#Sorry that's what the whole review boils down to for me

[chronurgy]

If you spend 6k actual real us dollars on one single two day vacation it better blow your dick clean off!

[my-mt-heart]

Idk how to say this but I am not as bothered about whatever is going to transpire between Daryl and Isabelle (bcoz for one thing - we know what is going to happen in the end- and for another - I honestly believe that the male execs are not at all confident abt their vision for these two as they would like to be and the whole thing would prolly boil down to ambiguity and ultimately- it will fall upon the viewers to dissect how Daryl feels - the Caryl fandom especially is really adept at reading into storylines - even stupid ones) None of this is good by any means. It cheapens the integrity of all the characters involved. It blatantly insults and reduces female characters - I believe that Isabelle deserves better. That a story should hold space for multiple female characters. Also - I am worried about putting the fate and the story of one the best female characters on TV (Carol) in the hands of someone who has proven that he can't be trusted to handle them with care. Reading S2 reviews - I am sort of reassured that Carol is treated well enough in the story - which I believe - has a LOT to do with Melissa McBride's input. Going forward - it is going to be more difficult bcoz once we have dealt with old traumas - we do need to evolve these characters and make sure they don't stay stagnant. I don't believe Zabel has the chops to do that.

sorry for that rant. I am just really frustrated.

What I worry about is the way all of this bts stuff amongst the male execs is going to impact the Caryl dynamic. Whatever the antis may think - and while McReedus has insane chemistry - I do believe that the romantic energy is generated between them by a lot of their acting choices (bcoz the underlying story is teasing a romance). What happens to all that when a romance is completely off the table? When AMC has been pushing this friendship narrative down our throats in a very evident bid to do damage control - the insecure/defensive promo that we have been getting last few weeks is proof enough that Caryl was always more than friends?

The problems were already glaringly obvious from the very beginning. the fact that Melissa isn't billed equally for a season where she is proclaimed to be the major focus? It is not even about Caryl going canon for me anymore. I love Melissa and Carol way too much for me to give up yet but I treasure the Caryl bond primarily bcoz they have always been each other's everything. it is truly a bond that evades definition. Both Carol and Daryl doesn't have what they have with each other with anyone. THAT IS A CANON FACT. I don't think I can watch that dynamic that I treasure so much being butchered - s11 was painful enough - I can't go through all of that and more again.

Going to watch s2 and then my further commitment will depend entirely upon how the characters are treated and their dynamic is portrayed?

It sucks that I am dreading watching Carol and Daryl back together on screen.

been here just for a few months but the way AMC has been fumbling with this promo - have you guys always experienced this whiplash or is it a new thing?

I’m going to include big spoilers in my response, so proceed with caution ⚠️

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with you on the point about Daryl’s and Isabelle’s arc. It seems like the male EPs (Zabel, Nicotero, Gimple) are overly confident that an explicit romance between their male hero and a younger blonde nun who accused Daryl of being like his abusive father just for trying to go home to his family will attract a larger male audience and they aren’t sparing any feelings with it because we aren’t their ideal audience anyway. To them, we’re just a bunch of “hysterical” shippers whose POV’s don’t matter and we can just take their crumbs. AMC is a bit more complicated, but I’ll get to them later.

Daryl and the nun kiss in 202, so there’s little to no room for us to dissect how Daryl is feeling. Isabelle’s death is the furthest thing from a relief because 1) it reduces her character down to man pain like you said and 2) from what I’m gathering, it completely overshadows Caryl’s reunion and then their entire arc. We get another hug that does absolutely nothing to elevate their relationship and then Carol has to face that Daryl didn’t need her to rescue him because he found a new family and become his emotionally supportive friend to help him through his grief of a lost love interest he’s known for a few months. It almost feels like it’s going to be a retread of Beth’s death, only worse. We know how Greg Nicotero views both of those relationships and to be blunt, the man needs to stop projecting his creepy fetishes onto Daryl and making it our problem 🤢

The way the story is framed, it’s not even about Caryl at all. They’re the relationship we’re the most invested in and yet all the emotional weight is given to a highly problematic relationship that developed over a dozen ish short episodes (compared to Caryl’s decade+ of emotional depth) and it’s all for nothing too. Zabel just resets Daryl like the hokey network procedural writer he is. And Caryl fans are rewarded for their years-long loyalty by getting more ambiguous subtext to analyze? Really?

I think you’re spot on about Melissa though. The reason she’s the bright spot of the season, the reason Carol’s individual arc feels true, and her spiritual connection to Daryl stays alive is because Melissa influenced all of that. She’s shown us time and time again that she understands her character so deeply and respects her fans. It really breaks my heart because I think she had a beautiful story in mind for Carol and she deserves all the support in the world, but as I’ve said many times, if damage is done to the character who has been written as her soulmate for over a decade, damage is also done to her. And I can’t watch that. I can’t watch the destruction of my favorite characters and my favorite relationship and put money in AMC’s pockets for gaslighting me. Retconning Caryl’s relationship into a platonic friendship is their way of protecting themselves from backlash. “Daryl isn’t emotionally cheating because he and Carol have always been besties?” “We didn’t mislead you. We told you they were friends, so you dumb shippers are doing this to yourselves. Please watch our slop anyways ✌️” They’re even trying to shift responsibility to Melissa by making her answer the shipping questions despite the fact that it’s Daryl’s arc throwing a wrench in everything and I expect that to continue at NYCC/Palyfest. It’s completely unethical and it’s backfiring.

Zabel cannot write for Daryl and Carol. He keeps showing us that he doesn’t understand their bond nor does he value it. A couple of the reviews mentioned it felt like Carol was shoehorned into certain aspects of the story, which tracks with what I already knew—that he and the other EPs think she’s hindering the story they want to tell about men doing manly things. That’s why they try so hard to challenge her significance to Daryl’s story and that is not going to change just because they’re moving to another location. Somebody like that should not have power to decide her trajectory. Fuck whatever he has planned for S3. I don’t want it. I still want Caryl and I still want to see them get the stories they deserve, but that’s only going to happen if we get a new showrunner who respects them and respects their fans. In case it needs to be said, Gimple is not that guy either (he can fake his enthusiasm on SM all he wants 🖕🖕🖕). A complete rebranding of the show to something that honors the characters and gives Melissa her dues (equal billing, title, etc) is the only way I’m tuning in now🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t have the emotional capacity to sit through S2, but I will be here, speaking up, to make sure Melissa gets all the necessary praise and those assholes can’t blame her if the show tanks.

I’ve only been here a few years and there’s been a lot of turn over at AMC even just in that time (I kid you not, all of our problems can be traced back to Josh Sapan leaving. He loved Caryl and Melissa). That being said, I cannot for the life of me understand why any of the guys over there (even the misogynistic ones) would approve of the Daryl/Isabelle arc after the PR disaster that Leah caused not even that long ago and at least for that, the arc tied back to romantic Caryl and we weren’t subjected to any uncomfortable physical intimacy. Why the fuck would they make the same mistake? Why the fuck do they have to spend more time cleaning up messes than avoiding the mess altogether at every fucking opportunity they had (and they had a lot). I just don’t get it. And I’m so tired of taking the abuse.

[poopersdoopers]

Thinking about a hurt & comfort fic with Shanks & Mihawk x reader. fem pronouns and fem presenting. Black reader in mind.

Synopsis:

Reader comes home from work more tired and upset than usual. Her partners want her to open up but she lashes out and goes a little too far.

To her surprise they are understanding and it breaks the damn. They comfort her and talk it out.

Angst, sfw, fluff.

It was another hard day of work. You were pissed and overwhelmed to say the least. 12 hours of emails, meetings, reviewing notes and for what…for it to start all over again.

The door to the train opened with a familiar ding and in no time you were walking home angry.

As soon as you opened the door, your red headed lover glanced over at you, eyes shining with admiration and excitement.

He practically fell over on his feet to great you. Sometimes Shanks’ feet too big for his lengthly body.

And as soon as you could begin to say the word, “Hi”, his arms were around you. His red head tucked between your shoulder and neck. You could smell tonights dinner, nicotine, wine — curiosity of your other lover— and sandlewood.

You would hug back but your arms were occupied by your workbag and take out.

“Hi love”, he squeezed your body closer to him, as if sensing something was off. He kissed the side of your mouth.

“Hey”, you answered back absentmindedly. You shook outta his arms and put your stuff down oh the couch.

Shanks was taken aback a bit but familiarized with your cold, repressed anger. He stood with his hands in his pockets, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure, don’t worry”, the words came out too gruff—to rushed to be believed. You hoped he wouldn’t press you. So you changed the subject.

“Where’s Mihawk?”

“In his study, he’s still working and asked me explicitly to not pester”, he said smiling the whole time.

You raised an eyebrow. The redhead’s eyes looked wicked.

“I’m shocked you’re not pouting.”

He chuckled and you couldn’t help but feel a smile crack across your face.

“Hey why haven’t you kissed me hello yet.”

You sighed. “I’m really not in the mood, for this Shanks. I just need to decompress for a second.”

You began to take documents, your uneaten lunch, and thermos out of your purse.

“You didn’t eat again today, babe? That’s the third time this week.”

You groaned aloud this time. Angry.

“I didn’t have the time to again. I’m sorry, okay? Is that sufficient enough of an explanation for you?”

You crossed over to the kitchen, Shanks didn’t follow. Staring into the hum of the refrigerator you gave yourself a pause.

“Look I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to lash out at you like that��.

He didn’t answer.

“Shanks?”, you cocked a head from the kitchen.

He stood there absentmindedly texting, his hand in his grey sweat-pant pocket. You took him in: standing barefoot in your warm home dazzling in light. His soft pink t-shirt doing little to hide his muscles.

“I said I’m sorry”.

“I know sweetheart, but we need to talk. And I mean we, not just you and I.”

You groaned again.

“About. What!?” Your own voice shocked yourself.

Shanks frowned, “Calm down”, he instantly regretted his remark.

You could feel your blood pressure boiling up, “Calm down?! Calm down?! If you even KNEW what kinda shit I wad going through you would not be telling me to calm down. I-“

You stopped at an instant, “please I just need my space and I promise I’ll be good”, your rubbed your fingers to your temples trying to stop tears from falling. You covered your face.

You were embarrassed. You felt like a failure for crying.

“What’s all this shouting for? I’m supposed to be in a meeting.”

Mihawk stared at you, frowning deeply. Your stomach twisted.

You remember the first time something like this happened. The disappointment in both of their faces. You attacked first, “Of course you’re in a meeting. You’re always working late and then getting on my case for working late.”

“People in healthy relationships are supposed to be able to talk freely. However if you need space we’ll accommodate, freely.”

“Fuck you.” You didn’t even know why you were mad anymore but this conversation tired you immediately. Spinning around, crossed over from the kitchen, to grab the screen door walk back outside. It was nearly 10 pm, the fall air crisper than usual. You lamented not bringing a blanket out to escape.

Sitting down on a lawn chair you stared at the sky and tried to calm down.

All you needed was the perfect song to escape to. Scooping out your phone and headphones from your tan jacket, you searched for Spotify.

You heard a ping and immediately tensed. You felt sick.

It was not a “ we need to talk” or “I’m breaking up with you”. No.

I love you. I love you.

Two separate texts from the most wonderful, supportive, and understanding lovers of all time.

You wanted to throw up, cry, scream, but instead you did what you always do: shut down.

Minutes pass you remain panicked.

“Darling I think it’s time you come inside. It’s nearly midnight.”

You glance over your shoulder and stare brown eyes into golden eyes. The raven haired man looked sad — a rare occurrence in your relationship. Had you done that?

Had you caused them to worry? You felt sicker.

“I’m sorry.”

He held a hand out. You couldn’t accept it.

“Love please. We don’t have to talk about it at all, but don’t shut us out like this. Come.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to stop the tears from flowing freely. You had been distant, distracted, and lashed out at your two lovers simply for just caring. Even turning away back rubs from them. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d ask them how their day was or just sat in a comfortable silence with them. Your squeezed your eyes tighter. Hands pulling at your hair.

Not only were you a failure of a worker, you were a failure at love.

“Hey stop that now”, it was barely a whisper.

When you opened your eyes, you saw your tears falling. Your shame. But you could feel Mihawk’s thumb wiping those pesky tears of shame slowly.

He whisks you into his arms. Suddenly you were back in the living room, lying atop him on your plush couch. You didn’t notice it at first but you were earnestly shaking. You feel a hand at your back —Shanks— rubbing smooth circles. The dam broke loose:

“I’m sorry. I ruined everything. I ruined dinner. I ruined work. I ruined our relationship. I’m not good at anything but getting frustrated and giving up. I’m running the only thing I love every night and I can’t fix it. My whole life, I’ve been waiting to be loved to matter to feel important and I can’t stop fucking myself over.”

Mihawk looked down at his young lover before glancing over at Shanks.

“You don’t to have it all figured out already. Please give yourself more credit than that.”

You started crying again but this time into Mihawk’s silken clad chest.

“Let’s get you into the bath. Hmm?”

He carried you the whole way there. Only setting you down to strip himself, before plunging in the water.

Shanks stripped you of your clothes. Starring reverently at your body and then at your exhausted face.

Before placing you gently in the bathtub between Mihawk’s waiting legs. The deep color of your skin contrasting beautifully against the raven haired man’s pale skin.

He couldn’t help it. He had to kiss you both.

“Don’t get any ideas now, darling”.

Shanks winked, before stripping down quickly and joining the bath beside you.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear”. You normally would laugh at such an outrageous lie, but you couldn’t even bring yourself to smile.

“This is the longest I’ve ever seen you cry and I know you don’t feel like talking, but at you okay?”

“Mmm..”

“That’s fair perfect answer, princess. Im gonna start with washing your front now?”

You felt Mihawk kiss the shell of your ear, as Shanks washed you gently all over.

A fresh wave of tears spilled. “Turn over”.

Mihawk could get a clearer view of your face now. Usually he would feel annoyed at someone this emotional and irrational but with you he immediately felt the need to protect and sooth.

He kissed underneath your eyes, then your nose, then your mouth before deepening the kiss. You completely stilled lost in the sensation and hand leaning against the raven haired man’s smooth chest.

“What happened to not getting any ideas?”, Shanks grinned. You broke apart from the kiss.

Mihawk rolled his eyes, “Unlike you, I can control myself.”

Shanks over-exaggerated a gasp, “You wounded me”.

You smiled at your silly lovers’ antics. Finally coming back to yourself a bit but too tired to keep up.

“I’m willing to talk a bit”, you yawned. Maybe having a fried brain was the key to opening up.

“Tomorrow my love. Lets stay in and catch up. You deserve that much.”

“Now it’s off to bed for you.”

Mihawk lathered each of his lovers’ skin in rich oils and body butters. Shanks wrapped you delicately in a fluffy robe. The raven haired man, held his hands out to guide you both to the master bedroom.

“Sleep”, he commanded.

And so you did, snuggled in the warmth of the two men.

Beloved.

[skeletonpunching]

Buddy Daddies interview with Toyonaga Toshiyuki and Uchiyama Koki

Interview with Toyonaga Toshiyuki and Uchiyama Koki (voice actors for Kurusu Kazuki and Suwa Rei) Interviewer: As we look back on "Buddy Daddies" up to this point - first of all, how do you feel about the early plot developments?

Toyonaga: The very beginning of episode 1 was an incredibly hard-boiled action scene, and then episode 2 was a total about-face - from that point on, it became more of a sitcom. I think that tonal shift was very intriguing, and everyone in the audience might have wondered, "Just where will things go from here?"

Uchiyama: It all started with a scene of assassins carrying out a mission, and the "assassins" premise itself was a very anime-typical hook in the first place. It seemed likely that there would be all sorts of drama, and so I expected a large proportion of the anime to be dedicated to that. But just like Toyonaga-san said, as the story progressed, the sitcom elements were unexpectedly pronounced; that left a strong impression on me as well.

Interviewer: Since then, Kurusu Kazuki, Suwa Rei, and Unasaka Miri have fully become a "family" - in review, are there any episodes that left a particular impression on you?

Toyonaga: Well, it's a fact that Kazuki and Rei are assassins, and they really did kill Miri's father...

Uchiyama: That was quite a grim start to the story, wasn't it.

Toyonaga: It sure was. And so the two of them find themselves obligated to look after this child, and they grapple with the conflicted feelings of "surely we can't actually bring her up, can we?" That's the first half of the series. Kazuki gets proactive about the parenting thing from pretty early on, but Rei's values and mindset change bit by bit over time... The part around episodes 8 and 9, when he reaches the point of thinking "it would be nice if life could go on like this", was very memorable. 

Uchiyama: Episodes 8 and 9 left a real impression on me too. Episode 8 focuses on Rei's biological family, and it depicts a tragic battle with a character who seemed closely connected with Rei in the past. So going from that to the events of sports day in episode 9 is a major shift for him. At first, Rei wasn't especially keen on parenting or living together with a child, but now he's shouting at the top of his lungs in order to cheer for Miri. I found that scene incredibly dramatic. In the recording sessions for the early episodes, I was often directed to perform Rei with more "restraint", so it came as a real shock to raise my voice during sports day and shout "Go for it!" But looking back upon the story as a whole, I've tried to portray his gradual transformation over time; that was the moment it really hit me.

Interviewer: What do you think of Kazuki and Rei's buddy relationship?

Uchiyama: The "buddy concept" is fundamental to the series, but since Miri has been part of the mix right from the start, I have a stronger impression of them as a "trio", when it comes down to it. In a manner of speaking, I think this is a story about the buddies being wrapped around Miri's finger.

Toyonaga: Kazuki and Rei each have their own dark pasts and traumatic burdens, but they've never experienced what regular children go through while growing up and as teens. Of course, the setup of these two falling under the sway of the innocent Miri might be kind of disorienting, but it sure is ripe for drama. There were just so many points where I thought, "Right, of course that's how it'd go!" In that sense, I think the balance of the three-person dynamic is absolutely perfect. And as for my approach as an actor - I give a pretty aggressive performance, so sometimes I'm really riding roughshod over Ucchi (Uchiyama)... Rei is a character who has to be defined in direct opposition to Kazuki, so I'm always like, "Ucchi, I'm so sorry." (laughs)

Uchiyama: No, no, not at all! (laughs) If anything, I really enjoy those plot developments of Rei getting pushed around. The story is richly varied, and every episode has a major shift in tone, so even we actors have a lot of fun during the recording sessions. Speaking from the audience perspective, I think this series was designed to keep the viewers hooked to the very end.

Interviewer: The ins and outs of parenting are very realistically depicted. Which of those scenes left the strongest impression on you?

Toyonaga: Out of everything till now? It's got to be the episode where they send her to daycare.  

Uchiyama: The rules and minutiae of what you have to bring to daycare really are so detailed.

Toyonaga: There's a whole list.

Uchiyama: And you need to put the name on every single thing. It was fun seeing Kazuki getting so worked up over that.

Toyonaga: I bet all the fathers and mothers of the world who've been through the same thing looked at Kazuki and Rei and went, "Right, right! It's tough, isn't it!" It's like Kazuki and Rei are receiving messages from all these viewers, and that leads to a reversal of the original setup. That's the point where I really sensed how far we'd come from episode 1's plot, and how unexpected this gap was. And this is a minor thing, but: Rei sleeping in the bathroom. It felt like a fantasy element in the middle of all this realism - that's the kind of deft balance only an anime can pull off.

Interviewer: Throughout all these interviews, we've heard from members of the staff that Toyonaga-san's performance of Kazuki and Uchiyama-san's performance of Rei "feel like the script was written for them". How do you feel about these comments?

Toyonaga: We were selected through auditions, but if that's how they feel after taking a chance on us, then I'm truly honoured as an actor. Everyone on the production team, starting with Director Asai, has given us a lot of leeway with the performances, and I think that's a huge part of it as well. Even if we take an odd or unexpected approach to the material, they allow it, and they have the capacity to chew it over and examine it closely. That's part of what brings all this together.

Uchiyama: When it comes to an original series, the cast is always wondering how the series will turn out. I suppose those on the staff side don't wonder quite as much as us, but I'm sure there are also things they don't know until they actually get going. For adaptations, the creators often turn to the source material for answers, but in an original series, the image of the characters is truly solidified by listening to the actual voices during the recording sessions. I think that's the true charm of an original series.

Toyonaga: When I think about it, it's a real privilege as an actor - receiving the outline of a character and getting to flesh that out through trial and error. By adding my personal touches to a character, I can put my own spin on things, and that's a lot of fun - but at the same time, it gives me a responsibility. There are things I have to be careful with. I need to present my own take on a character, while making sure that the emotional development and payoff fit perfectly.

Uchiyama: I've worked with Director Asai multiple times, and I know that I can safely leave the directorial decisions to him. I have faith that as long as we do our best during recording, he'll elevate our work to a whole new level with his wonderful images. I feel no misgivings at all. And so, as a viewer, I myself look forward eagerly to every completed episode.

Interviewer: "Buddy Daddies" is entering the final stages of the plot at last. What highlights does it hold?

Toyonaga: In episode 7, we see Karin - the younger sister of Kazuki's late wife. And Rei's father shows up in episode 8...

Uchiyama: You get to see their respective pasts.

Toyonaga: And after that, in episode 9, their feelings towards Miri gradually merge into one. But it's not just those "emotions" - there are also certain things which mustn't be forgotten... And from episode 10 onwards, those things truly take shape. What will they actually do with Miri? Can the trio's relationship really go on like this? And Ogino Ryo - an assassin who frequents Kyu-chan's (Kugi Kyutaro's) shop - gets involved. In this world of assassins, what will become of a girl like Miri, who lives a cheerful and hearty life despite her forlorn circumstances? That's what the story will address at last.

Interviewer: Just how will all the pieces that have been laid out so far be brought together...

Toyonaga: When you're wondering what will really happen with Miri, you should remember there's still someone who's related to her by blood... I think that relationship is going to play a key role.

Uchiyama: In a sense, there are some rather serious plot developments towards the end. I'm very curious how audiences will react at that point. I think those hard-boiled story elements are depicted in a style that's very characteristically "Buddy Daddies". I feel like those same plot points might be approached quite differently, in another series with a different atmosphere.

Interviewer: I hear the last episode has a plot point that was somewhat unexpected for both of you...?

Uchiyama: I was wondering how this story would be concluded, but I truly didn't have the slightest clue until I read the script for the finale.

Toyonaga: But the fact that Director Asai chose to end the story this way - naturally, it makes you reflect upon what he was trying to convey through this series.

Uchiyama: Personally, it came as quite a surprise.

Toyonaga: As far as the ending is concerned, I'm curious what all the viewers will make of it. For example, there are bound to be the realist types who make comments like "here's how things would go in real life", even for an anime. When it comes to those people, what I want to say isn't "fact is stranger than fiction", but rather, "Actually, isn't this surprisingly realistic?" That's the question I'll put to them. I think the ending makes you consider whether you can accept something like this.

Uchiyama: Considering the story as a whole, if you take out Kazuki, Rei, and Miri's backstories and relationship as a "pseudo-family", I think you'd be left with a very dark atmosphere. It was a new experience for me to witness how this could be depicted in an original series, through the lens of anime, and how it could be shown from this particular angle.

Toyonaga: I think you'll find yourself surprised, in some form or other. Last of all, I hope you'll enjoy each and every episode till the very end.

[widgenstain]

Alright, almost a week later, here is my review of Vanya and the night I saw it. Autocorrect didn't let me type this on my phone in my grimy bunk bed and that cold got me good, but here are my thoughts! @itsathingialwayssay , @shegottosayit , @illfayted17 this might interest you. Be aware, there are spoilers for the play as well as the production behind the read more.

I saw the play on Monday September 25th, so my opinions are based on that evening, can’t say anything about other nights!

I’ll start with some negatives:

The theatre. Not so much the interior or the personnel, who are absolutely lovely, but why oh why did I have to hear the trains throughout the whole performance?! At first, I thought it was on purpose, with it being the Russian country side, so you might hear some trains here and there, but no, it’s Charing Cross that you hear. Also it’s freaking expensive, but we knew that.

Secondly, I was annoyed by the audience. It was a surprisingly large number of classic elderly theatre goers, who all seemed to enjoy themselves a lot (except for one guy who snored), some teenagers dragged there by their parents (or the promise of seeing Moriarty) and some assholes, like the ladies next to me. One came in after the first act, prosecco in hand, they whispered to each other during weird moments and generally seemed bored and/or disappointed. Which is their prerogative, you don’t have to like everything I do, but with these two it seemed… performative.

Also, about the standing ovations: I get Andrew’s critique, it’s dumb if you feel like you MUST do it, but the fact is, that in a theatre that small, you don’t get to see the person bowing, if you don’t stand up. So yeah, people stood up, I did too (because unlike in Austria where you clap for like 5 minutes if you DIDN’T like it and for like 30 if you did, in the UK they only come out to take a bow once or twice and I wanted to see him), but these two ladies just left with sourpuss faces.

Thirdly the cigarettes. I knew he was going to smoke on stage, what I wasn’t prepared for was them smelling this bad. They’re not normal cigarettes, they’re of the self-rolled, cheap student tobacco kind, that you only really use for blunts. They reeked. If you’re in the first few rows, I’m sorry.

Fourthly, I don’t know if the play really lent itself to a one man show. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what Simon did with it, the way he mostly cut out the love rivalry between Vanya and the doctor, and shifted the focus more on Helena was a great decision. It made the play more cohesive and boiled it down to its message quicker. Loved the modern language and the Britishisms (could have dealt without the name changes, no one is called Vanya in a play named Vanya) and it was truly laugh out loud funny at times, which is great, because I’m depressed enough without listening to depressed Russian people for a full show.

But still, while it all worked in the end, I think there are plays better suited for this treatment. I have spoken to shegottosayit about this, but I also think they kinda expected a familiarity with the play, because it helps you following the plot. I talked to two girls in the queue outside though and they weren’t familiar with the play and understood it well, so what do I know.

Which brings me to the great stuff. The whole thing starts with Andrew just wandering on stage, smiling into the audience, switching off our lights and turning them on on stage. As if to communicate, ok, we’re in the theatre, you’re here to watch a play, I am an actor doing that play, like we’re all in on a joke. He starts with the different characters and they all have an identifier. For example, Vanya has his sunglasses, Helena her chain, Sonya her dishrag and it’s all nice, haha, see the actor is using props, so you know who is who, it’s simple and harmless. That’s how he gets you. Because he doesn’t need them and over the course of the play he starts playing and fucking with them and it’s SO GOOD!

He doesn’t change his voice much between characters, except the two “funny” ones (and maybe Alexander), there he goes a bit into more comical registers, but for the main characters he pretty much uses the same voice. And you still can tell them apart! Because he changes posture, his body language, yes, his tone, but not his voice and the levels of masculinity and femininity (in a traditional sense), yet he never veers into camp or offensive (that aspect really fed into my unpopular opinion on the whole “straight actors in gay roles” discourse, which I will never talk about). It’s incredible to watch how fast and seamlessly he does that and how effortless too. That’s the craziest thing about watching him act, he makes it seem easy, as if it’s nothing to him.

And the faces. The theatre has opera binoculars you can rent for one pound, I forgot my glasses (mild myopia, objects further away get blurry after a long day, especially if they’re an actor I’m watching from the second to last row), so I was super glad to have them and look at his face close up. What did I see? He changes faces. I’ve seen him do it before, but in this it’s instantly and so quickly! I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit creepy how he can change his facial shape somehow and go from sweet Sonya to hardened Ivan Vanya. It’s not just countenance or expressions, it’s something else and wow is it impressive! But a bit scary too once you think about it. ^^’

Also “zooming in” on him really cleared up something I’ve been wondering about ever since I’ve seen King Lear: One of Andrew’s biggest shortcomings on film can be that he sometimes comes across as too much, as a bit over the top. It is a theatre actor thing and he’s not the only one doing it (especially not in King Lear) and yes, that completely disappears live on stage. He acts for the whole house, but it always feels natural.

The one thing that felt a little bit forced was the singing in the end, he's right, he’s not a good singer (sorry!) and it took me out a little bit. The ending of Vanya is beautiful and heartfelt, I get what they wanted to achieve with him singing “If you go away”, it was a pause, a mood setter, but I think there are better ways to do this than through a musical interlude. That said, I saw A Little Life the other night, which is by the same production company, they made poor James Norton sing too and compared to him Andrew sings like an angel. So maybe I’m just a massive snob (hint: I am).

The other things that took me out a little were the sex scenes. Yeah, sex scenes in a one man play where the original play has none (at least not explicitly so). Damn, it’s been almost a week and my mind is still reeling from them. Did I like them? I have no fucking clue! I seriously need to talk to someone who didn’t have Andrew star in all her lonely sexy fantasies for the past 4 years, because I need to know how they affected someone with a normal, working brain who is not me.

I was torn between “wtf is going on” “JESUS HE TOOK HIS SHIRT OFF” “…you’re watching a dude make out with himself…” “…the sounds…” “don’t look at his naked back while he’s humping the stage, that’s rude, OH GOD YES LOOK AT HIS NAKED BACK, LOOK AT IT MOVE”. The second scene was even worse, because he’s standing up against a door, entangles his fucking impressive arms and moans as the lady while you see him move as the guy. Which was, yes, hotconfusingweird too, but I could have dealt with it, if he hadn’t mimed the penetration literally two seconds before and my brain just short-circuited and disappeared downstairs. The third confusingly hot thing happens in the end, when the doctor says his goodbyes. It’s actually a very good and touching scene, it has been set up that he’s falling into alcoholism and now that all his endeavours are nil, he downs more than half a bottle of vodka. We’ve all seen Andrew chug that beer in The Town and he does it here as well, but it takes a while and it’s so quiet in the theatre that you can hear him swallow and cry all the way through. Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Seriously though, there are more than one moment when the whole theatre is just stock-still. I mean, people laughed and reacted, again, one guy snored, I sighed a lot at Sonya (#ohlookitme), but in the important moments the theatre was dead quiet. Except for Charing Cross, of course.

When I left the theatre, my brain was buzzing and I walked out right into the backstage area. I read “backstage to the right” and was ready to walk to the right, even though no one was there. Except that stupid me HAD to ask the security, who I recognised from pics and the Cyrano backstage, if that was the way to the signings. And no, it wasn’t, that’s literally in front of the theatre (and honestly, probably why there are no selfies allowed this time, if they were, people would block that busy street for hours), I was walking towards the actual stage door. If I had had just one ounce of more self-confidence, I just could have kept on walking into the dressing rooms, God damnit!! (I’m kidding, I would never do that, and it would most likely get me banned for life, but still, it was a funny situation and that security was actually really nice and cool).

As for the signing, it’s a straight-forward affair, you line up, you move forwards, he signs your stuff, you move on (except if you’re an old lady, but more of that later). I soaked him in in all my manic brain overloaded happiness while waiting for my turn though, and the first thing I noticed was that he isn’t as short as people pretend he is. Yes, he wore some trainers with a thicker sole, but with them he wasn’t that much shorter than I am. Perfect height, for eye-contact, just saying.

Second thing was that he’s in the shape of his life, dear Lord! I always read him as wiry, which can look buff on screen, but no, he’s genuinely, proper buff. Those are some serious arms and just generally he’s wider than I would have expected. Other than that, he looks pretty much exactly like he does on screen. Some actors don’t, they’re either plainer or prettier (Anne-Marie Duff, she really was fucked over by some cruel form of unphotogenicness) in fact, the second night I went there I saw Sam Yates (he shook my hand :D) and he does not look like he does in pics for example. Andrew does. He has a fascinating and alive face and looks just like he did in that Vanity Fair video, except without the orange goo.

The first night I saw Simon Stephens coming out the stage door too and I literally hopped over to him, beaming like a loon. He and the people he was with were SO nice and so helpful, he signed my version of Vanya (the German edition) and I could actually voice my thoughts (which I couldn’t with Andrew) and tell him how much his interviews have helped me through the lockdowns and how I admire his writing, bla bla bla.

Anyway, I made him laugh, he shook my hand and said “it was a pleasure meeting you [widge’s real name]” in which moment my jaw literally did that looney tunes thing and dropped to my chest. Night was MADE, you don’t understand how much!

[Here I cut out a large chunk of extra thoughts to allow myself to post this in the tags]

Anyway, back to the old lady, she was the one who made Andrew laugh during the signing (LOVE that laugh), I passed her on the way back to the train and had to talk to her. She was a proper lady, dressed elegantly and she was the first damn person outside the theatre who understood my need to DISCUSS the play! Everyone else in the line was talking about other things, I had to PROCESS what had happened. She and her assistant were so cool, and she said she’d absolutely loved it and had a ton of other well thought through opinions on it. Big fan of her, no idea what her name is, but we all should get some cool older ladies to talk about theatre with, when our brains are buzzing with so many new impressions!

I aimlessly wandered on over the Thames after that, sat down in some red paint on the way, which made my jeans look interesting for the rest of the trip and had to just move for a while to cool down. I did go to the queue the next day too, just to be a little less tongue tied around Andrew (it did not work, whatsoever xD), but that was the day Joe Alwyn and a fox made an appearance, so it was totally worth it. As was the whole international camaraderie in the queue. Honestly, I’ve missed that, just people being excited about something together, I got hugged by a tiny Indian (?) girl and a Russian lady, all because we’re a bunch of excited nerds outside of theatre. It felt fucking great.

[starlightiing]

so what changed at your job? whats the new job? is it a lot different from what you were doing?

Hiya anon. Sorry it took me 50 years to reply to this, I have had a busy last few weeks and this required a pretty long response.

So I work for a TPA - it's insurance work, but we are not an insurance company. We are a third party administrator contracted to adjust claims on behalf of the insurance companies. Our clients are actually predominantly in London, but we are located in America and owned by a Canadian company. But anyway, based upon agreements and contracts with our London brokers, they write us into their insurance policies in the underwriting process and any agent that sells their policy is then basically made to work with us to handle claims on their behalf so they don't have to.

That said, my last job at the company was claims set up, or 'new loss' as we called it. When those claims came in, someone needed to set them up. It wasn't as simple as data entry though, because we had to link bank accounts (and if you screwed this up and put it on the wrong bank account, the Bordereau (reports and accounting) people would eat you alive, followed then by your manager). And, because of how specific our clients are (as they should be) and the fact that they keep a very close eye on our bordereau, if even one tiny thing is wrong, down to the smallest typo, it can throw off the whole fucking report and piss off the people in London.

I also dealt with the formulas and rates, and keeping track of what clients let us charge what rates, under which formulas, ect.

NOW I am in compliance. It's a bit hard to describe exactly what I do, but it's basically just making sure we are in compliance with our contract promises, laws, and other things. Which really boils down to running reports and making sure the adjusters are doing what they're supposed to be doing on their files (like making first contact within 48 hours), medicare/medicaid compliance, running dow jones searches on payees before we pay them to make sure we're not paying anyone who's done financial crimes in the past, dealing with department of insurance complaints, reviewing all the claims that are set up to make sure there are no errors, among a bunch of other things. Two very different jobs, but one is more chill, less time sensitive, ect ect.

I love my new position. I love the work so far, more will be added as I'm trained, and I love my new teammate and my new boss and the entire vibe of the compliance department. It's just two of us, we put our heads down and we work, no one bothers us, and there's no goddamn drama like there is in admin. There's no 'fight for your life' attitude like there is in admin, and because the 'fight for your life' vibes are gone, people aren't here constantly fighting you with their teeth out or throwing you under the bus to try and keep their job. The department switch has been huge for my mental health even just a week in. I'm still coming to terms with the freedoms and such that I have now. There's no competition, no volatility, none of that. It's just fucking work.

[antigone-ks]

That Quiets the World, chapter 3

This chapter contains references to homophobic name-calling.

- Go through email

- Finalize training schedules for the next month two months three months

- Review weapons systems inspections for the past six months

- Run twenty miles in the training gym

- Shower

- Clean and check maintenance on gym equipment Probably tightened the lat machine too much; need to tell someone not-Tony about that

- Check the weather a couple of times. A few times. Fifty-eleven times.

- Review new training proposals

- Lunch

Steve rolled his head from one shoulder to another and tried to focus on the proposal in front of him; Martin thought it would be useful to drill in an American Gladiator-style obstacle course. Steve was pretty sure “useful” was less the goal than “fun,” but there was no harm in it. He marked it approved and looked down at his list, chewed his lip and tapped his pen, then added another item:

- Apologize

He gazed at a blank spot on the far wall for a minute, then another minute, and edited:

- Apologize

- Pretend it didn’t happen

That’s probably the better tack, he thought. No need to dredge up the past. The long, long-distant past of this morning. I bet she’s forgotten already.

He caught his reflection in the glass walls of his office, and grimaced. “Bet I’m sleeping on the couch,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck and wishing you were there to do it for him. The head of steam he’d built up earlier had boiled dry over the last few hours, and he felt as close to hungover as he could without help from Thor’s mead, muggy-headed and weak-limbed and heartsore.

Ashamed.

He’d tried to ward it off, tried to re-stoke that anger from before, or at least a little irritation - kept picking at me, he thought, aiming for grumpiness and landing on petulance, both of them picking, like I can’t wash a damned dish, like she’s not just as - But there really was a limit to what he could make himself think, even if he wanted to be unjust right now. Even when he really was angry, overspilling with ice-blue fear rage, he couldn’t make himself entirely blame you, or Bucky, although at the time it’d made the whole thing worse. Standing there in the elevator, watching the door close on your face, outraged and hurt and confused, and Bucky’s uncomfortably familiar expression of wry disappointment, and knowing he’d done it all to himself.

And with an audience, this time. With you. It’s not like Bucky hadn’t seen him kick his own teeth in a few times, although he hadn’t done it lately. Well, not a lot. Not in a few months. Nothing like when they were kids and Bucky would haul him up out of the dirt and drag his sorry self home to get patched up.

“Can’t leave you alone for a minute,” he’d grouse, hand knotted in Steve’s collar. “Pickin’ fights when I’m not lookin’–” 

“I didn’t pick a fight!”

“How’d you get a busted lip, then? You fall out a window?”

“He called me a–”

“Doesn’t matter what he called you, Stevie,” Bucky shook him a little. “Jesus, you know all the things I’ve been called?”

“It’s different for you,” Steve muttered, searching his pockets for a handkerchief before any blood dripped onto his coat. His ma would give him such a look if she knew he’d been fighting. He staggered a little under Bucky’s sudden shove.

“How the hell’s it different for me? I don’t have ears?”

“It’s different ‘cos everybody knows you ain’t whatever they say! You’re not a wimp; you’re not a sissy, and they know it! You just stand up straight and they back down! You just laugh it off and they’re the ones looking stupid . . .” he gulped air and scowled at the pavement..

Bucky looked down the alley, up at the sky, chewing the inside of his cheek and glancing sidelong as Steve calmed himself. “Hell with them anyway, Steve. You don’t have to prove yourself to them, or anyone else. Or to me,” he added, fishing out his own handkerchief and stuffing it, not very gently, against Steve’s mouth. “You just gotta prove yourself to you.”

“You sound like ma,” Steve muttered, as they started walking home. “They’re not gonna whip me.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“I know you’re a shit.”

Steve cuffed him, because he had to, but his heart wasn’t in it.

How old were we? Steve wondered. Young, if he was fighting over insults. He’d lost the inclination after his ma got sick - he had bigger problems, and then everybody had bigger problems, and then hardly anyone made fun of him. 

Except when he was prancing around a stage in tights like a damned . . . what was it they called him?

“Nice boots, Tinkerbell!”

Yeah. Like a that. He could still feel it twist in his gut, a direct hit. He’d almost forgotten, by then, how it felt for someone to look at him and see the truth. They all saw the new shape of him and missed the little boy inside the costume, but all it took was a word. Tinkerbell. He’d been baffled, like a turtle suddenly yanked from its shell - how can you see me? - shocked so witless he couldn’t even be angry at them. How quickly he’d forgotten that he was the turtle and not really the shell at all. 

He’d forgotten again, and he didn’t like the reminder.

Tinkerbell. Useless. Weak. 

You’d never say it. You’d never so much as think it, he knows, but he is weak, and he doesn’t want you to see it. He doesn’t want so much as the chance that you’d see it, and then not say it, and just pity him instead.

Or just slowly drift away, until you met a man who didn’t tense at the sound of a strong wind. But you wouldn’t do that, either.

Or find a man who’ll talk to her, instead of running off.

Well. 

Now that.

That you might do. Might have to do. You said it months ago; you’d held his face in your hands and told him what you needed and then held him to it. “We have to communicate better” - he could feel the warmth of your hands and the frustration in your eyes, and he’d done it, for you. With only a few exceptions, most of them classified. 

So. 

- Pretend it didn’t happen  Order an apology bouquet. He probably still had the list of flowers from last time. 

If the weather were good enough for the shops to be open, I wouldn’t be in this mess, he huffed internally and tapped his pen in a disjointed rhythm. But he’d already run that race, angry at the weather, at the existence of wind and ice, at Johann Schmidt and the tesseract and Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. He’d even spared a couple of minutes to be angry at Loki again, just by association. Post-hoc ergo fuck you. My girl’s mad at me and it’s your fault or their fault or its fault. It’s somebody’s fault and I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for it and I should be over it. I should be - he could see his feet kicking up the dirt along that well-worn track all over again, deepening the groove instead of climbing out.

- Order an apology bouquet Grovel

Didn’t do anything wrong. His brain scuffed its toe in the dirt, like a kid who knows he’s been rotten. Just washing the goddamn dishes and she - 

“God, Steve, shut up,” he muttered.

***

“Oh my god, shut up,” you muttered at yourself, as your brain hit one wall and turned around to stomp across the room again. 

. . . can't talk to me like that, don’t know what crawled up his ass and died but he can’t talk to me like that, not gonna sit around here and wait for him if he wants to act like that, thinks he can just walk away and leave me stuck here, let him come back up here and we’ll see who tells who to go where . . .

You’ve said that before. You’ve been saying it for hours; it’s getting boring.

Actually it hadn’t been the whole time - first you went back to Steve’s suite to stew about it, then you’d put on some Bonnie Raitt and cried for a while. You tried working, to no real avail, then Steve wasn’t back yet and you started worrying, then you got mad all over again just in time for Nat to stop by and get an earful about it. 

“You could go talk to him,” Natasha said. Again. 

You made a surly noise.

“He’s probably right downstairs. I can show you.”

“Well, he’s the one who walked away, so I think it’s incumbent upon him to come back to me.”

Nat slumped down in her chair. “How did I not know you were such a stubborn asshole? All the background work I did on you, and I just thought you were a nice cute match for Steve. No warning at all.”

“He’s worse than me,” you said, without any real proof except it was afternoon and he hadn’t come back. Your brain got ready for another good stomp, then paused. “What background work?”

She rolled her head toward you, unimpressed. “You never thought about it? Even after you knew who he was?”

“. . . Ok, yeah. Some woman starts hanging out with Captain America right when he’s extremely vulnerable, that makes sense.” You shifted in your chair, annoyance temporarily ebbing. “Do I have an FBI file?”

“Almost everyone has an FBI file,” Nat said. “I have seven.”

“How do you have seven?”

“They don’t know all my aliases yet.”

“How many . . . never mind; you’re not going to answer that.”

“No, I’ll answer.”

“For real?” You eyed Natasha suspiciously. “Alright, how many aliases do you have?”

“More than seven.”

You pursed your lips and gave her an exaggerated scowl. “Thank you. Very forthcoming. I see that Steve is in good company here.”

Nat grinned brightly for a second, then sighed. “It’s hard to get a read on Steve, sometimes. It’s my job; I trained for it since I was a little girl, but he plays things really close to the chest sometimes when you don’t even expect it.”

She seemed to lapse into contemplative silence. You waited three heartbeats, then four, before you couldn't help it. “So does that mean you don't know what's going on, or you're not telling and I have to learn to read him for myself?”

“Ah, grasshopper, that is for you to discover.”

Your eyes narrowed at her, then - “You don't know. You don't know!” You kicked your feet against the chair. “I figured you out!”

Nat huffed. “Figure your boyfriend out.”

You stuck out your tongue, giddy with your mini-victory. “Maybe I will, since I'm so good at reading people.” You hopped up. “Where downstairs? Never mind; I'll ask Friday. You wouldn't know,” you said with a teasing sidelong glance.

“Ok, enjoy this while it lasts.” Nat stood and stretched, then headed for the door. “See if I go easy on you next game night.”

“You don't go easy on me; you're just bad at board games.” You started to follow her, then turned back to check yourself in the mirror over Steve's console table. “Wait! Does my file say anything interesting?”

Nat raised one beautifully-sculpted eyebrow. “I wouldn't know.”

Read Chapter One on AO3!

[laf-outloud]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsH6JYItyWJ/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Some of Jensen’s Instagram Post replies:

“Wish them the best but honestly the whole cast felt forced and yes even the level of “inclusivity" in the characters y supernatural magic was the seamless chemistry between the characters and not just the main ones! Plus the plot was a lot more solid... Maybe it's saved and it gets better idk”

“We love u Jensen and the idea behind this new series but the acting FOR ME was just not there....Favorite episode was the last one where u made a cameo with our fellow Idit bobby ©  missed seeing you guys. . Perhaps if u get renewed there will be more of u and maybe #savethewinchesters”

“I loved Supernatural. Actually I love still. But the show The Winchesters needs to end. It is so very woke. That's my issue with it. Maybe next time don't go full woke to don't go broke again”

“@jensenackles love to love this show, but it's lacking something..good lucky always tho”

“The Winchesters were Sam and Dean period. That's why people was not interested in that other series.”

“I loved supernatural, I loved the chemistry between you, jarad and all the others but this show for me was a bomb. No chemistry and poor story”

“Seems like there were a lot of directions to go but this one didn't land with the fans I think. Sorry man”

“Honestly I rather have a real sequel or prequel done and not save this one this one wasnt even OUR John and marry”

“Yeah I have to agree with the general consensus of evervone's comments, I loved the idea but it didn't really hit the mark for me, I know it was to reveal other twists and turns throughout the seasons connected to SPN and the whole going back in time ect ect but it wasn't for me and like everyone said the Winchesters are Sam and Dean • no matter what spin off they do this is what it all boils down to #samanddeanforever) I would like to see a Bobby and Rufus spin off that would be awesome...if produced and directed properly a and directed properly”

“Jensen, the homie. I love you, but it didn't look good” (translated)

“Hey Jensen take the loss buddy, you had a whole season, time to move on to bigger things”

“Nah the show is absolutely trash”

“It just didn't feel

"tough "enough to be the lead up to Sam & Dean”

“Nah the show wasn't any good”

“Jensen blink 3 times if you need help”

“Jensen honey let it go please”

Mist of the comments that are negative about TW are very level headed. Most of these people aren’t just “antis”. Of course there was pleanty of fawning or supportive comments. But the majority I saw just want the show to end.

I think Jensen doesn’t really care himself about TW anymore, but he let/made the cast go ahead and make this video to look like an effort was made. I honestly think he’d rather it just go away at this point.

If they're really hoping executives review the SM posts, they'll find that and so much more on Twitter. For a fan campaign to be successful, it usually involves universal support, which TW just doesn't have. (Not that I think the fan campaign for a show that failed in all aspects would even work).

I really think this is just Jensen pretending to care, and quite possibly acting out of jealousy that Jared's show is still going and his isn't. (Why else would he try and hijack SM during Walker?) It's too little, too late and he knows it. Guess he's going to have to actually feel what it's like to fail. I hope he learns from it instead of being bitter about it.

[hellcatinnc]

Destined Mr. Almost Right Review

Spoilers Games In Love365 App

Takane Momochi

This dude came off so sweet and in the app he seemed like this genuine dude. The fact that he was the MC's love interest in college made it seem like a reconnection until you realize the MC was practically his puppy doing everything to make him happy and then when it was her time to confess her love to him he shot her down like her feelings didn't even matter. She spent the next 10 years missing him and still remembering she cared so much about him. So when you meet him you go to the airport because he is a pilot and you hang out and talk and he gives you flowers. He seems so sweet and sincere and he tells you how sorry he was for being a kid back then. Honestly I guess my red flag should have gone up with bullshit meter fast because I wasn't even 2 chapters in and he was happy to be with her and wanting to spend his life with her and so on. He pushed every button then took her to the bar to drink after the second date and then he literally tells you since in the app it says your 100% physically matched he wants to sleep with you to find out if thats so.

When you go to shoot him down he shows how much of a prick he is and even tells you he was just using you to sleep with you. The mc I will admit is ballsy she tells him I will not sleep with you but for the next 30 days or something like that you will want to have sex with me and I won't until you fall in love with me. Honestly I had already spent like 40 hearts on this dude in love365 and was pissing me off cause the ones I used was back when I thought he was nice. So not only did he screw over the mc but me too what a fuckin asshole. Anyways didn't think a character could make my blood boil so fast but I swear he really made me mad as well as the mc. I wouldn't even want him if it was me after the way he acted. Its also why I stopped playing his route to save my hearts for some one worth them. It might turn out he falls in love with her but if they make me mad and I have no interest in them then I won't continue. Its not even like the tsunderes either he is a male chauvinistic pig who wants to sleep with anyone he even tells her he wants her panties until she sleeps with him he is just rude. I'm done wasting my breath on him but I got up to like chapter 10 before I couldn't deal with him anymore because every single date he was just as much as a asshole as the one before it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Komuro Satoru/Araya Kuze

Now this guy is the guy that followed mc around in high school even when the mc was so in love with Takane. He would find out things about him for the mc and things he liked. He would pass letters or anything she wanted to help her be with Takane even though he was in love with her the whole time. He thought being her friend until she realized Takane was a asshole was better than not being anything at all. He was sweet and genuine he was also 2 years behind the mc so she went to college with Takane and it was a different college than Araya got into so they were separated. Until this app and they matched at 99% and the moment he realized it was her he was over the moon. They connected right away when they met and I swear this man let nothing stay hidden he admitted he had wanted to see her so bad in the last few years. They had dinner and went back to the bar to drink and just joking about good times together and such. She gets super drunk and they go to leave and she falls but he catches her. They kiss then he confesses he has been in love with her since high school.

She is so out of it she doesn't pull away from the kiss and she had been treating him all night like he was a kid cause he was younger than her. He tells her when they get to messing around please give me one night, you can do whatever you want to me and I will never thing bad of you, I just want to feel important to you and feel like you see me. They end up back at his place and they have sex and then she wakes up the next morning and freaks out. He apologizes however she makes him feel like he really did something wrong with both of them had been drinking she kinda made me mad with that honestly because he is a sweetheart. Then he continues to apologize and even tells her he takes complete fault for it and he would like it if she would let him make it right. She is kind of like what? But he goes into tell her how he feels, and how things went down and that he thought they were on the same page and how they were connected that night. He then says but give me a chance let me be your boyfriend and then you can take that it was not a one night stand. It was so sweet how he came up with this after expressing how he has always felt.

He is a lyrist and all his songs over the last 5 years or so has been written about her and no one else. She is his heart, muse, and love of his life she is his destiny. He altered his name just for the app so that no one knew it was him since he is famous. She agrees and its so nice to see him when girls throw themselves at him he shuts them down and makes it very clear she is his only important person. Like omg.... this man is a freakin keeper such a difference from the first guy and to think she knew them at the same time yet chose the pig over this cinnamon roll. One of the sweet things he did was rented out a whole theme park for her and brought her to overlook it then turned on the lights and lit it all up for her. That was like the sweetest yes he has money but as long as he gets to spend it on her he is happy.

He even tells her that since high school she has been his princess and just wants to do right by her. I was in such awe when he told her he wanted to be with her and he wanted to marry her in the future like how many men just know and the fact he just knew since highschool thats alot of years being in love with one person. There was a bit of drama of a ex fiancé trying to come between them but to show his love he took her to a jewelry store to get her any engagement ring she wanted. So anyways alot of drama came out of things later in the story. It comes back that it was all a lie he set up the app the ex fiancé all of it to make her give him a chance and to fall in love with him. He was afraid she would never give him a chance any other way. Then when he realizes he lied to her and it hurt her he felt like he wasn't worthy of her so he tried to leave her and let her live her life without him because he did love her. I mean in the end she doesn't let him leave that easy and they end up together.

Honestly I guess in away its a bit of a betrayal and I think he will have to make it up to her because it was like their relationship was built on a lie. However I think their love for each other I think they would be fine. On voltage's side I will say after all the hearts that I paid for that I ate through in this game mostly on this guy it was a bit of a disappointment. His character I love in the end just for a happy ending there are alot better stories than how this one played out. I think if I had a 5 star rating system for this game would be 3 it loses 2 stars because of the fact it almost felt like the pay to play shit and then even after that you don't even get the kind of ending that you really should have.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because this is a story that uses hearts I am only reviewing the 2 that interested me enough to pay and then went with the last guy even more so enjoy the review of these to men of destiny.

[vivataurus]

Am I consistent with my reviews?... About as consistent as the plot in this story. Here is yet another review in my Vampire Hunter D series.

I believe I was warned about this book (along with the next); good god was this a shit show.

The dreamy vibe where D enters the castle grounds with the dancing guests and fluttering blue light was a wicked way to start the book. Figuring out whether the Archer was friend or foe, as well as hoping to find the actual grounds of the castle was at the forefront of my mind. Instead we are introduced to the most cringe townspeople that I've read in the book series.

We all know the author loves to write D as a Mary Sue, but the absolute dick stroking through out this whole book made me grimace. I figured because of the dream they all dreamt that the townspeople were made to be extra horny or something. But to my displeasure, half of the pages in this book was the town's women dropping their panties over D. Lord only knows that this is gonna keep happening in the later books. After reading the entire story, I understand they were existing in a dream and acting according to the dream maker Sybille. That's also the reason for my major whiplash when half the town was hatin' on D and throwing bombs in his hotel room even though they let him into town no problem. At the end of the day, you couldn't put your finger on any of the characters as they were being controlled by a dream, and even a dream within a dream. I wanted to like the Sheriff so bad, but the issues with abandoning his wife and his inconsistent behavior towards D was a struggle to read.

Now I wouldn't say that Nan was the worst female lead of the series (that personally is Lina for me), but she comes second place so far. I'm sorry I couldn't stand her ass. Every scene with her made me cringe and confused. She would try so hard to seem so mature and in the next breath act like a brat. I guess that's the author's interpretation of a young woman that age. Speaking of sexism, the very first conversation she has with D made my blood boil with this quote "The girl smiled wryly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. It's better you hear it from someone upstanding, like a grown man, instead of from me..."(16). So she says that to D when he arrives to town looking for Sybille, but then acts like a childish brat getting frustrated at D and demanding his attention in the rest of the story. It's like if she was so "aware" of her standing as a woman in this sexist idea, why would she act the way she does in the rest of the book? Wouldn't she not want to impose on D? She supposedly dreamt of D more than the rest of the townspeople and had a better idea of what kind of person D was. Wouldn't she not be as surprised when he cuts people in his way down? Her existence felt pointless after she makes a witness report to the Sheriff when D defends himself against the farmer/assassin Tokoff. Don't even get me started when her boyfriend gets in the mix and somehow D is put in the middle of their lover quarrels. Then the end sloppily ties her character together with the plot by making it like Sybille the dream maker transferred her soul into Nan, and that's why Nan was relevant. Maybe I need to reread the book in the future to have a better understanding, but after freshly finishing the book I find anything to do with Nan to be straight up annoying.

I will say that though all the dick stroking, minor parts of the story were interesting as they revealed more about the lore/universe in the VHD series. For example, the hotel owner just lets D under his roof with no issues even when it's revealed that dhampir's can't be housed unless they are on official business/with handlers. And of course being drawn to a town by a dream girl doesn't exactly make the cut for official business/invitation. I enjoyed D's interaction with Ai-Ling and the descriptions of the farms and animals that were the new livestock for humans to consume.

Overall I was not thrilled by this book in the series, as it felt very inconsistent in its characters. Of course I know the reason was the plot, but I still didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. I wasn't satisfied with the ending at all and needed more answers about how Sybille met the vampire who bit her. Who was the vampire who bit her? etc.

VHD 5 Rating: 5.5/10

[redhairedgirl95]

Ok wow. Omg the new chapter was incredible. First off Cyrus and Samson :( I’m so happy we got to see their reaction to the whole darkar situation. I love their relationship with Stella so much it’s so cute to see I mean they’re literally like her older brothers even the king can see that. I think radius definitely has a soft spot for them as well, seeing how well they look after Stella and how much they worry about her I think would definitely put them in his good books. Omg jealous radius! He still really infatuated with Luna or maybe it’s a case of i cant have her but i dont want anyone else to have her either. I’m really curious to see who it is though. However I cant even begin to express how much i hate chimera and Cassandra, they irritate me so much. I think just knowing that right in that moment (during summer) everything was perfect for Stella and she doesn’t know that in a couple weeks absolutely everything will be ruined . Cassandra is so fucking slimy though ugh I hate her she’s so fucking annoying even back in your Luna and radius fic she annoyed the shit out of me but at least we had the satisfaction of Luna putting her in her place but right now I just know it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I mean saying she disliked Stella since she’d been born like cmon get a fucking grip your an adult and she’s a literal baby and omg chimera 🙄 I just need her to be punched like I don’t think magic will be satisfying enough for me, I want Stella to absolutely ROCK HER SHIT… anyway. Radius was never interested in Cassandra like that!!!omg i wanna be sick so from the night Cassandra and chimera got their mark radius started seeing Cassandra and therefore became spelled, how come they’re waiting for the princess ball was it just to gradually show that Cassandra and radius were together to those working in the castle? Ugh I just can’t deal with them! Also I’m assuming Cassandra and chimera still have complete free will unlike radius I hope they get punished severely like I beg the bring back beheading because I really can’t stand them

Anyway! Onto Stella! I love how supportive the girls are of Stella it’s so cute to see her with such a healthy support system after everything she has and will go through. I also loved reading everyone staring at Brandon because it’s so true that everyone would be so interested in why he’s so special and why Stella the princess of the most power realm would be interested in him.

Stella and Anne :( I love them so much it’s actually insane. She really stepped up and did what Luna should’ve been there for. I understand her still going which I think Stella will really appreciate it however she could’ve done a lot more for her daughter then what she has done.

This was such an amazing chapter you’ve absolutely nailed it YET AGAIN!! I can’t wait for the next chapter yet also dreading it, because just poor Stella!! Little does she know this will be her last time in solaria for a while :(

I really hope the solarian people will reject Cassandra and chimera it would be so cool to see solaria’s people uprising because they demand to see their king and the real heir to throne and won’t accept anyone but them. I just feel like solarians love their royal family and would sense something is wrong especially since they will probably see that the royal family demands Stella be killed/captured.

Omg I CANT FUCKING WAIT!!!! You really out do your self everytime so sorry for such a long paragraph well multiple paragraphs 😭 I really can’t wait for the next chapter!

Never apologise for an in depth review! They’re my favorite!

- C&S are Stella’s big bros ❤️ aaaaand after EM3 you’ll get their backstory too 🌟

- Radius will always be down bad for Luna. He fell first and fell harder, while Luna is more of an ‘introvert’ as regards feelings. She is better at keeping them in check, at storing them and putting them away. While Solarian blood boils hotter and Radius is waaaaay more impulsive

- C&C are the worst. Always have been. Always will be. No redemption for them. Never in a million years. They are just straight up evil. Cassandra has always been after power and she’s raised Chimera in her own image. They will have what they deserve

- the girls know how important the Ball is for Stella and they want to make sure she enjoys every second of it! Little do they know that bigger things are happening behind the curtains …

- poor Brandon is a bit sick with all the attention 😅

- Anne is the ultimate loving mama. Best in the Dimensions!

- I still have to figure out the Solarians reaction … we’ll see!

Again, thank you for being so so so supportive 🌟 it’s much appreciated ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[wordtowords]

In Vogue: All That is Preternatural

preternatural - adjective - beyond what is normal; unusual (Google)

Is it just me, or does it look like everyone is trying to jump onto the preternatural bandwagon in a big way? Are creators so uninspired with what most would consider normal that they feel they have to push the envelope and take huge risks in order to get people to notice? I don't know, but yesterday I was led down a fork in the road, which veered away from Status Quo Drive, and I wound up taking a walk on the wild, weird side.

Case in point #1: The pregnant daughter of my best friend decided to videotape the preternatural way she chose to announce the gender of her forthcoming infant to close relatives. My friend, no doubt proud of her daughter's idiosyncratic imagination, texted the footage to a small group of us women friends. The daughter–I'll call her Cindy–is obsessed with her two riotous black Labs and felt that she just had to include them somehow, somewhere in the unveiling, so she bought and later put a blue collar on one (to represent a boy baby) and a pink collar on the other (to represent a girl). Then on one side of the family room, Cindy had her husband contain the dogs in separate cages in order to control them and heighten the suspense. On the opposite side of the room, Cindy was crouching down, holding a treat. When she called out to the right dog, her hubby opened just the right cage and it galloped to her, revealing to everyone its blue collar. It was all very Pavlovian to me, and I suppose unique, to be euphemistic. I'm sure all of you dog lovers out there can't wait to impart this preternatural, pre-natal gender reveal to your own expecting daughters or sons; but personally, I am left thinking that the whole thing divulged more than just the baby's sex. My guess is that Cindy may just wind up spending more quality time with the dogs than with her son. Thank Goodness the husband seems to prefer human children over canine kids.

Case in point #2: Have you seen any of the critically acclaimed films released in 2022? After the aforementioned texted home video, I saw two on TV that are being streamed right now: "Banshees of Inisherin" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once," both considered foreign, I believe. (And yes, they are, very.) The first, set on a beautiful, bucolic, remote island off the coast of Ireland somewhere in the distant, indiscernible past, has a simple, yet somewhat ridiculous plot involving two grown men: the older friend decides to alienate his younger best friend because he is dull, and warns him if he persists in wanting to reclaim the friendship, in retaliation, he will cut off his fingers on his left hand, the hand he uses to play the violin. That's it. That's the plot. Does he do it? Of course. And his selfish, sadomasochistic act leads to repercussions that only worsen the situation, but at least the bored protagonist is no longer bored. He's miserable. The second film, sci-fi in many respects, is pretty much a series of nonstop acid trips depicting parallel universes that eventually boil down to a reconciliation between an estranged teen daughter and her mother, the owner of a laundromat (both are Chinese in descent) somewhere in L.A. Both movies transcend the preternatural. I'm sorry, but both are just weird–too weird for my taste.

I am sure there are plenty of critics and readers out there who definitely disagree with me and would take a walk on the wild, weird side any day of the week just to take the detour off Status Quo Drive. Which is perfectly fine. To each, his or her (or their) own. Yet every once in a while, natural, as opposed to preternatural, is on the soft, comforting, cozy side :).

#film review, #word-to-words, #slice-of-life, #literature, #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing #opinion #satire

[xx-slug-xx]

I really like (/s) that there’s no sources and the argument just boils down to “trust me bro”. Like, they don’t go on to explain how it causes harm other than listing potential hypotheticals that may or may not happen. “It causes harm to minors” then give me peer reviewed essays and documents that explain exactly how that’s true and don’t list the hypotheticals and straw man arguments that you’ve come up with that “could maybe happen” and “common sense” as your answer. Like, are these hypotheticals even potentially true? Or are they just infantilizing people to the point where they assume people have no critical thinking skills or literary understanding? Because it really seems like the second option tbh.

Arguments like this also don’t seem to take in for account the whole “as you age, so does the character you simp for” thing. Great example is the comment that was shown, as if the moment someone turns 18, all attractions for “underaged” characters must stop or else you are a “pedophile”. Sorry, but I was the same age as Steven when Steven Universe started airing. Same with Future. If I want to simp for Future Steven, then I will because he’s always been the same age as me in my head :/ it’s a whole thing with psychology and I forget exactly what it’s called. The canon age of a character doesn’t actually matter because it’s not a real minor. Plus, a lot of “minor characters” people simp for are perceived as being older than they are in canon by the people who simp for them. It’s a subconscious thing that has actual documents that back it up, not simply “an excuse to justify being a pedophile” like many antis would claim. Honestly, I get so sick of antis not doing any sort of research into psychology and acting like they know everything just because it makes sense to them.

Google is free btw, and I think antis really need to realize that. Most proshippers I know have gone out of their way to do research, and site sources that back up their claims. Antis don’t read them usually. When antis do site sources of their own, it’s either something that hasn’t been peer reviewed, not accepted as the norm for everyone (cough cough slenderman stabbing), something that they are interpreting incorrectly, or old info that has sense had it’s understanding of it change over time. I honestly haven’t seen antis site credible sources in quite a long time. It’s always things they just claim as being true and if you don’t know that it’s true (agree), then you must be stupid :/

📺 On today's episode of antis are dumb :

There is real world problems like world hunger but antis wanna talk about fictional characters why are they focused on age of random cartoons so much ? What do they benefit from this ? The world my never know

[davenportia]

i should be doing my math homework but it’s stressing me out so i’m doing this instead

part 3 of why chase davenport deserved better. buckle up

adam. oh my lord i’m sorry but adam makes my blood boil. he’s always torturing him physically. he’s much MUCH stronger than him so he throws him across the room, punches him, and there was a whole episode where adam was using chase to work out. what’s the reason? y’all are brothers so it’s fine if you torture him? no. leave him alone. god i just

i love the ‘friends on the other side’ trend on tiktok about both sides of a person, the second being the villain side. i saw a couple about chase and omg i loved them. they were the episodes showing chase just wanting to be recognized and appreciated, then him in the avalanche episode (i still have to make mine for my instagram account.) chase had every reason to have a villain arc as he is treated so badly. yes he’s been a jerk sometimes. yes he does some things that are unnecessary but people treat him way worse than he does to others.

he and will byers are characters that i physically want to hug for hours because i feel so bad for them. my mom and i were watching lab rats and she went “they’re not very nice to [chase],” and i said “yes, no one treats him nicely.”

why is it so unbelievable and impossible for chase to have a girl interested in him or have a girlfriend? sabrina liked chase and adam ruined their study date by bringing spike out because he was jealous, and mr. davenport shook her hand to make sure she was real. is it shocking for him to have a girl over? and then when s1, i think her was, said “your brothers kinda cute” and told bree she was talking about chase, bree asked “chase? what did krane do to your brain?” like it’s so disgusting to like chase, and going backwards, in the robot fight club episode, when caitlin was chasing him because she had a creepy crush on him, bree said “he finally got a girl to pay attention to him.” however, bree did redeem herself in the attack episode with the iconic “no one messes with my brother” scene. however, adam has never been supportive, mr. davenport hasn’t really been supportive, and leo just didn’t care.

god chase can’t get a break. he wanted to hang out with his sister in the death spiral smack down episode and she lied to him to she could hang out with her friends. i don’t believe in lying unless you’re protecting someone, so i think bree should have just told him she wanted to hang out with her girlfriends that day. “i didn’t want to hurt your feelings” she said, which i get, but i think it hurts chase more when you lie to him. chase literally doesn’t have any friends until season 4 basically, and even those friends turn on him (i’ll get to that in a second). his best friends are his family (basically leo and bree), poor thing. in season 3, we see him and sabrina be friends for one episode and as i stated earlier, adam ruined it. in season 4, he became friends with sebastian (im not a sebase fan btw), and quickly best friends. little did he know that seb would soon be going to war with them essentially and trying to get revenge for killing his father, even though it was the right thing to do. that broke chases heart. he just wanted a best friend and seb and him were getting along so well. he and spin COULD have been friends, but honestly i think they’re so alike that they would hate each other. and chase could’ve been friends with each other if they had more screen time together. but even in elite force, he finally made some friends, but they still make fun of him. i’ll elaborate more on this later.

that goddamn list. y’all remember the list a.j. made ranking them based on their powers/abilities and how chase was number 5? BOYYY, he should’ve been at number 1 or number 2. let’s review his abilities, shall we?: super intelligence and super senses, force field, force field ball, magnetism app, override app, internal hard drive (and a whole database), fingerprint recognition app, molecular kinesis, levitation, laser bow, and though this is a glitch, commando app. plus, dude can FIGHT. how the hell does that deserve the last spot on the list? chases abilities are SO COOL SO IM LIKE???

he finally got some friends in elite force, even a best friend in kaz. they got along so well and they really were best friends with each other. and maybe kaz’s love language is making fun of chase because he too does that, but i think it’s light hearted. however, oliver, skylar, and bree picking on him isn’t light hearted. i don’t remember the episode but bree said chase is like an old lady (god he’s not that bad), and in another, oliver said it’s amusing when chase freaks out. i admit he was overreacting to the situation he was freaking out about, but why is it amusing when someone is freaking out?

principal perry. i don’t need to elaborate.

reese. i love her and hate her. i can’t explain why i love her, i just do. but i hate her because of how she treated chase. she tricked him. she played with his heart. again, i just want to hug him and treat him like a king. y’all know the song boyfriend by dove cameron, well that’s one of the things i feel about chase, just reversed. in another reality, where i’m a girl, i could be a better girlfriend than reese, danielle, sabrina, and for the chaz shippers, a better boyfriend than kaz. i would treat chase the way he deserves to be treated. give him the recognition he deserves. defend him. fight for him. love him platonically or not, i would treat him so much better than others treat him.

did we forget how he was created? by two brother scientists, one of which wanted to make adam, bree, and him ciber soldiers (correct me if i’m wrong) and make them evil. then he was taken from douglas by donald and adopted so they could have a better life. donald did save them, i’ll give him that, but he kept them in the basement for 16 years. i will admit, i wouldn’t have had a better idea than to hide them for that long, but when they made one mistake, he wanted to send them away to finish their training and never be able to see the world again. that’s just sad. but like, think about this. they were babies and they had these chips embedded in their necks when they were BABIES. they were literal lab rats (hence the name of the show) and they were B A B I E S. y’all??? imagine having a tiny metal get shoved into your neck when you’re barely alive and you grow up with these bionics that you never asked for and you’re hidden from the world for 16 years. on top of that, when your bionics are exposed to the world, everyone thinks you’re a threat and you’re nearly separated from your family. PLUS people like krane, who specifically wanted to kill them because he wanted to be more powerful. could you imagine growing up like that?

have i mentioned spike yet? well if i haven’t in previous posts, here you go. spike isn’t chase. he’s a glitch that’s like another person inside of chase. he’s an angry person with the strength of 10 men and ready to kill someone. the first time we ever meet him, he only comes out for a little bit but leo, adam, and bree are enjoying it and taking advantage of it. chase freaks out when he comes out of commando mode as he doesn’t remember anything and doesn’t know what spike did. he comes out again in that episode and they take advantage of it again so they can win a football game. when he disengages, chase reveals how excited he was for his first day and how he barely remembers it because most of it was lived by spike. bree ignores him and asks “where is spike?” while shaking the poor boy. leo then realizes that chase is right. but does that mean that the torture to chase regarding spike stops? sadly, no. i’ll skip ‘spikes got talent’ because that was an accident and he wasn’t being taken advantage of, so let’s just go to season 3. as stated before, adam purposely brought spike out to make chase humiliate himself in front of her who liked him. adam took advantage of chases glitch and was happy that spike came out. poor chase, man. chase doesn’t like spike, he probably hates that glitch, and people not using try to bring him out, but they take advantage of it when he is out.

hopefully this is the last “why chase davenport deserved better” post but who knows with me. alright back to my math, wish me luck yall i got a test coming up 😭

[hometownrockstar]

I’ve been wanting to read new books/comics do you have any suggestions? I wanna broaden my horizon and try out works I haven’t had the chance to get into!

yeah sure! ive been reading quite a bit lately, mainly horror and disturbing books/mangas so obviously trigger warnings for those ones i can elaborate on specific ones if u ask but i'll keep it short... iunno what specifically you might want so i'll just shoutout my favs recently

Berserk has been the latest manga ive been reading, probably one of the hardest ones to read bc its VERY sad and disturbing but is an incredible story nonetheless. i am not phased easily by written stuff but berserk was the first thing to have a scene that i had to look away from so proceed with caution... Berserk is interesting bc it has Nietzschean tragedy themes and structure, portraying a world where evil and pain happens for no reason despite humans fearing not pain but pain without purpose, but it also holds a sense of compassion and realism to both the good and bad, exemplifying how Nietzsche saw tragedy as beneficial to enjoying and valuing the good parts of life. Sorry this got long but a lot of horror stuff i feel can be boiled down to "Super fucked up bad things happen in it" which doesnt give the whole scope of how a specific media might handle or portray it, so i wanted to explain how it feels to me, rather than just saying its gratuitous.

Something different is the manga Ultra Heaven! this was like finding gold when i discovered it, its short and unfortunately incomplete but i highly recommend it just for the incredible illustration work and playing with paneling and crazy mind stuff. its written by a guy who does drugs and often points to psychadelics as a heavy influence for his work, and its extremely apparent in this one. if you love beautiful artwork and surrealist mind-fucky narratives (like perfect blue or eva) then i cant recommend this enough.

ok i cant let this get too long ummm Animorphs! throwing a curveball but its still horror, just kid's cosmic horror. and war. and its really good, even tho i read it as an adult for the first time i loved it. actually rlly good commentary on the ethics and grey morality during war. Heres where u can download every book, the megamorphs and alternamorphs are required for the plot btw theyre listed in the order u read them in-between the series books.

A good horror/comedy manga is Franken Fran, i INSTANTLY took to it when i picked it up its my style of dark comedy exactly. i really liked black jack for the episodic chapter style, n this is like black jack but with dark comedy body horror and i love it :3

Back to books... I'll list these together, Come Closer by Sara Gran and Confessions by Kanae Misato. I stayed up all night on two separate nights reading these bc they had me hooked so well lol... I wouldnt call them horror, more like thriller/tragedies. come closer has a great writing style, its a rather sad book about a woman being possessed by a demon, really good sparse prose that emphasizes details. Confessions is just... u gotta go right into it, its GREAT. really intriguing style and premise, love the epistolary format, SO good with details.

The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelley Jackson, short story compilation. i talked abt it best in this post so i'll link it

Bonding by Maggie Siebert is a great short story horror collection as well, the horror feels like aching and emotionally palpable in it, very well done one of my fav horror books ive read so far.

These next two things are about more abstract writing so dont expect completely clear narratives -w- but I read Amygdalatropolis by B.R. Yeager and i SUPER loved it but i might have to reread it a couple of times to get the hang of it. his newer book Negative Space has good reviews so i'll check it out soon but thats more of a grounded narrative, Amygdalatropolis juggles surrealist imagery, forum text, symbolic elements in a truly hypnotic way.

Umm finally i have been really into books of poetry by Sam Pink lately :)! theyre rather short and like some are more story-related but theyre absurdist and really like, good and resonating in a personal way, i really super enjoy it, i read You Hear Ambulance Sounds And Think They Are For You and a bit of Person and i like them a lot :)

[bridoesotherjunk]

Well, it's officially been a week since I first saw Venom 2. I'm going to start posting spoilers.

!!!!! As a reminder, I am tagging all my spoilers with these tags::

# Venom Spoilers

# Venom Let There Be Carnage Spoilers

# Venom 2 Spoilers

# Venom ltbc spoilers

------- Now, I'm going to start my spoilers with my honest review of the movie under the cut here. SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I talk about several scenes in the movie in depth. Please don't blame me if I spoil things for you. I tried to warn you.

First opinions?

This one was not as coherent as the first Venom. It went very very fast and could have used an extra 20 to 30 minutes to pad some scenes and slow a couple things down. That post that describes Venom 2 as "venom with the brakes off" is accurate because it goes from 0 to 100 instantly. It needed to just slow down a little bit and have some moments for the audience to breathe.

That being said?

Absolute blast of a movie. Super fun, super silly. Incredibly gay. Venom is a hopeless romantic and an absolute moron. It was so fucking funny. I was laughing during almost the entire movie. The first chunk of the movie felt like me on a bad day in quarantine, stuck in a house with my mother and brother for weeks on end. Ready to kill something off the slightest provocation. (Tom Hardy managed to get the "pandemic locked in the house" stress perfectly right before the pandemic even started.)

Venom gets hit on by a girl at the rave and he gets scared and runs away while saying, "No, no, sorry, not my type" - CUZ HES GAY and LOVES EDDIE.

Venom's speech at the LGBT rave basically boils down to ""I'm totally fine, I don't need Eddie. Eddie was wrong. Eddie is a big mean poopyhead. I don't even miss Eddie at all." And then Venom immediately collapses and talks about missing Eddie. - Hopeless. In love. Gay as fuck. Just go kiss him already, you loser.

I really appreciated that this movie kept up with the cliche dodging in some aspects. --- Cletus tries to do the stereotypical "mysterious killer" thing that all these movies and shows do where he tries to give Eddie tiny clue and tiny hints just to get Eddie to keep printing his name in the paper and get attention. Venom completely fucks up his plan. Cletus gets PISSED about it, but it's so fucking funny in hindsight. Venom just went ""Nah, fuck you. You don't get the spotlight. Exposed, bitch."" And I loved that. I went in expecting to get the big scary, half riddle, killer speech from Cletus. And they just went "YEah no"

I LOVED SHRIEK. SHE WAS SO MENACING AND SO WEIRD. Her first comment upon meeting Carnage- ""That is so HOT"" -- HELL YES, GIRL. Hell yes! Monsterfucker queen in the movie herself.

Didn't like that Red wasn't a girl, but I guess maybe they were worried audiences wouldn't understand it. Carnage was Evil Baby (tm) the entire movie. So young and so full or Murder. 10/10

There's a scene with Venom and Anne that honestly? Really did not like. It was uncomfortable and I know it was played for laughs, but I just... No. Just no.

I was fucking celebrating in my seat after Eddie and Cletus's altercation in the prison. When Cletus just fucking stared and shouted, "Eddie!!??!!"" -- EXACTLY what I wanted. Oh my god, I wanted that so bad. Just a moment for the scary serial killer to finally be thrown off his game. He thinks he's so big and tough and can hurt Eddie however he wants and then suddenly his whole world kind of tilts after he bites him. I LOVE moments like that.

DAN WAS BACK. I LOVE DAN SO MUCH. MY BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY, I'M SO GLAD THEY DIDN'T KILL YOU. DAAAAAAANNNNNNN

The ending was fucking beautiful. Venom tries to sound all smart and philosophical while confessing their love to Eddie and Eddie teases them about it and gets all smiley and happy while they sit on a fucking tropical island and watch a god damn sunset together and their bodies sit in the shape of a fucking heart. Andy Serkis, Kelly Marcel, and Tom Hardy, I thank you for your service. Now give me a bunch of sappy/horny kisses in the third one and I will love you all forever.

The end credit scene? Yeah, I knew it was coming for like... a month or more. I already knew what they were going to do. I'm not stupid. I could see it. ... I have to wonder what the plan here is, exactly... Tom Hardy's Venom really doesn't seem like a villain to me. He's trying so hard to be a hero, he's just super bad at it. I would enjoy it more if they had Eddie be like the weird hobo uncle to Peter. -- I enjoyed the hidden pregnancy innuendo in the credits, though. They knew their audience. (Also Venom's fear of towel swans. Relatable.)

Also did a little celebration dance when we got Venom and Mrs. Chen together. This movie fulfilled two of my biggest wants and I am so happy about it.

Rating - 8.8/10. Very enjoyable. But still had some problems.