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anonymoushouseplantfan · 2 years ago

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Meghan and Harry: Episode 1

Why?

Seriously, why?

Bet let’s start at the beginning. I live-blogged the documentary on my Notes app. I wasn’t originally going to post it because I’ve stopped blogging, but omg, this is truly, as Scobie would say, the endgame. Of course, it’s not the monarchy losing the game. It’s the Harkles, They’ve checkmated themselves.

This was a six-hour own goal. I knew it was going to end badly for them when I saw Sunshine Sachs dropped them. Without SS astroturfing positive coverage all over the place they were doomed anyway. However, the content of the documentary takes it beyond doom and into truly apocalyptic. I bet it has great ratings. It’s a complete train wreck.

[Edited after first liveblog: Netflix is calling it the most viewed documentary ever, but that’s misleading. It barely held on to The Crown’s audience which was its base number, and I doubt it will have the same staying power. Still, not a bad The Crown companion piece for Netflix.]

But let’s break it down.

Episode 1

Starting with shots in an airport lounge and a rented house looking like absolute crap is the weirdest branding idea I’ve ever heard of. They don’t look relatable. They look pathetic.

[I’m editing this after finishing their series and this opening is even more baffling now. Episode 5 covers their last week of royal engagements. First, that segment is a lot more glamorous and exciting than these sad-sack iPhone videos and they really should have opened with that. Second, Episode 5 shows they were elated and super excited after finishing those engagements. They loved the crowd reactions and the press coverage and were over-the-moon with happiness. These videos are supposedly shot after that and they are all sad and mopey and wondering “how they got here.” It’s a huge disconnect.]

The intro music screams “cheap YouTube production.” So does the stock photo montage. Oh, now it’s home movies…why? This resembles the video tab of a super-basic Facebook couple circa 2014. Netflix paid millions for this? I don’t think they got paid $100m, but I bet Netflix shelled out a tenth of that. They still overpaid.

[Actually, maybe they didn’t. The Crown cost $13 million per episode and they likely paid $10 mil for six episodes of Harry and Meghan which got the same audience.]

Now they are in a house (theirs? Victoria Jackson’s? Oprah’s?) that looks like a Restoration Hardware showroom and they look slightly less pathetic but also like they are in couples’ therapy. Oh, she did know who he was. What a shocker. Dimwit doesn’t seem to realize the implications. I wonder if the filmmaker is secretly mocking them.

[The house is a random rental that is now for sale so I wonder if they get a sales commission for the product placement. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmareynolds/2022/12/20/montecito-home-where-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-filmed-documentary-lists-for-335-million/?sh=3285e16b74fa]

My husband is watching with me. He was very confused by Meghan’s comment about how “when the stakes are so high” it makes sense to get the story from them. He doesn’t understand why the stakes are high. I told her Meghan is a narcissist and he didn’t believe me. He used to watch her on Suits and despite my best efforts still thinks she’s Rachel Zane. Anyway, he thinks the house looks like an expensive rehab clinic and now I can’t get that out of my mind. I think they are trying to look like the happy couples in When Harry Met Sally but it does feel like luxury drug rehab therapy full of Restoration Hardware furniture. He also asked me what was going on with Harry’s pupils in the airport lounge video. He thought that was weird. I tell him it's cocaine, but he thinks it's Xanax or something like that.

Montage. “They are destroying us.” “This has always been bigger than us.” Oh, please.

Montecito sunset. I guess this is their backyard? It looked better in the real estate photos. Meghan croons “isn’t it beautiful?” and Archie agrees. All I can think of is that these idiots used to live in freaking Windsor Park and now they have my grandma’s yard (complete with chicken coop and everything).

Walking with Archie. Harry mutters “this is a great love story” while pushing an empty newborn stroller (why? Where’s the baby? Is Meghan carrying the baby?). This is surreal.

Glamorous wedding shot (a melancholic reminder of past glories, frankly) and it turns into a closeup of Harry’s legs. Eew.

Meghan goes to the chicken coop. There’s a lot of cyclone fencing in this house.

Back to the Restoration Hardware Showroom. Meghan is in sweats because…I don’t know. Weird Instagram family pics including a sad little birthday party for Archie. Good lord, my kids had better parties than the King’s grandson. This is so pathetic.

Oh, no. She got the cheap Amazon patio furniture protectors. At least they match the cyclone fencing.

More family Instagram. They are protecting their kids…by putting them in a documentary?

Did I just see Harry’s underwear??!! Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Between the sale of family pics, the family drama, and the plumber’s crack, I’m starting to feel that Meghan married her dad.

Harry talks about consent with regards to his children…but they are too young to consent so it doesn’t really makes sense. Guess he thinks it’s only his consent that matters.

My husband asks if Harry is an addict. I suspect it’s partly his demeanor and partly the inconsistencies in the narrative. Meghan said she’d prefer Prince Harry, and that showed how little she knew about the royals? Media exposure requires consent, but your kids are in a documentary? Harry doesn’t seem to realize that these things make no sense.

I feel the way they structured these confessionals with an invisible interviewer was a big mistake. Oprah’s presence during that interview served to validate their shady claims. She has a lot of credibility so when she nodded and smiled people trusted that. It made their statements credible. Here they don’t have that and all the contradictions are apparent.

They’re in the yard. Meghan is trying to channel Martha Stewart and failing. Martha wouldn’t have cyclone fencing, Megs.

Meghan in sweats in the Restoration Hardware showroom. BIG expensive drug rehab vibes. I bet this is what all the rich women wear at the Betty Ford Clinic. She complains that other people write books about them and “wouldn’t it make sense to hear our story from us?” Actually, Megs it’s becoming painfully clear that the tabloids and royal biographers have made you two look a lot more interesting, glamorous and stylish than you really are. Left to your own devices you two are boring as dry toast.

Really cool shots of London. Whoa, the city looks great! They spent money on these. They probably should have spent that cash making California look good. London is their past and California is their future and so far their past looks a lot cooler and more glamorous than their future.

Tig Instagram pic montage. I wonder who was taking these? She should have rehired the photographer because the family pics she has now are terrible. These were much better. Her Tig life feels a lot more upscale and aspirational than her current Montecito existence which goes to show what good photography can do. LOL, she used the airport with the Ghurka suitcase. Yes, she didn’t know she was going to meet a prince and that’s why she traded in her Rowena for the luggage brand the princes are known to use.

Pics from what appears to be Harry’s private Instagram. Interesting—wait, the Insta rumor was real? What the? Good lord why would you admit that in a documentary???!! This is freaking surreal. Whyyyyy?”

[To those who don’t know. There was a rumor back in 2016 that Meghan was a designated Soho House “companion” and the girls were “advertised” through a private Insta account run by Marcus. If you liked a girl you could DM Marcus and get an introduction…which seems to be exactly what Harry did. I don’t understand why they would mention this in a a documentary. Everyone bought the Violet von Westerwhatever blind date story. They should have stuck to that.]

I wonder how the mainstream audience is reacting to the new instagram story. The original story got a lot of coverage and a critical mass of people may start to wonder what the heck is going on. Even my husband is skeptical and I don’t think he knew the blind date story.

BTW, the fact that she was following his account was known in Toronto as soon as the relationship story broke. Interesting.

“Friend” talking about Wimbledon. She’s actually Serena Williams agent so I’m not sure why she’s labeled as a friend. Wimbledon, blah, blah, blah. Lol, Again, Meghan’s old life appears a heck of a lot more glamorous than her current one. OMG, she told Serena’s agent she was going on a date with Harry??!! She was telling everyone wasn’t she?

Texting. She was posting all of this to Insta as it was happening which is absolutely hilarious. Actually, this whole documentary reminds of the early days of the relationship when she was posting everything on Insta and leaking stories to US Weekly constantly. They really wanted all of this material out there and waiting until they got paid for it probably took probably took enormous self discipline. Guess they took Doria's "don't give the milk away for free" advice to heart.

I just realized she’s wearing Trevor’s Cartier bracelet during her monologues and that cracks me up.

More cheap stock footage. Seriously, how much did Netflix pay for this? Endless chat about their first date, which is nowhere near as interesting as they seem to think it is. They should have stuck to the blind date story. It was slightly more interesting. Bad Soho House selfie.

Nacho shows up as a “friend” and he’s really Harry’s promo buddy. The Silver Tree person was also a Suits director. Everyone is a business contact in this documentary. All these white people in California resort wear are giving me White Lotus Season 3 vibes.

Baseball hat pics in a messy kitchen…these two are hellbent on shedding whatever royal glamour they had left. Wait, isn’t this an old picture from Toronto? Like real old, first year in Toronto kind of old. What a weird choice.

“Marry someone who fits the mould instead of someone you are destined to be with” followed by a pic of Megs trying to look sexy in a wifebeater shirt. Does the director secretly hate them? He was born in a palace but he had a trailer park heart…she was a tacky actress from the wrong side of the tracks…they were destined to be together selling family pics to the tabloids just like dad…it’s a family traditioooooooon….

Old royal footage…Diana…Charles…childhood photocalls, which Harry seems to resent, but he’s doing the same to his kids in this documentary, so I really don’t understand what he’s thinking. The Diana footage is a big misstep because wow Di was charismatic and these two losers can’t hold a candle to her.

Thirteen whole minutes of archival footage, most of it stuff his parents “consented” to, and lots of whining about press intrusion. Dude, you’re in a reality show. You’re putting your kids on television. Know where you stand.

Then a slew of private couple pics that they really should have kept private. Love the wallpaper. Bet that was Frogmore. The documentary is rather disorienting. I can’t tell what house they are in or when the pictures were taken.

Boom. “So much of what Meghan is and how she is is so similar to my mom.” My husband actually rewinds this part to make sure he heard right. Pic of Diana with her kids in the garden and then another pic of Meghan with her kids in the garden. Very similar gardens. Not so similar women.

“He wanted to marry his mom?” my husband asks.

Cringe video of Archie with a Diana photo. “I didn’t want history to repeat itself,” Harry says.

“He did want to marry his mom,” my husband says, amazed. “So he can save her this time.” Shaking his head. “This is nuts but it’s television gold. Did the brother marry his mummy too?”

“No,” I said.

“And the brother is the one who gets to be king, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

More monologue about their courtship. Lol, they really did leak the handholding painting to the press. Footage comparing Megs to Di and it’s painfully obvious she’s nowhere near as charismatic.

Diana’s death and more archival footage. This documentary is a humongous downer, isn’t it? Childhood friend of Harry’s I’d never heard about. Was he invited to the wedding? I don't think so. Strong White Lotus vibes coming from this guy.

Diana’s funeral. Harry’s drug scandal. Hellraiser Harry. Bitching about paparazzi. No mention of Vegas, which is weird. You’d think that would be the big traumatic story about media intrusion. I guess he only wants to blame the UK media and Vegas was a TMZ story in the states and the UK media wasn’t allowed to print the pictures so it doesn't fit his narrative.

More whining about royal photocalls…except for the Lesotho photo ops which Harry didn’t seem to mind. Bit of a disconnect there because those were royal pr as well. In fact, it was the way the royals rehabilitated his image after the drug scandal. Seems like Harry only hates the royal pr he can’t personally monetize. Why isn’t Sentenbale getting a shout out? You’d think he would plug the charity here (Audi, Soho House, and JP Morgan got very obvious brand placements) but if he did I missed it. [Edited: Should have added the house to the list of product placements]

LOL, Prince Seesio straight out says that the Lesotho vacation was a response to the bad press in the UK. They should have briefed him better. I don’t think he was supposed to say that.

Botswana vacay with Meghan. Wow, the Daily Mail made this look a lot more glamorous than it actually was. This wasn’t exactly glamping, was it? Were there showers? No, best to not go there. No charities are mentioned. No mention of the “love” bracelets, just a Daily Mail article shot.

More whining about press intrusion then private Halloween pics that really should have stayed private. Lol, they went to a party with Eugenie after the relationship was leaked. Tell me you leaked the relationship without telling me you leaked the relationship. I bet Meghan wanted to post this on her Insta and Jason didn’t let her. I wish they’d let her. The press reaction to the Call of Duty costume would have been epic.

Harry doesn’t seem to be catching on. If you were in disguise and no one knew you went to this party except Meghan, Jack and Eugenie, then who exactly leaked it, Harry? Because we knew about it a day later.

That’s a Toronto newspaper, the same one that had the leak about Meghan following Harry’s private account. At the time the evil British tabloids were actually under the impression Harry was still in England and had cancelled a trip to visit Toronto.

The other outlet who got the scoop early was our old friend US Weekly, and the byline was by a then-unknown gossip hack called Omid Scobie. Given what we know now about their relationship with Scobie. Yep, I think these two just confessed to leaking stories about their own relationship.

The DM had to quote the Toronto paper and US Weekly when they finally broke the story on the other side of the pond.

Interesting that Meghan and Harry’s “new and improved super real love story” is the one that was being leaked in Toronto and not the one that the evil UK tabloids had supposedly uncovered through nefarious means. I don’t understand why they are changing the story, though. The blind date wasn’t a tabloid rumor. It’s what they themselves said during a BBC interview.

End of episode. Overall, I feel this was a huge missed opportunity. Not much about his work in Africa or her UN/One Young World work. We hear about Harry’s photography but barely see it. It’s their chance to tell their story and their story is “we’re boring and tacky people who sell pics of their kids.” I feel they really wanted to put the “real” story of how they met out there—the IG dog pic, the Call of Duty costume, the crappy Soho House selfie. It reminds me of her old Working Actress blog where she was constantly stressing how unglamorous acting life really was.

I’m not blown away by the quality either. Their home movies feel cheap and curiously inauthentic. They should have run everything through a filter to make it feel coherent and cohesive. The stock/archival footage is sometimes great (London and the royal family), sometimes cheap (Soho House), sometimes missing (California), and sometimes misleading (pap shots of Chelsy, Cressida and Kate that are narrated as though Meghan was the victim).

The documentary lacks the authoritative tone most documentaries have. You really feel it’s “their” side of the story and not the “real” story. I think the problem is how they switch from the couples’ personal narrative, confessionals, and personal pics into historical pictures and public royal narratives. The institutional credibility of the royal shots makes the personal material feel biased and unreliable. The videos of Charles and the kids interacting with photographers, in particular are massive own goals because they remind the viewers that everything, including Meghan and Harry’s pictures and videos, includes invisible photographers. It’s just that the Harkles are hiding that from us, whereas the royals are upfront about it. The confessionals in the rehab setting, in particular, were huge mistakes, imo. They feel like reality show confessionals (like the ones the Housewives franchise uses) and viewers are trained to see those as unreliable narrations. Using someone else's house was also a bad idea. It feels fake.

The whole thing feels very chaotic and unconvincing. My husband thinks they are both addicts and I remember thinking that when they first started doing their beanie hat appearances. I ask him why and he cites the dilated pupils, contradictory narratives, family resentments and couch-surfing at other people’s housing. He says it’s standard junkie drama.

Other family members are watching and most of the group chat (lawyers and social workers) reaches the same conclusion: even the royals have junkie kid drama. The social worker says she has tons of clients like Meghan and the all sound the same. “They’re trying to destroy us.” “It’s a great love story.” “I don’t know how we ended up here.” “What happened.” They are all more interested in having their side of the story validated than in actually fixing the problem and they just repeat the same family dynamics over and over again. That’s why Harry is showing us pics of his kids in the house/garden/vacation right after complaining that his parents showed the world pictures of him, his bother, and his cousins in the house/garden/vacation. She noticed that he posted a pic of himself in military gear (the Halloween pic) as an adult and a similar one of himself a kid. He also posted skiing pics with the royals and then similar pics in the sand in California. She’s says he’s basically re-living his childhood and trying to get it right this time.

I didn’t expect many people in my family would be interested in this, but they are all having fun psychoanalyzing these two. Everyone thinks this is Harry rewriting his past so he gets to save his mum this time. Meghan’s motivations are less clear. No one believes she didn’t know who he was. The psychologist says it’s weird that Meghan’s side of the love story was just “it was exciting…we just got to know each other….” Her motivation is not that clear, although there was that one story about wanting to be protected from the elephants in the tent. Opinion is split with half the chat thinking she wanted to be rescued by Prince Charming and the other half (the psychologists and social workers) thinking that as an actress her fantasy would be A Star is Born. The psychologist says those two are not that different. In the Prince Charming fantasy you get rescued by an individual and in the Star is Born fantasy you are rescued by an institution, i.e., the studio or Hollywood. She thinks her fantasy was A Star is Born and that’s why she’s so resentful now. I think we’d discussed that in the blog before. Interesting to hear someone else saying it. Meghan didn’t want a love story where she was rescued by Harry, she wanted a Hollywood success story where she was acclaimed as a star by the palace. She didn’t get that and that’s why she’s still upset even though she got the Prince Charming love story. That’s not what she wanted. Harry got the fantasy he wanted, so he’s not as upset.

Not much support for the theory (mine) that she was manipulating him consciously. Everyone seems to think it’s a case of two mental illnesses falling in love, along with junkie drama. That’s why Harry is so amazed at their “fantastic love story.” He wanted to marry his mum and she wanted to be his mum. That’s a pretty unlikely combination.

I’m very curious about the “friends” featured in this episode. No Jess, no Markus, no Misha Nonoo, no one from the Suits cast except Abigail Spencer, and no Janina. Everyone seems to be a business partner of some sort. Cory was missing also, but it makes sense that she wouldn’t mention him. Reitman’s wasn’t mentioned either but I guess she doesn’t want to give them press.

I don’t understand why they didn’t lean into the charity work angle. She was doing One Young World and he was working Africa. Her "You can be Both" essay wasn't mentioned either and I feel they should have led with that instead of going with her “single girl trip” and the not-so-glam Botswana vacation. I also don’t understand why we didn’t see more of Harry’s supposedly amazing wildlife photography. After all, they are trying to build a career as documentary producers. You’d think that would be relevant. The big takeaways from this episode are: Meghan is mummy and I saw history repeating itself so I had to save her. “Save Mummy” seems like a weird narrative to craft a brand around, but my husband is right. It’s television gold.

On to the next episode.

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xf-cases-solved · 2 months ago

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S2E3: Blood

Case: In, ah—one sec... Franklin, Pennsylvania! It's in Pennsylvania, definitely remembered that on my own accord. Anyway, in Franklin, Pennsylvania, a bunch of people are losing their marbles and murdering people in seemingly random attacks. What ties these crimes together is that right before they went murder hobo, they were in a situation that exacerbated their biggest fears, and also they hallucinated technology telling them to kill, which is very entertaining bc it's the fucking 90s, so the technology is very silly on its own, but is even sillier when it says "KILL 'EM ALL" in big red letters, but I digress. Mulder—with continued secret help from Scully on the side, as well as the Lone Gunmen (!!)—begins to suspect that these killings might actually be related to a pesticide the government is testing on people, but you know how the government gets when you try to claim they're involved in some big conspiracy, la dee da, so it goes.

A man gets laid off work, but that's the least of his problems as technology keeps telling him to kill people; a microwave tells a lady to stab Mulder to death; Mulder gives Frohike Scully's phone number; my notes say there is a handsome cop with nice hair, but I don't know who I was referring to or why I wrote that down; and Mulder's work on the case is ALL DONE. BYE-BYE!

Does someone die in the cold open: He got laid off so he's probably dead inside, but physically everyone is alive. (This does not last long.)

Does Mulder present a slideshow: Still no one to watch. Maybe he makes them for himself and plays them alone in his office and cries.

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Mmmmmmm, not sure. My guess is that the government is planning to get rid of any evidence that they were allowing chemicals to be tested on its citizens, but I'm not sure if Mulder held onto anything or not. I mean, he usually doesn't, so probably not, but -shrug emoji-.

Whodunit: Subliminal messaging caused by a pesticide that the Pennsylvanian government okayed to be tested on the town's residents. I think.

Convictions: None, but the government has to stop spraying people with LSD.

Did they solve it: I'll give it to 'em, why not? Mulder knows what caused it; more or less got a confession, or at least got them to stop doing the thing; and I feel like his report would be one of the less annoying ones he's submitted in his time in the FBI. Good job, Mulder! (And Scully, but unofficially.)

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: Not being a test subject for government issued pesticides. I mean, like... you can try, but in the end, is it really up to you? What is the government testing on you right now? What have you been exposed to against your will? Is it LSD? It might be LSD, but who's to say for certain? Not being a test subject for government issued pesticides — honestly, you're fucked, so maybe you should just... kill 'em all*... *This company does not endorse homicide, even if those homicidal impulses are the government's fault. Please don't sue us.

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 14 (two in a row!)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me": 6

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 6

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8 ½ (i mean, technically that lady came at him with that knife so i'll give him a half point, but i doubt she would have ever been able to actually mortally wound him)

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 13

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 5 (and there were no worms in the body!)

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 16 (x come back, bb, i miss u)

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 3

Total Number of (Plot Relevant) Nosebleeds: 5 (changed stat to specify plot relevancy, so i can get away with not counting it if someone gets beat up and their nose happens to bleed or something. the nosebleed in this one did make that man homicidal, tho, so i will up the stat lol)

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 2

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 8

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 2!

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 0 (BUT GUESS WHAT NEXT EPISODE IS???!!! 😀😀😀)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 10½ (shut up)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 5

#txf cases solved #s2e3: blood #msr #txf #the x-files

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alchemist-shizun · 3 months ago

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MYATB ep 11 commentary

LETS GOOOOOO, live reaction because i was at work for 6 hours right when the episode released!! enjoy me going insane

Xiaobao my son he's all grown up and trying to go about this the smart way, trying to convince Su Yin with logical reasons, he's amazing. Though Su Yin not wanting to listen to him breaks my heart, I MEAN THE WAY HE LOOKED AT HIM I THOUGHT HE WOULD COMPLY :(

i dont know what it is about them telling the horses to go but it's so fucking funny each time I hear it.

WhATS THIS RANDOM MURDER AOOO these strangers are bloodthirsty

the flying was incredibly off but it's fine we love this terrible green screen it makes it better <3

shaoyu appearing there menacingly, thank you

wdym he must get the crimson dahlia before he dies, DO U WANT TO KILL HIM AFTER AR EU NOT EVEN GONNA MAKE THE EFFORT well you know what su yin, well played, slay, I'd also be that lazy

"do you believe everything people say?" THANK YOU SIMING MY ONLY MAN EVER.

oh my god que siming stayed too much with jinbao now he's starting to lose braincells again

OOO SU YIN GAVE HIM THE COLD SHOULDER??

HUAIEN!!!!!

HUAIEN WHAT THE FUCK. NOW YOURE BOTH POISONED.

"Can you save him?" "of course I can" QUE SIMING THE ONLY MAN EVER, ONCE MORE.

It's killing me how Huai'en is incredibly elated that Xiaobao is worried about him and is not in the slightest caring about the fact that he's poisoned

omfg don't tell me the side couple gets together behind the scenes fr I will SCREAM.

Why can't gay people be normal it's always "I love u so much I want to lock you up and never make you leave me ever" or "let me marry your bestie/servant or I will literally destroy you" wtf

"I think you need medical attention" no way que siming just told him he needs to be hospitalized /j su yin please just rest who cares about killing anyone

HAHHAHAHA ZHAOCAI AND XIAOBAO BEING SO SHOOK ABOUT JINBAO'S CONFESSION I love them. dumbasses.

your honor i love him ( #me)

zhaocai is just completely thunderstruck about jinbao's coming out

zhaocai is the token straight in this entire cast, he is revolted and disgusted by gay people and will become homophobic at the first next sight of que siming and I would understand

NOT THE TRANSITION FROM CUTE SCENE TO AGONY.

please stop this madness stop his pain I am going to CRY STOPPPPP

THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL THOUGH. I LOVE ANGSTY SCENES LIKE THIS MAN

theyre both gorgeous and make me feel sad

"If he comes back, what will you do with him" I'm going to kiss him AND U CANT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT BOY

SU YIN JUST SAY YOU HAVE INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA AND GO please

when you ask su yin any relationship advice:

i hope that was not su yin nearly crying because I cannot do this

THE SHADOWS ARE BACK

why do those look nearly like su yins robes, huai'en do u have smth to tell us..

xiaoyu singlehandedly saves the plot

I love xiaoyu because when the guy drops all the lore shes like UNFORTUNATELY I COULDNT CARE LESS

UNFORTUNATELY, HUAI'EN COULDNT CARE LESS EITHER GET THEMMM

me, seeing a strange move: what was that :0 also me seeing a weird fx: ... and what was that-

omfg not shaoyu. shaoyu is gonna get himself fuckin killed

OMFG ENOUGH TWISTS WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING

what an icon li gongxiang

OH SU YIN AND QUE SIMING ARE HERE??

su yin oh my god. oh my god stop playing the jealous bf please I'm begging u he has two hands

WHY THE FUCK WOULD SHE MARRY XIAOBAO ARE U INSANE. -100 AURA POINTS FOR YOU. WHAT EWWW

SROP STOP STOP MY BOY IS CRYING ON THE GROUND IN FRONT OF EVERYONE LET ME GO CUDDLE HIM PLEASE. PLEASE. WHY MUST U BE THIS CRUEEEEELLLL

"the more I want you the faster I lose you" RIP HUAI'EN YOU WOULDVE DONE NUMBERS ON TUMBLR.

well. that was it. wow what an episode. i thought we weren't going to suffer like tormented ants tonight and here I stand corrected.. i really thought su yin would cave to xiaobao's feelings and turn over a new leaf with huai'en but I guess I was wrong :( I WANT THOSE THREE TO BE HAPPY U DONT GET IT. THEIR DYNAMIC WOULD BE SO TASTY, as I'm sure others have realized

the little twist was nice, i was very sure that Li guy was cooked and instead no. Siming was still a chaos queen, zhaocai a mood, jinbao our beloved idiot and xiaobao victim of many torturous aches, I hope the shadows are okay and me? i just want to throw myself in the river if I cannot enter the screen and hug huai'en immediately. Thank you, see u tomorrow for another one pf these.

#meet you at the blossom #myatb #myatb spoilers #jin xiaobao #zongzheng huaien #su yin #que siming #zhaocai #jinbao #zongzheng shaoyu #jin xiaoyu #zouying #youying #idek if thats the right names for the shadows #idya pls stop

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coraniaid · 1 year ago

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A couple of months ago, at the start of my S2 rewatch, I talked a little bit about how Willow was slowly becoming an increasingly more key member of the Scooby Gang, at the expense of Giles and Xander. Now that I've reached The Zeppo, it feels like a good time to return to that discussion.

Let's try to quantify things a little bit.

Obviously, speaking time data alone doesn't tell you everything about how important a character is, and Julian Freedland's audio time stamp data doesn't always perfectly reflect which character is really speaking (in particular, it has some trouble with body swap episodes like Witch and Who Are You? and -- most relevantly for us -- The Killer In Me). But those caveats aisde, I think looking at some hard numbers can still be illuminating here.

The chart below shows both Willow and Xander's average speaking time over the course of the show (based on a rolling average of the last dozen episodes, but always ignoring the largest and smallest values in that 12 episode run).

[I picked a 12 week rolling average partly just because it was decent length of time to smooth out random noise and partly because it means starting the time series at the end of Season 1; I removed outliers the way I did to avoid overstating the importance of episodes like The Zeppo and Doppelgangland. If you're interesed in what the chart would look like without either of these smoothing efforts, click on the readmore below.]

Thus presented, I think the trend seems pretty clear. Up to the end of Season 2, Xander clearly has more average speaking time than Willow. Then, early in Season 3, that reverses: Willow starts to get a bit more speaking time and Xander gets quite a lot less. In fact Xander won't have as much average speaking time again until Season 7, whereas in both Season 4 and Season 6 Willow will have average speaking times much higher than Xander ever managed during Season 2.

And the data fits with how I'd summarize the state of things on a more subjective/qualitative level too. In Season 1 and up to perhaps the mid-point of Season 2, Xander really was treated as a more important character than Willow by the writers. He was presented as a possible love interest for the main character (however unserious that seems in hindsight), he was arguably the focus of several episodes (Teacher's Pet, The Pack, Inca Mummy Girl) where Willow was only the focus of one (I Robot You Jane). In fact, in the first sseason, Willow's main character trait -- otherthan being good with computers -- was that she was hopelessly pining over Xander. But as Season 2 progressed Willow became more assertive, moved beyond her crush on Xander and got a boyfriend and then, around the end of the season, she started to get more and more involved in magic, something that will come to define her character both this season and for the rest of the show. Willow grew and progressed as a character: the writers found more and more things for her to do. On the other hand, Xander .. didn't really get that sort of character growth. In a lot of ways, the Xander of mid-Season 3 really hasn't changed much from the Xander of The Harvest.

So in some ways The Zeppo is Xander's swan song. Even as it begins to suggest a new, more sympathetic version of the character -- one not defined so heavily by his unrequited feelings for Buffy or his (honestly not very compelling or plausible) relationship with Cordelia -- the show as a whole is quickly losing interest in him. Willow will continue to grow in status and narrative importance -- she'll come out as a lesbian next season, continue to grow in power as a witch and arguably even temporarily assume co-protagonist status in the show's sixth season. But Xander, as now reimagined, won't get to do that. He'll always be the Zeppo of the group.

On the other hand, perhaps I've got it backwards.

Perhaps the reason I remember the Xander Harris of the final two thirds of the show more fondly than I do the Xander Harris of the first third is simpler than I'd liked to admit. Maybe he's just easier to like because he isn't allowed to speak as much.

For completeness, this is what the chart above would look like if we didn't remove outliers:

And this is what it would look like if we looked at speaking time in individual episodes rather than taking a rolling average (note, in particular, the big spikes for The Zeppo, Doppelgangland and The Replacement):

Note also a common trend visible in all three versions of the chart: neither Willow nor Xander really get to say much at all in the second half of Season 7.

#btvs #buffy rewatch 2023 #charts

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thatdisasterauthor · 10 months ago

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Are you willing to share your thoughts on the TV show Yellowjackets? I was into it for a bit, but haven't kept up and I love analysis, especially critical kinds because they're often the most interesting and I feel with your experiences you'll have some really cool angles on it. No pressure to answer if you'd rather not!

Sure! But with the caveat that I've only seen season 1, and it has been awhile. Also, I'm going to stick this under my "Disasters in Film" tag because, well, it's on theme even if we haven't specifically discussed Yellowjackets in class.

Now then!

I love the core concept of Yellowjackets. Girls' sports team has their plane crash in the woods and no one comes to get them, and it all goes sideways and falls into the horror genre more than just pure survival? A+ concept right there.

But I don't think a single writer on that show has ever been outside a single day in their lives.

It's just a suspension of disbelief issue for me. You've only got so many SoD points you can spend when you create something, and Yellowjackets is deep into the red. Hollywood has made it pretty easy to SoD things like everyone turning on one another, random murder, people being vicious to one another, etc. etc. even though studies have proven over and over and over again that people really don't behave like that in disasters. But you've still gotta spend some points on those things anyways, because deep down people DO know they're lies even if Hollywood likes to use them all the time.

So your core premise has already cost you some SoD points, but that's fine! You still have some to spend. But that number isn't infinite, and the more outlandish your details, the more points you're going to have to spend to pull them off. Yellowjackets just spent way too many. (A wolf ripping someone's face off and she's fine with zero actual medical care? Really?)

Now part of this, too, is the structure of Yellowjackets. It is a story told by jumping between timelines/flashbacks. It plays keep away with its audience. That is a structure you have to be VERY careful with or your audience is going to get annoyed with you and tune out. It can work when done right, but if you try and do it when you've already overspent your SoD points? You're gonna run into trouble. Plus, if you don't have a strong, solid plan for the whole timeline of your show across multiple seasons--a plan you will not change--it can fall apart in a heartbeat. It is not a structure that works for open ended projects of an unknown length.

A girls' sports team having their plane crash in the wilderness and getting stuck there IS conceivable--it's literally happened in real life with that soccer team. The girls struggling to survive and some of them dying IS conceivable--again, it has happened in real life. The girls growing up into adults that struggle with the aftereffects of that crash IS conceivable. The girls starting a weird little cult is starting to tread into the realm of "eh, maybe, but it does make for a great story so it's fine." Same for them finding a very helpful little cabin full of stuff. Could happen, but less likely. Then you get into the "wait, I don't think that would EVER happen?" stuff. Would a bear really just walk up, roar at you, and then you kill it with basically no real weapon? (Do you know how hard bears are to kill? Their skin is WEIRD.) Wolves ripping people's faces off. A convenient plane that later explodes.

At the end of the day, I think the show tried to do too much in too short of an amount of time to build up the believablity for the more outlandish things, and I think it's structure--and the fact that it doesn't seem to have a solid plan all the way through for its story--just made those things worse.

Now, not all of that is the show's fault! The way TV works these days--with shorter seasons and precarious chances of renewal--played a big role. I think Yellowjackets could've been a great 3 season show with each season getting 20-22 episodes. There would've been a lot more breathing room for the character arcs, especially given how many characters there are (and some of them are doubled given they survive to grow up and be adults). I think it also could've been helped a lot if they had some outdoors/survival consultants involved. The more realistic they made the survival elements, the more they could've gotten away with the weird horror elements because they wouldn't have wasted so many SoD points on things they didn't need to waste them on. Having a more realistic wolf attack (or, even better, a cougar attack) would not have changed the overall story. Having a more realistic struggle to find food would not have changed the overall story. Having a more realistic changing of the seasons would not have changed the overall story. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So yeah. Those are my thoughts on Yellowjackets! Coulda been great, but it got kneecapped in about five different ways.

#Disasters in Film

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cowpokezuko · 9 months ago

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Guys I need to be a hater for a minute I'm so sorry.

If you have like a deep attachment to the Blue Eye Samurai episode "the tale of the ronin and the bride" look away now cause I'm about to rip into it. Also spoilers ahead for the whole series.

Okay, to preface, I am generally a hater of flashback sequences, so as much as this is a criticism of this episode, it's also a crit of most flashback sequences in film and television. I am also much more willing to let it slide when it's used for comedic purposes like the beginning flashbacks in Psych or clipshow episodes in IASIP or Community. Also, this is all my opinion, you are free to disagree with me all you want and that's totally fine. Apparently I'm the only person who thought this episode kinda sucked so I fully expect to be on my own here. I would like to present my argument nonetheless

Ok disclaimer done, now to get into why I think that the use of flashbacks and framing devices in this episode of BES was a poor choice and pisses me the hell off. Formatted into a numbered list.

It takes the tension out of the main fight. The fight scene in this episode is easily one of the best in the series, but the constant cut aways draws interest away from the fight and seems to equate cliffhangers with tension. On some occasions that would be fine. The bits where they cut to the other characters totally make sense and add to the tension of the fight overall as our minds are still on the fight and the show is not forcing our attention to something that's much less engaging than Mizu fighting like a hundred guys. It also decenters the actually interesting character dynamics we get to see in this episode by putting the focus on the relationship between Mizu and some guy we don't know. There could have been so much more development on the relationship between Mizu and Akemi or Akemi and Ringo which would have been so cool because they don't interact much before this episode, based on the finally, will end up being important relationships later on so why not spend your time showing us that? Why linger on this random guy from the past?

Flashbacks are lame and I don't like them. (This is my list so I get to be petty if I want to.) As previously mentioned, I am generally a hater of flashbacks. I think it's a boring way to relay a character's backstory and motivations to an audience. It often ends up over-explaining things that don't actually need to be explained and take away from the flow of the story. Ofc course, some flashbacks are better than others, for example, I think the flashbacks showing Mizu learning from the Swordfather are more interesting because learning how Mizu learned to fight and where her anger against her father stems from is actually interesting and very relevant to her actions. However, since we did see where Mizu's quest for revenge and fighting ability came from, why do we also need to see her get betrayed by a past lover on screen? Why did we need to see it happen beat for beat in the form of a flashback? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if we got to see her come across her ex in the actual plot of the story and not the metanarrative? Same goes for her mother? Why put the story on hold to tell us this when you could have made it part of the story?

We don't actually need to know every single thing about a character's traumatic backstory, and that's okay. This whole series of flashbacks fell flat for me because I already understand that Mizu is on a quest for revenge, y'all did a great job of conveying that by giving her a one track mind about it. I really don't care about what made her heart cold, isn't being jilted by everyone you've ever met enough to do that to a person? Why does she need a man to drive her to rage? Isn't being a member of an oppressed class enough to do that? She's a woman in an extremely patriarchal society and a member of a racial minority in a racist ass society, that's as good of a motivation as any. The idea that she needs more of a reason to hate the world is frustrating to say the least. In HBomerguy's video "Sherlock is Garbage and Here's Why", he discusses how Steven Moffatt fumbled the character of Sherlock by going back and showing his childhood, as he did with Jackman in Jekyll. In my opinion, if the only way you can think to reveal the character and motivations of a character is via flashbacks, you need to go back to the writing room and think of something else because there are always better ways to do it.

The romance plot is god fucking awful. This is probably my most biased point because I am so picky when it comes to romance plots in non romance stories. I am not against the concept of having romance subplots in non romance stories, and I am actually a romance lover, so it's not bad that there is a romance, this one just sucks dick and balls. Due to the format of it only existing in flashbacks there is absolutely no time for the audience to see the characters have legitimate chemistry or cute moments, so they try to use shorthand like the characters laughing together or whatever, but it falls flat because this is literally the first time we are seeing Mizu's husband and we know almost nothing about him. Every scene with them is super awkward and forced. There's no time for the audience to develop feelings or opinions on him, to the point that I am not using his name because I legit don't know what it is. Again, why not have Mizu come across her ex on her journey and have it be a source of conflict in the story? The way it's currently laid out is so goddamn boring that I was skipping through the parts where they weren't doing shit to get back to the good part (fighting).

Why are men? Must every woman have an on screen romance with a guy? Are we not allowed any other motivation? This isn't just me being a lesbian, this is genuinely such an annoying thing in media. There are so many guys who are on revenge missions who don't need to have their heart broken on screen too explain why they're murderous. Why did this need to happen to Mizu? We couldn't have had fmc with the same insane drive as Anton Chigurh or like the Basterds from Inglourious Basterds? There are basically no women in media who get to be just fucking nuts sans a tragic backstory with a guy and up until this episode, Mizu was one of them. But then we have to see how ooo actually she's a killer because a man broke her heart because god forbid women be angry at their material conditions. I'm not calling the writers misogynists or anything, I just think they took the boring way out in this episode.

The 'mother' reveal. WHYY NOT JUST HAVE THEM REUNITE IN THE BROTHEL OR SOMETHING?!?! This is the most frustrating thing. Her being alive during the flashback only to be killed by the end is a crock of shit if you ask me. It doesn't really affect anything because Mizu doesn't feel any different about her mother before and after the end of the episode BECAUSE IT ALL HAPPENS BEFORE THE STORY! If they had met during the timeline, we could have seen more development of the relationship between Mizu and her mother, but we already know that Mizu misses her mom because that's how she went into the episode. It was already explained in other episodes. Also by the end of the episode, she's still dead so what was the point of the reveal? If she had remained alive, Fowler's reveal that her mother is not her birth mother could actually change their relationship in an interesting way and could create intercharacter conflict which could be fun and cool idk.

The play framing device. I'm not too mad at this, it just feels kind of redundant given that it tells the same story as the flashbacks. I would have preferred they just stuck with this over the inclusion of the flashbacks because it's a lot more visually interesting and less on the nose. I do think that shifting Mizu from being the ronin to being the bride is lame, but that's just because it feels a lil heteronormative to me. Why does she havee to be the girl character in the play? Let her be the man, it's fine actually. I feel like it doesn't give us new information either because we go into it knowing that Mizu is violent and gets called a demon, then by the end Mizu is violent and gets called a demon, so again I think it was a little pointless.

I think that's all of my grievances, so here's some final thoughts. I really liked Blue Eye Samurai overall, I just think that this episode really fumbled the bag. Looking at reviews of the episode, it seems like most other people really liked it and I'm on my own here, but that's fine. I stand by what I said and will proudly hold my status as a hater up high. There are so many more interesting ways the show could have spent its time and I think it's such a shame that it fell back onto such boring storytelling. I also have my gripes with the way that the Swordfather flashbacks played out, but I think that it has a little bit more relevance than the time that Mizu was married so don't think I'm being selective in my hatership. I also have some very specific gripes with the way that this episode affects Mizu's relationship with her gender and sexuality in a really stupid way, but those are largely due to me projecting so I will not get into it here.

Once again, if you really like this episode, that's great, I am so glad. There are some parts I really like. The fight scene is awesome and I really like the parts where we get to see Akemi being the badass that she is. I wish there was more of that. As always, Ringo is the best guy ever and I love him, it's cool to see the way that he stands up for himself when Mizu does something he disagrees with. I just don't understand why we got so sidetracked by something as unimportant as an ex-husband. Usually I understand the concept of show don't tell, but if the only way you can think of to show us that is flashbacks, try again.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense and that you guys get what I'm putting down. Feel free to argue with me if you want, I'd like to understand why people like this episode so much given that I had such a negative reaction to it.

#I am also a butch lesbian Mizu truther but that's MY problem #blue eye samurai #mizu blue eye samurai #the tale of the ronin and the bride

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ponysongbracket · 1 year ago

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MLP Song Tournament: Results of Round 1

Warning: Very long post. So many stats

Of the three biggest landslides, two of them were This Day Aria, with the reprise winning with 93.04% and the original winning with 95.85%.

The reprise's sweep is extra impressive considering that it went up against an actual song rather than a joke songlet.

The number one sweep, The Smile Song, won with a whopping 98.15%!!!

For context, this is a bigger sweep than Discord (Remix) [which eventually won] vs Discord's Puppet. This is bigger than Chris Pine vs Chris Pratt. This is bigger than the assassination of Julius Caesar. This is even bigger than Oscar Wilde vs Oscar de la Renta, the previous record holder for sweeps in my tournaments (and because that matchup and the Smile Song ended at around the same time, that record stood for about 10 minutes)

Now, going from the biggest sweep to the biggest opposite of a sweep: we had another tie! We Got This Together vs So Many Wonders.

This one got more votes than this blog's previous tie (Earnest vs On Wings of Moonlight)*

*If you remove my vote, the win margin for We Got This Together becomes 50.21%, which is still more than Rainbow Factory got against Anthropology and The Moon Rises.

The two next closest matches were Friendship Bound vs The Goof-Off (51.41%) and Pinkie's Singing Telegram Song vs Off to See the World (53.125%)

Speaking of the Singing Telegram, that was the only song that was originally put in the "Okay" Tier (fifth tier from the top, or second from the bottom), thus making it's defeat of Off to See the World (which was second tier from the top on a Movie song tier list) the biggest upset of the round. There were 9 upsets in total this round*

*technically Glass of Water beating Friends Are Always There For You was an upset too, but I am not counting it, as they were both in the tier "Wonderful Songs" (third from top) and it was entirely random that FaATfY was one seed above GoW. Since they really had the same ranking, I don't count it as an upset

One matchup wasn't a massive sweep, nor was it close, but it is interesting for a third reason. That being, the third option. B.B.B.F.F. vs The Heart Carol was the matchup that got the most Show results votes.

This was because it was reblogged by @todayontumblr, and as such was shown to a lot of people who don't care about MLP but do like pressing buttons.

Below is how many songs from each season entered the tournament, how many remain, and the percentage that moved on.

*Other refers to songs from Best Gift Ever, Rainbow Roadtrip, the Theme Song, and the song A Pony Kind of Christmas

Of the 131 songs, 67 moved on, or just over half. Seasons 2-5 all performed better than this, while season 1, the later seasons and most other media performed worse. I would guess this is due to Season 1 being full of songlets, and the later seasons and other media being less familiar. The exception to this is the Movie, which impressively won all but one match-up (and even then it was the third closest match)

Here is the above, but with specific episodes with a lot of songs

Aside from Rainbow Roadtrip and The Crystal Empire, musical episodes all performed better than half

Now here is the above, but with the character singing the song

Pinkie Pie actually held on better than I expected, considering how many of her songlets got swept. As there are a lot of Pinkie Pie songs, and multiple people provide her singing voice, here is a breakdown of just her Voice Actors

Shannon Chan-Kent: 15 | 9 (60%) Andrea Libman : 10 | 1 (10%) EileMonty : 1 | 0 (0%)

As you can see, Andrea Libman as Pinkie Pie mostly did the songlets that got swept, with the only song she sang remaining being The Fresh Princess of Friendship (though she also sang The Goof-Off, which came close to winning)

As for how my taste conforms to Tumblr's, I have 36 MLP songs saved to my Music folder, and of these, 29 made it to Round 2*

*2 of these songs, At the Gala and True True Friend, were given byes, and so could not have been eliminated. Also, in 2 matchups, I had saved both songs, so the possible range was 4-34

But how about how my 11-year-old self's taste conformed? They had 5 songs saved to their IC Recorder, and of those, 3 made it to Round 2*

*This is kind of cheating, because the fact that I had saved At the Gala and Babs Seed when I was 11 is literally part of the reason they were given byes. So the possible range was 2-5.

Round 2 Starts Today!

#my little pony #mlp #my little pony friendship is magic #mlp fim #mlp g4 #mlp songs #MLP Song Tournament #MLP Song Tournament announcements

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sooodonewiththis · 11 months ago

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Alright, so few of my random thoughts of the pjo tv show as of episode 2:

SPOILERS AHEAD!

- Mrs Dotts looks way more awesome than i ever could have imagined her

- I know this was probably cut in favor of the runtime, but i like that once Chiron gave Percy that pen, he didn't ask for it back after the museum like he did in the book. He just let this 12 year old kid walk around New York with a weapon, without first making sure he really was a demigod

- Once he explained why he did it it made sense, but that doesn't mean Grover's betrayal at the school hit me any less like a ton of bricks

- I'm not sure how i feel about Gabe's characterization here. In the books he seemed way more cruel and intimidating, which justified how his story ended... But from what we've seen from him I'm not sure the tv show can satisfyingly give him the same fate

- Sally Jackson is a queen

- I like that they actually let Sally explain demigods to Percy instead of beating around the bush until it was too late

- Camp looks fucking magical

- Thought Hermes' cabin looks a hell of a lot less crowded than i imagined it (also where are the cabin numbers? Typing out Hermes' cabin felt weird. That's cabin 11 to you)

- Luke in the book to me felt like an cool older brother that looks out for you. Here he feels like the cool kid that you can't believe actually talks to you... And I'm not necessarily mad about that change

- I don't remember if it was ever stated in the book what Chiron wears at camp, but i can tell you that i didn't imagine him in a three piece suit

- I think we should have been shown a hell of a lot more of Annabeth watching Pery from the distance. Cuz we had like 2 scenes about people telling Percy that Annabeth is watching him, but only one actual scene where she was actually doing it

- On that note there was a surprisingly little Annabeth in these 2 episodes

- I'm going to watch these again and pay more attention but... Was Chris introduced at any point to Percy or were we supposed to find out that that was Chris from the credits?

- Why are the tables so small at the dining pavilion? Maybe 4 people can sit there. Are we abandoning the 'people from the same cabin sit at the same huge table' idea?

- I kinda like that we are explicitly told that Chiron and Mr. D know very well that Sally isn't dead. Like, it's shitty for them to keep it a secret. But logically it makes more sense that they know that going up in a shimmering light explosion is not how humans die

- I haven't yet decided how i feel about Grover going straight against both Mr. D and Chiron, and telling Percy about her mother though. Since in the book he was so fucking terrified of Mr. D (and for good reason too)

- While on that point... Are we gonna talk about the searchers license?

- The way Luke talked about not wanting to put Annabeth in danger by taking her in, made it seem like monsters Only come after forbidden children which is just not true. And if we are going with that idea, that camp wouldn't be necessary would it?

- And on that note... Forbidden children, really? What was wrong with Children of the Big Three (is it because we are abandoning the numbers?)

#okay this is getting way too long #i just wanna emphasize that i love this show #percy jackson #pjo #pjo tv show #pjo tv series #pjo spoilers

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karlyboyyy · 2 years ago

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It's Been Three Days

Summary: What I'd like to imagine took place in the days following the events of episode 10 - lots of Kazuki sadness, Rei trying his best, hugs and tears, and talking about feelings. Because we haven't really seen much bonding between the two of them in the show! Fic tags: KazuRei, Angst/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Depression, Anxiety, Comfort Wordcount: 5.5k Also on AO3! << It's my first ever post on there :D

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It’s such an odd thing to realize just how quickly you get accustomed to the orchestra of background noises that fill your home on a daily basis. The video game jingle that plays on a loop and gradually speeds up when the player is nearing the end of the race. The soft *ka-tak ka-tak ka-tak* of a kitchen knife chopping vegetables on a wooden cutting board. The rhythmic humming of the washer and dryer, constantly running to keep up with the laundry that seemingly never ends. The half-broken toy that plays that awfully annoying song from that popular children’s television series and doesn’t have an off button. The sweet laughter of a young girl who loves spending the day with her papas...

It’s been three days. Three days since that bittersweet family outing and that final ride on the Ferris wheel. Three days without that familiar orchestra of noises. And man, is that silence deafening.

Rei assumed he’d be able to adjust to the quiet atmosphere pretty easily. “I’m used to this, after all”, he thought, having lived in lonely solitude for years before Kazuki came barreling into his life. But even after Kazuki made himself at home in Rei’s apartment, the two of them hardly spent any actual time together, unless it was related to their work. Kazuki would sometimes attempt to start a conversation as he cooked dinner while Rei played his video games in the living room. But he was lucky if he got more than a few words and the occasional “hm” out of Rei, who would normally have his headset on and couldn’t be bothered to pay much attention to his surroundings. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. The two of them got along well enough to consider each other friends, and they each trusted one another completely. In their line of work, trusting your partner was essential. So, they were work partners and roommates. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, that all changed after Kazuki brought Miri home…

The morning after that ride on the Ferris wheel, Rei woke up before Kazuki. This was odd because Rei could count on one hand the number of times he’s been awake before Kazuki. But that day, he didn’t think too deeply about it. He knew that Kazuki was hurting and figured that leaving him alone to work through his emotions was probably the best thing to do. Besides, Rei had no idea how to comfort Kazuki in this situation and feared that he’d only make things worse if he did or said the wrong thing. So he made himself a bowl of cereal, sat down in front of the tv, and turned on some random program, leaving Kazuki to sleep in a little later.

The show Rei had landed on happened to be one he was familiar with, having watched it with Miri every Saturday morning. “Heh. I should record this for her to watch later.” As he grabbed the remote to set up the recording, the reality of the situation came crashing back toward him like a tidal wave. How could he forget so easily? Miri was gone. Knots began to form in Rei’s stomach and he could feel the onset of a migraine. After deciding to turn off the tv, he tossed the remote onto the couch cushion farthest away from him, pushed his barely eaten bowl of cereal toward the middle of the table, and abruptly plopped his whole body down onto the couch. Lying there, staring at the blank tv screen, he thought to himself, “this… sucks,” before drifting back to sleep. When he awoke several hours later, he noticed that no lights had been turned on, no food was cooking, no laundry was being done… there was nothing but silence. Kazuki hadn’t left his room.

The next morning was pretty much the same. Rei awoke to a quiet house, and the door leading to Kazuki’s bedroom remained closed. “Is he actually in his room, or did he go somewhere without telling me?” Rei wondered. “But if that’s the case, he would’ve left a note like last time… right?” Rei checked the front entry area and saw that Kazuki’s shoes and coat were still there in the exact same spot they’d been left the day before last. “Still home…” Once again, Rei made a bowl of cereal for himself but decided to eat at the dining table this time, hoping to avoid a repeat of the tv incident from the day before. After finishing his meal, he booted up his game console but quickly removed the Morio Kart disc that was inside and replaced it with one of his old shooter games. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t played these types of games since Miri started living with them, fearing that the blood and violence would be too much for her to witness. “But I guess Miri did have actual first-hand experience with not one, but two gun fights. Hell, she probably would’ve thought this game looked fun. Maybe I should’ve played it with her…”

Around lunch time, the silence in the room was broken by the sound of Kazuki’s bedroom door finally being opened. Rei whipped his head around so quickly he could have sworn he felt something in his neck pop. But it wasn’t quick enough, as Kazuki had already shut himself in the bathroom. Rei felt like a creep as he stared at the door handle, waiting for it to turn and for Kazuki to emerge from the bathroom. When he finally did, Rei’s voice cracked as he called out, “H-hey. You hungry? I can order a pizza.” Kazuki paused for a moment, but didn’t look up, his gaze locked downward. “No thanks. I’m good.” Before Rei could say anything back, Kazuki was already back in his bedroom closing the door behind him. Rei spent the rest of the afternoon and evening alone. One would think that having a day alone to yourself in a quiet home would be relaxing, especially when your daily routine was typically consumed by chaos. But that was a far cry from this reality. For Rei, the silence weighed on him like he was being pulled further and further under water. It was suffocating, to say the least. He also began to feel incredibly anxious, because he knew that he wanted to comfort Kazuki in some way, but had no idea how to go about it. “I feel totally worthless…”

It was now day three, and Rei had had enough. “I can’t go back to how things were before… I just can’t.” He decided to try his hand at tackling some of the chores around the house. He thought that it would be really pathetic of him to expect Kazuki to continue taking care of everything for him now that Miri was gone. Sure, he’d always done so in the past, but things were different now. Rei realized that Kazuki was only ever truly happy when he had a family to take care of. But now that there was no longer a “family” here, Rei knew deep down that there was a very good possibility of Kazuki leaving. Would it be next month? Next week? Tomorrow? The uncertainty frightened Rei, but he refused to become the same useless mess he’d once been. Well… he had enough determination in this very moment to at least do a load of freaking laundry. Baby steps were better than no steps, right?

So Rei started off his cleaning crusade by sorting through the pile of clothes on his bedroom floor and picking up any stray articles from the living room on his way to the washer. After tossing everything in and latching the door shut, he stood there for a moment staring at all the buttons and knobs. “Why are there so many??” Kazuki had, on several occasions, shown Rei how to operate the machine, pointing out the various features and wash cycles, and showing him exactly how to measure out the soap. But did Rei remember any of that? Absolutely not. But he figured he couldn’t screw it up too much as long as he stuck with the “regular” cycle and only used a little bit of soap. Once everything was set, he hesitantly reached for the Start button and gently pressed it in. The machine came alive with that familiar sloshing sound that he’d so desperately missed these last few days. He relaxed his shoulders, let out a sigh of relief, and smiled to himself. “Nice.”

Suddenly, the soft clack of a door being opened echoed from down the hall. Rei peeked his head around the corner to see if he could catch a glimpse of Kazuki. But alas, he had just missed him yet again. Rei then heard the shower turning on and thought that he really would be a creep if he were to stare at the bathroom door waiting for Kazuki to come back out, like he did yesterday. So instead, he headed toward the living room to start picking up all of his garbage.

**********

Kazuki felt numb.

It’s been three days, and yet that feeling refused to subside. Kazuki struggled to pinpoint exactly what emotion he was feeling about this whole situation. Was he mad? Maybe a little. But when it came down to it, he knew that both Kyu-chan and Misaki were right. Allowing a five-year-old child live with two hitmen was dangerous, and he couldn’t come up with a valid justification to argue otherwise. At least, not one that wouldn’t make him sound like a selfish asshole. Was he sad? Sure. But again, he knew that Miri was safer this way. So how could he truly be sad about the fact that she was safe? He couldn’t. In fact, if he were being rational about the whole thing, he thought he should actually feel quite relieved. “Yeah right… I’m too greedy for that,” he thought. So he wasn’t mad, or sad, or relieved. He was just… numb.

Kazuki knew that it was pathetic of him to hole up inside his bedroom, but he couldn’t help himself. Coming home that night to the sight of toys strewn across the living room floor, child-sized dishes piled in the sink, the basket of pink flowery clothes that needed to be washed… all of it was just so overwhelming. Kazuki couldn’t bring himself to look at any of it, so he ended up going straight to bed that night. Over the next couple of days, he only came out to use the toilet or to grab a quick snack so that he wouldn’t make himself sick. But otherwise, he stayed in bed staring off into space. He felt sort of bad for ignoring Rei, but he knew that Rei struggled with expressing his empathy. Because of that, Kazuki was afraid that he’d end up snapping at Rei for no real reason or accidentally saying something hurtful that he didn’t really mean, knowing damn well that Rei wouldn’t know how to react and would most likely take it personally. So in order to avoid that tension all together, Kazuki chose to avoid Rei for the time being. “I hope he’s at least eating something other than cereal…”

By day three, Kazuki was starting to get sore from lying in bed for so long. “I should probably shower.” On his way to the bathroom, Kazuki could have sworn he heard the washer running. “But there’s no way… I’m not even sure Rei knows how to use the damn thing, even though I’ve shown him a million times.” Kazuki let out a soft chuckle as he turned the knob in the shower all the way to the right. There was a brief squeaking noise before the water started raining down from the shower head, and steam began to gradually build up in the enclosed space. Kazuki started to undress, removing the wrinkled clothes that he’d been wearing for three days straight. He glanced at the reflection of his naked body in the mirror, flinching at the sight. It was obvious that he hadn’t eaten a proper meal nor had he gotten any decent sleep in these last few days. He had dark circles under his puffy eyes, his hair was a greasy mess, and his face looked pale and ashen like a ghost. He was honestly quite grossed out by the state he was in, and felt sort of relieved that Rei hadn’t seen him earlier. After stepping into the shower and under the hot water, Kazuki felt his muscles immediately relax. He stood there unmoving for god knows how long, just letting the water pour over the top of his head and down his face.

Out of nowhere, Kazuki heard what sounded like a gentle knock, followed by silence. He wasn’t sure if he was hearing things or not, so he waited for a moment to see if another knock would come. Instead, he heard the *click* of the door being opened. “…Kazuki? Are you okay? You’ve been in here for a while…” Rei was so quiet that Kazuki could barely hear him over the running water. He pulled back the shower curtain slightly and poked his head out, ready to teasingly chastise Rei for coming into the bathroom while someone was in the shower. But the sight before him almost sent him into a fit of laughter. Rei had his head peeking around the door into the bathroom, but his eyes were tightly shut, scrunching his face. Kazuki thought it was actually quite adorable. “Yeah. I’ll be out in just a few minutes, alright?” he said, with a slight smile on his face that Rei couldn’t see. “Ah, okay then,” Rei said, as he quickly shut the door. Pffft! Kazuki didn’t realize in that moment, but that numb feeling was finally starting to ease, if ever so slightly.

**********

Kazuki walked out of the bathroom to find Rei vacuuming. Rei. Vacuuming. WHAT?! Kazuki was so stunned he nearly dropped the towel that he was rubbing his hair with. He stood there in awe, taking a look around the entire room. Not only was Rei vacuuming, but it looked like he did the dishes and picked up around house as well. “Ha! Maybe I really did hear the washer running this morning!” Rei hadn’t heard the bathroom door open, so when he finally noticed Kazuki standing next to the couch staring at him, he flinched and scrambled to find the power button on the vacuum. “H-hey! You’re out! You hungry? I’ve made something to eat if you’d like some.” Although he still spoke in his low, nearly monotone voice, Rei appeared to be a bit more flustered than Kazuki had ever remembered seeing him before. “Oh yeah? What’d’ya make?” Kazuki was impressed. Rei cleaned and cooked?? “Um… it’s just porridge. I found an easy recipe online. You haven’t eaten these past few days, so I thought maybe your stomach was upset. I figured porridge would be easiest to eat.” Rei felt a little embarrassed to be offering his measly porridge to a guy who practically lives in the kitchen. And let’s be honest, Kazuki doesn’t exactly hold any punches when it comes to critiquing food, so Rei’s worry was justified. Kazuki could tell Rei was nervous, and again had to hold back his laughter. “Why is he being so cute right now? It’s hilarious, but I can’t tease him too much or else he’d probably curl up in a ball and shut down.” Kazuki pulled out a chair at the dining table, sat down, and looked up at Rei with a grin. “I’d love some. Please and thank you!”

And so the two of them sat at the table, quietly eating the porridge that Rei made. Rei cleared his throat, having already decided that he’d had enough of the eerie silence that had been suffocating him over the past three days. “Hey… do you wanna hang out today? Like, together? We don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. It’s just been really… boring.” Although Rei was definitely trying his best to communicate more with Kazuki, he wasn’t exactly ready to say that he felt lonely and anxious by himself. So he decided to play it off as boredom. Kazuki glanced up at Rei, and to his surprise, Rei was looking right back at him, their eyes locked together. “…Sure. Is there something in particular you wanna do?” Rei hesitated for a moment. Honestly, he wasn’t expecting Kazuki to say yes, and hadn’t really thought this far ahead. “Um… well, we can watch some movies. I guess? Oh but first, we should dry your hair. It’s still wet, and you’ll catch a cold. I’ll dry it for you, if you want.”

“Okay… who the hell is this person and what have they done with Rei?! It’s like the onigiri incident all over again…”

“Ah-haha, it’s okay. It’ll dry on its own. And it’s warm enough in here that I won’t get sick.” Kazuki was truly beside himself. He knew that Rei had started to step up more to take care of Miri. But he couldn’t think of any time before when Rei had offered to take care of him.

“Dude, just let me dry it. I used to do it all the time for Mi- uh… I mean. Well it’s not like you haven’t done the same for me before, so just shut up and let me do it, okay?” Rei scratched his head, annoyed with himself for almost bringing up Miri. He told himself just this morning that he would avoid saying her name in front of Kazuki at all costs, not wanting to upset him. But Kazuki wasn’t upset and could see how frustrated Rei looked. “Okay then. You can dry my hair.”

Rei sat on the couch, his legs far enough apart for Kazuki to sit on the floor between his feet. Kazuki held his knees close to his chest, his chin resting on top of them. The loud whirring of the hair dryer filled the air around them, as Rei ran his fingers through Kazuki’s soft hair. “Fluffy…” Rei absolutely kept that thought to himself, and could feel his cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“I can’t even remember the last time someone’s dried my hair. Maybe when Yuzuko and I first started dating?” Kazuki thought back on the memories of all those years ago and smiled. “But man, this does feel nice. And he’s being so gentle, it almost tickles. And this warmth… I could fall asleep.” A few moments later, the loud whirring ceased and Kazuki jolted in place, having truly almost fallen asleep. “All done,” Rei said in a soft voice. “Aw man, already? That was so relaxing!” Although Kazuki was only teasing, the words were true, nonetheless. “Um… I can brush your hair now, if you’d like? I don’t mind.” Although his words were nonchalant, Rei looked almost excited. And who was Kazuki to say no to that? “Okay.” Rei got up to find a hairbrush and returned in a flash to continue playing with Kazuki’s hair.

After a while, Kazuki was the first to break the silence. “Ya know, I really thought the three of us would be together forever.” He let out a soft chuckle before continuing. “How silly is that?” Rei paused for a moment, surprised by the topic of conversation. He didn’t think Kazuki was ready to talk about this yet. Before Kazuki could notice that his hands had stopped moving, Rei started running the brush through Kazuki’s hair once more.

“Like, I actually thought, ‘Hey! This is my second chance! I can build a life with these two, and we can be a real family. We can be happy.’ Why did I get my hopes up? I should’ve known this would all end eventually. I mean come on. Look at us. Two hitmen raising a child together? That’s some shit straight out of a manga. It could never actually work in the long run.” Kazuki closed his eyes and held his hand over his face, gently rubbing the furrowed skin between his eyebrows.

Rei was thankful that he was sitting behind Kazuki, and that Kazuki was unable to see his face in that moment. Because he could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and could only imagine what sort of twisted expression his face was in.

“Hey, Kazuki?”

“Hm?”

“Are you… going to leave?”

“Leave? What do ya mean? Where’m I going?” Kazuki realized he sounded slightly exasperated and hoped that Rei didn’t pick up on it.

“I know… I know that you want a family. And now that Miri… now that it’s just the two of us, we aren’t really a family anymore, are we? So are you going to leave now?”

Kazuki could hear the slight hitch in Rei’s voice, and quickly turned around to face him. Rei’s eyebrows were contorted and his cheeks were flushed red. And his bottom lip trembled.

Kazuki panicked. “What?? What are you talking about? Why would I leave?”

“Because it’s not safe for you either! The organization… they’ve already made it very clear.”

“But that was just about Miri, right? It was about our work getting sloppy, yeah? But she’s safe with Misaki now. And we’ll just go back to how things used to be.” As much as it pained him to admit, Kazuki knew that the words coming out of his mouth were true.

“No! It wasn’t just about Miri… it’s more than that.” Rei paused and closed his eyes for a moment, attempting to level his breathing. He then looked directly at Kazuki with glistening eyes and spoke more softly. “Don’t you get it? I’m a Suwa. I’m expected to continue the Suwa family line, and to take over the family business. But I…” Rei closed his eyes again and shook his head. “I don’t want to! I don’t want to…” Rei could feel the hot tears welling up in his eyes and failed to keep them from breaking through.

“Then what do you want?” Kazuki said in a soft, low voice. He could tell that Rei was terrified and could feel the adrenaline coursing through his own veins, causing his hands to shake. The only word he could think of to describe this feeling was protective. It was almost as if he was prepared to single-handedly take down anyone and everyone who had caused the man in front of him to break down in tears. Because anyone who was able to cause this normally emotionless man this much pain… deserved to suffer.

“I just… I just want our family back. But I know that’s not possible right now, and it may never be possible again, no matter how much I miss Miri. And god, I miss her so much… But above all, I want her to be safe. So I know that she needs to stay with Misaki. And I also know that you’d be safer, too, if you left… if you got as far away from me as possible. But Kazuki… I can’t. I can’t lose you, too.” By now, Rei was no longer able to hold back the flood of tears rolling down his cheeks, and his breaths were coming in short, shallow bursts.

In the blink of an eye, Kazuki had gotten up, positioned himself next to Rei on the couch, and pulled him into his arms, holding him close to his chest. Kazuki’s left hand cradled the back of Rei’s head, while his right hand gently stroked the space between his shoulder blades.

“Rei. Listen to me. I’m not leaving you. I will never leave you. You hear me? We ARE a family. Even if it’s just you and me. We can still be a family. Alright? So stop crying. Please, stop crying.” Kazuki tried with all his might to comfort Rei, but could feel that he himself was on the verge of breaking down.

“But… you deserve a real family, Kazuki. You deserve to be with someone you love. You deserve to be a papa. Because you’re such a good papa…” Rei buried his face in the crook of Kazuki’s neck, attempting to stifle the constant sniffling. He desperately grasped at Kazuki’s shirt, pulling it back so much that it was nearly choking Kazuki. But Kazuki didn’t say anything nor did he stop Rei.

“Rei, you deserve those things, too. You also deserve to be with someone you love. You deserve happiness.”

“But I AM with someone…!” Rei let the sentence trail off, surprised by the words that he’d nearly blurted out, and paused to catch his breath. “I was happy with our family. And I’m happy with you. I’d never known that feeling before, until I met you. And having Miri with us… made it so much more obvious. So I know I’m being selfish by asking you to stay with me. But I don’t want to give up any more of my happiness. I don’t want to go back to how things were before. I can’t go back. So Kazuki, please… I’ll try harder, I promise. I’ll clean more and I’ll learn how to cook and I won’t complain as much. And I’ll protect you. I’ll do anything to protect you. So please…” At this point Rei was sobbing so much that he began to ramble and his words were somewhat difficult to understand. But Kazuki continued to hold Rei in a tight embrace, gently stroking his hair to try and calm him down.

“Hey shhhh, I already said I’m staying, didn’t I? So try to calm down, okay? I’m not going anywhere. And hey, you did so good today with the chores! I was so impressed. And your porridge was delicious. Make it for me again sometime, will ya?”

Rei nodded, his face still pressed against Kazuki’s collar bone. “Yeah, okay.”

Kazuki slowly pulled away from Rei, holding both of his hands in his own between the two of them. “Have you calmed down a bit?” Rei nodded without saying anything. The tears finally stopped, but his face looked a mess. Kazuki reached his right hand up to gently rub Rei’s cheek. “Good. Ya know, I must say… you’ve been acting awfully cute today. I’m not used to it,” Kazuki said, letting out a small sigh of relief mixed with a faint laugh.

“Shut up!” Although he had meant to sound forceful with his words, Rei instead sounded like a whiny teenage girl, which made him feel even more embarrassed and caused a fresh wave of blood to rush back up to his cheeks. He then realized that his face probably looked absolutely ridiculous after his meltdown and attempted to wipe his eyes and turn his head away so that he was no longer facing Kazuki.

But Kazuki only found this to be even more endearing, and immediately guided Rei’s face back to where he could see it more clearly. He then positioned his hand so that he cupped Rei’s chin in his palm, with his cheeks squished between Kazuki’s thumb and four fingers. “Heheh fish lips.” He couldn’t help but laugh at the sight and at the fact that Rei was even letting him mess with his face like this in the first place. Truly, he was not used to this side of Rei. But he was enjoying himself.

Kazuki’s laughter eventually trailed off, but he kept Rei’s face cupped in his hand, lightly squeezing his cheeks. Then the expression on his face softened as he continued to stare at Rei’s puckered mouth. After what was probably only thirty seconds, but felt like hours, Kazuki locked eyes with Rei. “Hw-hwat?” Rei stuttered, unable to enunciate due to the squished cheeks. He wondered how long Kazuki was going to hold his face like this and why he just kept staring. If he was being honest, he was starting to feel a bit uneasy. Rei had never really had anyone look at his face for this long or this closely before. He felt almost naked.

“Rei. Have you ever kissed anyone?” Kazuki maintained eye contact after asking the question, so he was able to see the exact moment the pupils in Rei’s deep blue eyes constricted to half their size.

“HUH??! What kind of question is that??” Rei flailed, yanking his face away and batting Kazuki’s hand down. “Seriously, what the hell??”, he thought to himself.

“Aww, come on. I’m just curious! You’re acting so adorable today, and I wondered if anyone else has ever seen you like this.” Kazuki already knew that Rei had probably never been in a real relationship before, so the words he spoke were only a joke. Still, he found himself slightly annoyed at the thought of someone else experiencing this side of Rei, but decided to keep that thought to himself.

“Why should I even tell you?” Rei continued to swat Kazuki away, but Kazuki was relentless.

“Hehe so I’ll take that as a ‘no’.”

“Ugh! Why do you even care??”

Quicker than Rei could stop him, Kazuki grabbed Rei’s face again, this time sandwiched between both of his hands. “Because. I do care. I care about you. And if we’re going to be a family, I want to know everything about you.”

Rei stopped resisting, and just stared back at Kazuki. “He looks so serious now…”

Kazuki’s gaze lowered slightly, and Rei realized just where he was looking. His mouth. Rei then noticed that Kazuki was slowly leaning closer toward him. “He’s not… ACTUALLY going to kiss me, is he?!” Rei didn’t know how to react, so all he could think to do was close his eyes and brace for impact.

Kazuki paused in his tracks and smiled to himself. Rei had his eyes tightly shut, reminding him of earlier that day in the bathroom. “He’s so funny.” Kazuki continued leaning in, closing his eyes and gently kissing Rei on the forehead.

Rei’s eyes shot open in surprise. A forehead kiss was NOT what he was anticipating, and he felt a little ashamed for expecting something different. But that feeling of shame melted away the moment he met Kazuki’s gaze once more and saw the slight shade of pink on the apples of his cheeks as he smiled a goofy grin. Rei couldn’t help but smile back and let out a soft, breathy laugh.

Kazuki carefully pulled his hands away from Rei’s face and stretched out his arms, taking a deep breath and letting out a loud sigh. “Haaaaahhh! So. Should we watch a movie now? Was there one you wanted to watch?” Kazuki leaned back into the couch, but not before pulling Rei to his side and wrapping his arm around him, his hand on Rei’s bicep. In this position, Rei was able to rest his head on Kazuki’s chest just under his arm, but he wasn’t sure where to put his hands. One arm was stuck behind Kazuki against the back cushion, so he didn’t really have a choice there. But the other was left out in front, hovering over Kazuki’s lower stomach. Rei hesitated for a moment, but finally thought, “Screw it,” and set his arm down so that it lay across Kazuki’s waist. After receiving no complaint from Kazuki about where his hand fell, Rei tightened his grip on Kazuki’s side ever so slightly and nestled even further into place. “He’s warm,” he thought. “This is nice…”

“Any movie is fine. Whatever you wanna watch.” Rei honestly didn’t care about the movie. He was just happy to be spending time with Kazuki. Happy to be pulled out of the suffocating silence.

“Hey, Rei?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for avoiding you these last couple of days. It was nothing against you. So I hope you didn’t get too lonely.”

“…I was lonely. But it’s okay. I understood what you were feeling.”

“I might get like that again… I mean, I’m feeling a little better now. But it comes in waves. Ya know?”

“Yeah… I get it.”

“Then will you cuddle with me to make me feel better?” Kazuki said playfully.

“Yes.”

Kazuki only said that to tease Rei, so he wasn’t expecting him to respond so quickly or so matter-of-factly. But he found that Rei’s response made him insanely giddy. Kazuki tightened his hold on Rei, pulling him in even closer. “Good. That makes me happy.”

“…” Rei didn’t know how to respond, but knew that he, too, felt happy in that moment.

It’s been three days. And there was no telling how many more it would take before things finally started to feel normal again. Or maybe things would never feel normal again. Maybe there was a hell storm coming their way that they weren’t at all prepared for. These were all possibilities that they had to consider. But as they sat there embracing each other’s warmth, Kazuki and Rei both knew that they’d be okay, as long as they were together. If one was suffering, the other would be there to help pick up the pieces. If one was happy, the other would be there to celebrate in their joy. After all, isn’t that just what a family is?

#I did it guys #I wrote an actual fic! Woo!#kazurei #kazuki x rei #kurusu kazuki #suwa rei #kazuki kurusu #rei suwa #buddy daddies #buddy daddies fanfic #ao3 fanfic #angst with comfort #emotional hurt/comfort #I hope I'm using these fic tags correctly lmaooo

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geminicollisionworks · 1 year ago

Note

After an offhand line in an old ask of yours, I (with my Althaar-grade understanding of human intimacy) have been trying to work out who in the main cast had the mentioned brief offscreen sexual relationship that will never be acknowledged in-show but regardless affects how these characters are written.

There are easy exclusions, of course, but still many candidates. My current top candidates are Chip and Torianna, because this is something they would, I think, both end up doing, immediately regretting, and mutually swearing never to speak of ever again (though I have to wonder if Fraall, who enjoys flotting with them both, would've mentioned it by now if they had).

Now, I am not asking for an answer (unless my assessment is correct), but how would you feel about humoring me with a clue, namely between which episodes this regrettable encounter has occured?

Hmmmnnn...

Berit & Ian put a few things in Life With Althaar here and there that are... not exactly just to amuse ourselves, but as we've said, as flavor. Though it is also to amuse ourselves. And we've often wondered if any of our listeners will "figure [this background running gag] out."

But we've never actually discussed how to respond if someone does figure out one of our silly things, or comes close enough to want or warrant hints.

Like... the one thing that a certain set of non-recurring characters have in common (which, if you noticed it, would allow you to predict certain things about events involving these characters immediately upon their being introduced).

Or... the [who/what] that is quoted in every episode of Season Three (granted, there are quotes galore in all episodes, we just decided after randomly quoting the same source in 3.01 and 3.02 that we'd keep it up for the season and see if anyone noticed).

But the past "secret" relationship is considerably less random, and while not originally conceived for the show, happened organically in the writing and acting and helped in creating a dynamic between the characters that just felt right.

It is not Chip and Torianna. Though your thoughts on the "why" for them make perfect sense, and it's absolutely in character for them to have had that happen as you laid out (both Chip and Torianna have somewhat long histories and numbers of past brief unsuccessful love affairs). Alt-Universe slash-fic writers, have at it if you like! But in canon Althaariverse, nope, didn't happen. It certainly would fit a number of classic sitcom tropes, but no.

As to Frall's take on it if it had happened, yeah, they might give both parties grief about it, but I like Berit's idea that Frall wouldn't explicitly hassle Chip about the relationship specifically, but if it had happened, that would be the reason behind Frall's constantly flotting with Chip (since Torianna is Frall's closest friend, insofar as an inexplicable, nigh-omnipotent energy being has friends). Frall's actual reasons for needling Chip are, of course, thoroughly Frall-ish and inscrutable.

As to hints to what we have layered in...

It didn't happen between episodes. It happened before the show begins. Years before, in fact.

It was not a one-night-stand, but actual open dating for a short time. It was not "regrettable," but rather nice and sweet, just, in the end, not really right for either in the longer term. It ended very amicably.

Frall, of course, knows, but would never mention it to either, let alone tease. But some others know too, and it has been whispered about, but it never comes up because it would just not be cool.

There are slight verbal felicities between them they don't allow from many others, if any at all, and both have occasionally mentioned personal idiosyncrasies of the other that a friend might know, but an ex would be more likely to.

And that's enough hints. Too many? Is it obvious now?

Personally, as one of us two creators has old flames, preceding our 23 years together, who we remain close to, with no weirdness or tensions, we thought it was a nice, real dynamic that actually happens in our world that isn't so often found in the sitcom form (pace Chloe and James in our beloved Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23), and wanted to explore it, quietly.

Thanks for asking!

#life with althaar #gemini collisionworks #audio drama #podcast #science fiction #behind the scenes #questions #answered #we should maybe give out prizes #but what?

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mymanyfandomramblings · 7 months ago

Text

Gleecap 3x06--Mash Off

Here we go, controversial episode about which I have controversial opinions. To clarify, this is my second watching of this episode, and I was able to watch it more critically this time around. Here's my reaction recap:

Puck running around the hallways so that Shelby can walk past him again--hilarious. To be clear, I don't like the Shelby/Puck storyline, but damn it gets some funny moments out of Puck

Additionally--Hot For Teacher was a hilarious number. The mic stand duelling, the sheer amount of fun all four guys were having--love it. Ditto the above point.

Sue's political ads are so ridiculous, and I love that the show tries to pretend that people are actually taking them seriously.

You And I/You And I is one of the best mashups the show ever does. It's actually heavenly

Also--Puck plays piano? Since when?

Also half the ND's just sitting down on the floor for no real reason

Now the first part of the episode that bothers me--Finn specifically tells Santana that he's not interested in making it vicious. He wants to keep it civil. If he'd started off matching the competitive energy, Santana's actions would have made more sense, but no. He says he doesn't want it to get vicious, and Santana sails in with her insults. I really don't like her until late Season Three, and I know that she's actually great by season four, but this..is not it

When Will enters the choir room, Quinn, Rory and Blaine are looking out the windows at the top of the wall. Why? We'll never know.

Honestly, the New Directions are actually working together pretty well--Finn moves to give Rory a solo, Blaine backs him up, they're all friends. The fact Finn is so decent the rest of the episode makes what eventually happens extra frustrating.

"You're skinny, like all the crops on your family's farm failed.", Rory, I adore you

Now, here's a part where the whole Incident could have been avoided if the writers had just remembered one thing that they established earlier--insults don't roll off Santana. She can dish it out but can't take it. But no. Drama.

Quinn's dodgeball faces are perfect. Of course she's the dodgeball-as-an-outlet-for-repressed-rage girl

Also I adore that at all points in the game, there are random players just flying through the air

I fundamentally disagree with Kurt's assessment that dodgeball is bullying--it was one of but a few things we did in PhysEd at school that I liked. However, the way the Troubletones attacked Rory was plain mean.

I love protective Kurt. Bullying is such a sore spot for him, and he will rise to anyone's defence.

"I sound just like her" --Sugar, you are brilliant

Now observe--both Mercedes and Shelby tell Santana to back off Finn, because there's no point to the feud. Santana has an option here--she could stop, or she could keep going.

Also Brittany's response to Mercedes making herself leader is gold.

And then the Hallway Scene. I really really really wish I could have more sympathy for Santana because nobody deserves to be outed, but this lead up makes it really hard.

I also paid close attention to what Finn was doing during this scene. As Santana talked, managing to hit every one of his insecurities (his weight, his comparative mediocrity in comparison with Rachel, the fact his future is more or less hinging on riding Rachel's coattails, the fact he slept with her and neither came away happy etc.) you can see him slowly getting madder and madder, and then boom.

I am not defending Finn. He's not the brightest, but that's no excuse for discussing her sexuality in a crowded area where anyone could hear--and they do. However, I do think that it wasn't intended as an outing per se. He was primarily focusing on what he perceived as cowardice (which it really isn't), rather than trying to say anything homophobic, or intentionally yelling 'hey everyone, Santana Lopez is a lesbian'. Once more, I don't condone his actions--he took a cheap shot, he was thoughtless, and he endangered Santana, I just wanted to...nuance the discussion. (I would also like to add, that I hate that the outing is turned into a 'Finn was doing it for her own good' in the next episode--Finn was retaliating and hitting her where it hurt, nothing more)

Once more, Sue's political ads. I wonder how Carole responded to either of the implications a) that Burt is cheating on her with a donkey or b) she is the donkey

Puck is actually very sweet with Beth and I love that.

Next pet peeve--Mercedes is team captain of the Troubletones. Shelby knows that Santana has been crusading against Finn for seemingly no reason. Why then did she let Will pit Santana (and not Mercedes) and Finn against each other in the coin toss

Also Rachel is hilarious at how ridiculously aggressively she responds to Finn winning the toss.

You Make My Dreams/I Can't Go For That is actually brilliant. The costumes are fantastic, the choreography is fun, Rory and Tina get exposure, the girls' skirts and hair is so cute, and they are all having the times of their lives.

Brittany vaguely frustrates me throughout the presidential campaign arc, but then she does that a lot. Brittany is very up-and-down for me as a character.

Rachel being a selfless friend!! Yes, Rachel!! Love that for her.

Quinn in early Season 3...sure is a ride.

Also here, even Brittany is telling Santana to lay off Finn, to which Santana responds that manatees have thick skin. I am trying so hard to be sympathetic to her, but she makes it so difficult.

And now the scene. I love Sue taking responsibility for once. I love that for Sue

Now comes the bit where Naya Rivera's acting makes me feel sorry for Santana. That 'I haven't even told my parents' is so heartwrenching.

My unpopular opinion is that I prefer the Hall & Oates mashup to the Adele mashup. That said however--Santana sounds stunning. STUNNING. Her dress is also really pretty, even if I find the costumes a bit plain compared to the ND's. I don't find that the songs suit Mercedes incredibly well, but everything about Santana's performance redeem it, along with Britt's worried faces.

I genuinely believe that Finn was only saying that the Troubletones were good, however he probably did deserve the slap. Once more Naya acts the heck out of this scene

There's my two cents about this very controversial episode.

#garnet's gleecaps #Santana lopez critical #Finn Hudson critical #Sue Sylvester #Shelby Corcoran #noah puckerman #Rachel berry #kurt hummel #brittany s pierce #mercedes jones #Rory Flanagan #s3e6 mash-off #glee #glee opinions

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novakspector · 1 year ago

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With the evolution of the Cardassian look and their military uniforms, we can see them revising and refining their appearance on the shows.

The Cardassian prosthetics were designed around the appearance of actor Marc Alaimo. He had appeared on an early TNG episode as a member of a doglike/Chewbacca-esque alien species, and for that role they had to create a full face cast of him to create the prosthetics. They already had a mold of his head, and he's a fantastic actor, so why not bring him back as Gul Macet?

Alaimo has an extremely long neck, so makeup and prosthetics designer Michael Westmore created the neck/shoulder pieces to accentuate that. Alaimo has a strong brow and the Cardassians also have that feature accentuated.

The prosthetics would be refined over the years, but the basic form remained the same. The neck ridges, brow bones, the nose piece, the appendages from the ears to the jaw, the chin ridges, and of course the forehead spoon. It's one of the more involved prosthetics sets in terms of number of parts. So it initially took them 4 hours to do the prosthetics and makeup for each Cardassian. Eventually, they got the routine down to 1.5 hours on DS9, which is probably just by necessity since there's a lot more of them on that show.

Female Cardassians have slightly more delicate features, because realistically a look that was designed around Marc Alaimo's face isn't going to be flattering on a woman. So they tone down the heaviness of the features. The first female Cardassian we see is Gul Madred's young daughter. As for adult female Cardassians, on TNG we see only 2: a random unnamed female soldier played by background actress Cameron, and Gul Ocett played by Linda Thorson.

The brow of the female Cardassians is less pronounced and the forehead is smoother than the males. They also have a blue makeup on their spoon and neck scales to make them stand out. They wear red lipstick and nail polish, which seems like it must be a custom they got from Bajorans or other humanoid aliens.

As for the evolution of the uniforms, first of all was the look from the TNG episode The Wounded which introduced the species to us. They wore the 1.0 uniforms that looked a bit like brown American football padding + the weird helmet thing. The spoon protector. Why did they wear helmets? Who knows.

We only ever saw Gul Macet + the crewmen of the CDS Trager and Gul Dolan in the episode "Ensign Ro" wearing the brown football padding outfits. This uniform variant appeared in 2 episodes of TNG and was dropped after that.

Now of course compared to the later and more familiar iconic look we see from them, it's a bit silly. But it's not really a terrible design, certainly looks very "alien" and laid the groundwork for their overall look. The Cardassian ship designers were inspired by Egyptian forms, like the Ankh, and so we can feel a sort of desert cobras vibe in their appearance from the very beginning. Their whole backstory is that of desert cobras trying to survive in harsh conditions in the only way they can- by being predators. So the design of the characters in look and story is very cohesive. The center of the chest piece has an Ankh-like shape, sort of mirroring the teardrop/spoon on their foreheads.

Do you notice how many aliens in Star Trek tend to wear gloves? The Jem'Hadar in DS9 also originally wore grey gloves. It's just easier than painting everyone's hands and nails to match their alien faces.

The Cardassians in The Wounded also had much pinker skin than the Cardassians who would be shown after them. Pink, tan, olive, and brown tones are really common among the Star Trek aliens because these are much easier to blend with human skin tones. To get a blue Andorian or a green Orion looking like their skin is natural and not just paint is a more involved process, so most aliens have human skin colors.

On the next time we see the Cardassians, their appearance has changed dramatically. The uniforms are the 2.0 version. They're still recognizable as a species, but their look is more refined.

Gul Lemec was such a striking looking man. Handsome and frightening, charming and sinister, which is what you want for an antagonist of this kind. Aside from Marc Alaimo who is of course the O.G. Cardassian and the blueprint for the species, I think Lemec actor John Durbin really embodied the Cardassian look the best.

The prosthetics have been refined and look more detailed compared to ones seen in The Wounded. The brow bones look more defined, like bones rather than pinched blobs of skin. The wigs are now jet black. The neck scales went through several variations, becoming more defined and 3-dimensional over time. Their skin is greyer, and their uniforms have become the now much more familiar 2.0 style which stayed generally consistent in form throughout the 1990's Trek shows (with some variations I'll detail below).

The main shell of the uniform is a bodysuit made from neoprene- very insulating wetsuit material! It's uncomfortable! Hot! Sweaty! Not meant for land use. Not designed to wear under studio lights. Just think about how they had to film in the California desert wearing a wetsuit + the wig, the prosthetics, the foam rubber armor- it must have been like hell. I'm getting heat stroke just imagining it.

The uniform now had some piping and ribbed flourishes along the sides giving it dimension so it looked like alien clothes and not just wetsuit for surfing. Those little details make all the difference.

There's a round foam rubber "corset" shaped like a lozenge around the ribs and matching smaller ones guarding the elbows. Originally these were black/dark grey, the one above is from later on.

The football padding is gone, and has become a foam rubber cuirass with a diamond shape pointed outward on the chest, giving the chest a "barrel chested" look, which drives home the idea that these are lizard-like people.

They wear textured "boots," with patterns that match the cuirass, which are actually leg gaiters worn over platform shoes/ankle boots if you look close. Same thing was done with the Bajoran boots. Gaiters are easier and cheaper than having so many pairs of custom boots made. The shoes look like they give the already quite tall actors an extra 1.5-2 inches in height. This was common on Star Trek, actors wearing these Robert DeNiro elevator shoes. Captain Picard had them, too. Nobody is gonna notice for another 30 years when everything becomes HD.

The first variants of this new uniform we see on TNG look uniformly black or very dark grey on screen, but there are color variants later on. They wear a wrist communicator on the left wrist. The mold of the wrist communicator was also re-used on the doorbells on DS9 and Cardassian ships:

Originally the Cardassian actors were tall and slender guys built like Marc Alaimo, and that's how they wanted the species to look like, so they could all wear 1-piece bodysuits without any issue since that looks good on tall and slender people. If they're all shaped the same way that makes the tailor's job a lot easier as well. In the TNG days they probably thought they would have 5 at most of them on screen at any one time. But then came DS9 with dozens upon dozens of Cardassians.

But really, there's only so many actors who are not only 6 feet tall and 0% body fat but also right for the roles they wanted, so eventually they wanted to branch out and hire different actors- including older actors, heavy set actors, actors who had different body types, so the Cardassians would no longer just be all tall and very slender lizard men. They introduced a 2-piece costume that would be more comfortable and flattering on different body types. This is first seen on Legate Parn, who was the first chunky military Cardassian we see.

The Legate variant of the uniform also has sliver detailing on the cuirass, along with the gold Legate badge.

As for color variants, the earliest new style Cardassian uniforms seen on Gul Lemec & co. are black and dark grey on screen. But the uniforms in DS9 tend to be in dark blue, the cuirass and accessories have dark green colors. There are even some 2 piece uniforms with a pinstriped Dark Mauve color.

You can see above the different styles of one piece uniform and 2 piece uniform. The 2 piece uniform has overalls-design with attached suspenders worn under the top. So it was still pretty inconvenient to wear in terms of, like, needing a bathroom break. The only time I recall Dukat wearing the 2 piece uniform is when he was briefly promoted to Legate in the episode Indiscretion.

I for one don't understand why Star Trek costume designers think everyone in the future will be wearing 1-piece bodysuits. Even if everyone is hot and skinny in the future thanks to replicators rationing out our calories, a bodysuit still makes bathroom breaks a pain in the ass. But I digress.

The armor cuirass is made from cast latex, in a dark greyish green color. The cast latex would have made them lighter to wear than actual rubber, but as you can see it has a lot of wear and tear on it, it's less durable than rubber.

It has a strip on the side with writing and symbols in the Cardassian script, possibly denoting rank or division. These are velcroed on.

The construction of the back of the cuirass is slightly different from the front, and if you look closely you can see how it closes in the back, most likely with velcro or a hidden zipper?

There's an all-black and unique variant of the uniform worn by the unnamed sleazy Legate who talks with Major Kira in the episode where she goes back in time to see if Dukat banged her mom. His uniform is made with a shinier black spandex material which you can see below. Not as warm to wear as the neoprene. These pictures from the auction show all the detailing which is never really seen because it's covered by the cuirass and "corset." I'm not sure if these details are present in all the uniforms, because we don't really see it. The ribbed and piping details extend to the upper bicep and are also seen on the chest. The uniform is black yet the belt and holster are the usual dark green color. I can't find a shot of his boots/leg gaiters to see what color they were.

Of course these slight color variations didn't really register on 1990's televisions. The show has moody dim lighting and was broadcast in standard 480pixels definition, on cathode ray televisions. Only until seeing auction photos I've included here, and seeing HD AI-Upscaled version of the shows did I even notice all these color differences. I always assumed their uniforms were always black and dark grey the whole time.

The only time I can recall seeing a Cardassian with his rubber cuirass off was when Tekeny Ghemor took his off in his home. I mean, it makes sense why would you wear that around the house on your time off? Ghemor's legate uniform looks similar to the sleazy Legate's uniform, but Ghemor's is made of the standard wetsuit material.

And finally the holster for the Cardassian phase disruptor is made of the same foam rubber materials as the cuirass. The belt is made from the same materials and raised diamond-style rubber as Major Kira's uniform belt. The leg belt is held together with velcro, while the waist belt has snaps. I found these images from an e-bay auction and saved them for costume research purposes.

This is no means a definitive guide, but just showing that if you're gonna make a Cardassian military cosplay there's enough variations in color and style to choose from that you can improvise and still look like a legit Legate.

#costume research

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