#but that got me thinking on the difference btw danny and the dead

[redrobin-detective]

give lilies with full hands

“Ghosts at the cemetery, why am I not surprised?” Valerie grumbled under her breath as she glanced at the glowing dots congregating near Heavenly Gates, Amity’s largest cemetery. It was just after 5pm on a Friday; Valerie should be at home getting ready for a fun and relaxing weekend. Instead, she was speeding forward in the dreary pre-rain mist about to tackle a hoard of the undead. Her life was so strange and unfair sometimes it just fueled her hatred for everything ghostly.

As she approached the cemetery, she slowed down and had her ectoweapon up and ready to shoot. Instead of a fire fight, she found an eerie, unsettling quiet that sunk deep into her bones and made her unable to move. She just hovered above the cemetery and took in the full scope of the scene. The Fentons were here, hard as they were to miss but like Valerie, they were also frozen with unease. Mrs. Fenton kept fiddling with her weapons but couldn’t manage to lift it in a meaningful way. 

The fog hung heavily around the cemetery, clinging like wet paint dripping down an unfinished picture. She could make out the unnatural glow of several ghosts, a few of which she recognized. That annoying child pirate ghost none of the adults could ever see was sobbing silently, curled up in a fetal position on the ground as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible. The biker guy and girl were cuddled into each other, leaned up against a grave looked scared and worn, flickering dangerously like static on TV. Val spotted Ember looking frightened and quaking looking like she wanted to run but was unable to. Her soft glow alerted Val that there was another ghost she’d initially missed.

The ghost was more shadow than anything, the fog moving through and from them. They were a swirl of greys and blacks in the approximation of a long cloak covering their face entirely. Pinpricks of bright lights shone from underneath the cloak’s hood. They bore down on Ember as if it were seeing deep into her soul and found her lacking. 

Phantom was there too, he looked almost normal compared to everything else going on so it’s not surprising she’d missed him at first. The fog dampened some of his ghostly glow and he was standing properly instead of floating. Like Val and the Fentons, he seemed unable to move. The heavy drizzle in the air flattened his normally gravity defying hair. If she hadn’t known better, she’d say he was a normal person standing there, albeit one with weird fashion sense who went a little crazy with the bleach. And if Phantom looked human in comparison then just what was this new ghost?

“Amber Jablonski,” The ghost whispered quietly within the cemetery but Valerie could hear perfectly well, as if were being spoken into her ear. From the shivers she saw come from the Fentons, they were experiencing the same thing. Ember moaned, something deep and agonizing. She fell to her knees as more of her glow faded. “An eager musician just making a name for herself in her small town. A performance at a barn had faulty wiring. The building caught fire and Young Amber was trapped by debris and unable to escape.”

The flame in Ember’s hair burst into brilliant blue flames before painfully sputtering out like a candle on the verge of going out. A wisp like ghostly hand reached out and tenderly ran a finger down the side of Ember’s face like a mockery of the tears she could no longer shed. “Cause of death was severe burns across her whole body and smoke suffocation at the age of 22.”

“Enough,” Phantom announced suddenly, stepping forward through the ghostly arm putting himself squarely between Ember and the wisp ghost. The dead rockstar barely noticed, her whole form trembling as she looked down at the cold earth with absolute horror. Val wondered if she was feeling the cold of the cemetery or the burning heat of an out of control fire. “You’re killing her.”

“She is already dead,” the ghost answered, “as are they all. They are but echoes of lives come and gone.”

“That doesn’t mean you have the right to remind them,” Phantom said, looking more ghostly again. His aura flared suddenly and his eyes lit up like angry lightning bugs in a jar. “Death is sacred, it’s private and you’re using it to hurt them.”

“It is my duty, I am the Mortem Obire. I make the restless dead confront their own mortality, remind them of what they lost.” The ghost stared down Phantom who flinched but overwise stood his ground. “It is because of you, Danny Phantom, that I have been summoned to this realm. Your life essence has made these ghosts forget what they were. They flock to you, drawn to your vibrancy, seeking what they’d lost. The dead were straying from their existence, emboldened by your example, they were forging new purposes. I am merely correcting their assumptions to preserve the delicate balance that maintains the two worlds.”

“But death shouldn’t have to define them, I mean us,” Phantom pleaded. “They can grow if they want, experience new things. The end of life isn’t the end.”

“How very human of you,” the other ghost said breathily, an unnatural imitation of a chuckle. “Your death, if we can call it that,” the ghost said, “was born out of innocence and ignorance. Nature demanded the experiment fail but your naivety allowed for the flow of life and death to be disrupted. You looked at a machine you could neither understand or control and made the attempt anyway. Your hubris consumed you in the form of electricity, pain firing through your whole body as you screamed for a relief that never came. Your old body was obliterated and remade into the abomination you are now.”

Oh god, Phantom was electrocuted. He had lived his last moments as a human screaming and in pain. She knew he was vaguely around her age but it was one thing to know a kid her age had gone through that and another to hear it described. Without thinking, she lowered her weapons. 

“Yeah I know that,” Phantom said weakly. “I took out the power in the whole city for a few hours which I felt bad about afterwards. What’s your point?” His glow was completely gone, the wet humidity of the air clinging to him much like how it fogged up Valerie’s suit. The shadow of the sinking sun made his white hair look dark and the greens of his eyes had faded into a less unnatural blue/green. 

The only think remotely otherworldly about him was a faint pulsing glow coming from the center of his chest. It beat like a heart, a soft brightness that seemed to dispel the overwhelming feeling of death. Ember looked up from the ground, the pirate kid uncurled himself a little, biker guy and his girlfriend became a little more solid. They looked at Phantom with such awe and envy and grief it was almost painful to watch them stare at what they clearly lacked. 

“My words hold no domain over your heart now, child of two worlds,” the ghost wheezed, floating past Phantom. “But someday you will greet death properly, be made humble by it, and I will be there to remind you of how fickle and fleeting that precious life of yours is.” 

“I-” Phantom defended, glowing slightly with his eyes once more an ectoplasmic green. But now it was obvious to see how much more lively and present he was compared to the others. She still hates him, will probably still hunt him but while she knew Phantom was a ghost she knew, whatever he was, she couldn’t call him dead. Not with eyes so sympathetic and expressive and alive.   

“Be gone, all of you mortals, this is a place for the dead,” the ghost commanded. The ghost hovered over to the Box Ghost who had been shivering behind a tombstone the whole time and suddenly went still as stone. “Your compassion for them does them no favors. This is the price for their existence, the dead cannot and should not forget. That is their purpose and this is mine. This is not an end to their existence, merely a reminder.”

Valerie never thoughts she’d see the Fentons flee from a fight but still she watched as Jack and Maddie slowly backed up until they reached their garish assault vehicle. They fumbled for the handles, not willing to tear their eyes off the ghosts before climbing in and driving off. Phantom looked torn, grief stricken as he watched the mist ghost, the Mortem Obire, speak softly to the Box Ghost. He looked like he wanted to interfere, to place himself in-between again but his shoulders slumped as he realized the futility of the action. This was the nature of death and memory and the living were not to interfere.

He glanced up at her, wary and saddened before disappearing from view, going off to wherever it was he lived his life when he wasn’t causing her problems. Valerie swiftly turned her board around and sped quickly in the direction of home. This had left her a lot of things to think about, about Phantom, about ghosts, about what it meant to stick around once your number was up. 

But that was for later, for now she wanted to get out of chill before the rain started in earnest. She wanted to drink something warm, sit close with her father and feel their hearts beating in time. Valerie Grey wanted nothing more, in that moment, to simply breathe in and appreciate her life before it was taken and those happy memories used against her. She would not die full of regret for what she had missed.

[theshelbyclan]

Mae

Summary: I am Emma, the invisible sister of Danny Whizz-Bang: the ordinary man who passionately believed I was extraordinary

A/N: Anon requested: I’ll star saying this :I love your writing! , so I had an idea for an original character, like imagine if Danny Whizbang had a younger sister (around thirteen years old) who is always been near to the shelbys and it's really close to them all, after her brother comes back from the war she steps up to take care of him but she is not really succesful at it, when her brother dies she is absolutely broken hearted and tommy takes her under his wing. This could be an imagine or a longer fic btw.:) I love this request sooo much, thank you for this wonderful and original idea! I kinda got creative with this character, hope you don’t mind ;)

Words: 2586

***

My name is Emma, but I go by Mae. My mum likes to tell the story of my birth and how Danny was sitting in the hallway with dad, both smoking frantically. Mum had already had a few children, but I was her last one, the unexpected one. When I was born, Danny rushed in and demanded to hold me. When he asked mum what my name was, she told him, “Emma.” But Danny shook his head and said, “No, she looks more like a Mae.” So, I go by Mae. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Danny used to call me. I’d sit on his shoulders and he could walk for hours, until you could no longer hear the factories or smell the smoke. He’d show me the grass and the trees and used to say, “See? The world is bigger than you could ever imagine!”

I cried when he went off to war. He tried to make me feel better by telling me that he was simply traveling the world. “Are you going on one of our walks again?” I asked, full of childhood innocence. “A bit further than that, sweetheart,” he said. “All the way, outside of Birmingham?” “Yes, I’m crossing the ocean. And when I come back, I’ll tell you all about it.” And with a kiss, he left.

But he was different when he came back. He tried to act like the brother I knew, always softly spoken en as gentle as a giant can be, but when he was on his own, he often changed. The war had damaged him beyond repair and even though I tried to bandage the internal wounds as much as I could, he remained emotionally unstable. So I started following him around and whenever he went mad, I was at his side, when I could. Suddenly, Danny Whizz-Bang had a shadow and everybody knew it. It was almost like it’d had been before the war: my favourite brother and I, inseparable. But still, he was different when he came back.

*** One day, I followed him after school, because he wasn’t acting like the Danny I knew and loved. I lost him halfway so I went into the Garrison, thinking he might go there next. As I walked in, I saw Mr. Shelby sitting at the bar, so I faltered a little.

He looked up and noticed me. “Hello, Emma,” he said in that husky voice of his, “How’s your mother?” “Very well, Mr, Shelby,” I replied meekly, even though she wasn’t, “Thank you for asking, sir.” He took another sip of his whiskey, “No need to call me ‘sir’, Emma.” “Sorry, Mr. Shelby,” I replied, without noticing the discrepancy. The Shelby’s were like royalty around here and every child grew up learning they were to be feared and respected at all times. I’d known Tommy since I was little, but I wouldn’t dare to call him ‘Tommy’.

“And where’s your brother?” he inquired in a low voice. I was scared that he could sense the worry in my voice, so I feigned fear and let my shoulders drop. Pretending I was even younger than I was, I mumbled, “I thought he might be here.” And then Thomas Shelby turned and looked me right in the eye. Shivers went down my back and I turned away involuntarily. I couldn’t have been more grateful when another man stepped up from a table and walked over to Tommy to talk to him, freeing me from all inquisitive looks. Slowly, he lit another cigarette and tried his best to ignore the man who was talking to him, but I could see the interest in his eyes. He was like a horse, with ears suddenly standing up. I love horses. Meanwhile, I’d disappeared into the shadows of the Garrison. I was good at that: disappearing. See, I’d realised that girls of my age have that talent. We are still cute, if we want to be. Not quite adorable anymore, but sweet and innocent we can still be, to others. Luckily, I wasn’t pretty, or I’d lose my advantage of invisibility. But we see everything. People think we’re just children but our minds are beyond that stage already, so we observe. The secret is this: we are not yet women, but no longer little girls either. The strange result is that we are invisible to adults, because we fit in neither category. We pass around unnoticed.

Suddenly, my brother came crashing through the doors. He was having one of is episodes again and I rushed out of my hiding place towards him, only to be thrown backwards into the chaos. Tommy and the other man reached Danny first and even though they didn’t seem to like each other before, they worked as one now. With a few exchanged glances, they both knew what to do and they tackled my brother to the floor swiftly, while offering him calm words.

Danny didn’t stop screaming and I became numb from the pain I felt for him. I would share it all, if I could, but there was nothing I could do. When silence followed, Danny quickly apologized to Tommy, cap in hand, muttering the words I had spoken moment before: “Sorry, Mr. Shelby…” I ran after my brother when he left again and took his hand in mine. That always seemed to help. No one else had noticed my presence at the scene, though I could feel a pair of eyes burning in my back when we left. ***

I come from a large family. I had more brothers than I could count and there wee always too many mouths to feed at home. Most of them worked at the factories. They were just ordinary men, living ordinary lives. But Danny had always been my favourite. He wasn’t anything special, but he asked after me every day, even when he got back from France. I never talked much, not in school and never in the streets, but I did speak at home. But me and Danny, we actually talked. Also, he had kind eyes, like my mother has.

I wasn’t there when he stabbed the Italian. I’d been in school because I’d been the first one in my family to go and so I went, every day. I remember that one day, Tommy came into our house. Danny, another brother and I sat hunched over a book. Tommy asked my mother, “Are they teaching your girl how to read?” Mum had laughed a little, “I think she’s teaching them to be honest.” And so I went to school, because Danny told me I was the brains of the family and that was all the encouragement I needed. Meanwhile, my brother unwittingly killed a man with criminal ties, and so Danny’s death was demanded in retaliation.

When I heard, I rushed out of the school building and sprinted through the streets of Small Heath. Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind. “Shhh,” someone whispered in my ear. But I struggled for my life and kicked the invisible assailant, because the only coherent thought in my head was Danny. “Let me go!” I said angrily. “Emma,” he pleaded, and only then did I recognised the voice, “It’s done. Your brother killed a man.” I turned around to face Thomas Shelby and I spoke more words than I’d ever had to him, “He didn’t kill a man. After the war, Danny was already dead.” “We all are,” he nodded. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Safe.” I narrowed my eyes, “And for how long will he remain safe?” Tommy cleared his throat and looked away. All the shyness had fallen from me, “Tell me. I’m not a little girl anymore.” “The Italians deal with death by death. Either they kill Danny in the cruellest way imaginable, or I do it. Quickly.” “You’re going to shoot Danny,” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t see. “Emma. Look at me, eh?” he crouched down to my level and forced me to meet his eye, “I will find a way. Do you hear me? I will find a way. Trust me, eh?” I didn’t. So for the first time in my life, I reacted on impulse alone and lunged forward. In a flash, I had grabbed the gun from his waist, knowing where he carried it on him. Then I pointed it at the Peaky Blinder in front of me. “Emma…” he sighed, “Don’t make this difficult.” “Difficult for you?” I grunt out through clenched teeth. There was another thing I had noticed about Tommy. When he was stuck or found himself in a position of disadvantage, he changed the subject. He reacted to absurd situations with even more absurd questions or suggestions. This was how remained in control, by catching the other off-guard. And he was trying it right now, “How did you know I carried a gun, right here?” he pointed at the spot on his suit. “I pay attention,” I merely commented, not taking my eyes off of him or the gun. Tommy nodded slowly and stated matter-of-factly, “Give it back to me. If you shoot me, I can’t help Danny.” Something inside me knew he was right, so involuntarily, I lowered the gun a little.

He held up a hand in a surprisingly comforting manner, “You need to let me help Danny, eh? Those fucking Italians are brutal. You can’t get in my way. Stay here. Emma, promise me: stay here.” Completely numb, I nodded. I had no idea why I trusted this man all of a sudden, but I did. Maybe because I grew up with the Shelby’s, the worst family imaginable, but at least we knew them. “Good girl,” he said softly, “When I come back, I will need your help. Just stay here, alright?” And then he vanished. Minutes felt like hours and I couldn’t bear waiting. Silently, I retreated into an alleyway and slid down the wall. There, I hid my face in my arms, which were resting on my knees and just sobbed. I couldn’t lose Danny. After everything that had happened, the brothers I had already lost in the war, I needed him. He came back from France and everything went fucking sideways, but he came back. I needed him to stay. When I heard the gunshot, my heart dropped. The world stood still and my ears were ringing. It was done. Slowly, I got up and walked. Where to, I had no idea. I no longer noticed the people around me and it felt like I was stuck in a glass container, separated from the rest of the people. Apparently, I had walked for hours and when my mind came back to me, I saw trees. I felt exhausted suddenly and let myself fall down in the grass. Within minutes, I was asleep. *** Danny Owens: the man who died twice. I had done my grieving already, outside of Birmingham, under the trees, in the grass. The second time hurt less, or did it? At least it didn’t shock me as much as it did the first time. He was the toughest man I know, because fighting yourself is so much harder than fighting any enemy. I would forever remember him as the kindest, bravest and best man I ever knew. The ordinary man, as he used to say, who told me every day that I was extraordinary. He deserved better. In those months, I never saw Tommy again. He was busy fighting a war with London, the communists and the rest of the world. But still, I trusted he had done all he could for my brother. After everything that had happened, I felt like I finally knew the man behind the peaked cap a little. But then, suddenly, he showed up at our house. “Emma,” he greeted, his eyes soft, “I won’t ask you how are, but I want you to know I tried…” I quickly cut him off, “I know.” His gaze turned glazed all of a sudden and I knew he was thinking of France. Danny used to have that same look about him. “What can I do for you, Mr. Shelby?” I asked politely. And back he was, “I told you the day Danny went off to London that I needed your help.” I frowned, “Why me? How could I be of use?” “You’re special, Emma,” he emphasised. “I’m just an ordinary girl,” I responded, in surprise. Tommy smiled a little, “That day, you said two things to me,” he paused a little and met my eyes, “Two things I remember clearly. One: you told me you weren’t a little girl anymore. And two: you told me you pay attention.” I kept silent and waited for what came next. Truthfully, I felt a little called out by his words. “I’ve noticed you, Emma,” he continued, lighting a cigarette at the same time. “No one notices me,” I said quickly. Again, he smiled. I’d never seen him smile, but this was the second time in mere minutes, “Exactly. You are invisible and you know how to use it. Danny always said his little sister was the smartest little girl he ever saw, and I now believe he was right. Behind that timid façade of a little girl, you observe, analyse and see everything.” He paused for a moment, “Tell me, Emma, what is it that we Shelby’s do?” I cast my eyes down and answered vaguely, “You run Birmingham, sir, everyone knows that.” “Don’t be afraid,” he said in a low voice, “And stop pretending. You know exactly what we do.” So I spoke frankly, “Yes.” Suddenly, Tommy stood up and walked over to the other side of our small room, “I will make sure you can go to school, for as long as you want to. If you want to go to another school, you will. If you want to go to university, you will walk into that university with your head held high. I will make it happen, alright?” I blinked a few timed rapidly. “I want to ask you for a favour in return,” he continued in his business-like tone, “Keep an eye out for me on the streets. If you hear anything that might be of interest to us, tell me. You’re clever; you know what we would like to know. It’s not a condition; I will take care of your education no matter what, so you’re not obligated to do as I ask. That much I owe to Danny. I’m just asking for your help.”

I shrugged and my pigtails flipped into the air with the gesture, “I’m honoured, but…”

He pointed at me, with a twinkle in his eye, “That’s good: the innocent act, but with the cynical thoughts behind it. No need to try it on me though,” he cut me off.

“Alright,” I let the façade slip for a moment and held out a hand, “I’ll do it. But I do have a condition.”

“What’s that?” he asked, walking towards me.

I narrowed my eyes, “Don’t ever treat me like a child that needs protecting. I need a friend, but no replacement for my brother.”

Tommy shook my hand carefully, “I’ll be your friend then, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Come to me when you need anything,” he said softly, almost lovingly, “Even if you just need some company. I’ll look out for you, Emma.”

And for the first time, I smiled at him, as I contradicted him:

“I go by Mae.” *** Masterlist

[jacks4eva]

reaction to the lost hero by rick riordan

imma be honest this is a long time coming, okay so here’s the timeline we’re looking at so you understand me. i read lightning thief in middle school, dropped it and read it again in ninth grade. then i read sea of monsters, but never started titan’s curse. then for some reason in 11th grade i bought the second book in heroes of olympus and started to read it and got confused so i started to read titan’s curse and got to when percy took artemis’s place and then dropped it...again. very sad that time considering it was LEGIT THE END SO CLOSE. anyway yesterday i read the whole thing again and the battle of the labrinyth in like 6-8 hours. idk i can’t remember if i started at 10pm or midnight but i finished at 6am. anyways today i read the last olympian, and now i’m starting the lost hero. i thought it’d be funny to do my reactions.

this timeline is just funny because i have read so many books, and yet the most popular ones like percy jackson and harry potter, didn’t wanna finish lol. i still haven’t finished goblet of fire yet i read 100 pages an hour and could probably finish it in a day. anyways.

let the reactions begin

okay i’ve heard of jason but i was not expecting a pov already

woah electrocution

he’s already got a love interest what

he said the coach is 5’0 i now imagine the coach as danny devito i have no choice

piper and leo yes i recognize these names

(i’ve seen a lot of posts about percy jackson okay)

i like leo i don’t like dylan

i love the starwars reference

oh look guys we got popular girls that are racist, can they get their asses beat in this pls

dylan is also racist for smiling-asswipe

we love the cherokee representation

i hate them so much can they please leave

“i had to say something” i like coach hedge is this bad

i hope percy is the storm but i just know i wouldn’t be that lucky

ofc dylan is a racist monster

danny devito never returned :(

PLS TELL ME THESE REINFORCEMENTS ARE PERCY AND ANNABETH

who is the bulky dude

i’m sorry i’m laughing he’s a big scary dude with his head shaved and A RAINBOW TATTOO and his name is butch

oh so that’s why percy isn’t here

okay usually when reading i can form some kind of theory or connection but at this point i literally have no clue what is happening

i just knew as soon as he asked that he had abilities with fire but i was not expecting fire fingers

wow what a first impression “you should be dead”

wait so all i remember from the son of neptune was the beginning had percy alone i think and i’m not sure if he had his memory or maybe not and he was running away from monsters, so is what’s happening to jason similar to that? and WILL PERCY NOT BE FOUND IN THIS BOOK?

“That also was necessary. Long ago, your father gave me your life as a gift to placate my anger. He named you Jason, after my favorite mortal. You belong to me.

“Whoa,” Jason said. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Now is the time to pay your debt, she said. Find my prison. Free me, or their king will rise from the earth, and I will be destroyed. You will never retrieve your memory.”

... okay theories, um a goat skin cloak was mentioned to have been owned by Zeus’s foster mother and that he owned it so the woman could either be the foster mother or Hera. If it was Hera, it would make sense that Zeus gave his son to placate her anger at his cheating or whatever. They are also trapped in Olympus, so prison would make sense. Hera was brought up a lot too, and according to wiki Hera persuaded Aphrodite to make her son make Medea fall in love with a mortal named Jason, so more than likely the lady is Hera. Their king will rise from earth could be the king from the battle of the labrynth, maybe. Or another king ya know there are so many.

Wait a minute

Something else I know about their names is Jason’s last name...JASON GRACE I thought it sounded familiar, because of Thalia Grace. Hah look at me being correct. That explains the flying and not being burnt by a lightning bolt—oh I’m stupid for not seeing it sooner.

Now just gotta figure out who Piper’s parent is.

Aha so I was right it was Hera.

Chiron not being able to give the information they need is kind of annoying.

Enceladus? So a giant offspring of Gaia, um...no bueno. Not a king tho.

“Child of lightning, beware the earth, The giants’ revenge the seven shall birth, The forge and dove shall break the cage, And death unleash through Hera’s rage.”

Okay theory time, child of lightning is obviously Jason. Beware the Earth...yeah no clue. The giants’ revenge the seven shall birth, the giants are probably the children of Gaia since that one giant was her child and it’s the seven are probably the seven half bloods from the great prophecy. The forge and dove shall break the cage, um maybe Leo is the forge since he’s hephaestus’s child (probably butchered the spelling). Doves are typically associated with aphrodite/venus, so idk about that. Maybe Piper is Venus’s child, I mean her God parent is her mom and it’d be funny since she was judging the other aphrodite kids. Also I assume Hera will kill whoever trapped her or someone involved since she’s so mad. Idk.

Could kill Drew btw.

CALLED IT CALLED IT CALLED IT IM A GENIUSSS

Wait. This woman looks like Hera, her clothes are made of Earth and she said Leo would fight her children trying to wake her. They’re gonna try to wake Gaia, which would make sense that it said stay away from Earth if she’s the Earth Goddess

I like the wolves thing because Romulus and Remus, ya know the twin boys who were raised by wolf and started Rome.

“You are our saving grace, as always. The she-wolf curled her lip, as if she had just made a clever joke”

I mean yeah his last name is grace

“She must really like this Percy guy to search for him so hard, and that made Jason a little envious. Was anyone searching for him right now? What if somebody cared for him that much and was going out of her mind with worry, and he couldn’t even remember his old life?”

so what if Percy’s just chilling at the Roman version of camp halfblood without a clue to who he is? bro.

Imagine reading this and seeing all of things I get right and wrong and wanting to slam your head into a wall.

Okay like idk why Annabeth was freaking out we kind of knew they were siblings, I mean they have the same dad. Unless this is saying they have the same mom or are twins or something. That’d be cool. That’s probably what he’s saying tbh but still, could’ve emphasized it more than “that’s my sister” like dude.

Anyway, they look very different so that’s funny.

King Boreas? uh.

Oo French

Let’s see what I can translate from the very little duolingo I did. Bienvenu, maybe a greeting. Idk which tho. Je suis Piper, I am Piper. Et c’est Jason, fils de Zeus, and this is Jason, son of Zeus. Vous parlez francais? tres bien, you speak french? good. Hey not bad, not shockingly good but considering I did the duolingo lessons 4 years ago, not bad. Vrai? Truth? Yeah I just looked it up.

Danny devito is alive!

“Leo scratched his head. “Well, I dunno about Enchiladas—”

“Enceladus,” Piper corrected.”

Leo is me omfg

DANNY DEVITO IS BACK

Arrows...HUNTERS OF ARTEMIS PLS?

“Leo stepped out next. “You’re catching me, too, Superman. But I ain’t holding your hand.”

this made me laugh ok moving on

Uh fight a sea monster? bro is Jason just Percy 2.0

“Aphrodite’s message was clear: This one needs no improvement.

And Piper agreed.”

I wonder if you can hear me squealing from hundreds or thousands of miles away

Did you miss the fact that he’s thirty feet tall— I DIED

Who slew titan k-what now? So basically yes. Percy 2.0

Okay I recognize the name Hazel, and all I ask is that she is not involved with Jason because Jason and Piper are really freaking cute.

an exchange of leaders, SO THEY DID SWITCH THEM

The way I called it

I WAS RIGHT AHA

anyways. time to read son of neptune

[ori-flails]

Rewatching Guardian - Episode 07 Part 3/3

Episode List || Part 1 | Part 2 || Episode 08

SPOILERS for upto episode 40, SPOILERS for the novel.

Lin Jing has a point. If they’re being spied by members of the Yashou tribes it’s better to have Zhu Hong involved. And he’s speaking in codes because they’re listening in. And Zhao Yunlan got it. I didn’t notice before and just thought it was weird they seem to not realize they were being spied on. Wow. I clearly wasn’t giving the SID enough credit. :/

(Also, the house seems pretty big from the outside but once they go in, it’s tiny. Odd.)

On this note, Zhu Jiu’s voice is nice enough. The cursed wig ugh and the chuuni act...

I just can’t get over it. Zhu Jiu could’ve been pretty cool and I was sitting here trying to enjoy his character and waiting for him to grow on me as a character when in reality he irritated the living daylights out of me.

And I was trying so hard to give him a chance to become a compelling character that I didn’t even admit to myself that Zhu Jiu was plain annoying to me until Ye Zun appeared, so for half the series.

Lin Jing being serious is <3 Zhao Yunlan and Xiao Guo’s faces lmao xD

He’s right too. The first murder can’t be held against Lai Su because he didn’t know something like this was going to happen. If we really really baby him, then we can say that the man didn’t see the correlation between the murders and his work for the first couple of incidents. But even then, after that point, there isn’t really any excuse.

If it was me, I’d have been driven crazy with the knowledge that there was something I could do that would possibly stop the murders, if not for a guilty conscience, it’d be also for the fear of the authorities connecting the dots and me becoming a suspect of a damn murder case. That’s scary!

And yeah, even if he had stopped there would’ve been no guarantee of this mysterious man online would’ve stopped whatever that prompted these murders (Lai Su never knew of his abilities), but still. I’d have gone crazy with the possibilities. No amount of money and fame can compensate for the loss of peace of mind like that.

Zhao Yunlan quickly turned the situation into a good-cop-bad-cop situation lol. Using the knowledge that Lai Su pissed of Lin Jing of all people to that extent to hammer in the guilt factor and pressurise Lai Su into revealing if there was anything else to this.

Yeah, the virtual world is so vast and easy to get sucked into that actual reality becomes secondary. And in this, Lai Su, as a result, was completely desensitized to people being murdered, and he was sitting there rationalising what was happening and making excuses for himself to try and appease his conscience because his greed overruled it.

Sad.

“His ability must be to self-hypnotise with his writing”, “He and the monster he write about are the same person”

This is why the trashy CGI monster from this episode is more upsetting to me than the plastic looking Youchu. The show could’ve gotten away with it by not showing this monster at all in this instance.

Because of Zhao Yunlan’s wording, the picture I get is that Lai Su himself would commit these crimes after he ‘falls asleep’ or something and have no recollection of it becaused he hypnotised himself. This would’ve been pretty cool. But in this case, it won’t work because then the thug going mad because of the monster so horrendous won’t be explained. So perhaps instead of a clear cut explanation, it would be better to leave some aspects a little unexplained.

Like, we get to see Zhu Jiu’s cryptid message and his parting words,  then the claw coming out of the computer screen or just a close-up of Lai Su’s terrified face, and then a blood curdling scream from Lai Su’s hidden room from Da Qing and Chu Shuzhi’s POV. When they go into the room to check what’s happened, Lai Su would already be dead.

No awful cheap looking CGI monster, a sense of mystery, and still it would make sense due to Zhao Yunlan’s hypothesis in this scene. I know very little about cinema and screenplay but still, wouldn’t this have been somewhat better? And unlike the Zhang Danni impersonator case, leaving the monster to the audience’s imagination wouldn’t take away from the experience.

The key information is that Lai Su didn’t know that he had this power. If he did, the protagonists of his stories wouldn’t have been the murderer (or the victim) and Lai Su could’ve brought many good things to his life (unless it’s like his power wouldn’t have activated without Zhu Jiu’s interference). No one would willingly screw themselves over like this of their own free will.

“I would’ve never though you would say these words to me today” + the following comment about Zhao Yunlan’s growing understanding of Dixingren: o u c h

In these lines, the “you” Shen Wei is referring to is not Zhao Yunlan who is the future or past of Kunlun, but instead to Zhao Yunlan, son of Zhao Xinci, who, until recently, hadn’t shown any indication of being all that better than Zhao Xinci. Because it would not be surprising to Shen Wei if Kunlun was understanding of Dixingren; that would be expected.

Shen Wei likely knew of Zhao Yunlan before they met, and he is aware of what the SID had been upto since he took over. Whatever mental picture he had of Zhao Yunlan was probably so different from Kunlun until they met. Yet, Zhao Yunlan is not that mental picture of his, and neither is he Kunlun anymore/yet.

I feel like my brain (and heart) would become scrambled agg if I was in Shen Wei’s position, trying to align the three different ideas of Zhao Yunlan; the professional judgement of Zhao Yunlan as the new chief of the SID, the actual Zhao Yunlan he interacts with who is fun, clever and charming like a fox, and Kunlun.

In my opinion, Shen Wei’s doing good by keeping Kunlun and Zhao Yunlan as separated as he can in his mind, while trying to have a better understanding of Zhao Yunlan by having his professional image and the observations of him on a personal level merge.

Btw, when Shen Wei was saying these things, he looked like he was going to cry. And then there were unshed tears in his eyes when he smiled (the second and third to last screenshots). Q~Q

I wonder what he was thinking in that moment. Was he missing Kunlun at the very Kunlun-like thing Zhaon Yunlan just said with his very Kunlun looking face? Was it relief/gratefulness of somebody finallly seeing the same peril that he has been seeing? Was it the pressure of his responsibilities to his doomed people?

Ugh Zhu Yilong how do you do this... I will cry. The faces he makes are so freaking sad.

THAT’S ANGUISH ON HIS FACE AND I CANNOT.

Something entirely unrelated to the episode: I love how the way Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan talk are so different from the natural way Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu talk, but I never even thought that the actors were changing their speech so much but so subtly until I watched this long interview and my brain was confused out of its wits because Zhu Yilong speaking sounds so different to Shen Wei, while Bai Yu’s voice itself sounds completely different to me. They just sound so natural in their roles. As someone that loves watching good acting but cannot understand how acting even works, I am actually floored.

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  Hope you had a good day, and are finally getting some rest!  So, did you know there are sites that let you design your own ugly Christmas sweaters?  May I present the one that Peter’s husbands get him for a party?  Except then the jokes on them because he won’t stop wearing it EVERYWHERE (at least I hope the image shows?  It saved in a different format on the site I used for this.)  Also, if you were ever to actually make a shirt of it, I would suggest an image from the reaction GIF you used for the alignment/meta anon.  Because, my god, that smirk.  XD  (Also, they are totally right.  And it is hilarious to me that the two officers of the law are firmly [and accurately] on the neutral side of that axis.  XD )

And I’m still screaming over that latest preview.  He just wants cuddles and ear scritches, Noah!  The saliva will dry, he’s just showing his appreciation for your support.  XD  And oh, yeah I knew he would eventually get better, it was more me trying to decide how quickly I was hoping for it to happen.  My “I want it asap because I hate seeing them in pain” side was warring with my “but nightmare creature cuddles would be adorbs, tho?” side (and they are).  :D  Also, terrible thought brought on by working at my job too long: since I don’t think that form has a tail like a wolf (I don’t really remember noticing one, at least?), do you think that since he can’t wag, he starts doing the wiggle-butt thing like boxers and pits tend to do?  (sorry, the thought occurred to me and I couldn’t make it stop.  XD )

Also, how dare you put the image of Noah and Chris cuddling in the window seat watching the snow fall while the listen to Peter singing ‘Hallelujah’ as he finishes the dishes, in my head?  Or them sitting at the table having coffee and joining him for the choruses?  Or Chris singing along with Tony Bennett or Harry Connick Jr on the local Christmas station?  Or Noah singing along with Chris Cornell’s version of Ave Maria (or doing a damn good impression at least [song is available on Spotify, btw, if you’ve not heard it])?  My body was not meant to hold this level of feral screaming, dude.  XD

For the undecided alignment (that don’t involve spoilers), I would vote LN for Danny and CG for John.  No specific reasons, that’s just what feels right at the moment.  And I’m curious if Noah and the kids have been in the vault at all, because Malia would be able to access it.

And, yes, I am all for mutual body positivity support among the boys.  I remember watching some BTS thing a few years back, and Linden said something about how everyone was “running around without their shirts on, and I just feel kinda old and jiggly”, and my very first thought was “Oh, please.  You may not be I’ve-had-nothing-but-chicken-for-a-week-and-haven’t-had-liquids-in-three-days ripped like the other guys, but in no way will you ever convince me you are actually out of shape in the slightest."  Also, I’m just picturing a scene where Noah accidentally(/on purpose…?) looms over Chris, who just has this moment of "oh, yeah, that’s right, you’re tall now” immediately followed by “well, I am learning a number of new things about myself right now"  XD  On a related note, how do you think he feels about dip kisses after realizing this?  Although, I do hope Noah does not sweep Chris off his feet in quite the same way Chris keeps doing to him.  XD

On an unrelated note, that post about Artoo and Luke about killed me dead.  XD  Artoo’s propensity for shenanigans and Luke’s pervading issues with impulse control is just a complete recipe for hilarious disaster and total ride-or-die besties.  It also reminded me of the post about how Rogue One leads into New Hope and Leia straight up lying right to her dad’s face.  Which, while hysterical, also makes me think about how many posts I see about how Leia is very much her father’s daughter, but almost never see any that point out how much Luke is his mother’s son.  I just have a LOT OF FEELINGS about this, okay?  But I will contain that rant.  XD  (Star Wars has been an on-again-off-again love for me since I was 9.  It’s pretty much a guaranteed way to get an emotional response out of me.  XD )

And I’m glad Mo doesn’t bother the tree or anything, though the box thing is pretty funny.  But he does seem to have that very cat-like tendency to want to completely block you from accessing the keyboard or pin you in place because he’s laying on you and you don’t want to disturb him, so I think he’s catting just fine.  XD  I mean, I have some friends who one of their cats is immune to scruffing (the downside of this is that he’s also almost completely feral still [he was a stray that stayed], and at one point he got a UTI and needed antibiotics.  I’m pretty sure my friend had to get like a falconing glove or something to get his pills in him.  XD )

That America being huge vs Europe being old thing also made me laugh because there was the section about the "long bus ride” that was like two hours, and all I could think about was how often we drove four hours both ways to visit my grandparents, and how in high school we took a trip to Canada, and I don’t remember the exact length of the bus ride up, but I know it was between twenty-three and twenty-eight hours.

And I hope you’re enjoying the Spiderman game, or will when you get to it!  As best I recall, everyone I know who has played it has had nothing but good things to say about it.  And wow, I’m rambling again.  Oh well.  Anyway, hope you’re doing well, and sending lots of good energy for finishing the chapter to your satisfaction (I know the readers certainly don’t mind the longer chapters.  :D )  Take care!  *Hugs!*

Oh my god I am absolutely in love with that sweater. Why is this not a thing XD 

And yeah, they definitely gift Peter a sweater like that, lbr. No other way about it. It definitely backfires when Peter wears it every single year and to everywhere. Including PT meetings and the parent/school board meetings? I forgot the American word for it, in Dutch we call it ouderraad. I know we talked about them before where Peter starts a war with the ‘Karen’ and completely wrecks her. And how all the other moms fall in love with the three DILFS.

But yeah, wears it everywhere and every year XD. 

Noah’s deputies, including Jordan, have definitely snapped pictures and post them on every computer desktop in the station. Including pictures of Noah’s reaction faces of that sweater.

Because you cannot convince me, that a bunch of cops, would not be dicks about this.

Chris is infinitely grateful that he does not have coworkers like that.

And god that is rather good smirk to go with that line XD. And yeah I guess it is funny. But it’s also true and that’s wow... XD 

I did a character alignment test for Peter and came out on CN so that is what I’m going to stick with in any itteration for him. 

As for the wiggle butt thing, he does not have a tail and I already had a very lengthy inner discussion with myself before getting this ask and I can tell you, he does wiggle butt like a boxer in this form. Imagine a fucking beast like that just wiggle butting with happiness. The image is so bizarre that I had to include it in the full moon chapter.

Chris is definitely learning a number of things about himself when he figures out Noah can now loom over him and press him against walls. Also Chris has a thing for being bound or pressed against objects and when Noah figures that one out, well, let’s say Peter certainly doesn’t mind watching those moments.

There’s also a revelation when Chris says; I can easily get out of these handcuffs and Noah translates it too; Good, that means that as long as you don’t try to, you’re consenting to whatever I’m doing to you. Deal? To which Chris, enthusiastically agrees. It’s a very fun game. Peter disagrees because they tend to lock him out during the games with some ash, although he is invited back in after they’re done and then the attention of two Omegas is fully on him. So I suppose he doesn’t mind too much.

Something that is both funny and sweet though is that through Ben, Noah discovers how much he misses having little kids running around. And he has a few moments of; oh god I want another kid realizations in this chapter.

Of course, considering their situation this isn’t the time and Noah more than realizes that. But it gets conversations about the future going for all three of them.

Oh and to answer your question, Malia has not been to the vault, but she and her siblings will get to see it. If that’s with dad or with Derek I haven’t decided yet. But they will end up at the vault in this story. Gotta get Peter’s necklace back.

So far I’ve had a bit of a rough day but by answering this and focusing on headcanons, and that freaking sweater!!!!, I feel a bit better. So thank you my friend, this helped me a lot <3. 

And I agree, Leia is just like her father but Luke is all Padme and people don’t talk about that enough. <3

Lots of Love from me and Mo!

[deanky]

Here are some little like ‘reviews’ of all the Oingo Boingo albums... Under cut LOL... I just like to talk about Oingo Boingo I am so obsessed right now they have become tied for Mr. Bungle as favorite band... But anyways... Hope you enjoy ^_^

Only a Lad: Very fun sound as a whole. I enjoy how like poppy and synthy it is and stuff and that one weird electronic voice Mr. Elf man does in like every song. I remember like actually not liking most of the songs first time I heard it and I’m not sure why because I enjoy 9/10 out of them a lot now... But then again I like almost never really like an album the first time I hear it LOL I have a mean soul. A lot of the songs have pretty evil words in them but I have like slight respect for how much hatred Danny Elfman seems to have had for everyone on the entire planet at the time of writing. And for the majority of songs I cannot really complain about because I think it fits theme of like very happy sounding song but nasty words in it duality of man and such. Only one I really do not like is Capitalism because it has the whiniest lyrics of all and also it just does not sound good like as a song I think I am sorry. I must say it. Forgive me. I was so thrilled hearing Nasty Habits for the first time because I really like songs that sound like a homosexual cartoon villain would sing them to you. Well that’s all. Only a Lad itself was one of the first songs of theirs I heard except sped up and it had a picture of anime Bart Simpson on it. I like it. Good song. Recently I cannot stop getting it and Little Girls stuck in my head. That’s all

Nothing to Fear: Everything about this album is sooooo sooo good it is like so incredibly catered specifically to my tastes. One of the few albums I have loved immediately as soon as I heard I finished listening for the first time and was immediately like oh this is going in my favorites. I add some points also for absolutely incredible beautiful cover art it’s got weird colors weird animals logo made of worm things it’s so beautiful it makes me want to cry.  I think it gets SLIGHTLY weaker in its second half but that is hard not to do with albums. That said though a lot of songs that I felt were slightly worse at first have risen to being my favorites of the album like Why’d We Come and Reptiles and Samurai. Didn’t know what to think about Running on a Treadmill at first but I think it works very well in its simplicity and it is very catchy I can imagine people like singing it on actual treadmill and like jumping around abd being in zero gravity for some reason it is like that music video where they are in the plane but it is treadmills. Well, hi. The only ones that feel like slightly slightly worse to me are Whole Day Off and Islands but I think I am growing to like both of those a lot more too. My favorites though are Grey Matter and Insects and Wild Sex and also Nothing to Fear the titular song and Why’d We Come and Reptiles and Samurai which is over half of the songs so I think that’s good.  I remember listening to Private Life like 5 times before listening to the rest of the album but I always forgot how it went immediately after not sure why because I’d say it is a reasonably catchy song. Anyways INCREDIBLE album. Rude lyrics? Still a thing but tend to be much more agreeable like it is obvious who is being made fun of in like Grey Matter and Nothing to Fear and I say the fun making is well deserved! Even though I may be the target of Grey Matter I understand and I am sorry. The general sound is also amazing I LOVE all the weird noises and metal stuff and clanks and clonks and all the xylophone. Dude the xylophone is so good. Synth and xylophone and guitar they are all best friends and they sound so cool together and I think xylophones should be more widely used in like “pop” music as a whole whatever that defines. I keep wanting to start a band and just play xylophone. Like what’s anybody gonna do to stop me? I love xylophone. That’s all

Good for Your Soul: I wasn’t so impressed by this one the first time I heard it but it quickly wormed its way up to a very close #2 and possibly even tied with Nothing to Fear as my favorite album of theirs. The album art on this one is also really good I will say! I felt like slightly let down at first by it just because it’s so hard to live up to how beautiful of a cover Nothing to Fear has in my mind. But its art is so cool too. Muscle man in wobbly world. What’s more to love (Side note I enjoy the song Wobbly World it is not an Oingo Boingo song it is by Devo I should listen to more Devo.) The first time I listened the only songs that REALLY jumped out at me super hard were No Spill Blood and Fill the Void, and I think those 2 are still tied as my favorites. I LOVE the whole like rhythm No Spill Blood has going on and the weird animal noises and also the lyrics they are not about Animal Farm they are about The Island of Dr. Moreau he did those surgeries don’t you know he made the animals have to be men and they were like are we not men but they didn’t say they were Devo sorry I keep talking about Devo in this Oingo Boingo album review. And BTW Fill the Void also is really great and has possibly my favorite set of lyrics in any song ever to exist which is the part like “Every little thing is a piece of a larger thing / Every little fish is a tyrant of the sea / Every little atom is a master of his family / Every single piece calls my name / What do they want from me?” It is so good it makes me go so insane I love it. Another song that works really well in just being a simple thing.  It is so nice and cool it feels like being in space and you are in one of the levels of one of those Kirby spinoff games where he’s like a ball and you’re rolling him around NOT Canvas Curse the other ones like Dream Course I think. Anyways though while I wasn’t super big on all the other songs they ended up like slowly coming back into my head one by one until I was obsessed with all of them. First it was Pictures of You. Then it was Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me (would put that in my top 3 as well) and then Dead or Alive and then Little Guns and then Cry of the Vatos and then Wake Up It’s 1984 and then Sweat and then the titular song AND Who Do You Want to Be it was like. Wow. What a world.  WDYWTB + Good for Your Soul + Sweat were the 3 that didn’t really do it for me as much for a while but now I’ve been really enjoying them too so I think I can say I love every single song on this album. It is becoming my best friend. It’s sooo good. It feels like living in one of those fake Utopian cities and there’s actually something sinister going on behind the scenes. Like I will start seeing colors and freaking about it any time soon. Random memory that unlocked in me is that I used to be incredibly obsessed with The Book Thief and its concept of death when I was in like 6th or 7th grade like uncannily so but I never talked about the book ever I just hid it away in my mind. My sad story. Sorry everyone. That’s all

So-Lo: This one is technically just Danny Elfman but you know it is an Oingo Boingo album man they got the whole band there they were just having licensing issues because new label and stuff is my understanding. And they were like. Well let’s take advantage of this and do some less standard Oingo Boingo songs. That is how I grasp this situation I don’t know how correct I am her I actually don’t know that much about O.B. outside of the songs at this point I still cannot name any non-Danny Elfman member and I am really sorry for this and must learn to atone for my ways. This is a good album though. Once again has really good cover art I will say.  It’s like well hello there Mr. Elf man you’ve got some eyes sliding off your face and some funny colors and are controlling some little puppet things maybe it’s like you do you man LOL am I right or am I right! I like this album. This was yet another one where I listened the first time and was like. Man I’m not really feeling it with any of these songs. However I do enjoy that they all sound kind of like they were recorded on a Sega Genesis. I mean it does have very Genesis-y noises I know this was the 80s and it would be more accurate to say the Sega Genesis soudns like this album but you know what I mean. Anyways nothing grabbed me at first but upon my second listen I became extremely obsessed with the song “Go Away” and then listened to it on repeat for 2 hours straight and it still hasn’t got old for me I still like it very good song. Definitely my favorite. Tied with Everybody Needs which is also a very fun song I became similarly enamored with like a day later but didn’t listen to quite as much LOL. But anyways I went through that oh-so-familiar process which I must warn you is also the process I go through for every single album after this! - Where all the other songs started worming their way into my head and I was like oh brother I am beginnign to like them all now! Good for Your Soul, I think, marked like more obvious change from songs tending to be like “This is what Danny Elfman thinks of the world phrased in a humorous way” to more like actual stories and stuff, although the former wasn’t rid of entirely and the latter hadn’t just popped up or anything. But I think this album continued that in a really nice way and while it can be vague, listening to it I always feel that there is like one solid story all the song narratives go throughout. Someone pointed out in like Youtube Comments that Go Away feels like the sadder side of Cool City and to me it feels like the whole album is kind of in that vein. Seems to me like all the songs are in the Cool City itself and you’re seeing like the various different horrible things that go on in that town and horrible people that live in it. Yknow? Like Tough as Nails and Everybody Needs make me think of like various awful weird a$$ holbs living there and then stuff like Sucker for Mystery and Lightning and It Only Makes Me Laugh. Well they are clearly from the perspectives of some guy. The same guy? Maybe maybe not I don’t feel like they are the same guy. But it feels like they are like experiencing weird horrible sh*t in this horrible town that is filled with racists but also gay people. I like this album I enjoy it

Dead Man’s Party: OK I am sorry to say. This is a good album but it hasn’t COMPLETELY grown on me yet. But I DO like it a lot. I enjoy it it’s good. I really really love Just Another Day and the titular song and Heard Somebody Cry and Nobody Lives Forever and Weird Science which is over half of them so not bad all things considered. And I do not DISLIKE any songs. But the other ones haven’t quite grown on me yet. This album does kind of shift into like the more commercial stuff it’s not like generic pop or nothing. But it is like slightly strange to get used to. That said. The songs I like I REALLY like thye are so good. No One Lives Forever is an incredible incredible song just like Nasty Habits it fulfills my love of songs that sound like they are being sung by evil guys in cartoons but are not they’re actually being sung by Danny Elfman who is an evil guy in real life. Sorry I didn’t mean it he probably is not that evil I’m sure he’s perfectly nice Mr. Elf man if you are reading this I apologize. Anyways though. I like the general sound of this album I will say! I think though it has thing going on where like, in my mind, some of the songs feel like way too happy and overly peppy almost like mocking. I have a weird mind and a weird way of processing things and I am also incredibly afraid of everything on this planet so keep that in mind BTW I am sorry. But like Stay and Fool’s Paradise and Help Me and Same Man I was Before all have that kind of feeling to me, it’s like these are so cheerful and cheesy sounding to me it kind of scares me a little bit. However... I am starting to feel this less with Help me and Stay, and also I felt this a little bit with Heard Somebody Cry at first as well and I no longer do. So maybe I’m still going through the motions of song-liking as I do.  As I said though the favorites on here are incredible. Weird Science may have been written for strange movie deal and they may be really saddened by its memory or maybe just the music video’s memory but it’s a very fun song nevertheless. Dead Man’s Party itself it really fun true classic. Very orange song to me. It’s orange and purple like I hear it and I am like ah yes I am experiencing orange and purple. Very nice shades of orange and purple though, and they are mixing together in pleasing ways and throwing a big party and everyone’s invited you might even say it’s a dead man’s party heh heh heh (grins devilishly). I think this like takes the kind of narratives in Good for Your Soul and So-Lo and like takes it to best form! In that it has a very clear yet not super specific narrative going on throughout the whole album, I really like whenever an album has songs set up so pleasingly and nice like that it makes me sad when they’re just like in random order. But of course this album is all about death and accepting it and stuff and like all the different feelings of sadness and happiness and stuff that all go into it! And I like its message a lot, like obviously you shouldn’t want to die but don’t fear it. It has a very nice depiction of the afterlife. I like all the stuff in Beetlejuice and Corpse Bride with their similar interpretations too although Beetlejuice isn’t quite as positive about it LOL. I want to watch Corpse Bride again. I want to see another singing Danny Elfman skeleton. I want to see the Peter Lorre worm. My one complaint with the album narrative is that Weird Science goes at the end it kinda ruins the whole story a little bit but I can’t fault them because like where COULD they put it?  I think it might work kind of well as the first song because like trying to make frankenstein guy before all the accepting death stuff makes sense. But also. It would be a weird opener. Also the album art is so incredible I love it I want to join their party it’s beautiful. I did not mean for this review to get as long as it did. They just keep getting longer each album I’m sorry the length does not show my opinion but I just keep getting more excited each album

Boi-Ngo: Will admit this one is my least favorite. And once again my bias shows because it has cover art I don’t like very much. It’s just real guys looking at you. Where’s the funny Oingo Boingo touch where’s the charm people!??!? it makes me sad. And also, as a whole, while I DO like most of the songs I feel like I don’t like them as much as I like any of the ones on other albums, and it also has my least favorite song I’ve heard other than Capitalism which is We Close Our Eyes sorry I’ve seen a lot of people who really like that one but it just scares me. It feels so insincere to me it makes me feel that thing once more where it’s like this song is waaayyy to happy and peppy to not feel like it’s kind of sinister deep down. I apologize. It is a fun album however! I think it kind of goes back more to “Danny Elfman’s humorous observations about life”, which is not always a bad thing, but it seems to revert a little bit too much back to like him just being kind of whiny and not making much of a point in like, say, New Generation. Although it is a nice song I think! It scares me when he goes like now he’s got you by the balls. I understand the point of that lyric. But it frightens me.�� I think my favorites are Home Again, Elevator Man, Not My Slave (although lyrics feel like slightly concerning), Outrageous, and Pain. Which once again is more than half the album so shows what I know complaining about it this whole time. 

Dark at the End of the Tunnel: I feel bad for this album because before listening to it I always forgot it existed, like I listened to Boi-Ngo and was like aw man I only have one album left! Oh wait nevermind I have 2. And now I keep fearing there’s another one I forgot not including like the live albums and singles stuff. Maybe there is.... haunting me But anyways... I already did like incomprehensible post talking about this one earlier LOL which inspired me to do more equally incomprehensible things on all the other albums hence this post. So I’ve already said a lot of what I have to say about this and hope not to repeat it too much... but... LOL I was so afraid wondering if I would actually like this one or not... I wanted to just because of how awesome the cover art is. And I was afraid because I wasn’t really a big fan of most of the songs at first. But I think with this album and the whole Boingo era they were moving towards like more orchestral stuff and changing their sound and all... So it was a bit strange to get used to at first but the more I listened the more I enjoyed everything I guess like taking in all the instruments and textures and what not. A lot of the songs in this one also feel like kind of creepily cheery but I think it works best for this album specifically, because as I’ve said before it feels very intentional - there is like whole dual thing of more dark mysterious sections and light-hearted happy sections in most of the songs. Although my top 3 are all songs that mostly just have the former going on... Right to Know, Long Breakdown, and Run Away.  I also really enjoy When the Lights Go Out, Skin, Out of Control (though it still feels like vaguely scary to me LOL), and Glory Be... But I keep finding myself getting all the others stuck in my head as well. So still growing on me LOL! I am beginning to appreciate all the other songs more for those cheerier parts as well yknow... I think this whole album has a very fantastical vibe to it LOL but definitely like, a very old fantasy. Like they discovered this album in a giant wizard’s tower like ten thousand years ago and now it’s been unearthed again. But it was created by a child wizard who was like 5 years old. But still had a wizard beard. That’s the guy on the cover I’ve decided. Little wizard from long ago.  However... It does feel like it’s kind of setting up something. Like all the songs do... whole album is good but feels like it’s kind of a preparation for the next one. Which doesn’t make it bad! Just like I feel like it’s kind of part of a set... Incomplete on its own yknow? I would probably rank it in my lower 4 of all the albums but I’ll still say I enjoyed it quite a bit, that is no insult. And I like wizards

Boingo: This album is SO good dude. I’m glad this is what they left off on. Really great finishing album... I have a weird timeline involving this one because it was actually the first album I listened to, my dad showed it to me, but I only ever listened up to Lost Like This before very recently and by recently I mean today and I am still listening to Changes for the first time as I write this which is probably a bad idea but I am doing it anyways. Anyways though... The first O.B. songs my dad showed to me ever were Insanity from this album and Dead Man’s Party the song, and despite how different their two sources are they both have extremely similar structure I think. And so I kind of painted this picture of like all Oingo Boingo songs being similarly structured around 6-7 minutes and mostly repeating the same different sections in slightly different ways. And I am pleased that this album kind of fulfills that - a lot of the songs are like 2-3x longer than they really need to be but I enjoy that because I love long songs.  As I mentioned earlier, DatEotT feels like it’s just the beginning of something, and this provides a very satisfying ‘second half’. I think it works well by itself too, though! Boingo marks such a big change musically from everything else before even DatEoT but it somehow stays very true to their old spirit anyways.. But everything feels so much grander and I really like it. Almost every song has a pretty wistful melancholy feel but at the same time ALSO almost every song but like a different set of almost every song is very big and bombastic. So it definitely has that “well this is our last album goodbye” feel to it. But it’s OK. It’s like a big grand finale. If there was a like an Oingo Boingo musical that had every single song for some reason and lasted like 10 hours I feel like the other albums could be switched around the whole thing regardless of their actual releases, but this one would HAVE to be last. Adding to that, I feel like it really like takes a lot of the earlier concepts I’ve liked a lot in previous albums and had them return. Like So-Lo, many of the songs have pretty different narratives, but all feel like they can be one loose intertwined thing. Pedestrian Wolves and Lost Like This definitely feel connected for one... and like Insanity and Changes provide like nice bookends where the first is like analyzing the world around us and then the second is analyzing the self. Side note. Danny Elfman is always referring to himself as stupid in Oingo Boingo songs. And sometimes it’s just like PoV character or something. But it ticks me off a little bit because he is like clearly not stupid he is like a crazy evil genius.  But ALSO I’m not really sure what exactly the whole story of Boingo is, but it just feels connected in some sort of mysterious way yknow? Maybe it will appear to me later... If Dark at the End of the Tunnel was created by a little five year old wizard ten thousand years ago, this was created by the same wizard when he was reaching the end of his life and was in the wizard’s nursing home in like the 1920s. It still feels like mildly aged, there is SOMETHING about it that feels like it’s meant to be played on like an extremely old awful record player, but it has a much more modern feeling. It almost feels like another interpretation of the afterlife... Maybe that more Beetlejuice kind where it’s just like real life at first but if you peek around the corner you’ll find all the weird sandworms and colorful ghosts and stuff. Anyways though. This album is so good. Not my favorite right now, but definitely in top 3, like at the moment of writing this I would say. #1 is Nothing to Fear. #2 is Good for Your Soul. #3 is Boingo. But I am loving it soooo much on my first actual full listen even though I’ve had time to like absorb half the songs already admittedly. So it might end up being my favorite after all! I think my 3 favorite tracks also on this are Insanity, Lost Like This, and Hey!. Random completely unrelated parallel to my other favorite band. I like that they have a song called Hey! and Mr. Bungle has a song called Hi! It all fits together. And they both have the exclamation point. But anyways ALSO since I’ve only finished listening for the first time Changes finished while I was writing this BTW. I am still figuring out my opinions on the rest of the songs. Don’t think the I am the Walrus cover QUITE does it for me, I like Spider and War Again but not sure if they’re favorites. I hated Can’t See/Useless the first time I listened but now I like it how about that! ONE MORE thing I like about this. Is its songs feel like continuations of stuff in other albums. Although that may just be because of similar themes! Like, War Again feels like a continuation of both Nothing to Fear and Little Guns but it’s about similar subjects to both. And Tender Lumplings, Little Girls, no real explanation needed there. Insanity and Nasty Habits match up pretty well, with both just being like about hating the world although Nasty Habits is more specific than that LOL. Mary is a girl who is unfairly ostracized, Johnny of Only a Lad is a boy who is unfairly praised, you know.  And also one more thing ONE more I know this one ALSO kinda has the classic Danny Elfman yells about things stuff going on but I feel like this is the album where it works best. But maybe I am just a hypocrite. OK that’s all. Hi

[justallamaimaginingthings]

Hey I was wonder if you could write something about being Robert Baratheons daughter (not wanting the throne) and falling in love with Jorah? I love you and your writing btw

A/n: Thank you so very much!! Hope you like it! Please feel free to request anything else and/or leave a comment

Words: 1760 (I’m a hoe for Jorah fluff eheheheh)

Jorah had heard of the Princess who fled. She was Robert Baratheon’s only daughter from his first marriage to Mariah Martell, who disappeared shortly after Robert sat on the Iron throne and married Cercei Lannister. No one had seen her or heard from her ever again and most people assumed she was dead, Jorah being one of them. After all what else would they think? She was just a young girl when she run away, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

You were Y/n Baratheon and you were very much alive despite the rumors. You loved your father more than anything, him being the only family you had as your mother had died in childbirth. Things started to go wrong when he became king. No matter how much you loved him, there was no denying he’d make a terrible King. You tried to talk some sense into him but he wouldn’t listen to you. His soon-to-be wife knew you would get in her way of controlling Robert, so she formed some ridiculous charges against you which people didn’t have a choice but to believe. That’s when you knew you have had and enough, so you ran away and never looked back.

Thirteen years later, you had earned your place in the khalasaar as a valued and respected warrior. Over the years you had become friends with Khal Drogo, considering you were around the same age when his father took you in.

Being one of his closest friends and almost family, there was no way you’d miss his wedding day. Finally the ceremony was over and the gifts were presented to the couple. You saw a man with dirty blonde hair giving his present to Drogo’s wife, Daenerys, and smirked at his boldness. Drogo glared at him but he didn’t seem to care. He bowed and turned around to take a seat next to Daenerys’ brother. After they were done talking you decided to try and strike a conversation with him.

“That was a bold move, you know” you said startling him

“My gift was meant for a Targaryen” the mysterious man replied, not taken aback by your observation.

“Try explaining that to the Khal. He didn’t look very pleased” you continued causing him to let out a light chuckle

“It’s rare to meet a Dothraki who speaks the common tongue” he noted

“Actually, I’m not from here, same as you, may I guess”

“Jorah Mormont” he introduced himself

“Keira Rivers, but the Dothraki call me Eyelli” you said smiling at him. For some reason you felt bad lying to him, but you knew you couldn’t tell him your real name. Only two people knew your true identity and one of them was dead. You spent the entire night talking and sharing your adventures. By the end of the night you were sure you had made a new friend and you had a good feeling about him. Who knew, maybe one day you could tell him the truth.

As time passed you got to know Jorah and soon you became close friends. He told you about his adventures after he was forced to leave Westeros. You told him as much about yourself as you could without revealing your identity. At first you did it because you weren’t sure if you could trust him but after a while you were certain he could keep your secret if you asked him to.

Meanwhile you had been assigned as Daenerys’ personal guard which only resulted in getting closer to her. Your friendship bloomed fast and she was the first to know your real name. You expected her to get angry or see you as her enemy but she didn’t.

After two weeks of riding you finally made camp and you were talking with Daenerys in her tent.

“You know at some point he will figure it out. It’s better to hear it from you than find out himself” Daenerys had been trying to convince you to tell Jorah the truth for a while now, but you always managed to cut the conversation short.

“He’s probably going to hate me, Danny. I’ve been practically lying to him since day one. He doesn’t even know my real name” you exclaimed trying to underline the seriousness of the situation.

“Just talk to him, Y/n. He’ll understand” you opened your mouth to say something when you heard someone clearing their throat. You turned around only to see Jorah staring at you. He had been looking for Daenerys in order to update her of the khalasaar’s situation but had unintentionally ended up listening part of your conversation.

“I’ll leave you to talk” Danny excused herself and got out of the tent. At that moment you wished you could disappear. A feeling of pure dread and panic was flooding your senses and it took every inch of determination in you not to run away. You looked everywhere but at him, when you heard him approaching.

“How much did you hear?” You asked even though you were afraid of the answer.

“Enough” he answered and took another step closer to you.

“I know I should have told you, I’m sorry-”

“Why didn’t you?” He asked. You were afraid he’d be mad, but his voice was completely void of any emotion and that was even worse.

“I was scared. I know you pretty much hate my family and I didn’t want you to hate me too” For a moment Jorah looked at you confused. You had never mentioned your family, how could you know that he hated them? That’s when it clicked. Daenerys had called you Y/n. Y/n Baratheon, the princess who fled. Everything made sense to him then, your knowledge of Westeros, the ladylike manners you were trying so hard to conceal and most of all your secrecy. “Please say something” you said in the verge of tears. You had become so attached to the exiled Knight that the thought of him hating you seemed unbearable.

Even at that moment, you couldn’t help admiring his features. His eyes were a mesmerizing shade of blue. He may have a few lines in his face but he was definitely one of the most handsome men you had ever met. You scolded yourself for thinking like that in such a moment. He was your best friend after all, right? Your thoughts were interrupted by Jorah’s voice.

“Princess” he said bowing.

“Jorah, please. I’m the same person you know. I don’t want anything to change between us” you pleaded placing your hand on his cheek.

“You are a member of the royal family, your grace” he stated. That was one of the reasons you had left in the first place, so people would treat you normally and not like you were different than them. You flinched at the title and backed away.

“Fuck the royal family. We’re not in Westeros anymore. Nobody cares about my last name here. Hells, that’s why I left in first place, I can’t let my fucking name take the best thing that’s happened to me since I left. I can’t lose you” by the end your voice was less than a whisper. Jorah looked at you taken aback by your sudden outburst. He wrapped his arms around you pulling you into a hug. You rested your head on his chest and sighted.

“You won’t lose me” he said kissing the top of your head. At that moment you felt happy for the first time since you arrived in Essos. You knew there was no point denying it, you were in love with your best friend.

Extra

After finding out the truth about your identity, his attitude towards you didn’t change one bit, except from the fact that he started to call you “Princess” which you hated and loved at the same time. The title had shifted from a formal address to a friendly nickname and you were more than thankful for that.

As time went by he found himself more and more attached to you. Usually he was very reserved and closed to new people but you had earned your place in his heart with your witty and kind personality. The place of a friend, or at least that’s what he told himself. Back in Westeros Jorah had been married twice, but never been in love. Both marriages had been arranged and broke off rather quickly. That was one reason why he was having a hard time figuring out what he felt about you.

You made him happy, that was certain. However he knew a woman like you would never consider him anything more than a friend. Deep down he knew he was afraid. Afraid of letting you get close to him and then hurting you, afraid that he wasn’t good enough for you.

So, he called you his friend even though you acted like husband and wife. You’d spend most of your free time together and when one of you were busy the other would always help, you always rode side by side while traveling, when the khalassar made camp temporarily you’d share a tent or sleep next to each other and when it got cold at night he’d offer you his cape. Winter was coming and a light change in the weather was obvious. That night happened to be extremely cold making you shiver in your sleep. Jorah being the gentleman he is, took off his cape and covered you with it.

“Jorah is that you?” You mumbled in your sleep

“Just go back to sleep princess” he replied. You didn’t know if it was the cold or the mindlessness of being half asleep but you scooted over to him. He froze when he felt how close you actually were.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s cold” you replied before falling asleep. He didn’t want to move in fear of waking you up again but at some point he had to. His heart was threatening to beat out of his chest only for it to melt when he felt you snuggling up to him and resting your head in his chest.

“What am I going to do with you?” He whispered at he placed an arm on your waist. Jorah didn’t sleep much that night. He was preoccupied with thoughts of you, from the day he met you, when he found out who you were and how things were after that. The sun had almost risen when his eyes closed and he finally fell asleep. He couldn’t deny it anymore, he was in love.

[jbuffyangel]

The Weekly Rundown (10/07/18-10/13/18)

Sorry so late! I’m getting caught up on articles. Almost there :) Time to rundown what I’m watching, loving, hating and everything in between! Spoilers ahead!

God Friended Me (”The Good Samaritan”)

Confession time: I didn’t pay very close attention to this week’s episode, but Miles and Cara continue to be adorable. Pretty sure I ship it.

Manifest (”Turbulence”)

I’m not really feeling the chemistry between Josh Dallas and Athena Karkanis. However, the chemistry between  Melissa Roxburgh and JR Ramirez is smoldering.

Josh Dallas is my blue eye baby who makes me feel all the things. He conveyed so many emotions without saying a word in the scene where Ben and Grace discussed the man in her life. WOW!    

I want to believe Grace is in love with Ben and not Danny (because it's Josh Dallas and that's all the reason she needs), but I'm not buying it... yet

The whole twins being different ages is a never ending mind bender.

Seriously though what did Ben do for a living?

The Gifted (“coMplications”)

All I want is for Marcos to hold Dawn forever and snuggle with Lorna. Why can’t I have the things that I want?

But seriously though these Marcos and baby scenes are killing me.

Marcos fighting the Frost sister’s mind control was amazing. He was ready to tear everything apart to get his Lorna and his baby. SO HOT.

Andy, buddy what are you doing? Sure, they gave you a better hair cut and cool clothes, but Reeva is crazy. Tell me you know that boy!

I’m having trouble understanding why Reed didn’t want to tell his wife and daughter his powers were coming back. He has two mutant children! They tried to equate Lauren’s fear of “coming out” to Reed’s but it’s just not the same. He was her parent and he hunted mutants. She legitimately feared her father’s rejection. Reed isn’t in the same situation at all and I see no reason to for him to be lying to everyone for months.

Kate hugs Reed once he tells her the truth, which is nice, but were we really expecting her to reject him? Did the writers forget they have two mutant children?

The Gifted blew past all the build up to Clarice and John’s relationship and now they’ve sewn the seeds for the break up - in the third episode. This whole “Clarice is a spy for the Erg and lies to John about it” storyline is only going one place. John is doing his fair share of lying and pushing Clarice away. Needless to say I am unhappy with how this relationship is being handled.

F.B.I. (“Green Birds” and  “Prey”)

Finally got caught up on F.B.I. I thought “Prey” was a much stronger episode than “Green Birds.” 

I am so glad they cast Sela Ward! I love her. Her character is much more likable as Maggie and Omar’s boss.

I’m here for Omar doing hot things because Omar is hot. I feel warm every time he talks about his military experience. 

Still a little iffy about this show, but I’ll stick with it for now.

This Is Us (Katie Girls)

The depth of my hate for Jack's father knows no bounds.

"Or you can stay and I'll kill him." Honestly, I was okay with that option too Jack.

Randall is a mess watching his brother's movie and I stan this bromance so hard.

I am really freaking glad Randall is taking Kate on because I AM SO MAD AT HER.

Well that conversation swerved quickly. Stay on point Randall.

Okay well now we're off on a whole other thing and Kate is crying. Good grief children.

Not sure how Randall & Kate's discussion became a fight about adoption. The point was to discuss Kate's insensitivity regarding her remark about being the only person able to pass on Jack's genes. How did she turn it into Randall's insensitivity about her miscarriage?

Beth, Miguel and Toby having a group text to discuss their messed up in laws is AMAZING.

Randall is terrible at apologizing but also WHY IS HE APOLOGIZING?

I'm trying to hang with my girl Kate here. I've had a miscarriage and it's devastating, but your personal pain is not an excuse to be hurtful to others. Understanding where Randall was coming from was not a long bridge to cross.

I am so relating to Kevin putting the pieces together regarding Jack's service.

Beth got fired? NOOOOOO. My Beth!  

Toby's reaction to Randall showing up was gold.

KATE AND JACK ARE DREAM SEQUENCING AND I AM NOT OKAY. Btw Jack could you advise Kate to stop being such a jackass to Randall? Thanks bro.

Awkward Rebecca and Jack is the worst. You are soul mates kids. Get it together.  

Jack wants to marry you Rebecca and have lots and lots of babies. You are his dream.

I hope Randall and Beth have 9 months of savings. Suze Orman says you need 9 months of savings.

Marriage is never 50/50. But I think Beth and Randall have been going 90/10 for awhile and it's time for that ratio to shift.

I love how the writers find commonality in their characters in ways you never thought of before. Randall and Toby sharing their struggles with depression and anxiety was such a beautiful way to bond these characters

Kate wanted to marry Mark Paul Gosselar. Same girl.

"You came across the country to say you are sorry. That's the most Dad move ever." HELLO KATE. NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN. You could have added that he didn't need to apologize and you are the one who is sorry but I don't want to editorialize too much. Carry on.)

Rebecca pulled a Jack Pearson on Jack Pearson. EPIC.

Marry you the man who does dishes. 

A Million Little Things (”Save The Date”)

HOLY. FREAKING. CRAP. THEY. ALL. FOUND. OUT. That was fast y’all! Wow!

If we’re blowing past the big affair secret does that mean we’ll find out the reason John killed himself? It’s an annoying mystery. Cough up the answers, show.

All the awards to Grace Park. She’s been sadly under utilized on this show until now and boy did she come out swinging. The scenes where she confronts Eddie and Delilah were amazing. 

I cheered when Grace slapped Eddie. I have no sympathy for him. He’s cheating because his wife is gone at work all the time? It’s called a mortgage jackass. Guitar lessons aren’t going to get it done. 

It irritates me when people act like they have no choice in who they sleep with. Eddie is walking around like falling in love with Delilah was an accident. Listen pal you are a grown ass man. You made choices. Own it. Cheating is such a mean thing to do.  Nobody is forcing anyone to stay in these marriages. Get a divorce before you go hopping into bed with someone else.

I’m only slightly less angry with Delilah but that’s only because her husband jumped off a building. Her scene where she screams to friends to ask if she was the reason John killed himself was gutting. Guit is a bitch.

By the way, even if Jon made his peace with the affair it doesn’t make the affair okay. Also, nobody asked for Katherine’s opinon. Pretty sure she’d tell everyone where to stick if if they’d did though.

I feel like Gary is representing the audience in this episode, i.e. me. I don’t think the writers needed to muddy the water with Gary’s issues with marriage, his parents divorce and his birthday. I understand Jon and Delilah were his shining example of marriage bliss, but we didn’t need to make this about his childhood trauma. His anger was warranted by itself. Delilah and Eddie did an awful thing.

We need to move it along with Maggie’s storyline. She’s the friends-with-benefit-rando-friend-everyone-just-met-but-pretend-like-they’ve-known-her-since-always. Her impermanence in all of these people’s lives makes the level she’s included in things... odd. Let’s get the cancer out in the open and solidify her relationships - particularly with Gary. 

Blindspot (“Hella Duplicitous”)

Jane's hair is long. That's how ya know she's evil again

Seriously how do they not know Remi is back? She's so cranky. Jane is much more cheerful. Also, I feel like her voice is three octaves lower.

Remi can fight with samurai swords. Who knew? A list of all of her skills would be great.

Do I call her Remi or Jane y'all? I'm going with Remi for now.

Remi's impression of Jane being worried about Kurt was pretty spot on. Well played evil one.

Anyone else enjoying Remi looking all murdery every time anyone mentions Roman is dead? Same girl. Except I'm sad Luke Mitchell isn't on the show anymore not murdery because that'd be weird.

Jane's dying except she's Remi so like that's a double dose of suck.

Oh score. Cure. This is like Elena being vampire. They'll fix it. I ain't worried. Imma gonna get Jeller babies. Or should I say PLEEEEEEEEEASE give me Jeller babies.

OH MY GOD SHE'S HALLUCINATING ROMAN. Luke Mitchell IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so here for Roman being the crazy voice in Jane/Remi's head.

Sorry Remi. Your super evil terrorist group is canceled. Sorry not sorry girl. Watch Season 1-Season 3 and catch up girl.

Two Sandstorm operatives is more like a club than a terrorist group, but okay Remi. Gotta start somewhere I guess.

It's weird that the cure is re-erasing Remi's memories but also let's re-erase Remi's memories. I ain't a fan.

Damn. Blake is dead? That... was unexpected. Okay so now I'm imagining that Blake and Roman are happy in heaven together. Leave me to my dream.

Kurt is scared... I love you my cupcake.

Wiping her memory and meeting Kurt Weller was the best thing that ever happened to Remi because she's not nice and Jane is awesome. Kudos to Blindspot for reinforcing their central love story while also wreaking absolute havoc on it.

Is Zapata evil now? Is everybody evil now?

Weitz is director. Ugh.

"You can't keep watching me all the time." Girl, he does that when you are totally healthy. Kurt Weller giving Jane fuzzy bunny stares is the show. Seriously, someone show Remi S1-S3.

Haha. She squeezed Kurt too hard to hurt him. What a bitch. Also awesome.

Zapata's smile when she sees Reade on TV. Girl go home.

Rich and Patterson are gonna cure Jane using Santa magic and it's gonna be friggin awesome.

Reciting the wedding video is creepy Remi.

Noooo.... don't break out Mama Shepherd. She be crazier than you Remi and at this point that's saying A LOT. 

[lovelysilence14]

Blue Bloods - Jamko AT LAST!!!

So, in the season 8 finale of Blue Bloods the writers have ever so kindly graced us with Jamie and Eddie FINALLY becoming a couple! And not just as a couple - they are ENGAGED!!! After four years of anticipation, we finally got them together and getting ready to simply tie the knot.

BTW, long post. I’ve wait YEARS for this coupling to become canon! I’ve got a lot to say about it!

To some who haven’t watched these two since season 4 when Eddie was first introduced, engagement/marriage may seem a bit fast since they haven’t technically even dated each other. But, if you are a long time Jamko fan, you would know that there really isn’t much of a point for them to date.They already know everything about each other just simply from their long car rides on patrol together. (Where they have had the funniest banters about anything - superheroes from Marvel/DC, old films like Jaws, sports teams, Eddie’s hearty appetite, etc - and shared some pretty heartfelt scenes together.) Not including all the time they spent together outside of work for their dinners and drinks and regular hanging out.

So, yes. They have grown close over the years to where they pretty much know everything about each other. At this point in their relationship, there really isn’t a point to date. Lol

Now my personal predictions about season 9 following their engagement together. Bit of a long post here!

Now, I read an article where the producers/writers said they aren’t in a hurry to get Jamko married right off the bat in the new season. So, really, I think a wedding seems more like a finale episode if anything. But, I have a good feeling Eddie and Jamie are going to be met with some grief over their engagement.

Especially Eddie.

I bet she is going to get at least some snarky remarks about marrying the PC’s son only for career benefits. Some people may even treat her differently because of it. I know we are going to get at least one episode of that.

How can she not? She’s marrying into a family who has been established to be VERY famous in the police world of New York city. As a woman who is working as a beat cop, you know some people are going to be claiming she’s only marrying Jamie for his last name and potential career benefits. I wonder how she is going to take that. If we know Eddie Janko... not well. If my personal predictions work out for her reaction as a character, someone might have to hold her back when faced with that remark being thrown at her. lol

Jamie, I still think is going to get a talk from Frank about wanting to still work with Eddie as partners despite being married/romantically involved with her. The look on his face still has me worried when Jamie announced his newfound engagement to Eddie. He didn’t look thrilled about it.

Happy for him, sure.

He still warmly greeted her into the family, yes.

But even Hank and Erin had that “Frances/Dad...” moment with him. Especially when the literal first thing he says is “Well, I’ll be damned” right before bringing up the two transferring departments from each other literally right after that sentence. (Danny seemed more excited for his little brother, especially when being all mad at him for making them wait for dinner to having a big old grin on his face the second he saw Eddie on Jamie’s arm. That, I will say, was adorable.)

Frank seemed weary about things. And I just don’t know what to make of it. Maybe it is just me, but any father should have been happier to see their son getting married to a great woman. (Frank had met Eddie before and did seem fond of her in the very least.) Everyone else was all smiles and happy laughter for Jamie. Maybe he is just strictly weary about what his son is getting into with marrying his partner and still working on the field with her. But, I don’t know. I just have a feeling there is going to be a no-so-happy moment with Jamie/Frank about it. Again, maybe I am just over analyzing things. I hope it goes well! :/

As for Jamko’s relationship... I expect things to stay mostly the same. Except maybe a kiss and a hand hold here and there. Maybe more suggestive jokes between them, at the most. Not that I am not complaining! At all. :) I think in the very least Eddie and Jamie will be moving into together in the early parts of the season. But, I wonder how the wedding planning is going to go. And how Eddie is going to be with the planning! :) This means we will have some solid confirmation about the whereabouts of Eddie’s mother. I always thought she was dead. At least, it seemed like it to me.

Eddie always wears that silver circle necklace, so I figured it was a memento of her mother. I do think the producers/writers will likely push the wedding for the finale. Makes sense to me. If so, you KNOW there is going to be some major drama during it. There always seems to be major drama during a big wedding episode in any series. ANY.

But, I do think an episode will come where they will decide to split as partners and work separately. Just makes sense to me for the writers to have that part of their story line. Unfortunately. As the story tellers, how can they not have that happen? I just hope it goes well enough so that the Jamko relationship is still held intact! It better be! I’ve waited four freaking years for Jamko to happen, they can’t rip it apart now! But, I will remain calm until that happens. lol :D

But, I can’t wait to see the Jamko relationship! I just hope they last. I still can’t believe it! Jamko has finally happened and are engaged! Eeep! Everyone always said how they wanted Eddie at the dinner table - now we got it! Maybe the BB producers/writers really do read our YouTube and Tumblr comments. lol

Now, they can’t bring her to the table of all places - the famous Reagan dinner table! - and just take her away! She and Jamie better stay together after the long wait us Jamko fans have endured. I hope the writers and producers read that. Ha ha! :)

I do wish we saw the proposal, though. But, I get why they didn’t include it. (It just isn’t that type of show or they likely felt it didn’t fit in there.) But, we better have some discussion about it! Although you know Erin or someone is going to want the details about it. I mean, it’s one of the first things you ask the bride to be when hearing about her getting married. So, how did he propose?

Can’t wait for the next season! It better come fast! lol

[calliecat93]

RvB Season 15: Top 3 Worst Things

With Season 16 only weeks away, I’ve been going back over Season 15 a lot the past few days. I’m very late to the party on giving critique because at first, I had zero issues with the season. And overall, I think it’s still a very good one. But... it’s not flawless. There’s definitely a few issues that could bring the season down for some and now that I ave a clearer mind, I can’t ignore it. But I also think that there’s plenty to praise about the season as well, so... I’m going to make two Top 3 Lists, starting with the Worst. Note, this post exists for critical reasons. This is not an attack on Joe, Miles, Burnie, or anyone at Rooster Teeth. There is no reason for it. I want to see Joe improve, not bring him down. SO if you want that, kindly fuck off. For now, lets get into the list!

...that got incredibly long so look under the cut!

Top Three Worst Things ABout RvB15

3. The Film Refrences Are Overly Used

Joe Nicolosi has admitted to being a movie buff, and I always feel like you should use what you like/what you’re good at when making anything. Jax’s character existed to use film humor, and at first it was pretty good. Things like him the Citizen Kane reference and Force Awakens reference in Episode 4, Jax forgetting to record in Episode 5, and his jokes in Episode 7 were legitimately funny. The problem is... they never stopped. It’s perfectly fine to use a running gag, and Hell RvB HAS used pop culture humor multiple times. It’s a show based on Halo after all. But Nicolosi used in in every episode and it stopped being funny. Jax became annoying and while he was helpful in getting footage of Temple’s plans and distracting Lorenzo, he got grating because he wouldn’t shut up. And if you are like me and don’t understand all the references, it’s going to feel like Joe is cramming them down your throat. Fortunately, hes said that he’s going to hold back some in the upcoming season, which is good. He listened, and that's important. I don’t mind this kind of humor at all, just... space it out a little and don’t wear it out. Otherwise, ti just becomes annoying and unbearable and for a show like RvB, that’s something you just can’t afford to do.

2, The Blues and Reds

The idea of using evil versions of characters is always a fun plot. Its a good way to show how the heroic character has grown or even trigger them into growing. For example, in Danny Phantom he’s faced with an evil future version of himself and it is horrifying. It leads to Danny not only maturing a little to not make the mistakes, but he’a chance to fix the damage and does so. It’s a great example of a hero being faced with the worst of himself and choosing to become something better. This idea for RvB was a legit good idea and leads to a lot of possibilities. So the problem? There’s a few...

First, the copies are just exaggerations of the Reds and Blues. They don’t feel like characters aside form Temple, Loco, and Biff and I’ll explain why in a bit. The others feel incredibly shallow. I mean Hell, Simmons’ copy is voiced by Gus still even though everyone else got a different voice actor. I mean it leads to the amazing moment in Episode 20.. but at the same time he still feels less like a character and more like a plot device. The Blues and Reds, aside form the ones I listed, just feel like they’re there because the plot demanded that everyone have some kind of copy. It’same issue I felt Miles had with The CHorus Trilogy, he added a lot of characters but couldn’t do a lot with the majority of them due to time. 

In relation to this... why are they committing to this plan? I know what you’re, “Well Biff was horribly killed and they realized they were pawns”. No. That is Temple’s motivation. He is angry that his best friend was murdered in cold blood and that it was ultimately for no reason. Loco’s motivation is to be Temple’s best friend, but unlike everyone else he has regrets about it and uses his final moments to make it up to Caboose. It gives him a character even if he is more or less a Caboose copy, but it’s something. Biff is dead, but they did take the time to explain why he ended up int he military, why he wanted out, and he was an overall nice guy who isn’t like Grif aside form wanting out of the military, wears orange, and the Sarge copy hating him. Similar want, completely different motivation and character.

Why do Surge, Gene, Lorenzo, Cronut, and Bucky want revenge? Why are they committing to Temple’s insane plan? Why si no one questioning this Did they before? How did Temple convince the Reds into it? Maybe if we saw their reactions when they found the Freelancer Base and the truth, liek we did with our guys, that would be answered. But we don’t know. We don’t knwo why any of them would go along with this, or at least not ask if this is the right thing to do. We know that Temple cared about Biff, but what about Biff’s actual team? Likely he and Gene weren't as close as Grif and Simmons are, but did they have a friendship at all? We saw briefly that Surge may feel bad about Biff’s death, but he doesn't express it and it’s more based on his need to obey orders than anything. We don’t know Biff’s relationship with his team, so you question why they’re going along with it and... do you see what I’m getting at?

The Blues and Reds feel shallow and one-note. A lot of people don’t like Temple because he’s an asshole...a nd he is. But at least they fleshed out his motivation and character so even though you hate him, at least you see why he’s doing what he’s doing. Loco overall i also fine since he differed and did have a conscious. The others though Wasted. They just to because this plot demanded it and nothing is done to make them distinctive. We just want to see them die... okay maybe that was the intent, but still it made them weak villains and I’m not going to be missing them. But hey, we got the moment in Episode 20 due to it so... it’s not all bad.

1. It Was One Season

This is by far the biggest issue with the season. The were a lot of ideas for this season, and you can tell. It was a legit good idea and could have carried two seasons worth of stories... but for some reason they decided to make it a standalone. IDK if it was Joe who decided this or Burnie and Matt did, but it meant that things had to be rushed. You now what I said above? About the villains falling flat? If they had more time, chances are they could have fixed that. But because it was condensed into one season of 21 episodes, they couldn’t.

Now if it had been two seasons, they could have worked on some more things. Like what I said above about the villains and maybe extending the flashback so we could see them discovering the truth. We could have had some mroe solid characterization and understood what was motivating everyone into such drastic actions. Outside that, we could have seen how Red Team was dealing with Grif quitting more and explored things like Donut feeling left out or watching Sarge’s descent into siding with the Blues and Reds. Heck, we could have had Simmons maybe play up siding with the Blues and Reds for an episode, then actually trigger an escape plan that fails, but it would show us that he's what his kissassing ways. Especially if they emphasize on how much worst Gene is at lot and have it be like old Simmons is talking to current Simmons, provoking him further into becoming more independent. That would also justify Gus (who did a great job in the season BTW) being the voice actor for both which let sit feel less like it’s for just a joke and make it even more impactful since it’s current Simmons talking to himself essentially. Which would make the moment in Episode 20 even mroe satisfying. It took me about five minutes to come up with this and in a larger story could have been an effective and if played right funny character arc... but in a one season story, it would have taken up too much time so it wouldn’t be able to be included. But do you see how Simmons would get character development base don both his feelings about losing Grif and for his own benefit? And how it would make Gene a much stronger evil reflection, becoming something for Simmons to overcome and be better than by the end?

I’m saying is’the standalone format caused things to be rushed and ideas to be wasted. As I said, there as enough for two seasons worth. The first season could have the content of... the first fourteen episodes. If you do it as a typical 19 or 20 episode season, you get 5-6 more episodes to play with more ideas. Int he second half, we can start with showing Grif again and bringing Locus back in. Maybe have them go on a little roadtrip where they gather more people like Sister or something, letting her be a regular again and not in just two episodes. You have more room to experiment like show how far Locus has come, have Grif Sibs humor, let Sister have more character and show that she can be clever and resourceful, show more of how Grif’s isolation really affected him and how he needs the others. You can still make all of that both funny and emotional like have Grif and Sister talking about their various shenanigains and Grif is at first complaining about all the shit he goes through. Then he slowly starts talking more slowly about the dumb things and how he hates everyone.. but he also misses them all, feels horrible for walking out like he did, and show how negatively he thinks about himself. Sister, in her own way, makes him feel better. You get comedy, character development, and fun interactions that way. See where I’m going?

There great ideas and opportunities with this season. Hell, the possibility of meeting more Freelancers is pretty cool. But because we only had one season, they had to finish the plot in limited time. They couldn’t explore the opportunity gift-wrapped for them. Int he end they still made a good product, but you still are left feeling like there was so much more that could have been done. Like if I were paid to rewrite Season 15 and was able to make it a two parter, I already have a general idea of what I would do. It is doable.  But if I had only one season... yeah, I’d have to cutback a LOT of it. Like I said, IDK whose idea it was, but it was in hindsight one that hurt the season. Because of this, ti is the worst thing about Season 15.

And there you have it! 'l best another day, typing this took me an hour. And regardless, I really enjoyed the season. It could have bee so much more, but I will gladly take what I got. Joe’s already stated on how he’s read the critiques and will try to improve, and that is important for any content creator. So I wish him the best of luck,a nd now I can feel better now that this is out of my system.

[thesoulspulse]

Regarding the Fright Knight (Part 3)

Maybe it’s just because of all the pictures and gifs but I didn’t expect this analysis to take so long. Oh well, I’m having fun and sharing my thoughts is a good way to keep this stuff in mind. So with that let us continue our deep dive into the “Fright Night” episode, which by the way I have to remember to type that instead of ‘knight‘ since that’s his name.

Hopefully this will be the last part about the episode and then I can move onto the tragic downfall of the Fright Knight. Part 2: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/666367942726959104/regarding-the-fright-knight-part-2

25) I guess I should have talked about this in the last post, but it’s cool that the Fright Knight’s sword has the power to transform inanimate object to spontaneously transform into ghosts and other monsters. I have a headcanon that this feat is only possible on Halloween night which is when the Fright Knight is at his most powerful. Also, I’m guessing the creatures are only random if they don’t already have some defined form like these zombie puppets.

26) Going back a little, since Dash’s section of the haunted house was called the Spa of Doom and Danny’s is called his the Room of Doom I couldn’t help but think really guys? That’s the best you could come up with? I know they’re teenagers but they could have been a bit more creative than that, I blame Butch for using the same words like “fright” and “doom” all over the darn place in this show.

27) Compared to Dash’s room I guess I can kind of see why Danny’s was still considered kinda lame so to be fair I can’t fault Mr. Lancer with not being that interested. But at the same time, at least Danny’s room has a better Halloween theme and goes for the classic scares. And like I said before, Danny would never have been able to afford decent props anyway so it’s no wonder all his look cheap.

Think Danny, one of your best friends is a GOTH! Surely Sam could have given him tons of amazing pointers design-wise and maybe helped him pick better props even if he still had a small budget? Just look at her bedroom!

She’s got candles, a voodoo doll in the window, I think some sort of tribal symbol on that poster by the window, and lastly a Chinese lantern above her bed! Plus, she’s the one who showed him the book about the Fright Knight in the first place so she totally could have helped him recreate those ideas better.

28) I love when the Fright Knight sees Dash running and says “I know that terror. It carries the scent of my blade!” which to me literally translates to that the Fright Knight can SMELL fear. Makes sense given that he’s the Spirit of Halloween.

What I don’t get is why the Fright Knight landed in front of Dash to ask him where he’s running from since the giant swirling green cloud should have been a dead giveaway (pun intended!) Lastly, wow those two are big! But again I think he’s more powerful on Halloween which would also explain why his skeleton soldier’s dwarfed Danny so much too...

29) I kinda get the joke here but I think Tucker would have noticed sooner that the Fright Knight in front of him wasn’t Danny because of the evil alicorn in front of him and that his voice is totally different from Danny. That, and I think he would have been much more impressed by the “updated look” since the Fright Knight and Nightmare look incredible even if you didn’t know they’re the real deal. I always laugh at how seriously the Fright Knight shouts “FLAMING BEDSHEETS OF DEATH!” I wonder how his voice actor -who is Michael Dorn btw- was able to say this with a straight face.

30) This next part is VERY important because I mentioned before that the ecto-storm thing has more to it than we think which becomes even more appearant when the Fright Knight declares: “And once this ecto-storm touches every corner of this globe, all these transformations will be permanent and this, shall be my new domain!” Need I remind you, his Soul Shredder caused this more sustained storm but they have also been happening naturally so I think that’s a phenomenon left over from when he originally used to haunt the earth.

31) I’m probably overthinking it but the Fright Knight went from holding Tucker by the throat to straight up holding him up by one hand kinda like Pariah holds Danny and Vlad in one hand in Reign Storm. This just bothers me because the scale is all messed up since I showed a screenshot of him in front of Dash and I don’t care how lanky Tucker might be the Fright Knight’s not THIS large.

32) Speaking of scale, I’m glad these skeletons look right at least compared to Sam.

33) I guess Danny must have grabbed a Fenton Foamer from home just to be safe after he decided to, erm, “borrow” the Fright Knight’s sword. Speaking of which at least the Fright Knight didn’t say the transformations would be permanent by Midnight because Danny would have screwed up even worse if that were the case since he only planned to return the sword by then provided he hadn’t freed the ghost in the first place.

34) Ugh, seriously, cartoon or not physics are a thing so Tucker would not have been able to bounce like that. They should have just cut to him only briefly being flung back and then getting caught in the web.

35) I know at this point in the series Danny still isn’t very strong yet but I still think that on Halloween night the Fright Knight is nearly invincible so releasing him on the world when he’s at his most powerful wasn’t your best move Danny. I like to think of this like when Pariah Dark has the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire on but here, its the Fright Knight’s Soul Shredder that gets a power boost on this night specifically when the barriers between the real world and the Ghost Zone are at their thinnest.

36) I have so much respect for Tucker for jumping in front of Danny to save him. And it’s a good thing the Soul Shredder only teleports whoever it slices to a dimension of their worst fear otherwise Tucker and Mr. Lancer would have been killed on the spot. Their teacher had his head sliced and here, Tucker was stabbed in the heart. Seriously, I wonder if Danny had nightmares about losing Tucker for real like this after seeing him vanish like that?

All that said I still think that power only works on Halloween night since we only see the Fright Knight fight with this sword normally from here on out in the series because can you imagine if the Fright Knight had been able to slice Valerie with it and sent her to a dimension of her biggest fear? She would have no way to get back home on her own and Danny would have had to save her which is a scary thought.

37) I don’t blame Sam for looking scared when the Fright Knight goes after her next when she talks about the book she’s holding having a clue on how to beat him in it. Danny must’ve still had it in the room as a reference when setting it all up. Sam’s probably worried about Tucker and Mr. Lancer too but she knows they can get them back if Danny can defeat the Fright Knight and has faith in him, that’s what’s probably keeping her focused despite being afraid too.

Also, that book was cut cleanly in half so technically she wouldn’t have been able to find a page intact like this unless the book had been cut while she still had it open right along the spine.

38) I REALLY want to know the story behind this page, or well the whole book really. How did the author find out this weakness? Did they manage to defeat him this way bu chance or did a magic user help them seal the Fright Knight away like this after the fact? I’d like to think some normal peopled managed to beat him by uncovering this weakness and then made a new Halloween tradition of carving pumpkins instead of turnips -which yes is an actual part of the original holiday- so that should he ever return, people would have a way to send the Fright Knight back to the Ghost Zone once again.

39) At last, we’re nearly done but omg, Danny was amazing when he overcharged his energy to disarm the Fright Knight.

40) I’m glad something only has to look like a pumpkin for it to count as one Danny could stab the sword into since he uses Tucker’s ruined candy basket.

41) Once the sword is in the pumpkin, the Fright Knight can no longer pull it out and wield it. The seal has been cast, cutting off his power and reversing the ecto-storm so that it pulls him back into the Ghost Zone and reverses the transformations.

42) Oh hi Nightmare, have you been there the whole time just watching your master fight Danny? What a loyal steed!

43) Yep, I will never stop thinking that the Fright Knight was once also the Headless Horseman since we see his head vanish first before the rest of his armor is pulled into the portal too. Once he’s gone the sword vanishes as well.

44) Not sure how Mr. Lancer justified all that nightmare fuel he saw being part of the haunted house but whatever works I guess. As for Danny, I am kinda proud of him for being honest but at the same time it feels weird that he considered what happened “cheating” when honestly I think Mr. Lancer should have been more concerned by Sam’s explanation about: “Which causes a psychosomatic reaction in whoever’s exposed to it-” since that sounds actually dangerous. You know like using hallucinogenics.

45) Last one but ugh...its so stupid that Danny STILL gets detention anyway out of spite just because Danny’s parents drenched them in said anti-ghost foam in front of the gym teacher and embarrassed him. That part wasn’t Danny’s fault! I’m totally skipping talking about the very end of the episode because it still makes me want to barf.

But there you go! Sorry it took so long but I hope you guys enjoyed my deep dive about the Fright Knight’s intro episode. I’ll do a separate post later about his downfall as a character but for now I’m glad I managed to crank this out before Halloween actually arrives!

[scientifically-strange]

I love your defenders fic. Could you do one where stick introduces phantom to the team to fight the hand or something? Btw the way you write their dynamic is spot on!!

"Stick, who is this?" Daredevil asked,glaring at him from under the mask. Whoever his old mentor had brought, he was...An anomaly, to say the least. His heart was strong, but pumping at such a sluggish pace he shouldn't be awake, and the smell. It was something...foreign, like it didn't really belong on this planet, mixed with a little bit of cheap cologne. When he shook hands with this guy he could feel the cold through his glove.

"I'm Phantom," he said, giving the group a smile. He brushed his white locks out f his eyes and held out his hand for the others to shake, but nobody else seemed interested. Te dude with curly hair narrowed his eyes at Phantom,looking almost afraid.

"What are you?" He asked, taking a protective step forward.

"Er...A ghost...Hence the name? I mean, come on, man," Phantom answered with a roll of his eyes.

"I brought him here so he could help you all defeat the hand," Stick interrupted, limping forward.

"Where the hell did you even find a ghost?" Jessica asked, crossing her arms over her chest and giving Phantom a once-over.

"I summoned him," Stick answered casually.

"Right," Luke said. "Because it's so easy to think that that's possible."

"Well, if you would get your head out of your ass it wouldn't be a problem. Now-"

"-How did you summon him?" Jessica interrupted. "Was it random or is he someone big and powerful?"

"He's a very special ghost, very powerful, and there are only three of his kind in existence, so yes, it was specific, no it wasn't hard, and you can ask him about it later."

"He's just a kid!" Luke protested. Phantom glared slightly.

"Hey, man, I'm fifteen! That's almost an adult!"

"Whatever, Pipsqueak. Whatever helps you sleep at night," Jessica said, sarcasm oozing out with every word.

"Do ghosts even sleep?" Daredevil wondered aloud.

"It doesn't matter," Stick said, bringing them back to the real problem. "What matters is that we have extra fire power against the Hand."

"Can anybody fill me in on the Hand? I'm sure knowing what I'm fighting will be helpful."

"Why do you even want to do this?" Danny asked, eyes narrowed. "They haven't wronged you in any way."

"Well, Stick summoned me, so I kind of have to do what he says. And he's saying beat the Hand, or whatever, so I will.

"Later," Stick said again. "Right now, we need to focus. What's the game plan?"

"So how long have you been dead?" Luke asked as they walked through the creepy hallways of the Hand's base. It was sterile and white-blindingly so, and it unnerved the both of them. Danny shrugged.

"About a year ago. There was a lab accident and I got electrocuted with ten thousand volts of ectoplasmic electricity."

"That doesn't sound fun."

"It wasn't."

"Yeah. So what, you just run around and fight crime?" There was a bit of joking in his tone, but Danny knew he was at least half serious.

"Kind of. It was mostly just ghosts that kept coming out of the Ghost Zone, I just kept throwing back in. I mean, I saved the world once, too. That was cool, I guess."

Luke raised an eyebrow at that. He had never caught wind of a ghost apocalypse or anything remotely similar. The only earth-shattering things that have happened are the Battle of New York and whatever the fuck went down in Sokovia with that robot guy. But the kid didn't look like a good liar. Maybe he was telling the truth.

"What about you?" Phantom asked a few minutes later. Luke shrugged.

"Prison experiment gave me super strength and bulletproof skin."

"Cool."

The original four didn't know what to expect when Phantom fought alongside them. Yeah, they expected him to use his ghost powers, but ghost powers mixed with martial arts? That was a whole new level. He was sending ecto-powered roundhouses and ice-covered punches. It was truly amazing to glance at the smooth motions when fighting their own villain.

"Who are you? Bakuto asked, astounded that he couldn't even really touch this new guy. That had been a rare thing to occur, and now, with the kind of energy this guy was giving off, it was just unnerving.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Phantom taunted, dodging a punch thrown near his face. At times like this he couldn't have been more thankful his mother taught him some martial arts. If he had only his ghost powers in this fight, he knew he would probably be screwed.

"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to switch dance partners," Bakuto said, not at all upset by it. He back-flipped out of the way and towards the elevator. Danny was about to go after him when a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him. He whirled around, ready to strike, but instead came face to face with Jessica.

"Later," she said. "Right now? Devil Boy's ex-girlfriend."

Danny found himself having a hard time coming up with the nerve to say no to her, so he just did as he was asked, and flew over to Elektra.

There was something about fighting her that was different. Yeah, she was no Bakuto, but it felt like she was on her own level, at the very top of the pyramid, and it scared Danny down to his core. She was able to hit him, and it was like his fists went right through her. Even with his enhanced strength and other ghost powers, his martial arts were nowhere near her level.

"Curious little child, aren't you?" She said, easily dodging a kick from Phantom. He threw a punch, and then another kick. This time she caught it, gripping his ankle with a sort of strength he thought only Jessica possessed, and threw him into the cavern walls, right in between two rib bones of the dragon that held everything up.

All of a sudden, everything started rumbling, and shaking uncontrollably. Colleen and Misty must have finally set off the explosions, which meant they didn't have a lot of time to patch this up. He could get his friends out of here, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get the Hand leaders out. But Stick had said, before he died, that they were gonna kill them, and although he wanted to go against that and save everybody, the summoning contract prevented him from doing so. Stick may be dead, but the mission was still not complete, and if the mission wasn't complete then he was still at the mercy of Stick's friends until the hand was defeated. Whether or not that meant for good escaped Danny.

"Phantom, let's go," Danny said, worried. He, Luke, and Jessica were already heading for the elevator. And while he really wanted to, he couldn't just leave Daredevil to fight Elektra by himself. He shook his head and headed back to the fight. Daredevil stopped him though.

"You need to go with them," he whispered in Phantom's ear. Phantom reeled back, surprise written on his face.

"I can't just leave you here, you'll-"

"-You need to get them out fo here. That elevator won't last forever, and they need someone who can fly to get them out," Daredevil cut off.

"...But what about you?" Phantom looked at him pleadingly, not wanting to leave his friend behind at the hands of Elektra and unstable foundation.

"I'll be fine," he lied. "Someone has to keep Elektra down here."

"Why not me then?" Danny countered. "I'm already dead!"

"Because Elektra is my responsibility."

There was something in his voice that made Phantom actually consider. It was a sort of desperation, like maybe if he got through to her they wold somehow survive what was about to happen. It left no room for argument, and Danny, although begrudgingly, nodded.

"After I get them out, I'll come back for you," he said. Daredevil only nodded. Phantom left, leaving the same way the others had.

He flew up the elevator shaft, worry in his gut at both Daredevil, and the sight before him. The cable had broken, but had been caught by Jessica, who was now holding up a giant elevator with both the weight of Danny and Luke. He admired her strength, and a part of him actually got a little jealous. But he couldn't think about that now. Now, he needed to focus.

He flew up, grabbing Luke and Danny by their arms and lifted them up into the air. Jessica let go of the thick cables and the elevator dropped. He set the boys down next to her and floated in front of them.

"I can get you all out of here quick. You just need to hold tight and trust me, yeah?" he said. There was another large rumble, and the walls around them shook. Jessica wasted no time climbing on Phantom's back, ready to get out of there. Danny and Luke, though hesitant, linked arms with the kid. They weren't sure how well he was gonna be able to get all three of them out of there, but anything at this point was worth a shot. They had wasted to much time talking and not enough running. If it weren't for Phantom they would never be able to get out.

"We'll be fine as long as you guys don't squirm around to much," Phantom grunted as he lifted them up. All of the passengers aboard the S.S. Phantom felt a tingling sensation throughout their whole bodies. It was a cold trail down their spines and into their fingertips as they flew higher and higher. They had gained speed, and were now heading straight for a large rock that had gotten in the way because f of the explosions.

"Phantom-" Danny warned, but was cut off by them going through the damn thing. Phantom grunted, and Luke could see the sweat beads at his forehead, and couldn't help but feel a little sorry. After all, he was just a kid who had been pulled into this by some crazy old blind man who thought he had a say in everybody's fate. And on top of all that he was dead. That brought forth a new can of worms and Luke wasn't to willing to open it until much later, after all of this had blown over.

What would have taken much to long, Phantom got done in a few short minutes. The kid breathed a sigh of relief when they hit the surface, and the tingling sensation they all had went away as Phantom did his best to set them down gently over just dropping them on their asses. Phantom touched down to, his shoulders sagging slightly. He looked pretty tired for a ghost, and none of them could really blame him.

He looked instantly alert though when another boom went off. Phantom whirled around, only to watch with the others as the building they had been in sunk into the ground, down the giant hole were Daredevil was still fighting Elektra.

"No!" Phantom yelled. He wasted no time in flying back up and into the hole, not bothering to wait for the dust to settle. Jessica stepped forward, worry set in her features.

"He's not going ot make it."

Phantom didn't get there before the building reached the bottom of the hole, but that didn't stop him from looking around for any sign of Daredevil or Elektra. He said he would come back, he couldn't let Daredevil down now. Not when he was so close.

Danny didn't know how long he looked. He tried getting every nook and cranny covered, and he was sure that he did, but the only things he found were old dragon bones and the remains of the Hand leaders, which was horrifying in and of itself.

When his core started to pull at him, telling him it was too much, he headed back up. Once he breached the surface for a second time, he dropped his intangibility and pulled on his invisibility. The tingling pull from his core felt like a safety blanket, knowing nobody could see him. There were firefighters and police officers, along with a few reporters and pedestrians. He didn't see any of his friends down there, but one look at the horizon and he knew why.

The sun was starting to rise.

He was tired, and had been up for days. He needed a place to rest, to regenerate, and to eat as much pizza as he could fit. He took out his phone, choosing between which one of them was probably going to let him crash at their place for a few hours. He decided Luke was probably his best option, and set a quick text. The reply was almost immediate, and with his address.

When Danny got to Luke's, he scared the shit out of his girlfriend when he flew through the wall instead of just knocking like a normal person. She was about to hit him with a vase before Luke stopped her and told her who he was. Danny would have laughed if the situation had been different. He's sure they all would, if things had turned out better.

"Hey, man," Luke said, pulling Claire towards him a little. He gave Phantom a soft smile. "How are you holding up?"

A tightness pulled at Danny's chest, and part of it wasn't just from his core. Part of it was from the feeling of failure to do what he had promised Daredevil. He sighed and shrugged, stepping down. As soon as his feet were solidly planted, he fell to his knees, to exhausted to even stand. Claire was at his side in an instant, but backed away quickly when a bright light appeared around Phantom's waist and separated into two rings, going up and down his body. Luke shielded his eyes, and when he looked back again, he was starring at a black haired kid asleep on his floor.

"What the hell?" Claire asked. Luke could only shrug as he bent down and picked Phantom up bridal style before laying him down on the couch. Claire threw a blanket over him, checking his pulse for a brief moment before pulling away.

"He's breathing, and his pulse is slow but strong. You said he was a ghost, right?" Clair asked. Luke nodded, and then so did Claire. "That's probably normal for him then." She looked up at Luke, and then down at the sleeping teenager who looked like he could use ten sandwiches. She hugged his arm, leaning into him, and he rubbed his thumb over her shoulder comfortingly.

"How are you holding up?" She asked him. He shrugged and sighed.

"I'll manage," he replied. He looked down at Phantom, and something protective twisted in his stomach.

Luke would manage.

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

Shit, dude, I;m sorry this took so long. College and work have been keeping me busy. I hope you enjoy it though!

[pachathegreat]

Day 22: 28 Days Later

I’m two days behind so let’s get to it!

Now at first I thought that 28 Days Later wasn’t a zombie movie. But towards the end I excepted it as one. The major difference is that this movie is an update of what we expect from zombies and the surrounding attitudes of the time. This movie was released in the earl 2000′s. There was a mas fear of powerful viruses and chemical attacks going around. Much like how the fear of what radiation could do spawned the Romero Zombie, this was born out of the fear of infection. 

This movie could’ve been released 3 years ago and been as big of a hit as it was then. 3 years ago America was under the fear of an Ebola breakout. The infected in the movie also bare very similar symptoms compared to Ebola victims. 

The movie follows many of the classic zombie tropes. We start off with a lone survivor who acts as a proxy for us into this new world. This time it’s in the form of Jim (Cillian Murphy) and the shock and horror he endures in a world gone mad. He eventually meets a small group of survivors, bonds with them, loses one, and then are attacked by something worse than infected, people. People in the context of zombie movies, are shit. Usually and especially if they’re in the military. 

That’s not a comment on military as much as it is those who find themselves in a position of power. In many of these instances it happens to be the people with guns who wear camo clothing.  

For fans of the zombie genre itself, the influences are throughout the entire movie. I would say the one that stands out the most to me is the supermarket scene 

which is reminiscent of the scene from Dawn of the Dead

The scene in 28 Days Later has more of a cheerful cap off, while Dawn is more about consumerism and its effects on people’s lives. But I feel you can clearly see the influence on 28 Days Later

If it wasn’t for the way the infected were portrayed, this would’ve been a vastly different movie. When I watched the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, the good Barbra said something along the lines of “we don’t even have to run that much, we can just push some of them away, kill only when we have to”. 

This and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, introduced something that seemed so obviously scary. Running zombies. And this movie uses the frantic energy of the infected to great effect. 

That’s a great buildup of a classic trope. Usually the zombies appearance would kinda come out of nowhere or because one of the lookouts wasn’t being attentive enough. Our heroes have the same reaction we would in this. The tension comes from the fact of how fast they come in. It’s like a swarm of locusts. 

I was surprised when I saw that the film was directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), but as the movie went on, this wasn’t someone’s first big movie. The shots in this are great. The shots of JIm wondering about London, this vast and empty city, to great effect. 

One thing that I wasn’t really a fan of is how the film looked. I think the shots were great, the use of color was great, but the way it looked was another matter. It kinda looked like an episode of Doctor Who while 9 and 10 were around y’know? Eventually I got used to it, but it never quite settled with me. I just kinda had to look at it as an intense documentary. We’re in the shit with these guys, things aren’t always going to look great. 

The suspense in this is well done and mixes in with the frantic violence of the rage filled infected. Uses a soundtrack that isn’t based off of classic string instruments, that was kinda refreshing. 

I want to talk about the 3rd act a bit. The soldiers turn out to be horrible people (gasp! Whaaaa!?) and try to kill Jim and enslave his two female companions. JIm manages to escape the ditch they planned on shooting him. Now at the manor they were at, the commander of the soldiers kept an infected around to see how long it would take it to starve. Jim frees the infected and sets him loose on the entire compound. Usually in zombie movies, there’s something, usually something small or minute that would never in a million years be able to undo the hard work of this heavily fortified place from the zombies, but shit happens and it does. This movie goes “eh, fuck that” and goes against the norm. I actually liked it, it turned the horror away from our main heroes and subjected it to other people, people we don’t really give a shit about. 

Now in zombie movies, kills are explicitly gory, and while there’s blood and a few fires. The infected kinda just beat the shit out of people. It’s more about how and where they come from that’s unsettling. 

Also, getting beaten to death is pretty gruesome if you take a second and think about it. 

The acting in this is spot on btw. You've got Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Naomie Harris, and Christopher Eccleston and they’re always fantastic. 

Okay, wrapping this up, gotta write about INSIDIOUS now!

[ileolai]

rambling thoughts on Bill

I kind of wish we had more scenes with Moira + Bill, or at least Missy + Bill, bc really... that stuff is the actual core of Bill’s story. All the focus on Heather in the first episode seems to set up the series as a love story/journey to find Heather, when overall, as a series, it’s actually about Bill’s fundamental anxiety about her identity and being ignored.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very relevant and important to the story arc, but that’s probably a whole different meta analysis.

So anyway...  Moira and Bill. Moira isn’t necessarily a bad foster-parent, but her relationship with Bill is rather cold for someone who should be taking care of her on that level. She doesn’t seem to hear anything Bill says, she doesn’t really see Bill for who she actually is. You don’t really get the sense that Moira has a whole lot of parent-y instincts for Bill, right? She’s more like a room-mate who happens to live with her. I actually assumed that’s what she was, for a moment, when we very first meet her.

Bill keeps blatantly signalling stuff like ‘’uh btw I’m a lesbian’’, and Moira just doesn’t hear it. It goes right over her head, not because she’s a terrible homophobe or doesn’t care about Bill or anything like that, but because she doesn’t seem to actually listen. She didn’t even know there were pictures of Bill’s biological mother around in the house [I mean yes, the Doctor altered the timeline by putting them there, but on a metaphorical level, that says something about how wrapped up she is in her own stuff, to miss these details about Bill’s life] and she doesn’t seem to grasp how important they are to Bill? She just like, ‘’oh yeah, we have photos of your dead mom btw.’’ and Bill has to deal with that by herself.

Moira is not alone in this issue however. The Doctor doesn’t really hear Bill either. He loves her, he’s fascinated by her intelligence and wants to see the potential of that, but he also just sort of walks all over her emotions, and Bill has no real defenses against that. He’s dismissive of Bill’s very real fears of Missy-- and I mean, he’s technically being honest in the fact that he can’t promise her eternal life, but that’s not really what Bill needs to hear at that moment. That’s not what she’s really asking for.

Now how Missy is relevant to this... Missy is like, the symbolic stand-in for Bill’s foster mom’s issues, yes? She’s the ‘’wicked stepmother, hisss’’ as the Doctor paints her in series 9, and overall she’s tied into all this imagery around [super] dysfunctional parenting. So it’s technically her doing, what happened to Bill, although she doesn’t consciously remember doing it. She seems to remember it subconsciously, because her residual guilt and fits of tears become apparent soon after she meets Bill, but she's never really seen Bill as anything more than a means to an end, or a ‘’function’’.

So these two are both responsible for how Bill ends up as a Cyberman. Both in a literal sense, because the Doctor made a series of terrible errors, and Missy actually did it, and in a metaphorical sense -- Bill’s underlying, consuming fear is that nobody sees her or listens to her, so she’s been stripped of her identity, her emotional expressions, and made mute. She has to look up her own name in the Cyberman wifi-cloud or whatever, like she doesn’t remember it. Although there’s some hope in the fact she seems to be able to override the circuit emotionally and so she retains that aspect of her self.

So Bill is like, the kid in the center of a relationship between two parents trying to patch up a divorce or something, yes? Who can’t get their shit together long enough to properly notice her, the Doctor and Missy standing in for that, as representations for that.

Sooo... the Heather stuff, although lovely in terms of queer representation and very very relevant to the overall story on a different level, isn’t really what Bill needs to resolve... she needs to make herself seen and heard, she needs both the Doctor and Missy to properly acknowledge her, to really properly empathize with her, to claim her identity back.

I’m assuming, I’m hoping, desperately, that she gets that moment, because it will be an absolute disaster if she doesn’t, on a narrative level, as well as in terms of... you know, the implications of a queer black companion being denied that triumph. Danny got his resolution over his ambivalence towards being a soldier and went out in a blaze of glory at the same time, but... Bill needs more than that, I think. She deserves more. As a companion and as a black, queer woman.

On a semi-related note: this is why I’m thoroughly fed up with all the stuff about how ‘’the companions should stay dead’’ because ‘’consequences’’. That is just bullshit, and particularly here, in this storyline. Denying Bill her self-actualization, her moment of heroism over both her real and subtextual terrors and physical predicament, would be the worst, most anti-climactic, and dishonest cop-out this storyline could possibly take, and I really hope Moffat would have more writerly integrity than that. 

I’m hopeful, because this is like... the same dude that refused to punish Clara for her Doctorly aspirations, and actually gave her a TARDIS and quasi-immortality and an ending tied inextricably to Gallifrey and really sort of made her the first lady Doctor, prioritizing groundwork for an actual female Doctor over some boring pathos about death.... But... digressing now. I’m still anxious for Bill. I hope, I hope, I hope the Doctor isn’t alone and howling into the Arctic wind at the end because they decided to sacrifice the resolution Bill’s story demands, what the audience actually deserves, for his moment of angst.

[sanssouciavecmoi]

Ir0n F*st: Eh, what? (with background Asian count)

Spoilers follow:

Episode 1: Enter the White Dude

Hi, I am Singaporean Chinese. Yes, Netflix is available here and yes, they are trying to sell this to us. 

Secondly: I do read comics, but the whole “he was white in the comics” thing does not fly–see article for context. This is 2017, not 1974. 

Thirdly: the creators of Iron Fist were fetishising the heck out of kung-fu movies when they wrote the comic back in 1974. And they are crusty old relics that use the word “Orientals” even though it’s 2017 and they know it’s not the right word (but use it anyway in interviews).

Fourthly: Iron Fist is not one person–it’s a power that is passed onto people that subsequently bear the title. Only two of them have been white. However this is is not important, because they changed almost everything about Danny Rand (and 90% of his backstory and even what the Iron Fist is for) except the bit about him being white. So the less deliberately obtuse understand that this was the most important thing to the writers, directors and producers. Lewis Tan also auditioned for the same role, so most people know that they did not pick the best actor for the job–unless you think white actor = default best lead actor. 

Fifth point: this show had awful writing. And that’s even without the Orientalism and pseudo Buddhism. However, this dissection will be focused on this point.

Warning(s): Death, drug overdose, needles, guns, violence (kinda slow violence but still), Orientalism, lazy writing, car crashes, mangling of Mandarin, drugging someone against their will, forced institutionalisation, ableism, plane crashes.

Opening is … eh, kung fu in slow-mo. On a mountain top. With stuff like black ink. Like Chinese calligraphy. Only without any calligraphy. Just the vague aesthetics of calligraphy. *sighs* This is going to be painful.

In the first bit, Danny Rand returns to New York and tries to get into his parents’ company’s building. It goes as well as expected. His ex-childhood buddies treat him like shit. (He doesn’t get shot for assaulting security officers–this article explains why.) He also does not know that people think he’s dead–after 15 years, who would have thought, eh? Action scene was kinda slow. His ex-childhood buddies are also greedy cynical capitalists, so they have no reason to believe him.

I have to stop to ask: Can someone please tell me why this guy is barefoot? Other than bad writing (bad characterisation and bad worldbuilding)? Shoes were invented a long time ago and while a lot of Asians take shoes off when they enter a dwelling, we understand the need to wear shoes outdoors. Someone will no doubt write a fic where Danny gives his shoes up to some other homeless person. But there is no reason why he should be barefoot in that scene.

(How did this guy get to New York anyway?)

Back to Danny Rand, trying to get back into his old place. Ah, his other skill is animal communications or something??? His ex-childhood buddy Ward was a douche way back when. Still is. It gets creepy because Joy lives in this house now, so DR looks like a stalker.

Homeless in the park with DR. Time for him to use his iPod and read a book written in … I can’t make out what language that is but I know what they want me to think it is. (Stereotyping: your mind fills in the blanks with pre-existing scripts. Lazy writing.) Unless someone can tell me that this book is significant in some way later on, I’m going to call it unnecessary window dressing for that “Asian flavour”. 

Translation: the original comic creators were crusty old relics that wanked over the aesthetics of 70s kung fu movies and the producers and writers of this show are not much better. I kid–it could be line of poop emojis and we would never know.

In a scene that would have been much nicer without the extra window dressing, DR makes a friend. Big Al shows him Google search on an iPhone so that DR knows that people think he’s dead. His uncle is also apparently dead. The only person to be nice to him the whole day is another homeless person. Maybe we can focus on the plight of the–nope, not going that way.

The next morning, DR is very persistent. Joy feels (rightfully) harassed and calls people. That car-jumping scene was … um. Really extra. Let me try to articulate this, okay? This is 2017, people have access to decades of martial arts movies. (The Matrix was 18 years ago.) The action sequences in this show will compare very badly to those movies. So even people watching this for fight scenes will not be entertained.

First meeting with Colleen Wing, she gives him money and he mangles Mandarin without subtitles (for subtitles please look at gif set exhibit A under the link: white man polices biracial woman’s identity) and she says she hasn’t spoken it since she was a kid (rather than punching him for that). Man, if you wanted a job, you could have said so in English. Why do you suppose Colleen would know how to speak Mandarin? 

This is so uncomfortable on so many levels. If magical K’un Lun is not of this world, then why would they speak Mandarin? If it was truly isolated in another dimension, then K’un Lun would have its own distinct dialect, like most regions in China and most countries. So DR speaking (mangling) Mandarin is also BS. (Not even talking about the yoga-like poses in the park.) This would mean so much more if it was Chinese American DR, who was never very good in Mandarin class, and Colleen Wing, who might be able to relate.

Back to the more douchy sibling and DR. Apparently DNA tests cannot be done because Danny has no living relatives. (That’s BS too, btw.) Way to be ableist, Ward. (The only thing I like is that major douches in MCU are named Ward.) However, Danny is not as peaceful as his initial appearance suggests. We get it, he’s traumatised by the deaths of his parents–why does it get expressed as him being rather violent in a car? Apparently he’s not out of touch enough to not know how guns work (or maybe all kids know how to use guns in the US or K’un Lun–I dunno).

More job-hunting in vain. It’s not like it isn’t obvious that a) she practices a totally different school of martial arts in her dojo and b) she doesn’t have the money to pay another instructor. Yes, kick him out, Colleen. That’s what he gets for trying to police a biracial woman’s identity–is he trying to flirt with her? Ew. (Colleen Wing obviously cannot afford to pay DR–her dojo is sharing space with AA meetings. But she gives him shoes. It’s almost as if everyone who is nice to DR in this show are not very well off and–yeah, it’s very unsubtle.) 

Then DR gets attacked and chased into Chinatown (while Colleen Wing watches from above). Where a parade is happening. With lion dancers, dragon dancers and fire crackers and everything. But why? Is it Chinese New Year? What is the context for this? Can someone tell me why this is necessary? Or is this a way to claim that this show is diverse because there were something like 100 Asian extras in that scene? Way to endanger the lives of all the people in the parade, DR. Fight scenes are a yawn. Even though the mask DR is wearing in no way hides his curly mop of blond hair in this parade of Asian people–who do not notice the fighting at all.

(I feel that this scene is a metaphor for the whole show.)

On one hand, I hope the extras were paid a reasonable rate and had a good experience. On the other hand, I have a feeling that when it comes to telling the kids about how Mum/Dad/Second Aunt/your Cousin were extras on this show, it would come with the caveat that they shouldn’t try to be actors–because they’ll probably wind up as extras in a show (with not very good fight scenes) that needed a parade of Asian faces for reasons unknown. Representation matters.

(Story time: there were Chinese actors from my tiny state that tried to make it to Hollywood. Shanghai Knights was back in 2003 and Fann Wong is still mostly known as a local actress. Lau in The Dark Knight might still be Ng Chin Han’s biggest role to date in a major movie right after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Currently, he’s got a part in Gh0st in the *hell–not sure if he gets more or less lines than in Captain America. Most parents here still don’t encourage kids to become actors because there’s so little room for them.) 

Back to Ward, the more evil sibling who sends people to assassinate homeless dudes–he has reasons for being a terrible person. Reason number one being his dad (supposedly dead but still alive???)–who is probably why Ward is the nice cuddly guy he is. Wow, every baddie has a backstory. Probably affects plot in future. But is anyone interested? (I loved the art deco style building this scene supposedly took place in. Anyone know where it is?)

Remember DR’s one friend? His one friend is now dead of a drug overdose. Why? Maybe Big Al was around for for one Google search, some food and to allow DR to mouth some platitudes over his body? Or to highlight the plight of the homeless by ki–that’s really … really not good storytelling.

Security at Rand Enterprises is dreadful–DR has no problem sneaking in again. (Or maybe it’s that other thing.) Cut to Joy, the nicer sibling. Who is very calm for a woman that’s just found a strange guy in her office (again). Maybe it’s because she might believe him. Or is being swayed by his rhetoric. (”It’s a Zen saying” … gag me with a spoon.) His backstory is taking way too long … So Joy drugs him. I take everything back, she’s just as bad.

DR wakes to … a very troubling scene of forced institutionalisation at the end. As if everything else had not been bad enough.

Plot: It’s all over the place … Not sure if the writers know what DR is supposed to be. He has trauma, tries to be a pacifist but is really angry inside? What is the message here? Wall Street is evil? Problematic portrayals all over the place? The plight of the homeless and people with mental health issues? Not enough women with lines? Colleen Wing needs her own show with Misty Knight!

Orientalism: Check, aesthetics over substance, mangling of Mandarin despite the fact that DR has no reason to be speaking Mandarin, Zen sayings, yoga poses, a huge Chinese New Year-style parade in the background for reasons unknown (oooooooor they just wanted a certain type of backdrop for a not very good fight scene). One East Asian character with lines.

Asians in the background: around 100 of them perhaps, no lines, much firecrackers. Not sure if they were Chinese-American, Korean-American, Japanese American, Hmong-American … because they have no lines.

[praphit]

My Hot Fling

So, I've been trying to get back into the grind... back in the swing... on the horse... in the mix...

oh shazam, cinnamon trail mix... delicious...

Anyway, after the Oscar season, and the typical January crapfest of movies, and February - that shall now be known as "Black Panther Month", I figure it's time to get adjusted back to regular ass movies. But, it's difficult... Black Panther was soooooo awesome! It's like I had an amazing vacation fling with...

Alicia Keys -

- which would be extra crazy because she's married with kids, but whatever... What?? She's the married one, not me... I wouldn't be doing anything wrong. She works hard, she deserves a guy on the side; especially a guy like me... you should be happy for her and I. What??! DON'T Y'ALL JUDGE ME!

As I was saying! The fling!:We'd do amazing things on an exotic beach *wink*. I'd meet her celeb friends - go golfing with Kanye, gambling with Denzel, drankin and chess with Cardi B. Then back to romance with Alicia. AWESOME JUICE!

Then... I'm back in my city of Baltimore - back to my regular ass questionable flings and celebs. Clubbin with Joe Flacco

- doing shots with Catherine Pugh... it's just not the same.

Black Panther was THE FLING - though another "THE FLING" will be happening in April with "Infinity War".

 (Look at Thanos there... he's gonna get those Avengers, and get them GOOD! - Wow, I think I might be cheering for him... what's wrong with me?? He just looks so mighty... and kinda like he's taking a dump. But, it's a mighty dump... the mightiest dump OF ALL TIME! - sorry, that's nasty) 

Should I get back on the... swing of the grinded horse? or wait until something amazing comes around again (Avengers, sonn!)??

I've had some options: That Wrinkly Time Movie

- but that's like going on a date with someone who's sponsored by Disney you know?? - not Marvel Comics cool Disney either, but that classic Mickey Mouse Disney.

Not that there's anything wrong with those types; I love those people in my life. But, you can't really call it a "fling" if it's rated G... and that's all you're getting there.

"Strangers" 2 baby!

 - I heard it was crazy stupid though. Like... well-off suburban white family goes off to a vacant, foggy trailer park... they see dead bodies, and go investigate while leaving all of their phones on the table and their door open stupid.

Plus, it's Christina Hendricks as the new leading white woman!

- a tall, physically strong, feisty woman... two of the three Strangers are small ladies. C.H. could have channelled her inner Liam Neeson and taken out at least two of those Strangers by herself. But, no... running scared.

Then there is "Tomb Raider"

- but why?? Not "why see it?" (though that too), but "why make it?" The last Tomb Raider (a video game that I'm not sure people even play anymore) starred Angelina Jolie - which back then she was one of the most popular movie stars around, and who looked just like Lara Croft (The TR).

Alicia Vikander (above), though much respect for her training for this ro... wait, what?? - you don't know who she is? - yeah, you're not alone, and that's the prob; it was doomed to fail.

It's like going on a blind date, and when you see them for the first time, you know immediately(simply based off their look) that this is going to fail. That's when you turn around, get back into your vehicle, and politely drive away...never to contact them again - at least that's what I do... is that not polite?? It's honest though... does honesty equal polite?? - Idk anymore... I'm not a scientist.

What I'm trying to say is...

I don't remember my point... wait, let me get another beer..

...

...

...

Right... MOVIES!

- Then, I came across a string of strong Christian films. People say to me sometimes, "John Praphit, you need a strong Christian woman!" - to which I always reply "Why?"

I'm not saying that I disagree, but you can't tell me how you think I should be running my life, and not have a reason. Your programmed biblical response is not a reason. I want thought-provoking advice (always FYI).

Regardless, I said to myself "Maybe I need to change it up and check out one, if not all of these new Christian flicks!" So, I checked out some trailers of these new movies... (Samson", "I can only Imagine", "Paul, Apostle of Christ", "God is not dead: A light in Darkness"... I decided to check out what they were packin... UGH, and I was quickly reminded of why I don't see movies like these.

Look, I love me some Jesus, but my goodness!

I know what your judging minds are thinking - "Praphit, how can you love Jesus, but not support the cause?"

*Deep Sigh* Well, I'm glad you asked:) Let's take a look at some trailers.

#1 - Samson

a) How you gonna NOT cast The Rock? It's the same problem that we had with Tomb Raider. The Rock may very well be the reincarnation of Samson - you prove me wrong.

b) Right from the beginning, selling God as a arbitrary rule maker: 3 vows - no drankin (You monster), no touching of the dead (that's my whole Friday night - can't a brotha live!), and no cutting of the hair (I wonder if that's on his entire body? - if so, he's way too smooth for that role).

c) You spoiled the movie! As a Christian, I know about how things end for Sammy, but not everybody does! What are y'all doing??!

d) Plus, I think they need to sex it up a lil more with Delilah. Caitlin Leahy plays her - a beautiful, young actress... but they're not doing her any favors here. She has got a mom vibe going on (LET ME FINISH... not in a bad way). Mom's are sexy too, but... when I think Delilah, I'm thinking

BLAOW!

Alicia Keys, also a mother, but... that's proving my point. We'll give her taste in men a pass:)

I don't believe that Mrs. Mom Vibe (Deleezy) in the movie can get it done.

BTW - Billy Zane is in this - y'all remember him?

No??

(his head in this pic is huge... I'm getting lost in it. Someone is all up in his business, yet he still remains calm and... what face IS he making? A face that says "I'm Billy Zane", and nothing more. But, I guess there's nothing more you need to say, if you're BIllyZane... ... sorry, still lost)

He's playing King Balek... btw, some of these scenes have a slight homoerotic feel to them for a Christian movie.

King Balek: "Find out everything you can about this smooth yet unshaven MAN OF MEN Samson! What are his weaknesses... his likes, his dislikes, how does he smell? is he... adventurous?"

#2 - "Paul, Apostle of Christ"

 a) Isn't that Jesus? Man, you ain't Luke... yo name is Jesus! You can't fool me! Jim Caviezel will always be Jesus. I remember watching that show "Person of Interest" which just made me think of Jesus walking around shooting people - He finally got tired of our sinful, rebellious ways... that's how the Second Coming might look (so be ready). I can see the NRA now - being scared of multigun weilding Jesus, but at the same time filled with pride.

b) A lil homoerotic for a Christian movie again - did you see how Paul reacts when Luke comes to see him? Paul: "Luke, I never thought I'd see your sexy face again; let me touch it. Come down here a lil closer for a hug... oh yeah, that's the stuff."

c) This actually looks like a good movie, but unfortunately not enough money put behind it. Also, I wonder if people are just tired of this genre of film. Idk. ??

#3 - "I can Only Imagine"

a) Ok, so I need to take a moment. I am intimately familar with this song (this movie, btw, is pretty much an origin story... for a worship song. Look out Superheroes, cuz you're about to get schooled). I hate this song on a musical level, and yet... on a spiritual level... when I hear those piano notes - WHEW! Hallelujah!

b) ... however, doesn't the lead character kinda remind you of Kevin James? (I just ruined it for you didn't I? - now you know how I feel)

c) Plus, he calls his dad "a monster", I'm kinda on his dad's side from the trailer: He doesn't want him to pursue a silly dream (cuz he knows his son can't sing), he's struggling through an alcohol problem cuz he's being played by Dennis Quaid... and those are the types of characters Quaid always plays, and he's trying to make it up to him at the end, before he dies! (WHICH AGAIN SPOILER ALERT!)

 #4 - "God is not dead 3"

a) Was there a 2?

b) The lead actor makes me want Chuck Norris to be playing this role... like a young Chuck Norris... cg'd to the wall - beatin ass and bible thumpin! There's also a token black dude in it, who I wish was Danny Glover - cg'd to the wall! Running around, tossing soft ball questions to stump Chuck Norris (the badass bible guy). And the woman in it kinda looks like Aubrey Plaza.

Chuck, Danny, and Plaza - think about that poster

- a light of Heaven shining down on them as they prove ONCE AGAIN, that God is NOT dead... by the means of prayer and their kung fu cg hands of fury!

But, let's be honest, there's not enough money for my vision. That's the problem, most of the times these faith-based films come across too much like "Made for Tv movies". Why not pool all of the money together that's being used to make these smaller movies, and combine them for one ultimate Christian movie... or at least one ultimate Christian movie trailer:)

Also, pooling together different ideas/cultures/perspectives to make a quality film (that still gets the message across effectively) But, I guess that's like asking a bunch of churches to pull their resources together and join forces for the common goal, instead of trying to do everything on their own... making it about them... That's a ridiculous idea, I know.

I watched "Jessica Jones" Season 2 not too long ago.

JJ season 2 is soaked in feminism (and some other causes), but not obnoxiously. They set out to tell, produce, and sell a good story, and yet I still got all of the points they were making. Do something like that!

"Christiana Cross (will be her name), using her super strength to fight unbelief...and abortion:) Well, maybe not so on the nose, but you get what I'm saying, I hope. 

Wow... I have deeply digressed. Anyway, the Christian movies didn't hit me right either. Not sure what I'll do yet... get back to regular ass movies, wait for some Avengers action, or say "screw it all" and make my own Christian movie, but for now I pause to reflect on what was

 And maybe someday soon I'll get back out there.

Can I get an amen?!