#This is literally the only good image I can find of him online unfortunately

[stabbyhandsmcmike]

Don't forget Killjoy

𝔖𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔶 ℭ𝔩𝔬𝔴𝔫𝔰 𝔦𝔫 ℌ𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝔪𝔬𝔳𝔦𝔢𝔰

[ironxkid]

why don't you like endgame or civil war

((hoo buddy, idk what brought this up but salt under the cut!! Like... a lot of salt - specifically regarding Endgame lmao

I’m gonna start off with CACW because it’s a short response lol

I don’t like it simply because I was done with the infighting between the Avengers. The found family crumbs we were given in Endgame was something I really wanted to see, and them just... ripping them apart frustrated me lol

honestly, the movie was... fine? Idk, I found it to be a lil slow for my taste (it felt like it just dragged on when I watched it in theaters), and I just don’t care for it in general  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, ngl, I’m really bummed that Captain America: Serpent Society was a joke announcement because that sounds dope as hell and I really wanted to see that before I realized it’d been a joke dfgjhdsfhj

but, yeah, literally just because CACW is specifically an infighting movie annoys me to no end so I just won’t watch it again dgsfjhsfdhj

now, Endgame?

fuck Endgame

I. have a lot of issues with it, all of which are major grievances throughout the fandom. I’m pissed they killed Natasha and didn’t even bother giving her a fucking funeral because, I quote from Joe Russo, “Well, Tony does not have another movie. Tony is done. And Natasha has another film. And Marvel Universe obviously does not have to move forward linearly anymore. But that character still has more screen time coming.” (see here) and that annoys the hell out of me. She’s getting another movie - great! So you killed one of the few characters doing her fucking best to keep everything together at the compound, the one who was taking charge, give her a big role, and then murk her and... give her nothing but a brief mention at the end. Like... what the fuck? Natasha deserved so much better than what she was given. Tony’s funeral could’ve (and, frankly, should’ve) been a funeral for him, Natasha, and Vision because god forbid we see anyone mourn Vision other than Wanda

(actually this post covers how Endgame fucked over the MCU women perfectly, though Wanda’s not mentioned :c )

plus... Tony’s not done lol - he’s still a massive figure in the films/shows despite RDJ not acting in them, so his character has left shockwaves that aren’t dying any time soon. Natasha... basically disappeared, and I believe she would’ve been dropped completely if it wasn’t for the fact she does have a film coming out soon. Which, frankly, seems awesome and all, but it’s a film that goes back to post-CACW pre-IW and... frankly doesn’t give me any reason to understand why that means she didn’t get a funeral. She’s not coming back in future movies/shows that are in present MCU timeline - her movie is set in the past. She could’ve gotten a decent sendoff 

now, Clint’s arc as Ronin rubs me the wrong way. I know it’s a huge thing in the comics, and it’s not him taking a different mantle that I have an issue with. It’s the fact he, a white man, went around murdering people and got off scot-free. Yes, he was targeting genuinely bad people, but... to show that, they specifically singled out Mexican cartels and the yakuza (Japanese mafia, essentially) - so, in other words, the bad guys were people of color! I feel like I don’t need to explain how fucked up that is. And, to clarify, I love Clint! Clint is honestly one of my favorite characters, and the whole thing was just handled... poorly in the film

Tony’s arc genuinely hurts. This is a man who has suffered for years and has tried to make things right, and finally got a chance to settle down. He finally retired from the Avengers, finally settled down, and had a fucking life he could enjoy despite his ghosts, and yet... His arc ends with a message of “tortured soul finally gets rest by dying”. Because, y’know, it’s great seeing yet another long-suffering character only reaching peace through death, because god forbid they let characters heal! He could’ve still caused the second Snap, and he could’ve survived. He could’ve finally been able to step away for good and focus on his family, focus on recovering, and be truly happy. What’s so wrong with letting him stay alive so he can rest and be with his family? What’s so wrong with letting a long-suffering character finally find peace after one last bang? 

plus it pisses me off that they’re now using him as a reasoning as to why bad things are still happening. Why is this person the bad guy? Because Tony Stark somehow may or may not have done something that hurt them! Even though most of that really stems from Howard or Obadiah. Tony just ends up getting the blame in their place. He’s just an easy target to use, much like the tesseract seems to be the go-to answer for why things go wrong. But this is a different train of thought

Steve’s ending pisses me off just as much as the next person lmao. You take a character who has acknowledged he no longer belongs in the past (which, funnily enough, was written by the Russos), aaaaaaand have him go back to the past while ignoring two important people in his life that were still right there. He got Bucky and Sam back, and he leaves them. His arc is ruined within a matter of minutes, and it paints a hella bad picture of him in the process. He goes back in time to stay with Peggy (which ultimately destroys her own arc, and the fact she’s a person outside of her relationship (or lack thereof) with him because, y’know, why have her be able to move on and be her own person?), and we’re supposed to believe he’s fine with everything he knows from the future? Fine with knowing Bucky’s trapped with HYDRA and is suffering as the Winter Soldier? Fine with knowing HYDRA has infested SHIELD from day one? Fine with knowing Howard and Maria are going to die? Fine with royally fucking up the timelines? We’re supposed to believe he sat back and did nothing with all of that? They could’ve had him still hand the shield over to Sam - they could’ve let Steve stay an Avenger without the mantle

also the fact the Russos said he didn’t recognize Red Skull when he returned to Vormir to return the soul stone? Like... what the fuck?? Not to mention he literally returns the stone to Vormir, which “soul for a soul”, and they didn’t bring Nat back that way??

and now onto Thor. Thor... holy fuck is this hitting something personal for me. Thor was ridden with guilt - he was furious with himself, hated himself, and blamed himself for failing to stop the Snap. He fell into a massive depression, and... was promptly danced around as laughing stock. Like, “oh! look at Thor! he’s fat and drunk because he’s depressed haha!” - like fuck off. It’s not funny in any form. His suffering was made into a joke and it pisses me off because I suffer from depression. A lot of people suffer from depression. It’s not funny. It’s fucking terrifying at times. I wasted a shit ton of money on a stupid online sim game because it was a distraction - it gave me... god, I wouldn’t even say temporary happiness, but it gave me something to temporarily help, and I still hate myself for doing it. It was a poor decision on my part, and I wish I could change it. And, during that time, I was scared because I couldn’t see myself pulling out of it. I thought I was gonna feel that way forever. I called out of work multiple times because there were days I couldn’t stop crying (something I still feel horrible for doing), I couldn’t get myself to contact any of my friends for months, and it was all because the medication I was on at the time... stopped working. Thankfully, my depression doesn’t work in a way that makes me a danger to myself, so that wasn’t an issue, but it still fucking sucked. And to see a character that I could relate to on such a personal level treated as laughing stock fucking hurt. I’m not sharing this for sympathy - I’m sharing this because it Thor’s arc hit home and it’s literally the main reason why I will not watch Endgame again

this is more of a nitpick than anything else, but... I didn’t really care for Carol in it tbh? Which is unfortunately because Captain Marvel is one of my absolute favorite movies! And I’m well aware she was introduced in Endgame while CM was being drafted, but that in itself is annoying?? Because Carol was originally going to be introduced in AoU, but was cut because it wasn’t going to introduce her character properly. And yet they decide to introduce her character in a clusterfuck of a movie before her movie is in the final stages, and proceed to release her movie first and then give a complete different characterization in her following appearance

honestly I just wanna cover this now to clarify some things regarding Carter and her backstory: the only reason I keep Endgame as is is because it felt easier for me to do so for the purpose of bending canon for specific threads. I wanted to stay as true to the given plots as possible to help with fudging of both the movies and her background, and also because I didn’t want anyone to feel like I was trying to force my own headcanons onto them, y’know? 

I’m just gonna plug this here because fuck it lol, but I did start a fix-it fic regarding Endgame that you can read here! I... probably won’t finish it tbh, and I haven’t gone over it in a hot minute so it might be riddled with errors ahah - plus I’m not sure about how I wrote the characters! I get nervous when writing canon characters because I feel like I’ll miss their characterization completely, which is actually why I,,, rarely rp canon characters dgfjhgsfdhj

also the image in the doc was created by @/archervale!! 

[bodhrancomedy]

Unfortunately I do not have the time to give you a proper long essay on why helping people should not involve you profiting off their image or stripping them of their dignity.

Here is a link to a much longer video where I explain it as well as show the kind of abuse people get for pointing out that Mr Beast is not handling these situations even a third as well as he should be.

I said "exploiting people's financial insecurities" if we want to be technical, but, yes, I do believe that offering people (for example) $500'000 to live for 100 days with a total stranger in a nearly blank white room cannot be called anything but exploitive considering that is a literal torture technique. I do not care that "they chose to do it" since that is a life-changing amount of money in a cost-of-living crisis, anyone who comes up with that or allows it to go to air is a piece of shit.

He turns it into online content. Then ONLY do that online content to yourself. Or find a better, more productive way to make money. This is far from his only option. He's a personality. Use his own personality. Also, he should confirm whether he's doing it through other methods.

Strangely enough, I believe that people deserve both help and dignity. I don't think playing rich people games with desperate contestants is a net good in the world and I can tell you that as a Deaf creative myself (not downplaying the fact that you are deaf, but merely pointing out that I have a face and a presence on the internet and I don't think you do), that video was far from a net good because I was inundated with ableist and audist assumptions, demands, and comments due to his handling of our lives and culture despite having never criticised him before. I criticised him because his shitty video started affecting how people were interacting with me, a Deaf creator.

A little update and explanation (even if I’m late since I was dealing with a personal matter) on Mr Beast’s Deaf video and why it severely pissed off a lot of D/deaf folks. Including me.

[dazed--xx]

Alone

REQUEST: *Hi see you mentioned about story requests. I'm having a hard time since I'm currently pregnant and my partner walked out on me, so could you do one when Jungkook where I meet Jungkook and he helps me raise the baby please*

Summary:  “I'm pregnant Jungkook.” the line goes dead silent “look before you say anything, no I wasn’t hiding this from you and I completely understand if you don’t want to talk to me shit I wouldn’t want to talk to me and move on to someone who is not pregnant and going to be having this type of responsibilities-” “Y/N-”

GENRE: Mild-Angst, Fluff

Member: Jungkook x Pregnant!reader

Word count: 2,132 

A/N: so this is literally my first fanfic ever and i hope you guys like it. and to the person that requested this I wanted to tag you because i did post it but i didnt want to kind of call you out online especially since this was based on something you have personally happening to you, trust me pregnancy is scary let alone having to go it alone so if you need someone to talk to im here btw.. but hopefully you guys like this it was pretty good i wanna post a couple of requests a day since i banged this out as quickly as i did im taking more requests just inbox me or go to my ask let me know if you want your name attached to the request and i will send everyone that i know requested a specific story i will tag and send it to you so you know it is done but without further ado ALONE

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

“Where are you going? Do you really expect me to do this alone?” I shouted to the already abandoned house. A swell in my throat rises and I can't breathe. My body shakes as the tears take over. I fall to my knees running my hand over my stomach. “Don’t you worry baby; Daddy will be back he loves you I promise” I say to the life growing within my womb. 

The warmth from the comforter consumes me as I awaken with dried tears in my eyes. My heart aches as I remember the events from the past 12 hours. The thick silence takes hold of my heart and it begins racing. My heart beat sounding as if it is being played on a speaker the size of a skyscraper. Feeling the bile rise in my throat, rushing to the bathroom, I empty out the contents of my stomach. Tears escape my eyes as I reach out to the void. I'm alone truly.  

My first OBGYN appointment rolls around and my heart is in my stomach. The nurse escorts me in, slowly my feet turn into lead as I drag myself onto the cot in the room and lay back facing the monitor. Once I feel that cool gel upon my stomach, my heart settles and the most beautiful BUMP BUMP BUMP is heard throughout the room. My eyes focus on the image in front of me. “well congrats sweetie you're about 10 weeks, Due September 27. Remember no stress and make sure to take your prenatal. We’ll see you next week” My ultrasound technician announces excitedly. I smile anxious as to what I should do next.  

I make my way to a small café after my appointment wanting a small tea to calm my nerves. Looking around the coffee shop I notice quite the crowd and my panic begins to set in. It feels like I can't breathe while the crowds begin to grow as the café reaches the brink of rush. More and More people pour through the door as my anxiety takes over and I feel the bile rising again, I abandon my spot in line trying to make it to the restroom before I release the contents of my stomach all over the café floor. The restroom door becomes the only thing in sight to me as I dash for it. I reach for the handle and the door opens and I slam into a hard chest and soon I am on the floor.

“HOLY CRAP!!! IM SO SORRY I WAS NOT PAYING ATTENTION” A angelic voice apologized above me. My eyes drift from the floor up to see the most amazing man I've ever seen in my life with his hand out and my voice gets caught in my throat. I stare at him for a while capturing every detail of his face and take his hand. I nod quickly and mutter a fast “Sorry” and dash around the beautiful man and lose myself behind the safety of the door. I was dreading walking back out into the craziness of the café, but excited to see if I could once again get a glimpse of the gorgeous man from before.  

Soon I am back in line and order my tea, when a familiar voice sounds from next to me “You know.... you should let me pay you back for your drink you know...since I hurt you” Shocked I turn my head to see the same beautiful man from before. “Oh, please don’t worry about it I really wasn’t paying attention either it's not a big deal” I smile shyly. “Besides I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than to buy a stranger a drink” He laughs “Honestly, Beautiful, I don’t really have anything to do with my time that doesn’t involve getting to know you” Heat creeps up to my face and I lower my gaze and smile. “I don’t need you to pay me back for my tea for you to be able to get to know me, but unfortunately I gotta go” I say slowly moving past him. “At least let me get your number...please” He asked “You don’t even know my name and you want my number?” “Hey I know what I want and I feel like me knowing your name won't matter much cause I probably won't be calling you anything other than mine” I let out a small giggle “ that was super corny but since you're trying so hard give me your phone” I put my number in his phone and hand it back to him and walk toward the door “By the way my name is Y/N” as I make my exit I hear him shout back “Jungkook!”  

As the weeks pass, I find myself talking more and more to Jungkook. He still hasn’t stopped flirted with me as much as he did that day in the café but we talk everyday about almost everything and I can't help but feel scared to tell him I am having a baby. What would he say? Will he not want to talk to me anymore? Would he not like me as much? A loud RING pulls me out of my thoughts as my phone lights up with Jungkook's name and photo comes up on my screen.  

“Hey, what's up cutie?” He says excitedly  

“Not much, just lying in bed not feeling too good today” I respond pouty  

“Aw, do you need anything? Medicine? I can bring you soup it'll make you feel better I know you said you went out with your friend last night are you hungover?” The worry evident in his voice.

“Um honestly no um I can't drink so I'm definitely not hungover just different I know what it is though I'll be fine” the nervousness in my voice is evident

“what's wrong then beautiful? Is everything okay?” Oh no... not that question. He’s worried and I know he is but I don’t know what to say. I can't stop it the words just rush out of my mouth like the bile I throw up every morning  

“I'm pregnant Jungkook....I'm 14 weeks pregnant” the line goes dead silent “look before you say anything, no I wasn’t hiding this from you and I completely understand if you don’t want to talk to me shit I wouldn’t want to talk to me and move on to someone who is not pregnant and going to be having this type of responsibilities-” “Y/N-” No listen Kookie cause I really like you and I didn’t mean to keep this from you I was just scared that you would hate me” “Y/N-” “I mean I know you just met me a couple weeks ago and it wouldn’t mean much for you to just walk away from this because let's be honest who wants to deal with that-” “Y/N! JUST STOP AND LISTEN PLEASE!” The words stop flowing as quickly as they began.

“Do you think id stop liking you because of the simple fact that you're pregnant, I mean yeah it does suck that you're going to have someone else's baby but I don’t care about that... WAIT! Is that why your ex left?” I stay silent

“Baby....are you there?” He asks worried.

“Baby girl???”  

“Beautiful are you okay? Hello?”

I sniffle “Yeah I’m here sorry” my voice cracks at every word.

“Baby are you crying? Do you need me to get you anything?”  

“No, I'm fine I promise I'm going to go to bed okay? Goodnight handsome I'll talk to you in the morning” “wait what no I'm com-” I cut him off to end the already overwhelming call. My vision blurs as the tears cascade down my face and I let out a harsh sob. I was scared for nothing or he's just too optimistic. A loud knock on the door grabs my attention.  

“who is it?” fear leaking out in my tone. “Baby it's me open up” I hear Jungkook's melodic voice through the door. Quickly I swing the door open to be greeted with the man I've grown so accustomed to in the past few weeks. Taking in the sight of him my heart begins to race as the tears began to no longer form. He reaches his arms around me and pulls me against him. “Baby girl, why didn’t you tell me sooner? You really thought that would make me just leave. How could I do that when in the past few weeks, you’ve stolen my heart” He looks at me and there's a hunger in his eyes as they shift down to my lips. “aww fuck it” he exclaims as his lips capture mine. His arms wrap around my waits as my hands get lost in his soft midnight hair. After a while he pulls away and a small whimper is released from my mouth. “Do you know HOW long I've wanted to do that” he exclaims excitedly with a smile plastered across his face.

After that night Jungkook never left my side, everything I craved he got, Anytime I felt nauseous Jungkook was there.  It became routine with him his calls became more frequent on days he knew I had appointments and he went to every ultrasound. His excitement for my baby was shown one day when I came home from work and my whole apartment was filled top to bottom with diapers bottles and wipes. Jungkook was still too nervous to buy much because he felt he was taking part of the experience from me and the fact that we still don’t know what the baby is yet. As the date rolls around to the appointment it's all Jungkook can talk about. He wants a girl every five seconds he reminds me it's always “Baby do you think the princess will like me? I mean I want her to know I care and that I love you” which is why he was so heartbroken when he could not make it to the gender reveal appointment because of a last-minute practice session. “Please promise to call me right after you find out okay baby?” He begs sadly before he left for the morning.  

After the appointment my heart swelled with joy as I turned into my driveway to see Jungkook's car sitting there. As soon as I unlocked the door, I felt a pair of strong arms wrap around my waist and feel kisses peppered up my neck “Hey, Baby how did your appointment go? How are you feeling?” he says in-between kisses. A blush creeps up onto my face “Yeah, it went great baby is a growing good and healthy, so I have to tell you something” I state biting my bottom lip and looking toward the ground.

“Oh god what's wrong? Is our princess okay?” his use of the word our makes my heart skip a beat “OUR? And the baby is fine....” I look at him pointedly and his hand runs through his hair as his face turns beet red as he slowly stutters out “I mean....um... I'm sorry I didn’t mean to just assume that you wanted me involved but it's so hard not to be when I'm so in love with you that I don’t care if I wasn’t the one that got you pregnant that’s my baby and you’re my girl so yeah our.... so, what is you have to tell me?” I kiss him softly at his words. I beam at him “You're literally so amazing I can't believe you would even consider any of this I know it's a lot to ask for someone to be involved with someone who is pregnant and all I appreciate it baby BUT unfortunately it's not a princess we got blessed with, handsome” as I put his hand on my stomach and his face twists into confusion “what do you-WAIT! IT’S A BOY? FORREAL? IT’S A BOY?” the smile cannot be contained on his face as he comes to the realization.

"Yes, it’s a boy” I state as Jungkook lifts and twirls me around I laugh.

Jungkook happily exclaims “Oh my god, I'm gonna have a son.” Jungkook drops to his knees and places his hand on my stomach and softly speaks “Hey handsome, its daddy, no I'm not your real daddy baby but I'm going to love you and your mommy like I am. I can't imagine a world without you I can't wait to meet you”

I stand there smiling knowing.......Jungkook won’t ever leave me alone  

[mostlycompetentwriter]

“Question” - A Neverending Story Drabble

F/M Pairing: OC x Kim Seungmin (SKZ)

Genre: Strangers to Lovers; Sequel Drabble

Warnings: Fluff!!!

Word Count: 1.1K

Summary: Seungmin never really believed in the idea of love at first sight. But then he meets you, and his entire perception changes.

A/N: 101 Dalmatians is an amazing movie!

Seungmin was quite certain that, in another life, he would already have a giant house far away from the city where he could adopt and raise as many dogs as his heart desired. Unfortunately, living in his current apartment meant that he had to abide by rules and restrictions, and his landlord was adamant that Seungmin had to find his new puppies forever homes because they couldn’t stay with him. It was a harsh reality to embrace, but Seungmin was lucky that his close friend, Y/N, had already adopted one, and Minho could be convinced with the right reasoning. But that left half a dozen little dalmatians without homes, and Seungmin knew they deserved something better. 

He also couldn’t bear the thought of taking them to the animal shelter, so he immediately got to work and distributed online advertisements to reach as many people as possible. Consequently, Seungmin received more requests than he ever thought possible, but after a very thorough examination, he found a few interested parties who seemed acceptable. And he was meeting with one of the potential applicants in a neutral location - the small diner located close to his apartment.

Thankfully, it was only a short walk to the diner, and Seungmin arrived early enough to ensure that he would be prepared with the proper paperwork and several printed photographs of the puppies. It seemed like everything was going according to plan, and Seungmin had already decided that he was doing everything right to the best of his ability. Which definitely made it a little easier to cope with the knowledge that he would have to part ways with the dogs.

In any case, Seungmin was still startled to hear a tentative voice inquire his name, and he looked up in surprise to meet the shy gaze of a young woman wearing a heavy coat and sunglasses. “Hello,” she said. “Are you Seungmin?”

He nodded his head. “I guess you’re Anne.”

The smile he received in return was blinding, and Seungmin immediately sat up straighter in his chair while Anne took a seat down in front of him. “This place is really cute,” she commented, and Seungmin found himself drawn to the unfamiliar accent lacing her words.

“So, uhm, I have most of the information,” he said, gently pushing some of the files in Anne’s direction. “I’m really just hoping to place them in good homes.”

“Yeah?” Anne grinned. “I was so excited to see your advertisement. I just moved to the city and I thought adoption might help me feel a little less lonely.”

“Well, they make good companions,” Seungmin said. “I’d keep them myself, but my landlord won’t allow it.”

“He doesn’t sound too fond of man’s best friend,” Anne laughed. “I’m sorry you can’t keep them, though. You seem like you’d rather keep them for yourself.”

“I kinda grew close to them,” Seungmin admitted. “But at least two of my friends agreed to help. I can always stay in contact with them.”

“You’re very dedicated, then,” Anne remarked. “I actually really like that idea, and I wouldn’t mind giving you some information so that you can keep in touch.”

“R-really?” Seungmin stuttered because he wasn’t expecting Anne to propose such a thing. Nor was he prepared for the flirtatious edge behind those seemingly innocuous words.

“Of course,” Anne said. “I’m also in no hurry.”

She raised her hand to flag down a waiter, glancing at Seungmin to ask him if he wanted anything. “Coffee?” Seungmin inquired, and Anne ordered them both a mug and a piece of cake.

“The atmosphere is hard to resist,” Anne explained, and that’s how Seungmin spent an entire afternoon talking to a complete stranger to their heart’s desire over several cups of coffee and an interesting selection of baked goods.

It was early evening when Seungmin realized that he needed to return to his apartment to feed his dogs. But there was also a big part of him that didn’t want to leave, especially since he had discovered a strangely intimate connection with Anne. Seungmin had never been the type to believe in fated love or anything like that, but he did find it interesting that every part of him wanted to stay with Anne for just a little longer...

“Would you like to see them in person?” Seungmin asked and Anne nodded eagerly. Which, in turn, made Seungmin’s heart beat just a little faster.

Since Seungmin’s apartment was so close, he was able to convince Anne to walk with him, and they both admired the new Christmas lights that the city had recently incorporated to brighten the streets. “It’s so nice out!” Anne said, and her shoulder brushed against Seungmin’s.

Was that intentional? he wondered to himself.

Nonetheless, Anne was delighted when Seungmin invited her inside his apartment to the unforgettable image of several mischievous dalmatian puppoes rushing at them to observe the new stranger. “They can be a bit much,” Seungmin said, watching the puppies climb over one another to sniff at Anne’s sandals.

“I love them so much!” Anne said, dropping to the floor to open her arms and welcome an onslaught of black and white shapes, falling backwards with a delightful laugh. “Seungmin, they’re amazing!”

Seungmin laughed because he wouldn’t expect someone to appreciate a literal dog pile this much. “The smallest one is yours.”

“Really?” Anne asked with bright eyes, picking up the runt of the litter and bringing it closer to her face. “Hi, new friend.”

The small puppy offered a tentative lick, and Anne turned back to Seungmin as if to make sure he had just witnessed the exchange. “I think he likes you,” Seungmin said, and he quietly walked around Anne in the direction of the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“I’m okay,” Anne said, cradling the puppy against her chest to scratch behind his ears.

Seungmin nodded, but then he hesitated when he remembered that he was going to make a casserole for dinner, and he usually made way too much for one person...

“Seungmin, I should probably get going soon,” Anne said from the other room, and Seungmin immediately started to panic at the idea.

He quickly rushed back into the main room, gasping as he held up a hand in front of a confused Anne. “Y-you should stay for dinner,” he managed around several lungfuls of air. “I mean, if you want to...”

Anne paused, looking at Seungmin for several seconds before she started laughing. And for a moment, Seungmin was worried that he had blown his chances, but then Anne took a step closer to him. “I would love to,” she said, and Seungmin had never been happier to stay up late into the night sharing his favorite casserole with Anne while they surrounded themselves with six dalmatian puppies.

[thebachelordiaries]

Clare seeks HIMBO: ‘The Bachelorette’ cast first impressions

The Covid-19 pandemic has been rough for the entire world, but Bachelor Nation faced some dark days too. Going eight months without a single new episode from The Bachelor franchise is something I would really like to not relive.

Fortunately, those dark days are over. Clare’s season has me sucked back in. 

The quality of this image is atrocious.

Most of these men—presuming they followed CDC’s social distancing guidelines— haven’t seen a woman in months, are touch deprived, possibly unemployed and contemplating moving back to their hometown while stalking the housing market on Zillow. Everyone’s desperate. That makes for some pretty good TV.

This season features men ranging from ages 26 to 41. We’ve got a boy band manager, a grooming specialist, several men who look like they masturbate in front of full length mirrors and even more who probably want me to join their MLM pyramid scheme. 

I’ve never been more ready to roast a bunch of men who have nightmares about going bald. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since March.

Let’s go:

AJ, 28, Software sales

AJ is the kind of guy who writes “Looking for the Pam to my Jim <3″ on his Bumble profile. His bio is generic and probably not reflective of who he is as a person. If I were Clare I’d swipe left.

Ben, 29, Army ranger veteran

“Ben's favorite indulgence is an ice bath.“ Well then.

Alexa, play “Run” by AWOLNATION.

Bennett, 36, Wealth management consultant

Bennett’s profile is the biggest red flag I’ve ever seen. This man says he is the total package but hasn’t always been "this successful and good looking.” But wait, there’s more: “According to Bennett, his high school girlfriend is the only girl he's ever had to work for.“

Can someone tell me what NYC neighborhood he lives in so I can blacklist it?

Blake M1, 31, Male grooming specialist

Blake’s just another stereotypical “29th round draft pick who sat on the bench of the practice team before getting cut, but claims he left the sport due to an injury on his own accord.” 

Blake M2, 29, Wildlife manager

This Blake is an outdoorsy Canadian who seems pretty genuine and cool. Unfortunately, he has the face of someone who’d get sent home on night one. I hope I’m wrong.

Brandon, 28, Real Estate Agent

Just another boring hot person. Nothing to see here.

Brendan, 30, Commercial roofer

Brandan, not to be confused for Brandon, “loves some good true crime, working out and hanging out with his friends.” I can’t even make fun of this man. We have the exact same interests. 

Chasen, 31, IT account executive

The Winklevoss twins are actually triplets and Chasen is their long lost brother. But more seriously, have you ever seen someone who looks more like their name than this man?

Chris, 27, Landscape design salesman

“Chris hopes to find a woman who is sharp and witty but also easygoing.” Chris, sweetheart, have you met Clare? Easygoing...? There’s still time back out of this before it’s too late.

Dale, 31, Former pro football wide receiver

Dale aggressively screams “Bachelor material.” I’d say he’s auditioning for that role but Matt James already scooped it up. Better luck next year, Daley.

Demar, 26, Spin cycling instructor

Demar is a “very popular spin instructor in Scottsdale and says he can get on that bike and spin to any beat thrown his way.” Imagine how many trophy wives Demar has f*cked? 

Eazy, 29, Sports marketing agent

Eazy is very similar to Dale on paper. Except his name is Eazy so he automatically loses that battle.

Ed, 33, Health care salesman

“Ed is looking to find a woman who has natural beauty without looking overly fake.” Ed deserves to die alone.

Garin, 34, Professor of Journalism

Garin’s bio is giving me hubby material vibes. And maybe a little bit of a “gets eliminated on night one” vibe too.

Ivan, 28, Aeronautical Engineer

Ivan, what are you doing here? We’re in a recession. Please go back to your normal job before it’s too late. 

Jason, 31, Former pro football linemen

“He is a former NFL offensive lineman who, after suffering too many concussions on the field, decided to prioritize his health and change the direction of his life.” A big, brawny HIMBO with CTE? I feel like he’s Clare’s type.

Jay, 29, Fitness director

There are too many things about Jay that I dislike and I’m trying to keep this brief. Jay says “it's time to take a break from worrying about others and focus on himself instead.” I am willing to bet money that this man has never made a woman c*m.

Jeremy, 40, Banker

Jeremy is the oldest contestant ever to come on "The Bachelorette,” which may seem like a monuments accomplishment but he’s literally only one year older than Clare. 

He also “hates Instagram models, both male and female,” so he should have a lot of fun here.

Joe, 36, Anesthesiologist

Before I even saw his profession and location, I thought Joe looked like a doctor I’d find on a NYC dating app...and...uh...I probably did see him on there now that I think about it.

Anyway, this man has apparently been through seven stages of hell while on the front lines fighting Covid-19 in NYC so I definitely think he deserves to find love. Someone marry him please.

Jordan C, 26, Software account executive

I can already tell Jordan is going to get the “I’m young but mature” edit which means he’s probably not going to be good TV.

Too bad someone a tad younger (like Tayshia) wasn’t the Bachelorette. I feel like they’d make a cute couple.

Jordan M., 30, Cyber security engineer

I was going to say something mean but Jordan’s into cyber security and I don’t want my blog to be deactivated, so never mind. Cast photos are historically bad so I’m sure he looks much better in real life.

Kenny, 39, Boy band manager

I could go for the obvious drags regarding this man’s profession (or his sh*tty chest tattoo, or his suspiciously boyish face relative to his age), but I like to think I’m more clever than that. 

I’d like to take this time to talk about men, who are obviously difficult people, who rant and rave about how they want an “easygoing” woman. Look into the mirror, bud. No, not the one you use to jerk off to your reflection; the mirror that looks into your soul. Out of respect for the rest of humankind, have some self-awareness. Or maybe just see a therapist.

Mike, 38, Digital media advisor

Mike is seemingly a decent catch, but I can’t help but wonder why he’s still single or how he never (accidentally or on purpose) impregnated a woman in his 38 years of life. 

And now that I’m thinking about it, do any of these men have children? I have yet to see any mention of it in their bios. But there are eight men left to review, so there’s still time.

Page, 37, Chef

I spoke too soon. Page is a father! He also hates football! I’m a fan of this man. I was initially going to drag him for his name and say that Page is not a real name. PAIGE is a real name. PAGE is a piece of paper. I’m allowed to say this because we have the same name except mine is spelled the correct way. Based on my (mostly positive) review of his cast bio, I have decided not to hold his name against him.

Riley, 30, Long Island City

Riley, once married with children, would like to go on a family vacation that consists of touring every single MLB stadium in the country. If i were his wife, I would simply never give this man children.

Robby, 30, Insurance broker

No more Robbys on The Bachelorette. Society has evolved past its need for more Robbys.

This Robby described his dream woman as: “Incredibly athletic and able to throw back a few beers with him after a day of hiking. She has a sweet personality and won't mind that he spends his Sundays on the golf course.”

Someone please give this man a sex doll. He just wants a hole.

Tyler C., 27, Lawyer

“Tyler C. is a badass lawyer who says he is a businessman by day and a cowboy by night.” How does that make him a lawyer? Does this mean he’s into cosplay? I’m confused.

Tyler S., 36, Music manager

Tyler makes an honorable living off riding his brother’s dick success as a country singer. “He just LOVES his job!” Uh yeah, I would too if I had a low-show, high-paying job off the merits of nepotism. It’s the American dream.

Yosef, 30, Medical device salesman

Another dad! He’s totally going to pull the “girl dad” narrative. That saying is kind of sexist to me but the masses generally eat it up, so I’m fairly confident Yosef will get the "sweet guy” edit he’s looking for.

Zac C., 36, Addiction specialist

“He loves Philadelphia sports and dreams of sharing a Philly Cheesesteak with his future wife while watching the Eagles win a Super Bowl.” This man is so South Jersey it hurts. 

On a more serious note, I don’t think anyone in recent history has spoken openly about their personal struggle with addiction on this show, so I hope Zac gets a chance to tell his story. 

Zach J., 37, Cleaning service owner

Zach is seemingly obsessed with Clare already and hopes to introduce her to his mom as his fiancée. Since Zach watched Clare on Juan Pablo’s season, you’d think he’d know that Clare would first meet his mom during the final four hometown dates. Assuming he makes it that far. My prediction is that he won’t.

Final thoughts

After eight long months Bachelor Mondays are back!!!

Uhh....wait.

Actually, we now have the less-exciting Bachelor Tuesdays. Yeah, it definitely doesn’t have the same ring to it. But I’ll take anything at this point.

Here are my final predictions:

First impression rose: Dale. It just looks like he can turn on the bullsh*t charm

Final rose: Jason. Clare wants a HIMBO I just know it.

Bachelor: nobody (Matt James is The Bachelor)

Most likely to get engaged on Bachelor in Paradise: Blake M2

Most likely to get canceled online: Bennett

Most likely to get sent home night one but deserve better: Chris

Who are your favorite men cast on this season?

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

20. Sink

Word Count: 3989 Trigger warnings for religion and mentions of child pornography

Previous

Lord, if it’s you,” (Simon) Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then (Simon) Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Matthew 14:28-30

Simon had never been very religious. Scratch that… Simon had never been very mystical about religion. Whenever he was younger, his family went to church and he was quite studious and learned a lot in that time period. His father still believed in God and country or whatever and his grandmother, he imagined was praying over his mom every single day. But, he had never really known what it felt like to have that kind of faith in anyone or anything… until he was given Grace. It wasn’t lost on him the religious implications of being a boy named Simon (like Simon Peter, aka The Apostle Peter - huge name in the Bible world) being granted a savior, being blessed with Grace after a terrible sin, whether intentional or not, of killing Hope… His mind was in a daze right now. 

It was the fourth religious dream he had since that interview, and in this one, he was Simon Peter, calling to his Savior in the storm. Grace was just across the water. All he had to do was get to her and she would rescue him from all of this, just like she always used to. But, he looked at the impending storm, instead. He had Grace, but he was focused on the storm, and he sank… He jumped up from his sleep and literally felt like he had been drowning. Ugh. 10 years of church and 4 years of private school could definitely mess with one’s mind. Then again, so could 6 years of Grace and 5 years without it… her… 

He had begun to try to stop rationalizing that she wasn’t human. Unfortunately for him, before he considered her the void, she hadn’t been human for him either, then. She had been a deity. He worshipped her. She had been a vessel to save him, to help him, to comfort him. She had been what he built his faith system upon, his religion, his Apex, his lifestyle… Then, she was gone and he tried to continue without her. He tried to rebuild in his own image, in his own name. He tried to walk on water, as he had seen her do, now all he was doing was sinking…

In the aftermath of the interview, Simon noted that his faithful followers went on one of their ravenous attacks in Shana’s comment sections. She could even just post a photo of herself in the newsroom at Spelman as an inspirational post and they appeared in her comments to berate her for speaking about inspiration when she would attack an abuse survivor and have his abuser on her show, trying to make her sympathetic. Shana seemed entertained for some of the comments, replying things like a simple “K” or “Lol” and never addressing the person again, even if they supplied a melee of character attacks at her.

But, on the video link, whenever people started also attacking Grace’s fakeness and the fact that she still gets to abuse Simon indirectly by doing things like this, Shana had enough. She let them know that she had no regrets about the interview with Grace, no regrets about anything that she said about Simon, and none about all of her opinions of him. “Even if he’s a different person today, considering that he never got any backlash for the sex tape from high school, which i firmly STILL believe that he should be held accountable for, which I am convinced that he leaked, and I think that if he’s truly changed, he would have wanted to make that right at some point and free Grace from the uninvited attacks for that CRIME AGAINST HER, committed by him.”

There was an explosion of mixed reactions. Everything from, “This is the first that I’m hearing of this” to “Simon would never have done anything like that to Grace” to “WHERE CAN I FIND A SEX TAPE OF SIMON AND GRACE???” Many people were blocked. Many people were rocked, as Shana went live to address the massive amount of comments coming from her spilling that tea.

She made mention of the facts that while the statute of limitations of revenge porn had been exceeded, they didn’t exist for child porn. “And in case anybody is confused, yes, I am including links to inform you about how what he did is in fact child pornography creation, possession, and distribution, AND what the law says concerning them.” After replying to many of the comments, mostly in an amused fashion, she got bored. 

“Listen, I’m getting ready to go chill with my lady and get ready for class tomorrow, but I’ll just say this one more thing, “I’m not taking my foot off of Simon Laurent’s neck. As long as Grace has had to suffer in silence, because she’s no longer the vengeful type or whatever, she’s on right now in her journey, the journalist in me and the enraged victim in me will always come for Simon and the way he used the privilege that he did have - not to say that he didn’t lack in certain areas like money and common decency, but the ones he DID have - his race, his gender, his orientation, his proximity to education, etc, in order to vilify and humble this girl with false accusations of crimes, and get away with unconfessed crimes. Yeah, this IS about my Sassy Strawberry keychain, Simon you bitch! I know you watching. To those of you who can’t be bothered to use your Googles, I don’t know what to tell you, kinfolk. Shady Shana has said all that she needs to say for now. Tata, from the perfect place for shade.”

Then her accusations, the search for the information of said accusations and the buzz from back then resurfacing went even more viral than the things that he had said about Grace whenever he reached notoriety from the stories. Now that the Internet and social media were even bigger and just kept growing with time, Grace still being a huge public persona, despite the few short years that she wasn’t online and the time she had been inside, she made an explosive comeback at least as an Internet personality, and Simon was never as frequent online as he was a short time in the eye of the public to get himself established, but several professors had used his story for various seminars and lectures, his books did pretty well, and he was a very established young mind in his academic circles… So, he was a big deal in his world, but on the grand scale becoming infamous for this new attention. 

Shana and Grace’s worlds were very large, and both of those were combining to infiltrate his world with these not necessarily new pieces of information, but things that he thought would have been forgotten or left alone. He had not even considered that Shana would ever… Like… why was SHE so damn upset? Because of a small scuffle? Because of somebody else’s alleged injustice? Somebody that she didn’t even LIKE for most of her life? “Journalist” she was a shit-stirrer! All of her muckraking was making things complicated for simple Simon. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like dreaming about Grace as his savior. He didn’t like the idea of reaching out to her to get her to grab her dog. He didn’t like that he was suffering from nights more sleepless than usual and beginning to become counterproductive in his work.

Worrying about ramifications of the words “child pornography” and “sexual predator” being tossed about in conversations with his name led to nightmares, paranoia, guilt, intrusive thoughts, and mistakes in class and at work. One of them turned out big…

Amelia came up to him in her lab, with her arms folded and her face stern, “Is there anything you think we should discuss, Mr. Laurent?” He frowned and glanced her way, still working on the formula for the next tests in the prosthetics serum they were spending time discussing as one of his potential next big things. She raised her eyebrows and asked, “Not even an acknowledgment of what I’m speaking of?”

“I know what you’re speaking of and I decided that no, we don’t need to discuss it. It’s a personal matter.”

“A personal matter? Simon, you are supposed to be seeing a counsellor once a week, and now I find out that not only did he recommend that you see him twice a week, but that you haven’t seen him in several weeks! It is part of your ability to stay here, and I don’t appreciate that you’ve ducked out on this requirement, especially considering the personal matter you’re referring to.” 

He furrowed his eyebrows and set down his supplies. “This is about the shrink? I haven’t been able to see the guy, because I’ve been working on the new formula nonstop. I need a breakthrough, and if I can get the formula right for enhancing the prosthetics, I’ll be famous for that. I’ll be closer to the goal of enriching artificial organs, maybe even organic ones!”

“I know what this work would mean if successful. That isn’t the point. The point is that you are not allowed to be here without the help that you need and you agreed to. I’m going to have to speak to the committee, now that I know you haven’t been…” She turned and he caught her wrist really hard. The woman jerked away. She was stronger than he thought.

“Amelia… Please. I need this. People are out to get me. Out to destroy everything that I’ve built for myself, without parents, without love, without an inheritance. I got here on my own merit, my own mind! I can’t have it be the thing that gets me sent away.”

“You needed to consider that after we gave you another chance! We can’t keep going back and forth with you while you refuse to take the help that you need in order to get to your next rung!” She was loud. He felt like she was yelling at him. He didn’t like people yelling at him, especially women, especially older ones… It made him extremely angry and he yelled right back at her, only to find that she either hadn’t been yelling or she had an even louder yelling setting.

“I’M DOING MY GODDAMN BEST!”

“MAYBE YOUR BEST ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!”

And in addition to the yelling, the thing yelled was extremely hurtful. But, Simon was an angry hurt type. So, he was hurt, but it manifested in anger, “LIKE YOURS WASN’T! YOU HATE ME BECAUSE I CAN BE A BETTER YOU!” She laughed. That made him even angrier. “ADMIT IT! YOU’RE SO HARD ON ME BECAUSE I AM BETTER THAN YOU!”

“Simon, you’re a child. A foolish, often incorrect child. There are many things that I credit as better than me. You aren’t one of them.” He was breathing hard and clenching his fists. “I advise you to immediately set an appointment with your therapist and I demand that you leave the lab at once. At the very least, you need to take a break. At worse… you broke our agreement, Simon.” She began to touch his research, to put everything away, as he stormed out, trying not to let her see him cry and trying not to explode in the lab and further mess things up for himself. He didn’t get far before there was a different explosion in there. Not an extremely loud one, but loud enough that he turned around as others rushed in. 

Simon got on the phone, calling the last counselor that he had spoken to as everyone else scurried about trying to get help and rushing in various directions. “She was just arguing with Laurent, he rushed out and then this happened,” he heard someone say and he watched the three students who had been talking stop and look right at him.  “Are you calling 911?” One of them asked. He shook his head, because he hadn’t been. Once again, it wasn’t his first thought when he witnessed an emergency. One of them grabbed their phone out, presumably to do so and he… left. He probably should have stayed, but he couldn’t breathe and needed some space and needed to rage.

.

It didn’t take others long to start whispering. Simon had found a dumpster to kick for a while before returning to the scene and seeing them rushing Amelia into an ambulance. Police were there and wanted to talk with him. He knew that people would talk. They had been talking. He also knew that sometimes he imagined that people were talking more than they actually were and he hoped that perhaps, this would be one of those times that he imagined the criticism. It was not.

On top of the internet’s allegations of child pornography, learning that the state of California might be investigating these allegations, for the Monroe Estate, and being questioned about his chemical engineering “mistake” with the formula that became unstable as Professor Hughes attempted to put it away… 

Simon was whatever the opposite of numb was. He felt all things, everything, anything, all at once and at a peak. He hadn’t felt this way in a really long time and the only times he had, he had Grace to think of and settle him. After that, he had his own greatness to reflect upon… but that was slipping away from him and Grace had slipped away… No… He had shoved her away, and he needed her so much right now. Because he didn’t know if he could pull himself up from sinking. “Lord save me!” He heard himself yelling from the water in the storm… But Grace couldn’t hear him. She was too far away, and she wasn’t his savior anymore. He looked up for something to latch onto, but all there was, was the Void.

Its big black, form, with an aura of fluid black smoke, and hovered over him and charged at him, its face stopping just short of his own and he looked up to see it. It was nothing but a pale mask, much like one of the ones that Grace used to wear. Maybe… Maybe she was still inside of the void somewhere. Maybe she would rescue him after all. “Grace?” he called, “Is that you?” It had nothing in it’s face. No feeling, no warmth. There was no way that Grace was there. It had no reply. He blinked it away and looked at the police. They had just released him… so… something had saved him… for now. Probably just dumb luck, or lack of evidence. There had to be a lack of evidence, because he knew that he had done nothing wrong.

Despite having done nothing wrong, he had apparently made some type of mistake with the formula, but he figured it was more likely that Amelia had made some mistake in putting it away. It was too soon to voice that opinion. Students were upset, like she was some lovable figure. She was a bitch. He didn’t feel bad at all that she was hurt and he hoped that nobody expected him to act like he did. But, they were talking again. He felt like whenever he was a freshman at the academy and the staff and students didn’t appreciate him because they hadn’t seen his value yet… but these people knew him. He was important! He was significant now! He had done everything to become valuable and honored, including giving up Grace when she was holding him back! 

“Simon, it sounds like you’re just blaming everyone else for your problems again.”

“I’m only saying what happened. I matter, and they treat me like I don’t. They look at me like I’m a criminal. They’re handling me like I haven’t done great things! Like they haven’t heard of me or something! Who do they think they are?”

“To not value you? Maybe they’re just strangers, Simon. You’ve spoken to me a few times, and I don’t know you, either. That doesn’t take away from anything that you might have done, but it doesn’t give me the insight that you have of yourself. The same can be said about any of the people here,” the counsellor said. Simon resumed his meetings, but it was too little too late, as he was called back to the committee.

.

Grace was really just trying to enjoy her life. She only did the interview with Shana because Shana had REALLY come through in finding Hazel for her. She explained to the people keeping Hazel how she knew her and how she found her (not mentioning Shana’s name, but that she “hired an investigator”) mainly because she just wanted to see how Hazel was doing. The short answer was “not great,” but the long answer was Grace hated the fact that everyone that she talked to about Hazel didn’t seem to really know her or how to deal with her. That made her afraid that Hazel would continue to get bounced around, and eventually be lost to her again. After being approved as someone who could visit and spend time with Hazel (a longer process than she would have liked, and one that she knew could have been shortened if she just went crawling back to her parents), but one that was worth the work, because not only was she able to see Hazel and talk to her, but she also got her a phone, in case they were separated again and Hazel needed to reach out to her. 

The last thing that Grace wanted to do was be dragged into Simon’s situation. So, whenever people asked her about him, sent her messages, intruded into her comments, @ her in posts… she declined from responding. She made a statement on her linked social media accounts, reminding everyone that 1. She doesn’t speak about Simon. 2. She said everything that she intended to say to people outside of the situation to Shana in the interview. 3. She is not responsible for Shana’s feelings about the incident in question (the recording and sharing of the recording) 4. She has never spoken to anyone but Simon about the incident in question and doesn’t plan on going much more in depth with anybody about it any time soon. 

Whenever asked about the recording, since she did say in the statement that she had spoken with Simon about it, and it was presumed that meant that maybe they had made it together and it got leaked, as those things tend to do, she confirmed that she didn’t know anything about the recording until after everyone else had seen it, that she doesn’t like to think about it or that time in her life because it was one of her most embarrassing and painful experiences and she doesn’t want to have to relive it simply because people are curious about these details that don’t affect them one way or another…

People were relentless and dedicated to being in other people’s business. What about Simon? It affects Simon! Why aren’t you helping clear Simon’s name? Why are you still hurting Simon? What about affecting Simon? She’d punch every last one of these people in the mouth, just like she did Simon when she found out, if they were in front of her. Even, now, being  someone trying very hard to be peaceful and patient… “Simon already knows everything about that time that I would be able to say, so telling anyone else anything wouldn’t help him or me. If I was silent about it whenever it might have actually changed my trajectory in a favorable way, I’m certainly not going to begin going off about it now that I’ve been given another chance at a positive life, despite the things that caused me pain. Simon knows more than I do and more than you. Perhaps you should ask him, if you want someone who doesn’t seem to mind speaking about these subjects.”

That was what did it. Simon watched in a panic as former Apex members, arose to defend Grace and admit that during the time, Simon was open with certain people about having orchestrated the recording and using it to oust Grace from her throne. “We were mean kids, and I don’t know if we thought far ahead enough to really see what something like that could do to somebody. We all found it either funny or scary and weren’t brave enough to stand up for her back then, but Grace did nothing wrong and people should let her live her life instead of bringing this back up and hurting her again.” They basically all said some variation of that.

He became immediately notorious as #GraceDidNothingWrong began trending and multiple Apex members, former nonessentials, declared nulls, and actual victims of some of Simon’s direct attacks come forward, opening up about their experiences with Simon’s Apex, the Apex in general, including anecdotes, quotes, confessions, etc to further prove Simon’s guilt. To top it off Simon was put on academic probation as everything unfolded including the way he had been handling his psychiatric deal with the committee being unmet and the negligence that led to Professor Hughes’ accident. When he began losing various deals, gets major backlash for the accident, on top of the allegations of child pornography being investigated, he began to spiral as he considered possible charges from CA to MA. He deleted all of his social media accounts and shadow cyberstalked Grace, only to see that she really wasn’t participating in all of this.

He was SO CLOSE to his first Master’s degree. He couldn’t let all of this throw away his future! He was young and stupid and maybe he was wrong, but he wasn’t going to say that and he definitely didn’t feel like he deserved to be punished for it right now! 

He had been trying not to think about that interview, but the more he tried not to think about it, the more he obsessed over it - over her wondering how he was doing, over the potential for her to actually still care. It was so stupid. It was foolish. There was no way that she really felt like that, but all of his distraction had caused him to possibly make some type of stupid mistake. The police were investigating, but he was the main one working in the lab, so whatever happened was most likely due to some type of misstep on his part. He certainly had not rigged anything to explode in Professor Hughes’ face, like some seemed to be trying to suggest! 

The fact that they did not get along wasn’t very helpful to him. The argument right before it happened made it even more suspicious, and where they should have been able to speak with his psychiatrist to ensure that he was doing fine… he hadn’t been consistent with any long enough for them to know that he was doing fine… which brought attention back on him from the committee, which he guessed felt like he was jumping through loopholes in their deal. He saw the Void again, it's voice like a chorus of succubi singing, “I’ve come to take everything from you. It’s what you deserve.”

He rushed to the airport. He didn’t even have a place to stay. He rushed to the Monroe’s, snuck into their gate and beat on the door. It was 2 am, but he couldn’t wait. The Void was after him, and he NEEDED his Grace.

Next

[more--than--anything]

Episode Review: "Madeline is running the FBI like it's Orwell Night at Comic-Con." [S05E02]

This week’s episode featured Archie-the-Bunker and fan-favorite Bill “The world’s on freakin’ fire” Nye. And we finally find out Patterson’s first name! Could we have asked for more?

Y: I would say no but if I am being honest, I would ask that they stop making my favorite characters suffer? But this is Blindspot and so I guess that would never stop so I guess Archie the bunker, Bill frikkin’ Nye and so much more of Afreen being awesome is more than I dare ask for.

L: Okay, pain and suffering aside, there was a lot to love about this episode. I have a feeling this final, shorter season is going to keep up this frenetic pace the whole way, and I am simultaneously excited and having a panic attack.

Our team decides to poke their heads out of their bunker to find out whether or not they can trust Weitz, a mission that requires good disguises, untraceable comms, and Bill Nye, the science and espionage guy. Did their gamble pay off?

L: The team is still hunkered down in “Archie Bunker” (because Rich Dotcom is clearly up on his 1970’s sitcoms), but Weller has no intention of getting comfortable there. He wants the team to retrieve Dominic’s phone, which Rich stashed in an air duct at the FBI before being captured by the CIA. There is no way that the team can get it themselves (which frankly disappoints me, as I was really looking forward to an NYO heist job this season), so they have to find someone who can do it for them. Weitz seems a likely candidate, but our team is not in agreement about whether or not he can be trusted. (I have to admit that the first mental image I had when Rich referred to Weitz as a “piece of human garbage” was Rich wearing his “literal garbage” shirt in 1.18. I might have snickered a bit.) Weitz was responsible for Rich being captured (although honestly, that seemed more like incompetence rather than malice), but he also warned the team about the drone strike. So to settle the debate, Jane decides (in her first tough call of the episode) that they should talk to him directly, so they can evaluate for themselves whether he’s trustworthy or not.

Getting face-to-face with Weitz turns out to be easier than expected when they find out that he’s giving a speech at the “World Collaboration Forum” (a name which in and of itself seems ironic, since our team is trying to decide whether they can “collaborate” with Weitz or not). Unfortunately, they can’t get on the guest list themselves, but someone they know gets an invitation every year. Patterson is understandably reluctant to involve her father in their schemes (and after seeing what happened to Sho Ahktar, I really really really really really hope the team doesn’t get bad news about Bill Nye in the next episode!). To get in touch with him, Patterson hacks into the videogame he’s playing online. She only has 30 seconds to talk to him before they have to cut the connection, and honestly, the moment where she has to hang up on him as he’s saying “I love you” was the first (but not the last) moment these two made me tear up this week.

I know that the writers had no way of knowing what was going to be happening in the world by the time this episode aired, but the theme in this week’s episode about being cut off from family really hit home for me. I mean, sure, we’re not having to hack into video game systems and use untraceable comms to talk to our families, but even unlimited Zoom conference calls are a far cry from being able to hug your loved ones. And, like the team, we have no idea when it will be safe to visit with our extended families again. (And also like the team, even though most of us aren’t living in a bunker, we are still trapped in a confined space with the same group of people day in and day out. Frankly, it’s kind of surprising to me that the team isn’t getting on each others’ nerves as much as my kids are. But then again, the team has only been there a week, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how they’re doing in two months.)

Now, we are pretty open about the fact that we are serious Bill Nye fangirls on this blog, and he’s pretty awesome in this episode. I love his proud little smile as Patterson explains all the steps they went through to hack into the security system for the conference. His expression can best be described as “That’s my girl!” He might not be an actor by trade, but he’s doing a pretty convincing job of portraying Patterson Sr. on this show. His eyebrows alone deserve billing in the credits. And his attention-grabbing rant while Weitz sidles off to meet with Patterson and Weller (including a reference to his awesome “The world’s on f*cking fire” talk) was hands down one of my favorite moments in this episode. Second to that would be his timely wielding of a fire extinguisher to take out Madeline’s henchman so that he and Patterson can disable the bomb together. (They’re my new favorite podcast, too, Rich!)

Jane tells Kurt and Patterson to go with their guts, and they make the call to trust Weitz. He points the team to Afreen, although honestly, I don’t understand why they didn’t approach Afreen earlier. Patterson worked closely with her; surely she would have gambled on trusting Afreen before Weitz? But I loved the callback to David in season 1 to get Afreen’s attention on her coffee cup. (Thank goodness she is more alert in the morning than I am, because I probably wouldn’t have been able to pick up on the hidden message until after I’d already finished the cup and thrown it away.)

In a surprise to no one except Weitz himself, he isn’t there on the basis of his resume. He’s there to get Madeline’s henchman (his “security guards”) into the building so they can set a bomb to take out the real target, Susah Shah. Shah is described as “one of the president’s top advisers and has been a very vocal, very public critic of Madeline’s.” As we have mentioned, the team is going to need contacts high up inside the government but outside of Madeline’s influence, so it sounds like Shah might fit that bill. And fortunately, thanks to Bill Nye’s timely assistance, Patterson’s smarts, Rich’s hacking abilities, and Weller’s ability to take down paid mercenaries (it takes a village to save the world), Shah survives the conference, which means there’s a good chance we might see her again.

So in the end... they stick their heads out of hiding, they involve Patterson’s father, but they still walk away with a loss. Maybe worse than a loss, since Madeline not only gets her hands on the phone but also manages to pin her nefarious deeds on the team once again. (Okay, the team did save Weitz’s life, but I am not sure that all of them would count that as a win.) But it’s always the darkest before the dawn, right? I’m just gonna cling to that.

Y: We’re just so not used to this team losing so much, and it’s almost unbearable to watch them do everything right and yet still come out on the losing side. Sure, they’ve had their fair share of defeats in the past and some of them have been terrible defeats. But in the past, they’d enjoy a couple of victories sandwiching those defeats. But it seems ever since Madeline walked into their lives, they’ve suffered one defeat after the other.

And if we as viewers are feeling the pain of these losses then you can just imagine what these characters must feel like. In Helsinki, they literally did everything right. And then even went above and beyond and saved the lives of hundreds of innocent people when they could’ve easily just walked away and no one would’ve even known they were there. My heart breaks for them.

But like you said, it is always darkest before the dawn and maybe something good can eventually come out of this and that is knowing there is someone in the White House who could be a potential ally. Also, finding out that Madeline is now working with the Dabbur Zahn, while terrifying, at least helps them put a face and name to this new enemy. The Dabbur Zahn is probably the longest serving terrorist organization on the show. It has been showing up repeatedly since season 1, and while it may shift nationality and agenda, at least we know them—or rather the team know them—and that could go down in the positives column.

And we will get to Weitz personally in a minute, but I just want to comment on how his being a part of this op affected the op itself and the team. I think Weitz here serves as the first example of how aspects of a case will affect or influence how the team works and does things during the season. In this case, it was Weitz creating tension and splitting the team’s decision. In the future, it’s going to be other things, and it’s going to be interesting watching how these different circumstances will affect how the team operates and how it affects its efficiency and performance.

And speaking of performance, how awesome was Bill Nye in the field? It’s like he’s a natural and should’ve been given the chance to be a field agent a long time ago!

Okay, no, I am kidding. This one outing was enough because Bill Nye must be protected at all costs!

Like L said, there was no way the writers could’ve known the circumstances in which these episodes would be airing, but the emotional impact of this episode was multiplied exponentially with what we’re all living through. Not taking any credit away from the writers or the actors here. The writing was amazing and every single one of those actors nailed the emotional state of their characters, but damn, some of it was so hard to watch.

Martin Gero did say that we’ll be getting all our favorite guest stars back to give them a proper goodbye. But they’re also writing them back with such amazing plots and giving them the chance not only to have one final bow but also some really juicy stuff to work with. Bill Nye got to come back, got to be Bill Nye, gave an amazing speech, helped save the day, had some epic lines of dialogue, shared such powerful scenes with Patterson, and finally revealed the biggest mystery of all. William Patterson!

So I guess this is the last we see of Bill Nye on the show—unless there’s a surprise return in the finale—but all I can say is that we were so lucky that he was a part of the show and that his last appearance might be his absolute best. I hope he stays safe out there and his little adventure with the team doesn’t cost him anything because once the team make it back home, William Jr. needs to go have dinner with mom and dad (and the brother we seem to have forgotten about? Or was that a lie she made up to get Reade to open up?).

L: I do want to talk about Patterson’s non-existent brother, for anyone else who might be wondering. If you remember, back in 2.15, Patterson confronted Reade about his drug use, telling him: “I have a brother. I don’t really talk about him. But he almost died because of his addiction, and he’s still not well. And whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night, I think it’s finally the call.” But we never heard anything about the brother again. And then in season 3, they cast Bill Nye as Patterson’s father and talked about Patterson’s mother, but there was no mention of a brother. And it’s been the same each time we’ve seen Bill Nye since. I think that once the writers decided to make Bill Nye Patterson’s father, they didn’t want him to have a drug-addicted son, so they dropped that plot thread completely. When Patterson saw her father this time, she asked about her mother but didn’t ask about her brother, which she certainly would have. Sorry bro, I think you’ve been erased from history. (Which is probably a good thing, because given the Patterson-Nye family naming conventions, he probably would have been named Elizabeth Nye or some such.)

Meanwhile, Madeline’s grip on the FBI is turning into more of a stranglehold. How is The Resistance faring?

Y: Look, the show was giving me enough anxiety having to worry about the Bunker Family. And now they throw in the little band of rebels, and I am an absolute mess here… The Resistance? You’re asking about the Resistance? Well...

L: The Resistance is dropping like flies, and I am totally freaking out!

Weitz is his usual slightly smarmy, self-absorbed self in this episode, full of how he’s such a big deal at this conference. He even apparently thinks that Bill Nye is hitting on him. Oh, Matthew. The world is just not as hot for you as you think they are. (And probably even less so now, after your rambling, nonsensical verbal diarrhea on stage.) I love that Patterson’s first question to him is, “How did you get a speech here anyway?” and that Tasha follows up the discovery of the bomb with, “That explains how he got the speaking slot.” Weitz, I’m sorry, but the team is not as big a fan of yours as you are of them. I guess we know why Madeline said he was “valuable” last week, but now that he didn’t die as a tragic casualty in a bomb explosion, is there still a good reason for Madeline to keep him around the NYO? Is her “useful idiot” still useful?

I never thought I would spend so much time worrying about Matthew Weitz.

But for all of his flaws, Weitz does seem truly remorseful about what happened to Rich. And his reply—“I didn’t know they were gonna send him there. Really, I just thought they were gonna put him in a holding cell for a couple of hours until we, you know, did the usual thing, when we save the day at the last minute.”—does show the great amount of faith that he has in this team. They got off to a rough start, but he learned to trust them and to know that they’d deliver at the end of the day. He really did think that they’d get to Iceland and prove the whole case against Madeline. (I do wish he’d expressed a bit of grief about Reade, though, since of all of the team, he must have worked the most closely with Reade.)

Y: I have to say, I am really enjoying Weitz so far this season. And I know it’s only been two episodes, but he’s really had quite the two episodes. You guys know we love a good redemption arc, and we’ve always loved to hate Weitz, so I’m excited to see how the writers draw up this journey for him. Clearly that’s where they have him headed. We’ve already had one incredible redemption arc on this show with Rich, and now that good old Rich is nice and reformed, it’s fun watching another character embark on this journey.

Weitz has never been categorically evil. He’s walked the tight rope dangerously, but he’s always technically been on the side of good. He’s done some bad things. He’s flirted with the wrong people. But for all his dumb ass and wrong decisions, his self-serving and selfish motives, he’s always ultimately been one of the good guys.

Weitz was great in this episode. From his usual self-absorbed self, to showing some true colors of how much he has faith in the team, to his regret and guilt about what happened to Rich, to firmly cementing his stance as a member of the resistance. This was a huge episode for Weitz. And Aaron Abrams was absolutely brilliant. I’m glad this season is allowing other people to really have their moment and giving them some really good material to work with. And speaking of good material, that rambling speech he gave on stage? One of the best Blindspot scenes in the history of Blindspot scenes.

But as fun as the scene was, it was only a brief moment of levity compared to what is really going on...

L: Yes, things are steadily going downhill at the FBI. Weitz sums it up perfectly when he says, “Madeline is running the FBI like it’s Orwell Night at Comic-Con.” She has her team of mercenaries doing full body searches of all agents and support staff. She’s installing “tracking software” on everyone’s phones (and if tracking is all that app is doing, then my first name is William, too! Although now I kinda want to see Madeline’s Big Brother app facing off against Wizardville, don’t you?!). I’m not sure any of these privacy invasions would hold up in court, but since she controls the whole chain of command, I guess the employee complaint department is closed. And yes, Weitz, your speech on “American law enforcement’s role as champion for freedom across the globe” is not only ironic, but kind of comical at this point.

And now Mad Maddie has Briana spying on her coworkers. I had high hopes for Briana to see the same kind of evolution in her character that we are seeing in Weitz, but instead I think I am revising my opinion that she had anything to do with the bird tattoo message in Times Square. She seems pretty weak in this episode. And actually, not all that bright, too, since she seems surprised when Madeline threatens her family. She knew Dominic was working for Madeline. Did she think that Madeline was less ruthless than Dominic? Did someone ZIP and make her forget the drone strike that Madeline ordered on the team? Come on, Briana, this isn’t your first day at the FBI. Understanding how criminals work is pretty much your job description!

I will let Yas be our head Afreen cheerleader, here, but I just loved the scene between her and Briana and the backstory they gave Afreen. (And as much as I miss Reade, his absence does leave us a little more room for the development of secondary characters, which is both enjoyable and helps to remind us that more than just the fate of our team is at stake.) I do think that Afreen was able to get through to Briana, but it might have been too little too late. As Weitz puts it: Either she’s in trouble or he and Afreen are. I want to believe that Briana found a little internal strength to resist ratting them out, but frankly, she hasn’t shown anywhere near that level of gumption yet, so I feel like it might be too much to hope for.

Y: I was really glad to see Briana in this episode. She was mysteriously missing from the first episode and after the damage she did in the last few episodes of last season, I didn’t want her to just disappear into the background and not have to either pay for what she’s done, and make up for it or at least show us that she’s still somehow under Madeline’s control. Clearly, Madeline wasn’t just going to ignore her or let her go or not keep an eye on her. If there is anyone who can expose Madeline from within the FBI, it’s Briana. Lucky for Madeline, Briana’s not the bravest of the lot.

I want to be pissed off at Briana—for what she did last season, for not standing up to Madeline, for being so weak—but on the other hand, she is absolutely heartbreaking. She’s scared and she has every right to be. She’s trying to protect her family and no one can blame her for that. And at the end of the day, she does do the right thing. So while I want to be mad at her, I feel so bad for her that I can’t.

And now, she’s been added to the list of people I am worried about. Nothing good comes to those who cross paths with Ivy… I just hope that this is not the last we’ve seen of Briana. Just like the team, she tried to do the right thing but ended up… really screwed.

Now on to Afreen... Is it that obvious that I have a soft spot for Afreen? Okay, yeah, I guess it is. Look, I’m shameless here. I was an Afreen fan before Afreen was even Afreen. I mean, we used to just see a hijab-wearing extra in the lab scenes behind Patterson, and I was already a huge fan. Honestly, yes, I am glad they’re giving her more backstory, but I would still be ecstatic about her character even if they didn’t give her that tragic backstory. Not that I am complaining.

I love that Afreen isn’t just a token minority character used as a prop for presentation. She’s not just a hijab-wearing Muslim character being used for that. She’s now a fully-fledged character who is part of the story, and her story is not defined by her religion or ethnicity.

And I know Weitz thinks he’s running the Resistance, but let’s be honest, Afreen is clearly the brains of the operation. I loved that she was rightfully wary of approaching Briana. And I loved that she picked up on the message the team sent her. And I loved her crawling in the vents to get the phone and then her appealing passionately to Briana and getting to her.

Ami Sheth, the actress who plays Afreen, was given a small bit role a few seasons ago. She started off with practically no lines and evolved to popping up occasionally with a line or two, and in that she managed to make Afreen have such a noticeable presence. And now she’s gotten the chance to really shine, for her character to have an important role in the story and to become more than just a face in the background. And she is doing a great job at it! I know, I know… I love Afreen maybe slightly more than anyone else out there so you’ll have to bear with me and my gushing.

I hope we get to see more and more of Afreen as the season goes on, that she continues to lead the resistance and manages to help our favorite team take down Madeline and come back home.

L: Which isn’t going to be easy. This week we learned that Madeline hired mercenaries with ties to the Dabbur Zahn. If you weren’t entirely convinced that she’s a bad guy, aligning her with the same multinational terrorist group that our team of good guys have been battling off and on since season one ought to do it. I agree with Rich: She’s even more terrifying now. And more so with every minute that passes.

And even more terrifying than Madeline now is Ivy Sands. I mean, Madeline is batshit insane, but Ivy will kill you, chop up your body, and then ask for more money to chop the pieces up smaller. The fact that she figured out so quickly that Sho Ahktar was the one who gave the team the plans and executed him so ruthlessly to send the team a message.... Look, Madeline might be the big bad this season, but I would be much more afraid of being alone in a room with Ivy than Madeline. And I am not going to lie... I am kind of sad about Sho. I mean, he was also crazy as a loon, but he was pretty entertaining when he was high and sometimes even helpful!

I have to give full props to the writers for the way that the FBI resistance is confronted one by one by Madeline’s henchwoman, Ivy Sands, and then not heard from again for the rest of the episode. I desperately hope they are all okay, but between Madeline and Ivy, I also wouldn’t be surprised if the team gets pictures of each one posed like Sho in the next episode. Either way, it’s a powerful note to leave hanging for two weeks.

But whether they’re out on a mission or running things from deep within the bunker, the strain on our team is significant. Are we seeing any cracks in their resolve?

Y: In the review of the premiere, I mentioned how I think there’s going to be a lot of similarities between Kurt and Patterson this season in how they deal with the reality of working in the black—of not having the rules and regulations and structure of the FBI to fall back on—and it seems that the similarities between the two are actually going to be this and more. Of all the team members, they are the two whose families have been present in the show. Okay, yes, there’s Jane as well, but Jane and her family are a whole different story.

Kurt’s family may have had more presence, but Patterson’s family has always felt the closest and the more… normal. If such a concept exists on the show. Before we even met her dad, we knew that she had a tight relationship with her mom. So, Patterson has to be struggling with the separation and the distance the way she is. I’m sure they’re all hurting through all this, but it’s interesting how they are using each character as a vessel for different aspects of this struggle. Kurt and Patterson are the ones being used for the struggle with the legality of it and with the separation from their loved ones. And it was perfect that it was those two who went on this very emotional mission.

L: There’s been so much focus on Kurt missing Bethany that it’s easy to forget that there are other people on the team who are missing family members just as much. (How is poor Tasha’s Abuela doing?) As we talked about above, maybe it’s because of what we’re all going through right now, or maybe it’s just because Ashley Johnson and Bill Nye did such a great job with all the small details that sell us on their father-daughter relationship, but either way, it’s not hard to relate to the pain of absence—the liget that Bill Nye identified—that they are both feeling. And I think that it also makes us really appreciate how happy they both are when they get to work together to solve a problem—even if that problem happens to be a bomb that’s in imminent danger of going off. It’s quite clear that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in the Patterson-Nye household, as we see when they both have voice recordings for the other. “Great minds, Dad,” says Patterson. And they both truly are.

And until they are reunited again, it’s good that Patterson has her foster family around her. There are her foster parents, Jane and Kurt, whom she appeals to when her foster brother Rich is getting on her nerves. “That’s what he keeps calling the bunker. Please make him stop.” And they aren’t above teasing her, too, as we see when Kurt asks her, “What’s your space camp name?” This family may be a wee bit dysfunctional, but they’ve got each other’s backs, and right now, that’s what they all need.

Well, they also need to floss and eat right, so I hope they take Bill’s advice.

Y: I love that the show is still managing to give us these lighter moments between the team members. Because if the world’s current situation has taught us anything, it’s that through the toughest times, people still find humor and banter—in fact, it becomes more present in these times to help people survive the tougher the times get.

And the tougher times get, the closer you get to those around you, the more you lean on them, and the more you open up to them. Even if they occasionally get on your nerves and make you want to strangle them. Okay, I might be projecting here.

And for the second week in a row, we are destroyed with the feels because of a Tasha/Rich scene. Seriously, this is a friendship we never saw coming and never expected would develop to be so sweet. It’s terribly awkward because neither of those two is especially good at this—I’m looking at you, Tasha—but somehow they’ve found this new thing comforting and an unexpected balm in the midst of all this.

L: Oh man, I really loved the conversation between Tasha and Rich. It would be easy to shrug off the difficulties we see Rich experiencing in this episode; everyone has an off day, now and then, and Rich is so flippant most of the time, it’s harder to tell when something is seriously bothering him. But not only does Tasha pick up on his struggles, she understands the cause, and tries to help him as best she can. Tasha (like Jane) is someone who is more comfortable doing something rather than sitting around talking about feelings. So just giving Rich the poster would have been a way to show him he’s not alone anymore, that she heard him earlier, but she doesn’t stop there. She offers to be someone he can talk to, which is, for Tasha “I hate feelings” Zapata, kind of huge.

But it’s not entirely out of character. If there’s one thing we know about Tasha, it’s that she pays her debts (literally and figuratively). And she knows that Rich reached out to her when she was broken and lost and helped her to get back on course. So even though it’s not comfortable for her, she can’t do any less for him in return—although with the disclaimer, “I’m just as messed up as anyone.” And the awkward little hug she gives him, which surprised both of them? Oh man, my heart.

I just love this team. They’ve been through so much, and they are all broken and messed up in so many ways, but they help make each other whole again.

I’m glad that we’re talking about the PTSD that Rich would most certainly have had after his time in the blacksite, but I will admit that it still bugs me that we didn’t see more of it in Jane after she rejoined the team. And as much as I absolutely love the friendship we are seeing between Tasha and Rich, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t Jane who brought this issue up with Rich, after she clearly recognized that he wasn’t all right. She is the one who would understand best what he’s going through, so she would be the logical person to reach out to him. But I guess she’s a little busy helping her husband through his issues this week to reach out to Rich, too.

Too bad Borden turned out to be a mole; this team could really use an in-house shrink right now.

Y: I agree. Tackling the black site PTSD was a lost opportunity with Jane, but I am glad the writers aren’t glossing over it again with Rich. They could easily have Rich fall back on his humor and sarcasm and portrayed it as some sort of defense mechanism, but they’re not doing that. What happened in that black site really broke him, and we’re seeing that clearly on screen. Ennis is doing a great job showing this broken and fragile side of Rich, and while I hope Rich manages to overcome this, I cannot deny that I am enjoying his performance.

And while I do agree that it would make sense for Jane to be the one to support him, I understand that she may have a little too much on her plate. She does pick up on Rich not doing too well, but by the end of the episode she also has to deal with her husband’s breakdown, so I understand why Tasha was the one to reach out to him in this episode. On the one hand, it’s a sweet moment that paralleled him being there for her in the premiere. But on the other hand, it also has me worried about Tasha.

Yes, Tasha isn’t the best at feelings, but I think this goes much deeper than that. I have a bad feeling that Tasha is focusing on Rich’s struggles and Rich’s pain to ignore and avoid dealing with her own feelings. Tasha is far from having properly dealt with her heartbreak—with mourning Reade—and maybe helping Rich would be a good thing for her to work through her problems, but I also hope that she isn’t just burying her own feelings deep inside. I’ve heard rumors that isn’t healthy.

Jane makes a couple of tough calls this week. How is she settling into the role of team leader?

L: They are still filming around Jaimie’s limited mobility (and if I recall correctly, Ami Sheth, the actress who plays Afreen, was nearing the end of her pregnancy while they were filming this season, which makes me really impressed by how well they are able to film around these issues), so I totally understood why they wrote Jane sending Patterson to Helsinki in her place. But really, it would have made more sense for Jane and Patterson to go, especially since Jane is supposed to be leading this charge right now. It feels weird watching Jane hold down the fort while others are out in the field, and I hope we get to see her back in action soon.

Which doesn’t mean that Jane doesn’t have to make any hard calls during this episode. The scene at the end, when Kurt doesn’t want to give up on the phone data, even though it might expose their location? That was hard to watch, for both Jane and Kurt. Because, yes, Kurt is kind of losing it—working outside the law is getting to him—but Jane is the one who has to make the call. It reminds of the Dumbledore quote from Harry Potter: “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” Yes, Jane is a total badass in the field and will face down a billion bad guys armed to the teeth without blinking an eye. But you could see on her face that it was a million times harder for her to argue with Kurt and give up on retrieving the data from the phone. It was the right call, yes, but doing the right thing isn’t always easy, and in this case, she had to disappoint the man she loves in the process.

And Kurt does acknowledge that it was the right call, which brings us to another powerful conversation. So far this season, the team’s message has been that they’re going to clear their names, get back home, and get their lives back. But Jane is the first one to actually say that they might never be FBI again. And I think that’s a big deal. Yes, they might be able to prove themselves innocent of the crimes that Madeline pinned on them, but there will likely still be some suspicion surrounding their methods. It’s not as though they reported to their superior’s office to escalate matters up the proper chain of command, and the FBI is all about following rules and regulations. Not to mention the fact that Madeline has made public the crimes they did commit. Even if Rich doesn’t go back to jail for his hacking with Patterson, it’s unlikely that either of them would be allowed to run an FBI lab again. Jane did break Shepherd out of a blacksite, and Kurt did cover that up, so it’s unlikely they would be able to get the clearance required to be FBI agents again. And Tasha? Well, who knows. Madeline pinned a lot of deaths on her with no witnesses or proof to exonerate her, so in the end it’s her word against Madeline’s. And since her face has been plastered all over the news, it’s unlikely the CIA could use her for undercover work again, so where does that leave her?

I think in some ways Jane is a step ahead of Kurt right now. She’s already accepted that they aren’t going to return to the lives that they left, which leaves her free to imagine a new life and work toward that goal, rather than being stuck dwelling on the things that she’s lost. And maybe that’s just part of her personality: Every bit of security she’s had has been ripped away from her, over and over, throughout her life; her childhood in South Africa, her relationship with her brother, her daughter, her SEAL team. Every time she’s had connections, they’ve been ripped away, and she’s been forced to find a new way forward. It’s a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it makes her very determined to hold on to this family, to keep them safe and bring them home. But it also means she’s a very practical person, and perhaps that has given her the gift of being able to focus on finding a way out of whatever adverse conditions she’s found herself in. She isn’t someone who spends a lot of time feeling sorry for herself; she looks for a way out and moves in that direction. And as we began to see in this episode, I think that going forward, not only is she going to have to take the lead of the team, she’s going to have to show Kurt the way, too.

Y: I definitely do not envy Jane and the position she is in right now. It sucks to be her on so many levels. I love that Dumbledore quote. It perfectly applies to Jane right now. We’ve never seen Jane in such a position before, and I am not at all doubting her abilities to lead the team, but she is realizing just how hard it is for so many reasons. I love that this is the last chapter in Jane’s journey. After four seasons of self-discovery, of finding out who she is as an individual, where she belongs within the team and her relationship with Kurt, she is now figuring out what it means to not just be a part of a team but to be a leader of a team—and a leader as Jane and not as Remi.

It is natural for her to be struggling with this role. Making the tough decisions, making calls that determine everyone’s fate and having to take a stand one way or another knowing that others around her might disagree or disapprove. And it’s especially harder in the situation that they are in and the fact that the team have become more a family than just people who work with each other—a broken family but a family nonetheless. Jane is now realizing just how hard it is to be that person, to be the one who has to make the final call and be responsible for the outcome of these decisions even if it splits your team.

Jane is also realizing a few more things. For starters, even though she has technically done this before—being on the run, I mean—she is quickly realizing that doing it on your own is not the same as doing it with others. She doesn’t only have to worry about keeping herself safe, but she also has to make sure everyone else is safe as well—especially as the newly voted leader of the team—and that is much much harder. And if you add to that the fact that every member of her team is hurting on a personal level, then the job is that much harder. They’re still the most capable and most badass team, but emotionally every one of them is on the verge of collapse and struggling to remain in the right mental state for the task at hand.

And what is making it harder is that her rock, the one person she can truly lean on during all this and the person who she would usually trust to carry her through anything that proves to be too much for her to handle on her own, isn’t dealing with things any better than the others. In fact, Kurt is the one who is most visibly struggling with their current situation.

It’s heartbreaking watching Jane have to put aside her own pain—because you know that she too is feeling what everyone else is feeling, from missing those she had to leave behind, to the feeling of hopelessness, to the betrayal of being framed and not to mention that whatever Rich is going through must be triggering for her—and ignoring her own feelings in order to remain strong for everyone else. That scene with Kurt at the end was powerful, like L said, and it forced Jane to voice the one thing they are all thinking but are too scared to say out loud. And it hurts Jane just as much, but she sees that her role as leader means she also has to be the one to say those things. She’s really stepping up to be the leader she thinks the team needs right now even if it’s at the expense of her own emotional state.

One last thing about Jane is how interesting it is to watch her this season in this new role. It’s not necessarily that unfamiliar but it’s still new and different. She is going to have to tap into her Remi memories and Remi training to deal with certain things that may come up. But what I am excited to see is how Jane fares in a leadership position compared to Remi. We didn’t really get to see much of Remi as a leader, but we did get some glimpses of her as a second in command to Shepherd in some of the flashbacks and then when Jane reverted back to her in season 4.

Remi was always driven and motivated by the cause and she cared more about the end result and about the task than anything else. Remi cared more about getting the job done than the people who were doing the job. We saw how she was with the likes of Cade, for example. She cared about results. She cared about the missions. Remi was less concerned about the people, about the team she was leading, and I don’t think she would’ve ever taken moment to consider how they were dealing with things emotionally and mentally.

But that is not our Jane. In that sense, Jane cannot be the same kind of leader that Remi would have been. So it is going to be extremely exciting to watch Jane balance those two parts of her—the tactical and strategic and result-seeking Remi part that is most definitely capable of taking down Madeline and bringing the team back home, and the compassionate Jane part that loves her team and cares about them and values their lives and their well-being more than anything else.

You know Kurt is going through a rough patch when even getting to spend time with his hero, Bill Nye, doesn’t cheer him up. How is our favorite former Special Agent holding up?

Y: He’s not doing so great, is he? After the happiness of reuniting with his wife last week and trying to find some way to accept their current situation has worn off, (former) Special Agent Weller is starting to come to terms with what it really means, and he is not handling so great.

L: You know that things are not going well for Kurt when spending time with Bill Nye doesn’t reduce Kurt to a flailing fangirl. Or when he turns down the opportunity to defuse a bomb. Where did our Kurt Weller go, and can we please get him back??

Kurt decides early on in this episode, “That phone is the key to getting our lives back.” And in retrospect, placing that much weight on retrieving it might have been setting himself up for failure. Because the key to getting their lives back is sitting there in the bunker with him: It’s the team, working together and doing what they do best. Yes, the phone was evidence that could have helped, but it was also evidence that likely wouldn’t have held up in court, so at most it was a stepping stone to point their investigation in the right direction. But Kurt is struggling to keep himself in the here and now; he is so busy thinking about the life he left behind and the things he’s missing out on that he’s in danger of not being there in the present. And he’s going to have to find a way to focus, if he wants to get home in the end.

Y: This show isn’t called Blindspot for no reason. Each season has seen our favorite grumpy agent dealing with one blindspot or another. Sometimes, he manages to come through it more or less unscathed but at other times it gets the best of him. In the first season, Kurt refused to accept any theory that said that Jane wasn’t Taylor Shaw. He refuted all the evidence, refused to entertain any other possibility, and was blinded by his belief that his long-lost childhood friend was brought back to him. It clouded his professional judgement, and it also clouded his personal judgement.

Last season, he refused to accept that Jane was gone, that Remi was back for good, or that Jane wouldn’t be able to overcome the ZIP poisoning even when everything—science included—was saying her chances were slim to none. His stubbornness in that case paid off. So sometimes Kurt’s obsession with something pays off and other times it sort of screws him over.

This time around, Kurt is refusing to accept their situation. He is clinging to their previous life, to a dream of a future he was building with Jane and Bethany, and I think what could be hurting more is not the reality that they left behind but the dream of the future he knows they have to let go of. Of course we cannot blame Kurt for what he is growing through, but I really hope he doesn’t let this take over. Jane may be the one in charge right now but Kurt’s judgment and his instincts, especially in the field, will still be the go-to for the team. If his mind gets too clouded and if his emotions get the best of him, then he will definitely falter in the field and that isn’t great when the whole team depends on him.

I hope he finds a way to understand that as heartbreaking as it is, this new reality of theirs is not so bad—he has this team, his other family, and they are all going to give their all to find their way back home.

Kurt put too much weight on the phone being their ticket back home, and while it was hard to watch him snap at Jane at the end, it was great seeing him at the beginning of the episode be supportive of her as the decision maker. He knows more than anyone how difficult it is to be in this position, to be the one making the tough decisions and to have to carry that responsibility. I hope as the seasons continues and as the weight of being a leader starts to get heavier that Kurt continues to be someone Jane can go to and lean on and take advice from because she is going to need him now in ways she didn’t before.

And last but never least... When Mr. and Mrs. Weller were making plans for the future, hiding away in an underground bunker probably wasn’t on their list. How are they staying strong for each other?

L: One of the things that I have always loved about this couple is the way that they complement each other. Out in the field, that makes them an unbeatable team. But even wrestling with internal demons, they are able to work together; when one is weak, the other is strong, and vice versa. And we see this so clearly in this episode. Kurt is usually a fearless leader, but in this episode, he is struggling, and Jane is the one who comforts him and helps give him courage.

I’m just so glad that they are together now, that they have each other to lean on when they’re pushed to their individual limits. I can’t imagine them going through this if their relationship was in flux. This quest is going to throw some tough roadblocks at them, as we see in this episode, but their relationship is the bedrock upon which they both stand, and it’s going to keep them both standing strong, no matter how fierce the blows come. (And I have a bad feeling that they’re going to get much worse as this season goes on.)

Y: Can’t these two catch a break, please? For like one episode. Just let them… just catch a break! Every time they allow themselves to dream of a future, to make plans, or think that the worst is behind them, they are dealt another blow, and it just feels this won’t ever end.

I am sad.

But yes, one of the things that makes them so… sigh… you know… is that how perfectly they complete each other—how when one of them starts to fall the other is there to pick them up. Jane is being so strong for Kurt right now, but I just hope that she doesn’t start cracking too, and they’re both too weak to stay up.

On a positive note, how awesome was it that with just one look they both agreed without saying a single word that Patterson should be the one to go to Finland? I loved that moment, and sometimes it’s those tiny moments that remind me of why I love those two so much.

So... what would you have named Patterson? Come talk to our Ask Box! Or just flail about Bill Nye. We nerdy gals are always here for that!

—Laura & Yas

[songandashadow]

Fics I read this month. Please don’t forget to leave kudos on these amazing fics! :) 

other recs of mine: my August Fic Rec | my favorites | friends to lovers rec | canon compliant fic rec | ace! larry fic rec

***PLEASE ALWAYS READ THE TAGS FOR POSSIBLE TRIGGERS***

In Circles of You and Me by theweightofmywords | 21k 

college/uni au | friends with benefits | miscommunication | angst and fluff

Louis pulls Harry closer by the belt loops. Harry could feel his breath warm against his neck as he brushes his lips against his skin. “You know... I don’t care if you kiss other people.”

Harry smiles as he feels Louis’ stubble scratch against his neck. “I know you don’t, but-”

He stifles a moan as Louis bites down gently on the soft surface of his skin. “You can kiss other people too-”

Louis pauses to look at him pointedly. “I know I can.”

“Well, have you?” Harry asks, his brows furrowed.

“What’s it to you?” Louis retorts with a smirk. “You’re the one I’m kissing now.”

--

Or, Louis and Harry keep running into each other at parties. It doesn't mean anything, until it does.

the whole world, it is sleeping (but my world is you) by orphan_account  | 22k

x factor era | blind! harry | friends to lovers | smut | angst

Louis knows who this boy is. He saw him at the audition, on the chair in line getting interviewed. He’s called Harry, and he's got the most brilliant voice and the biggest sob story that Louis has ever heard, and what Louis knows is that he doesn't want it to be a sob story at all. His eyes are a wide, glossy sea glass green, and he can’t see a thing."

Louis never really knew commitment, never really knew love, until Harry.

The Section by bananaheathen | 11k

college/uni au | fluff and smut | banter | mutual pining | TA louis

In which Louis is a TA for an Intro to Cinema course, and Harry is an undergrad with a bit of a crush.

Or, the one with "Name: Harry Styles, Date: me please"

As usual, it’s the Irish one he hears first.

“Keep up, Styles. It’s YOUR boyfriend we’re off to see.” “He’ll have heard that, Niall, you arse. Thank you so much.”

Louis just has time to text Zayn: fuck.

The Thinker of Tender Thoughts by SpeakingWithInk | 13k

angst and fluff | asexual! louis | coming out 

Louis sits on his hands to stop them from shaking as he adds, ‘and I’m ace.’ If only he had glitter, he thinks. Coming out deserves a bit of sparkle.

Nothing But You On My Mind by nonsensedarling | 83k

royalty au | enemies to lovers | angst 

Louis Tomlinson is a PR manager hired to improve the image of royal bad-boy Prince Harry Styles. Unfortunately for him, that means being faced with the Prince's constant innuendos, incessant dirty jokes, and relentless flirting. Louis just wants to make it to Princess Gemma's coronation; once she's crowned Queen, his contract is up and he never has to see the Prince again.

Heartbeats in Time by forreveries | 6k

friends to lovers | fluff | high school au | first kiss | feelings and stuff

Based on the prompt: Harry and Louis are stuck inside on a rainy day and it’s all cuddles and snuggles and then one of them kisses the other for the first time and they admit their feelings.

Baby, I think we might be too cold to float by forreveries | 81k

murder mystery | journalist! harry | exes to lovers | new zealand

They couldn’t come back together after six years apart and tell themselves that this was love that they were making. Not with all that radio silence. Harry tried to keep it all down, lodged under the lump in his throat. He needed something to focus on, something to keep him out of his thoughts, so that he could go along with this because he didn’t want Louis to take his hands off him. He didn’t want that to happen. But. But he needed it to. “Wait,” Harry coughed out, his voice trembling, “Stop.” Louis looked up at him with wide eyes. “I— I need to stop,” Harry confessed, trying desperately to keep his voice straight. “What is it?” Louis asked, full of concern. “I can’t do this. I— I can’t play along. You left me and I need answers, Louis.” His voice caught on the end of his name.

AKA: Harry is a journalist that goes to Lake Tekapo, New Zealand, to look into a girl’s disappearance after a year of no movement from police. What he finds instead is his ex boyfriend Louis, who, six years earlier, ghosted him after five months of dating in university. A story of trauma, secrets, and the power of finally letting people in.

bambi legs by disgruntledkittenface | 11k

girl direction | first date | asexual character | fluff | no smut | coming out

“Oh my god,” Zayn says, rolling her eyes and standing up. “You do know what this means, right?”

“Yes?” Harry tries, looking up pathetically and hoping Zayn will take pity on her.

“This means she doesn’t even need the fabric she buys from you every other week,” Zayn says slowly, as if speaking to a small child. “She doesn’t come here for the fabric. She comes here for you.”

Harry works at her family’s fabric store sometimes and always sells the most interesting fabrics to Louis. Louis is the wannabe fashion designer who keeps buying fabric she doesn’t necessarily need just to find a way to talk to Harry.

You Got That Somethin' by styleandsin | 5k

famous/non famous au | musician harry | strangers to lovers | no smut

How are you? Having a good time? Got a couple of beers in? What are those?” Louis hears him ask in quick succession, the loudness of the microphone making him jump even though the screams around him have yet to cease.

“It’s vodka,” Louis says, slightly unsure.

“Vodka! Oh, straight?” Harry asks, louder this time and with a growing smile.

Phoebe and Daisy have turned around to face him, huge smiles on their faces.

Fuck, this man is really going to be the death of Louis. He can physically feel his brain struggling to make his body cooperate and answer the question. He is so gay.

“No, gay!” He shouts, immediately getting an elbow to the side by his sister.

Or, the one where Louis attends a Harry Styles concert and makes an absolute fool of himself.

between chaos and control by stylinsoncity | 19k

companion piece to the wonderlands written from Louis’ POV

give me love by falsegoodnight, soldouthaz | 41k

a/b/o | slow burn | alpha harry/omega louis | fluff and smut | unsafe sex

Despite being an omega, Louis’ always had a blatant dislike of alphas.

-

Or, Louis doesn't feel like a good omega, Harry doesn't remember how to be an alpha, and they figure it out together.

Indestructible by whoknows | 24k

car accident | amnesia | angst | ptsd

“Hi,” Harry murmurs, and Louis hiccups out a sob.

“Hi,” he manages, still clutching onto Harry’s shoulders. Harry’s fingers drift across Louis’ cheeks, and there’s something off about Harry’s expression, but Louis can’t figure out what it is.

“I’m okay,” Harry says, and Louis is going to say something to that, even if he doesn’t know what, except Harry’s kissing him.

Louis freezes.

maybe by momentofclarity | 2k

first meetings | falling in love | age difference (L is like 30 and H is even older)

I cannot not see you again. I cannot.

breathe into your well by turnyourankle | 4k

a/b/o | omega harry | smut

A rut bar. A place where omegas who are so inclined can link up with Alphas in rut. It's not a place Louis ever pictured himself visiting but in the hopes of having a memorable rut, it's where he finds himself tonight.

Sympathy For The Devil by taggiecb | 5k

fantasy au | santa harry | satan louis 

Louis keeps stealing some of Harry’s mail, which would be annoying for anyone, but it’s especially troubling when you consider that Harry is Santa Claus. Harry will have to go through hell to get Louis to stop. Literally.

Or the one with Santa Harry and Satan Louis and a series of misspelled letters to Santa.

We Met on Lex: A Socially Distanced Romance by homosociallyyours  | 4k

girl direction | online dating | blm protests | social distancing

Tipsy on the best bottle of wine she's had in a minute, Harry decides to join Lex-- a dating app for LGBTQ+ people that doesn't rely on pictures for first impressions --and write an ad for herself. Maybe she would've forgotten about it if the first response she received hadn't been so good, but as it is she's curious to know more about this Tommo person.

If only she could stop thinking about the girl who sold her that fateful bottle of wine yesterday...

Every Story Has Its Scars, Ours Is a Brand New Start by Rearviewdreamer | 62k

WARNING: domestic violence | graphic descriptions of violence

strangers to lovers | hurt/comfort | kid fic | angst and fluff | photographer! harry

Life as a devoted husband and an amazing father turned out to be a little different than Louis had expected. Everyone tells him it doesn't have to be that way; that he's worth more and that he's so much stronger than any one person trying to keep him down. It's all just words though until he meets the one person who makes him truly believe it.

[doof-doofblog]

"Let's Have That Playdate Tomorrow!"

Friday 20th November 2020

Hello again everyone! Hope you all are doing well, this current lockdown is nearly at an end! Hopefully things will start to look a bit better when Christmas comes around! I apologise for me being so behind on the episodes lately, unfortunately I am still working during this current lockdown and of course with things happening in my own personal life, there are times I miss out on watching an episode, let alone even getting the time to review one and type up a blog. I want to thank you all for your on-going support, there have been so many spoilers as to what may be happening over the Christmas period on Albert Square, I'm really looking to watching it all unfold!

Meanwhile, let's carry on from where I was last up to, Friday's episode. The episode begins with Kat, she's slumped on the kitchen table as Stacey makes her way in. Poor Kat looks as if she hasn't been able to have a wink of sleep all night. She reveals to Stacey that she's tried calling everyone she knows trying to find the whereabouts of Kush, she's still trying to call him but his phone remains off. Who knows where he must've gone to after the robbery?! He seems to have just done a disappearing act. But Kat isn't one to just hang around and do nothing, as she grabs her coat, she informs Stacey that she's going off to the police station to give her statement and then she's going to try and find Kush. If the police haven't got him then he must be somewhere?!

Meanwhile, Callum looks absolutely lost. He's seems to be in a world of his own as he tends to his busted lip. As Ben walks in, they begin to discuss how the whole situation has turned into such a mess. Callum informs his boyfriend that he really didn't have a choice but to let Kush go, considering he'd threatened to take down Ben with him if he got caught. Ben then speaks his opinion that Kush should remain missing, he seems to be believe that they would've gotten away with the robbery if Kush hadn't set off the silent alarm - however things seems to take an interesting turn here, Callum then reveals to his boyfriend that there actually wasn't a silent alarm, and the other reason the police turned up was because they received an anonymous 999 call. Ben seems to look deeply concerned, but does he have an idea as to who grassed them up?! Wait till he finds out that it was his brother!!

At the laundrette, Max walks in on Linda drawing up some new ideas for her business idea. She shows Max her rough copies of the new superhero's she's made, and of course - Max is really impressed and suggest that she should post them online. Once again I'm sensing more flirtation between the two, they suggest bringing their children together for a playdate and perhaps modelling some outfits that Linda has designed, but it's just so blatantly obvious that Linda is flirting when she suggests having an adult in on the modelling too to be pose with the children. They share a giggle as Sharon enters the building, oooh Sharon knows she has walked in on something! Both Linda and Max act very coy when she asks if she's interrupting something, Linda reveals to her friend that Max is helping with her business idea for the Lucy Beale Award. Sharon knows that Max is up to no good, the last thing she wants is for Max to break up another marriage! What do you think, are Linda and Max just good friends? Or do you fear that something is going to happen between the two and they'll cross the line?!

In the Cafe, Tiffany is informing her husband that both Rainie and Stuart haven't been in touch with her for a while since she agreed to be their surrogate, however once Keegan notices that she's had her phone on "Airplane Mode", loads of messages seem to come through once she's taken it off. I mean, of course Stuart and Rainie are going to be in touch with her as much as they can, it's the excitement of being one step closer to becoming parents. Suddenly they make their way into the Cafe and insist on buying Tiffany breakfast, however in stead of buying a lovely full English Breakfast, Rainie brings up a plate of salad to her - I mean, I get she wants her to be healthy so she'll be able to look after their baby okay, but something tells me it would start being a bit of an insult if she starts telling her what to eat and what not to eat. Tiffany and Keegan can both see this is going to be a really long journey for them.

Out on the Square, Ian appears to be dressed in his finest as he gives an interview for the Walford Gazette newspaper. I'm unsure what that interview is for, possibly for his public image? Or wanting to get the word out that the Vic is now under new management. He's one again gloating to this news crew that if it wasn't for him, the Queen Vic would've hit rock bottom with sales, business, etc. However, unfortunate for Ian, Tina is stood behind him listening to every word he's saying. It's interesting how many people he's really beginning to annoy and how many people are/will have it in for him. As Tina walks away after hearing him insult her family, Suki approaches and acknowledges how happy she is that someone as up-standing as Ian is getting the recognition he deserves, of course she's only saying that because they've come to an agreement of some kind. I do have a feeling that things aren't going to continue going well for Mr. Beale.

Returning to the Mitchell household, Kat pays them a visit an informs Callum that she's been down the statement having to give a false statement. She informs the young police officer that he didn't drop him in it but she knows full well that he let Ben off, she demands to know where Kush is, if anyone would know, he would, right?! Callum informs Kat that he has no idea of the whereabouts of Kush, its then he also drops the bombshell that he did find Kush during the robbery, but Kush ended up punching him and fleeing the scene. Kat can't believe that Kush would punch Callum, but he informs her that it's probably best if Kush stays hidden for the time being, as he not also took part in a robbery, he also assaulted a police officer, so maybe he is just lying low.

At the Atkins household, Phil is questioning Gray whether they'll be any issues in changing the licence plates on the cars. But Shirley reassures her boss that the paper work needs to be absolutely spot on, which is why Gray is doing the paperwork and Phil isn't! Interesting, there seems to be a lot of people who are in-the-know about this robbery. It's amazing how none of them have grassed any of them up, well of course except for Ian. But there's Kat, Stacey, Phil, Shirley, Ben, Callum, Kush, Gray, Sharon ... (Well maybe she doesn't know about the burglary but she's felt comfortable about giving Phil a false alibi?!) As Phil leaves the property, Tina arrives back and it's clear to see that she is seething over Ian's insults to her family and his attitude towards them and the Vic. Tina pleads to her sister that they attempt to get the pub back in their name, but Shirley reminds Tina that Linda is still an alcoholic, that was the reason they sold up in the first place. But Tina seems to believe that Linda is doing a lot better recently, she explains that since they sold the pub, Mick hasn't been the same, he seems to be so unhappy and lost. Could there be a way for the Carter's to win back the pub?! Is the pub really in Ian's name or Sharon's name? As Ian has always said that he bought the pub for Sharon, but who's name is really on the lease of the building?!

Returning to the Vic, Linda is informing her best friend about application for the Lucy Beale Award. It's nice to see Linda looking more positive and happy about her future prospects, but it's clear to see that Sharon is worried for her friend about getting too close to Max. As Linda is glowing with the excitement of a whole new beginning, Sharon voices her concerns about Max, but in a loving, friendly way that everything seems okay now between them, but if things go on it won't be long before Max will have his tongue down her throat. (However little does she know that they have already shared a kiss!) Linda reassures her friend that she wouldn't cheat on Mick and that she literally just sees Max as a mate. But Sharon has a good point, whilst Mick is away staying with Lee, it's understandable she's enjoying the attention but I'd hate to think she'd cheat on her husband whilst he was away, especially considering what he's been dealing with in recent weeks.

Meanwhile at the restaurant, Iqra is sat doing paperwork. Ian is stood behind the bar as Suki walks in, subtly she hands him over an envelope with half of the amount she promised him inside. Ian doesn't seem impressed and pulls Suki into the back for a private word, leaving the money on the bar counter. As he pulls Suki to one side he asks Iqra to watch the bar whilst they're in the back. Iqra is quite reluctant but once both Ian and Suki are out the back, Iqra starts to clean behind the bar, until she eventually comes across the envelope with the money inside it - instantly she's looking a little confused as to where this money has come from, but suddenly she begins to hear voices. Ian and Suki are both discussing their plan, Suki tells Ian that he won't receive the other half of the money until he has held up his end of the bargain and put things into paperwork and he has signed some kind of formal documents she needs, planning approval etc. Iqra is really shocked to have heard what she has, but what will she do with this information? Will she tell Ash what her Mother is really up to?! Or maybe will she help Tina in getting the Vic back in the Carter's name, knowing full well that Ian is up to some dodgy deals with Suki! Who knows?!

Back out on the Square, Whitney is seen leaving the Minute Mart as car sirens can be heard, slowly Ruby approaches from behind and they both watch in amazement as from across the Square, the police pull up the Slater household and barge their way in as they look for Kush. Stacey's voice can be heard objecting to them entering the house. Ruby voices her opinion that it doesn't surprise her that the police have come knocking at their door, however Whitney's response is more sympathetic, she questions that maybe the police have got the wrong house? But Ruby just laughs at Whitney's response and says that it wouldn't surprise her if they found something at the Slater household. Hmm, does Whitney know more than she's letting on?! Why would she be so quick to defend the Slater's?!

At the Carter's household, Max once again is helping Linda with her costumes (Wow! Can I just say how big baby Abi has grown?! I know it sounds silly, but I still picture her as a little baby, not the toddler that she's become. Didn't realise it was that long ago that Abi Branning passed away! Only feels like a year or two ago - which may possibly be how old young Abi it?!) As Linda is eager to get the children in their superhero outfits, Max picks out one for Ollie to year, however Linda recalls that the one he picked was the one Mick made for him when Ollie was first diagnosed with Autism. You can see a slight look of sadness as she mentions how Mick didn't want their son to feel different from everyone, so instead of different they made him feel special. When Max puts the superhero outfit away, Linda admits to him that it was actually Mick's idea to make their son a Superhero outfit. Is there a sense of guilt between them now that Mick hasn't been brought into the idea of superhero clothes for children?! Or the fact that they're feeling guilty for spending a lot of time together and have quite visibly been flirting with one another? Who knows?!

Meanwhile, Iqra has found her way to the Prince Albert, unfortunately she doesn't seem to be listening fully to Tina as her head is replaying what she's overheard from Ian and Suki. Tina is voicing how much she's going to miss living with her and Ash, but she understands that her moving out would help Iqra and Ash spend some time together. However, Iqra feels trapped in a corner as she admits to Tina that she can't stand Ash's family. I have to say I really do like the friendship between Tina and Iqra, I did kind of wish that they were a couple instead of Iqra and Ash. Anyway Iqra finds it in herself to confide in Tina and reveals everything that she witnessed, Suki giving Ian some money in return for some approval on a planning application. Tina tells Iqra that she's got to tell someone, she knows full well how dodgy Ian is being at the moment. Iqra pleads to her not to tell anyone, especially considering the fact the Iqra can't tell her own girlfriend that her Mum is up to something. But what will Tina do with this information? Will she find a way of getting her own back on Ian herself?!

Back at the Carter household, Max and Linda are enjoying taking pictures of their children in Linda's new children's superhero outfits. Only things take a slight U-turn when Max comments that they both make a good team. I think Linda maybe feels a little uncomfortable with his comment, he thanks Max for all his help but expressions her opinion that once they're done he should leave. Only when Linda begins to take photo's of Ollie with the flash on her phone, it frightens the poor boy and he attempts to hide underneath the kitchen table with his hands over his eyes. Linda apologises to her son and tries to coax him out but to no avail, Max then decides to take it upon himself to try and gain the little boy's trust. He gets down to his level and squeezes underneath the table, softly he speaks to the little boy and after suggesting that they build a den after taking their photographs, the little boy removes his hands from his face, much to Linda's surprise. Eventually Max persuades little Ollie to get up and join in with taking photographs, to which Linda is incredibly thankful.

Back on the Square, Tiffany and Keegan are approaching the chippy (Yum! Everyone loves a chippy, right?!) As Keegan orders himself some food, Tiffany feels a bit gutted that she's having to stay healthy. As she's voicing her frustration, Stuart appears from behind and informs her that he's managed to go to the chemist and pick up some vitamins for her. He pulls out about 3 or 4 different tube bottles full of pills and Tiffany is looking pretty overwhelmed with this new information that she's having to take pills as well as eat healthily. However it looks as if enough is enough when Stuart asks her to start taking them that day, she understands that they want the baby to be healthy but she assures Stuart that she wouldn't let anything happen to their child once its in her womb. Stuart seems to understand, he apologises for coming on so heavy, its nice that they have come to acknowledge each other's understanding, Tiffany tells him politely that she's more than happy to carry their child for them, but it does not mean that they can start telling her what she can and can't do, and in all fairness - Stuart completely agrees and announces that they'll do it Tiffany's way, to which she then responds with happily ordering something from the chippy.

Once again, returning to the Carter household, Ollie and Abi are both playing happily together as they wind down after their photoshoot. Linda is sat with Max as they look over the photographs they've taken. This scene did get me a little worried as I sensed something, once again, was going to happen between the two. Max brings up the fact that he's trying to be supportive to Linda considering he was with her the last time she had a drink, he doesn't want her to feel that she's got no one to talk to, but regardless of them spending time together, he admits that he knows that she and Mick are solid. It's then Linda seems to look upset and reveals to Max that things haven't exactly been brilliant between them recently, she explains that each time she tries she feels she's just pushing him further and further away. Perhaps this is why she's been enjoying Max's company so much, it's made her feel something again - I mean when was the last time, Mick and Linda actually had a laugh with each other and showed each other some affection? It's been a long time, hasn't it?! Max seems to understand but he makes the big confession that the only reason he kissed her a while back is because he wanted to, and more interestingly, he stills wants to! Things are looking as if they are going to pounce on each other, however Ollie breaks the silence as he asks for his Mummy. As Linda goes to see her to son, Max suggests that they make another play date for their children, to which Linda coldly responds by saying she'll text him.

Back at the Slater household, Kat answers her mobile which is ringing on the kitchen table, it appears to be Stacey on the other end. She informs her cousin that she's been desperately trying to search for her boyfriend but can't find him anywhere. Suddenly, there's a knock on the backdoor and Kat is surprised to see Whitney stood there. It's then Whitney announces that there's something she needs to show her, pretty urgently and they both leave the house together. Meanwhile in the Vic, Ian is feeling positive about his interview with the newspaper, even though he is looking incredibly happy with himself, the fella from the newspaper seems less than impressed as he downs his bottle of beer. Across the bar, both Callum and Ben are trying to talk about something other than the robbery. Oh but just by coincidence, as soon as Ben questions whether Callum can trace who dialled the 999 call, Ian is stood behind the bar ear-wigging on their conversation. However Callum is unsure whether the call will be able to be traced, but then again the only thing they'll find out is that it was made from a telephone box. Maybe Ian did a clever thing for once and made sure he dialled from a phone box and not a mobile phone, that way it would be harder for them to trace?! Suddenly Tina enters the Vic and makes her way toward the bloke from the newspaper. Ooooh I'm liking the look of this!!! She questions whether he's writing an article  about Ian Beale, but the bloke doesn't seem interested if she's going to comment on how much of a aspect to the community he is, but then his attention in instantly grabbed as Tina admits that that is not what's doing, she mentions that if he really wants a story then she has one for him. Ooooh - I'm loving this! Yes! GO TINA!!! Is she going to spill what Iqra has informed her about and portray Ian in a terrible light?! In all seriousness, it's more than what he deserves! Only the downside is, will it fall back onto Iqra and will she get the blame?!

Eventually Kat makes it to what looks like Whitney's attic, she's questioning why Whitney has brought her up there, only as she turns around, Kush is seen sat in the very far corner, almost looking scared and very sheepish. Kat is absolutely elated to find her boyfriend is safe and sound, she announces how worried she's been about him, but Kush is nothing but deeply apologetic for making such a mess of things. He's tries to explain how he thought he would be able to start the car and how things just turned so messy. Kat is just happy to see that Kush is safe, she promises him that they will sort everything out together.

At Ruby's club, Linda is sat alone with a drink, Ruby enters the room carrying a huge box of wine. It looks as if Linda is feeling sorry for herself, she seems very agitated when Ruby politely asks if she's okay. Whether she's waiting for someone or something else. Linda then voices that everyone around her sees her not as Linda anymore, but Linda The Alcoholic! Ruby tries to persuade her that that isn't the case at all, she tries to explain that she has lots of friends and family around her who are just trying to look out for her. She questions whether she should all Mick, but Linda snaps back that he isn't her carer, he's her husband. She also makes sure to point out to Ruby that the drink she's got in her hand is only orange juice, nothing else! But Ruby is quick to throw in one last dig, she knows that she's drinking a soft drink, as she explains that all her staff have a list of who not to serve alcohol to, and it turns out that Linda's name is right at the very top of that list! Honestly, that's a bit of a big insult, I think that would hurt anyone really wouldn't it?! As Ruby leaves the room, Linda takes it upon herself to approach the box of wine which she's left at the bar and swipes a bottle before leaving. Once she's home, she's sat alone with the bottle and a glass already poured, to me it looks like that she really can't take Mick's behaviour anymore, she's feeling lonely, unwanted and maybe also missing her husband as well as missing their happiness and intimacy. She attempts to call him but to no avail as it the dial tone rings dead, I did fear at this point that she was going to take a big gulp of wine. She brings the glass up to her face and she gently smells the wine, she then plonks the glass back down and dials another number - Max! She agrees to go along with the playdate for the children for the following day, but something else is telling me, is she doing it for the company. If Mick isn't around then why not have Max's attention. I do thing as things go on, something will happen between the two, what do you think? Feeling a little more relieved she gets up and throws the glass of wine and the bottle down the sink!

A very interesting episode I have to say, some very interesting things taking place, I mean I do feel a lot of it will come to some form of explosion within the next few days. I do feel that all this that's happening right now will be the drama that's all going to explode coming towards Christmas! Christmas is only a month away and it's not going to be long now until huge secrets are revelled and big bombshells are going to be dropped. EastEnders is always explosive at Christmas, right?! I, for one, am incredibly excited to see it all unfold! Thank you all for reading, I'll be back again tomorrow with another blog. Enjoy the rest of your evening folks! Love you all xXx

[thefloatingstone]

MST3K Recommendations for people who’ve never watched it

So if you’re somebody on the internet under the age of 22 there’s a chance you may have HEARD people talk about Mystery Science Theater 3000 or “MST3K” for short, and may even know exactly what it is, but you’ve not watched it and have no idea where to start. Or if you’ve never heard of it, this is me telling you you should probably watch it.

In the early to mid 2000s, when the only people on the internet where nerds and teenagers who were nerds (like literally. I have no idea how to explain to the Today’s Kids(tm) that the internet use to ONLY consist of nerdy people and fandoms. None of this “Influencer” shit.) Anyway, back when the internet was just nerds, before video was easily available, MST3K was still being talked about via audio clips, usually made by holding microphones right up to the TV, and when youtube launched in 2006, some of the very first videos were MST3K episodes cut up into 10 parts (because originally you couldn’t upload videos to youtube that were longer than 10 minutes and they had to be 240dp). And before google bought youtube, you could find full, complete episodes of MST3K on Google video.

It’s kind of a staple if you’re a nerdy internet person, and you’ll probably see it get referenced by fandom people and youtubers in their late 20s a LOT. Or use some of the things MST3K introduced in their own videos (like the Stinger after the credits for instance)

So MST3K is kind of essential viewing imo. And luckily, because of the nature of the show, unlike... basically EVERYTHING tv related, sharing links of MST3K is actually actively and honestly encouraged by the show creators.

The show ran from 1989 to 1999, changing from airing on one channel to another as it went (I’m not American so I never caught it on TV). And at the end of literally every single episode throughout its entire 10 year run, you would see this after the credits;

The show actively encouraged its audience to tape the episodes to video and share those videos with friends and family. This is because the show was never about “building a franchise” or becoming monetarily valuable for its creators, but it was about people actually watching the show. Even to this day, with copyright claims and “Subscribe to our streaming service to watch this show” running rampant, MST3K continues to be a show whose prime focus is to get people to watch it. (unless you want to buy it on DVD in which case the prime focus is for you to be rich to try and afford them because they’re like $70 for 4 episodes).

As such, some episodes are available for free on the MST3K official youtube channel completely for free. Some episodes you can buy from the Rifftrax website (which is where the show creators now work, doing basically the same thing as MST3K minus the puppets and host segments unfortunately) but I would be honestly shocked if ANY episode is unavailable online because sharing the episodes is.... just kind of the point of the show? I literally managed to find each and every one in 2008 (although that dark drive doesn’t want to work with my newer laptop so I might have to download all the episodes AGAIN. Thanks Technology...)

But if you’re somebody who has NO IDEA which episodes are “the good ones” or you just want to jump in and watch but you’re scared you’ll get a complete dud as your first experience and then not know what all the fuss is about, or you just want to know some good episodes to watch, I decided to throw together a list, along with links.

And with that VERY lengthy intro out of the way, here we go!

In no order

The Touch of Satan Year: 1971 S09E08 Host: Mike Mads: Pearl, Brain guy and Bobo

Despite the movie title there is no Satan in the film. A baffling movie where a good looking “All American Boy” named Jodie drives through a small town while road tripping from Texas to San Fransisco. There he meets a really pretty girl named Melissa who lives with who she claims is her mother and father on a walnut farm, as well as her insane grandmother. For seemingly nonsensical reasons (other than he’s attracted to Melissa) Jodie decides to spend the night at the farm. Eventually he gets pulled into the family curse and learn just who Melissa really is (It’s not Satan).

The movie is incredibly stupid and WOULD be pretty bland if not for the absolutely ridiculous dialogue, bizarre little details you can’t help but focus on (why a Walnut farm? Why is the father always so sweaty??) and just how.... 70s everything is.

Mike and the bots are super on point with their jokes, and it has a few of my favourite jokes and host segments in it.

https://youtu.be/ZebKhabJItE

Gamera Year: 1965 S03E02 Host: Joel Mads: Dr Forrester and TV’s Frank

Look. If you’re gonna watch MST3K you’re gonna have to watch a Gamera movie eventually. And since I could literally put ANY of the Gamera films here, I’m gonna start with the first one. Especially since the following Gamera movies the host and bots have running jokes and references to the first films.

Gamera is a Japanese Kaiju movie franchise originally created to compete with Godzilla. And completely misses the point of Godzilla. Whereas Godzilla was originally intended to be a metaphor of Atomic weaponry and Japan’s national wound following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... Gamera is about a giant flying turtle monster who is friend to all children.

....and I friggen LOVE Gamera. It’s because of MST3K’s episodes that I ended up buying a DVD boxset of every single Gamera movie. It’s good stuff. Start with this episode and watch the others as you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rly_1NPCXAM

Pod People Year: 1983 S03E03 Host: Joel Mads: Dr Forrester and TV’s Frank

This is MANY people’s favourite episode in the whole show, and was my favourite as well until I couldn’t pick a favourite any more. However this is the only episode of the show where I had to pause it the first time I watched it at one part because I was laughing so hard.

Originally intended to be an alien slasher movie, the producers asked the director Juan Piquer Simon to include a subplot where a cute child makes friends with one of the aliens so that they could market the movie as an E.T. rip off (E.T. had come out the year before) If you think this would make the tone of the movie confusing where half the aliens are killing off teenagers and half the aliens are being friends with a small, badly dubbed child... you are absolutely right. But it’s the Host segments and jokes within the film that make this one of the top 5 best episodes in the whole show, if not top 3.

It is the episode that people will most commonly reference even 30 years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCl2ZNkfnS8

Jack Frost Year: 1964 S08E13 Host: Mike Mads: Pearl, Brain Guy and Bobo

One of the many badly Russian films that deserved much better than the shitty dub they got. I was THIS CLOSE to putting “The Day the Earth Froze” here instead, but I felt Jack Frost is the easier watch of the two (however I do recommend checking out The Day the Earth Froze as well).

Honestly, this film isn’t that bad at all. It’s shitty dub is a shame but even with the silly voices and calling Baba Yaga “The Hunchbacked Fairy” for reasons I will never understand, the film is actually pretty charming, and if I had it on video as a kid I probably would have really liked it.  It’s a classic fairy tale about a pretty and kind young girl who is treated badly by her stepmother and stepsister, but she finds true love in a handsome prince who had been turned into a bear until he could learn humility. Also Jack Frost is there (I have no idea who he’s suppose to be in the original language of the film and I doubt its Jack Frost). The movie is innocent and weird and overacted and the main character of Nastenka is so pretty and big eyed and innocent it’s an easy target for jokes on just how silly and whimsical everything is. The jokes are never outright mean spirited or nasty, just in line with the whole silly movie, and honestly this is a great episode to introduce your kids to the show as it’s not scary and doesn’t have any gore (like some of the other films showcased)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVpOaeBtr7w

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies Year: 1964 S08E12 Host: Mike Mads: Pearl, Brain Guy, Bobo

Yes. That is the real title of the movie. And it is also the most exciting thing about it. This movie is..... incomprehensible, to say the least. I am only BARELY aware of what the fuck it’s even about. There’s a fortune teller on the amusement park wharf? And I remember a terrifying robot monkey asking people to buy tickets, and the main character (I use the term loosely) becomes evil? I’m sorry but this movie is so cut to ribbons in editing and has so little dialogue it’s barely even a movie. It’s held together by the thinnest threads of recurring images. However, unlike some of the other episodes in MST3K with the same problem of barely being movies, I find the jokes by the hosts land much better and they’re not in as agonizing pain as “The Beast of Yucca Flats” which I still consider the worst movie I have ever seen in my life.

I have no way to describe this movie. It’s not even crazy enough to garner enthusiastic “this movie is batshit insane” praise. Watch this one for the jokes by the hosts. And for the title so you can tell people “I watched a movie called The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jLGqN3XG-Q

Eegah Year: 1962 S05E06 Host: Joel Mads: Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank

Ugh. This movie. Ok. “Starring” Arch Hall Jr. who was a sort of actor and one of those 60s “teen heart throb” singers before boy bands became a thing after the Beatles. He never made it super big, but it was considered a big selling point to films he was in (he went on to being an airline pilot and good for him). This movie is about him and his girlfriend his girlfriend’s father finding a giant caveman in the desert outside their town (in a cave which is NOT made of burlap sacks). The giant caveman falls in love with the girlfriend and follows them to the suburbs.

It’s not the most remarkable movie MST3K ever did. It’s not the best movie they ever did nor is it the worst movie they ever did, but for some reason this film has a tendency to stick in people who watch MST3K’s minds. Maybe the jokes are just THAT quotable, but for whatever reason, it’s one of the staple episodes to watch. And hey, at least the movie is WATCHABLE. MST3K went on to reference things in this film for the rest of the show’s history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvFBKsW3Aew

Santa Claus Year: 1959 S5E21 Host: Mike Mads: Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank

A Mexican movie about Santa Claus and his friend Merlin who live on the moon and watch the children of Earth through a telescope to make sure they’re all being good. We focus on the devil Pitch who is sent by Satan to make children misbehave, most noteably a 4 year old girl named Lupita who is from a poor family and wishes she had a pretty doll to play with, and a rich little boy who wishes his parents would spend Christmas with him.

This movie is.... weird. In case the whole “Santa and Merlin are friends and live on the moon” thing didn’t already tip you off. The movie’s pretty harmless overall but it’s just WEIRD. Santa’s castle on the moon is full of children from all over the world wearing the most stereotypical clothes of all time (Japanese children in full kimono, American children all dressed as cowboys, African children dressed in tribal clothes etc etc) and they.... I think they make the toys? I’m not sure. Santa’s reindeer are terrifying wind up toys who laugh maniacally when they’re turned on. There’s a giant mouth on the wall that’s part of Santa’s computer? And an ear that can hear what all the children are saying on earth or something?

It’s just... it’s bizarre. And an excellent episode to watch for Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTWs3zvz1z4

War of the Colossal Beast Year: 1958 S03E19 Host: Joel Mads: Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank

I am recommending this one not actually for the movie itself, but for the short which plays first, which is “Mr. B Natural” and which is easily the best and most referenced MST3K short in the whole show.

It follows a little boy who wishes he was cool. He’s visited by Mr. B Natural, the spirit of music. Mr. B Natural is played by Betty Luster and is a bizarre character in himself, being completely androgynous and using male pronouns while being played very obviously by a woman with a very obviously female voice. Mr. B is presented as a sort of pixie character and possibly meant to be like the stage version of Peter Pan which is also traditionally played by adult women. The episode of MST3K aired in 1991 LONG before the concept of Non-binary was even a thing. As such MST3K plays along with the weirdness that is Mr. B, using only male pronouns for him and addressing him as a man, while also commenting on how attractive he is.

Mr. B teaches our little boy main character that if he wants to be cool he needs to buy a trumpet and join the school’s band, and goes on to be one of the most beloved MST3K “characters” who they often keep making references to and who shows up in the host segments now and then as a cameo.

Oh. And then there’s a movie following the short that’s a sequel to another movie. It’s about a man who keeps growing larger and larger in size but the bigger he gets the more he loses his intelligence. It’s directed by the notorious “Bert I. Gordon” whose movies are always more vehicles for cheap special effects than story, plot or characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL8umsMe28

Squirm Year: 1976 S10E12 Host: Mike Mads: Pearl, Brian Guy and Bobo

I am a little biased towards Squirm because I’m pretty sure it was the very first MST3K episode I ever saw (not counting the short “Are you Ready for Marriage?” which was the first anything MST3K that I saw). But even if it wasn’t I think Squirm is still a great episode to check out, and it comes with the double whammy of having the short “a Case of Spring Fever” in front of the film which, if they had the short in an earlier season, would definitely have become a running joke throughout the show. Sadly They only aired it here in the 10th season, but even being in the last season, it’s one of the show’s most famous shorts they’ve done.

As for the film, it’s actually pretty great too. It takes place in Georgia and is SUPER southern to a point of coming across as a parody almost. Our main character is the boyfriend of a local girl, a “city boy” who she met antiquing (a hobby they both share and talk about a lot throughout the film). However, a powerful electrical storm struck the small town a few nights ago, and as a result, it has turned all the earthworms underground into blood thirsty, violent predators (without actually growing in size). The movie is a silly and ridiculous B-Movie, but honestly a LOT of the effects are pretty damn impressive. Before he made it big in Rocky, Sylvester Stallone really wanted a role in the film but didn’t get it. All the worms in the film are real, and bought from the bait and fishing industry. So many worms were used in this film that they completely used up the entire New England’s bait supplies for the whole year following the shooting of the film.

Erm... so don’t watch it if you’re squeemish about bugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3msPmLpLTUM

Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders Year: 1996 S10E03 Host: Mike Mads: Pearl, Brain Guy and Bobo

omfg this movie X’D this fucking movie.

Ok. So what kind of movie do you expect with a title like that and if I tell you it starts off with a grandfather telling his grandson a story about how Merlin’s magic is real and has come to benefit mankind and help others?

You’re probably expecting some whimsical fantasy low budget Princess Bride knock off, right? This is exactly what the film THINKS it is, too. It THINKS it’s a magical child friendly story about magic and Merlin and him and his wife running a shop that sells magical items to better the lives of others.

So it’s kind of a fucking problem that the stories in this movie are based off of Stephen King horror Novellas!!!

And that’s basically all you need to know about why this movie is kind of a disaster. It thinks it’s an all ages magical romp when in reality it’s a horrifying double feature of pet deaths (warning for a dog dying in the second story) an abusive husband (warning for domestic abuse in the first story) and demonic powers.

Also, despite the film being made in 1996, the second story uses footage from the director’s earlier film “The Devil’s Gift” which was made in 1984. As a result, despite the 1996 release, the child in this part of the movie is playing with Star Wars toys and wearing an E.T. shirt through most of it.

This movie also has one of my favourite jokes by Mike right at the end of the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Q-RuAx4V4

Ah crap that’s already 10 movies and I haven’t even mentioned “Werewolf” or “Puma Man”. dkfhskdhfks Go watch Puma Man and Werewolf!! They’re great!

and finally, special mention;

Manos: the hands of fate

Year: 1966 S04E24 Host: Joel Mads: Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank

The great grandpappy of ALL the MST3K episodes. Of all the episodes they’ve ever done and all the movies and shorts they ever covered, Manos is the one that crawled under the skin of the hosts and the audience the most. Many people say it’s the very worst film they ever did EVER. As I said, I personally think the Beast of Yucca Flats is much worse if only because it’s painfully boring, but in terms of sheer “this is so fucking bad I can’t even process this”, I guess Manos wins. Being terrible because you’re boring is one thing. Being terrible because you’re completely batshit insane is another.

The story BEHIND the movie Manos is fascinating. Made when the creator of the film made a bet with a friend that he could make a movie despite never having done anything with film before, he went ahead and did it, with a screening and a premiere and everything. The actor playing Torgo was high on LSD the entire time of filming. The Camera used to shoot the film got so hot they could only film 30 seconds for each scene before they had to cut to a new one. The entire movie was filmed without sound and dubbed afterwards. The actor who was going to play the main character broke his leg before filming started and had to be replaced last second.

The movie is indescribable. It is PAIN and it is SUFFERING and it is BAFFLING and you should really build up a resistance to bad movies before attempting to watch this episode. I do NOT recommend starting your MST3K viewing with this one. But eventually, if you like MST3K, you’re gonna have to watch it. There’s just no escaping it.

The only way I can properly explain what Manos is like is to quote Crow who comments in the opening credits (which the film but forgot to put the actual credits over) “Every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.”

And that’s it. That’s the whole movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5baft7Kv0

I forgot to add my links!

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[adposto2]

WHERE is Gulberg Greens Islamabad.

Whom to trust whom not to?. Especially when it comes to investments, I think making decisions in this regard are harder than that lifetime effort made to earn that heavy amount. For instance me, who had been saving up for a decade now but took me more than three years to gain confidence enough to buy land. The money lying in the bank was only losing its worth . So, I knew I had to make a decision soon for my future security.  Now the question rises whom to trust, rather how to? . Commercial Projects  in Gulberg Islamabad

As we all know how fraud is common in this market. I can’t forget the first time I visited a real estate agent, the land that cost 15lac he was selling for 20 lac. And when I made a decision to buy it, it turned out to be a non-progressing land and probably have no worth howsoever. Now I knew this time is the right time to invest especially in the vicinity of Islamabad, my tension turned into frustration as I had never felt so helpless before. I was desperate for help YES… but was there anyone to guide me… unfortunately NO! One day while I was surfing Facebook, I came across Gulberg Islamabad’s post. The image was visually pleasing . Later ,when I dig down more to the content of their posts and website, the features seemed interesting too. Flat for sale in Gulberg islamabad

On top of all that, the name of Gulberg was quite promising itself. It suddenly clicked me to visit that place and visit their sales office rather than random property dealers. I entered Gulberg Greens and I was stunned by its beauty and grand look. I was overwhelmed by the hospitality of the Sales team that involved educated men and women as well. A lady helped me out with all the queries and procedure. For the first time I felt relieved to be in the right place and right away… yes right away I signed a cheque and booked an apartment in Gulberg Heights. The Roman architecture and amazing features and facilities that this place is offering was worth relying. So now I own my property and I surely believe that where there is a will there is a way! Commercial Plots in Gulberg Islamabad

My New Year Resolution

New Year Resolution: Enough of struggles… now it’s time to do more with my life! This is what I said to myself in the beginning of 2019 and changed my perspective about life. Life as we all know tests us in every way but it’s us who decide whether to become a victim of it or have control over it by learning from our mistakes and experiences… We can surely make it better by becoming stronger, by expecting less and giving more, by focusing on our dear ones rather than those who hurt us and most of us by analyzing what we want from life and how to get it! Of course it isn’t as easy as it sounds and not a work of day or two.

With time I realized that though we are always trying to comprehend everything around us, the most difficult thing to understand is what lies within us. Literally sometimes it takes years to figure out something as little as what is best for us and what isn’t. If I sound silly just try convincing yourself to do something against your will… My time for the last 4 years didn’t seem to be in my favor . But I simply accepted my fate till I couldn’t bear more, as not just my personal and professional life but also the lives attached to me were getting unbearably affected. I for once realized the cost of shattering my confidence and blaming myself.

No one was going to offer me solutions… I had to be my own master. I started off by taking care of myself, making my faith in Allah stronger . Also in any type of  circumstance I didn’t let anything get me down. All this seemed impossible initially, but today I am where I am because of this. My relationships got better and I showed good progress at work. Along with work I started a new online business of mobile accessories in collaboration with my cosine. In just one year I have earned enough to make an investment. For 2020 I can proudly say that this year I will start a new better life at my favorite place in Islamabad, The Gulberg Islamabad.

I have already booked a plots in Gulberg Residencia and now I can’t wait to see my home being built where I will have everything I wish for, a place rather than a house will be my home. I will finally be able to make my family happy with this beautiful gift. As no doubt there is no place like Gulberg Islamabad.

Everyone wants to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Don’t you???

In the serene and green Gulberg Residencia, is my beautiful home which means the world to me. And in that 7 marla home is my small lawn which is undoubtedly my favorite spot, my peace place. I can spend hours in my garden without getting bored since it makes me come alive from inside and I just love that feeling.

My mother, my favorite person is another person who loves this spot equally. Gardening is her hobby and more than me she the one who takes good care of this garden. My garden may be tiny, but its is filled with numerous colors of nature. Here you will see a huge and unique variety of flowers, fruits and vegetables. Roses are my all time fave. In addition to which we keep growing seasonal flowers and vegetables in the garden . Plots in Gulberg Green Islamabad.

The feeling is indescribable when you see the buds blooming, vegetable growing and new leaves sprouting… its like a new beginning of joy, hope and success. Plants are not just growing stem, they have a life. I often talk to them, while I water them, i pour my love and and when i hoe the soil, i know this care I put in them will in return bring more freshness to my life. Usually my day starts in my garden. It is a positive way to begin a day with the peace of mind. I practice deep breathing for around 20 minutes and then look at all the plants that I have.

I love spending the evening hours in my garden if I have time. Best are the days when my friends come over for evening tea. We chat and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. My pretty little garden is surely an integral part of my life. This place vanishes all the negativeness and makes me happy in seconds.

THE BIG REAL ESTATE QUESTION

Isn’t it hell of a confusion to decide which society is the best! These days too many new residence societies are emerging and everyone claims to be the best.

Other than few famous names such as Bahria Town and GULBERG, we can’t really rely on anyone… can we? So many fraud examples are there to scare us from making an investment. Also when it comes to business, we are either putting all our money in the drain or luck has knocked our door.

I wonder how many people get looted just because they trust the decent looking humans who convince them with their words. With the out of the world promises imagine how lifetime savings are blown away with just a signature. Though we can’t blindly trust any agent few things must be considered before making any decision.

They have been working in Real Estate for a quite a long time.

Check out the successful transactions and the feedbacks of their previous clients.

Their contact details, be it online or offline should always be available and so should be the responsive rate.

They should definitely be affiliated with a registered office or should be registered by themselves.

They should have in-depth information of the real estate industry.

Must supply your real estate needs as their utmost priority.

They should guide properly for your transaction

My Encounter with a Real Estate Agent

Today, thanks to the education and awareness, women believe there is nothing on earth they can’t do, well… try dealing with an ignorant person without him staring at you top to bottom, as if you are sitting naked just for his entertainment.

Seems relatable doesn’t it? That’s not it, my encounter with the goof I’m referring to kept getting more and more interesting. He was none other but a real estate agent. My colleague told me about good investment opportunities at societies near new airport so I took some time off to visit a real estate office for a better understanding.

I entered a small office with few people all in white kameez shalwar, which till this day I don’t get why they only where white… is it their dress code? Or do they try to portray decency through their look. Well if so it didn’t really work on me. Instead of gaining interest all I wanted was to get away from the creepy looks.  I asked him straight about the rates and the best offers they had within the budget I had. And after this long question he asked … “Madam Ji, what would you like to have chai or thunda (cold drink)” ? Confused I simply said, “NO, I don’t have time, please come straight to the point”… “Madam, how can we let our guest go unserved? Please feel comfortable.

So I ended up with a glass of juice which turned out to be much needed to clear my throat. Every time I asked a questioned, his eyes became wider and he bent towards me more… I thought he was going to sit on the table on some point. Well long story short, I changed my mind, received a fake call and escaped. It was till few months back when I went to the sales office of Gulberg Islamabad where I realized that decent dealing is possible in this profession.

I went with my colleague expecting disaster but she came out satisfied with all her quires answered. Now I too have made up my mind to invest only in Gulberg Green Islamabad because it’s not just serene and green, it has the best offers according to your requirements.

Life at Gulberg Residencia

Indeed, it was one of the best decisions of my life… we can’t regret the fact that our environment has a great influence on us. In other words, if we can’t adjust in our surrounding, nothing else can make us happy, neither money nor luxury. On the other hand, peace of mind in this fast moving era is not that easy to find. Cities are getting more and more crowded and so when I was capable of making an investment, all I could think was… PEACE! My residence  was living in central area of Rawalpindi.

The daily traffic block added extra half an hour to my office distance which was only 10 km away. And not just travelling, I was sick of the noises, pollution and altogether, I was unhappy with my lifestyle… even going for outing was not a fun thing for me. I know many people are happy the way they are but not me and I couldn’t help it. I had imagined a better life for my wife and my two kids who meant the world to me.

One day I crossed a newly emerging society, the Gulberg Islamabad and I felt the urge to visit it. Though the elegant entrance with wide roads and amazing farmhouses, I thought this place is only for the elite class.  Out of curiosity I asked a shopkeeper who showed me the way to the Gulberg Customer Dealing office. Again I was impressed but hopeless for I knew my savings were not enough.

Gathering up my confidence, I told the Sales Executive guy Mr. Mohsin about my total saving. Of course his response surprised me with a proposal not just for a living opportunity, but it offered an exceptional lifestyle, beyond my expectations at Gulberg Green Residencia. Though I could only afford a 5 marla plot, it was more than enough for me and my family. I thought it was the best gift I could give to my family and so it was.

When I brought my wife my kids and my parents to show them my plot, my wife was in tears of happiness and my mother couldn’t be more proud of me. I can’t wait for the time when I will move in to spend my dream life with my family. At Gulberg Islamabad, live your DREAM with SERENE AND GREEN LIFESTYLE!

[callsignbaphomet]

So I’m just gonna get right to the point. I love playing Skyrim, I love playing as my OCs in Skyrim. I especially love modding the living heck out of this game while playing as my OCs and pretty much living vicariously through them.

However, as much as I love this game IT IS SEVERELY LACKING IN LGBTQ+ CONTENT AND THE OPTION TO MARRY SOME CHARACTERS OF THE SAME GENDER AND ONE INSTANCE OF AN MLM COUPLE THROUGH A LETTER BECAUSE THEY’RE BOTH DEAD AF IN THE DRAGONBORN DLC IS NOT ENOUGH FOR MY QUEER ASS!

So what to do? Mods! It’s 2020 and a lot more people are openly accepting and open-minded, right? So finding LGBTQ+ mods should be a lot easier, right? Eh.........no. I’ve spent several days trying to find mods to make my Skyrim playthrough as queer as I possibly can make it, specifically for my High Elf OC who is trans (FtM), very effeminate, has a none muscular body and build and very gay. I think now, after several days of research, tutorials, testing and an endless amount of headaches I think I have the mods to make my play through true to how I imagine and have written this character as.

Bare with me for a few seconds, I promise I’ll get to the point and this is worth reading. I’m trying to get as much information in this as possible.

Disclaimer:

This mod list is only for the PC version of the game. Look, I’m super, super sorry but basically over 95% of all these mods are exclusively found online and even if they ARE on beth.net they aren’t used at full capacity from what I understand. Believe me, as a mainly console player, it breaks my heart that I can’t include the consoles for this list.

I won’t be linking to just Nexus. I’ve found a bunch of mods outside of the Nexus that are reliable.

I’ll only be working with the Special Edition version of the game. It’s the one I have and am playing on.

I will NOT be covering female body replacers. At freakin’ all. There are literal dozens of mods covering this. There will only be ONE and it is for very specific reasons only.

In my little venture into finding these mods I came across a lot of homophobic, transphobic and downright disgusting comments within the Nexus. I also found out a lot of queer mod authors were driven out of the Nexus because of said homophobic people. This is what happened to Vector and also why SavrenX refuses to upload anything other than weapon, item retextures to the Nexus. Nexus users and community overall is very homophobic and toxic so I’m very sorry if you see or read something upsetting. I advice you avoid the comments (known as posts on Nexus) tab as to avoid seeing some vile shit. Ignore them and don’t engage them ffs, they just want a reaction out of you. There’s no correcting these assholes much less educating them. They ain’t worth your time. Just report and move on.

The majority of the mods linked in this post have been tried by me, if I haven’t tried them out I’ll say so. Again, I’m learning as I go along and believe me this hasn’t been an easy task to find all of these working mods.

No, I won’t be searching or uploading any ports, texture, mesh or mod edits I myself have done. I ain’t confident in how well I may have or not have edited the mods and more importantly that’s as bad as uploading art that wasn’t done by you. Sadly, you’ll have to do these changes yourself. I’ll try my best to link tutorials. Also don’t go and harass the authors for a port or an update ffs.

I’ll most likely be editing this list as I learn more.

Yes, I will leave links from adult sites. A lot of these sites pretty much force you to sign up in order for you to download their content. It’s fine, just make some random account and you’ll instantly gain access to the mods. Just know there’ll be nsfw images, gifs and videos everywhere in these sites.

While I will be referring to male characters a lot of these if not all can also cater to non-binary characters too!

No, I will not be covering sex mods. I have no intention of adding them to any of my load orders and I really don’t care to. You’re on your own for that category. Try Lover’s Lab.

*Body Mods/Replacers/Races:

Schlongs of Skyrim (aka SOS). Not the only choice out there but the most current and fully working one. Pretty much mandatory for a bunch of mods so might as well have it, ya know?

Tempered Skins for Males. Was known as Better Males; pairs up beautifully with SOS. Super amazing work if you ask me.

Shape Atlas for Men (aka SAM). This is literally the god king of all male body replacers. Want a twunk? This mod will do it. Want a regular Joe? This can do it. Want a bear of a man running around in Skyrim? Yeah, girl, this can do it. Ever since I discovered it I have been obsessed with it! HOWEVER, the full working mod is only available for Old Skyrim, maybe for Legendary Edition but I’m not sure. Vector said he had plans to port the full working mod to Special Edition but confessed he was having issues with the scripts. Also afaik Vector’s last updates on working on the mod were back in late 2016 so I think it’s safe to say this beautiful mod will never be seen running on SSE. Sadly Vector just up and left the modding scene somewhere in 2018. It none of our business but from what I read he faced a lot of homophobic harassment from people not liking his body mod or giving him shit because he didn’t want to make a female body mod. He even faced harassment from our very own community.

Not all’s lost though. Some of the amazing modders in Vector’s site have made a working version for SSE.

SAM Light, SAM Morphs for RaceMenu, SAM SE Vanilla Armor Refit, SAM High Poly Conversion, SAM Light Texture Add-on, High Poly Head

The Ultra Femme. Title should be super self-explanatory. Super good if your character is really femme or non-binary or trans. I haven’t tried out this body myself and I’m not entirely sure whether this is compatible with SE or not. RefurbMadness has a lot of mods hosted in her site and still has some in Nexus that are being hosted by the site’s Care Taker. I’m actually gonna link a few later. I honestly suggest going through her site and reading up everything. She’s pretty clear when it comes to instructions, the only problem is she’s not exactly clear on whether her mods are compatible with SE or not. Maybe it’s written somewhere in there, I’m still new to modding and need very clear descriptions (you kinda gotta talk to me like I’m 5 when it comes to mods). I need to check more of her content and test a bunch of things. She also has armor and clothing mods.

Milkdrinker Male Texture and Slim Male Body for SoS (<3<3<3). Both by the same mod author. Sadly only available for Old Skyrim but the only reason why I linked it is because both mods are super easy to convert to use for SSE. Sweetie, if I managed to do it, you can do it too. Watch this, or this or this or try to Google it and see what comes up. Personally I tried the Slim Male Body and it was pretty good. Unfortunately you’d have to refit all the armors to fit either body yourself.

Transgender Race and NPCS SSE. Like I said before I wasn’t going to link or talk about any female body replacers except for one. This one! Look, there are a few out there but they’re extremely transmisogynistic and fetishistic and use a lot of outdated and transphobic language plus they’re mostly sex mods so I will abso-freaking-lutely NOT be linking them. Anyway, the people behind this port are back to working on this mod and have plans for adding transgender men. As of now the mod only has transgender women. They can’t add more genders due to the engine limitations and FYI they used “race” in the title because this isn’t a body mod, it’s actually a race. This is one of the few mods that won’t play well with SoS.

There IS one more body or better said, race, I tried but I really didn’t like it. Mod worked as it was advertised but--well, whatever, it’s for personal reasons that I didn’t like it and it depended way too much on a lot of more mods and it bloated up my LO something fierce so for that reason I ain’t gonna link it. Mod’s called Femboy if you wanna give it a try yourself.

*Extras (edits, armors, clothes and more):

Enhanced Character Edit SE. Tl;dr this is like RaceMenu but on steroids. It offers way more sliders and because of this it has fantastic potential to mold your character’s body to your personal liking. I used this instead of RM for my High Elf I mentioned earlier. He has a more “delicate” frame and is much thinner than my other OCs and this mod did exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve for a very long time now. Works like a charm.

SSE Luscious Locks for All - Unisex KS Hair. Makes it so that male characters can use all the hair options that comes with KS Hairdos SSE. Guys with long hair! Yummy! <3

Oooooooorrrrrrr you can just install ApachiiSkyHair SSE which has a bunch of long hair options for men to look fabulously yummy! This is the one I’m using.

Femfeet Redesigned SSE Port For Everyone. Look, it’s a foot texture mod, that’s it. Works with Better Males aka Tempered Skins and SoS, so yes, your guys will have pretty feet. Load this AFTER you body mod of choice.

Apachii Divine Elegance Store. This store has so much to offer. Really beautiful clothes and armors, exceptional jewelry, wonderful accessories aaaaaand your male character can also use the nails that are offered by the mod. So if you want your male character to have some stunning and colorful manicures done this mod offers it. They also offer actual claws that also comes in different colors so you can have both styles. Look, imo this is a must for femme male and enby characters. Your guys are going to look beautiful!

Immersive Jewelry - Earring for Male Characters. This enables Immersive Jewelry earrings to be wearable and visible on male characters.

Light Elven Armor for Men, Light Glass Armor for Men, Light Daedric Armor for Men. Tired of women being the only ones to get skimpy outfits? Ja, me too! Here’s some of the armor mods RefurbMadness ported to SSE before she left Nexus. There’s more available for Old Skyrim but you’ll need to convert them over to SSE yourself.

Slof’s Lair. Slof has a collection of skimpy armors, some accessories and even modern clothes (if that’s your thing). They have a link to their Nexus profile on their page but instead of adding all the links I just figured to leave the link to their site so you can check everything they have to offer. I haven’t tried any of Slof’s mods myself though I’m super interested in the Just For Men collection of mods and the Goth Shop (chill, it’s mostly Tera armors without the need to download that massive Tera mod).

Tera Armors Collection - Special Edition. And here’s that massive mod I previously mentioned but it’s actually a really good one. I’ve tested this out on both pc and Xbox One and it looks gorgeous on both!

The Well Dressed Mage. Not exactly skimpy but kind of revealing. Idk, these look lovely af and I wanna try them on my Altmer. Maybe someone else will want to try these too.

Modular Bandoliers and Pauldrons for Males. Pretty simple and to the point. Haven’t tried it since it wouldn’t go with my elf’s more refined bitchy tastes.

Bad Dog’s Skimpy Clothes SE. Some skimpy outfits for guys that were converted over to SE apparently not too long ago.

Bodyslide and Outfit Studio. So none of the stuff listed above is to your liking. That’s where this comes in. Thing is you actually CAN convert female armors and clothes for male use. So download the armors and clothes you wanna use and throw them and the body meshes you use into Outfit Studio. I myself am still learning how to go about doing this and the tutorials out there are kinda hard to come by. Try this video. I followed it and managed to convert a female outfit to fit on a male body I was using. Still need a lot of practice though but am working on it.

As far as makeup goes you can edit the colors of your character’s eyeshadow, eyeliner, cheeks and lips but with ECE or RaceMenu you can edit the colors further. May need to do some extra hard tweaking some choices though, not gonna lie. If I find a much better option I’ll post it.

I’m currently trying to find how the heck to get male characters to wear heels or if there’s a mod that has it. Like, that’s the last thing I need to make clothes complete. I’ll get back to this when I find it.

*Animations:

FNIS PCEA2 - Player Exclusive Animations (Dynamic) SE. So you got your character, you’ve dressed them and done up their hair and all that and to this point it’s all come together perfectly...until your femme male/enby character or your butch female/enby character starts walking and standing idly by and the poses and animations are completely and utterly wrong. Why is he walking like an angry gorilla? Why is she walking like a Victoria’s Secret model down the walkway? Can you switch their animations?

YES!!!

PCEA2--and yes, you will need FNIS to get this working--allows you to make animation changes to only your character. You can even add and/or remove which animation packs you want your character to use! I’ve just barely begun testing this mod as well as adding some specific packs for my Altmer and the pretty female idles works like a charm for him. I downloaded FNIS Sexy Move SE to try this out on him and see if it works but according to Fore it should work as long as you installed everything correctly and ticked the appropriate box to activate the animation pack you want. I’m not entirely sure if you can customize the choices given by each animation pack, probably something as simple as deleting the animations you don’t want and leaving the one you do want. I’ll have to test this further.

*Gameplay and Voices:

Simply Gay Letters. Simple and sweet little mod that adds some letters in certain places all over Skyrim tying certain NPCs to other NPCs. The hinted at couples are all the mod author’s headcanons so if that bothers you I suggest moving on.

Queering Skyrim - Blueflower Necklace. Basically it stops female NPCs from showing interest in your male character when wearing an amulet of Mara. Queering Skyrim - Lavender Menace Necklace does the exact same thing but for female characters.

Same Sex Perks - A Lover’s Insight - Agent of Dibella - Allure. Y’all remember Confirmed Bachelor from New Vegas? Remember how no Beth game has put it in their games again but are totally adding some lazy attempts to include us LGBTQ+ folks? The author has a pretty clear and easy to understand description of the mod in the page. There’s also Gay Insight - A Lover’s Insight Tweak which does the same as the other one but much simpler. I guess it’s up to you and your tastes when it comes to which one to use. I myself am using Same Sex Perks since it adds other perks.

Player Voicesets for SSE - Custom Voice Version. I downloaded this but I haven’t installed it yet. If I understood correctly this lets you change your character’s voice to any of the in game voices. My advice? Go into the page and read everything.

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type SE. The reason I haven’t installed the previous mod is because I have THIS one installed because of the head tracking but it also comes with an added voice feature so this might clash with the other one. I still need to test whether they do the same thing or not.

Skyrim - Player Re-Voiced Series. CaseyTheVA was kind enough to make a bunch of voices for your character. Just your character. I’ve tested these on Xbox and they are legit really freakin’ good! They seem to have added a lot more since the last time I checked. Unfortunately these are only available on beth.net or for Old Skyrim on the Nexus. You could just download them from the game’s mod page and remove the files and upload them back into the game using whatever mod manager you use. I did this with Cheat Room. Or you can port them yourself from Nexus. Honestly the quality alone is worth all the trouble.

[brooke-the-poet]

The Fantasy Adventure Trope and Autistics.

Currently I am fascinated with narrative framing. The structure of a story and how that gives us the meanings that we draw from it.  

What I have noticed is that neurodivergent consciousness isn't taken into consideration very often. In fact many narratives, especially in children's literature and films have a gaslighting affect when it comes to the experiences of neurodivergent children.

Children who are different are portrayed as having an overactive imagination, big emotions or too reserved, shy, afraid, a little adult, low impulse control, not very social, bullied at school and are ignored by adults.

This jumble of traits pretty much fits most neurodivergents. But just enough so that they are endearing and don't seem "too weird".

Unfortunately many children are thought of in the same vein as the biblical prodigal son. Disabilities and difficulties are seen as trials to be fixed, or to fix "us" as if we need some form of chastising.

That our ways are wrong and we choose to bring difficulty on ourselves by not ignoring the things everyone else ignores and doing what everyone else does.

 People expect neurodivergent children to be doormats and when they are shoved into that role they naturally become distressed and hide or rebel.

Such children then go on a magic adventure, where they learn about who they are as a person and then return home better off than when they left, able to cope and function better in their world.

That's a very general idea of the plots of most magic adventures. And there's nothing wrong with that, if indeed that is what is occurring.

But too often it is not.  Most of these narratives portray the child as in need of a rude awakening, again with the prodigal image, spoiled, lack of discipline, bad attitude, needing to burn off energy, needing confidence, needing change over all.

And how this occurs is through what is known as exposure therapy.  A theorized technique where non-biological anxiety is reduced through exposure to the source of the anxiety.

This does not work on neurodivergents nor many with trauma related conditions. It only serves to burn out energy and destroy our nervous systems and peace of mind if we had any to begin with.

The adventure supposedly  leads the child to become used to physical stress, work and decision making. It assumes that the child has had no trauma or stress before this. That their difficulties came from being uncooperative with adults.  What it comes down to is that it is the child that needs to change, not their world.

And what that means for the neurodivergent child whose experience of the world can not change through a change in attitude, is that they are made to feel flawed, that unlike the "good" children in those stories, they are bad.

Which leads them to hiding their difficulties and masking. And if they are autistic, the feeling of being nonhuman increases significantly.  

*On a side note: Fantasy gives neurodivergent traits to majority non-human characters. I really do enjoy fantasy but the characters I related to most were the non-humans or the villain, and both.

There are a lot of non-human characters that should just have been human. When only "make believe" species have your sensitivity and traits, it makes it very hard for people to take you seriously. That's a whole other article though.*

Back to narrative:

Two examples come to mind. The German novel "The Neverending Story"  by Michael Ende and and the Japanese film "Spirited Away" by Hayao Miyazaki.

These were big impact stories, I'm only going to cover 3 items from each.

Someone with more energy can dig in deeper.  Also if the plots sound really similar to you, children going off into fantasy worlds and receiving help from dragons, it is because Michael Ende loved Japan and was inspired by Japanese folklore.

His second wife is Japanese and his stories became huge in Japan where he toured and gave lectures and was honoured with his own museum shortly before he passed away.

First, The Never Ending Story.

Yes, the story with Bastian, Atreyu, the child-like empress and my personal favourite, Falcor the luck dragon. Who doesn't love the ending of the film version where he scares the shit out of those bullies as he chases them  into the dumpster?

There are a lot of very good things in this story,  Bastian fits completely the profile of the neurodivergent child,but for those who have read the book there are some glaring details, and Yes, I know all the other interpretations and cultural symbolism going on.

But I'm looking at these from an autistic perspective, being as personal and  literal as possible. Because that is how I viewed them and many others will, as a kid and teenager.

1. Despite Bastian's trauma from school and his mom's death it is up to him to fix his emotionally shut down father.

There's a new term for this, emotional incest. Google that.  Emotionally Bastian has a lot going on,he and his father should really be seeing a therapist.

This topic can be controversial as it crosses into many cultural expectations of what a family is and the required roles within a family.  There are various levels of toxicity that can occur in parent child relationships that result in anger later on in the child. But a parent relying on a child for emotional support is seen as the most benign.

One could say that is traditionally what children are for.  From the outside pushing back at this role looks like "modern selfishness" but the inside reality is that the stress placed on a child who needs support and understanding themselves is damaging. When suppressing growth for a parent, the child does not learn to become an emotionally healthy adult.

For many neurodivergents this can look like carer abuse, infantalisation, a parent guilt tripping for all the work they do for the child. Expecting full loyalty to a parent with punishments imposed for perceived infractions.

Demanding all of a child's time. Not allowing friends, becoming jealous of online friends, hobbies, and anything that takes their attention away from the parent.

Given that as adults many disabled neurodivergents rely on their parents for support, these relationships remain complex and complicated.

2. Spending too much time in your inner world makes you less human.

For those not familiar with the second half of this book, for every wish and fantasy  Bastian lives out he loses his memory and humanity. WTH?

As someone who has memory and dissociation issues this really freaked me out and made me question whether or not my dissociation, frequent need to retreat and loss of self at times was due to me being a bad, selfish person like the townspeople in the book.

Autistics and other neurodivergents have rich inner worlds that are just as real as what is going on outside them.

They are a part of this world as nature, and it is there that we often find and preserve our sense of self instead of getting lost in a sea of others.

Without them we would lose ourselves. Our humanity should never be equated with how much we outwardly participate.

3.  Bastian wasn't capable of being loved before his journey.

When Bastian loses his humanity he nearly kills Atreyu but is stopped. He repents by working hard in a mountain, as a miner where he loses the last of himself, including his name in order to learn selfless love.

Hard stare. Really? Neurodivergents tend to be born selfless it seems, and we have really hard times creating boundaries for ourselves in how much we will give others and are much too open to manipulation because of it.

In my mind Bastian is already doing far too much emotional labour for a child to sustain and shouldn't be required to have to work on top of that  for love to be given him.

More messages towards us about being selfless only harms us and makes us feel guilty for not draining ourselves dry for others.

Reiterating again, that Esoterica and symbolism, metaphors etc...are my special interest, I know what the esoteric symbolism of all this is but most children will not and Will take this aspect literally.

Overall none of his physical issues such as Body positivity, the school and bully situation nor any other issues were addressed. His real fear was part of his "overactive imagination" that he had to overcome.

This gaslights many neurological disabilities and experiences with the world, where synesthesia, sensory processing differences and executive Dysfunction are labelled imaginary and trauma around them is exasperated.

Spirited Away

This is the film that inspired this. Because I loved this. Miyazaki truly knows how to capture the soul of nature.

Some back story about anime you truly need to know before we move on.

If you're autistic, and fan of Anno Hideki creator of Evangelion, also a fellow autistic, who also worked with studio Ghibli, then you probably know what he means when he stated that anime and manga are an inherently autistic medium.  

Paraphrasing Anno: 

Your goal is to reach out and connect with others deeply and emotionally.  

The main way this is achieved is having the emotional interior of people reversed, showing every emotion externally.

In anime all the huge feelings, trauma and anxiety that usually go on inside someone are shown on the outside. This makes it really relatable and easy to connect emotionally to the characters.

Big secret though, non-neurodivergents assume a lot of the emotions are exaggerated and the trials and stages the characters go through are metaphors.

If you are neurodivergent, you know they are not. Many things are literally what is happening to us on the inside, how certain things feel.

I'll give examples when I talk about Spirited Away, but if you are further curious, Google Newtypes from the Mobile Suit Gundam saga and Evangelion.

This unique feature and style, of emotions began in the Tokugawa Era as a form of non-violent rebellion against the imposed socially rigid caste system and militarism of the era that saw creativity as superfluous.

Anything different, mysterious, unknown, imaginative and emotional did not meet the new "social norms" of the shogunate era and were rejected.  

Artists and writers, the creative castes, started making woodblock prints of fantasy scenes and stories in a style now known as manga.

They kept Non-linear, neurodivergent thought and ways of being alive during that violent time period when many creators were imprisoned.  

     Ok, with that on to Spirited Away.  I'm going to focus on Autistic masking. Masking plays a huge role in this story.

Briefly, the plot is: 10 year old Chihiro, on the way to her new home is spirited away with her parents. Going against her instincts she follows them into what turns out to be the holiday and pleasure district of the gods.

Her parents eat the god's food, turn into pigs and Chihiro must then sell herself to the onsen ( bath house) in order to work off the debts of her parents and save them.  

The main characters that I personally relate with in this piece are Haku, the dragon boy/river god,  the Faceless Spirit/Noh Face and the witch Zeneba.

So again, 3 things.

1. Masking, Chihiro is The Mask.

Chihiro, the cool, collected,lovely mixture of innocence and maturity is the mask that many autistic women grew up wearing in order to handle trauma. Be strong, brave and stoic for the sake of others. This is one set of strong messages that the film puts out.     

In the bridge scene where Haku and Chihiro, under an invisibility spell, cross the bridge to the bathhouse; in order to cross without being seen Chihiro must hold her breath.

That is what Autistic masking literally feels like, the fear of being seen, caught and punished for who we are and the sharp pain of inhaled breath held, for too long, and slow suffocation.

             Chihiro's journey  will feel familiar to many young autistics who are learning about themselves and the people around them and how they fit into the social structures here. Chihiro is a foreigner and awkwardly trying to stay out of trouble.

There isn't a structure that fits her.  She's scolded and hindered for simply existing in that space not meant for her. But she has a task to complete, so she has to figure out a way to make things work.

Being survival, task and mission oriented is a strong point of being Autistic. It's part of our ability to be perseverant.

It can be so strong that your mind creates different ways of being to hide and protect the most sensitive parts of itself, to protect the parts that are different.

Chihiro's final line in the film is:

"Don't worry, I think I can handle it."

She's resolute in her maintaining a stoic mask, which is implied as part of growing up.  This message is toxic to Autistics

For a lot of us Autistics this line recalls childhood trauma and masking. The exact phrase we would say to "make things work" for ourselves. Suppressing our needs in order to appear mature and keep our parents and those around us comfortable.

If the bathhouse is supposed to represent life and the social- economic reality, then it's the same reality so many face, forced to change and pretend they fit into society.  This message about masking feels at odds with the "re-discovering your true self" message that we get with Haku.

   The river dragon spirit, Haku literally represents what masking your true self can look like. Under Yubaba he loses sense of his true nature, physically grows pale and steely eyed. He isn't conscious of the spell Yubaba has placed in him. Masking isn't conscious to a lot of Autistics either.

     As an apprentice Haku carries out orders no matter what the danger is to himself. Putting ourselves in harm's way and being abused without us knowing is an outcome of masking. When masking we are in the position of copying others feeling very much like "apprentice non-autistics".

We want to please in order to survive and feel adequate with others. In the scene when Haku is bleeding to death and Yubaba kicks him into the incinerator to be disposed of, that unfortunately is a real emotional outcome to many abusive relationships built through masking. Relationships fail once we burn out.

In order to show his true nature, Haku actively fights inside himself when helping Chihiro. He plays double agent throughout the film. And then has to be saved from himself by Chihiro.

Do I need to be saved from myself?

Do I seem as cold and distant as Haku?

Am I and my masking setting a bad example, a burden to seemingly purer people like Chihiro who haven't quite learned to mask yet?

These questions flitter and linger for a long time. There's a pang of sadness in them.

    It's an extremely complicated issue which is further complicated when navigating personal  boundaries and what is felt to be personally owed to others, it changes with each situation.  

During the train scene when Chihiro is given time to process her predicament you can literally see her mentally forming her mask, the mask that's prepared to take responsibility for others mistakes.

It's the same mask we create to carry the burden of being social and appropriate when no one else is, the mask that self blames and takes up energy.  Chihiro takes responsibility for everything.

There is again that message of sacrificing your well being for others that is pushed. She is the only one actively trying to save both her parents and Haku.

    Being a heroine doesn't have to be about saving others, or being responsible for them, especially when they are capable of finding their own solutions. There are so many different ways to show love and support.  

It isn't about being selfish and just taking care of yourself, for many Autistics and those with multiple disabilities, caring for others in this manner isn't an option but feeling guilty for not doing this is a constant to many.    

   Who this message is being directed to, needs to change. It should not be directed at vulnerable girls or any children who will worry and have anxiety about themselves.

The reality of many situations where change is needed from someone in authority, parent or any other institution is that it fails to occur. Children or other exploited parties are made responsible for that failure.  

If an Autistic fails to fit in, it's never societies fault, the burden of change and guilt is always put on the autistic. And in order to shoulder it, masking occurs.  How long is she going to be able to keep up that tough girl facade?

      2. Home   

     In the opening of the film Chihiro is  upset at what would honestly be devastating for someone who relies on "their world" to make sense of who they are.  Moving, no home to return to. This concept literally is played out with Haku and Noh Face.

Haku's river is destroyed, because of this he loses his identity and falls prey to those who would enslave him.  An identity that changes with physical environment is common. Some autistics, like myself, unconsciously build an identity or mask that fits specifically to our environment.

     Environment becomes routine along with all of the sensory stimulus and sensitivity, our bodies physically bond to what is comfortable to us.  And when that changes, so does a whole persona or personality mask.

When it is an unexpected and forced change, it is traumatizing. In my own experience, I've moved 10 times in a single year at the age of 14. Only 4 years older than Chihiro.

That caused a shutdown that I'm still experiencing the effects of 20 years later. Losing those connections is never a matter of letting go and moving on. They are grieved and must be processed at length.  

    On the way out of the forest Chihiro's father notices how quiet she is, both parents finally are paying attention to the emotional reality of their child. If they had listened and paid attention to her intuition, warnings and signs of trauma, in the beginning, their predicament would not have occurred. They might not have even moved in the first place.

"A new home and school, it is a bit scary," her father says. To which Chihiro replies that she can now handle it.

Chihiro, suppressing her original concern and the trauma of her experience, now gaslights herself, after she's gone through the process of learning how to perform emotional and mental labour for others through masking as an act of love.

An act of love, that's how mainstream society positions suppressing the needs of the disabled. You're told if you love your parents, your family, don't cause problems, don't cause trouble.

Oh, your having trouble at school, at work, at home? Disabilities are framed as trouble in this manner, the same way one speaks of a misdemeanor or crime. It subtlety shifts feelings of fault and blame onto the disabled.  When it comes to Autistics the way we understand our self and our experience of the environment is often blamed as the cause of troubles.

For us the Non-autistic world is assaulting both physically and emotionally. It's a mess of social and psychological mind games and head traps that make us chronically ill.  We have to create our own environments to dwell and recover in each night.

For a large proportion of us, we experience time and space Non-linearly. Which means events are not chronological, they don't neatly line up in our minds.

Our experience of the world is like the concepts of Ukiyo and Yugen. Transience, ethereal and profound depth of feeling. Events, people, places float in and out with moments of deep joy and sadness to help us make sense of time.

Miyazaki makes full use of this narrative tradition in his storytelling with vast spaces and characters who on the surface are only loosely associated with each other yet deeply connected.

In our world connection is not linear, nor emotions. Associative thinking leads us to make broad connections in ways that branch out and lead us to discoveries that seem impossible or were unknown to many because the right associations couldn't be made in their linear minds.

Non-linear emotions mean that we don't process events as they happen. It's too much to take in, emotions float in us, incubating until they are ready to be understood. The moment this happens is usually triggered by seemingly unconnected events but to which our minds have made connections to, enough to bring us to full circle. Different mental processing times mean reactions and effects come later, long after expected.

3. Noh face.  Portraying other as grotesque.

The best for last.

Noh face as in the Noh theatre, because the mask they wear, delights and troubles in it's accurate yet disturbing qualities. The spirit does not speak except to make pleading utterances. The faceless spirit  is sad, mysterious, interesting,terrifying and revolting all at once.

When it is invited into the bathhouse it begins to eat several of the workers and gains the ability to speak and their personality traits.

It is one of the most grotesque and extreme moments in the film. It can make you squirm. But it's also the most literal example of what it can be like to mask.

There is a certain type of masking that occurs for autistics who also experience dissociation, derealisation and depersonalisation.

It's the least understood and most vital to  understand; this is how the brain involuntarily forces command or auto-pilot, for survival in situations it deems life threatening.

 When around other people these autistics physically feel themselves absorb the energy, the personalities, emotions and desires of other people, so much so that it overwhelms their mind/ soul, their identity and sense of who they are.

They can lose track of where they are and what they say and do ; literally becoming "drunk" on other people, acting erratically or hyper with a loss of inhibition.  

They may do and say things they wouldn't have before and never would alone, when caught in the energy of the crowd or moment. And often they can't quite remember what occurred until afterwards. It's an uncomfortable and frightening experience to not be in control, to feel like a slave to others wills .

 With this type of masking the autistic may be aware of it or might not be, but they are not in control of when it happens or with who. It occurs on a daily basis this absorption of personas and others traits. It's chaotic inside, an ever changing kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings that are almost never your own.

Physically, after socialising, especially if it's from a party, when this type of  autistic is alone, people hangover sets in.

People hangovers, even though I don't drink that's the best definition I have of it, you feel ill enough that you vomit; as you would expect with all of this swirling chaos.

The only way to end it is to sleep it off as you psychologically purge all the fragments of others out. This is another  physical sensation as you feel yourself emptying and regaining control. This process can feel like being scrubbed raw, internally.

This masking isn't done out of "loneliness" as is the reason given by the Noh Face. But having no one to understand and going through this alone, does build up and can increase the feelings of desperation to have a stable self.

In the scene when Chihiro gives the Noh face the expectorant, and they vomit just as Haku did, as all the people they consumed left, they returned to their original small form, no longer able to speak.

Chihiro, in that scene is the only one with boundaries, she masks her fear and listens, using her knowledge to give the Noh Face what they really need. She presents a kind, calm and stable force that counters chaos.

It's no wonder the Noh Face wants to absorb her. She's the ultimate mask that it can then have to feel whole and interact with others finally.

But it still would not be their own.

On a side note, it is for this very reason that Noh Face is finally paired with the witch Zaneba, whose line "hmmm, what else can we mess with?" is my favourite. Zaneba sees the structure of the bathhouse and wants to disrupt it.

Due to the chaos occurring inside these type of autistics, instead of trying to order life in a structured or "tidy" way, they impose chaos externally. As long as it is their chaos, this ordered chaos approach is effective in coping with life.

Roles, duties and tasks bring about more structure than superficial order as in the bathhouse. If there's a specific function and purpose that is clear, it makes it easier to not mask, which is why the noh face is able to remain calm.

At the end of the day Zaneba and Noh Face retreat to their quiet home, where function and roles are simple. Personally that's where I'd like to stay, if I were Chihiro I wouldn't have returned.

That's a final point, the "fantasy" world is always made out to be lesser than our shared reality. But is it really? Our inner worlds are what make it possible to survive in the outer world. It's where we process and draw strength to combat the hostility we encounter daily.

They aren't something you abandon in childhood, but a necessary life skill that develops further with age. The fantasy retreat is vital for rest and reclamation of self from society. Not something to be left behind.

So there you have it. My rough autistic sense on what messages an autistic/neurodivergent might take away from popular story narratives and elements in children's fiction and film.  

[genocider-syo-is-still-my-queen]

Danganronpa 1: Pregame au

Basically: What if the DR1 cast were fans of the Danganronpa series, and auditioned themselves? What would their old lives have been like? 

Warnings: Child abuse, sexual harassment, suicide and other sensitive topics.

Makoto - just an average boy... there's nothing special about him, not at all... in fact, no one would even notice he was gone if he ended up being dying in Danganronpa. So why not go for it? There's no hope for him doing anything impressive in the real world, so maybe he can make an impact in Danganronpa. Even if it's only small. (basically still average but less optimism)

Sayaka - She'd always watched Danganronpa (her parents were busy working and just left the TV on to keep her busy) , and wished she could be like them, like the wonderful detectives that solve everything! She was a quiet girl, and kept to herself, but reckoned she could make it if they just gave her a shot. Being the protagonist and being able to get through any trial (figuratively and literally) would be a dream come true! But waiting outside the audition room, she got a little nervous and fidgety. But she had always found that singing to herself could calm her down. So she did that a little, and managed to forget all her fears. A couple of staff were staring though... was it really that bad?

Leon - never knew what he wanted to do with life. His grades were alright, but he didn't really have any jobs that related to that (especially not a lawyer). He could run relatively fast, but didn't want to spend masses of time training. He could play some guitar, but didn't want to start a band or do anything with that. All around, people were pressuring him to make decisions "You need to do this, you're so good at it!" but he didn't have any real passions... So he choose the easy way out. Danganronpa would make the decision for him.

Chihiro - never really cared what others thought of him. Sometimes he liked wearing cute dresses, sometimes he wanted to wear more masculine clothing. But he'd never doubted that he was happy with himself. Even if other people looked in mixed disgust, he brushed it all aside cause he knew he was awesome. And hey, he did have some friends! But one of these friends wasn't doing too well, and was going to join Danganronpa as an escape. Chihiro tried to convice them it was a bad idea, but they wouldn't back down. So Chihiro decided that they would audition too, so they could try to protect them a little. (it's up to interpretation who the friend is)

Mondo - always overshadowed by his older brother. He was generally a quiet kid, but had some problems with his temper when he got mad. He didn’t like it, but he often got into trouble, and no one really liked him... And he was going to be expelled if he kept this up. And his parents always seemed so disappointed, even if they never said anything...  So he decided to audition for Danganronpa. 

Ishimaru - was always a bit of a loner. He found social interaction hard, as he didn't always grasp when people were joking or not. And apparently, he often sounded like he was being sarcastic, even though that was never his intention. His father died when he was young, and his mother moved with his grandfather. The grandfather would often jokingly talk about how Ishimaru needed to do better in class (even though he was averaging 96%). Grandpa Ishi didn't do this with any malicious intentions, but the boy took it to heart, and tried studying harder and harder. 

Eventually, the stress got too much, and he needed to take a real break. Around this time, there were commercials saying "apply now for Danganronpa: THH!" (they always gave initials but never what they stood for, build the suspense you know?). And Mamma Ishi said "Look at that, you're just the right age!" She was joking of course, she would never want her son to go through something like that.  But Ishimaru was never the best as recognising what people really meant...

Hifumi - was  a special case. He had been part of the online Danganronpa community for years (he was possibly too young when he got into it, but hey, the internet you know?). He was also a pretty popular fanfic writer, and had written several successful fangans. Team Danganronpa noticed this, and knew he was just about the right age now. So they contacted him directly, and made him an offer: he should join Danganronpa... as himself! Without any brainwashing to give a new personality or talent. Of course, if he ever told anyone the truth about the killing game, he'd be killed instantly. And in exchange, all of his works would legally belong to Team Danganronpa (who could capitalise off of them however they saw fit. This lead to the first magical girl spinoff, based on one of his earlier works. Also they made a couple of animated mini-series based on his fangans. They made tons) 

Hifumi accepted.

Celestia - never had anything. She never had a family, she never had a home, she barely had an education. All she wanted was to have a better life. And after all she’d been through, she deserved to have it all! But there was no way to get it realistically. So she auditioned for Danganronpa. If only for a short while, she’d have the happiness she’d been craving, and the lifestyle to go with it. 

Sakura Oogami had always been tall for her age. And she was often insecure about it. She also enjoyed sports, which lead to her becoming a little muscly as well - which she had always thought was unsightly for a girl. At 12 years old she was 5'10, and she soon found out why. She had a rare genetic mutation, that prevented her body from stopping her growth. But of course, this had some side effects - she wasn't going to live until 18. Sakura was understandably unhappy, but decided to do something with her life until she inevitably died. She decided to keep up the training, and started to love her muscles. She tried her best to be a good example, and do good deeds... 

But then she had an idea. In her youth, she had never really had tall muscly female role models. Or if they existed - they were one dimensional 'girls who learnt to fight because they have 4 brothers' (what strong female characters). There were also the tall girls in romcoms who guys were intimidated by. Girls needed more than that... so she would be the role model! At 16, and 6'3, Sakura auditioned for Danganronpa, not caring if she survived the game or not. All she wanted... was for people to look at her and say "Wow, I wish I could be like her"

Kyoko - tried her best. After a divorce in her youth, she didn't see her father much (as her mother's family was much better off, and fought hard for custody). But she loved both her parents a lot, and always wanted to impress them. Her father seemed pleased whatever she did, and her mother always told her she was proud. Her mother's family were very involved in her life, and seemed to question everything her mother did. It was only because they wanted the best for her of course! Remember what we said about Jin? And you went and married him anyway! Look how that turned out! 

 As she grew older - maybe 10 years old? - Kyoko saw her extended family in a harsher light. If they never had anything nice to say, why say it? She tried to stand up for her mother, but was laughed away, and her mother was criticised for not teaching her respect for her elders. But she was spending more weekends with her father now, and her parents seemed to be getting on better than before. Not good enough that they'd try again (yet), but it was better than nothing. And for the first time in years, Kyoko was able to spend time with both parents.

Unfortunately when she was 15, Kyoko's dad was given a new job... in a different country. And he promised he would visit, those times seemed few and far between. And during one of these times... her mother killed herself. And it seemed that she had been the one shielding Kyoko all these years. Without her, all the family's expectations were placed on Kyoko, pressuring her to do things she didn't enjoy. And it had been months since she'd last heard from her father... maybe he'd forgotten about her (her family wouldn't let his letters go through) 

 So she signed up for Danganronpa to get away. But as fate would have it, her father visited the day she was taken away for the game. He desperately pleaded to be let in. Heck, he'd even go through the game to save his daughter! And in a way, his wish was granted. Kyoko was intended to die in chapter 5, but with a connection to an extra like this? She could survive... plus, they had been looking for a headmaster.

Byakuya - was unsatisfied with his life. His father gave him gifts, but no love. All the toys he could want! But he was too busy to celebrate Christmas together. A great TV! But never a nice meal out. Whatever he wanted, except time together. His mother had died young, and Byakuya grew up lonely. But he understood, his father was a busy man after all. His father had plenty of expectations, and Byakuya tried to live up to them. His father never smiled at him, but he was always told "You're doing well boy." and that was enough. It was his father's way of showing affection... wasn't it? 

 He got though life, and he did a good job of it too. He was all set up to go to the most prestigious college, and go on to take over the company... but when he though about that future... he didn't enjoy the thought of it. He only saw himself growing up exactly like his father... and he hated the thought. Now Byakuya was going through that rebellious phase. And he wanted to do something new. Something his father would never approve of... Danganronpa. He was going to reinvent his image. When people thought Togami, they wouldn't think about the finance company, they'd remember the double murderer. And maybe his father could find someone else to take over.

Aoi - wasn't happy with her body. As long as she could remember, people had made comments about how attractive she was, and how they couldn't believe how young she was, she was so mature for her age (in personality, of course)! She loved donuts, but always got comments about she shouldn't eat so much, she'd get fat. She always felt judged for her interests. "You like Danganronpa? Name the favourite colour of the first person killed in the third chapter of Danganronpa 12: Failure and Puhuhu." (which is pretty hard, cause the murder was incredibly complicated and 5 people ended up dying, but not in the order they were found (one of who killed another after their own death)). But at least on the internet, there were people who didn't treat her like that. Until she worked up the courage to post a selfie of her cosplay. 

 She ended up auditioning for Danganronpa, if only to say "Do I know Danganronpa? I was in it fucker." one day. But she had one request if she got in - she didn't want to wear a mini-skirt.

Hagakure - was a bum. A complete and utter waste to society. He had been held back too many times. He didn't want it to be like this, but he could just never retain information the way other people could. He tried every studying technique, every book that said "NEVER STRUGGLE IN SCHOOL AGAIN IN 5 EASY STEPS!" but it didn't work. He tried his best, but he could never do it. And he hated it. He wanted to get a good job, to make his mama proud, but he could never do it, because he was just too stupid! He was a little too old to enrol in his school (and he made the staff look bad at official inspections), so he was officially hired as a janitor and was allowed to attend classes. (But hey, seeing as he was a student, they could technically pay him less than minimum wage. They wouldn't pay the student council now, would they?) 

 Hagakure wanted more. He couldn't do another year of trying and failing. He couldn't take the looks his younger, better classmates gave him. He couldn't. And there was no age limit for Danganronpa... you only needed to be in high school - which he was. It was worth a shot, if only to rid the world of his utter uselessness.

Toko - couldn't go on. Her mother and father hated her. Everyone hated her. She couldn't do anything right. She took the first chance to audition, and in the process she ended up spilling her entire life story. "Ah, I'm so sorry, I bet you're not at all interested in someone like me, I'll just leave now and save you the pain." But Team Danganronpa were interested (and hey, this saved them writing their own backstory! Just change that father to another mother (they're not lesbians, it's just very convoluted) and you're ready to go!). 

 Toko often found herself with blank spaces in her memory. The first was when she was locked in a cupboard for an entire day, but it didn't feel that long. She assumed she just passed out from not eating enough. But that wasn't quite true. Due to her trauma, she'd developed a severe case of DID (which went undiagnosed for years). This second personality was not a serial killer, was not a psychopath, was not objectively evil, and was not [insert negative DID stereotype here] 

 Team Danganronpa took one look at the potential of a 'split personality' character and simultaneously thought "It's free real estate"

Mukuro and Junko - They were twins of course, and had been kicked out onto the streets. It was them against the world. But they always stayed together. They were all the other had. While Mukuro became saddened by the world, Junko became angry. But they couldn't give up. Mukuro tried to make friends, to find a small jobs she could do - even if i meant she could only buy McDonalds for the two of them every day or so. Junko didn't try as much. Sure, she did some things when she could, but she wasn't going to give more back to the world than she had to. She was mostly dependant on Mukuro still. 

Mukuro wanted to create a new life. She found a job where the store manager was willing to turn a blind eye and let them stay in a small backroom. But Junko wasn't so happy. Whilst the manager was willing to let them stay for seemingly nothing, he was awfully pushy towards her. She smiled back, doing as little as she could without making him angry. She didn't want to be kicked out again. 

But she ran out of patience when the manager made a request that was too much. "That room's awfully cramped for the two of you. Why don't you spend the night at my place tonight? You can even sleep on a proper bed for once." Junko knew what he wanted. And like hell she was going to let him have it. She told Mukuro they needed to go, now. She didn't say the reason, but Mukuro knew she must have a reason. 

 Long story short - Junko stole a car. And they drove to the audition building. "We're going to join Danganronpa."  "What?" "It's better than what we have there. And we'll get nice food restocked everyday. And a school roof over our heads (unless we're in a resort DR, which would be even nicer)." 

 Junko and Mukuro auditioned separately, and Team Danganronpa let slip they were very interested in having a game with twins. Junko made a few comments too. "Wow, it'd be pretty tragic if one of the twins died, and the other had to live with the other's death until the final chapter." Team DR chuckled a little. "But if you try something like that... 

 "Please kill the one named Junko."

[kellylouise-blog]

Learning How To Idea

A few weeks ago, an ad on Facebook caught my attention. It was an ad for a writing course specifically about how to conjure ideas! Clearly Facebook knows all because that’s (shockingly) something I’ve always struggled with. My ideas for writing tend to just show up when I’m not looking so this was a new challenge to actively seek them out!

The course was called “Seven Ideas in Seven Days” and was offered by Writers HQ. It was short and sweet but I honestly learnt so much from it; about how ideas are literally everywhere, in everything you hear, see and think about. The structure of the course meant I got a new idea every day! I unfortunately caught the flu half way through which threw off my writing storm a bit but I made it through and honestly think I have some good ideas on my hands!

I wanted to post what I’ve written here (below the cut), with a brief look at the tips in the course! If you choose to glance through the ideas I came up with, let me know if anything looks promising to you or if you have any other ideas or feedback, anything is appreciated!

DAY ONE (take a mundane event or everyday task and look at it from different perspectives):

Channel 0: [omniscient] A large family is only ever together at funerals (and weddings, stuff like that.) The youngest sibling has recently died after a tragic accident. There are six siblings in total, their parents long gone. 

Channel 1: Viewpoint of the second youngest sibling, Matthew, who was closest to the deceased and considered his brother to be his best friend. The duo were inseparable and he is heartbroken to be without him. He hasn’t seen any of his other siblings in over two years, since the death of their mother (the father having died years before that). And he doesn’t want to see them, either.

Channel 2: Viewpoint of the deceased brother - a kind of ghostly perspective. He looks over the scene of his funeral, introducing his siblings to the reader, critiquing them and silently joining their awkward conversations. 

Channel 3: Viewpoint from the eldest sibling, who is dying from terminal cancer. She too, notices how seldom she sees her family and notes that she likely never will again. 

Channel 4: Game-of-Thrones style perspective switch between each of the characters throughout the day of the funeral.

DAY TWO (use a random literary quote generator online and take the last couple of words as a title! Then visit Flickr and take the third featured image as your book cover. Now, what’s the story?)

R1 (developing the story, random ideas): 

A detective story or murder mystery. A body is discovered in a marshy, boggy, forest area by passerbys (hikers? joggers?)

Maybe someone who’s been missing a while - search party discovery

Maybe something more supernatural - a group or couple out hiking and then, suddenly, one of them disappears. Found later, butchered. 

More horror film-esque - a night camping in the woods

A serial killers territory or dumping ground

Or the moor is alive - it swallows you whole

R2 (favouring supernatural idea): Who - A group of friends (18-25yrs) out camping. The forest/moor is rumoured to be haunted and dangerous. Amy is the most scared and skeptical of the group. But boyfriend Tom promises to protect her. (see where this is going?)

Two groups of couples (one hetero, one homo) and two single, “platonic” friends.

One of the “platonic” friends (Sophie) is first to disappear - later found by the other singleton James.

Throughout the night, the group starts to disappear, one by one, murdered by unknown forces. Eventually, it’s just Amy and Tom. But in the end, the moor gets him too as it swallows him whole, faster than quicksand. 

Finally, Amy makes it out of the living moor, but just barely. The lone survivor. 

Pitch:

The Moor is a suburban legend, a myth, a mystery and naturally … a tourist attraction. A group of fearless young people decide to investigate the legend of the “living moor”, treating it as nothing more than a regular camping trip. Amy tried to warn them.

The Moor is a living thing. And you just walked right into its mouth.

DAY THREE (Image Prompt):

Where are they/it? Suburban. London. 

When is it?-  1940’s

Why is it/they there? A young woman packs her belongings into her suitcase. She contemplates one last time about her decision to leave home.

Who are they? This young woman has had enough of her rough home life. She wants to see more, she wants to experience the world. But still, she is afraid. She has never done much of anything on her own, having gone straight from school into a less-than-loving marriage. 

What happens next? She finally makes the decision to leave home, packing what clothes and other things she can into her suitcase. And she’s not about to leave the dog behind with that man, either, no siree. She and her dog make their way to the train station, their destination unknown. 

Abigail Winston has not had the easiest life. But then again, she can’t complain, it could’ve been much worse. Mother always said that once she had a roof over her head, she had nothing to be sad about. And yet there she was, crying her heart out into her pillow, a pillow which has soaked up far too many of her tears over the years under this blessed roof. She could hear the music blaring from the gramophone downstairs. It was the same as always, the same tune, the same routine. She made her way home from her day job as a seamstress to be met by the backside of his hand for whatever reason he could pluck out of thin air. The dinner wasn’t done. The dishes were dirty. The dog was barking. The neighbours were noisy. The floor was a mess. 

“Why do you make me do this?” He asks, seeming to be genuinely perplexed at her nature. His hand is red raw from slapping her thricefold across the face. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.” He says, as he pulls her in towards him and kisses her right where he had just slapped her. His lips sting. 

But finally, as if some kind of cosmic epiphany had just hit her, she decided that she had had enough. It wasn’t her fault, it never had been. There was nothing wrong with her, it was all him. It was all down to the voices in his head that told him it was his right to treat her this way, she was his wife after all, his property. 

But no more.

She scribbled a note upon her vanity table, almost deciding to throw it into the bin altogether. Maybe it would be better to leave without saying anything. What would be the point in trying to explain her reasons for leaving? He would never believe them. He wouldn’t care. But she wrote it anyway, trying to keep her words as devoid of emotion as possible.

She didn’t love him, perhaps she never did. Marraige is just something everyone has to do, right? What a world. 

She pulled out the suitcase from the closet and threw in her most prized possessions, but mostly clothes. She hurried down the stairs, knowing he’d be back from the public house any time soon now. Pausing at the door, she turned around to find him standing there; Toby … the dog. 

“He’s never been kind to you, either, has he?” She found herself asking. The dog yapped and ran towards her and the decision was made. She wouldn’t be alone after all. 

She made her way down the suburban street with little Toby running along beside her. She caught the questioning glances of many neighbours as she passed them. Of course, she could not hope to leave unnoticed. Jonathan would be well informed of her departure, suitcase and all. But still, she carried on and tried to ignore the ball of anxiety building in her stomach. 

A half hour later, she had finally reached the gates to the train station. “Where am I even going?” She thought to herself. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. It had been a spur of the moment decision in the end. Maybe she should turn back. Yes, back to what she knew, that would be best. 

Toby yipped up at her, snapping her to attention. No, this was the right thing to do. She had to leave. She needed to get on the soonest train, that would take her farthest away, somewhere he would never guess to look for her. 

Cornwall. She had never been there. She barely knew where it was, only that it was pretty far out of London. She didn’t allow herself to hesitate and bought herself (and Toby) a ticket. A one-way ticket. There, she had done it. There was no going back now. 

Her heart hammering in her chest, she turned towards the gate leading to the train at a steady pace. Perhaps she wasn’t paying enough attention to her surroundings as suddenly, someone bumped into her, causing her to drop the suitcase and for it to burst open, spilling out some of her hastily packed things. 

The stranger stopped and bent down to help her. “So sorry, miss! I should’ve been looking where I was goin’! You alrigh’?” That voice. It couldn’t be. 

She looked up at the strangers face and realised he was no stranger at all. “Well, I’ll be … Abigail. It’s been an age.”

DAY FOUR (choose an emotion that you want to invoke in the reader and work backwards)

Emotion: Inspired

Need to experience: Success in the face of adversity. A hopeless situation turned hopeful. Perseverance. Never giving up, despite the odds being stacked against you. Succeeding. Leaving behind a good legend. Paving the way for others.

Who: A homeless person with a wacky invention idea. A single mother on the cusp of poverty who’s just trying to do right by her kids. A severely bullied kid who intervenes in someone else’s bullying. A political activist who keeps going despite being arrested, even beaten, a number of times. A dystopian world where the smallest voice can be the loudest. 

I can often feel inspired to suddenly change my life, to stop just accepting how things are and do something about it. I am in control. But they want to take that control away from me. 

Young girl in a world that wants to suffocate all that she is. A very strict world with lots of rules and regulations. Akin to a dictatorship. 

A single mother, Margaret, circa 1960’s Ireland who had to have her child in secret as she was unmarried. She leaves home, determined to protect her child. The father doesn’t know. How far can she go before the child is discovered and they are ultimately pulled from each other? She finds friendship in an older woman who was once sent to the “mother and baby” home after her own unmarried pregnancy in her youth. “It’s like a prison,” she says, “A torture chamber … under the guise of God’s work.” 

She fears every day for the life of her child. But it won’t stop crying. She tries to keep it happy but its screams echo right through the walls. She can’t stay in one place too long, lest somewhere see her and report her. Her family have reported her missing, her face is plastered across every town that she can get to. She alters her appearance as drastically as possible, new haircut, new hair colour, different clothes. She has barely any money to her name, and she can’t get a job since she needs to mind the child constantly. She turns to prostitution, a quick job with high pay. Anything for the child. 

The older woman tells her all about her time in the home, of the daily routine and the daily “retribution”, the punishment for having betrayed her promise to God. 

As she listens to the stories, Margaret becomes determined not only to save herself from the grip of the Church but to save other mothers too from their righteous judgement. She tries to find others who have survived the homes and learns more and more horror stories from them. The babes were stricken from their breasts, never to be seen again. Those that died in infancy were tossed aside in a mass grave, little more than garbage in the eyes of the nuns. 

Margaret starts to draw up flyers, leaflets and posters to alert people to the real goings-on in the homes. The homes designed to “reform” and “rehabilitate” wayward women. The propaganda must be subtle at first, a whisper in the collective unconscious until more and more women wake up to the problem in their society. The propaganda must be spread without its source being known. Margaret’s connection to it can never be discovered because of course, the child would be too. 

She develops a steady group of friends, women who have all been subjected to the Church’s law. One such woman, Josephine, only 15 years old, was impregnated by her local priest. Together, they round up more and more women and stage a protest outside of the home. They infiltrate and extract the imprisoned mothers and snatch up the innocent children. The mass grave is discovered and the Church’s secret is revealed. 

In the end, Margaret and her group of friends set up a real home for unmarried mothers where both woman and child are cared for until they are able to care for themselves. 

DAY FIVE (take a paragraph from a book you’re reading and pose what-if questions)

A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow

Pg 75

The queen-to-be invites a traitors daughter to supper.

What if the daughter bears the queen ill will?

What if the queen bears the daughter ill will?

What if the queen is worried that the daughter (a servant) will cause the king to stray?

What if the queen fears that the daughter, too, will prove to be a traitor?

What if she is a traitor?

What if the daughter uses the invite as an opportunity to enact a plan against the queen or some other vendetta? 

What if the supper goes horribly wrong and the queen is murdered and the daughter is accused? 

DAY SIX (Analysing the ideas): 

Idea One: The Family Funeral

Idea Two: The Moor at Night

Idea Three: Abigail

Idea Four: Mother and Baby

Idea Five: The Queen and the Traitors Daughter

 IDEA #1:

What interests me about it?

I’ve thought about this idea for a while, sparked by an observation on my own family. I come from a pretty big family and the prospect of only ever seeing them at certain events such as weddings and funerals is disheartening. But I think it’s something most families can relate to, especially as the children get older and separate into their own lives. We all get too busy to meet up until ultimately, we lose our last chance to see each other at all. Writing this story would be interesting to explore family dynamics and how they can be affected by tragic grief.

Will I be interested in it long term? 

I intend for this to just be a short story so it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks/months of my time once I get down to it.  

Is there an obvious journey?

I see this as a scene in the funeral home with the family reuniting. I would like it to show the frayed family coming together again in the face of their united grief, choosing to set aside their differences and grudges because life is short. 

Has it been done before?

I guess that episode in “Haunting of Hill House” (episode 3?) is rather similar with the family, once torn apart, coming together for their sisters funeral. Tensions are high, and they argue quite a bit but ultimately, it’s a lovely reunion. I guess it’s likely it inspired me subconsciously to think about this story and my own experiences. But I wouldn’t quite go down the spooky route with my story!

What about the research? 

I guess it would be worthwhile to seek out other people’s stories of how their families reunited and came back together after a tragedy - or perhaps the very opposite. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to quiz my own family about how they feel!

Why do I need to write it? 

Because yes, life is busy and we all have our own things going on but family is important. You never know when someone may be taken from you, tomorrow is never guaranteed. I want people to pause and think about their relationships and whether they’re holding onto unnecessary anger. If that person was gone tomorrow, could you live on knowing you’ll never make amends?

Who’s going to care about it?

I think this is something a lot of people - particularly those from larger families - can relate to. 

Is it a goer? 

I think this is a great opportunity to explore characterisation and storytelling so yes, I intend to work on it!

#2: The Moor at Night

What interests me about it?

I’ve always wanted to write a spooky horror story. I love watching horror stuff - especially supernatural stories - although I haven’t read many. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

This is a fairly fresh idea and I think it’s a little too “cliche” yet and needs something else to really interest me. 

Is there an obvious journey?

Uh, everyone dies?? Except the girl who was warning everyone that the Moor is serious business. So, not really, other than the survival. Or maybe Amy starts out extra scared but has to become brave to escape, yadda yadda, who knows.

Has it been done before?

In the sense of a devouring swamp, I don’t think so. It makes me think of the Blair Witch stories that I loved to read growing up. But it needs something to pull it out of being a “basic horror” monster eating story.

What about the research? 

I think I need to sink my teeth into more horror stories if I ever hope to write one. I watch plenty of movies but finding a book that is actually scary is rare, I think. And well, movies are all about the cliche so maybe more novels can open me to new ways of thinking about horror and how to scare! That, and research into pananormal/supernatural stuff could breed new ideas!

Why do I need to write it? 

This one would just be fun to write, I think.

Who’s going to care about it?

People who like horror stories, I suppose??

Is it a goer? 

Not sure yet. Think it needs a lot more development or rethinking more creatively.

#3: Abigail

What interests me about it?

I like writing stories that show characters coming out of a bad place and into a better life. I think this story could show people that they are in control of their lives. Too many people settle and just “make do” with their life situation even though they’re desperately unhappy. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

Hmmm, again there’s not much here in terms of a “story” just yes. A traumatised, abused woman finally leaves her unhappy home behind and … what?? She meets an old friend at the train station, perhaps a past sweetheart. What happened there? 

Is there an obvious journey?

This would be quite a character driven story. Abigail’s goal is to get out and make a new life for herself. Does this make her into a sort of outlaw? Does she have to fashion herself a new identity? Likely, her past will eventually find her again. What lengths will she go to to escape it? Hmmm, maybe there is something here….

Has it been done before?

Given how bare-bones this idea is, most probably. The story of an abused woman running from home has likely been done to death (although I can’t think of any in particular). So I’d have to find something to let this stand out.

What about the research? 

I think I should start by reading similar stories, particularly non-fiction books of women who have escaped abuse for extra inspiration.

Why do I need to write it? 

Again, I think people need to realise that they are in control of their own destiny. You don’t have to just “put up with it.” This would be a story about empowerment and learning to put yourself first.

Who’s going to care about it?

I guess this could cater to the feminist cause and female empowerment.

Is it a goer? 

Again, not quite sure until I’ve developed the idea a little more but I think there might be something there, alright.

#4: Mother and Baby

What interests me about it?

This is a topic that’s quite prominent in the Irish consciousness. The whole scandal around the mother and baby homes won’t be forgotten anytime soon. This idea was born out of a “what if” really concerning that topic. What if we had known sooner? Could we have stopped these terrible things from happening?

Will I be interested in it long term? 

Not too sure, this one isn’t drawing me as much as the other ideas I’ve had. Yes, it’s an interesting topic and one we should never forget but I’m not sure about this story.

Is there an obvious journey?

This story is quite about empowerment as well, standing up for what you believe in and refusing to back down. It’s about change and fighting for the greater good. Many of the characters involved will go on their own journeys of growth.

Has it been done before?

Of course, the Magdalene Sisters covered this topic pretty well (although I haven’t actually seen it) but that story takes place entirely within the home itself. So, it’s similar but doesn’t mean this story is invalid. This idea also makes me think of Fantine in Les Miserables who went to such depths for the sake of securing her daughters livelihood. 

What about the research? 

Being related to an actual event, I would have to do a good bit of research for accuracy. But that actually sounds exciting! Love me some research. Most importantly, I would seek out stories from women who actually experienced these atrocities and go from there.

Why do I need to write it? 

Because we can’t forget what we, as a nation, did to so many women and innocent children all in the name of “God”. 

Who’s going to care about it?

I should hope mostly anyone. 

Is it a goer? 

Maybe??

#5: Queen and Traitor

What interests me about it?

This was mostly a bunch of what-ifs but I think the scenario of the Queen being murdered at their dinner together could be interesting. The daughter is already of ill-repute thanks to her family and is naturally accused. This is, of course, a period story and that could be quite interesting to look into medieval stuff and how the royals live and lived. Of course, the daughter did not kill the queen, so it would also be a story about judging a book by its cover. 

Will I be interested in it long term? 

This idea sounds like a classic whodunnit, something I’ve always wanted to write. And in a period, medieval, royal setting? That could be interesting. But again, this seed is so little I can’t say if it will bear fruit just yet.

Is there an obvious journey?

The daughter will have to prove her innocence and discover the true perpetrator in the process. 

Has it been done before?

I don’t think so? Whodunnit’s are a genre unto themselves and I’ll have to investigate the likes of Agatha Christie to see what’s been done (and hasn’t!)

What about the research? 

Loads of research here into royalty and medieval life. But again, I love research so that just makes this idea even more appealing!

Why do I need to write it? 

A good old murder mystery would just be fun to write!

Who’s going to care about it?

Wannabe Sherlocks?

Is it a goer? 

I kind of want to develop this a bit more and see where it takes me!

DAY SEVEN (Idea Development):

I chose to focus on the murder-mystery actually as it excites me the most!

There’s a hero! Something happens and her life totally changes. She’s now got a problem to solve. Shit!

So, the hero is the daughter, perhaps a princess or just someone who lives at the palace. She comes from a family of ill repute. Her father previously betrayed the trust of the Queen and was extradited. But the Queen is loving and forgiving and takes his daughter under her wing. But no one else in the palace trusts her nearly as much. The Queen invites the daughter to supper with her. This is a rare occurrence as the daughter would usually sup alone since the rest of the palace people disliked her so. The supper is going well and everyone is having a good time until suddenly - tragedy strikes and the Queen begins to sputter and choke. She falls facedown onto the table, dead. The stain on her lips and wineglass make it clear that she had been poisoned. All eyes fall on the daughter as she is instantly accused of the crime. Guards are called and she is instantly pulled away into the dungeons before she even has a chance to defend herself.

She tries to solve the problem.

Not only has she been accused of murder, but she’s also locked in the dungeon! She has to find a way out and prove her innocence. She befriends someone in the cell beside her. A young boy, around her age. He’s been here a while, locked up for snatching a piece of bread that he swears he never touched. 

Somehow or other, they get out of the dungeon. Maybe they trick a guard or find a hollow point in the wall. But they remain in secret while the girl tries to find clues to clear her name. She listens in on conversations around the castle, discovering all sorts of goings-on. 

She fails miserably at solving the problem, or she solves it with unexpected consequences, and the story pivots and there is a new, bigger problem to solve.

She eventually discovers the true culprit! It’s not someone anyone would’ve expected. But, boneheadedly, she decides to confront him alone but he gets the better of her and knocks her unconscious. She wakes to find herself tied up and helpless once again. This man is someone of power, high up in the hierarchy of the palace and has everyone wrapped around his little finger. It will be difficult to prove him guilty.

The problem is fixed or remains unfixed. The hero is happy or unhappy. She is CHANGED in some way.

She eventually gets to expose the true culprit to the other people in the palace and clears her name in the murder. Of course, she is disgruntled that everyone immediately turned on her without giving her a chance to defend herself. She opts to leave her life in the palace behind and with her captive friend, they seek out a simpler, happier life together.