#anyway. my god. tv of all time but in the most literal sense human language can convey

[caminadrummer]

television, as a medium, was only invented so that one day it could be fully actualized through the ossan's love cinematic universe. everything else is filler, practice, whatever. nothing else can ever reach the levels of Television this does. my god

[staylavendertea]

music, ya know

this is a complete impulse of lying in bed middle of the night thoughts that i don’t even know if anyone’s gonna see that have been stemmed off the experiences of the past couple days, topic of 1:41 am mind boggle:

music and it’s aesthetic and importance in literal every sense cause it’s just that important to me

first experience of realizing this, i’ve always loved film scores and listening to music and the orchestral pieces from movies and shows, but it really seemed to hit me recently, like the fact that this week’s new LOKI episode, no spoilers, has the most badass score and a badass scene with such a perfect mix and musical atmosphere. i literally had one of my best friends over, who has a very small interest in comics, cinema, marvel in general, especially a show about a norse comic god that they know nothing about, and whilst they sat there for my own regard, watching the show like a normal human being would, i sat there clinching their hand, watching in awe as our music is louder than actors talking tv speakers spurted out the most spine tightening world building story and just wandered “jesus that was good” and whilst i will always think about the superior acting, cgi, the amount of different people that just went into those few scenes and like what was physical set and what was computer image and what the hell did i just watch that has my brain running olympic marathon circles right now?

the thought that said brain kept going back to was that fucking score. it was literally tearing apart of every corner of my head and why was it doing that?

second experience, another marvel one, but i digress. black widow (no spoilers i promise), thursday night, movie theater for the first time in i can’t even remember how long now and we set through so many previews just for fucking boss baby to start playing and the reaction of the theater to make me burst out laughing.

however whatever works in that little projection box, gets fixed and the movie is pushed to just a little before it starts, a nice small pepsi ad, the regal rollercoaster intro (if you go to regal movie theaters ya know what i’m talking about), and then i hear it - the marvel studios logo - something so musically engraved into my head that my ass that can’t sing for anything, can harmonize with the sound and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up around movie theater surround sound. but i can’t think of that now, i’m here to watch black widow, a movie on hiatus with the rest of the world for so long now, a character i didn’t know much about it or truly, didn’t have the most connection with in the first place. yet through that one movie, i seemed to build one of those.

ofc though scarlett johansson’s beautiful acting and world building, but it isn’t until the end of the movie that i even realize why. it was the fucking score again. when i think about it, the beginning of the movie felt like all of black widows scenes in the avengers movies for me, kinda just, there. not really emotionally tugging, not bad ofc either, but just, there. in the present, watching something cool in motion. but then it hits, what i can only describe as a theme that somehow tells the entire black widow movie in one singular composition. something so badass, story telling, but also just singularly black widow-esk. i can tell you that i walked out the movie theater rambling about the composition and looking up composers.

third experience, the most recent as it was literally like 20 minutes ago and sprung one train rail of a thought process that immediately tugged me into typing this brain vomit into a tumblr post. i have playlists. for everything. and when i say everything, i fucking mean everything. i’m a writer and a reader, i have playlists mostly for the young avengers, my most utter comfort characters, and their stories i’m writing. i also have playlists/genre/specific song for about every book i read.

when i read red white and royal blue when that came out, i noticed i listened to one of the drunks by panic at the disco the entirety of the ending of the book and the words and music fit together like puzzle pieces, not only did it make the reading experience better, but i was so fucking emerged in my over hyper-imagitive brain that when i finally actually finished the book, i still never left. rewind present day to the beginning of this past june, one last stop comes out, ofc i get it the day it comes out with my anticipation building like wildfire. i start reading that night and i put on my recents on my liked songs playlist (true to true spotify user) and i slowly over the next day as i read and finish the book, windle down to the genre, then the band, to the album, to the exact song that feels like the carbon copy of the words i’m reading. that song was only ones who know by the arctic monkeys. now go back to this past week, anyone who reads the carry on series knows, anyway the wind blows came out this past tuesday. i waited till wednesday to buy the ✨pretty special addition barnes and nobles copy✨ so that the dear friend that indulged me by watching loki that same day could buy it at the same time and make a cute book date or whateva. i started reading that night and something just felt ,,, off. i didn’t know what it was, but i was living off the pure joy that simon and co give me so i ignored the feeling. until i realized why it felt off this morning. i wasn’t listening to any fucking music, literally nothing, not even queen. motherfucking. queen.

i looked for the snowbaz playlist i made when i read carry on for the first time back in 2016/2017 when i was still a freshman in high school just to remember i deleted that literally forever ago. so i made a new one. like an hour and a half ago. very inspired on how i made the playlists for the young avengers and all their stories. letting the music talk.

the fact that all these rambling thoughts have led to this conclusion makes my head hurt, but for me at least in my own experiences. music talks. a two way conversation. a radio broadcast, turning the peg until you match the same frequency thats being put out and you can hear it and understand it. it’s like when you see comedians on stages or actors on panels, they talk, you have reactions, you talk back, and so forth the loop continues until the last voice, last note, rings out. music and songs and orchestral pieces and bands and composers and lyric writers are telling you the stories in reverse. they don’t know their doing it, obviously they meant something entirely different in their creations, but it’s like literature and any work of words and storytelling. interpretation. to me, the notes, pianos, violins, guitars, drums, singers, cellos, and anything that can make sound you can think of, is telling you something. whispering in your ear as you watch or read. facial features, emotions the characters dont say out loud, outfits, they way their standing or talking or moving or interacting with anything and everything.

when i just made that carry on playlist, i played it, decided to try read some good almost 2 am fan fic as you do, my hanging on by a thread sleep brain telling me words aren’t recognizable right now, and tighten myself into a blanket to see if i can sleep at all. the playlist still plays and my never shuts up head thinks it’s own daydreams, stresses out about anything it can, that is until the song plays. the one that just speaks the carry on trilogy language. the one that i found whilst i was reading wayward son and then would play whenever i re read carry on. the one that started this whole way too long ass post in the first place. cant be alone tonight by atlas. i heard just the first sound and i saw them, as if i were in the same room, like i never even put the book down in the first damn place because i’m actually terrified of finishing it. i could see simon in his oversized hoodies, baz in an outfit that was way too good just to be sitting inside, agatha looking as pleasantly pretty as ever, penelope poking fun at shepherd, and shepherd poking fun right back; bickering, laughing, saying the dialogues i try to remember so i can write them later, existing.

in a way music doesn’t just talk, but it lives. it lives and breaths. a three way conversation you could say. characters, stories, plot, and settings talk to the music, then the music delivers us listeners the message, so that we can send one back. this literally took me over an hour to write and i should point the important note that i do have synesthesia where colors and sounds and colors and words do the association so this entire thing might be me being entirely biased, but alas, i love sound so much and if there is anyone else that feels the same ways as i do as just a simple good film score and song makes anything ten times better, feel free to talk, i will totally be awkward, but i need some music freaks like myself around so feel free to hit me up, also if you love movies and cinema also feel free to hit me up as i need movie buddies and now it’s 3 am and i will be going to bed - peace out 🛸

[missskzbiased]

Getting a Roommate (5)

Really! I can’t believe I finished this chapter. OH MY GOD! It took me so long to review it. I’m tired. Anyway!

I realized I was writing “Amused” when I meant “Amazed” before UHSAHUSAUHSHAUHUSA I honestly thought it had the same meaning. I guess everyone just seemed to be having fun every chapter SUHAHUSAUHSAUUHSA Anyway, I will pay attention from now on kkkkk

I’ll be going to my sister today and will be back just after tomorrow, then I will have classes and some stuff to do so the next one will probably be written on next weekend >.<

Genre:  Fluff, Romance; Sugestive; College Au; Roommate Au; Love Triangle

Pairing: Minho X Reader X Chan

Word Count: ~8,8K

Female Lead

Warnings: Language, Sugestive stuff (?)

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Final)

   Right now you wished the ground would swallow you.

   You were sitting on your bed, feeling way better than you felt in the morning, Felix sitting beside you, cackling up, and Minho sitting on your chair, telling you all about the night before. You sighed embarrassed, wishing you stayed home yesterday.

   “Felix, I hate you” You stated, whining and He just snorted.

   “That’s not my fault if you think He’s hot and had to be drunk to yell it at him” You groaned and hit him with your pillow. Why the hell did you drink so much?! You should have known that you would humiliate yourself, especially if your best friend was giving you hints he would try to get you and Chan together.

   “You almost told him you wanted to ride him” Minho reminded you “I think calling him hot would be the least of your problems” He stated and grinned as you groaned again, hiding your face behind the pillow.

   “Oh my god! He must think I’m so irresponsible! That’s it, I’m going to die as a virgin” You promised and Minho eyed you surprised.

   “Are you a virgin?” He asked amazed, not expecting it at all.

   “No, but if I keep living like this I think I will go back there” You whined, “I didn’t even want to bang him!” You fumed “It’s all your fault, Lix! I wasn’t thinking about it but now I am and I will not get it!”

   “Hey, I don’t think so” Minho pondered “If you ask me, I would say He seemed really into you” He assured, and you looked at him filled with hope.

   “Really? Are you sure you’re not just hyping me?” You frowned and He promptly shook his head denying it.

   “I mean it! He cupped your cheek and called you his babygirl as if you were the most precious thing in the world” Oh! Should you have hope? You weren’t hoping to be his girlfriend or anything like that, you just wanted to get laid. Maybe someone to cuddle up and watch TV, but you had Felix to do it if you needed… So, yeah banging was enough. It shouldn’t be hard, right? You were nice, sweet, and kind, you thought you could be hot if you tried a little bit, even if Minho didn’t acknowledge it.

   “I told her a million times! He likes you” Felix rolled his eyes “If you text him right now and tell him you need him here, He would be here in a blink”

   “How can He like me if we don’t even know each other? He is fond of me” You corrected and Felix groaned.

  “Same thing! He’s fond of you and He calls you his babygirl and gets flustered when you call him daddy even though you’re just joking” Felix eyed you at that, showing He didn’t buy it at all “So you can just tell him you want him and you will get a fuck buddy” Felix made it sound really simple, but you weren’t so sure about it. He did say you were pretty and He would like to fuck you before, even though the guys didn’t know about it, but he also said it wouldn’t work out since you weren’t into his kinky. Or were you? You never really tried it…

   “Even if this is true… I just don’t know” You said weakly and Felix sensed your shift of mood.

   “Hey, it’s ok” He assured you “You don’t need to get laid to be happy! You know that I’m just teasing you when I say you need to get laid, right? You should not feel forced to do something you don’t want to do” He seemed concerned and you smiled at him reassuring.

   “I think I will let things flow” You stated “Maybe I will get really horny and want to ride him out of nowhere” You laughed.

   “Just don’t do it on the couch” Minho joked and you cackled up.

   “Now that I have my bed we all can bang on the couch as much as you guys want” You scoffed and Minho grinned.

   “Oh? Are you inviting us to bang on the couch, kitty?” He asked mockingly and you blushed, throwing your pillow at his face.

   “No! I don’t want to bang you guys!” You snorted “And kitty? Really?” You scoffed.

   “Hey! I like kitties! They’re cute and fluffy, fuck off” He pouted and you chuckled, getting up from the bed and announcing you would bring them something to eat since you were starving. You closed the door and went to the kitchen.

   “Shouldn’t you try to stop her?” Felix asked suddenly and Minho eyed him like he was crazy.

   “Stop her from bringing us food?” He asked confused.

   “Stop her from hooking up with Chan” Felix clarified and Minho scoffed, clearly confused.

   “What? Why would I do this?” He asked speechlessly and Felix rolled his eyes at him.

   “Are you kidding me?” Felix inquired, his eyebrow shot up “You were really interested in her body yesterday if you don’t recall it… And I may not remember everything I and Y/N did, but I do remember you calling her cute, but I don’t recall you telling her this today” Felix was smugly grinning at Minho, who seemed uncomfortable under his gaze. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes “Also you weren’t really subtle right now, hm? You call her kitty then say you like cute and fluff things as kitties?”

   “I didn’t mean it like this” He spoke firmly “Y/N is my friend, just like She’s yours. You called her hot and you don’t want to fuck her, right? I call her cute because I do think she’s cute but that doesn’t mean I want to fuck her either” He reasoned and Felix narrowed his eyes.

   “Ok, you made your point” He agreed, letting him go. While the boys were talking about you, you were mindlessly searching for something on the fridge, not seeming to find anything you wanted to eat. You hear steps next to you and you looked up to see who was there.

   “Feeling better yet?” Hyunjin asked you as He went to the cupboard to search for some snacks. You eyed him, unsure if you should be friendly yet. He didn’t apologize and was just ignoring all of your argument, although He teased you about the couch when he had the chance “You looked like shit this morning”.

   “Don’t you own me an apology?” You decided to challenge him, crossing your arms in front of your chest and He chuckled.

   “I don’t apologize for things that I would do again” He shrugged “I’m sorry that you felt like shit, though, It wasn’t really my intention” he admitted. It was better than you expected, but you wanted more. You wanted a real apology.

   “You should apologize, though” You stated “You have been treating me like an annoying brat and you were pretty rude yesterday. You were being an asshole since day one! And I did nothing to deserve it. I don’t have to put up with you and I deserve a sincere apology” You ranted, feeling pissed that He didn’t even think about being nice. He scoffed and looked at you like you were a baby, which didn’t help your pissed self.

   “Make me” He grimaced at you. What a son of a bitch. You smiled at him, a sickly sweet smile that showed you wouldn’t buy his shit anymore. You closed the fridge, walked to him, and took his snacks from his hand, going back to your room “Oh, god! My snacks! I so will have to apologize to her now” he shouted sarcastically and you heard him searching through the snacks all over again.

   “You know what?” You said as you entered your room, closing the door with a frown “Who needs to literally fuck someone when you can just fuck someone’s life?” You scoffed. The boys looked at you as if you were crazy and you angrily gave them the snacks.

   “Care to enlighten us?” Felix asked.

   “I’m going mess Hyunjin’s mind” You stated “He doesn’t want to be a good roommate? Fine! I will piss him off so much He will regret not being a human being, to begin with”

   “And how do you plan to make Hyunjin apologize?” Minho asked, disbelief in his voice.

   “I won’t tell you! You’re his friend” You scoffed “Do you think I’m dumb?”

   “Hey, He’s Felix’s friend too” Minho accused “We’ve shared the same classes for a while now!”

    “But Felix is my best friend and wouldn’t betray me!” You reasoned and He gasped.

   “Wow! That’s how low you think of me? Good to know! And here I was being nice to you and watching Tangled!” He jokingly argued and you laughed.

   “You liked to watch it!” You accused and extended your hand so He would throw your pillow back to you, but he just hugged it “Come on! Give it back” You whined and Minho ignored you, eating his chocolate. Felix snorted, amused by your childish behavior “Come on! Gimme” you pouted.

   “Ask your best friend” He muttered moodily and you let out a chuckle.

   “Oh my, are you sad because I won’t tell you my plans?” You asked giddily “Wants kitty to give you a hug?” You said sneering and He scoffed.

   “Oh? Are we  doing the kitty thing?” He asked amused “A good kitty would tell me their plans” He sang and you laughed at that.

   “Give up, I won’t tell you” You told him teasingly and He shrugged.

   “It doesn’t hurt to try” He snorted and threw you the pillow. He got up from his seat and eyed you funnily “I will let you guys here discuss your sweet revenge” and He walked out of the room.  You turned to Felix and started to explain what you had in your mind. You couldn’t wait to piss off Hyunjin like He was pissing you.

                                                            ////

   Step 1: Claim what is yours

   Hyunjin kissed his date like He needed that to live. He stumbled around the dark living room, trying to support himself and the girl as they made their way to his room occasionally throwing some clothes on the floor as they got closer to his door. He opened it, groaning as the girl kissed his jaw and sucked his earlobe. He threw her on his bed and looked confused for a split of a second.

   “What the fuc-“ He was going to say, but the girl beat him to it.

   “Is it for me?!” She asked with shining eyes, picking up the pretty underwear that was laying on his bed. Some white lacy underwear that he never saw in his life. He wiped off the confused expression from his face and smiled.

   “Don’t you wanna wear it for me, bunny?” He asked and the girl beamed at him, her eyes lustful.

   Just as you planned.

   “Jinnie! Have you seen my lac-“ You started to ask in a sweet tone and stopped on your tracks when you saw another girl on his bed. You knew too damn well He would bring a girl home and He knew you knew it since He warned both you and Minho in the afternoon. He expected you to say sorry and walk away, but you stood there chocked, your eyes tearing up “Oh my god! Are you cheating on me?!” You asked with a hurt expression.

   Hyunjin’s mouth fell agape and you had to gather all your strength not to laugh.

   “I can’t believe it!” You yelled, slamming his door and going to your room, expecting the girl to think you were gone. You heard her slamming his door open and when He tried to claim that you weren’t his girlfriend you heard her slap him. Oh my god! It was even better then you pictured!

   “You are an asshole!” She yelled at him “I pity your girlfriend! I hope she breaks up with you and you die alone, bastard!” And with that being said, she slammed the front door and everything fell in silence.

   “Y/N!” Hyunjin yelled at you and you opened your door.

   “What?” You asked slyly, grinning.

   “Care to explain yourself?!” He asked pissed and you scoffed.

   “I don’t explain things that I would do again… But I’m sorry you feel like shit right now” You grimaced his way and He scoffed.

   “Is that it? Oh my god! You’re so… Argh!” He groaned.

   “Now can you give me back my underwear? I have a date with Chan tonight and I was looking for it” You asked sweetly and He looked at you blankly.

   “You’re saying you didn’t plan this?” He asked suspiciously.

   “What?! Do I look unoccupied like that to you?” You rolled your eyes “Today was Minho’s turn to do the laundry, He must have thought it was from some of your hook ups” You reasoned and He nodded, tired.

   “I can’t believe you made that scene” He complained, picking up your underwear and pushing it in your hands.

   “It was just the perfect opportunity to piss you off” You shrugged.

   You felt really proud when He stepped out of your room and you felt the smile crepting on your face. For now, Hyunjin didn’t have a clue you were going to ruin his life. You put away your underwear and dressed up slightly just to not raise his suspicions for now. You waved him goodbye when you passed by him on the couch, and made your way to the place you agreed with Minho.

   When He saw you coming dressed up on a Wednesday He knew you were up to something.

   “Why the hell did you dress up to eat a hot dog on a Wednesday?” He asked amused, calling his friend over so He could order your food.

   “I have a favor to ask” You confessed and He shot his brow up eyeing you curiously “If Hyunjin asks if you let some lacy underwear on his bed could you say yes?” Minho choked at that.

   “What?!” He asked when He stopped coughing “What the hell?”

   “You see… I let my underwear on his bed” You explained and Minho narrowed his eyes.

   “Does it have something to do with your plan?” He asked and you grinned sheepishly “Oh! So I can’t know about your plan but I have to help you?” He scoffed.

   “Pretty please?!” You begged with puppy eyes and He eyed you “I will pay for the food” You sighed and He smiled.

   “Just what I wanted to hear!” He snorted. Later, when you paid for the food He smiled at you and said “I would have done it even if you didn’t pay for the food” and you whined at him. You decided to wait to go home since it would look suspicious if both of you came together “Just go there, I will wait in the car. You can say you’re back earlier because He ditched you or something like this” Minho suggested and you nodded.

   “Full of good ideas, aren’t we?” You smirk and He chuckled.

 Step 2: Surprise him

   You heard the door unlocking and you settled yourself on the bed.

   You were wearing one of his T-shirts that looked like a short dress on you and his boxers, reading a book like you were really relaxed and happy there. When you heard the door begin to be opened, you started to say.

   “Oh, Babe! I got to finish my work earlier so I came here to make you a surpri—“ Your sentence was cut off strategically and you saw an almost naked girl and a pissed Hyunjin. You never have seen him so pissed off before and you cheered inside.

   “What the fuck are you doing here?” He hissed and you gasped.

   “Babe?!” The girl scoffed humorlessly “You have a girlfriend?” She pushed him away.

   “She’s not my girlfriend” He voiced angrily “Stop the shit, Y/N, get the fuck out!” He ranted.

   “But… You said you loved me” You said tearing up and He scoffed.

   “She’s making this up! She’s upset with me” He rolled his eyes and turned to the girl “It’s some kind of sick revenge, don’t believe her” He pleaded and the girl looked at you with fire in her eyes.

   Oops. It’s not going the way you pictured it.

   She came over you and you raised your hands to defend yourself from the hit you were expecting but she grabbed your hands and pulled you from the bed. She took some sweatpants she found standing close and pushed it in your arms.

   “Come, sweety, He doesn’t deserve you!” She said, pulling you as she stopped to take her clothes from the ground and you rushedly put the pants on.

   “You’re a bitch, Y/N!” Hyunjin hissed at you and the girl eyed him enraged.

   “You’re an asshole!” She yelled back at him.

   You were feeling kind of guilty since the girl was being so nice to you but you followed her anyway and she stopped on her tracks once you were away from your place.

   “Where are you going now? I’m dragging you with me but I don’t even know where you going” She said worried and you smiled at her.

   “I’m sorry, He’s… He’s not actually my boyfriend… I…” You rumbled, trying to tell her the truth but she stopped you, resting her palm on your shoulder.

   “It doesn’t matter, He shouldn’t treat you like this,” She said and you nodded. She was right. He really shouldn’t “Anyway, If you don’t have anywhere to go you can come with me” She smiled at you and you shook your head.

   “I think I’m going home” You said and she nodded, parting ways with you.

   You were starting to doubt your little plan of revenge. While you walked back to your apartment you could only imagine how pissed off Hyunjin was, which was okay by you since He really pissed you off before, but was it fair to the girls? You didn’t think so. Maybe they really liked him… Maybe He liked them. Who knows?

   Was it really worth it?

   Hyunjin was an asshole but you didn’t need to be like him, right?

Step 3: Meet his Friends    

   Wrong.

   When you were almost home Minho called you.

   “What did you do this time? Hyunjin wants to kill you” He said on the phone and you sighed.

   “I was laying on his bed and I may have sounded like we were dating and He was cheating on me” You answered embarrassed.

   “You may have sounded like this?” He scoffed on the line “I’m quite sure He will retaliate you… You screwed, kitty” He pitied you.

   “I think I will apologize to him… I shouldn’t be like this, right?” You said, unsure.

   “I mean… I get that you’re upset. You should be. Hyunjin isn’t really the type to listen to people so… You could just let it go if you want to give him the other face” He reasoned.

   “I’m just being childish like him” You sighed “You’re right. I’m better than this… Gotta go, Minho, I’m getting home. Let’s face the beast” You said and then hang up.

   When you got home you didn’t expect to see a bruised Hyunjin on the couch. You rushed to him and looked at his knees, slightly bruised. He didn’t even look at you and you could tell He was pissed. What the hell? Did he knee the walls?

   “Are you okay?” You asked worried “What happened?” You touched his bruise and He pushed away your hands.

   “Just go to your room” He scoffed and you pressed your lips together, unsurely.

   “I’m sorry… I know I’m being childish” You sighed “I just thought that maybe if I pissed you off as you did to me you would say sorry”

   “Nice to know” He shrugged and you decided to leave him like this. Maybe when He was calmer you could apologize properly. You walked to your room and tried to open your door. It didn’t open. You forced it once, then twice, and then frowned.

   “Hyunjin do you know what happened to my door? It’s not opening” You said.

   “I locked it” He answered.

   He what now?!

   “You locked it?” You asked just to be sure you weren’t going crazy and He hummed. He fucking hummed “What the hell, man?! I didn’t even know we had a key for our doors” You complained, going back to the living room.

   “We don’t” He grinned at you “I locked it from inside. Good luck climbing the window” He smirked.

   You couldn’t believe it.

   “Is that why your knees are bruised?” You asked.

   “What did you think? That I fell in the kitchen?” He scoffed “It seems like someone will have to sleep on the butt couch today” He mocked and you felt your blood rushing to your face.

   Was it really that bad to be childish with this son of a bitch? You didn’t think so anymore.

   “Great! Just great! And I was even thinking about being nice to you!” You groaned “You’re just so… So… Urgh!” You wanted to kick his face right now, just jump and kick him right on that damn pretty face and tear off his chances with the girls. A broke nose would suit him well. You didn’t though. You couldn’t just fight your roommate out of nowhere and break his nose like this and be in jail while He laughed at you.

   You heard the door unlock and you looked at Minho, coming in the place oblivious to your murderer's intentions.

   “He locked me out of my room,” You said angrily and Minho looked at you confused.

   “Good night to you too” He snorted “What did you just say?” He asked, sure He just heard you wrong.

   “This son of a bitch locked my room from inside! And then He climbed out of it just to piss me off!” You yelled, fed up “Oh my god! Minho, please, climb there and unlock it for me, please” You whined, feeling like you were about to cry. You were so mad!

   “Sorry, kitty, I’m afraid of heights, that’s no way in hell I would climb it for you” He apologized and you sighed. Fair enough.

   You picked your phone up and called Felix.

   “Felix?” You asked when He seemed to pick up your call “Hyunjin is a son of a bitch and locked my door. I need someone to help me unlock it, but Minho is afraid of heights and I can’t climb a damn stair, imagine a building” You fought an urge to yell and hit Hyunjin again as you heard Felix gasping.

   “He did what?!” You could hear someone else on the line hissing at him. That’s exactly how you felt too “I’m with Chan right now, We’re going there to help you” Felix said and you felt relief wash over you.

   “Thank god! Thank you so much, Lix!” You thanked him eagerly but He had already hung up.

   They didn’t really take long to arrive and you looked at them gratefully as you opened the door.

   “I’m so sorry for this” You apologized but both of them ignored you, walking straight to Hyunjin.

   “Are you out of your mind?” Chan asked, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt “You’re gonna unlock that damn door, you ass” He hissed and Hyunjin scoffed.

   “Or what?” He smirked.

    “I’m gonna throw him out of the window” Chan threatened, looking at you and Minho and you felt your blood cold.

   “Oh god! Please don’t!” You pleaded, horrified.

   “Guys, what are you going to do? Beat him up? You’re going to jail” Minho reasoned, far calmer than you.

   “Do you need anything from your room for tomorrow's classes?” Chan asked you, serious. You nodded and He sighed “Is it really important? Like you can’t do anything without it?” He asked again and you shook your head.

   “No, not that important. Why?” You frowned.

   “Great, You’re going to sleep at my place tonight” He stated “Tomorrow I will send someone to change this damn lock and you will have the keys” He promised you and you felt your chest warmer.

  That was really… Smart, actually.

   “I can go to Felix’s” You eyed him unsurely and Felix grimaced at you.

   “I’m actually going to my friend’s house so we can finish an assignment” He apologized and you shook your head.

   “No, of course! That’s okay, Lix” You rushed to say.

   “Great, it’s all settled then” Chan nodded, satisfied with the resolution “Try to be less of an asshole, dude” He said looking at Hyunjin “You’re lucky I don’t have any proof you did this or else we would be at the Police station right now”

   He grabbed your hand and you followed him, Felix right behind you.

   You would be lying if you said your heart wasn’t racing right now.

                                                            ////

   You felt small on Chan’s place, looking around shyly.

   He locked his door and turned to you.

   “Do you want to take a bath?” He asked “I can lend you some clothes”

   “It would be great” You agreed “I’m on boxers, So I can just use it… I would like a shirt though” He nodded and went to his room, picking up a random shirt and handing it to you.

   “I will sleep on the couch, you can just take the bed when you’re finished” He told you and you frowned.

   “No! I’m sleeping on the couch. You have done more than enough for me today” You assured and He scoffed.

   “There’s no way I’m letting you sleep on the couch” He stated and you averted your eyes from him, blushing.

   “You can sleep with me…” You muttered and He grinned.

   “Oh, Babygirl wants to sleep with her hot Daddy?” He teased you and you blushed furiously.

   “You remember it” You whined.

   “I wasn’t the one who was drunk” He laughed and nudged you “I’m just kidding. I know you think you’re being a burden, but you’re not. I can sleep on the couch, really” He looked you in your eyes and you gulped. Was he always that gorgeous? He wasn’t wearing any makeup and his hair was messy and curled, his clothes were pretty normal too but He seemed… Dazzling.

   Maybe you were soft today, He did help you out…

   “Y/N?” He called you, worried about your silence.

   “We should sleep on your bed” You stated and rushed to the bathroom. You locked the door and leaned on that. What were you doing? He totally knows you want to sleep with him right now. Oh my god. You could only think He must be judging you right now. He was only helping you out as a friend and you just stated you would sleep with him. Well, not really sleep with him, but with him. Anyway. You couldn’t calm down right now.

   How long has it been since you had sex? Gosh… That was so long ago…

   Who said you were going to have sex?! You’re a horny little bitch, for lord sakes! You sleep with Felix every now and then! It’s completely normal to sleep on your friend’s bed with him…

  Who were you kidding? Felix was your best friend and Chan was someone you almost said you wanted to ride.

   When you got out of the shower, you felt sick. Were you worrying too much? He would probably be asleep when you got there… Yeah! He was totally asleep and you were overthinking everything. You sighed relieved. You were anxious, that’s all. You put your boxers and his shirt, folded your clothes, and walked to his room.

  Holy shit!

  He wasn’t asleep.

  He was shirtless.

   He was peacefully humming some song while He scrolled through his phone. Shirtless. On his bed. He was indeed wearing sweatpants, but it didn’t change the fact that he was shirtless and He was hot. And you were feeling hot. You horny bitch.

   “H-Hi” You stuttered out of nowhere.

   Way to go, Y/N! Smooth and sexy as hell.

   “Hi!” He smiled at you, an innocent and pure smile. You felt dirty to be thinking He was hot right now “Are you okay with me like this? Normally I would sleep on my underwear, but I figured it would be awkward”

   Awkward? It would be great if someone cared to ask you.

   You, of course, didn’t say that.

   “Yeah, totally fine” You chuckled “Can I turn off the lights?” You asked and He nodded. So you did it while He put his phone on the bed table and you climbed on his bed, laying down and looking to the ceiling even though you couldn’t see anything.

   He was warm, you could feel the warmth pouring from him even though He had the A/C on, the room quite cold on your freshly bathed self. You shivered imagining his warm body suddenly pressed on yours, his lips hovering over yours.

   “Are you cold?” He asked and you got startled “Hey! Calm down” He chuckled “I don’t bite, Babygirl” You swallowed in thick. You wish He did.

   “I was almost asleep” You lied “Sorry” You chuckled.

   “Sorry, I just saw you were shivering and I thought you were cold. Do you want me to bring you a blanket?” He offered and you shook your head.

   “No, you’re hot enough” You said.

   Oh my god! What did you just say?!

   “Hm… Are you hitting on me?” He asked unsurely and you sighed relieved. You still had a chance to be normal.

   “No, it’s just that you’re really warm, I can feel it from here” You chuckled and He snorted.

   “Yeah, I know” He agreed “You can cuddle me if you want to get warm” He muttered and you blushed.

   Cuddle was okay, right?

   Friends could cuddle.

   You cuddled Felix all the time! It wasn’t weird or anything. Cuddling is totally fine. Like totally fine. Your cat back home cuddled you. Fine. It didn’t mean anything. If your cat could do it, you could do it too! With this dumb thought, you turned around and rested your head on his arm, throwing your arm and your leg over him. See? Fine. You heard his heart beating really fast and loud. Was it always like this or were He nervous? Well… Judging by his temperature his heart was probably really fast. It couldn’t mean anything.

   Anything like He wanted to pin you down on that damn bed and fuck you senseless.

   You swallowed again.

   He turned to you, bringing you closer and hugging you, like a koala. You felt your body warming. Not a sex drive warming, but a cute warm. You smiled and nuzzled him, getting comfortable and feeling sleepiness take over you.

   You slept really well that night.

   You woke up with his alarm and you yawned, tired. You opened your eyes to see a grumpy Chan looking mad with his alarm. He groaned and tried to reach for his phone and you felt his body over yours while He was stretching to reach his bed table. You could get used to that. He turned off his alarm and his body was back to your side instead of hovering in your face.

   “Morning, Babygirl” He greeted you dizzily and you grinned at him.

   “Morning, Chan” You said, looking at his eyes.

   He stood there, looking at you with his cute wrinkled face and you smiled at him. He swallowed down slowly and you could see his Adam’s apple going up and down.

   “You’re too cute for your own good” He sighed, letting your body go and getting up. He looked at you on his bed and wished He could kiss you right now “I liked it” He stated blushing.

   “What?” You asked confused.

   “You calling me by my name instead of mocking me with Daddy or Dom boy” He said and looked away.

   “Chan” You called him again and He eyed you “You’re too cute for your own good” You grinned and got up from his bed. He just stood there, his heart racing as you made your way to the kitchen. Fixing him breakfast should be a good way to thank him, right?

                                                          ////

   You walked through the Dance Department feeling good with yourself.

   You noticed that the random shirt you stole from Hyunjin was actually a shirt with his name on it and you felt great walking down the hallways with that. You noticed some looks on your back and some whispers, but you didn’t mind them. Let people talk. You finally found Felix and waved at him, happily.

   “Lix!” You greeted him and He grinned at you.

   “What are you doing here?” He asked curiously and you gave him a sly smile. His friends looked you up and down and you shifted uncomfortably under their gazes.

   “I came to see Hyunjin, where is he?” You announced louder then you needed. Before Felix could answer you though both their friends gasped.

   “Is it true?! Are you his girlfriend?” They asked amazed and you grinned.

   “Is that how he called me?” You faked embarrassment and they gasped louder.

   “Oh my god! Hyunjin is taken” They laughed and you smirked. You hoped they would be loud enough about it later because all you needed right now was to people spread rumors about a dating Hyunjin.

   “I didn’t see him today” Felix answered your previous question, confused “Was He not at home?” You widened your eyes to him. Is Felix dumb or something? You were on Chan’s last night, for lord sake! How would you know?

   “Wait! You live together?!” The boy asked in chock and you bit your lip. That’s not exactly what you were planning but it may help, right? You nodded his way and He nudged his friend, looking excited. You waved Felix goodbye and went away, feeling the gossipy spread around you. You wanted to see how many girls He would get now. Suck on that.

Step 4: Talk through things

   When you got home later you didn’t expect to see a beaten up Hyunjin on the couch.

   His right eye was purple and swollen and his left cheek was red and looked a little bit swollen too. You arched your brow, confused. He grimaced at you and He twitched, his bruised lips probably hurting from stretching the wound. You ignored him, going to your room which was still locked. You frowned. Didn’t Chan send someone to fix it? You went to Minho’s room and knocked on his door.

   “Go away, Hyunjin” You heard him saying, sounding mad.

   “It’s me” You answered and He quickly opened the door. Minho had a small bruise on his lip and his cheek seemed swollen, but He was way better then Hyunjin for the most part, “What happened?” You asked, your hand making way to his cheek. He hissed in pain.

   “Nothing” He shrugged it off and you scoffed “Here, your keys” He gave you the small object, making mention of closing the door. You frowned and stopped him.

   “Did you fight Hyunjin?” You asked concerned and He averted his eyes, trying to force the door shut again, but you were holding it “Are you okay?”

   “I’m fine” He stated and tried to close the door again.

   “Did you clean up your wounds?” You asked, ignoring his attempt to go away.

   “Yes, mom” He snorted and you grinned.

   “Why?” You muttered and He sighed.

   “I guess I just got pissed because He’s been a dick to you” He admitted “Yesterday I got really pissed off at him and may or may not have punched him”

   “I’m quite sure you did it” You snorted and He grinned at you, tired “You didn’t need to do it… He’s your friend”

   “I couldn’t just stand there… It’s already bad enough that I didn’t think about changing your lock and would just do nothing at all because I was afraid of heights” He sighed, He seemed embarrassed and you frowned “How was it at Chan’s? Did you let out your horny self?” He chuckled and you laughed.

   “I wish” You answered jokingly “BUT!” You smiled at him smugly “I may or may not have a date next week…”

   “Oh?” He sounded surprised “Where are you going?”

   “We’re going to watch a movie and cuddle on his couch” You snorted “Not really your kind of date, hm?” You joked and Minho laughed.

   “Are you going to make him watch Tangled?” He scoffed and you slapped his shoulder.

   “Stop it! I let him choose it” You confessed “Hoping He will choose some horror, actually” You laughed and Minho snorted.

   “Eager, aren’t we?” He mocked you “Listen, Kitty, I’m going to lay down for a bit. Even though Hyunjin deserves to be beaten up and all that shit I’m not the fighter type so I’m feeling tired as hell” He looked like shit, but you didn’t tell him this.

   “It’s okay” You assured “If you need anything call me” He nodded at that and closed his door.

                                                                ////

   You felt great having your own keys for your room, it made you feel safe from Hyunjin’s assholeness. You were expecting him to just start to bang on your bed if He started to get really pissed off, so it was reassuring to know He couldn’t do it now.

   You had to thank Chan again.

   Speaking of which, you were really excited about tonight. Your movie date was finally around the corner and you felt happy to think about it. Felix was teasing you with is about a week for now and you could only groan to your friend from time to time, tired of his cheering self. “I told you He liked you” He always made sure to remind you and you could only laugh by yourself thinking about it.

   “What is it?” Minho asked, scoffing, eyeing you amused.

   “Thinking about Felix” You answered, laughing.

   “Chan will be thrilled to hear it!” He joked and you slapped his shoulder.

   “He knows We’re just friends” You rolled your eyes “Are you jealous because I like Felix more than I like you?” You joked and He laughed out loud.

   “So that’s how you treat your ally? I should go away now” He sang, threatening to stand up and walk away, but you grabbed his arm laughing.

   “No! I need your phone” You whined and He smiled at you.

   So your plan was quite simple this time. Minho told you Hyunjin was with a girl right now and all you would do is call him. Simple. Harmless. He knew you were trying to ruin him by now, so you needed to think harder: How would He pick up this damn call? Then it hit you. Minho. You were pleasantly surprised by his support since the lock event. You didn’t expect his fight with Hyunjin and even though both of them were alright right now, the bruises are gone and their friendship firm, He was still by your side.

   Cute!

   You dialed Hyujin’s number and waited for a bit.

   Hyunjin was driving Minho’s car, taking the girl to her place because He didn’t want to risk you blowing his plans again. He had a smug smirk and eyed the girl that was sending him a dirty look, ready to simply unbutton his pants right there.

   “You’re so thirsty for me” He purred and the girl giggled, her hands hovering over his bulge. His phone rang and He sighed. Why now of all times?

   “Hmm, Who is Roommate?” She asked curiously and answered it without giving a damn. Hyunjin grimaced, unhappy.

   “Hey, babe?” A girl’s voice sounded through his phone and He frowned. What the hell? “Are you coming home already? I’m making us dinner… And, hm… Did you get the pregnancy test?” Holy shit! It was Y/N. Hyunjin tried to pick his phone from his date, but the girl shot him a horrified look and pushed him.

   “You really have a girlfriend?!” She yelled and you and Minho suppressed a laugh “Oh my god! I’m so dumb! I heard the rumors but I thought… You’re an ass! Stop that car, now!” She ranted and Hyunjin groaned.

   “She’s not my girlfriend! I can explain” He pleaded and the girl scoffed.

   “Stop this damn car right now!” She demanded and Hyunjin pulled over, tired. She stormed away and you cackled up.

   “Nice try, dude” You teased him “But wherever you go, I’ll be there”

   “I hate you” He sighed “Do you know how long it has been since I got laid? I just hate you” He sounded tired and you smiled proudly.

   “Well, you have been doing some hateful stuff too If you need a reminder” You stated and He nodded, although you couldn’t see it.

   “Okay, We need to talk about it” He stated and you arched your brows.

   Talk like a real talk? That was a nice surprise.

   “I agree, but tonight I’m going to Chan’s. We can talk about it tomorrow” And He hummed from the other side, hanging up. You looked at Minho, happy “Oh my god! I think He’s gonna apologize to me!” You uttered and He high fived you.

   “It was about time” He cheered and you beamed.

   “I can’t believe it! Finally”

   You couldn’t feel any better right now.

 Step 5: Make Him want you

   Chan opened his door with a bright smile, looking adorable and you smiled back.

   “Hey” You said, getting inside and looking at his mattress in the middle of the living room. You eyed him like He was crazy “Why is your bed on the floor?” You asked amused and He snorted.

   “Well, what can be better than watching a good movie cuddling up on the bed? Since I don’t have a TV in my room I figured I could just bring my bed here” He smirked and you giggled.

   “You’re really serious about our cuddling session, aren’t you?” You mocked him and He nudged you.

   “Felix told me you loved to cuddle up and watch stuff on TV with him so… Well, I guess I wanted to outrun him on this” He laughed and you cackled up “I mean… We’re on a date, right? I should get you comfortable and all that” He averted his eyes, shyly.

   Oh my god! He was so cute! Why were you so worried about it last week? You wanted to hug him and never let go, but you made your way to the mattress and sat down, looking at him.

   “So? What will we watch?” You asked curiously and He sat next to you, bringing popcorn, chocolate, and soda and giving it to you. You took a piece of the chocolate and hoped He would say something really creepy so you could have an excuse to touch him more often.

   You laughed at yourself.

   “I thought we could watch some rom-com or animation” He told you and you frowned “Or… Not. Yeah, We can totally watch something else” He said unsurely as He saw your face.

   “No! No! I do like those but…” You snorted “I was expecting you to say some horror movie or… You know? Don’t you like those?” You asked confused and He laughed at you.

   “So you thought I was playing low! I see…” He hummed knowingly “I asked Felix what you like to watch and He said you loved this kind of thing… And to tell you the truth I love a good animation too, so…” He eyed you cutely and you grinned.

   “It sounds like you interviewed Felix” You teased him and He blushed hard.

   “I… I wanted to give you a good time” He admitted embarrassed and you didn’t fight the urge to hug him this time.

   “Thank you, I appreciate it” You assured him “Let’s watch some good stuff then! How do you feel about ‘How to train your dragon’?” And He beamed, hugging you back and muttering on your hair.

   “I feel like I just found my perfect movie buddy” He answered and you smiled into his chest.  

                                                                      ////

   Minho scoffed when Hyunjin’s friend told him how he was lucky to have such a hot girlfriend.

   “She’s not my girlfriend!” He whined and Felix laughed.

   “But she’s hot!” Felix agreed and Minho frowned at him.

   “I thought she was just your friend” He said, confused and Felix looked at him feeling lost.

   “She is” He agreed.

   “Are you calling your just friend hot?” He asked to make his point and Hyunjin laughed.

   “That’s because He’s not blind” He reasoned and Minho shot him a surprised look.

   “You think she’s hot?!” Minho uttered, “But you said you hated her!”

   “Well, She’s annoying me as fuck! But She can annoy me and be hot, I don’t understand your point” Hyunjin scoffed “Don’t you think she’s hot?”

   “No! I don’t” He frowned “She’s my friend”

   “She’s my friend too, mate” Felix stated “If you don’t want to fuck or date them they can be just your friend and you still can think they’re hot… I tell her she’s hot all the time and she tells me the same all the time… It’s what friends do”

   “I never told a girl friend that she was hot” He shrugged and Hyunjin rolled his eyes.

   “Do you think I’m hot?” Hyunjin asked.

   “Of course, If you weren’t we wouldn’t have so many dates” He reasoned.

   “Do you want to fuck me?” Hyunjin asked.

   “What? No!” Minho laughed and Hyunjin laughed along.

   “Exactly. We’re friends and you think I’m hot. Move on” He mocked him.

   “But that’s different” Minho shook his head “I wouldn’t like to fuck you” He stated. Felix snapped his head up, looking at Minho surprised. Minho arched his brows, startled and Hyunjin smirked.

   “Did you just say you would like to fuck my best friend?” Felix asked amused and Minho shook his head eagerly.

   “No! That’s not what I meant!” But Felix and Hyunjin were already on it.

   “You don’t say that she’s hot because if you admit it you will acknowledge you want to fuck her? Is that what I just heard?” Hyunjin mocked him and Felix cackled up.

   “That’s exactly what I heard too” He smirked “So… You’re into Y/N… I would do something about it if I were you because as far as I know, Chan is way ahead of you right now”

   “I don’t need to do something about it, because that’s only on your head, guys” Minho rolled his eyes “She’s just a friend”

   “Just a friend” Hyunjin agreed “That you think that it’s not hot at all”

   “Even though I know damn well you checked her out” Felix sang and Hyunjin scoffed. Minho tried to ignore them, pretending to look at some craft stands on the way and stopping on his track when a key chain got his attention.

    A cute kitty key chain.

   He smiled at it and approached the stand.

   “How much for this key chain?” He asked and the boys followed him. He gave the seller the money and looked at it fondly.

   “Did you need a key chain? I have tons home” Hyunjin frowned and Minho shrugged him off.

   “It’s a gift” He said nonchalantly and Felix grinned like a Cheshire cat.

   “A kitty for your kitty?” He hummed and Minho blushed.

   “She just got the key door so… Well…” He rambled and the boys laughed at him.

   “Dude, just accept you have a crush, it’s not that hard” Hyunjin mocked him and Minho sighed.

   “You know what? I’m done. I’m going home, good luck on getting there later, buddy” He said while going away. He didn’t need to hear the guys mocking him about something that wasn’t even true! He didn’t have a crush on you. Would someone that has a crush on you support your date? Sprawl on the couch with you mindlessly? Constantly bring other girls to fuck under your roof?

   He didn’t think so.

   When He finally got home, He closed the door, walked picked up the key chain He wanted to gift you, and walked to the corridor just to drop his gift on the floor. Standing there in the middle of the corridor, eagerly drying your hair with a towel was none other than you. On a towel.

   “Oh! You got home earlier” You said, looking calmly at him.

   Would someone that has a crush on you be calmly looking at you standing there on a towel? Yes, they would.

   He didn’t though.

   Minho felt his blood rush south and then up. He didn’t know If He should hide his bulge or try to hide his blush. He did neither. He stood there, frozen in place looking at your wet body. One particular water drop decided to mock him, slowly sliding through your collarbone and going to your cleavage and He gulped, uncomfortable.

   “Hey, are you okay?’ You asked concerned, approaching him and He stuttered.

   He stuttered like a fucking virgin, for god sakes!

   “Don’t come near me!” He shot and you frowned.

   “What the hell, man?” You uttered, confused and He took some steps back, thinking about what he should do right now. Should He just leave? Should He explain that he found you hot?

   Oh my god! He finds you hot. He sighed in defeat. He just thought you were hot.

   “What’s this?” You asked and He eyed you leaning down to pick up the key chain. Right in front of him. He closed his eyes and groaned. What kind of unholy thought was coming to his head right now? You found it weird, but shrugged it, leaning anyway to take the object and your eyes shone when you saw what it was “Is it for me?!” You happily asked, getting up, and He opened his eyes to look straight into yours.

   “Y/N…” He said cautiously and you eyed him weirdly “Please go dress yourself” He pleaded and something clicked in your head. Was that why He was being weird?

   “Oh!” You let out when you noticed that his pants didn’t look as flat as they should and He shot his hands down, averting his eyes clearly ashamed “That’s ok! It’s totally normal!” You assured him and He groaned feeling humiliated.

   “I’m gonna take a bath” He said, storming to the bathroom and locking the door.

   “It’s just a physiological response!” You shot through the door and He groaned again.

   “Go away!” He pleaded.

   “I’m okay with it, no hard feelings!” You continued and Minho turned on the water. You sighed “Come see me when you’re done”

   Minho rested his head against the cold wall and felt the water hit his back while his mind went back for your standing self. You were gorgeous! Hot couldn’t even begin to describe it to him. What the hell was He thinking when He thought you were cute? He felt so ashamed right now. He wanted to get off thinking about you but He refused to do it.

   “Come on, Minho, think about anything else….” He instructed himself “Anything… Anything else… Not her dripping hair… Not her innocent eyes… Not her smugness… Not her legs… Not her lips… Especially not her lips!” He swallowed thick, remembering how your lips formed a beautiful “o” shape when you saw him coming in.

   Fuck!

   He couldn’t believe it.

   He would have believed if someone told him he would want to hug and cuddle you, watch movies with you poking each other with your feet, laying down speaking unimportant things all evening, or even if someone told him He would like to kiss you someday.

   He could believe it.

   But he never would have believed it if anyone told him He would run into you someday and just wish to take off your clothes (or your towel), pin you down against the wall and fuck you senseless without a care in the world.

   Then again, Here He was.

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Let’s try to tag @slut-for-fandoms Hope it worked!

[voxvulgi]

multiples of 6 - for whoever you think has the best answer including youuuu (you can skip those you don't like xD)

// alright so *cracks knuckles* *puts on accountant hat* *takes out calculator* in 100, the largest multiple of 6 is 96, which has 16 6′s in it. i have 18 muses, but 4 of them are exclusive, so i can stick to the 14 non-exclusive muses and have 2 questions to spare, which i can answer myself

Keep reading

6: do you keep plants? 

“I do. I live alone, so the flat feels dead sometimes. Plants help me feel like I don’t live alone. I do like isolation, but that’s only to a certain extent. Plants are living beings you have to take care of, and they’re a sight for sore eyes, too. I especially like them in the kitchen. When I wake up to make breakfast, the sun is at an angle that pours gold into my kitchen window, and the specific shade of green of their leaves is absolutely gorgeous. I also have a group of small pots to plant thyme and rosemary and such. I could just buy them fresh, but picking your spices yourself every now and again just...engulfs the senses.”

12: what's your favorite planet? 

“When Malik asked me this question and I told him Uranus, he laughed at me for ten minutes straight. At first, he laughed for a few seconds because he thought I was making a joke, but when I told him I was serious, he laughed for the rest of the ten. I really wish scientists just let Uranus be called Ouranos. Did they really not consider that sometime in the future, a girl would tell someone that her favourte planet was your-anus and get laughed at? Rude. But anyway, Uranus is my favourite planet...literally just because it’s pretty. Blue is my favourite colour. Also, it’s the only planet that spins on its side, which was what made me decide that it was more worthy of being my favourite planet than Neptune. Neptune just goes with the flow. Lame, right? Uranus is not like other planets. It’s different. It stays home and eats chicken nuggets instead of going to parties. Also, it was the only planet named after a Greek god instead of a Roman one, and when I found that out, I was like finally, and I just made it my favourite planet.”

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.

“I live with my cousins, alright? They own a pub. So, basically, we live upstairs, and the pub is downstairs and open until late. My cousins don’t have a problem with this because they set their won work hours and wake and sleep as they please and all, but I have to attend work with the local herbalist sometimes because she trains me. So, one night, the pub was open well after the usual closing time because some man was getting married in a few days and wanted to celebrate with his friends. I’m not the kind of person to tell people how to live their lives and how late to go to bed, but I was irritated and went downstairs to ask my cousin when this would be over. You know, just so I could get a good idea of when I’ll finally be able to sleep. When I got there, the man to be married was flirting with the barmaid. I would have ignored it, but she looked terribly uncomfortable. I told him off first, and it didn’t work-- obviously. So I went back to my room and gathered some leftover poison ivy powder. I went back downstairs, flirted with him, and unbuckled his belt in front of all his friends. They ooh’ed and ahh’ed because they’re idiots, then I tugged on the back of his waistband and left him with poison ivy all over his arse. I waited until his face twisted and he started drunkenly panicking, then I left. That man didn’t know I’m related to the owners since my cousins are white and all, so there was no harm done to the pub’s reputation, but my cousins and the pub workers -- even the barmaid -- now keep asking me not to hide poison ivy in their pants whenever I look even mildly disapproving.”

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?

“I’d trust Alan with every one of my secrets. Except if I do something that isn’t actually worrying but I think might worry him anyway. Because he’s a worrier. That’s not technically a secret.”

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?

“Look, I think everyone has been truly scared. There’s always a moment in their life that really scares them, and just because it isn’t as scared as they can psychologically be doesn’t mean it wasn’t true scared. So yes, I have been truly scared. The most scared I’ve ever been was, obviously enough, when I got the phone call from my mother about Joseph.”

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now?

“Branches. They’re upbeat but at the same time make me feel calm and relaxed, which is thankfully my mood in general.”

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!

“My favourite coffee shop is a block down from my work. I rarely take work there, usually just buy a coffee and leave or stay for a while and lounge. It’s my favourite because they make the coffee taste how it smells. If coffee doesn’t taste the way it smells, you might as well be drinking mud water. They practically have walls instead of windows, and there’s this terrace on the second floor. It gives you a good view of the street. Looks best in the morning because there’s a park just a street away and people everywhere. The coffee shop itself -- the interior, I mean -- is just clean and tidy. Their seats are comfortable but don’t look like something a wannabe hippie would own. They like their plants in moderation. Their tables are glass, not metal or wood. They don’t have puns or cheesy quotes anywhere. I like that.”

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?

“My biggest fear was that a dragon would kidnap my mom and hide her in a tower. I thought and still think that my mom is so pretty! So I figured that if a dragon was going to kidnap someone, it would be my mom. I don’t have that fear now, but I’m...well, I’m really afraid of Jace dying.”

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?

“Jenny and Dean last father’s day. Their dad’s already been dead for about a year at that point, but...hell, it’s their dad. I probably looked really sad, too, and he wasn’t even my biological dad.”

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

“I do like poetry. Not big on the older stuff, mostly because of the language barrier. The modern stuff is easier to understand. I actually prefer confessional poetry because it’s like looking into the dark corners of someone’s mind, and not in this romanticised way. Not for me, at least. This certain kind makes me feel seen because when someone shares their experiences from behind their own eyes, in their own shoes, they experience emotions and thoughts that are so raw and human that I feel less alone reading them. I haven’t read that much, to be honest, so I don’t have favourites. I’ve only read the more popular ones that have been coming out in the past decade, so I think picking a favourite is unfair because my pool is so small.”

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? 

“I don’t know. I’ve never worn a flower crown, but I suppose that if I were given one, I’d like for it to have a good amount of leaves along with the flowers. Green is my favourite colour. The flowers can be anything, but I think open ones look better. Maybe daisies-- they sound perfect. Yellows and pinks and reds would be welcome, too, as long as there’s a good amount of white daisies.”

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it?

“I would not say I forget easily, but I note everything down, just in case. Some things are too important to get wrong, while others just cause avoidable inconvenience. It helps me organise my time and prioritise, too, so I just opt for making notes.”

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?

“Fanclub! They’re very cute. I only saw them in that movie called Despicable Me. Most of the time, Ivan and I aren’t allowed to use the TV, but it was on one of the days we were allowed, so we watched it. I liked it a lot. The minions are so full of energy and happy and stuff.”

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?

“Ooooh, yes!! I’m gonna get a bunch of tattoos! They won’t be anything fancy, though. Just some stars and smiley faces here and there. They’ll all be in colour. Nothing black or white. There’s probably gonna be some small dinosaurs. And music notes. Oh, and rocket ships! I’ll just get a tattoo every time I think of something. They’ll be small. Like, and inch or something, so there’s plenty of room!”

90: talk about one of your favorite cities.

“Paris is my favourite city. The thing about it is...it loves you. That’s how I can describe it. It’s a very old city, okay? A lot of shit went down in it. There were wars and revolutions and all that. I admit that I don’t know much about the historical details because I sucked ass in history class, but I just feel like Paris was founded on fighting, and people fight for their rights and the things they love. So...I think that every building in Paris was made with love and built with a purpose. I don’t like New York because I feel like it just wants to eat you. Paris loves you. I’m very appreciative of that, and I’m appreciative of the buildings most of all. Especially the old ones are gorgeous. I try to incorporate as much of Paris into my architecture models as I could.”

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?

“Not really quickly. If I just got on my computer and it tells me it needs to update, I wait until I’m done with my task before I update it. Otherwise, it’ll keep bothering me about it, so I just like to get it over with. Similar thing with my phone. I postpone the update until bedtime then let it update while I sleep. No need to let it disturb the flow of my day, you know? But I’m still gonna do it. I’m not a big procrastinator.”

[hellyeahomeland]

“Two Minutes” | Directed by Tucker Gates, Cinematography by Giorgio Scali

[This week remained hectic as heck so we are keeping the more casual format. --Sara]

Sara: Opening (or closing) with a Carrie mirror shot is classic Homeland and I love to see it! She looks very tired. I hope when the series is over, Carrie takes a long nap. But not, y’know, the LONG long nap.

Gail: If this shot is a look into her current emotional state, which I think it most definitely is, she looks tired but determined. She hasn’t been out of that rehab center for very long, you have to wonder how her medications are working, because it’s clear she isn’t getting enough sleep. But good God--Claire Danes is gorgeous!

Gail: When I watched this scene I had a few realizations. At first I thought the red thing in front of the water glass was a pill but when I zoomed in it looks like floss. Then it occurred to me that we haven’t seen Carrie taking her meds or listening to jazz this season. This version of Carrie seems very stripped down (no pun intended). No mentions of seeing her family or FaceTiming Franny either. I don’t know what any of this means yet, but pointing it out for future context.

Sara: Floss? Whoulda thunk? I love this very obviously photoshopped (or whatever the video equivalent of that is… CGI?) scene of “mourners” gathering outside the White House.

Gail: I loved this opening shot of Max with his back to us... much like the donkey at the end of the episode, he has the flight recorder strapped to his back via a backpack and he treks uphill. I love the pop of color from the flight recorder and Max’s backpack in this desert-like scene. The importance in this shot is all about knowing where the flight recorder is and less about who is carrying it. Although I’m sure everyone joined us in a sign of relief to see Max still alive!

Sara: Chekhov’s flight recorder! I’m thinking of other significant objects on the show (like Brody’s vest), but none have gotten the attention that this dang flight recorder is getting. Also, Max writing his name in sharpie on his backpack is big younger child energy.

Sara: As someone who wears glasses, I really admire that Max is always, without fail, wearing his. No matter how sweaty he is. I love you, Max! 

Gail: It is very interesting how every time Saul is kidnapped, his glasses are taken from him, but Max gets to keep his (for now at least?). Maybe there is a metaphor there about how Max isn’t losing sight of the bigger picture?

Sara: IJLTP, and it’s the first of a few POV shots this week. Max really is like an audience stand-in and this makes it even more literal.

Gail: IJLTP too! Such a great shot.

Sara: They had a shot very similar to this in Keane’s speech from “Paean to the People.” I really love how you can see how very manufactured this all is. Not that any of us need to be reminded of that…

Gail: The focus of this scene starts with the people behind it. I love that, because while the President is what the people are watching, he’s getting his cues and information from everyone else. In “Chalk One Up” we saw the theater of the peace announcement. Here we see the theater of the new president making his first speech. It’s all just words until the intentions behind them are realized.

Sara: Some of the keywords here: 

Bust

MARTA (the “mass” “transit” “system” in Atlanta… where my Atlanta homies at?)

Body scanner

Narcos

Influenza

Plot

Gail: If these keywords are a part of the search for Max, shouldn’t his name be on it? Or American? No wonder Carrie was pissed! Get with it, Lonnie! 

Sara: I know this is a stunt double, but it’s still meant to be Carrie, and Carrie riding this motorcycle so awesomely is one of the most badass things about her. We have no choice but to stan. 

Gail: What a cool payoff to all of the scenes and allusions of Carrie leaving the station undetected. Girl is resourceful, no doubt.

Sara: Are these wide shots so that Costa Ronin, who is apparently nine feet tall, and Claire Danes would both fit in the frame? Also, “I just like how he leans.” 

Gail: I think the shot might be indicative of their power dynamic. But I agree with you, Yevgeny’s consistent nonchalance is such a great character detail.

Gail: Interesting that by the end of their scene, Yevgeny sits down, making his body language less threatening. He enjoys these games with Carrie a little too much for my liking.

Sara: That smirk…

Sara: The framing here is really interesting. G’ulom sitting casually while Saul and Scott Ryan stand stick straight, almost obediently (ironically), is really striking. G’ulom has these almost angelic white curtains behind him while Saul and Scott are cloaked in shadows.

Gail: This feels different from Yevgeny’s casual nonchalance. I get the sense here that G’ulom is sitting out of lack of respect for the people standing before him. G’ulom turned his back on platitudes the second he turned his back on Ambassador Gaeto in the opening of “Chalk Two Down.” He only stands at the end of the scene to exert his power over Saul and General Ryan.

Sara: And then this shot, which is incredible. Centering G’ulom in the frame really emphasizes his power.

Gail: Such a great POV shot to see Saul and General Ryan’s reactions to G’ulom.

Sara: ...and I love the specific choreography of Saul and Scott both exiting so that their bodies are hidden behind G’ulom. I feel like Homeland doesn’t do shots this stylized that often so when they do it feels all the more impactful. 

Gail: I find it so interesting that G’ulom has turned his back on the audience too. 

Gail: I love the glimpses of the relationship between Mike and Jenna. Is this how Saul and Carrie started out?

Sara: Oof, ya think? I didn’t even think about their relationship in that context (maybe because the age gap is not as great) but now that you say it... I find it a really interesting way to shoot this, almost like we’re eavesdropping on them eavesdropping on Carrie. I love when Homeland returns to themes of surveillance. 

Sara: Why onions? Because we’re peeling the layers of this story. (I’ll see myself out.)

Gail: OMG, Sara! You are right, they are onions! I’m ashamed to say I thought they were beets. (Thanks, Dwight.)

Gail: When Fibrooz, Max’s captor, reaches for Max’s wrist in this scene, I thought he was going to unlock the cuffs. Doesn’t bode well for Max that this guy is all about making a buck.

Sara: Major Carrie in “Why Is This Night Different?” vibes. The framing is almost identical. This continues some of the role reversal of Carrie and Max this year.

Gail: I love the details in this shot and the one of the market shelves. It looks like a random assortment of remotes and calculators and jars on shelves, but it’s actually very organized.

Sara: Are they selling remote controls without the TVs that they control? 

Sara: Chekhov’s flight recorder strikes again! Sorry, I have nothing intelligent to say about the device of this damn flight recorder because I find it so freaking hilarious. 

Gail: I love how we are seeing the journey of this flight recorder and all of the different people who are getting their hands on it.

Sara: This show is really making me feel sympathy for Haqqani, which is completely wild. Look how he’s softly dressed in the light here. Total character rehab happening this season on all fronts. Numan Acar has infused him with a real weariness and softness that’s added so many new layers to what was once just a classic villain. 

Gail: I agree, Numan Acar has done an outstanding job with his portrayal of Haqqani. The writers approach to softening him has paired wonderfully with the direction of the show and has led to great shots like this of Haqqani, the man and father.

Sara: Gail pointed this out on the podcast. As the conversation progresses and Hayes veers off script he literally turns away from Linus. Subtle but effective. The use of body language this season has been pretty great.

Gail: The choreography has been fantastic, I agree. Wellington has ditched his suit and has rolled up his sleeves. His calm demeanor and thoughtful counsel that we’ve come to know about him is clearly about to be tested.

Sara: IJLTP.

Gail: When one door (seemingly) closes, another one opens.

Sara: IJLTP.

Gail: The blue lights behind her are gorgeous.

Sara: “CATASTROPHIC ERROR” 

Gail: The details! And much foreshadowing!

Gail: Things start out friendly and at a distance and then we rapidly move into tighter shots as Mike reveals to Saul just how bad the optics are for Carrie right now.

Sara: This is such a lovely shot and I love all Homeland rooftop scenes. Sometimes Carrie’s smoking, sometimes she’s having a panic attack, sometimes both things are happening at once. See how I turned this into a thing about Carrie? 

Sara: I don’t know if this is a new choice by Claire, but recently I feel like Carrie has a habit of literally turning away from difficult conversations. Anyway, this Carrie/Saul scene was incredible.

Gail: There has been a subtle shift to her personality this season. It must be hard to face her new reality and looking at Saul has to be one of the more daunting reminders of what it used to be.

Sara: It struck my while watching (and rewatching and rewatching) that Saul is literally the only human on the planet who could have this conversation with her. He knows when to push and when to relent, when to raise his voice and when to lower it. He really does manage her. Likewise, she knows when and where to strike. It goes without saying that Claire and Mandy are incredible here. This scene is really a testament to how invaluable the foundation of watching two characters (and actors) develop a relationship, in real time, over ten years, is for the audience. It massively enhances the performances and the dramatic weight of the scene. 

Gail: Sara!! You are buying into my Ivan/Saul convo theory (from “A False Glimmer”)!! I agree with everything you said and would add that with all of that being true, Saul can’t possibly think Carrie is getting on that plane back to rehab willingly.

(Sara: Guess he should have gotten the handcuffs then...)

Gail: What a stunning shot. I gasped when I saw it. Not because Haqqani was turning himself in. That I expected. But how Carrie witnesses it and reacts to it. The last time Carrie was that close to Haqqani she almost shot him. I Khan’t believe how much things have changed.

Sara: Gail, khan you not? Anyway, I agree, it’s a stunning shot. I can’t properly articulate why I love it so much so: IJLTP.

Sara: I know the show did something like when Carrie woke up from being drugged in “Why Is This Night Different?” I won’t check, because I don’t care to revisit that episode ever again. Gail, can you verify? 

Gail: They did and it was eerily similar. Big difference though: Quinn was saving/protecting Carrie and Fibrooz is most definitely not doing the same for Max.

Gail: The bookend to the opening scene with Max. The flight recorder has made its way into another backpack, heading up a mountain. I LOVE the color in this scene and how the flight recorder is on a JOURNEY.

Sara: Quite possibly the funniest scene on this show ever.

Gail: This spy is heading into the cold...

Sara: “Carrie, no!” … “CARRIE YES!”

Gail: Yevgeny’s (partly faux) nonchalance (he sneaks a peek!) and Carrie’s focused stare say so much without saying a word. No looking out the window for Carrie this time, we know where her mind is at.

Sara: Carrie stares straight ahead. Yevgeny can’t help but turn and look at her. Truly iconic. I know I say that about everything, but this really is I-CON-IC! 

[thousandeyesand-one]

S08E01

Ok so here's where D&D suck. They try to create an "open to interpretation" kind of scenario with most female characters, arya is definitely there but nobody is given a hard time over it more than Daenerys. They never explain or make her explain the why's & how's, because they want daenerys to be the "bad ass dragon queen whose impulse has given the show it's many epic cinematic moments"

GRRM does something quite similar too. He writes characters as faulted as human beings are supposed to be, he likes to conflict a reader's mind in the most tiring way possible. He said afterall he believes Faulkner's words "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself".

He makes his character do an action/say some words that more or likely they HAD to. But then he introduces the consequences of the said action/words while at the same time he gives a reason & understanding of why such a hard decision was made/tough words were used. GRRM creates conflict in such a way that it is upto YOU. The Reader, to decide for themselves what they make of the situation. Which ultimately means it's only one's assumption to choose to believe the character was wrong because you choose to ignore the reason behind their action/words. While the one's who support the character chooses to accept the character not only with the reason behind the action/words but also with the consequences of it.

Your "hate" towards daenerys is just YOUR assumption, your villainization of daenerys is just YOUR assumption, your degradation of daenerys's efforts & experiences is just YOUR assumption. Not the actual story definitely not the author's intent.

The scene where daenerys takes the unsullied is the most bad-ass, jaw dropping & inspiring scene centered on a female character ever. When it dropped I remember GA being taken by how "bad-ass" she is. But now I see haters using Astaphor as a "brutality" condoned by daenerys. All because the show never cared to reflect upon a deeper more sympathetic thought process behind doing what she did. While tge book reading haters like I said above choose to ignore her reason & only care about the consequences.

Tv Show: "we never really get this sense .. of her capacity for cruelty. They are surrounded by people who are terrible people but haven't done anything to her personally. It's interesting to me how the sphere of her empathy widens the sphere of her cruelty widens as well."

-Dan Weiss ( X )

Books:

"I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn't have done that. He wasn't just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?"

"Some kings make themselves. Robert did."

"He was no true king," Dany said scornfully. "He did no justice. Justice . . . that's what kings are for."

– Daenerys III ASOS

The show never showed this side of daenerys's story GRRM is literally giving a reason behind what she is doing at Astaphor while in the future books you get the consequences of those actions, THAT'S HOW YOU CREATE AN INTERNAL CONFLICT IN A READER (&/or) VIEWER.

What D&D do with dany all the time is leave her reasons behind & only show her actions & the consequences. Which over time lead everyone to believe she is descending into some form of madness, that she is an entitled power hungry monarch & that she is actually being a villain! Ignoring the fact that D&D draw inspiration for the show from a book series whose author treats all of his characters in a conflicting manner. 

Something like that happened in s08e01. Am not talking about the s@nsa vs daenerys situation. I think it's a call back to Alaric Stark & Queen Alysanne Targaryen's relations. Alaric Stark was known to be cold & hard towards Queen Alysanne at first but eventually softened towards her in time being as he got to know her more. S@nsa stans don't need a reason to hate on daenerys so this storyline was like a gift to them to continue that petty hate.

No matter what their relationship prospers into I have to say s@nsa was being unnecessarily rude towards daenerys. Alaric Stark actually had a reason to be cold towards the Targaryens, his brother died defending the wall against a mutiny caused by some prisoners King Jaehaerys had sent to the wall. But there is nothing that daenerys did to harm the Starks?! S@nsa herself has no reason to hold a grudge towards daenerys or the Targaryens. The northern lords are being a bunch of ignorant fucks still dwelling on the politics of the past that which a "smart" person would overlook given the state of emergency they are in. Instead s@nsa is using that ignorance to incite more segregation in Winterfell. Knowing well that the wall was breached she is treating the dragons as a burden when girl! they are your best defence against the undead one that Night King controls. S@nsa might be smart but right now she is not acting smart!

Regarding the matter of food, I don't think s@nsa understands the level of danger that the oncoming army of the dead possesses against the living. Alaric Stark was judgemental of Queen Alysanne & the party that travelled with her because she wasn't necessarily there to defend Winterfell against anything, she was there on one of the many royal progression's that the king & queen did all over the kingdoms. But daenerys isn't here on some progress she is here to stand her armies beside the North men & Knights of the Vale in the fight. It is S@nsa's duty as the Lady of Winterfell to arrange for the food & other commodities for perhaps the greatest alliance northerners have.

I don't much tread into the doylism aspect of things but the way s@nsa said that she didn't account for the dothraki & the unsullied did she mean she was expecting Jon to die in the south? Because there was only two ways Jon's southern trip would go he might return with allies hence more mouths to feed or he might die. That sure don't sound all that smart of a deduction though!

When daenerys said "whatever they want" she defended her children reminds me of how everyone used to tell the direwolves don't belong inside the castle walls but out in the wild but the stark kids defended them anyways. Daenerys did the same thing too she defended her magical wild beasts who, just like the direwolves are dangerous & different.

Daenerys expecting respect from sansa isn't entitlement, Jon is S@nsa's king & daenerys is Jon's Queen. By that it is a certain decency to give daenerys that respect. In inside the episode video David nutter & Sophie say that s@nsa wants daenerys to know that this is HER home??! I mean daenerys doesn't want her home she wants your respect, she has a home it's called Dragonstone!

“No man has ever died from bending his knee,” her father had once told her.

“He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand. He who will not kneel stays dead, stiff legs and all.”

-the Kings Prize ADWD

I just can't wait until s@nsa softens upto daenerys like Alaric did towards Alysanne. So people can actually focus on other more important things in the storyline.

Then about the reaction Sam had when he learnt about his father & brother's death.. THAT WAS ABSURD. He clearly wasn't that sad when he learned of randyll's death but his brother's death affected him most. Which reminds me of a quote..

He wondered whether Dickon would shed a tear for his brother who died in the snow, somewhere off beyond the edge of the world. Why should he? A coward’s not worth weeping over.

-Samwell I, ASOS.

Do it now. Stop crying and fight, you baby. Fight, craven. It was his father he heard, it was Alliser Thorne, it was his brother Dickon and the boy Rast.

Craven, craven, craven. He giggled hysterically, wondering if they would make a wight of him, a huge fat white wight always tripping over its own dead feet.

Do it, Sam. Was that Jon, now? Jon was dead. You can do it, you can, just do it.

-Samwell I, ASOS.

Sam remembers his brother in the books with the likes of Ser Alliser Thorne & Rast. It is understandable that his heart might be broken to listen of his brothers death but to do what he did especially to the last remaining family of his mentor, Maester Aemon  Who treated him 1000x times better than both his father & brother.. Maester Aemon felt so passionately about Daenerys & he only trusted that information to Sam.

"No one ever looked for a girl," he said. "It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought... What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it." Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. "I must go to her. I must."

-Maester Aemon, Samwell IV, AFFC.

Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a Maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected."

-Maester Aemon, Samwell IV, AFFC.

Alleras stepped up next to sam. "Aemon would've gone to her if he had the strength. He wanted us to send a Maester to her, to counsel her & protect her & fetch her safely home." "Did he?" Archmaester marwyn shrugged. "Perhaps it's good that he died before he got to oldtown. Elsewise the grey sheep might have had to kill him, and that would have made the poor old dears wring with wrinkled hands." "Kill him?" Sam said, shocked. "Why?" "If I tell you they may kill you too" marwyn smiled a ghastly smile the juice of the sourleaf running red between his teeth.

-Samwell V, AFFC.

It is so awful that Sam has infact put the last two family members of Maester Aemon's blood against each other. He is treating Daenerys the way he treated Alliser Thorne when Sam realised if Ser Alliser becomes the Lord Commander his life would be hell so he literally uses Jon & raises him to be a Lord Commander in the hind sight to protect himself. When Jon actually (in the books) decides to fight for Winterfell & take stannis's offer.

Instead, he blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon’s heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. “When you raised him up to be the lord commander,” the old man answered.

-Maester Aemon, Samwell III, AFFC

“Dragons,” Aemon whispered. “The grief and glory of my House, they were.”

- Maester Aemon, Samwell III, AFFC

Not only was Sam's reaction a little over the top but it was wrong how he channeled it upon Jon as well. He ruined the most important revelation of Jon's life because of, again, himself. Jon also didn't seem to care about the fact that daenerys is related to her (lmao) but was more taken aback by Sam suggesting him treason against daenerys.

I do not want to play the oathbreaker, even for good reason.

- Jon VIII, ACOK.

Jon Snow flexed the fingers of his sword hand, remembering all he’d lost. Sam, you sweet fat fool, you played me a cruel jape when you made me lord commander. A lord commander has no friends.

-Jon X, ADWD.

"I had a frightening dream last night, m'lord," Dolorous Edd confessed. "You were my steward, fetching my food & cleaning up my leaving. I was Lord Commander, with never a moment's peace." Jon did not smile. "Your nightmare, my life."

-Jon VI, ADWD.

Daenerys: "We all enjoy what we're good at" Jon: "I don't!"

-GOT, s07e03.

Jon doesn't want to have power for the sake of power. Over & over again in the books & in the show he made it clear he did what he did to fight the Army of the Dead not for a crown.

Jon: "Do you think we can beat the Army of the Dead without her? I fought them sansa twice, you want to worry about who holds what title I am telling you it doesn't matter. Without her we don't stand a chance.. Do you have any Faith in me at all?

Sansa: you know I do.

Jon: she'll be a good queen, for all of us. She's not her father. 

Sansa: no, she's much prettier .... Did you bend the knee to save the North or because you love her?

-GOT s08e01

There are two reasons why anyone would bend the knee.

•Out of fear, fear of cruelty, collapse or death.

•Out of love & respect & trust.

Jon bent the knee to daenerys for the latter, that scene with sansa & Jon was cut off annoyingly leaving the argument hanging but there was more than just love, yes Love is there My god if this isn't what every jonerys stan had been screaming since s07 ended. But there was more than love, there was respect for letting him mine the dragonglass regardless of no existing alliance, there is also trust when daenerys actually not only let him go beyond the wall but also flew all the way there, solidifying the trust he placed in her to come to his aid without an alliance in place. 

Jon glanced over his shoulder. The shadow was there, just as she had said, etched in moonlight against the wall. A girl in grey on a dying horse, he thought. Coming here, to you. Arya. He turned back to the Red priestess. Jon could feel her warmth. She has power. The thought came unbidden, seizing him with iron teeth, but this was not a woman he cared to be indebted to, not even for his little sister.

-Jon IV, ADWD.

But instead he chose to be indebted to daenerys by asking for her help without giving her anything in return. Because he trusts her to be a good, reliable Queen & she won his trust.

Sam: "Don't you know?

Jon: know what?

Sam: Daenerys, she executed my father & brother. They were her prisoners.

Jon: ......

Sam: she didn't tell you

Jon: I'm so sorry. We need to end this war.

Sam: would you have done it?

Jon: I have executed men who disobeyed me.

Sam: you've also spared men thousands of Wildlings when they refused to kneel.

Jon: I wasn't a king.

Sam: but you were you've always been. Jon: I gave her my crown Sam. I've bent the knee am not King in the North anymore.

Sam: Am not talking about the king in the north am talking about the king of the bloody seven kingdoms.

.......

your mother was Lyanna Stark your father, your real father was Rhaegar Targaryen. You've never been a Bastard you are Aegon Targaryen true heir to the iron throne.

.............

You're the true king, Aegon Targaryen, sixth of his name, protector of the realm, all of it.

Jon: Daenerys is our Queen.

Sam: she shouldn't be.

Jon: it's treason.

Sam: it's the truth. You gave up your crown to save your people would she do the same?

She literally did the very thing in s07e06 when she left dragonstone with Drogon, Rhaegal & Viserion to rescue Jon.

Tyrion: "You cant win the throne if you're dead. You cant break the wheel if you're dead."

Daenerys: "So what would you have me do?"

Tyrion: Nothing. Sometimes nothing is the hardest thing to do. If you die we're all lost everyone, everything!"

Daenerys: "You told me to do nothing once before & i lostened to you ... am not doing nothing again."

There are moments in the story both in books & show where we do undeniably see daenerys put the people or her children ahead of her crown.

That morning she summoned her captains and commanders to the garden, rather than descending to the audience chamber. "Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver's Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on."

"You have brought freedom as well," Missandei pointed out.

"Freedom to starve?" asked Dany sharply. "Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?" Am I mad? Do I have the taint?

"A dragon," Ser Barristan said with certainty. "Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace."

"But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?" He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. "My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I've freed all over again." She turned back to look at their faces. "I will not march."

"What will you do then, Khaleesi?" asked Rakharo.

"Stay," she said. "Rule. And be a queen."

– Daenerys VI, ASOS.

Not that she must or she needs to give up her crown for Jon or anyone so Sam can be convinced with her being a good queen. Fuck that! Sam is being impulsive here (something that daenerys is blamed of, turns out everyone does it) she has on multiple occasions put her people first. Sam hopefully learns it in time because his knows I don't want him to be the A-hole he acted like..

If she had been some ordinary woman, she would gladly have spent her whole life touching Daario, tracing his scars and making him tell her how he’d come by every one. I would give up my crown if he asked it of me, Dany thought … but he had not asked it, and never would. Daario might whisper words of love when the two of them were as one, but she knew it was the dragon queen he loved. If I gave up my crown, he would not want me. Besides, kings who lost their crowns oft lost their heads as well, and she could see no reason why it would be any different for a queen.

-Daenerys VII, ADWD.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

– Daenerys V, ADWD.

The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

- Daenerys V, ASOS.

"We will have it all back someday, sweet sister," he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. "The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King's Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back." Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

- Daenerys I, AGOT.

She did take a dozen flasks of scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff them and she could see the big house with the red door once more.

- Daenerys VI, AGOT.

"He died for me." Dany clutched her lion pelt to her chest. Underneath, a sheer white linen tunic covered her to midthigh. She had been dreaming of a house with a red door when Missandei woke her. There had been no time to dress.

- Daenerys I, ADWD.

"Is it Daario? What's happened?" In her dream they had been man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door. In her dream he had been kissing her all over—her mouth, her neck, her breasts.

-Daenerys II, ADWD.

Dany had never known a home. In Braavos, there had been a house with a red door, but that was all.

-Daenerys III, ADWD.

Soon Dany was as clean as she was ever going to be. She pushed herself to her feet, splashing softly. Water ran down her legs and beaded on her breasts. The sun was climbing up the sky, and her people would soon be gathering. She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.

- Daenerys IX, ADWD.

Isn't it amazing how the very episode in which Sam raises the question "will she give up her crown?" is the very episode where daenerys said this 

She obviously didn't feel at home neither at Dragonstone nor at Winterfell. This romantic moment is the closest to a house with the red door this show has ever done.

Also notice how throughout the episode whenever Jon is speaking to others he refers to daenerys as Queen. But when he is alone with her by that waterfall he refers to her as "a southern girl". Jon loves the girl daenerys not "the floppy ears" of the dragon queen that she wears..

If she had been some ordinary woman, she would gladly have spent her whole life touching Daario, tracing his scars and making him tell her how he’d come by every one. I would give up my crown if he asked it of me, Dany thought … but he had not asked it, and never would. Daario might whisper words of love when the two of them were as one, but she knew it was the dragon queen he loved. If I gave up my crown, he would not want me. Besides, kings who lost their crowns oft lost their heads as well, and she could see no reason why it would be any different for a queen.

-Daenerys VII, ADWD.

"So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit." Does it matter that Hizdahr's kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?

- Daenerys VII, ADWD.

So the point is neither does it make sense for Jon to turn against daenerys all of a sudden for something like a title that he himself just said doesn't matter to him. Given that the third episode is where the battle for dawn is supposed to take place. Iron throne is not on Jon's mind. Plus I don't think Daenerys will be anything but shocked, confused yet happy to find a family member, none other than the son of her elder brother whom she idolizes, she is in love with Jon as he is with her!

A crown should not sit easy on the head. One of her royal forebears had said that, once. Some Aegon, but which one? Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. There would have been a sixth, but the Usurper’s dogs had murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast. If he had lived, I might have married him.

-Daenerys I, ADWD.

Ser Davos is already planning a better solution to all this. A just woman & an honorable man to probably get married!

Now I need Sam to somehow learn more & more about who daenerys actually is.

[coldkept]

                                        WHAT IS IT...                                       ASSHOLE DAY?

blood brothers papa roach // remember when bad wolves // where did it go  asking alexandria // sick like me in this moment // the sinner is you volbeat // dead memories slipknot // violence a day to remember // humble our last night // the old me memphis may fire // unbreakable of mice & men // someone like you ice nine kills // lifelines iprevail // savior rise against // this is war thirty seconds to mars // kill4me marilyn manson // happy? mudvayne // down bad dreamville // this love, this hate hollywood undead // 0 to 100 drake // king’s dead jay rock, kendrick lamar, future, james blake // hit ‘em up tupac 

drew has an impressive collection of vinyl, all of which happen to be hip hop albums. he says the beats sound better that way, and the music is more true to form when it’s coming from a record player. however, few know about this collection, and even less have actually heard it. 

he is one of those people that should definitely come with some sort of warning label, considering that he lacks the filter that usually makes most people more socially acceptable. he rarely puts an effort into hiding his expression, or immediate reaction unless it’s something that might betray emotions he has to actually talk about. this means, simple put, he’s an asshole...but not in the fun way. this is your warning. 

because of the fact that he is quite literally made of stone, his body temperature runs way colder than the normal human or supernatural. due to this fact, he is often mistaken for something of the undead variety, and rarely bothers to correct people who assume so. 

he was gifted sponsorship in return for protecting the town, much like his brother samael. 

drew is not at all fond of hunters, due to the roll they played in the destruction of his family. he also is not fond of those supernaturals who happen to be associated with the typical ‘christian holy’  sort of vibe. they were known to be some of the first to demand (read as slavery)  protection from his kind, and that grudge is held to this day. 

cover songs. he really likes cover songs of any kind, whether it be the collection of pop goes punk cd’s that are squirreled away in his house, or just some no-name band trying to get themselves started on the success of others. yes, give him that shit. he also attends all the open mic nights at the bars around the town, and karaoke nights for this same reason. 

he often will set up a lawn chair and cooler in the arena, especially if there is a battle or event scheduled and watch like a trailer park redneck. the possibly white trash tendency doesn’t bother him at all, he just likes to watch...and if anyone were to ask, he’d just laugh and explain that it was far more entertaining than watching scripted wrestling on tv. 

he has a poor sense of personal space when it comes to someone, or something that he’s interested in. this however, does not extend to people who try to violate his. 

speaking of which, drew is prone to violence as a reaction. this is another warning of sorts, because his reaction to stupidity or annoyance is gonna be ‘i’m gonna hit you’ 99% of the time.

while most might not assume he is cultured by first glance, he can speak, read and write several different languages. additionally, he’s often checking out books...with or without permission...from the library to brush up on his reading, as knowledge is one of the ultimate powers, in his mind. he also wears reading glasses. 

drew owns a dog called sauce. he 100% gives more of a shit about said dog than most people. 

he can SANG sang, like really sang. clearly he missed his opportunity on american idol, but whatever. we’re not bitter about it. anyway, he can often be found doing so when he thinks he’s alone, or when he’s working on something.

connections:

someone who worked with the council to recruit drew here when they heard that he was one of the last surviving gargoyles. they could have known he was Sam's long lost brother, or not. this can be discussed, obviously. motives for bringing him are also somewhat negotiable. 

someone/someone’s who knew drew and/or sam before their family was killed, although they would have to be old as shit and i would much rather this connection be discussed more in depth before it’s taken, so crawl into my dm’s or whatever 

one of the local bartenders, because of his tendency to show up to the open mic or karaoke nights, they could be gifted the title of ‘less annoying than most people’. 

someone who has taken issue with drew being gifted his sponsorship and wants to give him shit for it (i don’t advise this but whatever) or someone who has outwardly threatened him about it (again, not a good idea). alternatively, someone who is fascinated by the rarity that is instant sponsorship, and working from there. 

potential rescues, but again the warning here is that he rarely would take or tolerate a rescue. so, there needs to be a reason that this person has caught his attention, or something that has transpired between the two of them to make said person worth the hassle. 

someone or something that he has failed in the past. he has been separated from his brother for years, and in those years, he’s taken small jobs here and there. mostly, he’s kept it moving, but there are occasions that he settled down. this could have been one of them. alternatively, this could have been someone that he’d left behind when he was tired of the town or it had worn out its welcome (because of danger, emotional attachment, whatever).

a witch/warlock/ god/ goddess(this can be discussed more in depth later but like woo woo dun dun).

Lace here, as per always. Hit the like button if you want to discuss anything with him, or if you want a starter. 

[reactingwithexo]

Personality Analysis : Kim Junmyeon (EXO)

Personality Analysis Series : Chanyeol 

A/N: Someone requested I’d do our leader so why not? He’s such a sweetie I feel like I’ll be praising him during the whole thing. Hope you enjoy! 

Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist of any sorts and I have absolute no personal connection with the EXO members, so all displayed here it’s just a result of my observation and opinion. Long post ahead.

This will be divided in topics so it can be less messy.

First Impressions

In depth impressions

Development

Final thoughts        

1. First Impressions :

I clearly remember my first impressions of him being : 1. Wow, he speaks a lot, seems very friendly but also kinda boring (the genius here clicked one of those short interviews where EXO says a whole nothing and looks super uncomfy while Suho talks about every song on the album because he’s the only one who memorised everything), 2.He really seems like a God, 3. How can one look so handsome? wow. So yeah, I already felt he had a big sense of responsibility in him. I was entirely new to kpop so I had no idea such concepts as “leader” in a music group existed, but I guess he was doing something right because I could definitely feel that without even knowing it was a thing.

2. In depth impressions :

 Well, after I learned the kpop language and how it worked, everything made much more sense.

Let’s face it, he seems pretty perfect even after you’ve watched every EXO video ever.

But after you get to know more them all as a whole and realize all the struggles they’ve been through, my view of Suho changed, it actually changed for the better , because I only saw the perfect guy, but I started realizing he went through a lot of pain in a lot of occasions, starting out with the fact that he trained for 7 years and still people didn’t see him as one of the most talented members in anything, he got easily overshadowed when it came to his strongest suit, which is vocal ability.

And I obviously can’t ignore the fact of 2014, with Kris and Luhan leaving EXO, that put EXO, which was set to be the biggest kpop group, in an extremely difficult position, not only for the public but also for within the groups’ dynamics, themselves said that they had a lot of arguments during that time and there were days no one would talk to the other, so imagine getting the whole group dynamic broken all of a sudden, and the uncertainty of what the group would become or even if they would continue. It still breaks my heart that video of Suho accepting a win for Overdose the day they found out Kris was leaving for good, and he went there by himself to accept the award, with pure sadness in his eyes.

here’s the video subbed in case you have never watched (i just rewatched it and i have tears in my eyes kill me)

I can’t even 100% imagine what he had to go through that time as the leader of the group, the guy who’s the intermediate between the company and the members, specially when there in such a bad place as a group, and in the middle of their first tour...it only makes me prouder of Suho and of EXO for being able to pick their pieces together somehow for us.

3. Development :

I see most of the development of Jun when it comes to loosing up, he’s much more natural right now but still mantaining that way of his of being responsible, I think that loosing up also became apparent as the whole group became closer and more comfortable in all senses. Just the fact that EXO doesn’t really give a shit anymore to the whole ‘mysterious image’ that SM wanted them to represent, helped with the development of every member in the group imo, specially Jun, since he carries the “heaviest” burden for being the leader and everything.

I also can’t forget to mention his artistic development, something that is extremely overlooked in the fandom, and specially in the kpop community as a whole. This guy is maturing now as an actor (both in tv and in musicals), has had solo songs and collabs out (check out dinner here), he has developed his vocal ability to a great use, you can check on exo’s concert, he reaches higher notes now without all the effort he previously needed to make, and with much more confindent on his act as a perfomer and singer.

4. Final Thoughts:

Now onto my final thoughts, this man is just so full of love, not only with the fans and the group, but I mean, don’t you see the way he treats all the other members? and him and Sehun aka the most adorable brotherhood of modern times, he just cares so much, you can see he is the happiest when he is around EXO , even if they tease him to no end. 

Yes he is very responsible and can be serious at times, but he’s also such a caring goofball and he works so hard to keep everyone happy and all with a gentle touch. I’ve literally never seen him loose composture, since my first impression of him, I’ve noticed he’s just a special one, that’s why he is my favorite leader in kpop.

This guy is the soul of EXO (seriously, have you seen an interview without him? it’s a mess, they don’t know what to do, it’s beagle line screaming random stuff only)

I just hope he gets more appreciation always, sometimes he is overshadowed with no reason but I think we all know how precious, talented and important he is.

A/N: I’m sorry some of the gifs aren’t credited, I had to search for them on google, and anyways, sorry if this is bad or too repetitive, but someone asked me to do this and I was super on board , he’s such an amazing human. If you guys want for other members, just hit my inbox! Thanks for reading.

[douxreviews]

American Gods - ‘Muninn' Review

"Burn, baby, burn."

American Gods mostly gets its groove back after last week's misfire, Wednesday and Laura go on a literal trip down memory lane, and New Media finally makes an appearance.

Billie is not going to be OK with what happens to the library, however.

Interestingly, after my complaint last week about missing the Bryan Fuller signature soundscapes and dreamscape imagery, we open with exactly that. To be fair, that was probably largely due to avoiding the cost and logistics of actually showing a train derail after hitting a car on the tracks. Disorienting yet suggestive imagery combined with an off putting soundscape tell the story of a train v. car collision just as well and are much, much cheaper.

Whatever the reason, it was nice to have them back. It's interesting however, to note that there were several instances where the stylized camera work made it difficult to follow what was actually happening. For example, it wasn't entirely clear what was going on when Betty the Car reformed herself post accident. Were they reversing the footage of the car being crushed as a way to indicate the fractured way one of the characters present experienced that moment of the accident? Was it a visual metaphor? A dream someone involved in the crash was having? No, apparently the car was literally reforming itself, as it was sitting there good as new a few shots later. Another instance was when the scene transitioned from Shadow looking out of it in the wreckage to Shadow walking through some trees in daylight. All of the visual language of television was indicating that we'd transitioned to a dream Shadow was having, but we weren't, we'd just cut to later in the day when he'd gotten out of the wreckage and that hadn't been communicated to the viewer in a clear way.

Honestly, the whole immediate aftermath of the crash sequence just made you realize how good Fuller is at that sort of thing, because I can't think of a single occasion where he's used that same distorted imagery technique and it resulted in the action being unclear. At least, not in a way that didn't feel one hundred percent deliberate.

So, after last week's absolutely delightful pairing of Sweeney and Laura, this week we get Laura paired with Wednesday which worked much better than I was expecting it to do. It seemed odd at first that Laura would reject Sweeney and choose to go with Wednesday instead, particularly as she knows that Wednesday basically destroyed her entire life just to get her out of the way. She and Sweeney clearly were really connecting last episode, so turning on him for picking up her body parts off the road seemed like a forced way for the show to separate them. Then I thought about it for a minute and remembered that sabotaging her relationships with people that care about her is pretty much Laura's entire character description. Viewed with that in mind, the whole sequence of events makes perfect sense. It would have been nice if the show had made that point a little clearer. I hate to criticize a show for giving the viewers too much credit for figuring things out on their own, but in this case they could have stood to underline her motivations a little more.

Ah, Mad Sweeney. Pablo Schreiber continues to be the show's standout, and is more so every week. Thank god(s) that they kept both him and Laura around past their appearances in the novel and that they continue to give both of them so much to do. Hypocritically, I also feel like they probably should have cut Sweeney out of this episode after they left the funeral home, as all we really got of him were comic relief bits showing his bad luck road trip to New Orleans. But then, if they'd cut him out we'd never have seen the look on his face when he realizes that he's been 'rescued' by a Christian rock band, and nothing is worth that.

The thing that this episode felt like more than anything was a series of videogame side quests. Now, I'm not a gamer myself. I have an inherited tremor which makes trying to use a game controller kind of a pain in the ass. But my understanding of the whole side quest thing is that at various points in the game you have to stop working toward the main goal of the game, whatever that may be, and instead fulfill a little side mission, or earn some money, or solve a puzzle or something. That's what this episode felt like to me.

Taking the side quests in order, Laura and Wednesday head off to find another old god that has allowed himself to be co-opted by the new gods because Wednesday wants to kill him and somehow doing that will 'recharge' the coin in Laura's chest that's keeping her alive and making her superstrong. Again we continue this episode's theme of not explaining things properly, as it's never really made clear why killing Argus will do that, plus we're all pretty sure that Wednesday is lying to Laura the whole time anyway, which it turns out he is but the coin recharge thing still works anyway because reasons. Having accomplished that, Wednesday immediately betrays Laura and leaves her stuck in whatever Argus' realm is supposed to be. It might possibly be a TARDIS, there were some very distinctive roundels in that last hallway.

Great job with the design of Argus, by the way. This is our first god that we've seen who doesn't look like a standard human to us as his standard desktop theme and they did a great job making all of the eyes look real and disturbing. The fiber optic cable bundles that writhed like serpents were also a nice look. I don't recall ever seeing anything quite like it.

Technical Boy and New Media are also on their way to see Argus, because Mr. World wants them to... um... scold him for not updating his Norton Antivirus or something, possibly? Again, it's not entirely clear what they're there to do. You might be seeing a theme here. Similarly vague are New Media's actions with Argus. Was she actually betraying Mr. World to join an alliance with Argus? It would make sense, as he represents watching and she represents being watched, but if that's the case shouldn't Technical Boy have reacted in some way to that development? Instead he just politely stands back and doesn't stop Laura from killing Argus, then he and New Media leave without even mentioning it. And I've been remiss in mentioning it, but Bruce Langley really deserves a lot of praise for his work on this show. It's hard to play a character that irritating in a way that isn't irritating to the people watching at home, and he pulls it off.

Then we have Ifrit and Salim, who head to the corn palace to pick up a magic spear, as you do. Instead of the corn palace, they end up at a strip club called the Porn Palace, whose neon sign has a faulty first 'P,' making it appear to be a 'C' at first glance. That was a cute reveal. There they pick up the spear with no incident from a Lakota trickster god named Iktomi, who was played by the always wonderful Julian Richings, who many will remember as being the definitive Death over on Supernatural. This plotline felt the most perfunctory, and probably could have been replaced with a line of dialog later on down the line, but it's always nice to see Mr. Richings.

Lastly we have Shadow and his new friend Sam Black Crow, who gives him a lift to the storyline's next destination. Again, not a lot happens here and Sam feels very much like a mouthpiece for the writing staff to muse about things philosophically, but it works. Mostly because Devery Jacobs has an indefinable charm about her, but also because it opens up the concept of Two Spirit gender identification, which more people should know more about.

Quotes:

Wednesday: "Ah, Mrs. Moon. Did we sit on a wall?"

Mad Sweeney: "You just gonna lie there, let nature have her way with you?"

Laura: "Are you eating me?"

Sweeney: "Coward? I saved you." Laura: "I’m dead, coward." Sweeney: "Well, you’re welcome for picking up all your gory little f**king pieces up off the road."

Ibis: "The advantage of love at first sight is it doesn’t require a second look."

Technical Boy: "How the f**k is that an upgrade?" This felt like the writers pre-empting complaints about New Media. It probably was intended as such.

Wednesday: "So, you’re working on faith, huh?" Laura: "I definitely wouldn’t use that word."

Sam: "You ever hear of the Crow nation warrior named ‘Finds Them and Kills Them’?" Shadow: "No, but he sounds very efficient."

Laura: "Please. Tell me more about what I want."

Wednesday: "What’s the worst thing you can do to a book?" Laura: "Um.. Ignore it..?"

There are not words for how much I love the Hello Kitty collar on this shirt.

Bits and Pieces:

-- It's awfully convenient that Laura was literally blown to pieces in the train crash and Shadow only got a little bruised. But then, her body is actively decaying, so I supposed she'd be more explodable.

-- I know I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I have to say it again. A lit cigarette will not ignite fuel, no matter how many TV shows and movies show it happening. It will either be smothered by the liquid before it gets anywhere near generating enough heat for combustion, which doesn't happen in the liquid but happens in the off-gasses, or it will smolder until it burns out unless by some miracle the off-gassing reaches LEL (Lowest Explosive Level) before that happens. Please stop.

-- You could, however, use a lit cigarette to start a fire in a library full of parchment. It would take a little effort, but you could do it. But despite having a lit cigarette on hand at the time, Laura takes the easy route and uses a match.

-- It seems that Sweeney's bad luck only hits him when he's not around Laura, which sort of makes sense since he's also near his coin at those times.

-- It's interesting that Sweeney is still heading to New Orleans to see someone who I presume is Baron Samedi, since he was only going there to help Laura and she's not with him anymore. That's sweet. I hope he's the one who rescues her from Argus' domain.

-- Sweeney seemed genuinely hurt when Laura chose to go with Wednesday instead of him. I'm 'shipping those two so hard.

-- Argus isn't in the book, nor are any of the Greek Gods. Neil stated that he decided against featuring any of them since they get used so much more often in popular culture.

-- New Media just isn't working for me yet, although I know it's way too early to judge. I miss Gillian Anderson's celebrity impressions.

-- Laura's dad was a drunk. Now we know why he wasn't at the wedding. No word on if he's dead or alive.

-- I wonder what Wednesday is going to need the seedling for?

I know I'm sounding like I didn't enjoy much about this episode, but that's really not true. There was a lot of good stuff here, and many, many little details that show that someone was really putting their heart into it. I just wish that some of the storytelling had been a little clearer.

Three out of four creepy eyeballs.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water

[johnnymundano]

First Reformed (2018)

Directed by Paul Schrader

Written by Paul Schrader

Music by Lustmord

Country: United States

Language: English

Running Time: 113 minutes

CAST

Ethan Hawke as Pastor Ernst Toller

Amanda Seyfried as Mary Mensana

Cedric Kyles as Pastor Joel Jeffers

Victoria Hill as Esther

Philip Ettinger as Michael Mensana

Michael Gaston as Edward Balq

Bill Hoag as John Elder

(Confession: All images stolen from the Internet. We’re all going to hell anyway.)

In which Paul Schrader, a man whose last movie I bought from a pound shop makes a movie with goofy Ethan Hawke as a sad vicar and…it’s my favourite movie of 2018? Damn straight it is, Poncho. In First Reformed Paul Schrader creates a gloriously stark and sedately paced meditation on the question, how can we survive in the face of despair?

First of all, the Ethan in the room. Ethan Hawke. He’s okay, right? Never a chore to watch, but hardly a heavy hitter. A pleasant enough addition to any cast. Well, that was before First Reformed. First Reformed is movie about revelation and Ethan Hawke’s Ernst Toller(1) surely is a revelation. Toller, predictably enough, is the umpteenth iteration of Schrader’s evolving portrait of (Thomas Mann’s) God’s Lonely Man, and, like the Whitman said, he is large, he contains multitudes; he is the refined essence of all the God’s Lonely Men who came before him. Given Hawke’s predecessors in this ever mutating role include such titans of thesping as Robert De Niro, Willem Dafoe, George C. Scott and Richard Gere, the fact that his (Ethan Hawke’s!) performance can lounge comfortably amongst them is perhaps the biggest surprise in First Reformed. Appropriately enough, watching Hawke as Toller you will feel the scales fall from your eyes; Ethan Hawke (Ethan Hawke!) is not a lightweight screen presence, he is, in fact, an actor of the top tier. It helps that in First Reformed he’s given top tier material by a true auteur going at it like he’ll never get to go at it again. First Reformed is Schrader at the top of his mature game, exerting an iron control over material driven by an icy rage. And Hawke (Ethan Hawke!) is more than equal to the task. The boy done good.

1) A toller is defined as “a person who rings church bells (as for summoning the congregation) bell ringer, ringer. signaler, signaller - someone who communicates by signals.” There is some irony here as Toller’s congregation is small, but he definitely communicates via signals, particularly so at the close of the movie. Oh yes, particularly then.)

Everyone else has to act in Hawke’s daunting shadow, so it is absolutely to their credit that they still shine so brightly, so fiercely.  I doubt many people other than his immediate family thought that Cedric the Entertainer could portray such a smoothly venal and slyly manipulative Pastor, while still appearing wholly human and relatable. (Mind you, Brummy funnyman Lenny Henry made a creditable Othello, so who the hell knows?) Michael Gaston is great as Edward Balq (2), the bad businessman who ambushes Toller over apple pie and thinks maybe it’s God’s plan to fuck up the world for cash. And he’s no one dimensional greedy meanie either, he is part of Schrader’s dramatisation of humanity’s struggle with The Bible’s (typically) contradictory command to both tame the world and also to preserve it. The abysmal weight of the latter burden falls on Philip Ettinger, as Michael Mensana (3). Ettinger is worryingly convincing as a man who clearly can no longer control his own mind. This tortured soul is desperately using his last scraps of rapidly fleeing reason to prevent himself from doing an unforgivable thing; either via the humane intervention of Toller or via other, more drastic measures. Amanda Seyfried is harrowingly vulnerable as Michael’s wife, Mary Mensana (4), but she also brings the core of steel essential for survival in the fallen world, a core which her husband, Michael, fatally lacks.  

2) “Balq” is a phonetic ringer for “balk” i.e. to hesitate or be unwilling to accept an idea or undertaking.

3) Mensana alludes to “mens sana”, the Latin for “healthy mind”; it is used ironically for Michael. His mind is unhealthy.

4) Mens sana is used literally in the case of Mary. She also deserves its use in the wider sense; Mary embodies Juvenal’s phrase “mens sana in corpore sano”. She is “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. Her pregnancy is a sign of health and hope. Also, she’s called “Mary” and is pregnant in a movie thrumming with religious tones both over and under; I don’t think we need Sherlock Holmes to puzzle that one out for us.

Things are being said in First Reformed. Things weightier than “Tom Cruise can save the world without chipping a nail” or “uptight businesswomen need to unclench so wacky men can love them”. All true and valuable lessons, no doubt, but they aren’t what’s being said in First Reformed. Of course, something is usually being said in a Paul Schrader movie. That’s the way Paul Schrader rolls; like the thunder. Paul Schrader has been knocking about movies for what, five decades now? Since 1974 anyway, when The Yakuza was filmed by Sydney Pollack from a script by Schrader and his brother, Leonard. It was a good start; an entertaining geriatric action movie, involving an aged Robert Mitchum steamrollering his way through the Yakuza, while delicately pining for his war-time love. A little bit of playing in the Hitchcock sandbox aside (Obsession, Dir. Brian De Palma, 1979), this potent fuel of meditative violence would form the core of Schrader’s early offerings, with Rolling Thunder (dir. John Flynn, 1977) and, particularly, Taxi Driver (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1976) refining the approach. Movies like Blue Collar (1978) and Hardcore (1979) also displayed Schrader’s interest in alienation, guilt, dehumanisation, guilt, sexuality and spiritual inquiry. And guilt. Sure, such themes were certainly less immediately arresting than hook handed ‘Nam vets and tonto taxi drivers, but with American Gigolo (1980) Schrader successfully intertwined all his major themes, high and low, into his first critical and commercial career maker of a knockout. That same year saw the release of the Schrader scripted Raging Bull (dir. Martin Scorsese). Top o’ the world, ma, in effect.

There then followed the ‘80s and, for Schrader, what appeared to be a “kid in a candy store” phase.  (Legal note: no one said “nose candy”) Given the freedom Hollywood success bestows, Schrader  indulged his more personal fascinations via his own scripts and those of others. Schrader having more going on upstairs than most in La La Land, this led to mixed results; his study of the celebrated Japanese author and coup instigator Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) clearly being of more artistic value than his study of Nastassja Kinski’s bare arse in his remake of Cat People (1982). But I have watched the latter far more than the former, so who am I to judge? Somewhere in this wayward and invigoratingly fun period is a movie about kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst (1988) and an adaptation of Paul Theroux’s Mosquito Coast (Dir. Peter Weir, 1986). And I’m pretty sure few filmographies contain a musical starring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett (Light of Day, 1987) and a Jesus movie which managed to upset various touchy Christian groups, including that of his own father (The Last Temptation of Christ, Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988). A real cinematic fruit basket; lots of fun, something for everyone.

But after the party comes the hangover, alas, and the early ‘90s for our fascinating firebrand seemed somewhat listless and directionless. At best. Schrader working with Harold Pinter sounds dauntingly awesome, especially with Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren on board, but the result was a stodgy Europudding adaptation of Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers (1990). (Walken is amazing in it though, true.) Then in 1992 there came Light Sleeper, a perfectly fine movie, a pretty damn good movie in fact; if you ignore that it’s basically American Gigolo for drug dealers, with a soupcon of a last act shootout for Taxi Driver/Rolling Thunder flavour. It’s probably Schrader’s best ‘90s movie because it magpies from all his earlier, good movies.  A TV movie starring Dennis Hopper which used fear of witchcraft as a metaphor for the ‘50s Communist scare (Witch Hunt, 1994) sounds…interesting. (I haven’t seen it.) And the lean period sputtered out with a script contribution to City Hall (Dir. Harold Becker, 1996), a movie which despite a class pedigree stubbornly refused to ignite. No period in Schrader’s filmography is a total loss, but there was a clear lack of  artistic traction in those six years.

Maybe even Schrader noticed, because in 1997 his work flowered anew with the release of both Touch and Affliction. As if invigorated by the source works, Schrader produced one of the best ever Elmore Leonard adaptations (an even greater achievement given the atypical nature of Touch. Christopher Walken is excellent in it, obviously), and an appropriately despairing staging of Russel Banks’ grim novel of dysfunctional families and DIY dentistry. As to the latter it would be lax to fail to state how incredible James Coburn is as The Awful Father. I’ve never seen Forever Mine (1999), so for me Schrader’s ‘90s closed on a high with the adaptation of Joe Connelly’s Bringing Out the Dead (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1999). A fine high-octane night-in-the-life-of-a-paramedic parable featuring a lively cast kicking out the jams; all led by a truly great Nicolas Cage before his fall, before his face started adorning novelty sequin cushions.

In 2002, with Autofocus (from Robert Graysmith's book “The Murder of Bob Crane”) Schrader went back to the well of morality and debauchery he had been lightly dipping into throughout his career, and this time chucked the bucket in further than he had since Hardcore, drawing up a weighty, but darkly comic, look at the corrupting influence of images. Pretty ballsy for a man who trades in the things. It was a great start to the 2000s, so obviously it immediately turned to shit. So shit in fact most of the movies from this period appeared without my noticing, were difficult to source, or were disowned by Schrader himself. Not exactly Paul Schrader: The Glory Years. A 2005 Exorcist prequel was yanked off him by the studio and re-edited and re-shot under Renny Harlin. The Walker (2007), was really good with Woody Harrelson as a gay “professional companion” to older women accidentally uncovering Washington corruption; a kind of Light Sleeper for gay consorts. A really good movie, but nobody noticed. In 2008 Adam Resurrected occurred without my noticing, as did The Canyons (2013). In 2014 I did notice The Dying of the Light was taken off Schrader and re-edited by the studio so, without wishing to cause offence:  **** that one. And this is where we came in...last year I picked up Dog Eat Dog (2016) on Blu-Ray in a Pound Shop; it was…very energetic, very hectic; a post fall Nic Cage and a never-even-stumbled-once Willem Dafoe were obviously having fun. I kind of dug it in a weird way, but Schrader definitely looked like his best days were behind him. Then I heard he was doing a movie with Ethan ****ing Hawke as a sad vicar or something. Hoo boy.

HOO BOY! indeed. Cover my face with egg and fry it in a pan! Yeah, Paul Schrader made a movie with Ethan Hawke as a sad vicar or something, and it was one of The 3 Movies I Loved in 2018. (The others, obviously, being Mandy and Let The Corpses Tan. I’m sure everyone agrees.) Schrader, the wily bugger had just been playing possum; letting his energies build, fermenting his themes, you know, getting ready to put out some fires with gasoline, as someone sang over the credits to one of his movies once. Filmed in the hypnotically discreet Transcendental Style so dear to his heart First Reformed is the “Paul Schrader movie” par excellence. It’s all been building to this one, kids!

First Reformed is a heartbreaker, a goddamn beautiful heartbreaker of a thing, it moves soft as a breeze and punches you in the heart like LaMotta on meth. The everyday becomes numinously stunning under Schrader’s soporific direction; the mundane is exalted; an indefinable mysticism hums through every scene; every performance is pregnant with the preternatural. Schrader lays his transcendental groundwork so well that when the movie makes a late lurch into magical realism it doesn’t jar, it just feels right; no, it just feels perfect. In First Reformed, terrible, terrible feelings are going on behind ordinary people’s faces; terrible, terrible feelings Schrader’s camera miraculously, tenderly, delicately captures like snow settling on an outstretched tongue. So, no, slow cinema doesn’t have to be boring cinema; only bad cinema is boring cinema. And First Reformed is good cinema. First Reformed is great cinema. First Reformed is Paul Schrader taking back the crown. Turns out everyone else was just keeping it warm.

[juvoci]

9 January 2021

9 January 2021.

3:54 PM.

So, I’ve written about writing fiction on this blog before, and this much has become clear to me: It seems that I enjoy writing about fictional worlds, rather than writing stories within those fictional worlds.

So, in this blog post, I’m going to write about a fictional world that I’ve been creating, and perhaps someday I’ll publish a novel or something of a story within this fictional world.

But, until then, I’m just gonna write about it. But why am I writing this on my blog? Why am I publishing this for all the world to see?

Because, well, I have this weird mental thing, which I can’t seem to figure out, nor seem to change... and that weird mental thing is this notion that, if something isn’t immediate relevant, I can’t really find the motivation to work on it.

In other words, I need to work in real-time in order to feel like my work is meaningful and thus be motivated to actually work on my work work work work work work... shoutout to Rihanna and Drake.

So, yeah. I’ve found that if I just publish my work (almost immediately or instantaneously; and even actually immediately and instantaneously, when I stream on Instagram Live or YouTube Live or Twitch TV, etcetera), then I have much more motivation to actually continue working.

Whereas, when I don’t publish my work (almost) immediately, I start to feel... disconnected, irrelevant, lonely in the work.

I guess I just like sharing stuff. I want my work to be an ongoing conversation, not something I slave away at by myself for days upon days upon days and then release to the world.

My friend Zane recommended that I write Flash Fiction. No, that’s not the right name for it. What is it called? It’s this kind of fiction where, every few days or every week or whatever, the author releases a new chapter of the story. Well, I don’t know if it has a name, but it’s a good idea. I might try that in the near future. If I forget, please remind me.

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

It is now 4:07 PM. I’m feeling a little antsy, so I’m going to do some exercise — yoga, weight-lifting, etcetera — to release some energy. BRB.

4:17 PM. Random thought just occurred to me. Another reason I like publishing my writing immediately is because I like talking to people. When I write and publish in real-time... it’s as if I’m talking to you, the reader.

Only losers go to school. I taught myself how to move. I’m not the type to count on you. Because stupid’s next to "I love you".

So what can you show me, that my heart don't know already? 'Cause we make our own sense, and you're qualified to me.

— Lyrics from Losers by The Weeknd featuring Labrinth

5:01 PM.

A beautiful and hilarious quote by Lucky Yates. He tweeted it on the day of the Capitol Attacks in Washington DC.

I should post a vlog on YouTube about my experience with marijuana. The flower has played an interesting role in my life thus far.

5:12 PM.

Cracks create beauty, and beauty is broken.

5:56 PM.

Oh, yeah, I was gonna write about my fictional universe. I’m making some coffee right now. It’s a little late for coffee... but today feels like a coffee kind of night.

So, anyways, the universe I’m creating is called Universe 1830. First, I’ll explain what exactly this universe is, then I’ll explain why I’m creating this fictional universe.

So, what is Universe 1830?

Well, like I said, it’s, um, a fictional universe. Just like any other universe, it has stories, locations, characters, history, culture, technology, etcetera. You can think of Universe 1830 as a sub-universe of the larger Universe (the Absolutely Infinite Universe). (Or maybe the Universe of all Universes, or something.)

The numbers make it interesting because then you can imagine infinite universes numerically. For example, Universe 1, Universe 2, Universe 3, Universe 40, Universe 50, Universe 60, Universe 700, Universe 800, Universe 900, Universe 1000000 Universe 2000000, Universe 3000000, Universe 4000000000, Universe 5000000000, Universe 6000000000, Universe 7000000000000... I think you get the idea. INFINITE Universes.

And then Universe 1830 is just right there in between Universe 1831 and Universe 1829. (Impressively, pretty close to Universe 1, actually.) (Just kidding, the numbers are arbitrary, simply for labeling purposes.) (Maybe someday I’ll play around with these numbers.)

So, yeah, Universe 1830 is a sub-universe within the larger literally completely infinite Universe.

Universe 1830 has its own canon. And, for now at least, this canon can only be written by me, this individual, Juvoci. Perhaps, in the future, I’ll permit other writers to write within the 1830 Universe. But, for now, I will preserve that right for me alone, for the sake of keeping 1830 a contained project.

Of course, anyone can write fan fiction for Universe 1830, if anyone is so inclined. All such writing will only be part of the “1830 Fan-Fiction Universe” unless I adopt it into the Official Canon.

Get it? Got it? Cool. Moving forward.

Why am I creating this fictional universe?

There’s a few reasons.

1 — Writing fiction is a great way to explore and discuss real world issues. By using fictional locations, places, names, characters, histories, etcetera... I can explore real world issues in a different context and without name-dropping. (But that isn’t to say that I won’t name drop. 😏)

2 — I love writing fiction. Contemporary Fiction, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Fiction, Historical Fiction... it’s all good fun to me! I just love writing, language, ideas, worlds, universes... I just love it.

3 — I can’t think of any more reasons.

6:19 PM.

So, yeah, I guess that’s what and why. Did I miss anything?

Listening to music by Victor Norman right now. It’s like dark and minimal Drum and Bass... or something. Right up my ally, whatever it is. Good stuff.

Oh, another reason I want to create a fictional universe is because this world we live in now is messed up in so many ways. I feel like we, as a global society, need to start telling ourselves a different story about what this world is. We need a new mythology. So I’m hoping that potentially by creating this fiction universe called 1830, we can meld and blend our real-world mythology with this fictional mythology and hence create a new story and context for ourselves and thus create a better Earth.

Like, for example, different “realms” or “planets” in Universe 1830 worship certain pantheons of gods; and we here as humans on Earth can use these gods as symbols and heroes and idols and signposts. These gods can give us motivation and direction.

And later, in this blog, I’ll talk about some of the gods.

But, remember, I’m literally going to be building this universe in real-time, while blogging on the internet... so not everything I write is immediately canon. I might make edits later.

That being said, I am going to create a wikipedia (either on this website or on Fandom or both) which keeps track of the characters, locations, stories, yada yada. So this blog will sort of act as a “sketchbook” for Universe 1830, and the wikipedia will act as a sort of “logbook” for Universe 1830. I’ll elaborate on this further, in the future.

6:32 PM.

💜 This is my favorite heart emoji, by the way. Although, I wish there was a pink one. There is a pink one, but it has some shit on it or something.

7:04 PM.

So, Ora is perhaps the first character I should talk about in Universe 1830, because Ora was the first character I ever created for Universe 1830.

So, who is Ora? Well, Ora is... alot of things, lol. I created him in 2015... so he’s been developed for awhile.

But, yes, Ora is a male, a man, a he. I suppose, that is the first thing you have learned about Ora.

Now, does this mean that Ora has a penis? I don’t know, maybe. At certain points in Ora’s existence, he is a male human... so I suppose that, yes, Ora, at certain points, has a penis.

The only reason I mention that last bit is because of the interesting things happening in pop culture regarding the difference between sex and gender. Honestly, the debate is beyond me. I say, “be whoever you wanna be” and “I’ll call you whatever you wanna be called”. So, yeah, I guess that, when I say “Ora is a male”, I’m basically just saying that he was born with a penis, and likely still has one (assuming he’s in human form). (“Human form?” you’re asking. Yes. Ora has more than one form. I’ll cover this later.)

But, also, I suppose that, when I say “Ora is a male”, I’m also saying that his masculine energy is stronger than his feminine energy. Now, what exactly the difference is between masculine energy and feminine energy is... complicated, and not something I even completely understand. It’s more of a... feeling. Stuff just feels masculine or feminine to me. It’s hard to explain. It’s almost... an emotion. Maybe I’ll dive deeper into this topic another time.

But, let’s get back to Ora. Who is Ora?

7:15 PM.

Like I said before, Ora has multiple forms. So it can get a bit complicated when we talk about what or who Ora is. But I’ll begin from a place of simplicity; when Ora was a human.

(I suppose I should write all of the lore in past tense? As if all the events of Universe 1830 occurred back in the day? Perhaps? Not sure yet.)

Ora was a human in the Realm of Zunora (a realm which has many other names) on Planet Zunora (a planet which has many other names).

Who is Zunora? Zunora is a god / goddess. (Zunora is known to appear in both male and female forms, so I’ll henceforth refer to Zunora as he, she, and they. That being said, Zunora appears most often in her feminine form... so I’ll usually refer to Zunora as female. She tends to reserve her masculine forms for when she needs to be dominating. Deeper voice, bigger frame, etcetera. Classic biological differences.)

(Fuck, I’m writing in present tense now. Whatever, screw worrying about tenses. 😂)

For the sake of convenience, I’ll simply refer to Zunora as a “god”. Honestly, in my mind, “god” can apply to male and female gods. Even distinguishing goddess from god is kind of insulting. They’re all just gods, they’re all just actors, they’re all just princes, etcetera...

So, yeah, Zunora is a God. Zunora is a God of Light. Her colors are yellow (or gold), black, and white. Zunora is a God of Inspiration, Creativity, Radiance, Spark, Lightning, Electricity...

Indeed, Zunora is a God inspired by the Sun. So any (or at least most) of the Sun’s characteristics, are characteristics of Zunora. The name Zunora comes from the English translation of Sun Aura. (I will explain the history of language in the Realm of Zunora at another time, and at that time I will explain exactly what I mean by “English translation”. But, in short, it’s an effort to maintain the “realism” or at least “realistic feeling” of the “fictional” universe.)

That being said, when Zunora was created, she was created to be the aura of the Sun, and not the Sun itself. In other words, Zunora is symbolic of the light surrounding the Sun... but not the literal Sun itself.

Now, you may have noticed that “Ora” and “Zunora” are quite similar in that they both have “ora” in them. Look at you, Einstein! Atta-boy! Ehem. Sorry.

But, yes, Ora is derived from Zunora. (Or, perhaps, Zunora is derived from Ora? Queue the suspenseful music!) Just exactly why Ora is named after Zunora is something I’ll probably cover in a story about Ora. (A story which I’ve already finished some percentage of and I hope to publish someday.)

8:21 PM.

Sorry, got distracted by the news. Watching Reuters videos about the Capitol Attack on January 6. Reuters is a great news source. They are more diverse, (relatively) less biased, and less anxiety-inducing, than other news sources. I highly recommend checking out their videos at reuters.com/video.

It’s amazing how many military factions there are (and have been). The FBI, the Maryland National Guard, the Capitol Police, Antifa, the US Coast Guard, the Red Army, the People's Liberation Army, the Korean People's Army... I mean the list goes on and on and on...

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more understanding of why militaries exist. Peeps be fucking shit up, and sometimes we need an elite force of trained soldiers to stop the fuck-uppery. That being said, I still think that, at the end of the day, violence isn’t the answer. I still hope and dream for a world without violence. And I think we can achieve it.

I’m a believer! I couldn’t leave her, if I tried!

Then I got the idea: 1830 will be a non-violent military force. We use our minds to inspire change, not physical force. Sounds kinda corny, right? Whatever.

Oh, by the way, 1830 is different from Universe 1830. 1830 is a real-world community, while Universe 1830 is a fictional universe. Hm... this could get confusing. Maybe I should give Universe 1830 a second and more practical name. How about... Fable Union? Sounds good. Universe 1830 is now also called Fable Union. Great.

So, yeah, 1830 is a religion, a non-violent military force, and a... newspaper?! Surprise!

Yes, 1830 is also a media outlet, a digital magazine (and perhaps someday physical), a newspaper.

Sigh... 1830 is alot of things. Lots of potential. But only Time will tell what it truly becomes.

Stop looking at me like that. Yes, I am aware that I’m a little crazy. (Just kidding, I’m 100% sane. Just kidding, I’m not. Just kidding, I am.) (I am.) (Seriously.) (Okay, not that seriously... but... seriously enough.) (Wtf am I talking about?)

8:36 PM. Jeez. I’ve spent like the entire day writing. Cool.

But, yeah, 1830 is a platform for intellectual and political conversation.

Let’s get back to talking about Ora.

8:48 PM.

Maybe I should just continue writing the fictional stories about these characters, instead of explaining it all here, because I feel like... if I keep writing about them in this format, I’ll end up just spoiling the stories... and that’s no fun, right?

But everytime I try writing the fictional stories, I lose motivation, as I mentioned in another recent blog post. Hm...

Fuck it. Let’s talk about something else. I need to think more about how I wanna approach Universe 1830. Sorry for the false alarm! Oops, I mean Fable Union (also known as Universe 1830).

Let’s talk about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency in general.

Firstly, I wanna post a screenshot. In the Economics Explained Discord (great YouTube channel, highly recommend it), I simply asked this question: Thoughts on Bitcoin (or Cryptocurrency in general)? And I received some pretty interesting responses. Here is one of the most interesting responses I received:

Don’t stare at money too long, it’s Medusa! — Kanye West

Sorry, just thought of that for some reason. It’s true, though. Yes, what a wise intuition that was! Before we begin talking about cryptocurrency, which is money of course... let us acknowledge that we must not over-indulge in money! Fair warning.

But, yes, let’s go over this interesting response regarding Cryptocurrency.

This Discord user (whom I won’t name, for the sake of privacy... but if you read this, and want me to credit you, let me know), begins by saying a bunch of stuff about oil and Ethereum and petrodollars, but I don’t quite understand what he’s (I’m guessing it’s a dude, because most people on Discord are probably dudes, but I don’t really know for sure) trying to say here. Please let me know if you understand. But, moving on...

Something he says, which is super interesting to me, which is why I exclamation-point-emojied it, is “The whole idea that supply cannot be changed is just false.” And, at first, when he said this, I was like: “Wait, whoa, what? Isn’t one of the major points of Bitcoin that it has a limited and thus scarce supply? But this statement by this anonymous Discord user completely contradicts that.

But then I thought about it... and, wait a second, I think it might be true! What if a government, slowly but surely, built itself around Bitcoin, such that it held Bitcoin as its central currency, and then could export subsidies and import taxes, as it pleased, through Bitcoin, in order to control the supply and demand of Bitcoin.

In other words, control of Bitcoin’s availability, through subsidies and taxes, is essentially synonymous with control of Bitcoin’s supply.

In other words, being able to control Bitcoin’s value, by controlling its availability, is essentially the same as controlling its supply.

See what I’m saying? I’m honestly not sure if I’m making myself clear, or making any sense. It makes sense to me, anyway.

So, in other words, yes, there will (supposedly) only ever be 21,000,000 Bitcoins in existence. But manipulation of Bitcoin’s value is about the same as manipulation of Bitcoin’s supply.

HOWEVER, if Bitcoin becomes the GLOBAL RESERVE CURRENCY for ALL countries... then it should be more stable, because then there will be competition, and not a monopoly, over the Bitcoin’s income and outcome, and thus value.

This is actually the best result, in my opinion; that Bitcoin becomes the Official Global Reserve Currency. The OGRC...? 😂 Official Global Reserve Exchange... or OGRE. 👹 Lmao.

9:40 PM.

If Bitcoin became the world’s official reserve currency... that would be dope. Why? Because it actually does, numerically-speaking, have a static supply. This means that governments, corporations, individuals, nobody can create Bitcoins out of thin air (unlike dollars *cough*).

That’s why Bitcoin is such a great reserve currency. And other currencies, like the US dollar, the Chinese yen, the Russian ruble, and Ethereum (ETH), can be backed by the value of Bitcoin.

Just as a side note, I wanna acknowledge how awesome of a name Bitcoin is. Hats off to whoever came up with it. I mean, it is kind of an obvious choice, no doubt. But it’s so beautiful in its obviousness and simplicity. It’s a great name. There are some other cryptocurrencies with great names too, though. Tether, for example, is a great cryptocurrency name. (Although, I’m not sure whether or not Tether is as good an investment as it is a name...)

Returning to the anonymous Discord user’s posting, I’m gonna define a few terms he mentions, for you and for myself.

petrodollar : In America, the petrodollar is any US dollar paid to oil-exporting countries in exchange for oil. The dollar is the preeminent global currency. As a result, most international transactions, including oil, are priced in dollars. Oil-exporting nations receive dollars for their exports, not their own currency.

blockchain : A system in which a record of transactions, made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, are maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network.

smart contract : A computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control, or document legally, relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. A self-executing contract, being directly written into lines of code. This code exists across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network.

I was going define unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) and account-based chains... but it turns out that they’re just super technical terms that aren’t super relevant to the average consumer... so I’ll just skip over those. You can research them on your own, if you’re interested.

11:21 PM.

Got distracted again. Starting to get pretty tired.

The Discord user says that Ethereum has a higher throughput than Bitcoin. This means that transactions can happen faster on Ethereum (I think, but please correct me if I’m wrong). I’ve heard that Ethereum might end up being a currency which is used more often, but uses Bitcoin as its reserve currency.

10 January 2021.

1:37 AM.

Yeah, I’m pretty tired now.

I just played some Magic the Gathering (MTG) for the first time in months. I actually streamed it on Twitch. It was quite fun, honestly. I might continue. I really love that game. It’s a great game.

I used to be a pretty competitive Magic player. For a brief time in 2019, I was ranked in the Top 400 players worldwide on Magic Arena.

5:44 AM.

I feel pretty distracted, in life, generally-speaking. Modern life demands my attention in too many directions at once. I’m glad to be moving to Oregon soon, into the wilderness, for awhile.

Focus is so important.

“There must be a better life...” he says, “somewhere... beyond.”

6:17 AM.

Part of me honestly thinks that the whole fictional universe thing is kind of dumb. But I think I might just be over-thinking it. I think I think? Yes.

But seriously, I feel like it could be dumb. But then part of me loves it, and wants to keep building it. I’m not sure how to feel about it.

Is there a way for me to continue working on it without feeling like it’s kinda dumb? Or is it just actually kind of dumb?

No, I don’t think it’s just dumb. I think I just haven’t put enough effort into it to make it seem like something that’s actually cool. Maybe it will just take more work.

Bear with me. I’ll figure it out. Someday.

Loading . . .

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Spider-Man 3 (2007)

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart Dec 7, 2016)

Ah yes... Spider-Man, one of my favourite marvel superheroes.I remember that there was talk about making a live action Spider-Man in the early nineties and James Cameron was gonna direct it. Some time later in the early twothousands I started to get confirmation that a live action Spider-Man movie was indeed in production. (Directed by Sam Raimi though, but he directed Darkman, which I liked, so he seemed like a good pick.) Before this there had been mostly DC in the cinema when it came to comicbook superhero movies, and pretty much only of two of the most wellknown heroes DC had, Superman and Batman. And it was mostly Batman. In both cases the franchises started good but got dumber and worse with every sequel. It seemed like Hollywood just couldn`t make good superhero movies. Then an X-Men movie came out. Maybe not perfect but at least it understood the sourcematerial. Then came the Spider-Man movies. After waiting for ten years was it everything I hoped it would be? Not quite to be honest, but don`t get me wrong, I did like it and it was good. It had all the basic things that Spider-Man should have; webswinging, a colourful supervillain (both metaphorically AND literally), Mary Jane, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, fights, people being saved, badassery and great powers followed by great responsibility. I would have preferred a different look for Green Goblin though. Give him a costume closer to the comics, but with pants instead of bare legs.Then came the sequel and I liked it even more, it felt like the logical next step for the characters of the first movie to take. Then came the third movie... maybe not bad per se but it felt like a step down from the second movie. If you like it I can understand, it has some redeeming qualities but still... it had more subplots and characters than it knew what to do with. It seemed like Hollywood, once again, just couldn`t make good superhero movies. Anyway, it`s here now on my constructive criticisms. So let us see, in my very subjective editorial, how I would have done it differently.

With great power comes great SPOILERS Sandman, Gwen Stacy and the butler Lose them. As much as I like Gwen, she wasn`t necessary for the story. She was only there so that MJ could get jealous, and it just feels like a step down from how MJ was written in Spider-Man 2.I do like the moment where Flint Marko has been turned into sand for the first time. You can tell by his body language that he`s thinking: "Dear god. What have I become?" But his story takes time and focus from the symbiote plot-line that, in many ways, is the spine of the movie.The butler wasn`t in the first two movies, not noticably anyway, but that`s not the problem. If he knew that Spidey didn`t kill Norman why didn`t he tell Harry that sooner? On the fence: Topher Grace A part of me thinks that Topher Grace was a bad choice for playing Eddie Brock. I would have prefered a little older actor because I think that the idea of Eddie competing against Peter, a much younger and more successful photographer, would only add more fuel to his inferiority complex that would drive him to become Venom. On the other hand: Maybe Topher Grace would have been better as Eddie if the script had been better. So: either keep Topher Grace or replace him with (and this is just some of my personal picks) Jeremy Renner or Nathan Fillion.

Story: The beginning is pretty close to the beginning of the movie that we got: things are going well for Peter and he goes to see MJ perform on stage. In my version however her performance isn`t singing but acting. She performs in a stage version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (she plays a supporting role, but it`s a wellwritten and important role). After the show is over Pete congratulates MJ and meets Harry Osborn who he tries to reason with but Harry is still hellbent on revenge. Before Pete meets Aunt May to tell her that he plans to propose to MJ he bumps in to Eddie Brock who is in a hurry and doesn`t have time to chat with him because he`s "chasing a big scoop". A masked terrorist named Sin-Eater is mentioned a few times on newspaper headlines, he`s kinda like the unabomber in this universe. (Yes, Sin-Eater is gonna be in this one, but he doesn`t play a big part.) Pete gets attacked by Harry Osborn and they fight, but instead of Harry knocking himself out and losing his memory he chases Pete into an abandoned old building that he demolishes with lots of grenades. There`s no sign of Pete in what`s left of the building but Harry knows that he must`ve escaped. Since Harry knows Pete`s secret identity Pete knows that Harry might use his loved ones to get to him, so he tells MJ to get out of town with Aunt May. MJ reluctantly agrees to this and tells Aunt May that she thinks it would be good for them to get a little time of their own for a little female bonding. They leave early the next morning. Pete does his usual shtick, superheroing as Spider-Man and selling his photos to Jameson but all the time doing so while looking over his shoulder, fully aware that Harry is out there. (Yes, I know that he has spider-sense that warns him, but still.) When Pete`s at the Bugle he bumps into Brock who has just finished talking to his dad on the phone, or rather, his dad`s answering machine. Here`s where we get a little human moment from Brock where he tells Pete that he and his dad hasn`t talked to eachother for some time. He then runs away to "chase his big scoop". We get one scene where Harry visits Aunt May`s house to find that no one is home (thus validating Pete`s paranoia). He smiles confidently and shakes his head. "You`re a clever boy Pete, you knew what I was gonna do." Meanwhile at Aunt May and MJ`s hide out: May realises that there`s something odd about this very sudden "female bonding" trip that MJ practically forced her to join and wonders if there`s someting going on that MJ doesn`t want her to know. Is it about Peter? Is he in trouble? MJ tries to calm her down and says that there is nothing of that kind going on. Aunt May pretends to accept MJ`s explanation but senses that she`s lying, MJ herself feels awful for lying to May. Later that evening at Pete`s apartment: Peter collpapses on his bed after a long day. The black goo that attached itself to his moped on his date with MJ (Yes, I`m going with the movie`s version of how that happened.) comes out of the shadows and devours Pete. Spidey wakes up hanging upsidedown outside a building, looking at his reflection in the window. He feels more confident and powerful. He goes out swinging and finds a masked terrorist who`s about to blow up a mall. Spidey beats him up and uses more violence than necessary. He stops himself from killing the terrorist, webs him up and leaves him outside a police station. Pete doesn`t like what he just did, he almost killed that man. Criminal or not, that`s just something that he shouldn`t do. Could it be the suit? Is it making him more aggressive? But then the suit clouds his judgement and he tells himself that he has everything under control, what happened was just a one-time thing. The next day the police arrests the terrorist who turns out to be that Sin-Eater that has been mentioned in the news. Since Sin-Eater has been caught Brock reveals to Jonah what "the big scoop" that he chased earlier was. All this time Brock had been telephone-interviewing Sin-Eater who had told him a lot about his life-philosophy and about how "decadent he thinks our secular society is". Jonah likes it, it`s extremely in depth. Brock could win the Pulitzer prize for it. Hearing this makes Brock beam with pride. That same evening Spidey is out webswinging and runs into Harry. They fight. At one point Harry uses a sonic grenade and here`s where we learn that the black suit is vulnerable to loud noises. Spidey gets the upper hand, goes really violent and almost beats Harry to death. Harry manages to escape and all of this has been caught by a guy with a video camera. It later ends up on the late news and is seen by MJ. Once again Pete feels bad for going too far and once again the suit makes him think that it wasn`t a big deal.The next day Brock`s interview is published in the Bugle. Jonah congratulates him in his office when Brock`s phone suddenly rings. It`s Sin-Eater! But wait a sec, isn`t he in jail? Maybe he used his one phone call to call Brock? But then Brock (and Jonah) finds out that the man calling doesn`t know that Sin-Eater is in jail, the man calling isn`t even Sin-Eater! All this time Brock was interviewing a mentally ill man who pretended to be Sin-Eater. (The man also has no TV or easy access to the news paper, that`s why he didn`t knew that the real S-E was behind bars.) This is bad! Todays newspaper has already been printed! Jonah fires a distraught Eddie Brock. Later that day MJ comes to Peter`s apartment. (Yes, Pete told her and May to stay out of the city to be safe from Harry, but right now Harry`s not much of a threat compared to Pete.) She saw Spidey`s and Harry`s fight on the news and thinks that he went too far. They start to argue and Peter pushes MJ into the wall... just as Aunt May walks in and sees it. Pete realizes what he`s done and runs out of his apartment to be alone. He sits on top of a building to think, sees a church and gets an idea. He uses the loud noise from the churchbells to rid himself of the alien suit. Eddie Brock happens to be in the same church at the time. After the suit has been separated from Pete it looks for a new host and finds Eddie... who turns into Venom. Pete returns home to his apartment (with clothes that he has taken from some church-charity thing) where May and MJ are waiting. (It`s his apartment after all and they don`t have the key, so they can`t leave it unlocked.) After some talking MJ forgives Pete and a few minutes later May does the same. After this Pete (as Spidey) swings over to Harry to patch things over with him as well. (He is of course smart enough to realize that it`s not gonna be a walk in the park.) When they meet we see that Harry`s face has been damaged from their latest fight and he doesn`t want to reconcile with him. He doesn`t want to fight him either but he wants him to get the hell away from his property. Somewhere else: Venom kidnaps Jonah, takes him to a construction site and soon gets Pete`s attention thanks to the news. Spidey suits up, swings to the site and tries to reason with Eddie, but Eddie won`t listen. He says that he and the suit has a "symbiotic relationship" and after that he starts to refer to himself in plural ("we" and "us"). He knows that Spider-Man is Peter because the suit told him that. Spidey and Venom fight. After a few blows have been delivered Eddie says to Spidey: "Can`t sense when I`m coming, can you? That`s right! The suit knows all about your little extra warning sense! And it knows how to not trigger it!" Harry sees their fight on the news. Spidey manages to incapacitate Venom long enough to break away from the fight and rescue Jonah. But then Venom gets the upper hand and knocks Spidey out. He`s about to kill Spidey when... Harry comes to the rescue! Harry and Venom fight, Spidey manges to regain consciousness just in time to see... Venom stabbing Harry with his own hoverboard! Spidey fights Venom and defeats him (or "them) the same way he did it in the movie. (Harry is strong enough to still be alive, he pulls out a grenade that he throws to Spidey that Spidey throws at the symbiote.) Eddie isn`t desintegrated by the blast, just knocked unconscious by it. Pete and Harry say their good byes and Harry dies with peace in his heart. The next day Peter visits Aunt May, gives her the ring back and says that he`s not ready to marry MJ yet, maybe some day but not in a near future. The next day Pete, MJ and Aunt May go to Harry`s funeral. Next we see MJ and Pete (in Spider-Man costume but without the mask on) on the roof of a tall building staring at the sunset.

The End Mid credit scene: Eddie is in the hospital in a coma. We get a re-play of the moment when the explosion killed the symbiote and knocked him out. A close up shows that a small piece of the symbiote managed to escape. Back to Eddie in the hospital: the symbiote is outside his window, it sneaks in and devours him. We get a close up of one of his eyes as he wakes up from the coma. Yes, I know, my version is not much better than the official version. Even in this one Venom doesn`t appear until the third act. But with Sandman and other distractions gone we at least get more time to explore Eddie and understand his goals and motivations. When I first came up with this I was originally not going to have Venom in it. I was gonna use Lizard since he had already been mentioned and shown in the first two movies and it felt like a waste to not use him.   

And no: I`m not gonna do a CC of the The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Because A: I don`t want my gallery to be filled with thousands of editorials. I want my visual art to outnumber (or atleast be in equal quantity to) my written stuff. B: Spider-Man 3 has been on my CC list for a couple of months while TASM 1&2 haven`t been on the list at all. (Not that they don`t have a few things in them that I would like to change though.) If I were to give them the CC treatment I would sum it up like this: a: Don`t reboot them, make them sequels. It is possible to make sequels with a new director and a new cast. Just saying. Or b: Just stop after Spider-Man 3 and let the rights revert back to Marvel.

[stuffminusthings]

SomeWordsFromAMillenialTurning30InAWaySoHipsterYou’llNeverGetTo

Last year on my birthday, on my phone before I got out of bed, I read a story in the local news about an 11-year-old boy who, like me, had a birthday. Just on a different day. But his birthday came early on his clock, and with a condition that makes basic motion incredibly difficult. His family was selling lemonade to buy him a bicycle so that he could enjoy life at a speed of his own discretion.

I couldn't stop crying, so I got my things together, called my mom to find out how to get to the softball field where the lemonade stand was set up, and dropped off a fraction of a bike payment for a boy who really, really should ride like all kids should, but was maybe a bit bashful about all of the attention, and went on my way.

And now it's birthday season again, and, surprisingly I'm still in the same town.

Surprising.

Sure, in my 30 years I've lived in 8 states. From ages 18-28 I usually moved within a month of my birthday. Getting a job post-90's isn't the 90's. Spending my youth around different sets of people every few years makes moving on something I've already gotten over.

When I turned 29, I could have moved to another state again, sure. And a few months later, waking up in a different bed, I was sure I was going to have to move again to find a new job.

But it only took a few months from my birthday to find out why the boy was bashful.

It's a strange thing to spend nearly 30 years doing whatever you damn well please, and then to wake up covered in drool in a hospital needing a wheelchair with no recollection why. After spending most of my life viewing accommodations for accessibility as an excuse, I was determined to not let my injuries get in my way. Give me fentanyl, and, I know for a fact that I will be caught on foot, trying to escape the hospital hours after fracturing my pelvis in 2 places, and also my pubic bone, and my ribs, and a couple vertebrae.

But after the comedown, something hit me more powerfully than an F-150.

The millennial are the first generation in centuries to be raised before society could react to itself. We were only just barely hanging on before then. The industrial revolution changed everything. Work happens without human energy now.

But, nothing happens without energy.

Anyone offering help for energy we can't measure often receives the only tangible rewards. Sure, we're all hanging around for the after life, but if I know anything about death now, it's that it's lights out. I can't account for energy I can't understand, so I'm not going to.

Sure, you can bet on whatever you want after the lights go off, but you're only allowed to account for your own energy while reading this. Oh, you're screen is on? Guess you accounted for your own electricity. That's about how much effort you need to put into the afterlife. Oh no power?

It's not like you like reading this crap anyways.

But if you're not suddenly checking the weather...

We can create our own intelligent design by helping those around  us with the things we've already done.

I can't stand that it's been 30 fucking years and we're still selling lemonade to buy a kid a bike so he can feel the wind in his hair

There is a life to be made in caring for what you do have, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the things you are caring for.

Often times, we don't notice the things we need to care for until they need care.

It's tough to feel the need to care about anything you don't know when you go to kindergarten in Hollywood Hills.

If you look at older maps, the Negaunee, Michigan neighborhood where I played tag in at recess was Labeled “Hollywood Hills.” The modest midwest print map relics represent a lingering resentfulness between elements of the working class taken to the highest degree of sarcasm.

I love where I come from. But it takes actually standing in California and on the shores of Teal Lake to really get the joke. Otherwise it's just second hand.

And thanks to the internet, we can do anything second hand. #vanlife

Van life, if you're doing it for anything other than recreation, is fucking stupid. It gets old when you're on your fourth stint in a van and sick of the fact that it takes an hour and a half to find a safe place to take a shit in the morning. Just to start working. You were cavalier enough pissing onto the sidewalks of what was questionably marked a school zone the night before.

Tell that to anyone who hasn't had to do that yet in their van adventures, and well, they'll tell you what.

I lost my license for 6 months thanks to Michigan's Graduated License Program after 3 speeding tickets where I was definitely speeding all three times, but all three police officers got arguments about me speeding “not that much.”

The last time, I even argued that I'd been in the car with my police officer father and watched him use his badge to get out of speeding, and that it was bullshit that I was getting a ticket.

I got my license back the day before I moved into a van for the first time. I felt so cool chasing the sun West into the wild unknown just like on TV.

I wasn't wrong then, if I've learned anything from my poetry degree, it's that we're all living our own home videos.

Pure objectivity isn't possible. We make objective nature shows, and then forget that we're in one.

What other species spends all of it's time making better and better dioramas?

We are surrounded by people who go on the news to talk about fake news, while the average citizen with a cellphone is often the most unbiased source. Tourists expect to do the things they see in tourist videos, because they want to know. Know what they are supposed to do. Pride in knowledge can be blinding. Anyone who works at a tourist destination will tell you that.

Go to Mackinaw Island after dark, and don't bother trying to sleep. The bison in Yellowstone? Not quite as annoying than the cattle in Oregon. For sure.

If a sign of intelligence is recognizing ones self in the mirror, but what about the ability to pull away?

I drove through Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, California, New Mexico, Colorado, New Mexico, and finally got pulled over  and didn't get a ticket in Nebraska where I was going exactly 5 over while exiting a construction zone. I didn't argue that time because my parents had just split up, and only one of them knew, and I needed to get home. I didn't get a ticket for the first time in my life.

The point of creating a god was to remind us that an alternate, objective perspective is possible. But in a species full of “C” students reading spark notes, the details of the message gets lost.

The crime isn't failing to understand the content, the crime is failing to make something for the “C” students to become “A” students. If they like video better, that isn't going to change. You stubborn teachers. If everyone gets an “A,” we'd probably just move on to better things to teach.

I know because I probably got a “D” senior English, where I was told I “couldn't possibly” have read Macbeth in Elementary School in Arizona. I don't know for sure because I still haven't picked up my last report card or my diploma. I knew that in the scale of things, passing tests from that school didn't mean register.

Power, not technology, kept church services in dead languages until only recently. I was taught Macbeth by a teacher who moonlighted as a Comedian, who censored out the scenes with the porter. The only words of the play I actually read in high school were “nose-painting, sleep and

urine.”  I knew the rest already from a man whose dreams, I hope, consisted largely of telling jokes.

We're getting closer to realizing objectivity now with media. Security cameras already see everything as it happens, but limited only to where they are pointed and what their sensors can record.

God creates man in his own image and vice versa. And that's all anything is, an image, sure we make “better images” that show more and more of what's happening, but we can't even physically see what's happening. We know this only because we have instruments that we made to look for things we think of in a way we comprehend. Things Fall Apart.

Sure there might be evidence of a higher power somewhere. Regardless, it's not going to affect how anyone feels unless it changes the way they feel happy. Thanks to the progression of cave paintings to the printing press, emoji's still make the most sense. People who spend all their time writing will take offense to this, but as emoji's are more accessible across a variety of languages across the world, reading text-based communication will soon become an education of luxury.

There's no need to burn books if people don't know how to read them. Try burning the Aztec Calendar that literally everyone has seen—or at least thinks they have. Try reading the hidden features on a LaserDisc.

If it's a sign of intelligence to pull away from the mirror, where is it that the same species makes a video camera, and then realizes that it is only part of a bigger movie?

If some species is watching me right now, on my 30th birthday, it would probably comment “That one sure went a whole lot of places before going nowhere.”

But I'm only a container of ideas. As long as they spill out well I'll be satisfied no matter where I am.

It's the idea that the best ideas should be kept at the top that keeps them from spreading.

Shakespeare, makes South Park make sense, but I grew up being told not to watch one and hating the other. And I had to figure out for myself that together, they are wonderful. But that's the age we live in. Embracing the past while denying the inevitable future is irresponsible. The Swedish skier kid on TV in the  Olympics was right, Wu-Tang is for the children, but not the way most of us experience it as Americans.

It's probably a good thing Americans don't care about big guns as much these days. The world's largest shotgun, parked right next to the world's largest chainsaw, didn't even make the local news when I almost died in sight of them.

But, it was a foggy day.

I'm just guessing that the most excessive of consumerism burned itself out in the 90's—I was there. My parents built a house and a pool out of loans with jobs that they were sure would satisfy them forever. Everybody was doing it. The fountain-of-whatever-you-want was made in a hill range that was there before the fountain but only named after it.

You can't just build a house and get a job every few years forever. Materials run out. The incredible concentration of our Nation’s wealth, and the mismanagement of it, created dozens of artificial populations that don't produce their own food or energy. I know. I spent a decade in Arizona. At one time, Gilbert, where I lived was the fastest growing city in the U.S. We went from 1, to 5 high schools where I was one of over 2000 kids. That was never gonna work. At some point creation for the point of consumption burns out in the desert. Just ask the Hohokam.

My next run in with the law was 8 years and a couple continents later in New Mexico. I was speeding through a canyon between Raton and Angel Fire totally lost and with a nearly empty tank while driving my grandmother's Anti-Abortion sticker laden jeep. I explained that I was speeding, and I was confused.  I got directions to the nearest gas station.

When it was my turn to crash came I felt so slick to be at home in a place that worked off a crash with the cold-war-hype and was making the best of it.

Now I live in a place where there is more fresh water than anywhere else on earth, there are more trees and forests and trails than almost anywhere on earth. And nobody noticed that in the 90's because the winters here are too cold, and construction too remote. In fact almost everything we use is imported.

It took a lot of wandering around to see that. But in 30 years of traveling, I'm still on the same ground. Earth.

On my 30th birthday I want to stop trying to be like anyone but myself, but that person knows it takes other people being themselves to do that.

I'm doing my best just to feel normal, when I was already fucking weird.  But if I don't accept the new me, and embrace the changes I need to make in myself to be able to embrace those around me as well, well I'll be just that.

Fucking Weird. With no patience for lemonade stands.

[chaosmagetwin]

The Wild Adventures of Ashley and Paul: Prologue

Ashley stared at the empty bowl in the sink, one green eye twitching.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Despite the calming action, her tail twitched angrily. After a few more moments, she finally yelled out loud. 

"WHERE IS MY FUCKING! PUDDING?!"

Silence followed, and it took a few moments before a heavy step sounded just outside the kitchen door. "I ate it." She snapped her head to look at the man standing in the doorway, his too wide shoulders taking up half of it, even though one of the shoulders wasn't even visible yet. The rings in her horns jingled for a moment and she propped her fists on her hips. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, he spoke again. "You used butter in it. You know I can't resist that."

"You don't even have a stomach anymore!" She ranted. "I made that pudding for me! It was vanilla and strawberry!" Her tail swished through the air, and she winced as the tip accidentally clipped a cupboard handle. "It's my favorite..."

"I thought we agreed to never use butter for that reason again? I thought we were going healthy?" He stepped through the doorway the rest of the way, and carefully slid a chair so he could sit in it. She glared at him as he sat down, but waited. "I might not have a stomach anymore, but I still have tastebuds." He smirked at her as her rage deflated. "Besides. I won't gain weight. I've got an... iron stomach." He sniggered as she rolled her eyes at him. 

Ashley sighed and picked up the bowl with one hand. Not even a little bit left. She jumped as the doorbell rang. "Who the hell?"

"Hey, Language, potty mouth. Keep the cursing for the humans." He stood up again as the two of them headed for the front door. The moment they opened it, Ashley burst out laughing. "Well, if it isn't the guy who never shuts up about toilet paper!"

The large man in a business suit outside her door sighed, and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. "That was one story, Ashley. How is The Wild House treating you two?" The Author stepped inside, looking around, a pen tapping his clipboard. "I see there's no damage yet. Surprising, considering your heritage and Paul's size..."

Paul sighed. "Yes, please, come on in. Would you like some vanilla pudding?" Ashley shoved her elbow into his ribs and winced as it hit hard steel. The Author looked up at their nervously grinning faces and shrugged. 

"I'm afraid I don't have that sort of time today. I'm just here to inspect the house and make sure you two havn't killed each other. I need my characters alive, after all. How is high school?"

"Apparently, Character High School is terribly racist. Being part demon kind of sucks. or a cyborg." Ashley spoke slowly at the wall, choosing not to look at The Author.

"Yeah. Apparently, half demons should be slutty and sucking out... 'souls'... and cyborgs need to have laser beams, have no emotions, and no sense of humor. I literally cannot pun or joke in class without everyone staring at me and trying to figure out if i am being dead serious or not. Sarcasm is literally impossible."

"Yes, those are the stereotypes... And you are fighting against them?"

They both nodded, although Ashley gave a shrug too. "Apparently my anger is because I'm a demon, and not because I'm pissed that they are both objectifying and demeaning me. Also, Paul is hilarious. Usually." The Author scribbled furiously on the clipboard, nodding. He walked past the two of them without even looking up. "And have you been following your character arcs?"

"You mean... studying?" Authors are so difficult to understand. Why can't they just talk like normal people? Ashley thought. "I mean, yeah. It's school."

"Mhmm." He passed by the kitchen and stopped to stare inside for a few moments. He made some sort of noise as the two of them stared inside as well, wondering what he was seeing.... or not seeing. "Show me to your bedrooms?" he had phrased it as a question, but it was toned as an order. The two of them sighed. Dealing with The Author was never easy. When Ashley had first saved Paul, neither of them had thought they would be recruited by The Authoritative Agency and forced to live together. Phrases like 'incredible backstory' and 'fascinating characters' were thrown about as a house was purchased for them and the short yet large Author was assigned to them to study and learn... for something. The AA wasn't exactly understood by anyone outside of it. They'd been placed into a highschool filled with people like them, although they were a little more human. Some were going to grow up to become 'hard boiled detectives', while others were already working as 'magical girls'. What any of that meant to Ashley or Paul was unclear. 

The short walk up the stairs to visit the bedrooms was punctuated by The Authors' 'hmm's and 'aha's. Ashley opened her door for him and watched his face as he looked in. She bit her tongue as his face lit up with delight. "Ah, yes, perfect, quite perfect indeed." Her eye twitched dangerously, and Paul put a hand on her shoulder before she spoke. "I quite like the decorations. Girly, yet dangerous. Fitting."

She looked into her room as Paul and The Author moved to his room. For a moment, she wondered what exactly he meant by 'dangerous'. Her wall's were a nice neutral beige color, and most of the floorspace was taken up by a simple wooden dresser, a desk, and her red blanketed bed. The floor was not as clean as she wanted, with some books lying about here and there, a pile of clothes shoved into the corner, and a plate of old food half hidden under her bed. The only 'dangerous' thing was the pulsating flesh telephone she used to keep in contact with her mother, or, more likely, for her mother to keep in contact with her. Even the window had a bland look outside.

Her thoughts were interupted by The Authors cries of "No, no, this is all wrong. Wrong! This can't be here! Ah, you need you get rid of this."

She looked over at Pauls room and watched as now Paul's face twitched with anger. He had better control over his emotions than she did, but obviously this was bothering him. "What's he complaining about?" She asked casually.

"The books. Apparently, since I choce a muscle-bound body, I can't be intellectual."

Paul's room had quite a few more books than hers did. In fact, it was where she got her books; four bookcases lined the walls, with a desk shoved between two of them, and half of the other acting as his dresser. His closet was impossible to access with a bookcase in front of it. All the shelves, except those holding the few clothes he wore, held books. In the center of the room was the bed, with a simple blue blanket covering it. 

The Author harrumphed and stomped out of the room, then glared at Ashley. "Show me to the bathroom."

"Wow, jeeze, can't you date a girl first?" She asked automatically, her eyes flicking to Paul’s face to see his reaction. She grinned as Paul's face lightened and broke into a smile as well. "It's this way." She led the way, and opened the door. "Shouldn't you know where all this is anyways?"

"Of course I know where all this is. It's polite to ask." He stepped into it and jotted a few notes down as she sighed, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. She didn't know exactly how he did it, but The Author was in control of how her life went now; how good her grades were, what happened during the day, whether a cute boy would hit on her, or an ugly one. He was like a god she despised who was also a mortal. 

"How do you two entertain yourselves?" Paul was the first to answer. "Books and jokes. Occasionally T.V. and video games."

Ashley gave a shrug. "Video Games, occasionally books, and trying to cook. Depending on your mood, it sometimes even turns out well."

"You aren't supposed to be good at cooking. Those were just strokes of dumb luck." She glared at him as he revealed the truth. 

"Well, I like to! Can't you change that?!"

"No. Show me where you play." She clenched her hands behind her back, but her tail and face gave away her real emotions. Paul stepped in front of her, his massive back taking up her view for a moment. 

"It's right this way, Author, Sir. Just down the stairs. Out of curiousity," he asked as they moved downstairs, "How are we supposed to eat?"

"With forks and knives, of course." For a few moments, everyone was silent, before he corrected himself "And you're supposed to go out to eat. Sorry, i work with many strange creatures. Some of them ask me that question, and I have to take it seriously."

Oh, fuck, he wasn't even joking, thought Ashley. "Isn't that expensive?" She said outloud. 

"The two of you don't have to worry about that. Your background gives you leave for that sort of expense." He looked in the living room, and made a 'hmmm' noise again. "Show me the games you play." Ashley sighed and entered the living room. It was decently sized, yet rather empty; a card table took up one 'half', even though it was no where near actually taking up that much room, while the television and couch properly took up their half. Next to the mounted flat screen they had saved up their allowances to buy were two dressers that held all their games, while a coffee table below the mounted TV held the console and the controls with long cords. She headed to her dresser and opened it. Most of her allowance went to the games, with a solid portion dedicated to food. "These three are my favorite." She tossed them to The Author, who read the names out loud.

"Seraphim's War, Call of Guns, and Final Fiction twenty seven? Why these?" "... I like fighting games, shooting games, and I like the main character in the last one." She said carefully. She put her hands behind her back and wrapped her tail around one leg. She didn't want it to smash into the TV if he said something that angered her again.

"And yours, Paul?" She glared at The Author as he completely ignored her choices. Not even a compliment for taste!

Paul moved to his dresser and opened it, pulling out his favorite three. "Uhh, Love-Love Dance Machination, Cyberspace, and The Dating Sim GrandMaster." Ashley rolled her eyes. So did The Author

"Well, at least both of your tastes are unique. Should have had your genders switched." He muttered. "Oh well. It's written now. I have to go, now. Alien House calls." he waddled for the front door. "I'll see myself out. Be careful in the coming days. Your story is about to get Wild."

[misterbitches]

Im not intelligent at all. In the conventional sense. The ramblings of a girl who just has sooo much going in in her head it's constant. But im not a genius. Or that confusing.

It just sounds like I am bc fandoms have this issue where they can JUSTSO point out the issues in soletiing. They can pick and prod and go oh problematic! But then you go to name the problems and the difficulties within society like for ex: the idea of representation in general. Salivating over it. How fucking sad that is. How we are trained to accept it. So in a BL and also RACE in the bl genre they exploit viewers naivete both domestically and internationally. Ive seen tons of people liken being asian to being a person of color. However, in their predominantly homogenous society (or intentionally publically homogenous society), they are not "poc" (also name the of color; i dont use bipoc idc if u do but it's called being asian guys cos yall aint talkin about black ppl lmao)

They as humans seeing other humans who look like them everywhere, engage with the world differently than an american in asia or asians living outside of their home country (like bae doo nanwhen she worksnin the US is not the same as the bae doo nanworking on a korean program) I dont complain about it in everything i see bc ppl say it ALL THE TIME. but it is NOT the same. Being a person of color is very distinctly an american concept. This is all stuff people will get to know on their own if they choose to dig more.

I do my best to underline what my ugly little eyes process. How i figure things out as a black female american artist too! Im hard on shit cos i should be. I take it seriously. And even if i dont take it seriously bc THEY dont then thats their problem.

I know this is a complaint that I am not alone in. I know it's the internet. I just don't get how people can write really heavy analysis but they refuse to actually probe the underlying issues. Not everyone is me, or like my friends, but if there's way fewer people talking about this stuff it seems absolutely glaring when theres few people engaging in the way i do. It seems like im the glitch but I am thinking just as much just differently.

I really loved where your eyes linger but there was little deep class analysis. I remember few convos a bout it. I know a lot about korea (sigh being a black ex kpop fan lol mess) and i love the history but all ofnit matters! Korea's relation to labor!

People bringing up thai actors snd actresses leaving the industry and doing acting as something quick. As an artist~ who went to film school with insanely wealthy ppl and isnin tons of debt you have to understand how shitty that is. People have monetary access and they just fucking do whatever just because they want to. Meanwhile you have young people being coerced into this bullshit mainstream life to LITERALY just make money bc they dont come from a rich background. The wealth gap in thailand is BAD, theres a dictatorship, they had a fucking coup. The governments like here do not respect their people. Their marginalized groups. Trans thai women, black thai ppl, poor thai ppl. And it LITERALLY CANNOT DO ANYTHING EFFECTIVELY IN CAPITALISM. No nothing can be perfect but if it's going into our eyeballs and we can view the worlld critically then why the fuck not!???

I dont say the things i see are wrong always. I reply when i think i need to. I try and engage with others but not to kuch avail. I just want to rb stuff and tdhink lajfhhdjwhjej.

But like yea theres a lot of just wrong or misguided stuff. A lot of the times it is just historical inaccuracy in framing or idk. A refusal to think outside the box. I dont care. Theres more to life than just sort of looking and not thinking especially for othrr artists.

Idk im sorry. I dont see how i can change how i view things. I really wish people would expand their palettes too and go deeper into other means of art from places! Things not in the mainstream! Theres a lot of good thai artists and a lot of them critical as fuck about their country as they should be. Authority, austerity, patriarchy, capital, racism etc like that is central to a power thats interested in growing gains and fiscal and social power. Theres rly radical or left leaning etc ppl out there in the world and these countries in these communities. So they exist. No people in these countries dont have NO clue whats going on. Cultural relativism is alsos something people should understand. I had a good talk with ppl on here a while ago about that. Talking about shit, critiquing, but being respectful to a group. Part of thay is realizing these groups CLEARLY know their own issues and all our cultures share the same goal. Guess what it is. It rhymes with acquiring wealth. Money means you hurt people. In the post, we talked about use of "wife" and "husband" which is a stupid joke that has been "explained" a billion times and yet the explanations still dont seem to answer or justify a minor problem (it's very funny to me that a language that doesnt have gendered pronouns is now very specific about two men. Hmmm wonder why. It is annoying.)

So im not the only person on the planet doing this. Or the few ppl ive seen that do. Im not new my thoughts arent new. Ive gotten to see another side to a culture i knew not much about and that means i can put the context of my beliefs and life and try and understand thheirs. For ex i learned from ITSAY because of a sign that said 'french food' that they were the only country to not be colonized back then. Do you know how integral that history is to their region? That was an interesting detail (i didnt finish itsay bc ihad a lot going on and i was rly upset that i would see hownrich they are and i hate that.)

Anyways thats my complaint. It used to feel like a sting of rejection. I left online for months in 2019, i started organizing more, joined a union, trying to do some panther work shit like that. I learned a lot in those months and it changed my life! But when I came back, I felt so isolated. It wasnt my true friends tho sometimes theyre ANNOYINGGGGG (love u) but it was me being like "if we are going to complain guys then lets put our money where our mouth is" lets be fucking serious about it then. No say it with your chest dude. It isnt difficult. Go with the fucking flow, talk about it, critique it, think. You can still fucking like itnor love it.

I am BLACK ok and i love rap. I am a black woman. I will continue to clown black men that cant seem to not clown themselves and listen. No i wont support monetarily: drake is a creep and i hate him but i bump that niggas song. Thats fucking LIFE. I got so sick of hiding myself and it became clear that it wasnt that i wasntthinking well or hard enough. They just didnt like that i said we need to commit class suicide and inspect out middle class sensibilities and middle class wealth hoarding (google it) if thats what we engaged with. Every part of you, antagonize it. I still have my privileges; class, skin color, even my father being a nigerian immigrant, me being cis, im not str8 but not a lesbian and those are differences.

Insecurities in general but some shallow thoughts (?) on discussion in "fandom" space. FYI, this will most likely stay the same. I tend to stay in my own bubble socially IE me and my friends are similar in our views. During this awful year while running my union's account, im surrounded by like minds. Me and my friends? We changed together. We grew up and saw what we didnt like and what we want. We do our best.And i CHOOSE my life to be that way bc it should be. There is no solution. I dont believe in solutions because the solution is to abolish capital or just divest. Abolishing capital and labor are a huge one and i will die before that happens (but so help me as long as im alive? Black women to FREEDOMMMM is my motto!) so making your own path in life is the best thing an artist can do IN MY OPINION.

However with technology and stuff this puts another layer onto things. Tech, social media, this shit....it THRIIIIIIIVESSSSSSS off of conflict and shallow readings of the world. We are literally primed for it. Engagement in bites. Impossible for me with my brain; i got used to it and i paid for it by limiting my scope. Not being encouraged to THINK AND READ before just speaking

(For ex i am in iww, i helped form a branch here. It is a radical union. Unionism is imprative to me-if ur interested u should read up on some. Look up peter cole! Google inthesetimes Ilwu. Gives you some understanding. Ive always been progressive and now i am....very left idk ic ant label myself. But even in my progrssiveness i had the gall to tell my white friend, whoa has her privileges but i had mine with our class disparity, that we dont need unions, i have WORKED retail. Ive done barista work for sonoing and i do gig work. So i wasnt out of touch. I had been stiffed even with a shoot i was working on by rich kids. So i had a frame of reference . But i didnt know what the FUCKa union was and why it is imperative. Then learning about anarcho syndicalism and all these other things. It changed my fucking life but two years earlier i was this idiot spouting shit like that making one of my best friends fucking upset. We DO AND CAN CHANGE. Think!!!!)

So were i a creator for tv id just constantly try and push the buttons if i need big money. Make them sell into me (thank you sonic youth!) theres Endless possibilities guys which means theres SO MUCH TK EXPLORE!!!! When i wanna have fun with it i just have fun. When i want to think i do. I dont understand why we are so dedicated to upholding things and doing mental gymnastics to end up in a space you dont need mental gymnastics for. What about these critiques makes you uncomfortable? Saying we're all part of the problem as spectators? Im sorry but we will always be. Thats LIFE. God fuck. Fuck me. I feel so fucking worthless and stupid sometimes. I know I am not. I know i am talented and intelligent. I know my friends and family. I know how to approach ppl. I know how to tell people if they are rich but want to be progressive whatsup. I choose how i live part of that is being ok to say what i want.

Ironically consrrvatives say this shit alot. But they arent ever alone bc their ideology is default. But yea it does feel shitty. It even feels shitty when ur in left circles but people STILL dont even wanna do that. These perspectives really arent ss many as they should be. I dont want to feel so alone with it. I know there are more. I just love art and the world so fucking much, endless possibility. Endless pain but endless good.