#all to live up to a bullshit beauty standard of how a romantic lead should look

[nancywheeeler]

very frustrating when you have something you really want to say but you're missing half the words you need to say it

[asterekmess]

S3A - E5

AAaannddd, we’re back, with another episode! Wow, this rewatch is gonna take for-fucking-ever isn’t it? Yeah, I thought so. Anywho, on with the show.

Read More’s Are Polite

Thoughts:

Boyd and Isaac sharing a bus seat, even though there’s clearly empty seats available. I love it. I love the packness (I will cling to the barest hints at pack until the day I die)

I think this is the most I’ve ever heard Boyd talk. I want MORE BOYD.

Also, all these fucking twenty-somethings riding the bus, tryin’ to pretend they’re just wee little 16/17 year olds. HA. They look so uncomfortable.

This is also the most I think I’ve heard Danny speak. I want MORE DANNY.

Oh god, this episode is gonna give me a headache. I don’t even know how to start going about writing this. Do I follow the show, with the flashbacks every ten seconds? Or do I actually follow the timeline and try to piece together all these lil bits? Oof.

Why why won’t Scott talk to Stiles about the Darach thing? This is literally the exact thing that Stiles said was happening, and now Scott’s beloved Deaton has confirmed it and Scott just...refuses to talk to him about it?

As usual, I’m on Stiles’ side. Why the fuck are they going to this cross-country meet after what happened?? “safety in numbers” what does that mean? NONE of you should be going???

Also, injuries from an alpha take longer to heal yeah, but like, not days? There’s no reason that Scott should think that’s normal. Surely he went to Deaton with his injury, right? Did Deaton tell him it was normal?? ALSO, just to get that whole anti-scott thing out of the way. If Scott’s becoming a real Alpha, then there’s no reason the injury shouldn’t have healed way before this. It’s almost like he only has a few cosmetic traits of Alphas, but none of the biological ones. Hmmmmmmmm.

*slides in from the left* also, side note, it’s canon that wolves in a pack are stronger and faster “better in every way” which includes healing faster. So It makes total sense for Boyd and Isaac to have healed way faster than Scott. Scott’s an omega, while Boyd and Isaac have a pack. They’re literally automatically more powerful than him.

That was such a random way to introduce the premise of the episode. “I can’t believe he’s dead” where is that line coming from? We were talking about the slash in your side and werewolf healing abilities.

wow. that’s literally the first time I’ve heard Scott say ‘i looked it up.’ I’m actually....impressed? He actually did research...of his own volition? I’m fucking flabbergasted.

where the hell did he hear about that agreement between Allison and her dad? Did Chris tell him? Did he say it in the last episode and I can’t remember?

I...okay hear me out. I see the tension/teasing they were going for between Allison and Scott, but like...I still don’t vibe with it? Like, the point of the conversation is “Is Allison capable of fending off a werewolf” and it’s like....yes? Obviously? When she says “I have skills and training” she doens’t just mean with the bow, dude. She was specifically taught how to fight someone who is far faster and stronger than her. Her training included how to deal with claws. Your argument is just ‘I have all the same traits as what you were taught to defend yourself against’ and it doesn’t actually lend itself at all to him being too capable an opponent?

WHERE? Where does Scott get these moves from? I’m not sorry, but hand to hand abilities are not innate. Scott doesn’t get to just be a fighting genius because he’s a werewolf. Derek was trained. Isaac and Boyd were trained. Allison was trained. So what the fuck is up with Scott suddenly being able to do all these things? Reflexes don’t cover that. It’s the fucking lacrosse thing all over again. Being a werewolf isn’t a replacement for actual skill. And why are they so desperate to show that she’s not capable of fighting him? What is romantic about her spending months training to fight a werewolf, only to be immoblized by a fucking omega? That’s terrifiying?(not to mention it makes no sense for her training to have sucked that bad when her family is one of the most deadly hunter clans in the world?)

for that matter...how does he know where she lives now?

....did he have do the creepy “looking up through eyelashes” thing with the ‘and they should scare you too.” he just looks fuckin demonic with the grr face. It’s almost as bad as that nasty grin they gave Derek at the end of S1.

also, WHY are all the camera angles tilted diagonally? That’s how I take instagram pictures, not how to shoot a fucking tv show. everybody looks like they’re in a fun house??

Do the argents know that there is an entire pack of alpha werewolves living above them? Did anyone think to tell them?

Derek. STOP just telling people that they’re going to help you. You’re supposed to ask. Peter’s a horrible influence on you. I also kind of hate the implications of this fight Derek is planning. I hate that it’s more than just them killing Erica. It’s Derek trying to do what his sister wants him to do. She was pissed at him for not attacking them, and he tried to explain they weren’t ready yet, but she was so fucking angry at him. So now he’s doing this, to prove to her that she shouldn’t be disappointed in him. Can you imagine the pain of finding your long lost sister alive again, and the first thing she does is tell you that you’re a complete disappointment and you’re weak and she regrets coming to find you?

*snort* in these random slow-mo flashes to the mall fight, it’s so easy to see how fake the fighting is. Like, obviously I don’t blame them, cus’ it’s not like they could actually beat each other up, but watching Derek’s fist completely miss is hilarious.

Dude, obviously he’s listening. You’re two seats away from him. JARED is listening. The both of you, get some fucking volume control.

How’re you plannin on stopping them, Scott? Hm? Boyd’s been able to take you down since day one, and Isaac is a beautiful lil vicious boy.

Why is the default plan always murder? Um, because these are literally serial killers and there is no form of human law enforcement that could ever take them down? God, the idea of ‘reasoning’ with them is literally like reasoning with Hitler. Every one of them personally murdered their entire pack to be a part of Duke’s group. They killed Erica. There is No Reasoning with them.

Oh how I love Cora. Yes. Good girl. And No, Derek...he didn’t? He followed you into the vault begrudgingly and then enlisted the help of a fucking hunter who helped more than he did. Like...? I don’t get it? PLUS. What do you mean save her life? You already know that the Alphas intended for them to get out and they weren’t planning on killing Cora. They wanted her to kill other people so you would have to kill her. Which you were never gonna actually do, so how did anybody have to save her life? Derek? Wtf?

They already made the first move by kidnapping your sister and your betas, then killing one of them, and then injuring another. Honestly, they’ve made like five moves and ya’ll are super behind.

.....dude what is with this whole ‘Scott suddenly gets all the literary references” thing? I mean, i get that he’s supposed to have gotten all enlightened over summer break, but why tf was he reading the myth of Herakles? Also, spoiler, the Lernean Hydra was defeated by Herakles working with Iolaus to cut off its heads and cauterize the wound before more could grow back. So cutting its heads off still fucking worked. (Fun side-fact: Only two of the Hydra’s heads did the double growback thing. The middle head was completely impervious to Herakles’ weapons and was immortal, so he chopped it off as close to the body as he could and just buried it. Worked pretty well.)

God, I’m still just so disgusted with this whole Lydia/Aiden Danny/Ethan thing. Like, I saw someone somewhere say that Aiden and Ethan were well over eighteen...but then...how did they get enrolled at the school? Whatever, even if they were seventeen/eighteen, or hell, even nineteen, My issue is with the MURDER part. THEY ARE MURDERERS. WHY has no one explained this to Danny or Lydia?? WTF?

Ew. Why would Lydia ever wanna bang in a school office? She has standards, people.

Scott, this is the one time when you could actually say ‘i can smell it.” or ‘i just know” Because that’s LITERALLY how chemosignals work. and instead you just point out his claws?

why is this elevator so fucking big???

...i do not know what to think about the whole Deucalion is blind, but only when he wants to be, thing. Like...why’d they give him a disability and then just make it so he could turn it off anytime he wanted? It would’ve been so much more badass if he was always blind and had just learned to use his actually hyped up senses to navigate the world instead? It would’ve been even more badass if the only physically disabled person they have on the show weren’t a goddamn villain.

Okay, but like, Peter and Cora. His greeting to her, such a quiet, unassuming introduction to her? Clattering something to announce his presence. Keeping his distance. ��it’s just me, your uncle.” But then, it intrigues me that he specifies. “Your uncle Peter.” DID THEY HAVE MORE THAN ONE UNCLE???? And Cora’s instant tension, but keeping a sass that sounds so much like something she would’ve learned as a kid, mimicking that terminology. “Uncle Peter who killed Sister Laura.”

I WANT THEM TO HUG SO BAD.

Okay, but timeline-wise. why didn’t anybody go to the bodies right after the fight? They all watched Derek and Ennis fall, but no one went to check on them? Huh?

what is with this voiceover??? You have no idea if Derek’s going to get them all killed! Them not doing anything is definitely going to get them all killed! “Don’t stop them, lead them.” GAG. Fuck you Deaton.

????I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. Why does Boyd just randomly back down?? Is it supposed to be seeing that Scott’s hurt? Why would that matter? Is it supposed to be hearing that Scott cares? Cus’ that’s bullshit. Even if Scott does care, it’s not like he’s the only one? It’s not like Boyd’s all alone? Isaac’s RIGHT NEXT TO HIM and Cora and Stiles have all made clear they care about him. Even PETER is around.

Yes, Stiles, you do have a very perceptive eye for evil. It’s fucking wonderful.

.....when did Stiles get danny’s number? ARE THEY BROS? I see a previous text bubble from Danny above Stiles’ first message which means THEY”VE TEXTED BEFORE THIS. I”M CLAIMING IT.

Is anyone else like..super depressed that Ethan is showing more of a pack bond with Ennis than like...anybody else has with Derek besides his actual family? Like, yeah, Stiles has worried about him plenty and Boyd’s clearly fucking pissed off, but the actual fear in his eyes, that quiet worry, that’s so much more pack-like than anything else we’ve seen?

I am SO confused about why they can’t fucking hear this shit. Why can’t ethan hear them talking about it? Why didn’t Scott hear Ethan telling Danny? Just PRETEND for a MINUTE that these are fucking werewolves.

THey’re going after the others ANYWAY Morrell! Helping save Ennis isn’t going to change that. They’re gonna kill Scott ANYWAY.

Also, why can’t Morrell just open the gate herself?

why is Jared so nauseous? They’re at a standstill? I thought the point of car-sickness was the movement??

God, that moment with Lydia on the phone? I love it. I love it so much. Just the chill “Heyyy Stiles.” “...okay.” So good.

“Do I have a PhD in Lycanthropy?” I’m CACKLING. Fucking snorting like a pig, why is this so funny to me? God, Dylan your delivery is so perfect.

I can feel Stiles having a fucking aneurysm while Coach whistles at him. I can feeeeeell it.

“hey Jared. How ya doin?”

Dude..that is not...that’s not what happens when you don’t heal out of guilt. That’s just not. We see IN THE NEXT EPISODE that that’s not what happens. Their blood doesn’t turn BLACK. That’s a POISON thing. GUYS COME ON.

....i’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel bad for ennis but I like REALLY don’t feel bad for him.

Allison honey, this’d be easier if you laid him down on the floor.

JEsus CHRIst. HOw fucking toxic was her relationship with her mother than Allison hallucinates getting SCREamed at? Also, Allison seriously needs a doctor bc these hallucinations started way before the nemeton. This is so unhealthy.

Putting aside my fury at Isaac going to Scott after what happened with Derek, I hate this whole “you’re not going alone” thing. Like...what the fuck is this supposed to be? If Isaac knows what happened, then he wouldn’t insist on going for Scott’s sake. he’d be doing it for BOYD. HiS PACK. He’d be doing it for ERICA.

I love how chill they let Lydia be. “Ah, screw it.” God, it’s so nice for her not to have to be the hyper-feminine “better than all of you” character anymore. She’s allowed to have some depth.

duke you’re not...you’re not fucking blind. Also, how exactly did Kali GET up there?? and WHY DIDN”T ANYONE NOTICE? Scott’s just fucking useless at this point, but ISAAC? PETER? DEREK? BOYD? CORA? COME ON.

WHY ARE THEY SHIRTLESS? WHY NO SHIRTS?

God, what the fuck is wrong with these people? WHy do they insist on making ethan and aiden masochists? It’s literally disgusting, having them fucking laugh every time they get the shit beat out of them.

NOpe. NOPE. NO. Scott does not get to do the Alpha thing. NO. I SAID NO.

I love Cora’s normalcy like yeah, she’s all wolfy, but she’s also so well-adjusted? KNocking on the door. It’s so fucking nice.

“Out cold,” Deaton says, and then Ennis immediately opens his eyes. Love it. Some vet you are. Deaton, what the fuck happened to “difficult for someone like Scott to cause me any trouble” “Not in here you won’t”?? Why is Duke suddenly able to kill his own packmate in your fucking office? And why can Duke leave with blood on his hands and no one realizes he’s the one who killed Ennis? Why didn’t Kali HEAR that??? Why Didn’t Aiden and Kali notice Peter and Cora hiding behind a CAR?

ALSO peter’s holding cora’s HAND. I LOVE FAMILY. (i’m complicated, okay?)

Yes, Allison THANK YOU. That’s the kind of shit I LIke “Sounds like saving your own ass” YES.

BUT. HOw the fuck does ALlison know where to go????

....Allison, the first three flashbombs helped. After that it’s just a light show. YOu could literally have killed the ALphas RIGHT THERE with an Arrow EACh to the heart. WHy were you aiming at the floor??

nobody questioned ALlison and lydia getting on the bus? Finstock? No? OKay, sure, fine.

I like Stiles getting to actually talk to someone about the Darach, since scott refuses. Lydia’s got his back.

for once, it’s true. That wouldn’t have been Scott’s fault. Slicing up the back of Ennis’ leg doesn’t make it his fault that Derek fell.

Shaky cameras are so gross.

NO. NO NO NO. NO. Fuck you.

Last Thoughts: This episode was just...bad. Like, it was just this constant contradiction of (Still flimsy) baseline abilities and behaviors set up for the characters. It’s even more Scott centric than all the other episodes and it’s SUPPOSED to be about DEREK DYING. How do you have an entire episode about Derek’s death without actually giving him any real scenes?? God, it’s so frustrating to get more satisfaction out of a three second scene with Peter and Cora than it is with any scenes with Scott in them.

Also, sorry I took so long to put this one out. This is slow going my dudes, it’s hard to get up the mental fortitude to watch these, make notes, and also make real notes about what I’m changing/adjusting in my rewrite. Oofta.

[mssapphire]

Deconstructing Romantic Love, and what’s actually wrong with it (pt. 1) - Desire and Admiration =/= Love.

In our infinite quest for happiness, one pervasive question we tend to have is: what is love? (baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no mo’). And in this quest we have tried to find a million different answers and we have tried to deconstruct and understand what works and what makes it dysfunctional.

In the last century or so, we have tried to come up with alternatives to what we have identified as the root of all evil and female oppression: heteropatriarchal romantic love. And I say in the last century because Romanticism is a 19th c. thing - and to understand how it completely changed society and our relational dynamics, I’d suggest Alain de Botton (it’s a long video but 1) it’s worth it and 2) if you don’t have the time to read his book(s), it’s a great alternative).

This has given way to different forms of “Ethical Non-Monogamy”. I’ll eventually write a post abut the history around different Free Love movements - and how the term has definitely meant different things in different moments of time, and how we have now devoid it of any meaning, to the point we’re back in the clutches of patriarchy through rampant consumerism of bodies. But that’s a post for another day.

What I’d like to explore today is that the problem doesn’t rely in what relationship model you choose to follow (monogamy, polyamory, relationship anarchy, open relationships), but in the way we (mis)understand love. I recently wrote a post about the meaning of being emotionally responsible, making an emphasis on why it’s so difficult for cis straight men. And following that thread, I’d like to come to another crossroads we (but, again, specially cis straight men) seem to find ourselves on: confounding admiration and desire with love. Let’s break that down.

I could really, really go on a tangent here, but I’ll try to stay focused. We could trace back our culture’s confabulation of love, admiration and desire to Courtly Love. Courtly Love taught men that love but, most importantly, loving the right way, was something that could make you a better person, morally (and even socially) superior. The right way to love a Lady, who was the purest being incarnated on the face of the earth, was to admire her beauty which was no doubt a display of her own moral worth (yes, these are white beauty standards, where the most celebrated type of woman was blonde, pale as porcelain, and with blue or green eyes) - and yes, physical appearance being equated to moral worth was a thing in Medieval times (you can guess which are the good guys or the bad guys in a Medieval story only through their physical description). But here comes the plot twist about Courtly Love: you didn’t even had to have met the object of your desire to love her. So you have an entire tradition of poems being written by men to, for and about women they hadn’t even met. They had just heard about their reputation, and they completely made up a fantasy as to who the woman was - a woman they not only proclaimed to love, but also a woman whom they loved so much they could die for her.

This was fertile grounds for Petrarch’s poetry, now in the Renaissance, who took Courtly Love one step further: actually attaching the object of his desire to a real, living person (Laura). Fast forward to Romanticism and the idea of loving someone to the point it kills you, and that they’re the one and only object of your desire, and your “soul mate”, and thus complete and complement you in every single way has now become the trend as to how we perceive love.

But that all sounds very exotic and distant. What about the present? Certainly, you can’t compare these guys to the guys on tinder trying to hook up with anyone who’ll say yes. But allow me to say: 1) yes, yes I can and 2) it’s not only these guys - but even those who seem “more decent” and actually take you out on a date, and even date you for a while. Allow me to elaborate.

Again, I am going to go ahead and quote bell hooks’ definition of love (this is something I do, a lot): you have to distinguish love as a feeling vs love as a verb (we’ll circle back to this). When you understand love as a feeling, and as a feeling only, desire and admiration tend to feel a lot like love. And the problem lies therein society’s portrayal’s of love: “love at first sight”, passionate sex as the ultimate display of what love is and should be, blind admiration towards that person and how you have to stick through thick and thin until death do us part (does that ring a bell?).

“Seeing no wrong” with the object of our affection (or what we now call “missing red flags”) is something we do when we blindly admire someone. And, thus, that convinces us that real love, true love, is that in which you find no conflict, and where the other person is perfect and without flaw. The problem with confusing admiration and love is that, to admire someone, we have to put them up on a pedestal, so we can continue to admire them without our image of them crumbling. Think about all the times you lost respect for your idols as you found out who they really were, as a person, above and beyond their work.

The same happens with desire - which is something more visceral and raw. That person is desirable as long as they fit the fantasy we have about them - which relies to physical attributes, yes, but about things they do and don’t do. Even more so, sex is something that gives you the illusion of intimacy, because sex is inherently emotional and vulnerable (and the idea that it isn’t is capitalistic bullshit, but that’s a topic for another post).  So while you’re engaging in sex, you can enjoy all those endorphins and mushy feelings, without actually doing the hard work of actually getting to know the person for real. The moment the person displays a behavior or an attribute that clashes with the idea we have in our heads (maybe they’re too awkward, or they have bad breath in the morning), our fantasy, built on desire, starts to crumble.

Let me drive the point home with a personal example. An ex of mine was initially deeply attracted to me because of my intelligence (it was a good thing that he found me physically attractive too). He would be delighted when he saw me debate other people (and destroy them), to the point it immediately triggered physical affection. But as the relationship progressed and we found ourselves sharing and discussing personal views, his attitude started to shift. A quality that he usually admired me for, became something that made him feel contempt. “You’re so smart” turned into “you’re too smart” which eventually turned to “I can never talk to you because everything turns into a debate”. My attitude and approach hadn’t changed. What was happening is what always happens in an emotional relationship where you’re actually getting to know the person: I was falling off the pedestal he put me in. 

And, suddenly, I was seen not only as a human being with flaws and shortcomings, and far from perfect - but having to be so close and vulnerable in front of me was also deeply uncomfortable to him. Because when you’re really close to someone, that makes you reflect on yourself. True love and intimacy is an exercise of self reflection, which allows you to become acquainted with the best and worst sides of you. In my ex’s case, having to be confronted by the intelligence he admired so much initially, made him feel stupid and insecure.

Which leads me to another thing: in this confabulation of admiration/desire for love, men also get another short end of the stick. Because patriarchy has convinced them that a woman’s love lies in her admiration for him, the object of their desire (who has to instantly desire them back just because they want this person) has one job and one job only: to admire and support him unconditionally. This means that men are permanently stuck in a position where they have to display strength and bravado, as they fulfill the role of protectors and providers. And what happens then? you never truly get to know who they are inside. So any sort of criticism, disagreement or conflict is perceived as a threat - if you’re not admiring them, you’re personally attacking them, and you don’t really love them.

Again, the problem with all of this is that we still haven’t understood what love actually is. According to bell hook, love is also a verb. It’s the actions you take in order to nurture the relationship, so you both feel seen, known, heard and understood. It’s getting to know the other person deeply and honestly. It’s seeing ourselves reflected in their eyes and getting to know new depths about us that we hadn’t before.

Think about it in another way: if that person wasn’t physically attractive to you anymore, would you still love them? if that person presented flaws that you hate, would you still love them? If they didn’t have the same social status or job? if they didn’t engage in specific activities with you? and what would you be willing to do if those things change? these are all important questions to assess where your feelings for someone stand.

To be clear: you can love someone and admire them and desire them. But just because someone desires you or just because someone admires you, that doesn’t mean they love you. Again, love is in the work you do. And if you do your homework, you will find yourself admiring that person on deeper more significant attributes, like their compassion and patience and integrity, while you even learn to understand and appreciate their flaws in the context of who they really are - that’s what being understood means.

The problem is not monogamy. In fact, I find it more responsible and sustainable to understand just how much work goes into having healthy loving relationships and deciding to have that with one person, than being a hot ass mess and falling in and out of an unending string of relationships because we’re trying to score “woke points” by denying monogamy. Because if you think you’re defying monogamy while at the same time you’re following the same romantic standards to relate, then you’re not really subverting anything.

Next time you feel like you might feel love for someone, ask yourself if what you’re feeling means that you actually have the willingness to do the work required to be in a healthy relationship with them. If you find their presence in your life worth the effort or not. If this is a nourishing relationship, then the answer will probably be yes.

[mistergrass]

I Got Too Carried Away With My YukiKyo Headcanons Again

Well, anyway. 

Was asked by Shark on the discord if I had fluffy headcanons for them. And I thought about what it would be like if Kyo proposed to Yuki. And then apparently I couldn’t stop. 

Have a half ramble/half freeform drabble about Kyo proposing. 

SFW Warnings: This Is Cheese Central Word Count: ~2500 (because I haven’t been concise one day in my goddamn life)

So I've always had a long standing headcanon that Yuki and Kyo really like to hike together or go on long evening walks. They're just really outdoorsy people, and I imagine if they go on vacations they avoid cities and go on more nature-esque type trips. Like they would go to California and not go to any of the LA tourist stuff, just go right up north to the redwoods and spend time in those kinds of places.

Anyway, I think they have their normal walks that they go on (and really, it's a shame that they're not pet people because any dog would be over the moon to get such long walks all the time).

They've talked about marriage a little back and forth, they've been living together for a good while now. But they both agree that they're not super romantic people, and if they get married it won't be this big thing. The conversation is really..... tepid? And wildly unromantic and very "straight to the point". Anyway, Kyo and Tohru are having lunch together just the two of them as they often do, and Kyo kinda just mentions casually what's going on with him and Yuki.

And Tohru FLIPS out, she's so excited. She wants to know who proposed to who and what the wedding is going to be like when it's going to be and HAVE YOU TOLD KAZUMA YET and just bombarding him with all these questions

And he's like "woah woah, chill out, it's not like that. We just kinda decided on it. No one proposed. We're not gonna have some dumb big wedding. It's just something we're talking about is all."

"....Oh."

And Tohru just kind of deflates and pouts, and Kyo gets irritated like, "We're not romantic people, Tohru. In case you haven't noticed."

And Tohru's like "that's not true, what about the time Yuki surprised you for valentine's day at that restaurant" (Yuki found this place that served sepcifically country-style food that was close to the region where Kyo trained in the mountains that Kyo really likes -- took him there, and then surprised him with an overnight trip at a hot springs like an hour away from where they live).

"Or what about the time that Yuki surprised you at the dojo," Tohru adds. (Kyo got his official teacher certificate for karate, and Yuki asked Kazuma if he could borrow the dojo for the night, and threw a small surprise party for him with all his tolerable friends).

And she just starts listing example after example until Kyo's like -- “I GOT IT.”

Cause the difference between them is that Kyo is all about the little gestures, which Yuki isn't great at, but Yuki is much better at the grander gestures that throw Kyo off and make him feel so important and special and loved.

And Kyo kinda puts his head on the table like "fuck." And Tohru waits for a second before she's like "soooo..... you'll do something special then?"

"Yeah, yeah, get off my back."

Because Kyo realizes he's never really... done something like that for Yuki. Never done something that focuses on him so much and makes Yuki feel like the special one. And.... Yuki’s never really had that in general. Any praise he got from their high school peers or the main house were based on things that weren't true about Yuki, or that Yuki didn't like about himself. And Kyo knows that by now. (But also Kyo’s an idiot, and if you were to ask Yuki who is the more romantic one between the two of them Yuki would say Kyo without a doubt. He’s so consistently considerate on an everyday basis without even trying. Yuki’s a little insecure about the fact that his affection has to be so deliberate at times, but I digress).

So Kyo huffs, and realizes it actually would be really nice to see Yuki caught off guard by that.... and it makes Kyo feel happy to think about how happy it would make Yuki to receive some kind of gesture like that.

So Kyo does his best to plan something. But despite it all he's not great at it. Until he kind of comes up with an idea.

(Also he's acting a little weird throughout this whole period of trying to figure something out, and Yuki figures he's freaking out because they talked about getting married and Kyo's realizing he’s not ready.

Yuki actually confronts him one night, and is like "You know... things are fine the way they are. I didn't mean to pressure you into anything." And Kyo is like ???? he never even considered not marrying Yuki as an option?

And he wants to open his mouth and say that he's wrong, but all the things he wants to say kinda step on his speech he's been working on for like a week now, so he just says instead "Don't worry about it.” And kisses him, and sorta just goes to bed. Even though he knows Yuki is still feeling a little uneasy.)

So anyway, one night, he goes up to Yuki and asks if he wants to go on a walk with him -- which is a pretty standard happening. And Yuki stretches and smiles and agrees, and they walk down the path they've walked since they moved into their new place. Their first apartment was small and crowded, and they were still young and figuring things out. The new place they've moved into is more of a town house, and they've been there about a year now. It's closer to wooded areas, like Shigure's place, and they're close to a temple that goes up a huge amount of stairs (they went there for their first new years in the new place and watched the sunrise from one of the benches at the top of the hill. They both decided they were gonna invite Tohru to come with them next year).

Anyway, Kyo leads him down the path, and they're pretty silent. Yuki tries to start conversation, but Kyo's really nervous and kinda tongue tied and can't really focus so Yuki gets the hint that Kyo's probably just lost in thought and just walks by him comfortably.

Now, more backstory because apparently even random headcanons that I come up with on the spot need this kind of bullshit:

There was exactly one (1) maid that Yuki liked in Sohma house when he was growing up that worked in Akito's house. She had other duties, but once a week, she would also clean the whole house -- and often times Yuki was there while she would. She was a nice, older woman and at first they didn't interact much. But when she would clean, she would play English songs on her little radio and hum along to them -- in particular Ella Fitzgerald. It was such a nice sound, and the woman's voice on the radio was so comforting and rich — it was so unlike how people talked to him, so cold and dispassionate. So he would silently follow her around from room to room to listen to the music.

The maid thought it was really cute, and wouldn't say anything because she didn't want to scare him off. It's a few weeks of this when Yuki finally asks who the woman singing is, and the maid tells him. Yuki starts paying more attention to his English studies because he wants to understand what she's saying. When the maid comes over, instead of lurking outside the rooms, he sits in a corner out of her way as he reads a book and she does her work silently. She also starts commenting on how skinny Yuki is (he didn't eat much at the time) and would always give him little candy treats that she usually gave to her grandkids.

She tells him how she was a little girl when the war ended, and they lived in a place that got flooded by a lot of American activity, and so she was exposed to a lot of English music growing up, and how it reminded her of her family.

There's one song in particular that Yuki starts to sing along to -- Someone to Watch Over Me

When he and Kyo start dating, and they stop being spiky little shits, and become more relaxed, Yuki starts opening up a little more. Kyo is over at Yuki's place one day and Yuki puts on Ella Fitzgerald, because once he was old enough he was sure to track down all her records and CDs and plays them while he's working now.

Someone to Watch Over Me comes on and the two are just sitting, idly, Yuki working on homework, Kyo reading one of Yuki's books, and when the song plays he starts to hum it and then clumsily sing along to it. He sits next to Kyo and takes his hand and says "You know, this song always makes me think of you."

And he sings along (though he's half tone deaf and still has a pretty bad accent, despite his grades lol)

Won't you tell him please to put on some speed Follow my lead, oh, how I need Someone to watch over me

And Kyo kind of snorts, and squeezes Yuki’s hand back and goes "What does it mean?"

And Yuki hums and goes "You should have paid more attention during English class."

Back to the present day, Yuki's interest in Ella Fitzgerald doesn't go unnoticed.

He walks Yuki along the path, and it's about a mile and a half until they reach this really pretty clearing. It's almost summer so there are some fireflies around, and the bamboo is really high and creates this cool little secluded place that they've found. When they're about to reach it, Kyo takes Yuki's hand and Yuki, still not aware of anything, takes it easily and smiles.

And Kyo stops him and is like "Hang on a second."

And Kyo looks really nervous now.

And Yuki kind of looks at him and asks "What's wrong? Are you not feeling well?"

And Kyo is looking around all frantically before he kind of snarls out, "you assholes have NO sense of timing, do you?"

And there's this really faint voice off in the bamboo that goes "sorry."

And all of the sudden the area is lighting up. There's lights placed all around the bamboo, and it gives off this really beautiful, glow. And then, music starts to play. it's Ella Fitzgerald, but it's not Someone To Watch Over Me -- it's Night and Day. And Kyo puts his hands on Yuki's waist and goes "this is the one that reminds me of you."

And Yuki is already fucking floored and is looking at Kyo and goes, dumbly, "What are you doing?"

He sways with Yuki a bit back and forth in this really awkward dance, and because Kyo isn't all that conventional of a person he just says "I want to marry you. And you'd be dumb as hell if you didn't want to marry me too, cause no one else is going to take your shit other than me."

"I want to marry you," Yuki says immediately, still shocked.

"Good. But. Shut up. Let me just. Talk."

"I want to be with you. And I'm not gonna hide that. You're not something in my life that I'm gonna hide. I don't give a shit who knows I--no, I want people to know. That I love you. And that I'm choosing you. And that you're gonna be part of my life. Forever. If you want."

Yuki opens his mouth but

"Shut up, I'm not done. I'm tired of you talking. You always have to have the first AND last word, and you don't think about what I want half the time. Let me tell you what I want without you thinking you're dragging it out of me, or whatever. Because I'm about to ask you to marry me, and then I'm gonna tell you that I don't want to just sign a piece of paper, I want people you care about... and I care about with us. I want a big fucking party because I should get some kind of congratulations for agreeing to deal with you for the rest of our lives, got it?”

And Yuki just kind of nods, and his face is starting to turn kind of red and he's breathing pretty hard.

"Good."

Kyo goes on one knee, finally. Even though this is all really out of order, and digs something out of his pocket and pops up a ring box for a gold band.

"Let me marry you, Yuki. Please. Keep me around, alright?"

And before when his expression is kind of still pinched and irritated like Kyo gets when he's embarrassed and nervous, now it's completely sincere and vulnerable. And Night and Day is still playing in the background. And he can HEAR people rustling around and he has no idea who yet and he still can't believe this is happening.

He sinks down onto his knees in front of Kyo, takes the band and holds it up. "Aren't you going to put it on me?" He asks, but he doesn't sound smug he sounds winded. And Kyo nods. And he does.

And Yuki holds his hand up in front of him and is kind of holding back tears, until he slides that hand through Kyo's hair really gently and looks at Kyo.

"Can I speak now?" Yuki asks, a little teasingly, but still pretty much caught off guard.

Kyo snorts, "If you gotta."

"I want everything you want," Yuki says. "I think that's how it's going to be for awhile. And I want to marry you. I. Yes. I don't even think you technically asked, but I'm still saying yes. Kyo."

And he leans in and kisses him, and the two kiss there in the clearing both on their knees, holding each other really really really tight, and Yuki can't help it maybe ONE tear slips past.

Anyway, the people who were hiding in the bushes were Haru, Kakeru, Momiji and Tohru. Haru was taking pictures the whole time, and the one of them breaking apart after that kiss they have framed. Because Kyo's hands are wrapped around Yuki's waist, and Yuki's hand is on Kyo's cheek, and his other arm around Kyo's shoulders, and they're both smiling at each other.

Yuki keeps the rest of the photos in a photo album along with all their wedding photos.

Once the proposal is over, Kakeru and Tohru roll out a whole picnic that Kyo had prepared for them. And Momiji is the one who set up the lights and the music, so. They all fuck off and let them have their dinner together, but not without all of them hugging them first.

Kyo tried to shoo them away after they helped him set up, but they refused. Yuki seemed happy enough that they were there, so he guesses it’s fine.

[moviegroovies]

brad majors: a character study

ok i think it probably says something when the first time i tried to make this post the power to my entire house went out, wiping my progress and turning off my dvd player, but fuck if i’m gonna let prognostic signs stop me from being on my bullshit. 

the point is: y’all ever devote a few hours worth of time and effort to making something that nobody is ever, ever gonna read? if you do, then we here at moovie groovies dot tumblr dot com feel sorry for you, although naturally we can’t relate. no, you don’t need to check how many notes we get on these stupid posts. don’t worry about that. ANYWAY

sometimes you just wake up and, despite knowing that your classes start up again in less than a week, you just have to spend some of the precious few hours you have left on deconstructing everyone’s favorite asshole’s fragile, fragile psyche. and by you, i mean me. and by sometimes, i mean now. 

let’s go! 

so, i’m gonna start with the scene in front of the church (let’s start at the very beginning, the beginning’s a good place to start...). brad’s introduction is the first time we meet any of the major characters of the film (unless you count patricia quinn’s lips and richard o’brien’s voice as an intro to magenta and riff), and it sort of sets him up as our “protagonist,” a role he... doesn’t quite maintain for the duration of the film. obviously, the second frankie shows up, he’s the main event, babey, but even for our “hero” and “heroine,” brad, who seems to be the main focus for the first act, gets less on-screen development than his female counterpart. plus, janet’s solo song wasn’t cut. sorry brad ): 

regardless, i like the church scene quite a bit in terms of brad's character. the movie isn’t entirely huge on the character development kind of thing, so you have to take it where you can get it, but imo, introducing brad with ralph as a counterpart/sort of foil was a good choice, because it lets us compare our hero with what i’m just going to assume is the standard for the society he’s living in. we jump in: the first conversation we see in the whole movie is between brad and ralph, who we learn is a friend of his from high school. it seems likely that brad and ralph aren’t as close as, perhaps, betty and janet are (this is just my speculation, but if you look at the other wedding guests, there’s at least one other girl who’s wearing the purple dress that janet is in, which could be the bridesmaid’s dress, while i don’t see anyone else wearing brad’s little outfit, making him not one of the groomsmen), but brad initiates the conversation, struck by social norms, if absolutely nothing else, in the need to be polite. their conversation seems awkward (asshole boxing!), but more so for brad than ralph, who just steamrolls on totally oblivious to how fake brad’s laugh is. brad comes off as the more thoughtful, conservative one of the two--he’s kind of cringing under his smile at the conversation, and everything he says is sort of.... stiff. also, did you notice his face when ralph says the only reason he showed up to the science class was because he was trying to get in good with betty? brad, who actually likes science, has sort of a blank/disappointed look while he announces this, which he turns to an awkward “ha ha ha” laugh. when betty throws her bouquet and janet catches it, ralph tells brad it could be his turn next, which he seems to somewhat brush off (”who knows?”), but once ralph leaves, he’s definitely caught up in thought again, perhaps contemplating the timing of his proposal (who the fuck brings a ring to someone else’s wedding??). 

side note about that scene: both betty’s dress and ralph’s suit are white, which, at a wedding, symbolizes virginal purity. even the lewd message on the car (”wait til tonite--she got hers, now he’ll get his”) implies that both betty and ralph have been waiting until their wedding night to, y’know, consummate their relationship, which brad and janet initially parallel, but...

the conversation then switches to brad and janet, and their first interaction together is kind of,,, tense. janet is gushing about the wedding, but once again, matter-of-fact brad majors is kind of awkward, and his comments are all very forced. “everyone knows that betty’s a wonderful little cook.” “ralph himself, he’ll be in line for a promotion in a year or two!” both of these come off as commentary on what he thinks people are supposed to be thinking about--brad, at this point, is a man who has a framework of what life should be (domestic wife, upward movement at a respectable job, white wedding) and who is doing his absolute best to fill his role in all of that. his stoicism even fits that, because, as we’ll see in a moment, he does have real, giddy emotions around janet--he’s just doing his best to keep them down until the very moment of his proposal.

and that brings me to: dammit janet! it’s really very cute, and kind of the closest thing to a brad-centric song we get if you’re watching a version that doesn’t have once in a while which.... you probably are. brad gets flustered while he just tries to start the proposal, and compare his wide, shameless smiles at janet throughout this song with the way he kind of grimace smiles at ralph beforehand. he’s in love! and you know he’s in love, because he says it outright six times over the course of the song, while janet only explicitly says it once. maybe he just got luckier with the rhymes (dammit janet, i love you is the same syllables as brad, i’m mad, for you too), but tbh i think it’s sort of telling--brad’s playing the emotionally stunted prototype of the american man, but deep down he’s deeply in love and thinks his girlfriend is the most special person in the world. meanwhile, janet clearly cares for brad, but i think what she’s really in love with is the idea of marriage (she’s so enamored with betty monroe’s transition to mrs. ralph haphshatt, and in the scene beforehand she’s definitely anticipating brad’s proposal and waiting expectantly for it)--but this is a brad character analysis, so i’m going to try to stick to his side of things. he beams at her while he fumbles through the first bit (“hey, janet, i’ve got something to say”), and has to lean back on a tombstone once he gets through it. i love him! i love how he drops his composure and starts jumping and running around (backward!). also, peep that bit where janet leans in for a kiss and he pulls away at the last minute... telling? maybe not, he does kiss her in a moment. 

the most excited janet seems throughout the duration of the song is when he pulls out the ring. in his excitement, brad fumbles trying to put it on her, and falls over while spelling her name and telling her how much he loves her--meanwhile, she leaves him on the church steps while she goes inside to admire it. all of brad’s lyrics in the song have been about their courtship and how much he loves her, while hers are about how her ring is better than the one her friend got, and how it’s good that he’s already done the proper thing and met her parents. this isn’t janet hate, really, but i think the comparison is interesting--brad was introduced with somewhat awkwardly stunted emotions, but he’s the more open, idealistic one of them when it comes to romantic feelings. janet, meanwhile, knows exactly what she wants--but maybe it doesn’t matter so much who gives it to her, as long as she ends up in that dress she’s built up so well in her head. basically: he wants to plan their future, she wants to plan their wedding. 

that theme is showcased pretty well in this exchange toward the end of the song: janet leads with her “brad, i’m mad,” bit, which he eagerly answers with “i love you too,” though janet has yet to say that she loves him. also, i wish i had screenshots, but if you watch that scene, he’s looking adoringly at her, while she’s looking adoringly at the ring. the song is about different things for the two of them.

it’s pretty cute to me that brad’s immediate first thought upon getting engaged is not that they need to announce it to their family, or their friends (like betty and ralph) of similar age, but their tutor. also, look at them when he says this--i think that maybe the two of them were on different pages when saying “there’s one thing left to do.” janet probably did want to tell family and friends, because she’s finally getting her dream, she’s getting married, she has a beautiful ring, and she wants to tell people! brad wants to tell one person, because he thinks his whole relationship is owed to his teacher, whom he admired, and he wants to share his happiness with dr. scott. we learn later that the two of them had been working together on scientific pursuits even after dr. scott was his teacher in high school, which i like for brad. i love his devotion to science! i don’t love his devotion to dr. scott, because he’s the real villain of the movie, but brad doesn’t know that. i don’t blame him.

anyhow.

i bring all that up because janet looks a little disappointed when he starts talking about dr. scott, doesn’t she? maybe i’m totally reading too much into it for the sake of my theory, but she looks sort of blank until “made me give you the eye and then panic,” where she dutifully giggles and looks down at the ground. 

they do kiss at the end of the song, but it’s close mouthed and brief, and the screen cuts away to riff raff, magenta, and columbia (or their actors playing bit parts, at the very least) for most of it. this is probably more about the stand up american kid’s sexual repression than lack of attraction, if we’re being honest. i’m not saying at any part of this that brad wasn’t in love with janet. the two of them, at that point in the movie, are very dutifully filling roles they think they should be filling, and that means they’re being the perfect distant WASP couple. no impure thoughts until the wedding night. and so forth.

next up: the police statements. i actually hadn’t read them until just now, which marks the two hour mark of me writing this analysis... and i’m about 15 minutes into the movie. funny how that happens, right? don’t worry, i’ll have less to go on soon so i can shut up. until then, though: brad’s police statement is a fun ride because the whole thing is written like his first stilted conversation with ralph. also, it reveals his name is bradley j majors. what’s the j for? that’s for you to decide. he introduces himself and mentions that janet is still his fiancee (which is backed by janet’s police statement), and explains that everything started at ralph and betty’s wedding. he goes into some backstory with dr. scott’s class, and gives this line in relation to his first thought about janet: “she’s just the little help and support I’m going to need throughout my life.” god, brad, that was straight of you. it’s perfectly in character (fitting his comment re: betty that she’s a “wonderful little cook;” he’s thinking about women in a supportive, domestic role, and not so much as people, although his actions when janet are actually around make him a little less of an asshole about it), but it makes me want to slap him a little. at the same time, in the context of him having a perfected ideal in his head and trying to stick through it, that’s just about love at first sight for him. i think it might just be that janet is in love with the idea of marriage, and brad is in love with the idea of janet. he thinks he’s found the perfect woman to round out his fantasy american home life. she’ll give him support, and cook his meals, and pop out their 2.5 kids. meanwhile she’ll get to have her wedding and be a nice little homemaker, and if that’s not exactly what she wants, well, it’s what she seems to think she wants now. 

both brad and janet’s police statements are funny because you can see them projecting their thoughts and actions on each other while changing the occurrences of the story. i’ll scatter references to the stuff that happens after along with my commentary on the stuff themselves, but brad says that janet “got sort of excited and kind of did a bit of a hop and a skip – she gets a bit carried away when she’s excited – and skipped into the church.” yeah, brad. janet was the one who was carried away. he mentions that he should have noticed that there was a funeral going on while they were in the church (janet doesn’t comment on that), and that he would have noticed, had he “been so confused by her saying yes.” brad. darling. she was saying yes in her eyes before you even pulled out the ring. in her police statement, she says she “thought he’d never get around to it,” but that she “couldn’t hint to him. but anyway he did it.” janet’s been trying to get him to propose probably since they graduated high school. brad says that “ralph and betty got engaged and then married before [he] had the nerve to ask Janet if she would kinda get married to [him]. You know what it’s like ? You don’t like to take these things on until you’re sure.”

side note: i like his little “kinda get married.” he does that a lot in this--kinda, sort of. i think it’s his way of downplaying his emotions and what he wants. it’s sad, but it shows a lot about him, i think.

his full explanation for not noticing the funeral until he thinks back on it later is that he and janet “kissed, and [he] felt so hot and cold that [he] just didn’t notice.” once again, i say brad. DARLING. i love you. you are so so emotionally stunted.

their next scene is the car, driving to dr. scott’s house. i know i take the opportunity to wax poetic about my great love for brad majors just about every other line, but i LOVE how he’s got nixon’s resignation speech taped and playing on the way there. it’s such a funny little detail, and also it begs some questions in my mind--does he like listening to it out of some kind of respect for nixon? (i ask this mostly because the way nixon presents the speech is reminiscent of brad’s early dialogue/his police report) or does he just like hearing the bastard step down? (more likely, since brad would probably find unamerican actions quite heinous, and regard the whole watergate scandal as entirely treasonous) either way, it shows a trait i just want to call attention to: brad is a NERDDDD. i love him.

janet seems much more casual and chatty in this scene than he does. brad’s a man on a mission, or maybe his persona just doesn’t allow room for unnecessary chatter. either way, it makes for an awkwardly quiet car ride. janet tries to break the silence, first by offering him chocolate (this is also part of her seeming younger than him, though if they were in the same high school class i suppose they really can’t be), then by commenting on the motorcyclists. brad takes this opportunity to show his disdain for their “type,” probably meaning rebels, junkies, and general counterculturalists. oh, brad. you have no idea what you’re in for here, do you?

not that relevant, but i find it funny that while janet recalls that brad told her to wait in the car (which she uses to bring up the fact that she “wasn’t going to risk losing him if there was a sophisticated, seductive woman in the castle,” a comment which i find more indicative of her devotion to her wedding than her devotion to brad), brad describes leaving together as a joint decision. maybe it’s just not that important to him, maybe his ego smarts a little from her brushing off his attempt at protecting her, maybe he just wants to portray all their decisions as a joint effort. man and wife. awwww.

his actions in this scene are mostly focused on his protective element. he does the “mom hand” across janet when they first get the blowout, and then tries to convince her to stay while he wanders off into the darkness alone (which, let’s be real brad, would have resulted in a man door hand hook car door kind of thing, wouldn’t it have?). basically this scene is full proof that brad majors would 100% be “white dad in a horror movie” material if he wasn’t changed by the experience, which he seems not to have been, if the police statement is anything to go off. so, they both get out of the car. part of me likes to think about what it would be like if brad really had gone in alone, but at the same time, the au necessitates that janet be alone in that car all. fucking. night. so.

i don’t have any commentary on him in “over at the frankenstein place,” particularly, except that he’s a dork who doesn’t take off his glasses in the rain. seriously, brad, you have to be completely blind at this point. what the hell are you doing.

unrelated side note: amanda seyfreid should have played janet in the 2016 remake, i always think that susan looks a little bit like her in this scene. plus i just... didn’t like victoria justice in the role. whatever.

brad kind of ignores janet’s worry and fear from that point on for a while. on one hand, asshole! but on the other hand, like, why go all the way to the castle just to turn back at the door? maybe because castles don’t have phones, but he doesn’t know that yet. 

brad falls in to introducing janet as “my fiancee janet weiss” very quickly. in my heart, i’m going to say that this is because he’s been doing it for a while in his head. brad and janet seem a little uncomfortable with riff raff, but brad reassures janet it’s just a weird hunting lodge, and they go inside, still holding out hope that they might use a phone here before the night is over. oh, brad’n’janet. if only you knew. magenta (who both brad and janet call “madge” in their police reports) slides down the banister, and they get a little startled. both of them find this important enough to note in their police statements, with brad commenting that her maid’s outfit “somehow didn’t look right;” in fact, he felt “a bit embarrassed by it actually.” i think this is another instance of him downplaying every emotion/feeling he reports on. janet, meanwhile, just comments that her dress had lost some buttons, which i feel goes along with a common theme in her report--brad’s sexually frustrated, janet judges other women. it goes along with pitting herself against betty (”it’s nicer than betty monroe had!”); janet comments that the wedding was perfect, except betty’s train should have been longer. just little details like that. 

next: the time warp! janet Does Not Like the time warp. she faints twice, and another time right before sweet transvestite. brad is initially as startled and disturbed (?) as she is, but by the time columbia’s verse is over, he’s smiling and he seems sort of into it--bobbing his head and so forth. janet’s the one who tugs on his shirt and tries to lead him out. interestingly, in her police statement, she switches the blame for their inching out of the room and puts it on brad--“i would have quite liked to see the dance right through but brad insisted we leave and he’s so strong and brave.” brad, again, presents this as a joint decision he and janet had: “janet and i backed out of the room.” at this point, i really am just thinking that he wants to believe that he and janet are unified in their decisions, maybe as a kind of mental block to the shit they’ve been through. it’s cute. he still loves her quite a bit. 

oh, before i go on. i want to pull your attention to this bit from the police statement: “now, this bit is going to be a bit hard to believe but you’ve gotta believe i’m telling the truth. I mean I had a very upright honest christian upbringing and I don’t lie about anything. no sir. i never lied to my mother about whether I’d cleaned behind my ears or not.” 

i don’t like, have anything in particular to say about it. i just love him.

so, the time warp ends. janet urges brad to say something; apparently, him asking the transylvannians if they know how to madison isn’t the something she wanted him to say. that’s one of my favorite brad lines, honestly. it also proves that brad’s a lot more comfortable here than janet is--for now, at least. he defends the strangers’ rights to act strange by suggesting that they’re foreigners with different ways from their own, and seems to be a bit irritated by the fact that janet’s reacting so harshly (”get a grip on yourself, janet!”). his thought process at this point is probably that she’s behaving like a hysterical woman, while he’s a paragon of rationality. funny how those roles kind of switch by the end, no? right now, though, it’s still brad’s turn with the calm juice, so janet faints again when the elevator comes down--brad, to her right, says in his police report that he “was about to get angry with her” for screaming. harsh much, brad? 

these next parts are going to be hard to analyze because watching brad when frank is on the screen is... hard. i’m a man of simple tastes; i see tim curry in drag, and i watch him. ah, the things i’ll do for a completely pointless character study. 

anyway, frank’s first appearance has brad kind of stammering. frankie is going through the “how do you do’s,” and brad is just standing there, working his jaw. he didn’t catch janet that time. interestingly, though janet noticed from the start that frank was a man “who looked like a woman,” brad apparently didn’t catch that until he saw the corset--up until that point in his report, he refers to frankie as a woman, saying that janet fainted, and he “decided that there was nothing to faint about – there was just this woman getting out of the lift.” he goes on to say “yes, she was about 6’1”” which, baby, i don’t know who you’re kidding but tim curry is 5′9″ and that’s generous. i guess he was factoring in the heels, but he mentions the heels in the next line: “but wearing very high heels, a lot of makeup and a shiny black cloak with a silver collar. She motioned us back in to the ballroom and I thought we could follow her.” at this point in janet’s statement, she notes that “brad says that [she] went of [her] own volition, but he was really pushing [her]” to follow dr. furter. huh, brad, i wonder why you were so intent on following...? he goes on to say that “when we got there she started talking about being a transvestite. now, I don’t keep up with the modern trends that happen in new york and all those big cities and i wasn’t quite sure what a transvestite was.” brad... never change. didn’t frank only start talking about being a transvestite once the cloak was off? maybe this is one of those things where not all the song sequences happen in universe. whatever. anyway, he notes that frank is a man, and finishes with “yes, i did get further confirmation of this fact later and i’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind,” which is the only allusion he makes to sleeping with frank.

brad is pretty stiff/shocked for most of the song, but by the time he remembers himself and recovers enough to ask for a telephone (brad, babydoll, you are never going to get a telephone here), he gives an awkward little nod/smile at the “well, babies, don’t you panic.” then it’s back to freaky & awk. he’s self consciously feeling his hair at the insinuation that he might not be shivering because of the rain. still, when he’s getting stripped down by magenta, he’s pretty cool again, introducing himself (asshole!) and janet (slut!) even while she’s pulling his shirt over his head. to columbia, he’s a little rude: she tells them they’re very lucky to be invited up to the lab, and that some people would give their right arm for the privilege. snidely, brad asks “people like you, maybe?,” which i think goes back to his “life’s pretty cheap for that type” comment from the car. he’s very us (clean, straight american kids) versus them (motorcycle junkie amoral delinquents) here. still, though, he’s not protesting too violently when they get put in the elevator. in the statement, he seems to be asked about whether or not frank’s castle was a gambling den because of his “we’ll pull out the aces” comment, to which he replies that it wasn’t, and furthermore, that gambling is evil--his mother told him. that makes a lot of sense--he seems quite a bit like someone who never questioned the morals his parents instilled in him. this is probably the first experience in his entire life that ever gave him reason to question them, and he still comes away swearing he tells the whole truth, and that gambling is evil, and so forth. even if he’s been shaken... he hasn’t been shaken that much.

when they get up to the lab, brad (who is, by the way, wearing the world’s ugliest underwear) does a little “ladies first” gesture and lets janet out in front of him. and they say chivalry is dead. he still gets out before columbia and magenta, however. 

brad gets to do his “i’m brad majors (asshole!), and this is my fiance janet weiss (slut!)” bit that i’m sure he’s been rehearsing in his head since tenth grade for a third time, but fucks it up this time with “vice,” which shows you exactly where his mind is. it’s interesting that this is where he fucks it up, and not when he was introducing them to columbia in the last scene--columbia being a scantily clad young woman watching while he was being stripped naked, while frank in this scene is still crossdressing, yeah, but is much more moderately dressed since he put on the gown thing. funny, no, which one elicits his freudian slip? i don’t think brad is completely gay, since i’ve already gone into how strongly he feels for janet, but i think a lot of his attraction to women is based around his idea of what he’s supposed to do, while when he’s not keeping a close grip on his feelings, he lets attraction to men just sort of... slip out. he’s back to being his dominating american man persona in this scene tho (it’s a bird, it’s a plane... it’s super asshole!), and seems awfully jealous when frank flirts with janet, probably because janet does very little to seem unreceptive. he also gets pissed as fuck when frank mentions how hospitable and generous he’s being by letting brad’n’janet stay here, which... there’s still no phones in the castle, asshole. he’s more reserved and a little bit self-conscious both when frank compliments their underclothes (don’t listen to him for a moment, brad, you area still wearing the world’s FUGLIEST underwear) and when his outraged “hospitality!” speech is met with frank telling him how forceful he is (which the conventionalists find ENTIRELY amusing). i guess it’s understandable--this is almost definitely the first time in his life he’s been hit on, by a man or otherwise really, and he’s repressed enough that he kind of shuts down. you can’t just be openly sexual in brad’s mind. that’s not how it works. the question about the tattoo brings him back to himself, though, which again shows his distaste for counterculture. tattoos are things that type has. not him. 

janet giggles when frank asks her, and he stares at her in disbelief for a while. when janet claps along with the transylvannians for frank’s experiment, he just stands and watches before holding her so she can’t do it anymore--but when janet starts getting scared of the lights and the noises, he’s back in his a-game, reassuring her there’s nothing to be scared of. he really does like being the one with power--he thinks he has it when he’s yelling about hospitality, frank brings him back to earth by looking at him, for lack of a more tasteful phrase, like a piece of meat. while he’s reassuring janet, and she’s thinking of how strong and protective he is (a comment that she makes many times in her police statement, and which frank is perceptive enough to have picked up to use in the seduction scene), he’s okay again, and he starts looking in shock at the machines frank is using. that’s another thing about brad--he can get used to these situations pretty easily, and he’s still easily distracted by his interest in science. it’s just frank himself and janet’s flirtations with frank that are throwing him off his groove. 

side note. in the police statement, brad implies that he thinks rocky was just “having a snooze” in the tank, though whether he says this because that’s actually his impression or because he legitimately does believe that the story he’s telling is too fantastic to be true is kind of unclear. if he did believe that frank was able to create life, i think his dislike at this stage would be pretty easily overcome by his dorky science questions--but maybe that’s just me. 

brad totally checks out rocky. he puts on his glasses and does this whole once over--subtle. in the police statement, he comments that “frank got very concerned about his being frightened and kept telling him he was beautiful. he wasn’t a bad looking guy – but i wouldn’t have called him beautiful.” suuuuure. maybe rocky’s just not brad’s type, though; he does go on and on about eddie.

when frank asks what brad and janet think of his creation, brad smiles briefly at janet for her (flat out lie that) she doesn’t like men with too many muscles; before frank even reacts, though, his face falls when the spectators laugh, and he seems a little embarrassed. i would have liked to see his answer--although, like i said in the last paragraph, it may simply be that rocky (whom he calls “rock,” citing rock hudson, who, side note, was gay, altho i have no idea whether or not they knew that in the 70′s) is not quite his taste. we don’t see brad’n’janet for all of i can make you a man, but we do see them again in hot patootie--eddie seems to flirt with rocky and janet and maybe even brad, a bit (if he was one of frank’s conquests, eddie must be bi too, right?). brad’s face seems mostly just flat out baffled for the duration of the song, but all his comments in the police statement seem pretty positive--“this guy who burst out on the harley sang his song. i held his sax for a while he was singing. good voice”--which is somewhat strange, given that eddie embodies all the stereotypes of the “other” that brad has been shitting on since the beginning--he has a motorcycle, he’s got tattoos, he’s part of frank’s little circle, and he pretty much humps columbia right there on the floor. brad doesn’t seem actually distraught by the murder, though, saying not much beyond “god rest his soul” like a good little christian boy would. he does note that he would have thought that eddie “could have made a lot of money as a singer,” which is again, cute, because he really doesn’t seem to believe all those stereotypes as much as he seemed to think he did. 

side note, if he was attracted to eddie, and we know he’s at least somewhat attracted to frank, doesn’t that mean brad has the exact same taste in men as columbia? which could be related to him thinking that rocky wasn’t anything to write home about--neither of them seem to be that interested in muscle.

brad’s not even slightly subtle about checking out frank when magenta and riff raff take the gown off him. he looks away, as if that helps anything about it. he also looks absolutely betrayed by janet’s announcement that she’s a muscle fan. dammit, janet.

he takes the time to mention frank and rocky’s “wedding,” which he makes sure to detach from the other one we see in the movie by assuring the police that it was nothing like ralph and betty’s, although he praises them on about the same level: about the haphshatt’s wedding, he says “very nice wedding it was,” while in regard to frank’s, he says “it was quite nice, i suppose.” i appreciate that he never really expresses disgust for any part of the night except for the cannibalism--he never demonizes frank as a q***r or anything like that. in regard to what happened after the wedding, he either is ignorant (unlikely) or feigns it--he says that he “didn’t think it was [his] business,” which i feel like is the polite streak that was pounded mercilessly into his head jumping out. 

off topic, but he wasn’t completely accurate in saying the wedding was nothing like ralph’s--at the end, the transylvannians throw flower petals and chant “rocky, rocky, rah rah rah!,” which parallels the wedding guests cheering “haphshatt haphshatt, rah rah rah!” at the end of ralph and betty’s wedding. is that a custom i didn’t know about, or was it a nod to the fact that the guests were supposed to be played by the transylvannians?

next: sex! i probably don’t have to say anything for y’all to know that this is one of my favorite scenes--i’m predictable like that. the seduction of brad and janet go pretty similarly, with mostly the same lines--frank changes “i think you’ll find it quite pleasurable” to “i think you’ll really quite enjoy it” for some flair, and brad gets angry (nevernever. never!) while janet gets weepy. janet protests that she was saving herself (for marriage, which she’s built up in her head), while brad gets pissed because he thought it was the real thing--it’s notable, though, that while janet was already getting hot and heavy when she thought it was brad, brad doesn’t get into anything sexual until after he knows it’s frank; he was only holding “janet” and petting her hair. frank gets smart after janet makes him promise not to tell brad and leads with the fact that he won’t tell janet, and after making sure that frank promises he won’t tell, brad’s out there arching his back and moaning. can’t say i blame him--i wouldn’t have even said no in the first place. in the statements, brad seems to have either blocked out the entire memory (which i doubt) or just refuses to say it, much like he did with what frank and rocky did in their room; first of all, he leads with “well, janet and i went off down all these corridors and things and were shown to our bedroom. one each. even if we hadn’t been given a room each, i would have insisted on it. you’ve got to do the right thing.” yeah, sure, brad--that’s why you let janet in so quickly, huh? anyway, he continues with “a few things went on during the night. no, i’d rather not talk about it. no, i can’t remember. yes, i think someone did come into my room. no, i’ve got no idea who it was. i was asleep at the time.” what was it that brad said earlier about always telling the complete truth? not that i really blame him--look man, it was the 70′s, and even if he didn’t have a 100% upstanding citizen’s image to maintain, casually announcing that you’re a fag probably doesn’t have amazing consequences for anyone involved. janet, in her report, is free with the fact that she knew it was frank, though she still doesn’t acknowledge that she had sex: “i thought it was brad at first, but then it was frank so that was o.k. i mean i would have been shocked if it had been brad. he’s always been so respectful towards me.”

basically, “i would have been shocked if brad touched me like that. he’s way too repressed to go beyond closed mouth kissing.” 

but i digress. 

we see brad again on the television monitor, smoking a “we just had sex” cigarette and looking back at frank casually. they seem to be talking, and frank seems super pleased with what he’s done. i suppose he would, he’s just gotten off two (three?) times in the last hour or so. like, fuck, that’s pretty impressive. especially if you have a dick. brad seems a lot more chill with what they did than janet does--janet’s crying and guilty at first, then crying and betrayed, which is... strange. janet, did you somehow forget that you fucked the exact same man in the past twenty seconds? maybe she just wanted to believe that his will was stronger than hers, or that he was straight. how would she have reacted if it was, say, columbia in that bed? i guess we’ll never know. 

maybe she’s just thinking about her ruined marriage, if we’re being honest.

anyway, brad, unlike janet, seems content to follow frank after they make it, and doesn’t really seem unsettled by what they did. he does seem unsettled by watching frank whip riff raff, but once that’s over and the three of them are looking at dr. scott on the television monitor, he’s gotten over that, too, and he’s happy to announce (with no mind for reading the room) that he knows scott--that’s an old friend of his! frank gets apprehensive and angry, concluding rationally that dr. scott (who he knows as a UFO investigator, and who would naturally prove dangerous to his continued stay on earth) sent brad and janet to his castle to spy on him. brad tries to reassure frank that he’s there because his car broke down--and here, he’s still smiling a little, until he drops to a serious “i was telling the truth.” maybe he should tell frank that thing about washing behind his ears? frank doesn’t believe him, and starts jabbing him backward (but not hitting him) with the handle of the whip. brad gets increasingly angry at this disrespect, and seems (like he did in the lab earlier) about to snap out, until he trips backward, and frank raises the whip, at which point his weird relation with power dynamics saves his ass. he almost forgot, before, where he stood, but now he’s looking up at a man with a whip who’s clearly not afraid to use it, and so he chills out quite a bit. frank asks him to confirm that dr. scott works for the US government in the investigation of UFOs, and brad shoots back that he might, which angers frank, until brad drops his own anger and submits in a more placating “i don’t know!” frank chills out, and then summons dr. scott up to the lab.

despite being threatened with a very real whipping, brad seems no less excited to see dr. scott than he initially was. he really is quite devoted to his mentor, and has no shame when offering his hand to shake--like, how does he not realize his robe has blown open and dr. scott can definitely see his dick through his ugly tightie whities? no idea. but damn if he’s not happy. frank makes a comment about how adaptable he is, and only then is brad embarrassed enough to look away. scott saves brad’s ass a little by assuring frank he had no idea that brad was going to be here, to which frank seems a little surprised, but probably pleasantly. it’s better to know that the dude you just fucked wasn’t secretly a spy conspiring to out you to the planet earth, right? 

brad seems hurt and confused in the rocky horror role call bit by janet’s betrayal--which is a little fair. after all, brad only fucked one guy, but janet’s been caught in bed with at least two. still, infidelity is infidelity, and neither of them has much room to judge at this point. brad probably gets this, because, while he still seems a little miffed when they sit down to dinner, he’s not trying to confront her about it or anything. in fact, he doesn’t try to do any confrontation at all until frank-n-furter implies that dr. scott is a nazi (which. doesn’t really work if he’s been doing the german accent the whole time, but whatever), and brad, who doesn’t know that it’s true, gets righteously angry on his behalf. poor baby. might want to get a better fcking mentor.

he still seems a little upset when dr. scott starts singing “eddie,” but makes his peace, i suppose, enough to get into the song by the end, where he sings with what i’m just gonna assume is righteous anger at how bad eddie was. i think at this point he’s more or less loyal to frank, at least in the eddie department. less so when frank slaps janet a second later; then he’s back in the “righteous anger” department. he takes off his glasses and then is apparently so blind he can’t see which way they went. that’s not how glasses work, brad. 

he’s pretty impressed with the science in the latter half of “planet schmanet janet.” like yeah, they’re glued to the spot, but he doesn’t seem as upset about that as janet does, and knows exactly what dr. scott’s impression of the transducer means. once again, i just want to emphasize how much i’d like a fic of frank and brad talking about science and machines and stuff. brad’s a scientifically minded guy! he’d be fucking fascinated with all this shit if he had time in between his bouts of righteous anger to be! 

despite being trapped, brad tries to get a hit in while frank sings the sexiest line of the movie. respect, i guess. and another after janet beats him for a little! 

there’s protective!brad again. he’s trembling with anger while he threatens frank... completely ineffectually. you’re trapped, dumbass.

ah, well.

then, the floor show! the floor show gives us kind of a jump in brad’s character. according to his statement, he wasn’t conscious for the part where he sings on stage--he says he doesn’t really remember anything between the dinner (which he refuses to answer questions on: “oh yes, we did have dinner at some point. no i feel ill when i think about it. i didn’t eat anything. at least not very much. i’ll be sick if you keep asking me about it”) and waking up in the pool. the little segment in the show itself tells a lot about him though: here, though brad seemed pretty cool & collected up until this point, we learn that he’s massively uncomfortable with the role he’s found himself in--the sex, the company, and probably above all else, the corset and the fish nets. he calls on his mother to save him, which supports that bit in his report when he says that his mother told him that gambling is evil--he’s kind of a momma’s boy, and he’s reverting back to that while finding himself in a situation he can’t control. at the same time, though, he doesn’t totally seem to hate it--he does admit to feeling sexy dressed like that, and once he gets in the pool, everything gets blissed out. even in his statement, he doesn’t try to hide that part of his evening--“yes, i did have a nice swim. it was warm – it was beautiful really.” that’s probably the most glowing review he gives of anything that happened that night, and his actions in the pool consisted of... licking frank’s chest, rubbing his head on rocky’s dick, and getting dipped by columbia. yeah, i think beautiful pretty much sums it up, actually. he returns to his “it’s beyond me” chorus for a moment in the pool, but columbia puts an end to that. 

oh, i love his pose while frank is singing, too. i know i’ve used the word repressed like fifty times in this review, but... 

all i can say about the rest of the song is that i’m really feeling his legs in the chorus line. he’s got more devotion to the dance than rocky does, at least. 

then there’s protective brad again; he pulls janet away from frank when riff raff and magenta start threatening him (and gets a heel to his foot for his trouble). during “i’m going home,” he looks appropriately sad at frank’s departure. maybe even more than appropriately, since this isn’t exactly his closest friend in the world, is it? still, we also get protective!brad protecting someone other than janet for the one and only time when riff raff announces frank’s death and brad yells out “you’re going to kill him? what’s his crime!” there’s that righteous anger again... and like, even though this is a man that brad has seen murder one man, brutally whip another, and who has threatened him and his beloved mentor and harassed his fiance... brad really can’t fathom why they would kill him! it might be a side effect of the mind control ray frank was using, but dr. scott was under the same stuff, ostensibly, and didn’t find a single problem saying that they had to kill frank for society’s protection. 

i love that short little scene with brad burying his head in janet’s hair while he holds her. i think he’s a little disillusioned with his mentor by the end, or at least i would hope so. poor frank ):

brad’s part in superheroes is mostly just about him being sexy for me. like. the words he’s saying mostly just tell me that he’s freaking out because of what happened. but the way he’s sitting and writhing around in the smoke.... undeniably hot.

anyway, holy shit, i’ve been working on this for like seven hours now. tl; dr: brad majors loves janet weiss a lot, or at least the idea of her, but is completely sexually repressed and can’t deal with it when he has his gay awakening and then subsequently tries drag for the first time before watching the dude who fucked him dying. i probably should have gotten more out of that, and maybe i did, but that’s in the past now. FUCK i wrote too much. ok.

[robkirbycomics]

HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS ('70) When Barnabas Collins leaves the small screen he discovers he can inflict a lot more blood & mayhem on the big screen #31horrorfilms31days

NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS ('71) Quentin Collins inherits Collinwood in all its splendor, inhabited by the spirit of Angelique the witch, who only wants him to love her. Obviously Quentin's new wife is not into this situation, no way no how

GERALD’S GAME ('17) Couple's sex-zay weekend becomes much less so when he keels over dead while she's handcuffed to the bed. Surprisingly potent mix of super-squirmy thrills n chills w/ Triumph of the Spirit uplift

BODY BAGS ('93) trio of horror tales features a very early 90s brew of synth-y score, jokey cameos by Wes Craven, et al. & an overall sophomoric vibe. But also good performances + Debbie Harry. Body Bags = mixed bag

HEREDITARY ('18) This very dark blend of ORDINARY PEOPLE with ROSEMARY’S BABY features a wonderfully unhinged performance by Toni Collette and remains a sobering reminder that sometimes it does *not* get better

TRAIN TO BUSAN (’16) Excellent Korean Zombie Apocalypse thriller mixes edge-of-the-seat thrills with involving human drama - with characters you genuinely care about. At the end I was all (crying emojis)

THE TAKING OF DEBORAH LOGAN ('14) Harrowing found footage flick: a documentary film crew filming a woman dealing w/ early effects of Alzheimer's disease finds she is afflicted w/ something much worse - something *unholy*. A small gem, I recommend

THE REEF (’10) TFW you realize that the perfect killer shark movie was made nearly 45 years ago. But anyway here's yet another killer shark movie

THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER ('15) Weirdo teen girl & non-weirdo teen girl spend a lonely holiday weekend in an empty all-girl's school where things get super creepy in that arty-slow-burn-fractured-narrative fashion. Honestly, I was riveted

VIY ('67) Loser-y Russian seminary student must spend 3 scary nights praying over a dead witch's body. Only she's not so dead & wants to drag him down to hell with her. During the day he drinks much vodka, who could blame him? Enjoyed this charming folktale

TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID ('16) del Toro-esque tale of orphaned street kids on the lam from a vicious drug cartel, alternately haunted & helped by ghostly victims of the cartel. Scary, funny & touching, a fairytale that will give you the feels

ANGST ('83) Psycho creep gets out of jail and wants to kill, proceeds to do so. Best part of this clammy little German film: the totes adorbs little dachshund, even the whackjob seemed to like it with its cute little wagging tail

PONTYPOOL (’07) Radio shockjock has a super bad day at work when a terrible virus breaks out that turns people into murderous zombies - esp when he learns how the virus is transmitted. Def recommend this excellent, downright existential Canadian chiller

HELL HOUSE LLC ('16) A crew of douchebags acquire an old hotel w/ unsavory past to open a Halloween haunted house, only to find themselves stuck in an overlong combination of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT w/ THE BEYOND - never a good place to be 

SUSPIRIA ('18) Luca Guadagnino’s radical reimagining of Dario Argento's rococo 1977 masterpiece polarized horror fans: Those Who Damned vs Those Mesmerized. Count me solidly in the latter camp 

16. DARLING ('15) Young woman takes housesitting job in huge, elegantly ritzy NYC apt, slowly unravels, eventually does damage w/ a big kitchen knife. All in beautiful B&W

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP ('80) Monstrous mutants arise from the depths to terrorize a fishing village. Turns out they also want to propagate the species, Ew

BUCKET OF BLOOD ('59) Loser schnook works as a busboy in beatnik cafe, then finds success pawning off corpses covered in plaster as ART. This adorbs time capsule amusingly satirizes both beatnik culture & Art World bullshit

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS ('60) This cheap little quickie about a bloodthirsty plant that morphed into an 1982 off-Broadway hit & more is still engaging, w/ fun Borscht belt type humor & game cast, incl Jack Nicholson, genuinely funny as a masochistic dental pt 

EATEN ALIVE ('76) Sweaty whackjob owns (A) rundown remote hotel, (B) large scythe, & (C) man-eating crocodile, all leading to (D) bizzaro murderous mayhem. Highlight: the croc (spoiler alert) eats a pre-Freddy Kruger Robert Englund

HOUR OF THE WOLF ('68) Artist & wife settle into life on isolated, windy island, where he inevitably begins to succumb to his inner demons. Ingmar Bergman's lone horror film is filled w/ all kinds of frightening imagery + existential dread. Good times!

THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF (’73) Little Richie: I'm scared, Dad's a werewolf! Let's not go camping with him! Everyone: He is not, you're tired, you had a nightmare, those dead people were killed by a wild animal, go to bed, etc. Repeat for 80 minutes

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD ('19) Japanese item features a low-budget film crew filming a zombie flick. Charming, funny, & way-meta - recommend not reading anything about it B4 watching (after this post, obvs)

JU-ON: THE GRUDGE ('02) A brutal double murder creates a relentless curse in this genuinely creepy Japanese ghost story. It's also one of ol' Rob's faves from the aughts

JENNIFER ('78) TFW the school bullies are being super horrible but then you remember Hey wait I have *supernatural power* over *SNAKES* and I could totally use that to my advantage! (hint: she totally does)  

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE ('16) Father & son coroners perform an autopsy on a mysterious corpse & must soon deal with several standard supernatural tropes including jump scares 

HAGGAZUSSA ('17) Portrait of a woman branded as a witch, living in isolation outside a remote village, slowly losing her grip. Not a fun or action-packed watch, but if ur willing to meet it halfway, this German film might both mesmerize & horrify you.

IN THE TALL GRASS (’19) People get lost in an ominous field of grass that apparently stretches out waaay further than you'd ever think possible, not unlike the runtime of this movie

THE NIGHTSHIFTER (’18) In this clever Brazilian gem, guy working in a morgue learns the hard way that when the dead impart information, what they tell you should stay *strictly* confidential

MANDY (’18) Nicolas Cage dials it up way past over-the-top avenging himself on an evil cult & demon bikers in this flamboyantly campy, blood-soaked, LSD-infused revenge tale. Me = shaking my head, utterly hypnotized throughout

CANDYMAN (’93) Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman (...)

INHUMAN KISS ('19) Young lovers must contend w/ the fact that her head detaches from her body every night to feed upon flesh in this romantic, wildly over-the-top dark fantasy from Thailand. Lovely way to wrap up this yr's  #31horrorfilms31days extravaganza

[toonstarterz]

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #137

Once upon a time, there was a girl. An unpopular girl. That nobody knew, nobody cared. She strived to be popular. To have dozens of friends and live the life of a socially fulfilled high school girl. After much time and effort, she had finally succeeded in her goal. She got friends. She got popular. She became normal.

But it wasn’t everything she hoped it would be.

And so Golden Week came around. She made plans with her new friends. And the popular girl can’t help but wonder...

“Is this really what I want?”

Chapter 137: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Prepare for Golden Week 

Okada: “Is my forehead that big?”

Katou: I wonder if Kuroki-san is doing anything after this...?

Tomoko: “Man, I’m tired.” 

Komiyama: [ Exactly what it says. ]

Y'all know the drill by now. Tomoko expects the least, ends up getting the most.

Katou is honestly a very difficult character to get right in this kind of manga. For a series as excruciatingly real as this, a beautiful, popular girl like Katou could easily come off as “unrealistic” or an “otaku’s fantasy” with the way she reaches out to Tomoko. But Nico Tanigawa manages to keep Katou within the realm of believability, and I think it’s because she treats everyone with motherly kindness. It’s her natural instinct, so it doesn’t seem forced in the slightest.

Yeah, buzz off, Kiyota! You’ve already exceeded this manga’s male quota for the next ten chapters.

It sure is swell that Tomoko’s friendship with Yuri has grown enough that even people outside of the loop can see how joined-at-the-hip they’ve become.

I’m getting flashbacks of the KBBQ dinner right now. Someone invites Tomoko, she invites Yuri, Yuri gives a double negative response, etc. What gal pals.

Again, more KBBQ flashbacks, only with a twist. At the party, Yuri took the affected role, stating that her decision to go would be based on whether Tomoko would. But now, the roles have switched with Yuri suggesting that Tomoko wouldn’t go if she wasn’t there with her. I don’t like where this is going...

Mako is totally the type to keep track of how she divides the time between her friends, always balancing a bail with a hangout. Such are the difficulties of being the “nucleus” friend.

For better or worse, Yuri‘s been taking Mako’s “rejections” in stride lately. Better, because that means she’s no longer unhealthily dependent on her best friend. Worse, because that could means she projected her attachment issues onto Tomoko and Yoshida. Have her insecurities been dissolved, or have they just been spread wider across their little quartet?

Mako and Yoshida talking when the others aren’t around is total friendship-baiting and I’m behind it 100%.

The ultimate tug-of-war between a mom who knows their daughter’s faults and a daughter who’s too stubborn to heed her mother’s concerns. 

Sorry, Yuri dear, but at that, I’mma callin’ shenanigans. 

It should be fairly obvious by now that Yuri is becoming dangerously co-dependent on her relationship with Tomoko. It’s not so much that Tomoko needs Yuri with her, but that Yuri needs to feel that she’s invaluable to Tomoko so that she herself can be validated. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that can only get worse since Tomoko and Yuri are going in opposite directions, with the former becoming more self-assured, and the latter becoming more reliant. 

Katou rolling her sleeves up inexplicably raises her “mom” appeal three-fold.

For those who don’t know, this the same joke that happened when Tomoko peeked at Ucchi during the sports festival. Only eating rice is suggestive of just having done something exhausting, usually perverted in nature. Oh, that Nemo.

Still, it’s telling that Nemo actually made that joke and got shot down by Tomoko right in front of the others. Their bantering is usually kept just between them, but doing it within earshot could lead to some pretty tense situations if the others jump in.

That’s quite the unique face Yuri’s making. Not exactly anger or resentment, but there’s something negative about her expression. My best guess is exasperation, but low-key, as only Yuri could. And I hate to say it, but it’s pretty hypocritical of Yuri to get all bent out of shape about Katou’s smothering, when she herself came just to “support” Tomoko.

This might seem innocuous at first, it really speaks to Yuri’s non-indulgent behavior when receiving attention from others, as is very common of introverts. Just like how Tomoko chose something moderate when Okada treated her.

The whole exchange here is incredibly awkward, but it comes off more sincerely than it is cringeworthy. The kind of awkward that makes you facepalm is the result of knowing that the whole thing could’ve been avoided, or at least done better. Okada’s apology and Yuri’s dismissive forgiveness really couldn’t be handled differently, so while there’s this unspoken barrier between them, we can get behind it because you can tell Okada and Yuri are doing their best to clear the air.

Food porn.

Is it embarrassing? Yes. Is Tomoko going to do anything about it? Nah, she’s going to milk Katou’s motherliness for all she’s worth.

And let’s be real-Can you really blame her?

This whole “normie” business didn’t make a whole lotta sense to me when I first read it, but by comparing it to another label used in the West, I was able to make a connection.

Back in the day, the word “nerd” was a derogatory term, used to insult people who were into comics, video games, anime, etc. But by the turn of the last decade or so, this idea of a nerd became antiquated when people realized that the things that nerds were once ridiculed for were actually entertaining in their own right. The standard of being a nerd dropped to the point where mildly enjoying pop culture was enough to make you a nerd. And thus, when everyone became a nerd, nobody was. And the nerd became an identity that only the most hardcore of nerds could adopt.

I never realized until now just how much social stock Tomoko has put into having a boyfriend. You’d think that after her perceptions of the “normies” evolved, she’d understand that having a boyfriend or having a romantic relationship, in general, isn’t as valuable as society makes it out to be.

Now the whole “hanging out at the cafe” thing being normie...maybe.

Quickly researches the reputation of Aoyama Academy.

Oh. So like, Stanford or Princeton. Dream on, Tomoko.

Dat tiny smile on Yuri is too precious.

One thing that I’ve always wanted to see more of is Tomoko’s sense of humor at work. She doesn’t do it often, but the few times when she casually jokes around are met with positive reception, most notably with Yuri. While the readers are more used to Tomoko’s raunchy, crude humor, Tomoko can also play up the “I’m an idiot”-type humor. And it works especially with Yuri and Nemo, who can tell when she’s half-bullshitting them. 

A rare moment of genuine playfulness between Tomoko and Nemo.

Of course, because Tomoko actually is an idiot at times, it can be hard to tell when she being actually stupid, or being fake-stupid for the laughs.

Mama Katou doesn’t know this yet, so naturally, she has to protect her daughter from the mean bullies. Her dialogue here could easily come off as confrontational if it were spoken by anyone else, but as we’ve seen before, Katou is more of the “quiet rage” kind of girl.

Yeah, I saw the video of Cristiano Ronaldo defending the Japanese boy from the audience. Referential humor tends to be hit-or-miss, depending on whether the joke is sustainable without it. In this case, it’s the kind that can be lost in a few years time. So despite being a piece of common entertainment knowledge in Japan, once in while for the series is just enough to keep it fresh. 

I must admit, I used to think that Katou was a replacement character for Imae after she left. But now that we’ve had time to get to know her, I see that that’s not really the case at all.

Sure, Katou is caring and sweet like Imae, but what sets Katou apart from her besides her “mommy-ness” is her naivety. Katou has all the tenderness and effort of a guardian, but she lacks the sensibility...somewhat. But that bit of cluelessness is essential to rounding out her character, enough so that even this stylish riajuu can play the outcast in times like this.

Damn, girl. It’s one thing to view Tomoko as a good person. It’s another thing to see her as some societal paragon. Now I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t get corrupted by the Tomoko virus.  

Even though this is being played for laughs, it does key into an actual strength of Tomoko’s that none of the others have. That being, her extreme candidness. Tomoko, frankly, sucks at pretending to be someone she isn’t, but is incredibly impressionable when she's her unrestrained self. Yes, there’s a time and place for that kind of thing, but sometimes, an incestual eroge is exactly what you need to get your point across.

Precious Lil’ Bean and Jealous Lil’ Bean. Take your pick. 

Yeah, yeah, Nemo getting in Tomoko’s face is nothing new. However, what is new is how Nemo dishes it out and how Tomoko takes it. Nemo usually glowers over the girl as if to assert dominance, but she’ll occasionally crouch down, like a cheetah ready to pounce. Tomoko always cowers a bit during Nemo’s provocations, shrinking down with caution. But here, Tomoko doesn’t waver. She stays upright, even looking down at Nemo for once despite being obviously flustered. Stand your ground, Tomoko. Stand. Your. Ground.

Low-key bitching followed by buddy-buddy invitation equals the politics of friendships.

Sweetie, the girl can’t even bother to use your own name. What do you think?

Normally, I’m not fond of this kind of storytelling where the author tacks on additional, never-before-seen events to a previously seen memory just to add plot tension. The only reason I let this slide is because, as is soon revealed, this memory is more for Yuri’s characterization than for story direction. Plus, it’s interesting to compare how close they are now as opposed to back then. You win this time, Nico Tanigawa.

Taking the easy route even in college, eh, Tomoko? I expect nothing less from you.

Taking the easy route even in college, eh, Yuri? I also expect nothing less from you.

Lazy Sisters Unite!

Promised, my ass.

You’re killing me, Yuri, making me call shenanigans on you twice in one chapter. But yes, twisting your friend’s words into a promise just to suit your needs, and then playing the victim card when said friend doesn’t keep their “promise” is a serious friendship offense. As much as we will all want to Yuri have beautiful, lovely friendships with these girls, it suddenly makes a whole lot of sense why Yuri didn’t have these friendships in the first place. My emotional spectrum is out of whack right now, unable to determine whether Yuri’s behavior is a regression in character or a reconstruction of one.

Bless Mako and her patience.

Oh god, Nemo’s Yandere Stare is spreading.

Hmm, the extra text on Yuri’s date is ripe for some overanalyzing. My first instinct is to say that writing more of a description is indicative of Tomoko actually caring more about spending time with Yuri than she does with Nemo and Katou. But then again, it could just very well be that Tomoko didn’t want to be redundant and write the same thing over three times. 

Whatever the reason, at least she managed to write out Yuri’s last name. I might have died if she just drew a face with pigtails. 

This has always been one Tomoko’s key developments, realizing that being a normie or popular doesn’t give you a pass in life. Everyone has their own shit to deal with no matter how (un)popular you are, and now that Tomoko has gotten a taste of that, the next step for Tomoko’s personal journey could be one of self-actualization: 

Stay where you are and possibly lose your roots, or go back to where you came from and potentially lose what you gained?

Exact-a-mundo. A lot of people have criticized this manga for turning Tomoko into a normie and betraying who she was. But in my opinion, Tomoko is not a normie. Such a self-deprecating label is more defined by one’s personality rather than their social network. Tomoko knows a lot of normies, but until she stylizes up her hair, disregards her hobbies and pulls a Nemo, she’ll always be our lovable mojyo.

On a final note, it’s easy to see Tomoko as the dense protagonist of harem manga right now, and yet, these punchlines regarding her “pursuits” seem to be much more effective if you look at Tomoko’s “harem” as just platonic and devoid of romantic subtext (whether or not it’s actually doing that is another story). Perhaps it’s because while Tomoko is oblivious to everyone’s jealousy, she actually has a great deal of agency that is not often seen in harem protags. The girls are so responsive to Tomoko’s actions, and thus, the emotional core of the Tomoko’s harem actually carries some well-earned weight. 

Can we have more manga with a strong, platonic harem, please?

[queen-of-hearts92]

Any more thoughts about "Beautiful Thorns"? I personally liked that Shiori wasn't demonized this time.

I’m gonna do a full thing with more thoughts later but I’ll put down what I got on my mind for now. ouo

I, personally, did like Beautiful Thorns but I do get why there are people who don’t like it. The story of Juri, Shiori, and Ruka has been simplified greatly, so if you like it or not depends on if you are ok with/like how the story turned out after simplification. 

However I don’t think the story being simplified means theres nothing to look at here, and that we should blow it off as “Saito not understanding Utena again oh hoho”. We shouldn’t do that. Let’s not do that.

So imma talk about Beautiful Thorns aka “Juri you useless lesbian, pls stop hallucinating dead people” and see the different take at the relations between these three characters as well as looking at what we got from this story as a whole. /owo/

(Quick note: I discussed this manga with my friend Fuji so I’ll be mentioning her when repeating what we discussed. \owo/)

Let’s start with Juri and Shiori and how it goes in this version. 

Juri falls for Shiori while they’re in middle/high school instead of them being childhood friends. Shiori, in this universe, is the well off pretty girl. Juri is the one who refers to herself as “unlovable” and “ugly” this time. Juri wants this cute girl to notice her but isn’t sure how to go about it until she overhears Shiori saying she thinks fencers are cool like princes. Juri, being the baby gay that she is, goes “GUESS WHO’S GONNA LEARN FENCING, IT IS I” and she learns the fuck outta fencing cause Juri is go big or go home and if fencing is the best way to impress Shiori then you bet your ass she’ll do it! She learns the fuck out of fencing so much she becomes the school’s fencing champion and Shiori does indeed notice her. However, shock and sadness, she’s engaged to another. 

That would be Ruka, who I think is also part of the fencing team. So here while Ruka is her senpai, he is also “that motherfucker engaged to Shiori” this time around. Kinda different there lol. Her feelings towards Ruka are jealously and also feeling like he is a standard she can never live up to. I’m gonna touch on this more later down the line cause this falls with the prince thing. So, lets keep going. ouo 

Juri is like “aw fuck me” and we get to see the inside of the iconic locket we all know and love and she becomes a sad gay (now in this universe Shiori facing away from the camera in the picture doesn’t. make. much. sense. but idk guess Saito just wanted it to look like the one in the anime). One day, she drops the dang thing and Ruka finds it and is like “lol if u want it back come and catch me” Juri tries to catch up to him but she forgets that Ruka has long ass legs so he gets away. 

Now Ruka during all this has fallen in love with Juri, however he realizes that Juri loves Shiori. Unlike anime! Ruka, this Ruka takes this rather well. But he is concerned by Juri’s drive to be a prince cause we all know that being a prince in RGU is a terrible idea overall. I’m gonna talk about Shiori in a moment but first imma quickly cover the part that’s taken from the movie aka the big old life changing moment for all the people involved here. 

So Juri is all bummed out cause Ruka took her locket and she’s being sad by a river on a stormy day (cause that’s the BEST time to hang out by the river, when theres a fuckin storm). Then she sees Shiori, who uh, either get pulled into the water by a wave or she fell in I honestly can’t tell but either way Shiori falls into the damn river. Juri is like “iTS PRINCE TIME” and dives in and saves Shiori’s life. But Juri can’t pull herself out due to the current and gets pulled under herself. Ruka comes the fuck in and is like “NOPE LETS NOT” pulling her out to safety and he is pulled under and dies instead. 

Now, as mentioned in a convo I had with Fuji, Juri has been outprinced by Ruka. She wanted to be one to impress Shiori with her princelyness but now Ruka has permanently upstaged her in her mind by giving up his life to save another. And this, was on purpose by Ruka. Which I’ll talk about more later. After this happens it seems like Juri follows a path like movie! Juri did. She feels like she still has to compete for Shiori’s heart, and has to keep playing the prince no matter what. 

This idea of always being a prince has slowly been messing her up over the years to a point she’s literally seeing things (magic castle bullshit aside), ignoring Shiori, behaving aggressively overprotective towards Shiori (more on that later), and struggling to win fencing matches. This mindset of “being a prince” doesn’t work so great for an adult who hasn’t coped with their guilt/trauma yet. Juri, much like anime Utena, has thrown a lot of her self identity into being a prince and now its harming her quite intensely. I’ll get to the resolution of this a little later but that’s the position we see 36 year old Juri in when the story starts.

Note: I say 36 by adding 20 years to her age she was in the original series in which was 16. Yup.

Now Imma talk about Shiori here.

This Shiori is quite different from previous ones, especially for both of her relationships here. There are more parallels to her movie counterpart to be made due to the nature of the story which is very interesting. 

So, for the relationship she has with Juri. It doesn’t seems like Shiori blames Juri for what happened at the river, unlike in the movie where she did and mcfreakin lost it. Even if it wasn’t the smartest thing for Juri to do, Juri did still save her life at the end of the day. That didn’t occur in the movie but I can’t comment too much about the movie’s situation cause theres a lot of ??? in that particular aspect but thats a totally different discussion so moving on. I think there is a part of Shiori that feels guilty about what happened, like Juri nearly died saving her which lead to Ruka’s death. She implies she use to dream about Ruka and ghost! Ruka visiting her tells me that she’s probably also had trouble coping with the tragedy though she’s handling it a lot better then Juri has been.

However what Shiori decides to do is she chose to support Juri, becoming her fencing manager/agent from what seems like high school and well into their adulthood (which I do indeed love oh man). Juri even says that Shiori has been supporting her for quite sometime and is grateful for her support! It seems like Shiori refers to Juri as “my prince” at times cause she figured out doing so made Juri happy, which makes me think she did in fact figure out Juri’s big gay crush on her and might feel the same way but she hasn’t felt like she can tell Juri that yet due to Juri’s um. Problems. And probably her own lingering guilt for Ruka who was engaged to her in the past.

Side note: I think Shiori refers to Juri with the -san suffix here because of her position as her manager/agent. That’s just my guess anyway!

As for Juri’s problems, their relationship has started to hit a big roadblock at the time of the narrative because of said problems reaching their boiling point. It sounds like Juri has become more erratic recently but she’s had certain concerning behaviors before she started really acting oddly. 

Judging from what we’ve seen, when guys (or maybe even anyone) that remind her of Ruka get too close to Shiori, Juri suddenly grabs her, pulls her away, and is very overprotective of Shiori around these said guys. We know this isn’t a new thing for Juri to do because right after that happens Shiori says “When you act like that, I just get so…Forget it.” and Shiori even considers becoming a manager/agent for someone else because she’s getting real tired of shit like that. We can even see a bit of Juri’s possessiveness during her duel with ghost! Ruka when she says “I won’t let you have Shiori!”. I imagine maybe Shiori thought Juri’s overprotectiveness and possessiveness was kinda cute when they were 16 and therefore didn’t discourage said behavior but now they are 36, it has longgg ceased to be cute to her anymore so she’s running out of patience for it. However by the end Juri has decided to let go of “becoming a prince” and Shiori was visited by ghost Ruka as well. Now Juri and Shiori can truly move on in life, they can move from harmful roles like princes and princesses that had carried over from their adolescence and instead have relationships as healthy adult. 

Shiori, I think has already moved passed what happened back then and was moving towards the future before ghost! Ruka said hello to her in her dreams. She was just waiting for Juri to catch up. \o3o/

As for Shiori’s relationship to Ruka theres a MASSIVE difference here. It seems like, even though they were engaged to be married, Shiori and Ruka didn’t hold romantic feelings for each other. It was just like “welp we’re in an arranged marriage, alrighty. Might as well get along”. I say that due to Ruka’s crush on Juri and it simply didn’t seem like that’s the case by the brief interaction we saw between the two of them. 

Judging by her response to his death they were still friends, probably close friends. So that makes Ruka and Shiori the childhood friends here, WILD MAN. Anyways, losing Ruka was probably hard on her. We only see her grieving briefly but I think it’s enough to understand there wasn’t animosity between them at the very least and they were indeed most likely close friends. This tells me that Shiori had probably a close childhood, and seemly supportive, friend that she didn’t grow up to hate which makes a world of difference and why she’s less of a trainwreck in BT. It’s kinda a shame we didn’t see more of their interactions, I’d love to see how this version of Ruka and Shiori talked to each other and such.

There is a lot I like/find interesting about this version of Shiori. However I will say I feel there should have been a little more focus on what Shiori was thinking about all this. I feel like theres some gaps here. Like did she actually figure out that Juri is SUPER gay for her? Like I think so cause of what I said earlier and that Juri can’t hide it very well but we haven’t been given any confirmation for sure as far as I can tell. Plus what did she think of Juri before the accident anyways? Or before that? Like, I feel theres some missing pieces here hm. I’d love to see the pieces filled in but we probably won’t get that so I suppose we’re going without sadly. 8/

Let’s get to Ruka and Shiori now, on the Ruka side of things that is. This Ruka is quite different from the Ruka in the anime. Looks like a major difference between anime Ruka and this one is that anime Ruka HATED Shiori and blamed her for all of the problems she and Juri had and was also very jealous of the fact Juri liked her but not him. BT Ruka on the other hand was childhood friends with Shiori and had been engaged to her when they were children. They were close enough to a point when after he died Shiori is shouting to his body “How could you get yourself killed saving Juri?!” which implies that Ruka doing “princely things” isn’t out of character for him to do and he normally didn’t die doing them and Shiori knew that quite well hence his death was all the more shocking. So he didn’t villianize Shiori for breaking Juri’s heart or anything like that. Instead he wanted both the girl he was in love with AND his childhood friend to be happy. Which is super duper different than anime Ruka cause lets face it, in order to make Ruka be likeable enough to be considered a prince figure this kind of change had to be made. Oh yeah and bonus points for BT Ruka for not committing sexual assault, thank god I probably would have died inside if that occurred and was treated as heroic omg…. 

Ruka, was indeed a prince this time around. Fuji and I had discussed that being a prince means sacrificing EVERYTHING, including your life. That’s why he didn’t want Juri to go down that road, if she did she’d end up dead. Hence he calls her a goddess instead, unlike princes a goddess is immortal. It’s hard to say what was going on in Ruka’s mind when he saved Juri and if he had maybe drowned willingly? But why? Like Ruka, buddy. I have a lot of questions still. And there isn’t much answers, cause everyone who writes Ruka love to keep him super mysterious it seems like.

At the end of all this, thanks to ghost! Ruka and Revolution Force Ghost Utena, Juri decides to stop trying to live up to this unobtainable prince role and let it go. Clinging onto this role was damaging to her and the people around her. Instead she’ll do things if she wants to and because she loves to, not because it’s a princely thing to do so. Hence “fight Jyuri” (which I can’t decide if Ruka can’t fuckin spell her name or he is making a TERRIBLE pun) being engraved on the locket. Fuji and I talked about how, this story, as well as the one right b4 it, is alll about finding value in yourself and not in toxic impossible roles either in life or relationships.

Ok! Now I’m gonna talk a bit on the fandom’s reaction. Note to all reading this, I’m not here to say you gotta like this chapter or else. I just want to address a little bit of what I’ve seen online since the translation came out. I understand if you dislike how the story was told/simplified, like each to their own. I’m not here to bag on you, like or dislike whatever you want. If you like it, ok! If you don’t, also ok! Cool? Cool.

Anyways, I’ve seen a couple people saying things like, “what. Juri wouldn’t *insert impulsive/intense action here*” or dislike that its not as complex as the anime/saying Saito doesn’t understand Utena. 

Well first off this isn’t the same Juri as anime Juri, so probably should think of this as a different version of her or it’s gonna be a bad time. And Juri making impulsive choices due to an outburst of her emotions is quite in character, in fact we see that in episode 7 when she nearly tackles Utena into a fountain trying to yank Utena’s ring off, or that episode when she slaps Anthy in the face for seemingly no reason (I know there is one but she still shouldn’t slap her) like listen. Juri pretends/tries to be calm and collected, she isn’t totally what she appears to be. Like, that’s a pretty frequent theme in Utena y’all. But yeah I find that an odd thing to say something like that for a story thats just a different take of these characters, you don’t gotta like it but don’t say its out of character in the context of the anime because we aren’t in the anime’s context. Like this isn’t the anime and never will be. Speaking of which.

I think the fandom can be a bit, overly critical towards Chiho Saito. Is the original manga good? Eh, I think it’s only ok personally (it really has problems tho man). Is it better then the show? No, the anime is still the best version of Utena out there.

Look. Expecting this manga to have similar complexity that the anime had isn’t a good idea because the anime was written by a group of ppl instead of just one person like this manga was! You’re just not gonna get the same result. A group creation will always been different than a single person creation. Always, always, always.

Listen, this series is over 20 years old and has had a ton of media over the years. You don’t have to like this manga if you don’t want to, or any of the other Utena media if thats how you feel. But, I think people are wrong saying Saito doesn’t understand Utena. She does, maybe differently than you do but what’s done in this manga ties in well as a continuation of Utena’s themes. This manga (both the chapters) is about adulthood and moving on from what occurs during childhood and adolescence. It’s a pretty logical move forward for the series to take, you can’t go back to adolescence. You can only move forward and try find yourself as an adult. And that, strikes me as quite RGU feeling indeed. Even though no one has turned into a car yet, but hey. Maybe next time! \*w*/

Super side note: Why the fuck does Miki look like a 13 year old’s head on a grown man’s body? It’s weird! It’s fucking weird! Like gdi Saito you couldn’t like give Miki a new hairstyle or a mustache or something? Is this a plot point? Did Miki find the eternal youth fountain? I’m concerned. Pls let Miki’s face age he is in his 30s omg.

[heartmindalignedspirit]

1. You don’t give a fuck. The most amazing and notable quality of witches is that they’re in touch with a level of intuitive and imaginative power which gives them an inner authority. They’re being moved by their own genius and not by any external dogma or force. They may use a wide variety of traditional or institutional tools, but they’re not dependent on traditional or institutional authority for their power. They’ve woken up the magic within their own hearts and it’s alive and throbbing. Witches are often offensive to – well, just about every body. Witches tend to offend both the sensibilities of conventional, non-magically oriented types of people and also of people involved with magic who have rigid ideas about what magic should look like. Just about everyone gets alarmed in the presence of an actual live-wire witch. Among these we can count my controlling, holier-than-thou ceremonial magickian ex-boyfriends. (Hi, gentlemen! Don’t you worry ’bout me, my magic is rolling along just great even though I don’t ever do the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram! Mwah! Hope you’re still enjoying living with your mom! Yes, Bali is great this time of year, and I don’t at all wish you were here! xoxoxoxo, Carolyn) So if you find yourself still very committed to magical practice and to spiritual development and you have next-to-zero interest in fulfilling anyone else’s expectations of what your magic or spirituality should look like, then you may just be a witch. 2. Seriously, you do not give a fuck. In your life you’ve probably had plenty of experiences of people freaking out at you about your signature strange way of being in the world, and while this is sometimes sad or challenging, ultimately you don’t care. You’ve got work to accomplish – art to make, people to heal, houses to build, rituals to craft, stories to write – and you just don’t have time to be constantly soothing people who expect you to adhere to some standard other than your own genius and inner authority. This may mean that eventually you go into stealth mode so as not to continually create alarm, but you don’t go stealth because you’re hiding or avoidant. You do it because you’ve got things to accomplish and only a limited amount of time here in the third dimension. 3. You make people nervous. No matter how toned-down you allow you are in your dress or demeanor, you still make people nervous just by your very presence. There are things that can be done to mitigate this, but it’s probably unavoidable. For folks who are looking to external authorities to tell them what’s good and beautiful and okay, the presence of you, an inherently wild someone who is wholly reliant on her inner authority, is disturbing. Your presence is disturbing because others can sense there’s something about you that’s unpredictable and uncontrollable. You’re not being ruled by the conventional programs, so you’re not immediately legible to people who still allow themselves to be ruled. 4. Folks tell your eyes are “beautiful” – what they mean is that they’re penetrating. Most people don’t have the words to describe your eyes. They just notice that there’s something compelling and different about them. That something is that your eyes see. You can look at someone and see what programs they’re running, see where they’re blocking themselves, see what they’re attached too, see how they mishandle their own sexual energy and power, see their potential for liberation. It’s just evident to you when you look at someone because you’ve done that liberatory work on yourself already. 5. You can always tell when someone is full of it. See the above. Your penetrating vision is a kind of psychic perception. You can see how people deceive themselves because you’ve unravelled many of your own self-deceptions. You can hear when someone is bullshitting because you can perceive that the whole of their being is not in full resonance with their words. 6. You’ve been actually persecuted at least once in your life. Because you make people nervous and you don’t give a fuck and you probably did not start out in stealth mode, it’s very likely that if you’re a witch you’ve attracted actual persecution at some point. This could be persecution in the form of cruel harassment and teasing in childhood, or persecution in the legal and professional realms as an adult. Often it’s persecution in the form of malicious gossip from former friends who couldn’t keep up with your magical growth and then felt envious. Kindness and compassion in the form of brahmavihara cultivation are great antidotes to energetic persecution, and so are traditional protection spells and an ongoing practice of developing your communication and relating skills. 7. You encounter tons of synchronicity, and it doesn’t always lead to peachy places. Witches are basically tantric bodhisattvas; they have a soul-commitment to liberate themselves and all beings as fast as possible, ideally in one lifetime, using alchemical transmutation. This means that they’re on the karmic fast-track and life very often comes super-fast and hard to them. This means that following even gorgeous synchronicities can sometimes lead bad witches to apparently dark places – and that the visit to the dark and dirty places is totally part of the trip. In other words, life is not a “love’n’light” New Age bowl of cherries for witches – it can, at times, be a tour of the hell realms. 8. Your disapproval visibly hexes people. One reason that you make people nervous is that you have so much personal power that if you dislike, insult, or disapprove of them – they’ll feel it, hard. Their day will be ruined, and maybe their whole confidence. When people get hexed by a cross word or look from you, they lose connection with their own best direction. They look dazed because they’re up in their heads, spinning scared thoughts around. Folks are so affected by your disapproval for the very reason that they can sense your perception is penetrating. This is the “evil eye” that’s been so feared in so many cultures across history. Of course you would resent and fear someone who had the power to crush your confidence with a glance because you know they see you clearly. So as a witch, it’s a good idea to continually cultivate awareness of and to transmute your own resentments and fears so that you’re not walking around spattering everyone with mean ju-ju just because you don’t feel good that day. 9. You’ve experienced your raw magnetism in action. You know you’re hot stuff. You’ve had abundant experiences of your own magical ability to magnetize amazing romantic partners and friends and other beautiful things. There’s times when people just come up to you and tell you how fascinating you are or how deeply moved they felt by your work. You’re magnetic and you’ve got reams of proof, so just accept it already. 10. Your experience of the fourth dimension is more vivid than most people’s experience of the third dimension. “The fourth dimension” is a short-hand term for the world of spirit and emotion and desire and vibration and feeling and intuition and imagination. It’s all the unseen stuff that can have the power to dramatically affect the seen. On the whole, witches have a much easier time navigating fourth dimensional realities than they do with third dimensional realities. The third dimension is hard, literally. It includes matter: table legs that you can stub your toes on, cars that can crash if you steer them the wrong way, water that leaks through roofs, bills that have to be paid. A major challenge for witches is integrating their fourth dimensional prowess with third dimensional day-to-day reality. The third dimension is more difficult for us than it is for others for the simple fact that large amounts of our minds and hearts are usually occupied by the fourth dimension. We witches have less processing power to devote to third dimensional issues, and so we have to make it a deliberate part of our spiritual practice to deal with material reality – hence, practical magic.

[hard-reset-with-a-hammer]

Valentine's Day was four days ago, and in four days, the world almost set a record with how fast something can piss me off. I've spent the last 96 hours talking to friends, family, and even a couple complete strangers who just needed someone to listen, and everything I read and heard broke my shrivelled heart, which only served to piss me off even further. This year had to be one of the single worst years for hopeful romantics around this armageddon-tier fuck up of a country, and I'll tell you why in one, simple, easy to understand word that everyone knows;

Expectations.

That's right, the super villain of the world of love. And I'm not talking about your run of the mill "You look nothing like your Tinder pictures" expectations, I'm talking the kind that people vilify and have mocked you for your entire fucking life. Acne, pudge, bad hair, gangly appearance, a weird skin condition, limbs that don't function correctly, or even mental disorders. Outside bullshit that means nothing in the grand scheme of whatever fucked up religion you follow. If you're one of these shit spewing ass-nozzles, then you can kindly fuck off in a direction of your choosing.

As for all of you hopefuls that got your heart broken or didn't have the courage to confess your affections, stick around. Uncle Fuck Off is gonna take a break today. It's just you and me, and I'm gonna tell you everything you need to hear. I don't have dating advice, obviously because I don't date, and I don't have any magic words that will get you that date with the lover of your dreams. But what I can give you is peace of mind.

The first thing I wanna address is everybody here who has trouble with their weight. Not for lack of trying to be healthier, some people just don't have a good metabolism, and it's something you gotta fight with every day. You've tried dieting, you've tried fasting, you've busted your ass exercising every day until you damn near vomited blood, hoping that you'd see some improvement that never came. It's not your fault, even when you gave up. You're down on yourself all the time, thinking you could've tried harder, but no one on this ball of mud tries harder to be better than you do. If other people don't see that, then they're the ones who has something wrong with them. Just keep doing your best, and do what you love.

To everybody who suffers from acne; I get it. I understand completely. Most people think acne is just bad, pimply skin from being dirty, but they couldn't be further from the truth. Acne is a bacterial issue that can't really be treated. Sometimes people are born who's dermal oil is really corrosive that it creates more impurities than it traps, and that eventually leads to acne. It's not something that a shower can get rid of, and all these advertisements on TV for "Dermal Acne Cleansing Products" are full of shit. The only thing in these products that are good for the skin is Charcoal, Isopropyl, and Aloe, but none of those things do shit for acne and can actually exaggerate the issue. If you want to have clearer skin, chlorine is actually the best thing for the job. I'm not telling you to buy straight up chlorine and rub it on your skin, that will just kill you slowly. Go swimming in a chlorinated pool, take a dip in the hot tub, let the water sit on your skin for a half hour before washing it off, I guarantee you'll notice a difference in dermal clarity in a couple months time. Just don't push yourself to be beautiful. Beauty is bullshit and only used to market to vain cunts who wanna be stars but can't get the job because they're too bitchy.

Vitiligo. I'm sure a good number of people don't know what that means, so I'm gonna give you the Cliff Notes explanation. Vitiligo is a skin condition that is often described as a disease because of how it works. Vitiligo is what happens when pigment-producing cells die, causing the skin to look patchy and mismatched. Physically, it is not a painful disease, nor is it contagious, but mentally and emotionally, it can be torturous due to people afflicted with it feeling self-conscious or out of place. Let me tell you right now; it is nothing to be ashamed about. It is a unique and beautiful feature that none of us could ever hope to experience in life. To have something that sets you apart in this mundane world is a gift and should never, ever be considered a burden or ugly. You are an image of beauty itself.

To anybody still reading this, let me ask you a question: What defines love in your eyes? Where is the line drawn? Does it have to be limited? Weird questions, but you would, or maybe wouldn't, be surprised to know that most of the people whom I spoke to were disabled. Three of them couldn't walk and one of them was born without her left arm. I wanna know why these people, above all else, couldn't find love. And don't give me that tired answer of "Well if it was me, I would have said yes" or "I dated a blind (gender) in high school". I don't care about that shit. I wanna know why disabled people are seen as inferior in something as simple as love. And fuck you if you tell me "lOvE iSn'T sImPle". Love isn't simple when one, or fucking both, parties are making it difficult. What makes a relationship difficult? Again, motherfucking expectations. Make money, have a good car, do your makeup, wear the good clothing, go to the popular places, drink the good alcohol, know the right people, have a big house. You avarice driven cunts can lick my dogs ass. Your standards are the metaphorical roach in my coffee cup. I spent almost 3 hours consoling a woman I barely knew because "He didn't want to date somebody who was handicapped". Her exact fucking words. This would surprise me if it wasn't for the fact that this is the standard in this ass backwards country. This motherfucker didn't care that she was 5'8", brunette, athletic, and had a fucking experts degree in biological sciences, he cared that she was missing an arm. An arm that she never had in the first place and never once in her life felt hindered by. He cared that she didn't fit his vision of beauty. What the fucks the problem here? Smoking hot wife with an education that will lift you up when times are hard, or some crack addicted crypt keeper who sucks your bank account dry every two weeks so she can get another fix? Pick your fucking poison.

There is not a single person on this planet who tries harder to be a better person or live a better life than these people that you take for granted. You've denied them a chance at sharing a life of happiness with you, and honestly, you're the ones missing out. In the end, it's you dumbasses that will suffer in the end when you die at the ripe old age of 31 in your low rent apartment from an overdose of painkillers and Jack Daniels.

A little too morbid at the end there? Good. Maybe then some of you will think about what's really important the next time one of these people I've listed off asks you for a chance instead of laughing them out the fucking door.

[janiedean]

I never thought I'd be this person but I legit said"what hetero nonsense is this" when Rose said love and kissed Finn lol

okay anon this is not against you and I know you didn’t mean this seriously and I know this reply might be overreacting, and you probably didn’t see that I previously posted about hating how this fandom (especially *my* subfandom technically) is reacting to finnrose so you probably didn’t know, but: no.

specifically:

it wasn’t random nor nonsense. she had a fangirl crush on him, she got to know him better and she liked him and she thought she was about to bloody die. if I was in her place I also would kiss the guy I like if anything to know I’ve done it.

on the other side, he needed to talk to someone he didn’t know already and to show him a different side of things and who made him realize that the resistance was more than single people he might have cared for or not going against the big bad evil, which was what made him finally stop running. he didn’t kiss her back but it’s nice that he gets it from someone who likes him genuinely, especially coming after a life of dehumanization.

so it wasn’t nonsense, it was a plot decision you can like or not but saying it was out of left field or made no sense or was nonsensical is not a thing I can agree with because imo it was very well-developed and like in a life or death situation I would probably try to kiss the guy I liked, and rose liking finn was already introduced from the moment she showed up and then she just got to like him as the person he was rather than the supposed *legend* or whatever, which... is... nice. it’s normal. it happens. why the hell should it be nonsensical?

ah, because it was heteronormative and apparently if het ships happen it’s bad because they’re heterosexual, which is like, typical tumblr drivel and sorry but nah.

(now, before I go into it: if it had been rey kissing finn, would people be crying about heteronormative nonsense? idk. just a thought. and guess what, for me finn/rey is like, the most platonic shit in existence and I can’t see the two of them kissing romantically and it making any sense so we all see it differently, but if it had happened I’d have shrugged and moved on with my life. anyway.)

listen, guys, let’s be freaking real, as much as tumblr likes to think the contrary, straight/heterosexual people make up 90% of the demographic. heteronormativity is normativity because nine people on ten are straight. the problem is when heteronormativity is seen as the only default. the point is that if you want to counteract that you have to push to normalize relationships that are not heteronormative and make sure they’re seen as a valid alternative to the norm, but you can’t honestly go and say that heteronormativity is in itself statistically wrong because it’s not, nor that it’s in itself inherently wrong because then you pass the message that if you’re straight you’re *wrong* and honestly from a website where the message that people think they’re passing is that *you aren’t -wrong- for your sexuality I’m really tired to see that it’s valid for everything except straight people. because it’s really fun to go online and wade through posts on posts of people joking about how if you’re straight you’re Bad, you have no tastes, you’re not a good lay if you’re a man and should date women anyway if you’re a woman and everything bad in the world is the fault of you horrible straight person and ah, wait, being straight is also boring and who would choose to be straight -

except that you don’t choose your sexuality. no, I didn’t choose mine either. (yes, I’m straight if it wasn’t clear, and I’m getting progressively pissed off at this attitude. actually I’ve gone past the point of pissed off, but never mind that.

so like, now apparently if a heterosexual ship happens it’s all because they wanted to cater to the straight crowd and it’s all nonsense just because it’s a man and a woman locking lips!

and like, fuck, no. this idea that finnrose is inherently nonsense because it’s *heteronormative* and they pushed finn on a WOMAN THAT’S NOT REY is.... sorry, I know you didn’t mean it like that and I don’t wanna sound like an asshole, but if you say that rey would have been cool and rose isn’t then WHY, I mean isn’t rose okay enough? good enough? I mean I’ve read some stuff on *my ship’s* tag which was reeking racism because rose was apparently a downgrade and rey was the only option they could accept *if finn had to be with a woman* and honestly, no?? that’s... like... no??? I find it really rich coming from people who ship... a pairing.... made of nonwhite people.... at least for US standards (yeah I ship finn/poe mainly and this movie has made me block half of the tag for the finnrose vitriol IMAGINE HOW NICE). and IT ONLY HAPPENED SO THEY COULD CANCEL THE GAY COUPLE is like... a) it wasn’t gonna happen in the MIDDLE movie anyway esp. a franchise that gets distributed in countries where the gay couple would mean a ban/the movie not getting released (like, we do remember the beauty and the beat wank over damned lefou for what, ten seconds of him dancing with a dude??), b) means that finn’s sl would have had any worth just if he and poe made out (and same for poe) which basically means reducing their storylines to them making out? like, that’s... really.... sad? they only have worth as characters if they make out? sorry, I can’t really rally behind that. I care about them as characters and I loved their sl this movie and if they don’t kiss WHATEVER, 99% of the m/m couples I shipped in my life stayed not canon and it never changed my life, even if they were in relationships with women. that’s why fanfic exists. maybe next movie we’re getting it (because anyway rose kissed finn, he didn’t kiss back or anything so it can go there or it can’t and whichever way it goes I’m okay with it) maybe we’re not, but saying that their existence is useless if they don’t kiss or bang or aren’t *gay* just reeks of tokenism to me and the fact that finnrose is being described as heteronormative bullshit made to appease the r/eylo people or to deny people finn/poe is really not a thing I can rally behind either.

like, again, there’s nothing NONSENSE behind it and the fact that you attached heteronormative to it again means that the problem with it is that it’s an heterosexual ship and given that it had all reasons for existing and that, again, I’m really fucking tired of every straight relationship in new media getting thrown at the wolves just because it’s straight and being straight on tumblr is Very Bad TM so... sorry. it’s not. and like, if according to you it was just *nonsense* fine, you didn’t like it, legit, but heteronormative nonsense? really? can we just.... not... frame it as if anything heteronormative or heterosexual or straight is The Worst especially since on top of that finnrose is actually pretty progressive as a thing? I mean, when was the last time you saw a main black lead in an immensely popular scifi franchise that everyone and their kids watch in a relationship with an asian woman? never. like, it’s progressive, too, not the same way finn/poe is but progressive nonetheless, so... like... can’t we just let this goddamned ship live and be the cute thing it was without splitting hairs?

because sorry but again the fact that the main objections I’ve seen were a) IT’S STRAIGHT AND NOT GAY, b) he’s kissing rose and not rey IF WE HAD TO HAVE A STRAIGHT SHIP, c) IT’S PROREYLO AND ANTISTORMPILOT which.... uuughhh. like, can’t y’all take things the way they are? (nvm that I could rant for three hours about how r*ylo was like, written to happen and the fact that people don’t want to recognize that a villain has a personality is another entire problem but never mind.) it’s a cute ship. it happens to be straight. it’s also fairly progressive in itself. it was put on a good (imo) storyline which made sense and everything poor rose did was kissing the dude she liked after saving his life and thinking she was about to die. lay off her, pls?

last thing: since - we all guessed it by now - I happen to be straight can... y’all... please... not send me asks about how shitty heteronormative ships are and the likes? I mean, I know it’s a problem in a lot of cases and I’m more than willing to call it out if it’s obviously done maliciously but this wasn’t the case and I’m honestly tired of this STRAIGHTS ARE TERRIBLE drivel and HETERONORMATIVITY IS INHERENTLY BAD drivel and so on. especially when it’s about a thing I don’t actively ship but liked (finnrose) and then I have to go into my ship’s tag (f/p) and see it trashed to hell and back and read posts over posts about how they fucked up f/p for THE STRAIGHTS when I’d be the first person to offer the entire cinema a beer if it actually was canon. like, I’d be overjoyed if it was. but not at the cost of being assholes to other people who ship other things or at the cost of trashing on this movie for things that don’t exist or deny both of those two’s character arcs because at the end of it THEY AREN’T GAY. (as if they couldn’t be bi or pan, but of course anything that implies that someone could be in a rship with someone of the different sex is okay just as long as the relationship isn’t with someone of a different sex. like. please guys. no.)

last thing: don’t take this rant personally anon I’m sure you meant well, but you just touched on a thing that is really irking me lately and my hand slipped. I’m really meaning no ill will I’m just really tired of this HORRIBLE HETERONORMATIVE complaints thrown around like candy because of course everyone has feelings and shouldn’t be insulted except straight people because they are the majority so they can go die in a fire as far as tumblr cares. peace.