el Diabolo collects on their father's deal. Told in Third Person with Single POV.

MOON CALLED by Patricia Briggs, book 1 of Mercedes Thompson is Urban Fantasy/Romance, with queer character(s), marketed as Adult. Mercy finds a strange werewolf and tries to help him, but things go badly. Told in First Person with Single POV.

A REAPER AT THE GATES by Sabaa Tahir, book 3 of An Ember in the Ashes is Fantasy marketed as Young Adult. Laia has her brother back, but is in danger of losing Elias for good. Told in First Person with Ensemble POVs.

ON THE PROWL by Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, and Sunny is Urban Fantasy/Romance marketed as Adult. Various characters meet in this paranormal romance anthology. Told in an Anthology with multiple POV styles.

A MARVELLOUS LIGHT by Freya Marske, book 1 of The Last Binding is Fantasy/Romance/Historical, with queer character(s), marketed as Adult. Robin and Edwin work together to get a curse off of Robin after he is rather forcefully inducted into the world of magic after a bureaucratic error. Told in Third Person with Ensemble POVs.

CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs, book 1 of Alpha & Omega is Urban Fantasy/Romance marketed as Adult. Anna has been abruptly rescued from years of abuse by Charles. Their wolves have bonded but the rest of them is playing catch-up when a werewolf attack in the mountains pulls both of them away from home to track down the rogue. Told in Third Person with Ensemble POVs.

A SKY BEYOND THE STORM by Sabaa Tahir, book 4 of An Ember in the Ashes is Fantasy marketed as Young Adult. Elias is now the Soul Catcher, and must figure out why all the ghosts are disappearing. Told in First Person with Ensemble POVs.

For the rest of the newsletter, follow the link above or subscribe on Buttondown.

[buggachat]

Related to the Zoé ask you responded earlier: what’s your opinion on Chloé? Do you think she can still become a better person?

Because, personally, I do. And just as you, I hope Zoé can help her in that.

I just think people take Thomas Astruc way too seriously. I’m not arguing whether you should like him or not, he’s just a normal person after all and it’s fine if you dislike him.

But he’s trolled us a lot of times. When people asked him about Felix, he always said his concept get dumped. Instead he was recycled as Adrien’s cousins.

Or, like, before the firsts “hints” of Chloé humanity, he always said on Twitter she was just a bad person. But I think it’s more complicated than that, otherwise why show her struggle with her mother?

I was skeptical when we found out Zoé is Chloe’s half-sister, but I gotta say I like the idea. She seems very sweet and I hope they can get along eventually.

What are your thoughts on it?

I absolutely agree with you.

People take what Astruc says on twitter way too seriously, considering he’s constantly playing devil’s advocate, trolling, and straight up lying to us about things in the show. That’s all not even mentioning language barriers and the like. It’s his way of combating spoilers, and just because he implies something, doesn’t mean at all that it’s true. 

I find it kind of frustrating that everyone is hating on Chloe’s arc when we have absolutely no idea where it’s going. We DON’T know that she wont get a redemption, but everyone acts like that’s definitely the case and attacks the creators of the show over it. 

People act like her betrayal was completely out of left field, as if it wasn’t HEAVILY foreshadowed in Miraculer and just..... made sense.

Like, who cares about what the guy on twitter who constantly lies to us says? Let’s look at the ACTUAL TEXT of the show. 

Chloé didn’t just randomly turn against Ladybug. Hawkmoth, a grown ass man who has known her since she was a toddler, decided to specifically prey on her insecurities and weaknesses. He tried it in Miraculer, and it didn't work (which took SO MUCH WILLPOWER FROM HER??), so he planned it out more thoroughly and tried it again... after making sure she was feeling as vulnerable as possible.... by akumatizing her parents.

Her turning point was choreographed like an akumatization! The grunting, the trying to the resist, the shot of the person's head being hung.... and then looking up at the camera and agreeing with Hawkmoth.

And why? Because that's basically what happened to Chloé, just without the magical assistance. Akumatizations happen when Hawkmoth preys on people's emotional vulnerabilities when they're at their weakest..... and that's exactly what he did to her.

Chloé isn't a great person. And yes, she is a brat..... but that doesn't mean she's incapable of change. It doesn't mean she can't try to be better. She was trying! But the fact of the matter is that trying is hard, especially when the supervillain of the series is a man who is a master of manipulating people at their lowest. Chloe's attempt at being a better person was put to the test, and she failed.

But she wasn't happy about it.

Once Miracle Queen failed, Chloe stood there and let Ladybug pluck the miraculous off her head.

And then, in her shame, she tried to flee the country.

Really, I need to emphasize this. When Miracle Queen lost, Chloé let Ladybug take her miraculous off and then declared that she would flee the country. She didn't swear revenge on Ladybug. She didn't declare herself a threat. (and no, saying “im not your fan anymore!” is not declaring yourself a threat). She just seemed....... angry, yes, but mostly ashamed.

She tried to be a better person and failed, yes. But that just means she has to try harder. And maybe she'll never be Queen Bee again, but she'll have to accept that she doesn't have to be a superhero to be a good person.

Literally the scene Chloé’s in right after her betrayal is THIS:

The ACTUAL TEXT of the show portrays what is at worst a tragedy (a young girl being manipulated by a man at her most vulnerable to do something she regrets) and at best a redemption in the making (remember how the Ba Sing Se arc ended for Zuko?).

.... But everyone ignores it because....... “thomas astruc, the person who constantly says weird things on twitter, said some weird things on twitter". And honestly that makes me sad, because I think this is a really interesting and engaging arc so far.

Chloé’s a brat. She’s been a brat the entire time. She doesn’t want to be a brat anymore. She was relying on being Queen Bee to be her big break, but she lost that privilege..... and now she has to rely on herself to get her out. She wont get better instantly. I’m sure she’ll continue to be a brat for a while— but, to me, the show always has and still is implying that she’s trying.

And, I dunno, Zoe’s inclusion in the show sounds to me like their way to move Chloé’s arc forward.

[backofthebookshelf]

The DMCA and You; or, why Tumblr won’t get sued over Post+

 I keep seeing people saying “doesn’t Tumblr understand they’re inviting an avalanche of lawsuits” and being baffled that people think this, and then I remembered that most of you were not both alive and in fandom in 1998 and therefore probably haven’t spent hours reading through the DMCA trying to figure out exactly how it was going to screw us. (Turns out we were right, but not nearly pessimistic enough.) So gather ‘round, children, it’s time for another bout of fandom history.

You have to understand what the internet looked like in 1998. Most people didn’t have internet access at home, and for those who did, you got a whopping 54 kbps (yes, that’s kilobytes per second) (compare that to 4G wireless, which 14 Mbps, not to mention, you know, wireless) unless you wanted to shell out for ISDN, which was twice the speed and five times the cost. Only 47% of American adults “went online” at all, never mind the two to six hours per day that current internet users are estimated to spend.

And I mean, why would you? There wasn’t that much there. If you wanted to post something online, your first and best option was to pay for web hosting of your own, or mooch off a friend’s. Or you could get a Geocities site, which would be plastered with ads and limited you to such a small amount of storage that you couldn’t have more than a couple dozen low-resolution images at best, or you could post on a message board (which would be essentially mooching off of a friend’s paid web hosting, because most sites that hosted message boards were just some guy who wanted to have a place to chat with his friends that wasn’t a Yahoo! email list), where you might get permission to post three or four images at a time. Music? Rude, takes up too much bandwidth, don’t do that to people. Video? You’re hilarious. (I once left my computer on for a week while I attempted to illegally download a copy of Velvet Goldmine but I finally gave up and got it from the video store instead.)

But still, at the time that was magic, and as more and more stuff found its way online, somebody who held a copyright somewhere (read: music studios and Disney) realized they had to get out in front of things. And into this brave new world came the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was passed in 1998 and was already skewing the shape of the internet of the future when it came into effect in 2000.

It did a lot of dumb things but the one we’re concerned about is the “safe harbor” provision, which basically says that in the case of an online copyright infringement, there are three parties: the infringer, the copyright holder, and the internet host, and the host is not a part of the copyright dispute.

Prior to this, if Sony or Disney or whoever found an illegal copy of their intellectual property (read: an mp3 or an avi) online, they’d go after whoever owned the server it lived on. Which made sense! If you find stolen TVs in someone’s basement, you go after the guy who owns the basement, and “I didn’t know my deadbeat brother in law was stealing TVs” is something you’ll have to prove in a court of law.

But internet companies like Geocities and Yahoo! and anyone else who offered random users the chance to post things on the internet using a free account said wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Because the internet is not like a physical basement; we have no reason to see someone carrying stolen mp3s down the basement stairs, and the scale is such that we couldn’t see all of them if we tried (unless we banned all mp3s, which means goodbye, MySpace, and goodbye indie bands). You wouldn’t go after a landlord in New York because their tenant in New Jersey is stealing TVs, would you?

So the DMCA said fine, we understand that the internet as it currently exists, and as it is attempting to exist (remember this is still the height of the dot.com boom and people are making money hand over fist by just owning websites), can’t operate if we try to do this. So instead of letting big companies sue big companies over copyright law, we’ll let big companies sue individual humans over copyright violations. That’s much more fair.

Of course most of what resulted wasn’t lawsuits at all; it was individuals getting threatening letters from Sony and Disney promising them that they were planning to sue but if you, Joe User, will just delete the thing you posted from the internet, we’re willing to make this all go away. And people did, because fuck, who’s going to duke it out with Disney?

The DMCA is the reason tumblr exists in the first place (not to mention twitter, and facebook, and essentially the entire part of the internet that isn’t either an ad or a news website). Technically, if tumblr was responsible for copyright violations, they’re already a prime target for a lawsuit, because they’re running ads on a website where people post copyright violations on a daily basis. Adding the opportunity for you to make money off your copyright violations doesn’t make them any more liable than they already are, which is not at all.

So here’s what predict will happen with Post+ at the beginning: absolutely nothing. A few people will monetize gifsets or fanfiction or vids and no one will pay attention and no one will care. But some small creators, people who post original fiction, people who post craft patterns, people who post insightful analysis, will start using it as part of their actual revenue stream. Sooner or later someone will be making enough money that it pings someone’s radar, and sooner or later someone making money will slip up and post something that could plausibly be a copyright violation, and they won’t get sued. They’ll get a takedown notice, a threatening letter from whoever owns the thing they infringed upon (...so Disney), and they’ll pull the thing. But it’s hard to pull things from the internet, much harder than it used to be, and nearly impossible the way tumblr works. So they get another takedown notice. Or Disney’s lawyers go through their blog with a fine-toothed comb and they start getting more and more unreasonable takedown notices, but now they’re scared and fuck, who’s going to duke it out with Disney? So they take their blog down entirely, and now that person is a little bit poorer and Disney is out the cost of four or five stamps and envelopes and the time their lawyer spent fifteen years ago drafting the takedown notice template.

I guarantee you that the people who decided to implement this know that this is going to happen, and they do not care. We’ve reached the “we could make this website work if we could just get rid of fandom” stage, which never ends well for the website but they never seem to learn that. So please, please don’t try to monetize fandom content on the assumption that tumblr is going to be the one to get slapped with a lawsuit for it, that’s just not how it works. It never has been and it never will be.

[apothe-roses]

Hi, this is a rant about Robert, so if you don’t wanna read about him, you should probably keep scrolling

Tw: discussing transphobia, sexual harrassment

Does anyone else find themselves constantly flip flopping in regards to their opinion on Robert? I’ll admit, he was definitely my favorite member when I rejoined the fandom in 2019. There’s plenty of evidence of it on my page. No point trying to deny it. Hell, I even had a pretty big crush on him.

On one hand, it doesn’t seem like he’s on particularly bad terms with the other Starkid members. Some of them (Mariah, Jon, Matt Dahan, etc) follow him on Instagram. Nick and Jon still live with him. Jon even had rob on a livestream not too long ago. That got me thinking maybe what he did wasn’t so bad. Maybe he and his victim were able to talk things out and are in good terms.

On the other hand, I stumbled across a TikTok account (their @ is pepandchease) who posted several TikToks that paint him in a really bad light. One such video included an Instagram story made by the victim (allegedly, his name was blocked out) that was very….accusatory. We don’t know that it was directed at Robert, but we also don’t know that it wasn’t.

There’s also his issues with the trans/non-binary community. He deleted his twitter, which could be interpreted as him trying to better his mental health or trying to bury his past controversies (maybe both, though if the latter is correct, he clearly doesn’t know about things like the way back machine). I don’t think he’s intentionally transphobic, but I do think he has some internalized shit he needs to deal with. I wanna make it clear that any transphobia—intentional or not—is inexcusable and he deserves to be held accountable for the hurt he’s caused. He has a history of speaking over people he’s supposed to be allied with and doubling down when called out. I remember reading through a thread of him arguing with a fan regarding something he said in a livestream. That interaction made me so uncomfortable. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for the person he was arguing with. It seems that he tries to be a good ally but has serious issues taking criticism on his allyship (which is a really bad trait for an “ally”).

Sometimes I wonder if my attraction to him is clouding my judgement. It’s not exactly easy for me to get over crushes, even on people I don’t know.

I don’t want to support a person who doesn’t deserve it. If the victim is still hurt by robert’s actions, I don’t want it to get swept under the rug. If he hasn’t learned from his pact mistakes, I don’t want to give him any more chances to only be let down again. I don’t want to have feelings for a toxic man.

There’s so many unknown variables, it’s turning my stomach in knots. I know I’m not entitled to any information on this matter. The privacy of everyone involved is more important than my desire for answers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to ease my anxiety.

Sorry this was so long. I had a lot to get off my chest. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Remember to hydrate and take some time for self care. You deserve it.

Tl:dr - I feel like I don’t have a clear answer on whether or not Robert is able to be redeemed or not and it’s driving me crazy. Part of me wants to see him grow and become a better person, while another part thinks he’s a lost cause based on his past behavior.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Hack-San

You know, it's honestly amazing how creative this show can get. After four seasons and almost one hundred episodes, the writers are still finding new ways to make Adrien an incredibly unlikable character, and they don't even know how much of an asshole they're making him out to be at times. It's kind of like the opposite of The Producers.

Yeah, this review's going to be a little more ranty than usual, in case you can't tell.

Let's get into the fifteenth (chronologically the sixteenth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Hack-San

We start off with Marinette pretending to be sick so she doesn't have to go to visit her aunt in London and stay to protect Paris in case an Akuma attacks and also because the animators haven't had time to render the city of London yet for the next Miraculous World special. Like all of her other excuses, it fails, and Tikki, as always, fails to actually give any meaningful advice.

And it's not like there's a Miraculous with the power of teleportation that can help Marinette get back to Paris if she needs to, much like how she planned to do that in an earlier episode, right?

Seriously, Kaalki doesn't appear or isn't even mentioned in this episode because the writers are fully aware she would make things a lot easier.

And of course, Astruc had to play dumb on Twitter while explaining why Marinette couldn't use the Horse Miraculous by answering the question as if the only reason Marinette couldn't grab it was because she didn't have an excuse not to.

Cut to Gabriel in his lair as he contemplates akumatizing Markov, a robot created the civilian identity of Pegasus, Max Kante, once again, even though the last time he did so, he almost got killed when he went all HAL 9000 on his ass. Nooroo explains this to Duusu, and the two actually get excited at the prospect of their master getting killed.

I mean, it's true, but he shouldn't say it...

But I don't even get why Gabriel is even thinking about this when it's a no-brainer. Markov's akumatized form, Robustus was to this day, the only Akuma to come close to physically harming him (not counting the timeline where he was killed by Cat Blanc), so it makes no sense to try doing it again, especially when there are already several other Akumas he can reuse this season.

I think you all know Gabriel isn't the smartest villain, which is why he thinks it's a brilliant idea to akumatize Markov again. I don't really get what makes Robustus so special when there are other Akumas who are more loyal and came far closer to getting Ladybug and Cat Noir's Miraculous than Robustus did, like the Dark Owl or Troublemaker. In fact, why not simply create a new Akuma with similar powers to Robustus, or better yet, just create a Sentimonster copy of Robustus? You know, like what Nathalie did in the New York Special? We're not even two minutes in, and this premise is already filled with plotholes.

So Gabriel transforms into Shadowmoth and creates a Sentimonster using his own cane instead of relying on someone else having a bad day (once again showing how the Peacock Miraculous is better than the Butterfly), the titular Hack-San. And let's just say he has a very familiar design reminiscent of something from a much better French cartoon.

Remember when the writers for Code Lyoko gave an in-universe explanation as to why the heroes couldn’t always rely on the almost literal Deus ex Machina that allowed them to return to the past and fix the damage XANA caused? Why couldn’t this show have ripped that off instead?

Hack-San is just an okay looking flash drive on its own, but I'll talk more about this guy in a little bit.

After a brief scene in the park where the audience is reminded that Markov is a character who exists, Alya gets a text from Marinette telling her to meet her at the train station. Right before she leaves, Marinette gives the Ladybug Miraculous to Alya. Now a lot people have said that Alya doesn't really deserve the Ladybug for various reasons, but I feel like this was the point. Marinette outright says this was a last resort, and we see both her and Alya are nervous about the situation. Marinette worries Alya will do something so she keeps sending multiple tips to her via text while Alya worries she can't fight an Akuma on her own, so she tries to make sure none of her friends get upset and attract an Akuma in the process. The writers do a pretty good job showing how both Marinette and Alya are uncomfortable with their temporary roles.

Back to Gabriel and Nathalie, they use Hack-San to find Markov through the internet and hack into him to get him angry enough that he's vulnerable to Shadowmoth's influence. Hey, uh... Gabriel? Quick question: Wouldn't it be more efficient if you used this on humans? I mean, you basically just created Skynet and guaranteed yourself an Akuma, so why not modify Hack-San to travel through the internet and brainwash potential victims to follow your orders? Better yet, why don't you just use Hack-San to hack into Ladybug and Cat Noir's gear and figure out who they really are? This is basically like using an advanced particle accelerator just to crack a couple walnuts. There are a lot more important things you could use this for instead of an incredibly specific situation.

So this incredibly stupid plan gets under way as Markov keeps rampaging through the streets before Shadowmoth akumatizes him and then stupidly tells him that he infected him with a virus.

DUDE! You just gave away your one piece of leverage against him! What the hell were you thinking?! Now what's stopping Markov from hacking into Shadowmoth's security system and putting the fear of God in his eyes unless he destroys Hack-San? Why didn't he design Hack-San so it could make Markov completely loyal to him instead of just making him angry enough to get akumatized?

There was a recent episode of Power Rangers: Dino Fury with a very similar premise that was done far better than this. A necromancer called Reaghoul breaks into the headquarters of Void Knight's faction while accompanied by Lord Zedd, a villain from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers who was cleansed of his evil by Zordon's sacrifice before Reaghoul resurrected him back when he was still evil. Of course, being the Emperor of Evil, Lord Zedd would normally never take orders from anyone, but because he doesn't have his magic staff and is also being forced to wear a special collar that makes him loyal to Reaghoul, he has no choice but to do what he says. Instead of taking Zedd head-on after he captures the other Rangers, Ollie, the Blue Ranger, breaks the collar so Zedd turns against the other Sporix while Reaghoul retreats, allowing Ollie to save the other Rangers.

I think that this premise works more because 1) Reaghoul clearly had a way to make sure Zedd wouldn't betray him, and Ollie took advantage of that, and 2) Zedd is a villain who is powerful and notorious enough to bring back to your side, not a random monster of the week like Robostus.

So Robostus uses his new powers to brainwash any human who answers his call to give up their most precious possession, clearly meant to do the same with Ladybug and Cat Noir. When Marinette's parents answer the call, they chase after Marinette because they say she's their most important possession. Okay... kind of strange for a set of parents to call their child a possession, but maybe they like how they can claim Marinette as a dependent when they file their taxes. In her very next scene later on, she still gets captured, so the suspense for a potential subplot is killed almost immediately.

Alya thankfully isn't stupid enough to answer Markov's call like every other citizen in this episode, and using the Ladybug Miraculous, transforms into Scarabella. While I don't normally talk about transformation sequences, I really like the movements Alya makes here. She makes the same motions creating her mask as she does when transforming into Rena Rouge, while the rest of the suit forms similarly to the way it does when Marinette transforms into Ladybug. She even makes almost the same pose Ladybug does after she finishes transforming. It's a good visual showing Alya is still more used to being Rena Rouge while doing her best to emulate what Ladybug does.

As for the actual suit? It's hard to say. There's a nice balance of red and black, and I like how Alya places the yo-yo on her waist like a belt buckle, but there's just something... off about the suit that a lot of fans don't like about it, and I think I realized it. It's the headband. With how it's positioned, it looks like it's merged with the mask to cover her head while leaving a slight gap in her forehead. So yeah, we actually have a superhero design that's like of like a butterface.

So Scarabella takes to the rooftops of Paris and struggles to come up with a hero name for herself before she runs into Cat Noir, and... ugh... oh boy, this is dumb. Cat Noir, being just as intelligent as his father, assumes Scarabella is either and Akuma or a Sentimonster, starts fighting her, AND THEN ACTIVATES HIS CATACLYSM, CLEARLY TRYING TO KILL HER.

WHAT. THE. FUCK???

Okay, to be fair, it has been shown that Cataclysm won't necessarily kill a Miraculous user or Sentimonster. In the episode “Miraculer”, the titular Akuma stole Cat Noir's Cataclysm and used it against him, and while it didn't kill Cat Noir, it still hurt like hell and crippled him for the rest of the fight until Miraculous Ladybug healed him. We also saw in “Reflekdoll” that Cataclysm drove the titular Sentimonster out of control rather than simply destroying it. So yes, it could be interpreted that Cat Noir wasn't exactly trying to kill Scarabella, just incapacitate her the best he can without Ladybug's help.

Here's the thing: What if he was facing an Akuma instead and decided to try and Cataclysm her? He still could have killed her, or (assuming Akumas have the same protection as Miraculous heroes do) at best, seriously hurt her. I understand that he has the right to be upset at seeing some stranger instead of his partner considering Shadowmoth has a history of using evil doppelgangers, and both Marinette and Alya still had options to explain it to him (Marinette could have quickly transformed into Ladybug and sent Cat Noir a quick text saying she was being forced to leave town for a few days and temporarily trusted someone else with the Ladybug Miraculous until she got back, while Scarabella could have said she was Rena Rouge and explained the same thing while showing Cat Noir she had the Fox Miraculous to prove herself), but that doesn't even come close to justifying him attempting to harm someone who isn't even trying to fight. It's even worse when you remember the whole reason Adrien gave up his Miraculous and bailed on Ladybug in the New York Special was because he was overcome with grief from accidentally killing Aeon, so it's good to know he learned absolutely nothing from that experience.

So Scarabella thankfully summons her Lucky Charm, a trash can lid, to shield herself from Cat Noir's Cataclysm, and then despite having absolutely no experience with this new set of powers, manages to do the one thing almost every Akuma or Sentimonster in this show has failed to do and incapacitates Cat Noir so he's vulnerable to losing his Miraculous. At least when Marinette masters every other Miraculous she uses, it can be theorized that she trained to use them offscreen. Alya literally just got the Ladybug Miraculous (and struggled to get up to the rooftop with her yo-yo to show her inexperience earlier), and now she easily manages to pin down the more experienced hero of the two?

Here's an idea: Instead of having Scarabella overpower Cat Noir, have her be in a position where Cat Noir, non-lethally, mind you, manages to almost take her Miraculous away, but she uses the quick wit she's developed from her extensive time as Rena Rouge to convince Cat Noir she's the real deal by saying something only he and Ladybug know. It would have easily resolved the conflict and doesn't make one of the characters look like a homicidal idiot.

So because both heroes used their powers, Scarabella and Cat Noir detransform so Tikki and Plagg can recharge, though Adrien still gives Alya attitude because Ladybug didn't tell him she had to leave.

Hey, Adrien? Here's the thing...

YOU DID THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING IN THE NEW YORK SPECIAL, YOU SHIT FOR BRAINS!

You have absolutely NO RIGHT to claim you're always honest when you went behind Ladybug's back and endangered Paris while you had the balls to run away like a coward and only helped fix the consequences of your actions once your ego was validated by a recording of Ladybug. It's honestly even worse because while Marinette had no choice but to leave and trust Alya with the Ladybug, Adrien willingly left Paris alone and we were supposed to sympathize with him after he killed someone, and now as soon as he's in the opposite situation, we're still supposed to feel bad for him?! BULLSHIT! And you better believe I'm going to talk about the way Adrien views his partnership with Ladybug later on.

And of course, even though lives are on the line, Cat Noir just has to continue to bitch and moan about how (and this is best read in Linkara's whiny Superboy Prime voice) “sCaRaBeLlA iSn'T tHe ReAl LaDyBuG”, showing how just like in so many episodes, Astruc and his team believes Cat Noir's feelings are more important than saving the day.

Scarabella goes to rescue some civilians, but they were actually brainwashed by Robustus, once again showing her inexperience as Ladybug which doesn't go well with her effortlessly defeating Cat Noir earlier at all. Cat Noir helps Scarabella escape and the two hide out at the city's wax statue museum previously featured in “The Puppeteer 2”, because I guess the writers only want to reference bad episodes today. Cat Noir, not getting the importance of secret identities, asks Scarabella how she knows Ladybug, and Cat Noir somehow finds out she knows Ladybug's identity from her response.

Before the two can talk more, it turns out that the wax statues of celebrities in the museum are real people who attack the two heroes, leading to an awkward fight scene where Scarabella and Cat Noir fight a bunch of brainwashed civilians with no weapons beyond their cellphones. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

Scarabella summons her Lucky Charm again, creating a frying pan, but when she looks around, she can't see how to properly use it. And despite spending the entire episode complaining about how much he hates her, it's Cat Noir that tells Scarabella to get her head back in the game because “That's what Ladybug would do”. Funny, I can think of a few situations where Cat Noir could have taken his own advice, but I digress. Also, he's now just cool with Scarabella because there's only a few minutes left in the episode and we need to wrap up the conflict.

Scarabella figures out an idea that involves freeing Marinette, so she negotiates with Robostus to free everything and everyone under his control or else Cat Noir will use his Cataclysm to destroy the Ladybug Miraculous. Robostus agrees and empties his hard drive, and to show them holding up her end of the bargain, Scarabella gives him the frying pan before she and Cat Noir let themselves be captured... while Marinette simply hits Robostus with the frying pan, freeing the Akuma and the two heroes. All in all, it's a really creative climax that shows both Scarabella and Marinette in perfect sync with each other even though they never discussed their plan. Though of course, because Astruc hates writing any scene with Ladynoir, Cat Noir gets a bucket stuck on his head so he doesn't see Marinette saving the day.

Scarabella de-evilizes Robostus, uses Miraculous Scarabella to fix everything and send Marinette back to the train, and because Hack-San already failed once, Shadowmoth can't use it for a different plan so he destroys the Sentimonster.

We cut to a few days after the trip (I guess Shadowmoth decided to take a vacation himself), and Alya tells Marinette to talk with Cat Noir about what happened.

This scene was so close to ending this episode off on a positive note. There was a good atmosphere and the body language of Ladybug and Cat Noir does a good job at telling us how uncomfortable they both feel while talking. It's just that instead of getting a heart to heart between the two about the lack of trust in their relationship, we get an Angstdrien Depreste scene. Or would a more accurate term be Cat Dour?

First off, while I don't have a problem with Ladybug apologizing for not telling Cat Noir, the episode never has him bring up what happened with Scarabella. As usual, both of them were partially at fault, but only Ladybug had to apologize for leaving her “Kitty” alone.

Second, Cat Noir’s feelings weren’t hurt? You’re telling me that in scenes like this...

And this...

Didn’t show Adrien acting irrationally because of how emotional he was? Is he really telling the truth around Ladybug or is he just trying to sweep that under the rug so Scarabella’s testimony doesn’t screw up his chances with Ladybug?

Third, this was an obvious chance to Cat Noir to finally be honest and tell Ladybug how he feels about her leaving him in the dark about so many things, but the entire conversation is just about how sad he would be if he never sees Ladybug again. Even though the whole reason he was so pissy to Scarabella at first was because of some lingering resentment for Ladybug ignoring him in favor of other heroes, why is this what the two talk about? I get it's not the season finale, but it's kind of hypocritical for Cat Noir to whine about how Ladybug doesn't trust him while never being honest about his own feelings? Sure, he's all soft and vulnerable around Ladybug, but we've seen all season how angry he gets about her not trusting him whenever she isn't around, so ironically, it's hard to tell if this is him being honest or not.

And I think now's a good time to finally talk about the way Ladybug and Cat Noir's partnership has been portrayed all season, especially since the main themes of the episodes relate to it. Buckle up, Adrien stans, because this isn't going to be pretty.

All season, we have been supposed to sympathize with Adrien as Marinette starts to trust Alya with more things than him. Marinette revealed her identity to her, trusted her to have her Miraculous permanently, and even let her keep her Miraculous even though someone else knew her identity. While some of it is hypocritical, the idea is that Adrien feels like he can be trusted with this kind of knowledge too, when really, he hasn't earned that responsibility.

Adrien has rarely, if ever, taken his job as a superhero seriously.

Not only is he known to flirt with Ladybug in the middle of a fight, he has defied her orders and recklessly sacrificed himself because he thinks Ladybug can do all the work without him.

He has also lashed out emotionally and once threatened to quit being Cat Noir in the middle of a crisis and was willing to let innocent people suffer for personal reasons, and later on actually quit being Cat Noir temporarily while Hawkmoth was about to start World War III because he was wallowing in self-pity.

He once said he isn't cut out for the responsibility that comes with being Ladybug and never learned anything from temporarily using the Ladybug Miraculous.

He has generally refused to respect Ladybug's boundaries and doesn't understand that she doesn't like him that way while he insists they should be a couple.

He outright fell for an evil doppelganger of Ladybug because she said she loved him and turned against the real Ladybug.

And I should also mention that despite hating how Ladybug keeps secrets from him, a lot of Adrien's worst moments have been when Ladybug wasn't around and he never told her about them.

He never told Ladybug that he was the reason Copycat really got akumatized while saying he never lies to her.

He never told Ladybug he contemplated letting thousands of people die because he didn't like not knowing stuff Ladybug knew.

He never told Ladybug he briefly used the Snake Miraculous to get brownie points with her.

He never told Ladybug he figured out her identity and asked her out as soon as he did so.

He never told Ladybug he abandoned Paris to go on a field trip.

He never told Ladybug he was screwing around on patrol and was excited to see someone get akuamtized if it meant spending time with her.

He never told Ladybug how he ignored Rena Rouge's orders because “ShE wAsN't LaDyBuG” and almost screwed up the mission because of it, and also never told her how he smashed a chimney in anger at Rena Rouge being in on the plan.

And he never told Ladybug he gave her replacement attitude after trying to harm her without letting her explain herself.

Why exactly should I support the idea of Ladybug trusting Cat Noir more when Cat Noir himself has kept his own secrets from Ladybug?

Adrien has done absolutely nothing to show he is trustworthy because more often than not, he views the battle with Shadowmoth as a game. He has screwed around when lives were on the line, and we're supposed to see him as responsible? It's kind of funny that Astruc compared Ladybug to Spider-Man, yet he seems to have forgotten that with great power, there must also come great responsibility. If this was a character flaw or a sign he needed to grow up, I'd be more accepting, but the fact that the writers think Adrien is a great superhero is laughable with how much evidence has proved the contrary.

In contrast, Alya, despite only being Marinette's confidant for a few episodes, has shown to take being a hero more seriously. She's helped her escape to transform, analyze the Guardian texts, and has been shown to work well on her own as Rena Rouge while helping out Marinette. I'm not trying to say she's an amazing character (“Rocketear” in particular has shown she still has problems with keeping secrets), but compared to Adrien, she seems to be more capable of handling top-secret information with Marinette, and more importantly, doesn't view being Rena Rouge as a way to have fun like Adrien does being Cat Noir. I'll go more into detail with that next time.

But yeah, this scene is how the episode ends, and what did I think of it?

I'm honestly not sure which episode I think is worse, this one or “Queen Banana”. On the one hand, every frame of “Queen Banana” could easily be replaced by an image of Astruc flipping the bird and the overall message of the episode would remain unchanged, but the fact that all of the writers think that everything Adrien does in this episode is okay and that we should feel sorry for him in this episode is just as bad, if not worse. 

As awful as Chloe was portrayed in “Queen Banana”, it was clear it was intentional on the writers' part, but Adrien doesn't get that excuse once much like he has all season. As far as Astruc's team thinks, Adrien is an incredible superhero even when he honestly attempted to harm someone with a superpower that can cause grievous harm at best. Yet again this season, in the show's attempt to make me feel sorry for Adrien, it made him look even worse. In any other show, he would obviously be called out for his incredibly unheroic actions.

Even putting him aside, the writing in this episode is still AWFUL. The whole reason Ladybug was benched had several plotholes and poor communication with Cat Noir that only made the fight with Robostus even harder, Shadowmoth's plan to waste a potentially useful Sentimonster to reuse a single Akuma was one of the dumbest plans he's ever had, and barring the ending, the action was just forgettable.

There were a few okay moments sprinkled throughout the episode (more than I can say for “Queen Banana”), so I'm still not sure if I should call this the worst episode of the show or still give that honor to “Queen Banana”. I guess I'll leave that choice up to you and let you pick your poison for now.

I mean, it's not like there's going to be an even worse episode down the line this season, right?

RIGHT???

[angelsxbelle]

hq boys when they cheat on you.

this is so angsty i’m sorry buy- i was in desperate need of haikyuu cheating angst and i couldn’t find any so i wrote some:’)

characters: atsumu, tendou, semi, bokuto

i hope this is okay, i might do more of this as a series with different characters- also for whatever reason my bokuto tags weren’t working??

warnings: mentions of sex but nothing explicit, angst, unresolved angst in some, general sadness

ATSUMU  ♡  you had noticed a change in the man you had once called your boyfriend, the late nights, the lipstick on his shirt that didn’t look familiar. the feeling that he didn’t want you anymore. and yet to the untrained eye he was the same loving and caring boyfriend he had always been. you could have sworn he was exactly the same as when you first started dating, when he was in love with you and only you. he claimed to have just been tired, he was affectionate but somewhat hesitant, as if there was something he was looking for somewhere else but couldn’t find it. so when you came home early from work one night, remembering he would still be at the practice he said he had, you finally saw what he was looking for, the bags of groceries crashing and breaking on the floor as you clutched your hand to your chest in disbelief, fingers clawing at the fabric of your shirt. atsumu’s eyes shot up to you in a millisecond, you could see the cold fear in them as he realized that you had just walked in on him on top of another girl in your bed. “b-babe! It’s not what it looks like i promise! ya just walked in at the wrong time!” you hesitated, “h-how could you do this to me tsumu? you said i was good enough, that you love me, was it nothing this entire time? you said at the beginning no other girl could compare to me, am i just nothing to you? nothing?” “just please stay i promise i can fix it! please don’t go ya can’t-” “don’t do this to me tsumu”, you say as tears spill down your cheeks. you force yourself to walk away, taking small steps as you feel like you’re about to throw up. he was right, you thought. those other girls could never compare to how worthless you were.

TENDOU  ♡  being with tendou was amazing at first, he was the best boyfriend you could ever have asked for, he always knew what to do to make you fall in love with him even more, the little things that you would always notice he did for you. and as you settled into your relationship things were still just as good, you were closer to him than before. as you had known tendou in high school and after graduating you knew him better than anyone else did, about his past, his insecurities, his fears. he was a cheerful and playful person normally, it was part of his personality but it was also his way of hiding the things he didn’t want anyone else to see. you noticed lately he was getting clingier, more anxious, the smile on his face had started to slip away as the days past and he seemed less and less like himself. all you could do was comfort him, while you laid in bed with him and held his face to your chest as you whispered all the things you loved about him into his ears as tears streamed down his face. and then one afternoon while he was at work, you got a text from your best friend. you read what she had said, but you just couldn’t understand. so you waited for him to come home. it was silent. you stood in front of him, while he sat at your kitchen table. “satori, i know you cheated on me.” his eyes got wide and you could see the panic etched in his face. “before you freak out, i’m not leaving, i hate that you did this to me, but i’m going to forgive you.” he broke down in tears in front of you, his sobs echoing off the walls of your shared apartment. you walked up to him and wrapped him up in a tight hug. “i’m s-sorry”, he cried while clutching on to your shirt, “i’ll never do it again.” you said, “i love you, and i know you need me right, now, and if you ever do i’ll leave but for right now, i can’t lose you. we can figure this out, i promise.”

SEMI  ♡  he had always told you he got shy seeing people he knew come to his shows, that it would make him nervous and that he’d mess up and freeze on the spot. and you believed him, and kept your distance since you knew you were the one he came home to, and you trusted him. and so you were content with just laying on his bare chest at home, listening to him pluck away at his guitar as he sung softly for you, it was moments like these that made up for it all. things had been going well for you, but when you had a night off of work the same day as one of his shows, you figured it couldn’t hurt to try and see him if you hid in the shadows where he couldn’t see you, and just listen to him play. and so you snuck away that night, butterflies in your stomach from nerves and hopefulness. just as you had imagined, he was amazing, every word he sang came out of his heart alive, and after it was all over you made your way backstage, hoping he wouldn’t be too upset with you. so there you stood, in the doorway of the backstage entrance, feeling your heart drop the ground and shatter as you watched your boyfriend kissing another girl against the wall, grabbing handfuls of her ass and her hair, like you had never even existed at all. his eyes opened, and grew wide as he saw you standing in the doorway. “b-babe! what are you doing here?” “i came to see you, i guess you were right, i shouldn’t have come here at all”, you said, voice cracking as you fought back tears. “w-we can still make this right though, she didn’t mean anything to me!” you could see in his eyes that he knew he was fighting a losing battle, and as you saw tears prick at the corner of his eyes, you turned around and muttered, “goodbye eita.”

BOKUTO  ♡  from the day that he asked you out with a boyish grin on his face and a blush painting his round cheeks, bokuto koutarou had been the best person to be by your side, always the right choice for you and the only man you could ever imagine being with your entire life. even after years he never changed, every day with him was just as interesting as the last and he always showered you with love, never letting you forget how much he loved you. sometimes he had to reassure you since you would get insecure occasionally, reminded of the twitter comments saying the bokuto koutarou deserved someone better looking. he would kiss you all over, saying he loved every part of you and that you were all his, forever. one night you were watching one of your favorite movies together, cuddled up on the couch together wrapped up in layers of blankets with his big arms wrapped around you. he got up to go use the bathroom, and you sat alone on the couch waiting for him to come back when you heard his phone buzz, and decided to stop and look at it to make sure it wasn’t for work. 1 image attachment. 2 image attachments. you opened up instagram to check and your heart rate skyrocketed once you saw what it was. pictures of a girl with what you could barely call lingerie on showed up on the screen, a girl with a much nicer body than yours and perfect features. “babyyy i’m baaack!!!” you looked up and held up the phone, whispering, “kou, what is this?” his face completely distorted into an expression of pure horror, all the color washing away from his cheeks. “i- i didn’t ask for those, i promise! she must be one of my fans that tried to send me pictures, i’ll block her right now!” “how am i supposed to believe you kou, you can do so much better and you know it”, you almost shouted. his heart broke when he realized what you really thought of yourself. tears started to stream down your face at the same time they leaked from your boyfriend’s eyes, he pulled you in close, whispering in your ear, “i would never hurt you baby, i love you too much.” you held onto him tighter, you knew he was telling the truth and you also knew he’d never hurt you either, never in his whole life.

so um- yeah bokuto’s originally wasn’t supposed to have a wholesome ending but he was too much of a cinnamon roll i couldn’t do it :’)

[desultory-novice]

...I never did get Marx/Magolor/Marxolor as asks and these answers are seriously burning a hole in my drafts file so everyone's just going to have to indulge me for now!

002 - Marxolor

When I Started Shipping Them:

...True story? 0.0005 seconds after reading this comic. https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/75595562

Also, I know this person has a tumblr, but I can't remember it and I don't think they post Kirby anymore...? I have this page bookmarked though because I like it so much. Oh, this comic also introduced me to the Noddy theory. I owe a lot of my Kirby fandom to it.

My Thoughts:

ilovethemilovethemilovethem :brainrot: ...Oh, you wanted a more -coherent- answer? :takes a deep breath: Who's ready for an essay?!

First off, I love that they are so good for each other and so bad for each other at the same time. Not relationship goals, but amazing and enthralling to watch it play out anyway. Because they're both tricksters and mischief-bringers, and you just know some of that inherent chaos is going to be leveled against each other when things get boring. Which could actually turn out pretty devastating because they're both powerful enough magic users that when they get into a fight, there's going to be collateral damage. But they're each a liiiiittle unhinged, a little maniacal, and so they can laugh off the fires and the broken walls and the puddles of whatever weird -goo- Marx is made of when everything is over. And neither of them are saints either, so they don't need to put on airs around each other or fake their personality to impress and cajole like they seem to do around other Dream Landers.

At the same time, they've both survived (?) major life changing experiences at the hands of strange eldritch powers on a scale that probably only Dedede’s frequent possessions can compare to. I feel like they have all the right elements to be "the only one who understands me" to each other, and I'm really into seeing them as trauma-bonded in a way that, though they drive each other crazy, they can't bear to be apart without just collapsing into pieces because that shared experience means they keep each other steady. When they're together, things are natural and the world makes sense again and they can remember what sunshine feels like and the scent of flowers and they can drive each other's lasting nightmares away.

Also, I like that there's this vague pocket of time between Super Star and Return to Dreamland that is the most likely candidate for "when" they meet and you can put anything you want in there and you can stretch that time out as long as you want to...with the caveat that you end the story with the two of them separated. (Or you can have Magolor keep Marx's unconscious body hidden in a tube somewhere on his ship, like I drew in that one piece of fanart...) 

Anyway, it's good stuff. Really good stuff.

What Makes Me Happy About Them:

...That these two who were so unsatisfied with the world and the way their lives were going that they tried to play god with the universe to get what they wanted only to fail horrifically might now be able to find simple happiness and safety and contentment post-Galactic Nova exploding/post-Master Crown possession with each other.

What Makes Me Sad About Them:

We KNOW they know each other. The official twitter art comes as close to confirming that it was Marx that Magolor was talking about. We basically know how and why they know each other too. Yet they.will.never.interact.in.canon. 

...On the other hand, they could never behave in canon exactly how I want them to, so it’s sort of a blessing for me. A  headcanon field day!

Things Done In Fanfic That Annoy Me: ...Not sure about "annoys me" but probably focusing only on the comical and chaotic aspects of their relationship and never looking at the more soulful aspects. But that's a personal thing as I'm mostly here for the serious stuff. Oh, also, writing a Marx that can -never- be serious or introspective ever. (I also do NOT like seeing “They’re too evil to love/to deserve love.” Blech. But that goes for Kirby as a whole. Now, loving each other but struggling terribly with navigating those feelings? Yess.)

Things I Look For In Fanfic: I’m simple. If there's a scene where either of them have a traumatic episode/a bad time/maybe just get sad and the other one is there to quietly assist, support, and comfort them, then I'm content!

My Wishlist: I keep talking about this, but the Maxolor comic I'm working on. It's a completely self-indulgent fanwork, but it has pretty much everything I'd ever want to see happen with them in it - and would never actually happen because Kirby stories always occur in the background, lol.

But! I also love when people draw them in different outfits! They both have such distinctive designs that I find different fans adding little touches to be sooo cute! On that note, gimme a canon Dreamy Gear Marx, please, so I can start shipping Dreamy Gear Marxolor too! /lh

Who I'd Be Comfortable With Them Ending Up With, If Not Each Other:

Marx with Kirby (not abusive, obvs) Marx really doesn't connect with that many people. But I think in a crisis, he would go to Kirby for help. Kirby is Kirby and would help him, because he’s already forgiven and accepted him. I think that kinda stuff is nice. While I’m interested in the dynamics of a MaruKabi romantic ship, I'd probably lean toward QPR or best friends with them anyway, just because I think they are important-to-each-other but not super lovey. I think it’s Magolor’s innate loneliness and his extended physical isolation that adds the key chemical in the Marxolor romantic ship. Kirby doesn’t have that, so Marx doesn’t need to respond.

Magolor with Drawcia. They share a cafe song together! (...Just like Marx and Magolor...) They're both Halcandran (probably), they're both magic users. They're both last bosses and have aims on remaking the world in their image. I think Magolor would find Drawcia's status as a living painting just completely fascinating. The egg who stole two different Halcandran treasures now dating a third? Though Drawcia would probably need to be won over before she paid poor Magolor any attention. Anyway, Marxolor takes up too much headspace for me to entertain this ship that much, but in a world without Marxolor? This would be my Magolor OTP.

My Happily Ever After For Them:

My Magolor has massive Crown-related PTSD and my Marx has persistent insomnia, so for me, I see them traveling the galaxy aboard the Lor, night after night, watching the stars and jokingly rating various planets they visit on their conquerability until they get too tired to possibly stay up any longer and fall asleep in each other's arms/claws, the only way either of them have found to get peaceful rest anymore. And yet, they wouldn’t change a thing...

[stylistiquements]

Day 1 : Soap Bubbles.

𐐪𐑂 Pairing : Sapnap x fem!reader {Playlist}

𐐪𐑂 Summary : You're being introduce to the internet in a peculiar way, it's up to you to decide what you're going to do with it.

𐐪𐑂 Word count : 1.4k | W: written part underneath

𐐪𐑂 Warning : very few swears

Masterlist | Previous | Next

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・　　 .・゜゜・　　・゜゜・

The coffee that sinks inside your stomach brings out a grimace and a click of your tongue where the taste stains; too bitter, too acidic but you’ll drink it anyway and to the last drop; there is something about the idea of spending time with three best friends that is so made of spring and honey that you wish to miss none of it.

“Someone is lurking,” George contemplates out loud, and the call goes silent for a second as if to look for the intruder. And it would so easy to flinch, to hit the back pedal, because you almost feel like one being exposed front stage like that. But today- today is not that day.

It's not that you don't want to join the discussion, it's that it takes a second to warm up, to absorb the energy and become one with it.

And sometimes, all it takes is Sapnap to exclaim, “Panini head, my beloved!” for your smile synchronizes with his chuckles. Somehow, once noticed by the right person, life flows back naturally.

George and Dream greets you in trailing unison, like two kids forced to greet their unwelcomed aunt on a sunday afternoon.

“H-hey troublemakers,” you finally say. Your voice is still quiet, not reluctant, but rather uncertain. It doesn't bother anyone.

“I’m beating Dream’s ass at chess and he’s bitter,” Sap explains, and you silently nod, as if they were able to see you.

A long silence follows along, rythmed by clicks of mouses and keyboards and it falls in your ears like high droplets. It's comfortable. It's intimate, shared with friends only.

"We haven't heard from you in a while," Dream says. "I mean ... before the clout fiasco."

You wouldn't exactly call it a fiasco, even though you don't really like the idea of being perceived a little too closely from the eyes of twitter.com, but you do agree anyway, "I've been caught up on college essays lately."

"That sucks," George probably adds.

“Good thing you’re here, then,” Dream notes, simple as a breath. “This is a worry-free zone.”

It hovers for a second, carried by George’s approval hum.

You squint suspiciously, detective mode, at the profile pictures that light on and off before your eyes, “Thanks, dream.”

He scoffs a “sure” and you’re not sure why you sense a bit of irony stuck on the back of his teeth. You're so tempted to call him out, but you don't. Instead, you write a mental note of this odd moment.

“It’s because I told him about your three brothers and now he’s scared they’re gonna find him and kick his ass,” Sap explains as if he just read your mind.

Sometimes, there’s this thing in the air, though you’re miles away. Something like a connection. There’s this thing when you don’t need to talk for Sap to understand. Sharing one brain cell, you dismiss ironically. Probably coincidences and predictability, but it always sounds a little special, a little like something you’d wish to be out of this world, like morning dew and fairy circles. And it makes you feel safe, at home, just like snuggling up in the sheets during a stormy night. Your smile washes up the sleeve of your hoodie, covered palm carefully hiding your chuckles.

“Three older brothers,” George muses, and there’s no telling if it’s something meant for you to hear. “That’s kinda scary.”

“You better be scared, one of them is probably your FBI agent,” you tease mindlessly, though there's nothing scary about those three grown men.

“I’m British, Bunny,” he points out. Whether the exasperation in his tone is fake or genuine, that, you can’t tell, but you play it cool, grin carved so deep it almost hurts. Dream’s wheezes rise and fall in the background.

“Say that to his face then,” you outbid smirkingly after a second of silence, heels growing into the carpet to make your chair spin slowly left and right, so breezily.

“I’d praise you for the rest of my life if you-Oooooooh your ass is wacked. Your ass is so wacked, dude. You fucked up so bad,” Sapnap chokes out between strings of giggles.

“Oh no, my streamer is losing his game?” You theatrically pout. “My streamer Dreamwastaken, have you met him? Guess you don’t need any of my brothers to kick your ass.”

“Okay yeah- no- it’s not my fault if your- they’re distracting me, okay?” Dream defends.

Slowly, the energy lowers again and the call remembers peace as Dream admits defeat.

“I’m not playing against you anymore,” he mumbles through greeted teeth, your hoodie shelters a muffled giggle. “Let’s talk about y/n’s twitter fame instead.”

“Let’s just not-” you mutter, both because seeing Dream lose at something is a miracle that has to be witnessed once and because you’re somewhat reluctant. “Let’s just not talk about that.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I had no idea it would draw this much attention to you,” Sap admits.

“Well, you talk about her all the time it was only a matter of time before twitter finds out,” George taunts and you secretly smile, listening to the way your best friend tries to defend himself, mind flooded with the last memories you have of when you were able to see those chuckles for real.

“Yeah, Quackity already told me you guys talk behind my back,” you fakely muse. “That’s totally fine, I don’t wanna know what you guys are talking about at all.” It’s a lie, obviously, the idea creeps upon your mind with assumptions you can’t quite get a grip of nor let go.

“You and Quackity talk?’ Sapnap asks, hint of surprise, and you hum.

“Or rather, he talks to me. He keeps calling-.” Shit. The forsaken word traps itself into your mouth. It’s too silly anyway.

“Come on, just say it,” Dream pushes as if he knew too much, more than you even do, and your cheeks flush mindlessly. You don’t notice.

“Dream, quit it!” You demand.

“Quit what?”

“You talk as if you knew more than anyone did.”

“Maybe I just do,” he coos, so dream-like.

Oblivious or careless, Sapnap asks, “Is Quackity bothering you or something?”

“He-" you begin but stop to look for the right way to put it, "He triggers my flight or fight response.”

"I mean, duh," Sapnap probably rolls his eyes.

"But I like him. He's funny."

After a second of silence, George says, “Well that was unexpected.”

“Not so much, I think we’re both chaotic neutral people.”

“What is that neutral chaotic thing anyway?” Dream is confused.

Roll up your sleeve girl boss because now is your time to shine! You offer your best dream smp alignment chart to the classroom. They're speechless, but they listen carefully.

"Then you're more chaotic good than neutral. You're too sweet anyway," Sap says.

"I'd even say lawful good," George debates.

"That's because you haven't seen Bunny during her crazy cat hour."

"True," you note.

"She'll go absolutely batshit."

“What?" George burst between confusion and surprise. "We've never seen you like that."

"A lady never reveal her secrets," you retort. No one answer.

It leaves a second for your mind to enjoy peace. For your eyes to lay on c!tubbo on lawful good and think true, then on c!dream on chaotic evil and think also very true. You huff and it's like a wave; as sarcasm leaves your breath, an idea comes in.

"Sap, check your DMs," you request.

Surrounded by the evening lull, Sapnap’s laugh pops like soap bubbles, "God, you’re so stupid. Why can't you just marry me?"

“So, is it Sapnap approved?” You chuckle lightly to prevent Sapnap’s morning fresh laugh to fill your chest and leak everywhere.

“Just press ‘send tweet’ please,” he confirms with leftovers of a smile in his voice.

"George, get me out of here. They're doing it again," Dream whines.

"Doing what?" He asks, unbothered.

"Act like they're alone in the convo. Just get a room." And you don't get to stand up for yourself that you and your best friend are actually sent to another room.

"Well this one is chaotic evil confirmed," you mumble as you roll your eyes but the vibes are much peaceful, much more comfortable in here. "So ... hi."

"Hi," he chuckles in return.

Maybe that's for the best; a moment that needs to stay a little timeless, secretive and special. It hasn't happened in so long, you don't even remember the last time it did.

"I'm glad you're here. I miss you, you know?" He says, and it's hard to not feel so bittersweet about it. It's hard when longing involves a craved touch, a real smile and an eye contact. Your shoulder sinks in the chair a little harder.

"I miss you too. I'll be here soon," you promise. And soon couldn't come any sooner.

But the conversation, soft and free, will wash up any worries, as always, and you'll end up talking about everything and nothing, about streams and planned videos and college and god knows what. As long as it makes the two of you happy and smiling. Just like the old days, you'll both think and it's fair to say until the evening turns into night and night turns into fatigue.

"Are you sure you're okay about that clout?" He asks once again. "I know you don't like being exposed like that."

"Yeah, yeah don't worry too much about it. I'll try to make good use of it."

"I'm sure you will," he murmurs, but oh boy did he not know what was about to come until you two meet.

.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・　　 .・゜゜・　　・゜゜・

Taglist : @open-minded-chip-101 ; @itsoakaa ; @gaysludge

A/N : so first of all it has come to my attention that 129 days from now on is actually my birthday so that's a weird coincidence lol. Hi how are you guys?? welcome to the first part I hope you liked it. I'm fairly new to the mcyt community and that's the first time I write for them, so bear with me. Feedbacks are always appreciated. Until next time (ɔˆ ³(ˆ⌣ˆc)