#and regurgitated this monster

[aiscapades]

we've all had thoughts about what makes leander a monster, but what if it's literally just that he's a horrible human. that's it.

[dr-lizortecho]

it’s actually hilarious on a uniquely terrifying level that the same people who can’t forgive Tyler Lockwood (a traumatized seventeen year old kid) for making a few fucked up choices early on are obsessed with Klaus (1000+ full grown whiny bastard) regardless of his continuous fucked up choices that victimize countless people (including those he claims to love)

[walks-the-ages]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but regurgitating Radical Feminism talking point of

"Men are all Inherently Evil, Physically Superior, and Predatory to Women"

does not, in fact, do anything for Actual Feminism where the main talking point is

"We are all Human Beings and we're not Intrinsically Different based on the gender some random doctors decided on at birth"

and you're not doing anything for Queer Solidarity either when you go around proclaiming that all men, including trans men, are these evil oppressive monsters who have advantages in life based purely on their gender (even if they are trans men who are not out of the closet yet, apparently) , and I'm not sure why on earth the new crop of Trans-Inclusive Rad Fems think that being 'proud misandrists' is going to save them from being targeted by cis transphobes??? You can't win protection from transphobes by throwing your fellow trans community under the bus, and when you go around saying that all men are disgusting oppressive predators who have never done anything for the queer community ever and have never experienced any true oppression ever its like. ....

.... what the fuck is wrong with you?

Did you forget the AIDs crisis exists?

Did you forget the gay and bi men exist?

Did you forget that Black men exist??

The world's oppression does not begin and end with trans women, and if you're happy to throw the rest of the trans community under the bus so you can feel superior, I don't know who the heck you expect to have your back when you need help, because everyone else has already been run the fuck over, because you fucking threw them in the road because you somehow still think Respectability Politics is gonna save you instead of leaving your Exclusionist Bubble the community that ends up alone and isolated.

Trust me. Life is a lot more bearable and hopeful when you don't go around insisting an entire 50% of humanity is evil based on their gender. Try talking to your fellow trans men, trans mascs, nonbinary people and intersex people before you make another post about how """theyfabs have it so easy and trans men are inherently privalaged and evil because they're men and they shouldn't talk about reproductive health or the need for safe abortions because that's just speaking over women""" 🤦🤦🤦

[farvann]

Was thinking about Vincent and his mouse lunch (assuming he eats it whole) - does he work on the same principle as snakes that dissolve bones in their stomach acid or is he kind of like a bird that has to regurgitate the bones? Or a secret third option??? I've been thinking about this since last night since we don't know what kind of snake monster he is

Usually he would be able to digest the bones like a snake but in this form he’ll occasionally cough up a bone or two.

Here’s the older comic this is the sequel to

[wonderjanga]

Marvel and Being a Pseudo-Father

So, I know some of you probably saw the father thing and were like- Woah, another Billy and Connor thingy? Nah. Two words: Wonder Girl.

Anyways, the specific Wonder Girl I’m talking about is Cassandra Sandsmark. If you’ve watched Young Justice, you’d know she’s there. Also, in this alternate universe, the JL doesn’t know Billy is like 12 years old.

It starts off Marvel, I don’t know, eating or something. Then, Cassandra walks in the room, and all of a sudden in the divine twitch chat, he just hears Zeus talk about “oh my daughter!” So Billy pauses mid bite of cereal and just stares at her for a bit. He’s sort of confused because he thought Diana was the only daughter of Zeus as far as he knew. Let alone the only daughter of Zeus associated with the Justice League.

Meanwhile, Cassandra is like, “is that the dude is supposed to be watching over us?” She walks over to him and introduces herself:

Cassie: “Hey, I’m Wonder Girl. You’re the dude who fills in for Black Canary when she’s not here, right?”

Marvel: *Finally finishes his bite of cereal.* “Huh, oh, yeah. I’m Captain Marvel. You can just call me Cap, or Marvel, or any other variation you can think of.”

Cassie: “Wait really? Wonder Woman told me about you. She said you were her sort-of older brother.”

Marvel: *Almost regurgitates his cereal* “She said that?” *Pauses to actually think about it* “I mean I guess we are, huh? He’s one of the gods that sponsors me. He also kinda had a hand in making me.”

Cassie: “He had a hand in making me too!”

They hang out a whole lot more times after that and soon they develop a big brother/little sister relationship. And then one day, while they’re, let’s say training or something.

Marvel: “Hey, I was wondering if you want to help me kill a bunch demons.”

Cassie: “That sounds… amazing. Let’s do it.”

Cue the two going to some place in the Himalayas where demons keep crossing over. They then brutally massacre them all. Marvel even offers Cassie his cape to wipe the blood off her face, much to the outrage of a few of the gods in his head. They then go get ice cream from a random little stall in China, where Billy spends around 15 minutes trying to see if he could use magic to convert his few measly dollars into yuan. They eventually do and they end up sitting on a bench, ignoring the many people taking pictures.

Cassie: *Eating her ice cream* “Hey… uh- I wanted to thank you for doing this.”

Marvel: *Pauses eating his own ice cream* “Huh? What do you mean? Getting you ice cream?”

Cassie: “Nah. For- uh, I don’t know? Doing stuff with me?” *exudes awkwardness* “God, this is- So like, I never really get to spend a whole lot of time with my mom cause she used to like, leave me on my own a lot because of business trips. She was an archeologist. So she used to fly around the world and stuff. So you doing stuff like this, taking me to fight demons, taking me to fight monsters, taking me to fight ghosts, it really means a lot to me? I think?”

Marvel: *Looks super surprised by her words* (not even by the whole thing. Just one sentence) “Your mom was an archeologist? Dude, my parents were too.”

Cassie: “Wait really?”

The two then go on the completely forget everything Cassie just said as the topic about archeologist parents soon spiraled into multiple different conversations.

[columboposting]

Obviously and rightfully everyone is going insane about the Nandermo stuff in the new WWDITS episode, but something I would like to briefly talk about is the Laszlo & Colin Robinson & The Monster plotline and the way it mirrors Season 4. Because like, the way Laszlo was treating the Monster -- viewing him as a science experiement first and foremost, forcing him to rotely memorize and recite facts instead of doing things that actually interest him, making him dance for the entertainment of others -- is the way that he treated Baby Colin! Baby Colin was a scientific experiment! He made him dance on the nightclub stage! He took away his fairytales and replaced them with dusty historical tomes!And while we can all see that this is terrible parenting, that was never something the show was seriously interested in reckoning with. I mean, Guillermo was there to say "hey this is fucked up," but that's his job on a good day, and in the end the plotline more positions Laszlo as a loving but misguided parent than an outright shitty one. Which, for the record, I do think is fine -- it's a comedy show about weirdo vampires with a weirdo vampire moral code, the show wouldn't be better if it cancelled Laszlo and I can sort of pretend that Laszlo and Baby Colin's relationship was healthy because it makes for better drama, y'know? (I mean, I literally just posted fic about their relationship that Kind of Ignores the fact that from a normal person's perspective Laszlo wasn't a very good father, lol)

But suddenly in this episode, Colin Robinson is there mediating that relationship and pointing out all the ways it is harmful to Laszlo's dependent. He looks at the way Laszlo treats the Monster and says, "Hey, this guy is not a dancing monkey. This guy is not a regurgitator of fun facts. This guy is not a scientific experiment. He is a person, and he loves you, and you're hurting him." And, of course, though neither the show nor Colin Robinson are capable of pointing it out, Colin Robinson would be the one to know these things better than anyone else, because he has quite literally been in the Monster's position before. Colin Robinson, as Laszlo's (former) son, is uniquely positioned by the narrative to call out the way Laszlo is treating his current son. And the fact that, in the end, Laszlo came to see things Colin Robinson's way feels quite meaningful to me -- he has been saved from continuing to make the same mistakes he made with the Boy as with the Monster, and can now more forward as a better, more caring parent. If "Laszlo's Father" was sort of relitigating Season 4 from Laszlo's perspective, "The Promotion" is doing the same from Baby Colin's, though much more implicitly. Good shit!!!!!

[bratdotcom]

Baby I'm Yours ♡

( RE2r!Leon Kennedy x GN!reader || baking cookies but not getting much done because ur bf is very very sleepy || this rookie is trying his best ♡ re2r fluff for anon ♡ )

“Leon,” you chuckle, smiling as your eyes peer down at the bowl of batter he was supposed to be mixing. “You're mixing the air, not the bowl.” You point out, gesturing down to the bowl. He was still mixing the air, spoon not near the batter. Not by a long shot. Leon seemed out of it, head in the clouds all droopy eyed. Just what was he thinking about?

“Hey! Hey! Leon, I'm talking to you!” You say, waving your hand in his face. You knew working at the RPD was stressful, endless amounts of paperwork, and all that, but was it really that stressful enough to make Leon sleep while standing up? In the kitchen? Of all places?

Leon blinks, realizing your hand is in his face. “Oh shit, sorry.” He quickly apologizes, yawning softly. “The senior officers are just…too much for me.” He says, his focus on mixing the batter in the bowl in front of him. He sounded tired and looked tired, too, if it wasn't evident by the sleepy look in his eyes. “They're just peachy, aren't they? Been in the force too long?” You joke, trying to lift the mood.

“Don't worry your head, Scotty, they're just old geezers too long in office - probably rode dinosaurs or something to school.” You add as you shrug. Leon snickers, almost dropping the spoon he was holding in his hand.

“If Chief Irons heard ya you'd be dead meat, one of those stuffed animals he has in his room - it isn't the stuffed animal you're thinking of, by the way.” Your grimace at what Leon was implying, whatever it was, it didn't sound too pretty. “Oh god, do you mean..?” You trail off, looking at him with slightly wide eyes. Leon seems to brighten up, amused by your reaction. “Not the cute kind, definitely.” He chuckles, placing the mixing bowl to the side.

“The type you'd find in a museum. I don't know why he likes those things so much. He sure is peachy.” Just like you said, Leon agreed wholeheartedly. He didn't want to admit it, but he had a habit of soaking in whatever vocabulary you threw at him. Leon was regurgitating whatever you said in a sweetly, somewhat mimicking way. Like the way he quoted movies. Lucky you, even if you didn't notice it at all. Leon remembered the little things, or, at least, he tried.

“I finished mixing the batter…” He trails off, staring blankly at the bowl of dough like he was trying to see his own reflection in it. His blues gazed into the wheaty dough like he was trying to peer into a mirror. He, of course, couldn't. “What are we making again?” He asks as he peers into the bowl. He tilts his head. Maybe if he looked at it sideways, it'd make sense?

“Raspberry danishes, your favorite, remember?” You reply, taking the bowl from him. “Just sit pretty on the couch, okay bubba? You deserve a break.” You say, kissing his cheek. He looks up at you, eagerly nodding his head. Leon kind of wished he had a mirror now. He could feel his cheeks heating up as soon as your lips pulled away from his cheek. Bubba? That was new.

He glanced at the living room, then back at your face. You looked as though nothing had happened. As if you didn't just kiss him on the cheek.

Leon turns around, padding to the living room without saying a word. Besides a small mumbling ‘thank you’. He wasn't a monster, after all. He had manners.

He traces over where you kissed him, still the green behind-the-ears rookie he was back at the station. Even when it came to love. Especially when it came to loving you. You seemed to remember the little things, too.

[pmdobt]

well, cats are experts at regurgitating food they just consumed

This page is part of a Monster House Marathon sponsored by 3man!

[ovenproofowl]

pour one out for my man john doggett. dude gets zero breaks. he's pulled in as an emergency replacement partner for the resident conspiracy theorist department that lives in the basement. he doesn't even believe in aliens but hell, he'll keep an open mind. he'll play the logical card on every x-file because the person who used to fulfill that role has now turned full tin-foil-hat since losing her partner who was. *checks notes* abducted by aliens. he's not sure how he feels about aliens but he's still trying to maintain a professional approach. his partner is routinely absent for hospital appointments she doesn't want him to know about. apparently she's pregnant with *checks notes* an alien baby that was only possible by using the donated sperm of her partner who was *rechecks notes* oh, yeah. abducted by aliens. the government want her alien baby and he's gotta fight tooth and nail to keep this from happening. a few weeks ago he was shot to death, vored and regurgitated by a monster-of-the-week before being reconstituted from goo and brought back to life. not a single person has asked him how his day is going.

the FBI still expect him to file reports on this shit.

[gayofthefae]

Let's do a major contrast I've somehow overlooked. Let's talk WILL'S confession versus Mike's.

Mike and El both express self doubt as prompting for Will and Mike to tell them their feelings to make them love themselves.

But Mike tells Will he feels like El doesn't need him. In response, Will tells him that he lights up the people around him and is their guiding light. In conclusion: he is needed. He says this after "of course she'll need you, she'll always need you" fails.

On the other hand, El tells Mike that she feels like an unlovable monster and he responds that she isn't unlovable and isn't a monster. Essentially, the same direct response that failed for Will (so it's a good thing she already got to self love before he got there).

Mike said he felt unlovable and Will described the definition of love in great detail with him as the subject and concluded by pointing out that what he just described was love. El said she felt unlovable and Mike said that he did love her. He didn't include a personal story - No. He didn't. He included a length of time.

Read that again

Mike absolutely did not tell a story of loving El. He dated his love for. He said 'I have loved you since that one time you looked sweet in that big t shirt'. That was a memory identifier. Even shippers know the shirt isn't what MADE him fall in love with her, it was just endearing.

Mike never told El a story. He did not use a SINGLE EXAMPLE.

Will's speech breakdown was:

You bring light [my life]. You brighten [my] days when [I'm] feeling sad. Being without you is a burden for [me] but having you back is such a joy - so much so that the idea of losing you is terrifying and can make [me] impulsive and avoidant. All that has a name. It's love.

Mike's speech breakdown was:

I love you. You think that I don't but I do. I couldn't say it because I was scared but you're more important now. I do love you. I have for two years. Remember two years ago? I do. You're wonderful so please please don't die on me you're so important to me.

And when you see them next to each other like that. Mike's is just the bare bones of Will's...just without any deepening of it. He doesn't describe the emotions he experiences once. But he does go "your self doubt is wrong, compliment, personal story, I was scared, I love you", which is what he got from Will's. Whether he believes himself to be copying Will's words or copying El's, he's taking a speech he was as romantic and mimicking it.

We've seen the van scene a hundred times but Mike hasn't. Will said "you're the heart" and it gave him an idea. So he reapplied the details and quoted a long speech said to him 12 hours prior to the best of his ability of the top of his head.

Because people in real life don't remember monologues said to them like that. Mike probably remembers the most important phrases to him like "you're the heart" but besides that he remembers "you're wrong, personal story, compliment, I was scared, I love you - and when he said I felt really loved".

He's got an emotional memory and because of the recency a pretty clear memory of the speech's structure. He remembers the exact structure and he remembers that it worked, so he uses it. Will reminded him of a love confession that worked to cure self doubt so he uses it.

His confession isn't just plagiarism. It's his best regurgitation. But the only feeling behind it was the desperation for it to work, so it lacks everything it needs to because unlike Will, he doesn't know why he's saying each piece. He doesn't know the story is supposed to be an example of what loves feels like, he just knows there was a story and it worked on him so he thinks of a story and puts it in cliche romantic wording.

Mike's speech is Will's speech if you asked someone who didn't know the justification for any part of it to recite it back to you technically.

"Wrong, story, compliment, scared, love"

[antianakin]

hey, just wanted to say that i appreciate you creating this space to discuss more uh....unpopular takes on star wars. obviously fandom is a hobby and i don't want to ruin anyone's fun! but i also want a space to push back against fanon interpretations without treading on anyone's toes, you know?

like the whole obi-wan catholic guilt trope, jedi repression trope at large...i'm being dramatic but as an asian person, sometimes it sucks that this is such a prevalent idea about a heroic group that was influenced by buddhism and is very asian-coded. i'm not wording this well but just like how stories about european knights often reflect *the very best* of western values like chivalry, honor, gentility, i could really see a lot of the best of asian culture (a huge over-simplification) in the jedi.

but all that being reduced to "oh actually it's totally catholic guilt" or a inadvertently a regurgitation of prevalent asian stereotypes (the jedi as a group suppress individuality, they don't express emotions, they are too harsh, too unforgiving, lack compassion) is...frustrating to see, even though it's everyone's right to interpret & relate to things as they see fit.

especially when focused on obi-wan! even if we assume that obi-wan is repressed, secretly attached to an unhealthy degree but hiding it, or whatnot - the man quite literally airs the dirty laundry in front of mace and yoda, perhaps the "highest" members of the jedi. he says that he thinks anakin is arrogant, isn't listening to him. i dunno but a repressed person who hates confrontation and vulnerability probably wouldn't do that. he should've gone "haha nope anakin and i are totally fine masters, totally fine" instead of looking for advice & airing out his frustrations.

people getting angry at obi-wan for putting the jedi order over anakin is still annoying, but at least accurate. like yes! obi-wan does put the good of his culture and the galaxy at large over his old padawan! good for him!

but honestly all popular fanon obi-wan tropes go round on a roulette wheel waiting for me to pick one to be petty about lmao.

I definitely get what you mean about wanting a space to push back on common fanon interpretations without stepping on anyone's toes. That's obviously exactly why I made this blog in the first place. It's why I named the blog "antianakin" at all, it's supposed to be a giant neon warning sign to people that I'm not going to feel ashamed of some of my more negative opinions. It's why I use anti and critical tags as much as possible, and don't use the more general tags most of the time (aside from just... "star wars"). This is my space to put my feelings out there, positive AND negative, and I work really hard to make sure I'm not invading spaces that are meant for being positive.

I also often don't reblog people's posts that I completely disagree with JUST to talk about why I don't like their take. I won't invade someone's Jedi critical post in order to tell them that they're wrong about Star Wars. People have tried to tag me into posts like that, but I'm not interested in doing that kind of thing. If I DO want to say something about what I've seen, I make my own post about the issue.

It's interesting that you mention that stories about European knights often reflect what's viewed as the best of Western values, because so often when I see people talk about what would make the Jedi BETTER (or Legends versions of the Jedi that they think were done better), it's usually pretty clear that the Jedi are being turned INTO your more typical European knight to reflect those exact values. They're often wandering on their own, doing what they personally believe to be right whenever and wherever they want, defending the helpless wherever they find them by just riding in on a white horse and slaying an enemy or a monster. And of course some of those values they uphold are about what love and relationships should look like, too, so they all end up in committed monogamous relationships (even if it's with more than one person, it's still usually monogamous). This is one of the reasons I started getting frustrated with the High Republic novels by the third one because it started having that vibe that the "good" Jedi who stuck to more "traditional" ways of doing things and "traditional" values were so much more like your typical European knight, while the Jedi character doing something more modern and more political was losing his way and struggling with a desire for things he was repressing.

It's a feeling we've seen come up time and time again and it keeps getting tossed out in more recent shows, too, the idea that the Jedi "lost their way" from what they should've been, that they once used to represent something worthwhile and losing those traditional values is what caused their destruction and the only way to keep it from happening again is to go back to that. It's not hard to see where that storyline feels compelling, obviously, but it IS sad to see the values that the Jedi DO have in the Prequels in particular getting tossed aside as unworthy and to see their defeat being rewritten as THEIR failure instead of everyone else's.

I've had people tell me that this story feels like it has more nuance to it than the Jedi simply being the heroic victims and the Sith being pure villains. And I get why people think that, I just think that there's a lot of nuance they're MISSING in the story being told, and that that nuance exists EVEN WITH the Jedi still being the heroic victims and the Sith being clear villains. I am more than happy to help critique some of the WAYS that that story got told in the Prequels, the issues in the structure of the Prequels and how it maybe muddied some of the messages that the story was trying to get across, but I also think that that critique is SEPARATE from my feelings on the intended narrative itself. I don't think that the narrative itself is bad or lacking in nuance simply because it may not have been told perfectly. And, personally, I think that some of the more "nuanced" Jedi critical takes often seem INCREDIBLY simplistic themselves.

As for Obi-Wan, fandom will do what fandom does to its darlings. I've certainly done my fair share of simplifying my faves down to shadows of themselves because I happened to enjoy the shadow sometimes in its own right. But I do think that there's plenty of evidence to contradict a lot of people's more popular interpretation of Obi-Wan as a repressed, damaged, traumatized waif. I don't mind a LITTLE of that sometimes, usually when I read fics set in the early years of his apprenticeship with Qui-Gon following some of the events of Jedi Apprentice, but it comes with the context that Obi-Wan is still VERY YOUNG at the time and is dealing with some fairly specific things that have just happened to him and is still learning how to do that in a healthy way.

By the time you hit The Phantom Menace and ESPECIALLY the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan should no longer be a repressed, traumatized waif of a person. That's when it stops being believable to me because the character we see on screen in that time period never fits that description. Like you said, he's ACTIVELY confrontational to his superiors. He does do it with Mace and Yoda (and he does it in ROTS as well as in AOTC) and he does it with Qui-Gon during his apprenticeship, too.

The one other time I was willing to accept some of this characterization was in the Kenobi show where we do see him being more repressed and traumatized and less willing to stand up for himself when faced with confrontation with people like Owen. But one of the reasons this worked for me is because, much like with those JA fics, it comes with a VERY SPECIFIC CONTEXT, and it's done with the intentional purpose of giving Obi-Wan somewhere to develop. He also doesn't stay particularly submissive or waif-like for long, we see him gain back a LOT of his willingness to stand up for himself and confront people by the second episode. The message wasn't that Obi-Wan had ALWAYS been damaged and traumatized or that he was always "meant" for sadness or whatever, but that he had the capacity to find happiness IF HE CHOOSES TO ACT LIKE THE JEDI HE ONE WAS. The only reason he's struggling is because he ISN'T acting like a Jedi anymore. He's not finally figuring out how to handle his traumas, he's GOING BACK to being the person who can handle his traumas.

Anyway, yeah, I feel you, I have definitely experienced the roulette wheel of petty frustration at fandom interpretations of Obi-Wan lol. I can barely handle the "he drops his lightsaber all the time" joke because I feel like it often makes him come across as childishly incompetent.

[tobiasdrake]

You know, I really think that critics and artists need to come together to form the wall against AI art. It's rare, I know, but this is one place where I think we have a common enemy.

As an artist, you don't want your work stolen and used without compensation or credit to churn out soulless consumerist trash.

Me, I'm a critic. And you know what? I don't want to review the mass-produced garbage utterly devoid of artistic meaning or value that would be produced in this manner.

You pour your heart and soul into the art you create. And it's that very heart and soul that I'm looking for when I'm critiquing your work. I know I can be harsh at times. And I know it may sometimes feel as though we are natural enemies. But without that sincere, honest human expression that you pour into your work, my field wouldn't even exist.

And I promise you, even when I don't like what you've put in front of me, I would rather sit through it a thousand times than have to scrutinize a bastardized Frankenstein's Monster of ideas created by a soulless computerized husk that can't even comprehend the words being regurgitated from its automated mouth.

Every critic needs to stand behind creators against this digital invasion of our spaces.

[noosayog]

wc: 500

warnings/content: angst, cheating(?), descriptions of vomiting

part 6. directory here.

--

Atsumu's running. He finds himself doing that a lot around you.

From the start, the only thing you ever wanted from him is to give him the slip. But he chased. He ran after you, chased you down, and finally found that he was granted access to the insides of your heart that first night he had pulled you into his arms on your bed. He remembers the exact moment you began to relax in his hold, weightless against his chest.

Now, he's chasing again, but things aren't looking up.

The events leading up to this point flash across his mind. He thinks of his disappointment when you had leveled him with a scoff and an ironclad no when he had asked you to come see him play at the biggest game of his professional career. He thinks of the adrenaline he felt the moment he scored the game-winning point, only to be soured by the realization that you weren’t there, watching and celebrating with him. He thinks of the frustration when you hadn't shown up to his victory party, despite promising him. He thinks of you, he misses you, when that girl had shown up wearing a top that he knew well.

He had seen that top in your closet and begged you to wear it for him. He remembers persistently bringing it up day after day, only to be met with your usual bored decline. Until the day after that night in your bed, when he had asked you out for dinner, and you had shown up in that top, bashfully avoiding his eyes and grumbling, "I would've worn this anyway."

He remembers being stunned for half of dinner before finally regaining enough brain capacity to tease you as he usually does. But that didn't stop him from staring the remainder of the night. He couldn't look away. Something about you wearing the top he had been begging you to wear for him, dreaming of you in, made it feel like you were his.

And so, when someone in the same top had approached him, the mix of disappointment, soured adrenaline, and frustration amalgamated into some sick need to get revenge on you for abandoning him.

And yet, it didn't make him feel better. In fact, despite not having one single drink, he felt the need to vomit on the spot when you barged in.

The nausea gets worse as you run, run, run. There's bile in his throat and a strange sensation that his lips don't belong on his body because they've been tainted by someone else's touch.

When he finally reaches you, hands circling firmly around your wrist, he briefly remembers your first encounters and the irony of it all. This must have been how you felt in your first encounters, nauseous just at the mere thought of the his eyes on you (though, you felt it out of hatred for him and the concussion he gave you, and he feels nauseous because he knows you’re about the pull the plug on him), because as Atsumu bores into your eyes at this very moment, you're looking at him like he's a monster. And no amount of alcohol would make him feel more like regurgitating the contents of his stomach more than the return of that foreign, cold stare.

There’s nothing more he can do when you slam the door in his face, the first time in a very long while. This time, it feels like the door is staying permanently bolted.

[desmon1995]

Female Warriors, Broadway, and the American Dream.

The Warriors have been out for about 2 weeks now and it's slowly but steadily building up a pretty passionate following.

I think one of the biggest changes that have been rough for some long time over years 79 fans is that the Warriors are now female, which some argue ruins the point of the original and or softens the story too much.

While I do respect everybody's opinion when it comes to artistic criticism, I do think that dismissing the concept album just because it features women is a little short-sighted IMHO.

Regurgitating the original male cast just in musical album form would not only be repetitive but would make it no different than other Broadway show that focus on gang violence like West Side story or now The Outsiders.

We have so many shows that focus on brotherhood, kinship, and just masculinity not even within film but also on Broadway, but we hardly ever see the same for female characters.

The Female Warriors are very rough around the edges, foul-mouthed, violent at times, and in the case of cowgirl, lustful.

They're also different body types, present themselves differently, and are all played by BIPOC.

I've seen a lot of Broadway shows in my 30 years of living, and we just don't get diverse female characters like this a lot if at all.

If any female character had the above traits they would likely be presented as being the less than ideal woman or flat out villainous.

The girls have flaws, but these are just things they picked up because of how rough the world has been to them, and at the end of the day they're not only friends but a family.

That's a big difference between the female warriors and their male counterparts from the movie and novel.

The Male Warriors are supposed to be seen as what ends up happening when youths get tangled up in gang culture and how it turns them into monsters.

When the police arrest Ajax in the film it's because of how unruly and savage he was acting and likewise Fox getting killed along with Cleon is supposed to be seen as a consequence of them even being a part of this culture to begin with.

I've said it before, but I think while the intentions may be good it's viewing these marginalized groups through a very White and conservative lens.

Nobody wants to be a part of a gang or run away from home but sometimes living in poverty, an abusive household, or just being crushed by the system forces people to do desperate things and more often than not that's banding together with like-minded people.

Another thing is that most of the Warriors in the original film are White and that's largely just due to the fact that an audience back in the 1970s would be less willing to watch something that didn't at least feature several white main leads otherwise they'd be uncomfortable and uninterested.

From a modern-day perspective, a person like male Ajax would likely get away with his sexually aggressive behavior because of the color of the skin ( you can look at a certain orange politician to see that in present day) and we now know thanks to things like BLM that the police do not always operate in good faith nor to protect the people.

I think that's why the concept album is so good and culturally relevant despite having being created nearly a few years ago.

The Warriors consisting of a group of marginalized women that banded together to support one another to conduct a world that really doesn't care for them is a story you really get to hear not just on Broadway but in Hollywood in general.

Luther being a white gang leader and killing a black cultural figure like Cyrus in cold blood to stop any semblance of progress is the tale as all this time and how he mocks the AAVE the non-white groups he surrounds himself with after making life hell for them is especially painful.

Luther and Crosby literally don't have to worry about ever being hounded by the police because of how they look which allows them to get away with literal murder, but it is very telling that he ends up crumbling the moment he's confronted and called out for his misdeeds.

The cops themselves are also completely reworked for the concept album as opposed to them just being the boys in blue doing their job to get rid of the trash that is the Warriors like the original film, they're essentially the biggest antagonist even more so than the Rogues.

Both police officers that appear in the album have a cat calling motif which doubles as sounding like police sirens just to illustrate how dangerous and cancerous they are not just to the Warriors but to the community as a whole.

Captain Victor and Barnes abuse their power and end up nearly subduing the Warriors by killing Fox and sexually a harassing and later arresting Ajax.

In Derailed Victor even tries to kill the warriors with his squadron before they run away to the cemetery and all of this is done because they can.

The fact that these two are portrayed by people from the 1979 Warriors film sort of acts as a double entender because in the original, the Warriors themselves are supposed to be seen as monsters and what happens when kids fall too deep into the sins of the world, so the cops view the women as nothing more than street rats who need to be exterminated .

The Warriors are guilty because they're marginalized women and that's enough for them to be blown away as far as society and the system is concerned.

I think in some ways, the Warriors is basically the reverse of LMM's other work Hamilton because it shows that the American dream isn't really for everybody and that sometimes you have to find another means to live by.

The system very much failed the Warriors so they had to rely on themselves to make it through the world because nobody else would bother with them.

It's for this reason why I'm sort of against the idea that this album needs to be radically changed in order for it to move the Broadway.

Doing things like giving Luther more complex feelings, adding in things to help the predominantly white audience and critics understand how Urban culture works, and rewriting the characters themselves just to be more stage appropriate seems like it undoes what the musical was trying to say.

I think this story as it is is one worth telling and beyond maybe a bit of polish I don't really think it should be tempered with too much.

If Lin and Eisa were to doll the Warriors up too much it would basically be a completely different story altogether and what we would have is just another Broadway musical that allows the audience to digest certain things that they may not understand nor possibly want to hear.

I think we as a society have moved beyond watering down things so that people who aren't even from the community that these stories come from can sleep better at night.

I think that's why this album and the original movie have dedicated fan bases to them because it does speak to a generation of people.

[pretty-weird-ideas]

This was literally the most harrowing piece of television I have watched in YEARS because it's just a lynching with no strings attached. And then I watched how white fans twisted themselves into knots to make the clear lynching seem like the evidence presented is actually punishable and entirely factual with no agenda attached.

The agenda is "How can we quickly lynch Claudia and Louis and make it a spectacle?", that's it, the information presented is all there to push the coven's agenda. If propaganda helicoptered itself on your face, you people still wouldn't get it.

"What they said about Louis is actually correct. He's unreliable as a narrator and we're finally getting his comeuppance." What about a lynch mob seems like a reliable source of information?

Quickly now! What about a clear metaphor for a lynching gives you the vibe of "unbiased information told to the audience that we should take to heart"? I'm genuinely scared of some of y'all because I'm getting the vibes that if someone told you a dude "whistled at a white woman" you would just go with it. Any bad-faith gum flapping about a black person would just be believed on the spot by some of you. The benefit of the doubt for Black people is nonexistent around here.

Question: Do you not take Fox News, Infowars, and alt-right media's depiction of POC seriously because you PERSONALLY can tell that it's racist and that the information is wrong? Or did society have to TELL you that it's racist and you know there's a social consequence to believing it? Do you hear racist language about real Black figures and you can tell that the source isn't trustworthy, or does someone have to come down from their ivory tower and regurgitate basic sense to you?

I'm starting to realize that this fandom doesn't understand racist agitprop... at all. They're only against racism when someone tells them it's racist and there are consequences to believing racist propaganda. Someone has to hold their hand and tell them that calling someone an "uppity violent Jezebel that should put out more" is racist. Someone has to tell them that racists who have an incentive to lie about Black people aren't reliable sources on Black people. And that is a level of incompetence that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Someone could literally list 30 antiblack stereotypes and someone would be like "What is wrong with calling a black person all of these at once?". People's cultural awareness is fucked.

And there's a learned incompetence as well here, a cycle. People refuse to understand that Black people are intentionally held under a harsher light and read in bad faith ways that consciously mimic stereotypes. "I only believe something is racist when others tell me that it's racist" and "I don't seek out people discussing racism so nobody is here to tell me what is racist" is a deadly fucking combo with this show.

Read literature, read about slavery, read about lynchings, read about Black Queer liberation, read about domestic violence, read about race and Monster theory. Like read SOMETHING. MY GOD.

The show is intentionally riffing off of historical and cultural subject matter, and white fans are purposefully not learning about it so that their lives aren't upended by the reality of current and past race relations and how it affects their own lives and fiction. You guys are lobotomizing yourselves so the show's basic principles aren't visible. Just because you do not understand racism or domestic violence doesn't mean that the show isn't talking about them and it's not just going over your head. Things going over the white audience's head does not mean it is not present.

Anyways... I keep saying that the people should collectively get my laptop taken away and it still hasn't happened so this post was penned. Take away my laptop or my posts will continue.

[franki-lew-yo]

It's not just the Art: A look into why Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was scary as a kid and is so oddly charming as an adult

Found some comments hating on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark because, despite the Stephen Gammell art, the stories themselves are "all hokey basic urban legends".

To me, that's why I loved this series and why I think it was affective childhood horror.

The "pale woman" story about the beady-eyed swollen looking lady would haunt my dreams...and yet, if you remember the story she's actually not a threat she's the one who's warning the protagonist to get out of the hotel they're in. Whatever was going on in that hotel, she wasn't the scariest part of it and that's what worked about that one- though I was still too scared to read her story in fear of looking at her as a kid.

It's what made the stories that are morbid-fun campfire jokes feel more uncanny ("Hearse Song", "The Viper"), and what made the basic-simple urban legends all the more meaningful when they let your mind fill in the blanks after the picture/using the picture as a jumping off point ("The Big Toe", "The Liver", "The Bride"). An important aspect of horror/children's horror, I think, is to ground you in the reality of how innocent things can be used for evil and also how things that look scary aren't ACTUALLY evil, like the pale lady is in her story.

This is best illustrated in Alvin Schwartz's earlier scary story collection In a Dark, Dark Room. Before he and Gammell did Scary Stories, Alvin's collection here was a good concise list of basic campfire stories, but they didn't have that extra bite to them- a bite needed and finally sold home with the literally graphic art of Gammell.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was used by my sister and I exactly as how it was advertised- and that was telling it to scare each other and our cousins on vacation and see how long we could go before we'd get the heebie jeebies on a dark ride home or at night when we were supposed to be in bed. The lasting impact of these urban legends/folklore regurgitations matters not because they are inherent classics but in how and when their told to you in that early stage of life. The uncanny, nasty but sometimes harmless monsters and creatures of Gammell's art helped bring these stories to wicked life while the stories' matter-of-fact reciting kept the images in your mind all the more. A nightmare of symmetry.