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morningstar-descended · 4 years ago

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Here's a challenge for ya, 📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂📂, there should be at least 100 there for ya, have fun 😊- 🦀 anon

Mammon was an accomplished soldier in the Celestial Realm

Belphie used to be a little Lucifer Mini-Me when he was a young Angel

Lucifer would sing his siblings to sleep, Before

He didn’t tell his brothers about Lilith because he didn’t want them to interfere with her new life. It was hard enough for him not to.

Diavolo’s older brother, Beleth, has a scar covering the left side of his face from where Dia ground him into the dirt to try and get him to yield.

Their formal fight for the crown lasted three days.

Diavolo’s younger brother, Amaymon, is Asmo’s sugar daddy.

Diavolo’s Mom is also still alive, she has her own estate in another part of the Devildom. She can suplex him.

Lucifer will absently neaten up his brother’s clothes for them while he’s lecturing them.

Lucifer has fed demons and unruly Witches to Cerberus before.

Mammon has never had a partner in any sense of the word.

Satan was ‘born’ as a baby.

Asmo used to dress Satan up in little outfits when he was small.

Satan can repeat almost everything he’s read verbatim.

Lucifer has to double check that he knows where all of his brothers are before he can rest at night, unless he passes out.

All the brothers wore their hair long as angels. Lucifer’s the only one who’s never grown it back out since their fall.

It took Lucifer around six hundred years to develop proper feelings for Diavolo.

Lucifer is deathly afraid of Diavolo’s father.

Barbatos is possibly--not counting Diavolo--Lucifer’s only friend.

The Sport Beel plays is a type of Wrestling mixed with MMA and Capture the Flag. It’s played topless.

Lucifer will occasionally ask Levi to explain the plot of an anime or game to him if he wants to zone out for a while. He’s listening, but because following what Levi is talking about takes a lot of concentration, it’s almost like meditating.

Lucifer’s hair got its white / gray streaks when they lost Lilith.

Lucifer actually does have some wrinkles, he just hides them most of the time.

No matter how hard he tries, Lucifer just can’t get good at video games.

Lucifer will write out bits of sheet music when he’s bored.

Lucifer has more demon markings on his body than just the diamond on his forehead.

Lucifer’s hands are very scarred, mostly from dealing with small child Satan.

Beel’s sport is unnamed because in Infernal, it literally just is called “The Sport” since there’s only one.

Almost all of the siblings have physically torn an opponent to shreds and or consumed them. Asmo and Mammon are notable exceptions.

Satan went through a phase where he spoke solely in riddles.

Levi was hardcore into theater before animation became more of a thing. he still has a lot of opinions about it.

Belphie spent most of their early fallen years either half asleep, or completely asleep.

Beel is incapable of chewing gum or sucking on a jaw breaker properly. He impulsively swallows whatever goes in his mouth.

Lucifer has been summoned to the human world successfully only twice in his existence. He killed both summoners for the audacity.

The entire garden around the house of lamentation was of Lucifer’s design.

Mammon has the best control over his shape-shifting--able to stay in a false form for longer, and able to retain his humanoid form despite high emotions.

The brothers are, quite literally, Devildom Celebrities.

Diavolo has never kept a pet before.

Lucifer is ambidextrous, but prefers his left hand.

Mammon is left handed.

Gluttony demons tithe to Lord Beelzebub on his birthday in the form of whatever food they fixate on.

The first angel Lucifer killed after his fall was one he didn’t actually recognize.

The first angel Mammon killed was one of his friends from the Celestial Guard.

Lucifer will never forgive the other Archangels for turning their back on him.

Lucifer has only ever had two partners in any sense of the term in his entire life.

Beel used to be the smallest, before he hit his growth spurt and overshot all of them.

Lucifer swears almost exclusively in celestial, when he’s pissed off enough to actually swear.

Satan doesn’t really have any of Lucifer’s memories, but he retained the emotions based around them. It’s confusing.

Lucifer can cook just fine, but he can’t bake to save his life.

The Longest Lucifer has stayed awake without any rest was about a month. It wasn’t pretty.

Half of the time Lucifer says something funny it’s unintentional.

Most of the Devildom’s current infrastructure was pioneered by Diavolo’s father.

King Diavolo’s real name is Ba’al.

Lucifer can play basically any instrument that’s been invented, apart from electronic only ones.

Levi’s skill in painting could put any of the great masters to shame.

Lucifer isn’t a fan of a poultry, ironically.

The fact that they can get Belphie to wear his complicated RAD uniform everyday while being the Cardinal Sin of Sloth is a point towards how well Belphie controls his sin.

Being a shutin used to be cool and mysterious-- Levi mourns that social shift often.

Lucifer considers Levi the easiest brother to handle because he doesn’t really leave his room.

Mammon, while definitely being guilty of lots of grifts and get rich quick schemes, actually has at least five jobs on top of his stipend for being a Sin.

Lucifer has been trying to figure out how to kill those three witches for causing him problems by proxy, but he hasn’t figured out a legal way to justify it yet.

Amaymon is Diavolo’s youngest sibling. Lucifer can’t stand him.

Flower arranging is one of Asmo’s hobbies.

Asmo also has the best eye for interior design aesthetics, even if he uses them to make a room look... Like That.

For Centuries Lucifer couldn’t even begin to talk about his interests without Diavolo flooding him with related gifts. He’s gotten better about it since.

Lucifer and Diavolo’s relationship was purely physical at first.

Beel often uses the fact that his brothers think he’s stupid for his own gain. Most of the time it’s to get more food, but whatever works works.

Lucifer is completely fire proof now as a demon, inside and out.

He has nightmares of fire, though.

In one of the battles of the Celestial war, The Archangel Michael did his Signature “Step on Lucifer’s face/head trick” And Lucifer nearly took his leg off for it.

All demons can both purr and growl.

Lucifer’s back is heavily scarred from his fall and Satan’s creation both.

Mammon physically regenerates the fastest, and Belphie the slowest.

Levi, due to Envy’s ability to constantly and unintentionally buff the demons around him, is always helping his brothers in some small way whether he means to or not.

Beel still has specific nightmares of Lilith’s death, and will often crawl into Belphie’s bed to hold him after.

Satan never knew Lilith, but he’s emotionally attached to her because of the vague memories he inherited from Lucifer.

Asmo’s hair, if he grew it out, would be loosely curly.

All Lust type demons are Incubi / Succubi / Concubi.

Wrath type demons are the ones who cause classic hauntings.

All sleep paralysis demons are Sloth demons, though.

Pride type demons are the most prone to possessing humans in power, despite Lucifer having never possessed a human before.

Barbatos is actually a little bit older than Diavolo, but not by much.

Luke is basically Michael’s son.

Simeon is the younger brother of the Archangel Jophiel (the Angel of Beauty).

Asmo, if given the chance to defect back to the Celestial Realm, would seriously consider it.

Mammon acts like a fool, but isn’t one himself.

Belphie and Beel aren’t quite telepathic, but they always know where the other is, or if they’re in trouble.

The Cardinal sin of Wrath traditionally writes all of the punitive legislation in the devildom, so Satan is the one who writes out what crime gets what punishment.

The Devildom’s economy has never flourished so much before Mammon became the sin of Greed.

A good 60% of the work Lucifer does is paperwork that should actually be handled by one of his brothers.

Asmo’s painted his nails with his own venom before, and then used it to kill people who piss him off.

The only person Lucifer can accept losing to is Diavolo.

Lucifer isn’t a functional person until around 2 hours after he’s woken up. Luckily he tends to get up around 4:30a.m. / 5a.m. so when normal people have to interact with him, he’s mostly aware.

Mammon likes to over-saturate his foods with toppings and sauces, which is why Beel can’t stand his cooking.

Asmo likes the taste of straight vodka.

Lucifer once slapped another demon’s head clean off when they spoke back to him while he was addressing Diavolo’s court.

Lucifer and Diavolo’s first real “Date” was in the Royal Garden.

Any part of an Archdemon is worth a small fortune, as they’re rather potent spell ingredients.

If you talk shit about Mammon near a Greed type demon they WILL beat your ass.

Diavolo loved Lucifer on sight. Or, well, he loved the look of him.

#{ Mun Post }#Ask Meme #{ fuck you. never challenge me again ghdhghsdhg }#Anonymous #long post #dialuci

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hmgfanfic · 4 years ago

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Talk about all the Fillory worldbuilding in LQoF, please :)

THIS IS INEXCUSABLY LATE. I’m so sorry!

And I wish I could say it was just my scatterbrainedness, which is definitely a constant factor, but it was also that when you sent this, I was deeeeeeeep into writing the final few chapters of Little Quirks of Fate and I was kind of... in my head about it. It took a lot longer to finish than I had planned (a cardinal sin to my particular combo of severe ADHD and Type-A personality) and I was spending excessive amounts of time making sure I figured out a satisfying ending by my own exacting standards, so I just didn’t have the headspace to think through my early process yet. Very sorry about that :( But now that I’m finally done, I’m excited to look back! So if you’ll indulge me a very late answer, I’d be tickled. 💗

Long ramblings and major fic spoilers under the cut.

The truth is a lot the world building came down to character stuff foremost, followed closely by my preferences as a writer. I adapted the world to the story I wanted to tell, while using the little bits of information we’re given in canon as a baseline, rather than building the story around the world. And that was a lot more fulfilling for me, since I only really love worldbuilding through the lens of character, rather than as an exercise unto itself (though it’s super fun once you get rolling.)

To explain what I mean by that, you need to know that Little Quirks of Fate was originally going to be a oneshot. My plan was about 25-30k (lol) of a pure S2 retelling, only with Quentin in the role of Fen. It was also going to take a much more traditional enemies-to-lovers’ path—with Quentin as an active member of the FU Fighters—and the whole thing was going to be in his POV. Also, they weren’t even going to kiss until after the bank heist (which, yes, was going to be a thing here), but that got abandoned the fastest in favor of trying my hand at smut. But two things made me realize I needed to significantly shift course:

1) I was struggling to make Quentin actually feel like Quentin. I wrote this very atmospheric early scene at the FU Fighters encampment, with lots of description of the bonfires and the way their shirts dyed in Fillorian red looked like blood (you get it.) It took place in the black of night, shrouded in secrecy, and when Bayler questioned Quentin about his new husband, Quentin said something like, “He’s a drunk idiot, we have the advantage.” It was all very lush and dramatic, but it really, really, really didn’t feel like Q in any recognizable way to me. Now, I’m not someone who thinks Q needs to be a precious sweetheart all the time, but what I was writing didn’t have his idiosyncrasies or a motivation that felt true to who I feel he is.

2) The draft was DEFINITELY missing Eliot’s story and his perspective. I certainly don’t think Eliot’s POV is always necessary (sometimes not having his direct thoughts heightens tension in romance especially), but it felt really necessary here, to fill in the gaps of what Quentin was assuming and also—more importantly—because the events were just as impactful on him, but in a very different way. So I knew I was missing half the narrative, but that meant I would need to deal more explicitly with the Beast (i.e., Mike, the most devastating storyline to me, personally) and I really, really didn’t want to do that.

My first step in making a more recognizable Quentin was figuring out a way he could more or less use the same syntax that he does on the show. Voice is the first way I connect with a character, so while many writers in this fandom thrive at modifying speech patterns and keeping the heart of a character alive, keeping close to Quentin’s canon speech was an easy fix for me in a story I was excited to get rolling. Sort of like the old adage of uplifting your strengths before putting outsize energy into things you struggle with.

The easiest way I could think to give him the same syntax was to figure out a way Quentin spent some significant time on Earth during his formative years. And once I rewatched 2x06 and was reminded that Ess went to Phillips Exeter Academy for high school, I lost my damn mind. I started sketching out ways that Quentin could get there too and that’s how I built out the idea of Umber brokering a marriage deal with the actual landmass of Coldwater Cove, which included an education opportunity for the boys (in a nod to Fillory’s patriarchal nature), and also the reason why Umber did that, which was to take advantage of his brother’s orgy mistake with the first Children of Earth to usher in a more productive and orderly Fillory. So that created a whole new set of rules and essentially a whole new world for me to play with... all for the sake of Quentin getting to say “fuck.” It was that important to me. :p

And as I worked through all that, I realized I also wanted to give Q magic, since Quentin’s relationship with magic is something I’m interested in. But I had read on ye olde Tumblr that the reason Illario uses a wand in 2x06 is a nod to the books, where Fillorians specifically aren’t Magicians and that’s the rationale for the Children of Earth royalty. And while I generally see the books as interesting supplemental material with zero bearing on the television show canon, I still said to myself, “Self, wouldn’t it be kind of funny if Quentin was the only native born Fillorian who had magic and so the FU Fighters believe he’s the chosen true High King, but instead of it being because he’s ~special~, it’s because Umber made a clerical error? Lol! Hilarious!”

So while all my questions for how to explain all THAT spun out into more and more detail, at the same time...

I caved to the idea that this story was going to be a No Beast AU, just like my last two stories, mostly because I really couldn’t bring myself to deal with the Mike of it all, even tangentially. I could have just changed that single element, but I’m not a half-measure gal! But I still wanted to stick with the vague background theme of Fillory = adulthood from a questing perspective and I wanted Julia leading the charge this time, but without the sexual assault that occurs in canon. So obviously, the answer was avenging all of the murdered and cannibalized “grown-ups,” i.e., master Magicians, by seeking out help from the gods in a balanced Fillory free from the devastation of the Beast. Duh! ;)

So then, like anyone would do, I rewatched every episode up to 4x11 that makes a mention of Fillory and took about twenty pages of notes on the canon worldbuilding, along with an analysis of how much a particular piece of information would be impacted or not by balance in the realm. For instance, the existence of geraniums (per The Fillorian Candidate and Tick’s misunderstanding of “power plants”) and the lack of diamonds as a precious stone (per the River Watcher not knowing the value of Margo’s earrings in Knight of Crowns) struck me as static facts unaffected by Ember’s reign of chaos. But I shifted the overall feel of Fillory to one that’s more functional and a lot more bureaucratic, leaning on things like the existence of socialized health/vision/dental insurance (the idea of which is canonical, per a petition from the beavers requesting dental coverage from acting High King Josh in Ramifications), strict taxation plans, and an overall sense of thriving Ceremony to show Umber’s influence.

Basically, I wanted Eliot to inherit a much, much easier Fillory to rule—especially with the highly educated Quentin as a built-in and passionate advisor—mostly so it wouldn’t completely strain credulity when a lot of his energy goes toward his love life rather than the intricacies of ruling (though Margo would say he still favored his personal life more than he should have, and she wasn’t... wrong. He wants to be a husband more than a king!) But I specifically made it so most of the chaotic elements were played as whimsical (sorry) quirky shit or smaller hints of greater injustice (see: Ember getting rid of STDs, but still letting magic-poor citizens die of sepsis because that’s too boring to deal with), all while a cataclysmic danger lurked under the surface.

After that, I just filled in details as they worked with character stuff and plot stuff, and I tried to make sure they didn’t contradict each other in a way that couldn’t be chalked up to “chaos.” I basically lived with the Fillory map open all the time and also took screenshots of Benedict’s map of Loria, which gave me alternate ideas for the overall feel of the landmass rather than just the kingdom. And pretty much that’s the basic process I used to create the world! It was extremely fun, and I learned a lot, though I’m *definitely* focusing on some pure relationship kind of stuff for a while because... oof, sometimes it was a lot.

Annnnnnnd if you’re still with me, here’s some stray observations, for funsies:

I wanted Quentin and Eliot’s starting points to be more mature than in the show. Quentin when we’re introduced to him as an adult in LQoF is a lot more jaded and cautious than S1 Q, which is because in this world, his S1 mentality happened while he was on Earth and came to a head during the throes of his fucked up relationship with Bayler. Similarly, Eliot had already gone through a lot of shit too, and was much more self-actualized by the time he agreed to be High King here than in the show. It was still out of desperation for purpose, but not coming out of a direct trauma spiral. I think if they had been younger, both in age and mentality, the story wouldn’t have worked because they would’ve blown it up day two. They’re both still disasters, as we like to say, which is why the... everything happens, but they’re not disasters in the exact same way as in early canon. I thought of them as closer to their S3 selves, pre-Mosaic.

While I mostly kept Quentin’s syntax the same as on the show, I did change it up in some ways to reflect his Fillorian upbringing. The most obvious was replacing “goddamn” with “godsdamned” and “Jesus” with “Hades,” but I also made him slow on the Earth idiomatic uptake and slightly more likely to use passive voice and less likely to use contractions, especially early on and especially when speaking with Fen. He also said slightly out of date things even for someone who last remembered 1999, since Earth was still overwhelming despite his immersion. E.g.: In the epilogue, he asks Eliot if he can spend some time “Googling the World Wide Web” instead of watching Gossip Girl together, even though by 1999 most people were saying “on-line” or “the internet” by a pretty wide margin. But in my mind, the first term he learned was World Wide Web and he stuck to it like glue.

I originally had a full-blown coronation scene, where Quentin helped Eliot with the answers to the 90s questions via subtle charades, such as flapping his hands at his sides to give him the answer “Wings” (and Eliot was eventually going to Eliot-Logically use that moment to argue to Quentin that maybe Q really is the true High King since he was the one who actually answered the Knight’s questions, etc.), but I cut it and only showed bits and pieces in flashbacks because it didn’t really matter. They had to treat it seriously because it was An Event in this version of balanced/un-Beasted Fillory, with a full audience bearing witness, but the whole thrust of the external plot was about dismantling that moment and the concept of monarchy in general, so giving it too much weight outside of the Eliot and Julia friendship felt disingenuous to the story I was telling.

This is also why it was important to me that Margo hated the title High King Eliot the Kind, even though I only brought it up textually once or twice. But in my view, she fucking hated it and never came around to it. Which isn’t because she doesn’t think Eliot is kind, it’s that it felt like a simplification of all that he is, and the coronation ceremony in general felt similarly shallow. It wasn’t just the four of them working out their shit on the beach; it was true ceremony after a year of questing toil and a lot lingering uncertainty/resentments (especially regarding Julia), so it was too Big Shiny Happy Bow to her.

Yet on the same theme, my greatest regret was not being able to work in the fact that Margo’s title for Penny (King Penny the Persistent) was supposed to be half-sincere and half-sex joke. She did genuinely admire that he stuck it out even through his initial heartbreak because he gives a shit about his people underneath it all, but—and this is a very important headcanon to me—she admired his dedication to the art of the female orgasm even more.

I was originally also going to include the One Day More sequence with way more details—such as Umber taking the Javert lines, Ember taking the Thenardier lines, Bayler taking the Enjolras lines, and Penny taking the Marius lines, but... uh... writing a musical number is apparently not in my skill set. Also, honestly, the weirdness of the original is its whole charm and so I didn’t want to improve upon perfection. See also, in a more serious way: Eliot bowing to High King Margo on the Muntjac, the events of Plan B, and Quentin & Penny in the Flying Forest. Would not touch it!

My favorite Fillorian detail was either the guy who sent a citizen petition requesting a “smidgen” of Eliot’s earwax for an undisclosed purpose, or the use of the verb “to peg” to describe a Pegasus flock greeting an outsider with honor. They encapsulate the obscene yet pristine feel I always tried to give Fillory.

My favorite subtle(-ish?) ironic moment is Ess, the heir to a hereditary monarchy, taking Quentin to task for not honoring the anarchy patch on his high school backpack. In general, I don’t like everything being neatly resolved, including on an overarching world level. And I very strongly felt they had ZERO business meddling in Loria, so it left some fun-to-me unanswered questions. Will Ess usher in democracy for Loria based on his experiences on Earth? Maybe! Maybe not, since tradition’s a hell of a drug and Loria has its own history and complexities. Who knows?

I misread the town name Sutton as Sultan on the map the first time I referenced Bayler’s hometown (Sultan’s Ridge), but instead of going back to fix it, I just made it a sister town. Whatever!

I do not know how Quentin got a full bookshelf of Earth literature back to Fillory with him. Magic, I guess. (That’s the answer to anything I didn’t totally think through.)

I occasionally get asked whether Quentin and Fen were physically related. The answer is no, though it doesn’t totally matter. But I intended heart-cousins to be more like close family friends. (Though I actually originally had a joke where Eliot still wasn’t sure by the epilogue, but it didn’t land/feel realistic so I cut it.)

The details of the magic frequency poisoning were DEFINITELY what I thought through the least. My main goal was to have something catastrophic happen to Fillory based in part from the historical actions of the Children of Earth and Ember, patently ridiculously but with lasting consequences. Hence, god orgy that took away Fillorian human magic and sent out a slow poisoning of the overall magic “frequency.” It sounds all well and good, but it’s definitely something that would fall apart with even the lightest bit of prodding. It serves it’s purpose though, so I figured the gaps could be filled in or politely ignored. ;)

This question was way too much fun and a helpful retrospective for me! Thank you so much for indulging me, many moons ago. 💗

#little quirks of fate #harri writes #anon asks #ze process #<3 thank you i love you #this one is a long post even for me #dialogue asker if you’re reading this you’re up next I promise!

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curious-minx · 4 years ago

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Review of the first episode of The Great North (plus some sad Bob’s Burgers’ news)

2021.

I was going to begin my review of the pilot episode of The Great North, the sister sister series of Bob’s Burgers, with my trademark snarky and slanted curlicue wit... Instead, I am reckoning with the headline of the death of Bob’s Burgers character designer, Dave Creek.

Dave Creek.

Type his name out and put it in comic sans and you can see it’s a name meant to be involved with TV. One of the rare individuals to pass away from something other than Covid-19 or our rising totalitarian government. The artist contributed to the show in many ways, most profoundly with the design of Lady Tinsel from the Bleakening, one of Bob’s Burgers most visually ambitious episodes to date. I am ill-equipped to eulogize the man like his fellow peers are doing, but as someone who writes and thinks about the Bob’s Burgers series it is impossible to not address his passing.

//////

The Great North.

“Sexi Moose Adventure”

Look up there! What Do You See? Nature and stuff Like a rock And a tree Oh, The Great North Way up here we can breathe the air Catch some fish Or gaze at a bear Wow! Oh, The Great North Here we live, oh, oh Here we’ll stay, oh, whoo From longest night To longest day In The Great North

An Alan Thicke bop or the wimpy Cheers theme this aint. A jarring theme. I had to transcribe it to lay it out in front of me to see how wordy it is, but to my surprise the theme song looks more concise on paper. Still, I am not sold on this theme song. Mainly because I prefer the misheard lyric of “Here we’ll say (it’s actually “stay”): oh, whoo,” digging further into the regional grunts.

1:24, One minute and twenty four seconds in and there is already a little bit of winking scatalogical humor by the ever youthful Paul Rust, or as I am sure he’ll be known for generations, Ham Tobin, the middle of the three Tobin sons. Compounded within these first two minutes is a stylistic swivel away from Bob’s Burgers comedic well with a Brokeback Mountain themed wedding cutaway joke with real-world celebrity cameos. Speaking of celebrity cameos, how about a side character conversation with an Alanis Morrisette constellation (and she’s a recurring character!) you’ve never seen that in Bob’s Burgers! In the first three minutes and thirty seconds we have two instances of explicitly expositional dialogue, the first is the cleaner introduction of eldest Wolf Tobin (voiced by Will Forte) and his fiance Honeybee Shaw who has just moved to Alaska from Fresno and helps set up the reverse All in the Family Meathead and Gloria dynamic. What comes next is once again another moment I can only describe as jarring when the inexplicably normal named Judy Tobin explains to Alanis Morrisette constellation exactly what is wrong with sweetly overbearing father. The reason involving a somewhat convoluted background story about the former Tobin matriarch's abandonment of the family and Beef, the Tobin patriarchy, is in denial of this fact. Beef prefers to live in the reality where no wife of his would leave him she could only have been eaten by a wolf.

What goes on throughout the episode is what I believe is a cardinal sin of episodic storytelling: Making jokes and observations at the expense of an off screen character. There are already WAY too many characters being thrown at me and not once throughout the episode was I able to identify any of the characters by any names other than the name of the celebrity voice actor. Minute six and yet again we are hit with Honeybee generating another celebrity name for a joke and I really hope that the writers develop more of a game for her. Oh wait a minute the episode reminds me again at the eight minute forty sixth second mark that she is in fact from Fresno. More diarrhea and fart jokes snaking their way back into the scene as well, but Jenny Slate has always relished in the poopier jokes (see: any of her stand-up, Kroll work, or Obvious Child).

At the ten minute mark there is a quality character defining joke when Wolf distracts Beef by pointing out an indoor potted plant in a mall, which causes Beef, ever the Nature man, to take matters into his own hands by trying to rescue the potted plant. Beef is basically a combination of the two Rons from Parks & Rec, the emotional frugality of Ron Swanson and a touch of Sam Elliot’s Ron Dunn Earthiness. Julio Torres’ mall juicer character is also introduced with a perfunctory but enjoyable deadpan exchange with the awkward Judy, but it’s the kind of performance Julio Torres could give in his sleep (and probably did).

The eleven minute mark introduces a character that I was initially pretty jazzed about, Judy’s boss at the mall photography store Alyson Lefebvrere (gosh I hated typing out that name >.<) voiced by long-time Molyneux collaborator, Megan Mullally. On paper, much like the theme song, a heated exchange between an emotionally vulnerable Beef and a character voiced by real-life wife Megan Mullally should be dynamite, instead much like their podcast it feels like a wet fart in the sheets. Mullally’s work on Bob’s Burgers as Linda’s sister Gayle is terrific and with the power of animation having her play an unconventional looking character really works to her advantage. Alyson’s character design is boring and conventional cartoon attractive as she’s clearly being set up as a potential love interest for our leading Beef man, but the whole thing in execution falls completely flat. The extended 69 joke between Beef and Alyson is supposed to be funny because we know it’s between a real life publicly beloved celebrity couple. You cannot coast on innate chemistry alone! The setting up of the love interest isn’t even coy, we see Beef get heart eyes and drool over Alyson, which is just the most predictable and least interesting choice. A route this show seems dangerously flirtatious with.

Finally, at minute:second mark 13:15 we get introduced to a potentially fun and quirky sitcom character, Londra the neighboring fish mongerer. Voiced by Judith Shelton, an actor I am sure we all remember as Sally from Seinfeld and Angela from the Gregory Hines Show. Instead she gets instantly shut down and shuffled by in favor of advancing the plot of the episode. Moving on to the birthday party. Yep Honeybee makes another pop culture reference this time the Minions (it was Squidward last time, but I was too faint of heart to mention it at the time). We also find out in a forced confession from Ham that he is gay. I am glad the show has hired an openly gay actor like Julio Torres to play a bit recurring character, but it feels weird having Paul Rust a thoroughly heterosexual actor portray a gay goofball character. I feel like there easily could have been an actual gay goofball Paul Rust type out there deserving of the job, but this show does do right by having Dulce Sloan as Honeybee and Aparna Nancherla as MVP, Moon Tobin (Who I’ll get into later). Therefore I should not let this irk me, but clearly this show and I are not seeing eye to eye. In an era of gestures towards meaningful representation I would just like to see some consistency. Rust will probably go on to join the ranks of the many other hetero men who have also portrayed perfectly competenent and sensitive gay characters, but with gay characters should come paychecks for gay voice talent. In the end of this dead end debacle I much rather Paul Rust have the role and be spared the unimaginative Randy Rainbow casting. Back on track.

There’s a four square action sequence of the four siblings that also feels like the show attempting another stylistic flourish to separate itself from Bob’s Burgers. The episode, all one straight ahead single narrative, comes to a happy ending to also establish that the Bob’s Burgers sister sister series is also interested in being a sentimental sitcom to its core. An unfortunately okay first episode that got worse for me with a repeated viewing. The only character and overall performance that sticks out to me is Aparna Nancherla playing what is essentially the show’s Tina and Louise lovechild of a character Moon Tobin, an animal identifying gender flipped peculiar savant-like child. She’s one of those comedians that I will always root for and appreciate whenever she pops up and I really hope that this show treats her right. She really elevates the material. Everyone else does just fine. The first episodes and first seasons of any sitcoms are rarely all that innovative or memorable so I am certainly going to allow this show to grow on me.

For the time being, this first episode of the Great North is deserving of Two Sexy Moose Antlers out of Five Forced Pop Culture References

#TV Series #Bob's Burgers #The Great North #Fox #adult animation #Animation Domination #Sitcom #TV Review

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grinnoire · 4 years ago

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Worst Total Drama characters per season?

i hope youre ready for some BAD OPINIONS

s1: i’m so sorry harold but every single thing you do hurts me...honestly he’s as horrible as ezekiel but at least we only had like 1 episode of ezekiel and ezekiel drops the misogyny (and becomes gollum which is like a really positive direction for his character and i’m really supportive of it). harold just reminds me too much of high school me & there is nothing more detestable than the shadow self. amy and sadie are kind of a close second because that gimmick wears pretty thin pretty fast haha...too bad bc they seem really sweet! i guess i wish they did more with them?

s2: beth and courtney...but i’m gonna give it to beth because i at least really like courtney, especially in other seasons, she’s just bad in this one (it’s kind of annoying that her villain gimmick was kind of just “is really good at competing so keeps winning immunity” but i love her meanness/cattiness/hypocrisy, they make her really interesting as a character/villain, she’s just better utilized as the drama queen she is than as the overarching antagonist, you feel me?). i feel kind of bad about disliking beth though? she’s so sweet and definitely someone i’d really like irl, but on this show “generically nice” is really boring to me...i’m sorry beth you don’t deserve this

s3: sierra ... to be honest i kind of really liked everyone in season 3? they managed to do like an actually good job of making both likable villains and not-boring good guys! i think i dislike sierra here because she had a really interesting gimmick at the beginning - having so much dirt on the show and other characters that she had an edge - and then just kind of devolved into a cody stan. she deserved better than that :pensive: i’d have at least loved to see someone like...take advantage of her knowledge, or for her to remember she had it in the finale, or something, but it kind of just never comes back. ever

s4: currently in the middle of rewatching this but like uhh somehow staci’s bad-ness is SO bad that she’s managed to taint the rest of the season despite only being in one episode? which is pretty impressive. but i feel like first-episode elims don’t count, so it’s definitely zoey and mike.

and to be clear, mike (and co.) is my favorite character, and i don’t even dislike zoey! they’re just definitely the worst part of every episode since all the other couples that season are so charming and these two have...no chemistry. like the chemistry is that they’re both nice...and ones a girl and ones a boy...thats it! zoey also commits both of my td cardinal sins of 1) not really playing into her gimmick (i would not know she’s supposed to be a hipster unless the supplementary material told me, and nothing in her arc has to do with that. if they wanted her to be some sort of crazy survivalist they should have ... done that with her instead of being like “she is a hipster and also she goes full rambo on scott”. like what if her thing was that she basically grew up in a log cabin in the woods and is terrified that if people find out she hunts bears and stuff they won’t like her, so she’s trying to pretend to be a super sweet city girl instead?) and 2) just being kind of generically nice, which mike is guilty of too. it’s total DRAMA, guys

s5: gonna be real with you this is my favorite season by far (season 3 is better written but every line that comes out of mal’s mouth physically hurts me, which means it makes me feel more emotions per hour than any of the others combined). honestly i feel like i have to give it to zoey again? the problems from season 4 - no chemistry, generically nice, etc. - carry over to season 5, and are worsened because these two have so much more screentime.

the problems i have with s5 are numerous though and i feel kind of bad for dunking on zoey because, like beth, i actually like her quite a lot? she’s just not...really good in the show haha. it always feels like the writers never know what to do with her...they went “well she’s lonely and nice” and then in season 5 she’s not even lonely so i dont even know what she’s supposed to be about anymore

s6: did not watch this one... i heard it was kind of bad...

#total drama #Anonymous #yeah to be clear total drama has like a lot of problems #one or two characters i think weren't written too well are like the least of its issues #but when i watch total drama i set my standards really low #so yeah mostly i dont actually dislike almost any of the characters?#i do kind of dislike harold i'm sorry harold fans #but even in his case i kind of feel like most of the issue i take with these characters #isn't really the characters themselves #but how they're utilized (usually poorly)

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copias-thrall · 5 years ago

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Hulloooooo! Do you have any headcanons about how Copia and Papa 3 would be in bed with each other?

These idiots.

Thirst below

*m/m, really rough sex*

What you have to understand is these two are basically a walking Enemies to Lovers tag.

Copia shows up on the scene and Papa III is hella suspicious. Why is this man here at this Church. There are so many senior clergy members here, why add another? And to add insult to injury the guy isn’t even flaunting his favor. He’s just. Always in his office working or attending to the education of the Siblings. They guy’s just such a square. He’d been expecting to hear poor performance reviews of The Cardinal’s Sibling initiations, but on the contrary—he seems to have … groupies. It’s beyond maddening. He’s determined to show this man how unwelcome he is here at any opportunity.

Copia himself is wondering how he ended up here. He’s not really the political type, and that’s maybe what landed him in this predicament—he’s pretty much a neutral party who is devoted to the Church and does excellent paperwork. He wasn’t exactly expecting a warm welcome from Papa III, but the level of disdain and vitriol the man directs at him is beyond unwarranted. That man is a spoiled brat, surrounded by yes men, and he wouldn’t know what a Form 38a § G was if it slapped him in the face. Which is what Copia would love to do every time he goes to III’s office to find him there with a Sibling under his desk.

And then the pranks start.

Stupid, little things. Surprising in how juvenile they are. A whoopee cushion placed under his seat pillow in Chapel. A tack on his office chair. Sugar in his salt shaker and salt in his sugar bowl (and ok: after finding the sugar in his salt shaker he really should have checked his sugar bowl, so that one’s on him).

Honestly, Copia had assumed it was the Ghouls or bored first-years. But then one day he has to double back to his office to retrieve a file he overlooked, and he catches III in the act of—well he’s not sure, but there were pulleys involved. Copia saw that his door was ajar—unusual, but not immediately suspicious. The sounds, though, were. Copia had slowly swung open the door—his palm flush on the wood—to reveal III, slightly bent over, fiddling with ropes, the clunk of the metal pulley loud in the relative silence. Perhaps sensing a shift in the air around him, or a change in light, III had turned to look at the doorway and froze. Copia looked at him. Papa III had looked back. They has stood like that—a cursed tableau—until III at least had the indecency to look ashamed. He’d quickly gathered up his … contraption … and scuttled down the hallway, Copia just standing there, motionless and mute throughout the whole.

And maybe that could have been that. The prank war could have ended with Papa III’s embarrassment and the two of them continuing to have a quiet, but markéd, distaste for each other. But Copia did not rise through the ranks on his studiousness alone. You have to be somewhat dangerous if you want to ascend and you’re not of the Emeritus line.

Copia lets III fall into a false sense of security. He barely shows any acknowledgement that he caught him red handed. And Papa III seems begrudgingly grateful that Copia didn’t report him to Sister Imperator; he thinks there’s an uneasy truce.

But Copia is a patient man.

The dark solstice is upon them. The shortest day of the year. The time where it is more night than day. It’s not one of their High Unholy Days, but it is a time for new sins and wanton revelry—so one could say it’s an important holiday to the Church. It’s a service III can perform by rote—a few updates to the Latin sermon every year, but basically it’s a boilerplate by now. So he doesn’t really practice it. Just sends it off with his few notes to have it rewritten cleanly.

The service is usually excruciating—the Ghouls and Siblings are counting down the minutes til they can fuck and drink all night; many of the permanent clergy members have heard this sermon for years; Papa III himself is bored with it. Only Nihil, Papa I, and Sister Imperator seem to actually be enjoying the pageantry of it.

This year though, as soon as Papa III gets a few lines in, there’s a hushed tittering in the crowd. III ignores it because: it’s probably just some tomfoolery. He’s more or less spaced out, his brain on autopilot as he sings out the words to the verse. It’s when the murmurings turn into stifled giggles, and he tunes in enough to see Imperator glaring at him, does what he’s actually saying dawn on him.

Oops, I did it again / I played with your heart, got lost in the game / Oh baby, baby / Oops, you think I’m in love / That I’m sent from above / I’m not that innocent /

He stutters and pauses; he picks up the sheaf in front of him, squinting.

Yes.

Oh yes.

His solstice sermon has been replaced with the lyrics to “Oops, I Did It Again.”

He chances a look over to the pew with the Higher Clergy—to gauge from his father and Sister how bad it is—but instead he catches the eyes of an expressionless Cardinal Copia looking deadass back at him. Papa III narrows his eyes and meets The Cardinal’s steady gaze, their white eyes at war. He proceeds to finish his altered sermon with as much pomp and severity that he can lend to an outdated pop song.

His eyes don’t once leave The Cardinal’s.

Afterwards, Papa III is on his way to having a full on hairy conniption. He manages to make it back to his office before he tears off his ceremonial robes in a rage. The Ghouls attending him are surprised and concerned at his uncharacteristic carelessness with his vestments. He hurriedly shoos them out, and then sits down at his desk, panting in ire. He’s not one that angers easily, so he’s unused to the pounding adrenaline. Taking out his aged Scotch—the bottle he really keeps in his desk just for show—he pours himself two fingers (if “two fingers” means the space between his index and pinky fingers) and swallows it down in two gulps, coughing and sputtering at the burn.

It’s enough to take him out of his snit a bit to consider why he’s so angry; it’s not like this particular holiday is of great importance to him, and it’s not like in general he doesn’t find the services tedious. Lucifer, it’s not like doing a dramatic reading of a pop song is out of character for him.

But he would never, never, be so ostensibly irreverent during an important occasion. The heavy eyes of the Church—of his father, of the Sister—are ever on him, watching, waiting. Cardinal Copia made him look like an asshole in front of the whole congregation—and because it’s so on brand, no one probably even thinks it was a joke on him.

And that’s what’s making him incensed: at a time when his tenure as Papa is so precarious, The Cardinal made him look like a buffoon.

Papa III’s blood boils all over again and his fists tighten. Cardinal Copia crossed a line, may have even done it with malicious intent, and he needs to pay, that Rat.

He takes a generous swig from the bottle before making his way to The Cardinal’s quarters. Unlike III, Cardinal Copia’s office and personal chambers are in the same suite, so he knows there’s a good chance of catching him as he’s changing out of his cassock and into one of those ridiculously tight suits he owns.

Copia has to admit to himself that maybe he took his revenge too far. He was only trying to show Papa III that he’s not a pushover. Given the man’s reputation, Copia didn’t even consider how thrown that man would be at his little switcheroo prank. But there had been a—a what? A sudden slight paleness to the unpainted skin around his face; a moment of panic in his mismatched eyes. He’d continued on with gusto, but there was none of the humor in it that Copia had come to associate with the man. In all honesty, Copia hadn’t expected III to continue (or honestly get so far)—he’d had the correct sermon under his own seat ready to hand over.

This was a Papa he’d expected to linger and joke with his parishioners—instead, III had hustled out of the chapel in a flurry of swirling robes, hardly paying any heed to the Siblings that batted their eyelashes at him in hopes of being one of his chosen revelers. Copia is at war with himself between wanting to apologize and scoffing that the man had brought it on himself, even if Copia had miscalculated.

Everyone knows how pranks can escalate.

Copia is halfway through the ties and clasps and buttons to get out of his dress cassock when his door bangs open (he hadn’t thought to lock it because he’d assumed everyone was already out on the grounds celebrating). Papa III stands there, panting, with murderous intent in his eyes.

As expected, Papa III finds The Cardinal in a state of half undress (his shapely legs bare and exposed) in his outer office. He’s stopped his ministrations, as if caught in a freeze frame, and staring wide-eyed at Papa. III had come here to really lay into the man, but something about seeing him so caught off guard—like he’s more concerned about changing into his party clothes than how he’s ruined this night for Papa—sets something off on him. Before his brain catches up to his impulses, Papa III is launching himself at The Cardinal, fist drawn back and ready to strike.

But III is a lover, not a fighter. He throws a punch like he’s launching a paper airplane, and The Cardinal easily deflects his attack and—in what can only be a practiced movement—uses his momentum to pin his arm behind his back. He struggles and The Cardinal instantly releases him, hands palm up in appeasement.

“Your Unholiness, please—” starts Copia, but III isn’t here to talk. He goes for Cardinal Copia again, and Copia—expecting another fist—is startled when the palm of III’s hand lands a slap across his cheek. He looks at III, incredulous.

“Did you? Did you just slap me?”

Papa III huffs and raises his chin at The Cardinal.

“Come at me. Bro,” he says in his accented English.

The Cardinal’s mouth drops open, and—before Papa III can relish what he thinks is his victory—Cardinal Copia slaps him hard, right on his cheekbone. Papa is momentarily startled, reflexive tears threatening to spill. When he catches his breath he sees that Cardinal Copia’s eyes are smoldering at him in obvious challenge, so he launches himself at The Cardinal once again.

They both raise their hands to each other, each strike being batted away by the other, until they are both embroiled in very involved, very mature slap fight.

“Stop that!”

“No, you stop that!”

Suddenly Papa III gains the upper, err, hand by gaining a hold on The Cardinal’s wrist; he wrenches it and uses his leverage to push Cardinal Copia on his back onto his desk. The Cardinal goes sprawling, his half undone cassock spreading and exposing his bare legs again. Is he wearing nothing on at all under his ceremonial dress!?

“I see you like to go nude. Let me help you further, dear Cardinal.”

Before The Cardinal has a chance to push him away, III grabs at each side and rips his robes down the middle, belts tearing and buttons popping to scatter every which way, the sound of them skittering across his desk and plinking of the floor now filling the room. The Cardinal grasps frantically at the material, in a vain attempt to keep himself somewhat covered.

Papa III is now panting over The Cardinal, between his legs, and suddenly very aware of the miles of naked skin. Copia is looking up at him with … an unreadable expression. III leans down, gets right into The Cardinal’s face, and says lowly:

“To think I thought of you so chaste. But look at you. Does it give you a thrill? The knowing you could be caught in a compromising position? Or is it the sensation you like, hmm?”

He runs a gloved finger down the sliver of bare chest to where Cardinal Copia is clenching the ends of fabric together with one fist over his crotch. He continues his trail over The Cardinal’s knuckles. His dick gives an interested twitch.

“Even here?”

Copia’s heart is beating fast from the adrenaline; it was foolish of him to forget that he was dealing with a dangerous predator. And now here he is, under him, literally showing his vulnerable belly. Papa III is well within his rights to do anything, take anything, from him. It sets off a tingle of butterflies in his chest.

While III is distracted with his nethers, Copia uses his other hand to grasp Papa III by the hair. Copia yanks his head down, hard, til their lips meet in a painful smack. He opens his mouth to suck Papa’s plump bottom lip into his mouth, then bites down hard, drawing blood.

III makes an indignant noise, his hand suddenly coming up to grab at Copia’s jaw to hold it firmly in place from further injury. His eyes glare a warning.

“Is that how it is to be, Rat?”

Copia just snarls against the grip.

Papa’s hand slithers from Copia’s jaw to lightly clench around his neck. Copia gasps as much as he can with the restriction, his hands coming up to grab at Papa III’s arm. His ruined cassock falls open completely to reveal that the only thing beneath it is a black g-string. III looks down at it and chuckles.

“What a surprising Rat you are.”

His other hand snakes down between their bodies to yank and pull at the g-string until Copia’s half-hard cock bounces free, betraying his interest in the proceedings. Papa III’s eyes widen as he takes in the girth and size of Copia’s member. Looking back up at Copia with a smirk he says:

“It is no wonder then. Why you are so popular for Initiates.”

“Shall … I …” wheezes Copia, “Initiate … you too?”

Papa III is studying his face intently.

“No. No, as leader of Church I feel I have been … remiss in my, ah, duties.”

He runs a light finger up the vein in Copia’s cock, which only plumps it into further hardness. With all the blood rushing into either his head or his throbbing dick, Copia is beginning to feel a bit light-headed.

“As high-ranking official, you must be seen to myself. Forgive my negligence, yes?”

Papa III finally lets go of Copia’s neck only to insinuate himself further into the V of his open legs. Copia is momentarily distracted as the air flows freely into his lungs again, and it’s enough for III to start manhandling him onto his stomach. Copia isn’t going to make it easy for the bastard, so he starts to struggle against Papa, who only makes a tetching noise before slapping him across the face.

“Learn your place, Cardinal,” he growls. “This is what is lacking with you, no? You must learn this anew. I am in charge still. You follow my command.”

“When you do any actual leading, I’ll be sure to follow,” hisses Copia.

Papa III snarls at his insolence, and is suddenly on Copia, turning him over in a burst of rage while also tugging his tattered garments free. He pulls the shreds of the cassock away just enough to not be a hindrance, but not enough that Copia has free use of his arms—they’re still caught in his sleeves and now firmly behind his back. Copia has no leverage, but he starts bucking and struggling anyway; Papa just lays a firm hand on the middle of his back and commands him to settle.

Copia huffs; his cheek is squashed into the desk, all his papers are scattered—some crinkling under him—and the edge of the wood is digging into the pudge of his belly. His cock dangles heavy between legs. Copia wishes he had something to rut against—he’s half turned on and III is being a goddamned tease, as usual.

There’s a rustling and movement behind him before he feels the poke of Papa’s hardness against his ass cheek. He tenses.

Papa III isn’t really sure when his anger turned into lust. Or was it always lust—or is it still anger? All he knows is that he has to have this man beneath him. Has to subdue him and assert his authority in some meaningful way. And he’s not immune to the miles of freckles stark on pale skin or the prominent flesh of which he can take handfuls.

He’s been hard ever since he saw The Cardinal’s cock on its way to full mast. So The Rat likes a little dominance, eh? He’s more than happy to show him who’s boss here. He works his cock and balls free through the slit in his pants. He’s going to fuck The Cardinal with his clothes on. He rubs his cockhead into the meat of The Cardinal’s ass, delighting in the jolts of pleasure from the pressure and the visible trail of precum he’s leaving. The Cardinal is trembling and breathing hard beneath him as his takes his pleasure, and it gives him sudden pause, causing him to stop. He’s about to ask Cardinal Copia if he should cease, when The Cardinal looks over his shoulder at him and huffs impatiently,

“Are you waiting for an invitation?!”

Papa III slowly drags his cock from the meat of Copia’s ass to the cleft.

“I was, actually.”

The Cardinal snorts, “Get the fuck on with it, you brat. Is this how you lead, Your Unholiness?”

III growls in frustration at this infuriating man.

“Shall I take you dry, then?”

He spreads The Cardinal’s cheeks and presses the tip of his cock against his hole. Cardinal Copia hisses.

“Ai! If you can’t use spit then there is lube in the top drawer.”

Papa III scoffs. Spit is so … uncouth. Only to be used when absolutely necessary—he is not an animal. He flounders for the drawer and fumbles for the bottle.

“Lonely nights, eh Cardi?”

The Cardinal leers back over his shoulder. “As you say—I am not unpopular with our Siblings.”

“I see. You are like that trike you ride around, except everybody has a go, no?”

“Just what the pot would say to the kettle.”

After removing his gloves, Papa III haphazardly dribbles some lube on his cock and down Copia’s crack—making sure to rub it into his hole. The Cardinal jolts forward—either at the sensation of Papa’s fingers or the coolness of the lube.

“I would not be so mouthy If I be you, Cardinal. I will show you your place and then things between us will be settled, yes?”

“Shall I say yes and appease you?” quips The Cardinal.

How a man nude and about to be fucked stupid can be so flippant is past Papa. Unceremoniously, he pushes into Copia’s snug ring, exhaling forcefully at his tightness. The Cardinal lets out a punched breath.

“I should very much like your attempts to appease me, Rat,” Papa III says through clenched teeth.

He slides in to the hilt, leans over The Cardinal’s back, and hisses in his ear:

“Will you be a good Rat and appease your Papa?”

The Cardinal lets out a rumbling moan.

Copia is so very full and stretched. He’s no stranger to bottoming, but the Siblings tend to prefer him on top, so it’s been a while. Papa III’s cock feels amazing—just enough to fill him without being obtrusive. Now if only the man will get to it and pound into him hard enough to stimulate his prostate.

“So much … talk. Very little action—just like your leadership,” he says hoping to goad his superior.

Papa III growls and begins to snap his hips into him roughly

“Let’s see if you can handle my big game, hmm?”

Fucking finally.

III drapes himself over Copia’s back, crushing his arms uncomfortably, and boxing him on either side with his arms. Copia hears the man’s panting in his ear and feels the drag of his waistcoat on his uncovered skin. The fill and drag of his cock inside Copia has him shuddering and wishing for some attention on his own dick. Papa is pumping into him fast and hard, but is only really hitting his prostate every several thrusts, which is only a teasing pleasure. With his motion restricted by his own cassock and Papa’s weight, he can’t do much more than grunt out a tempo to each greedy thrust.

“Is this how it is then?” wheezes Copia. “A supple body to masturbate into? No wonder the Siblings come to me.”

Admittedly Papa III is initially enjoying the tight feel of The Cardinal’s body around his dick too much to think of the man underneath him. He’s not one to be rough with his lovers unless they ask him to be, and even then that’s just a game. But The Cardinal is not his lover, this is not a game, and he feels a thrill at the freedom to take out his frustrations on Copia’s body.

Still. He prides himself on being attentive in the sack, so he slows his thrusts, making sure to pull almost all the way out before sliding back in, though his dick is throbbing with need. He positions his mouth at The Cardinal’s ear to ask:

“Do you think you’ve earned my attentions? Have you learned who here is in charge?”

“If I say ‘yes’ will you touch my cock?”

Papa III is thoughtful for a second.

“No. For that you are to beg. Repent and I will bring you to such lustful heights that you will pray to our Master.”

Despite the lip of the man, The Cardinal is quivering under him. Papa III leans up so he can adjust the angle of Copia’s hips and his thrusts. He does this until he hits the angle that makes the man below him moan wantonly. Now that he knows where the sweet spot is, III starts punching into The Cardinal again, his hands on his hips to drag him back forcefully.

“Is. This. What. You. Want?” asks Papa, making sure to punctuate each word with a hard thrust. The Cardinal lets out a gasping Uhn at each hard jolt. “Shall. I. Make. You. Cum. Just. Like. This? On. My. Cock? Or. Will. You. Beg?”

Papa lets himself luxuriate in the tight feel of the slow drag up and down his cock. He could cum very easily just like this if he wanted—but he’s had years of practice on holding off until his sexual partners cum. The Cardinal is in for a long night if he thinks he can wait him out.

Fuck

If Copia thought the tease of his prostate was bad, this concentrated assault is worse. He can climax readily from a good prostate massage, but this is not that. It’s enough to have his desire flowing and his blood pooling south, but the hill of his orgasm remains frustratingly out of reach. He’s truly at Papa III’s mercy. He can occasionally feel his dick throb inside him, but other than that III shows no signs of getting close.

Copia squeezes his eyes tighter as he’s jolted against his desk, papers crumpling further. How much longer can he go on like this? He tries for as long as he can, his world narrowing down to the drag of Papa’s cockhead on his prostate and the grip of his hands on his hips. He’s so lost, floating in a haze of near pleasure, that he doesn’t realize his grunts have turned into whimpers of distress. Not until III stops to pet a hand down his head.

“Dear Cardinal. Pride is not the correct sin to indulge here. Will you not let me absolve you?”

His dick is hard and pulsing, and his need to cum is excruciating. And that’s before Papa III begins pounding into him once more. Copia lets out a moaning whine as the white-hot bursts start up again. Before he realizes what it’ll mean, he’s gasping out a pained Please. There’s a slight pause in the man above him—as if he too is surprised at Copia’s entreaty—then a hand snakes under him to give his flushed dick a hard squeeze. Copia gasps at both the pleasure and the pain in the action.

Papa III leans over him again to snarl in his ear, “Now you will pray.”

And pray Copia does as Papa pounds into him and as his clever fingers stroke and manipulate weeping cock.

“Oh sweet, Unholy Lucifer below!”

Papa III had really thought he’d have to torture The Cardinal until the man couldn’t help but cum on his cock, so he was startled when the man gasped out his supplication. He really was appeased.

He’s entranced with show beneath him: The Cardinal is twitching and thrashing and clenching—and it’s making his own cock throb with need. He wonders how hard he can make Copia cum and a sudden burst of desire from his own gut has him purring out a moan. He strokes the man’s cock, making sure to switch it up enough—a slow stroke, then a thumb across his slit, now a squeeze before speeding up—that each change makes The Cardinal jerk in a new crest of pleasure.

III hopes The Cardinal will cum very soon because he would very much like to let himself climax already. As if in answer, Papa feels the dick in his hand get rock hard a second before he feels Copia’s hole tighten vice-like around his own dick (and he subsequently has to breathe out hard so he’s not cumming before he rides out The Cardinal’s climax).

Then The Cardinal is jittering and spasming while yelling, “Ah ah ah—oh fuck! OH FUCK!” The cock in his fist kicks and Papa III can feel the pulsing waves as his cum shoots out and onto the rug; he tries to keep a steady pace through it, but he’s only a man. The Cardinal spends his whole orgasm jerking and twitching, only coming to rest once he’s good and truly milked empty.

Papa releases The Cardinal’s cock quickly so he can grip back onto his hips for the leverage to finally take his own pleasure. He closes his eyes and fucks hard into The Cardinal’s body as he allows his checked desire to wash over him.

“Ah—yes, Unholy Father.”

He lets the pulse and spasm of his orgasm guide his movements as he empties himself in the warmth of The Cardinal’s hole. He allows himself to stay like that for a moment—hands on Copia’s love handles, slightly bent over him, and panting—while he catches his breath and comes back to himself. Beneath him The Cardinal is a mess: he’s covered in sweat that’s dripping down his sides; the black makeup around his eyes is streaked down his face; there’s some torn paper, now moist, sticking to his cheek.

“Good talk, eh?” he pants as he pats Copia’s sweaty flank.

The Cardinal’s head lolls to the side as he attempts to look him in the eyes.

“Fuck you.”

Papa III chuckles. “Maybe next time.”

Copia doesn’t know if Papa III was kidding, or if he was expecting Their Thing to happen again, but it takes Copia by surprise when it does.

Repeatedly.

If III was thinking that he’d cowed Copia, he was wildly mistaken. Their rivalry only intensifies and if you saw them glaring at each other during sermons or Church rituals, you enter their offices at your own risk lest you get an eyefull. (Some impetuous Siblings and Ghouls will try their hand at joining in, but a dual glare from both their mismatched eyes is enough to send anyone straight to Hell preemptively.)

Not even the confessionals are safe. You don’t even have to get far into the Chapel before you can hear their grunts and barbed words.

The Clergy isn’t really surprised by this turn of events. The two men have been eye fucking since day one. Papa Nihil is resigned that even the promising Cardinal has fallen under his youngest’s spell. Sister Imperator just rolls her eyes and hopes they’ll eventually grow tired of each other and work can get back to being done. She’s only one woman.

It’s one day months into their—ok yes—tryst, that Copia realizes that they haven’t been hate fucking in weeks.

He’s lying in Papa III’s bed as the man himself draws nonsense patterns in the sweat on his chest. Copia had come to him after a frustrating day of first-years who seemed to only have two brain cells amongst them all. He’d vehemently expressed his vexation at their almost willful refusal to retain Latin, knowing Papa would take him in hand and fuck the annoyance out of him. What had started as his attempt to berate Papa III for allowing the new Siblings to be so lazy and a good hate fuck to shut him up, had turned into a genuine arrangement.

Copia’s come to appreciate the care Papa III takes with him, even if it is with mock irritation as he calls him “Rat.” He’s realized that III cares about the Church as much as he does, his verbal sparring with the man enough to prove that he knows his stuff. It’s not that the lackadaisical playboy is an act—it’s not—it’s just hiding deeper waters. He’s shocked to find that he cares for this intemperate man.

He turns his head to look at him.

Papa III stills his hand to return his gaze.

“What is it, my Rat?”

“I think I like you, Papa.”

III’s whole face brightens and he sits up, puffing out his chest.

“Of course you do! Everyone likes Papa. I am the bomb dot com.”

Copia scoffs and pushes at his chest.

“I hate it when you purposefully use slang half your age.”

But III just clucks and wags a finger at him.

“No you don’t! You like me, remember? You said it not 2 minutes past!”

Copia huffs, turning his back on him and crossing his arms across his chest.

“I was perhaps hasty.”

“Aww, dear Cardinal,” Papa coos as he drapes himself over Copia’s back to rest his chin on Copia’s shoulder, arms encircling his middle, “don’t be fussy. I like you too.”

Then, because he’s a little shit, Papa III presses a loud smacking kiss into Copia’s ear.

That night Papa III will go to Copia’s chambers. Copia will be surprised, but pleased to see him. He’ll tell Copia he wants to bottom for him, making the man tremble with nerves and anticipation. The Cardinal will be overly solicitous with his kisses and soft caresses until III has to yell at him to get a move on.

Papa will have already prepped himself with a plug Copia will enjoy teasing out of him. Copia is a reverent, gentle top—no shocker there—and he will fuck Papa firmly and slowly, taking special care that his dick is not neglected. Also not surprising is that Papa III is a pretty bossy bottom—he’ll direct Copia on when to speed up or slow down, until he’ll take matters into his own hands by manhandling Copia onto his back so he can ride his cock. Copia will cum first—Papa is good with his muscles—but III will follow soon after, thrilled as always at the way his lover twitches and thrashes in the throes of orgasm.

Afterward Papa III will ask if he can stay the night—they don’t spend the night together often, but when they do The Cardinal always spends it in Papa’s sumptuous bed chambers—and Copia will reply that he is always welcome.

Papa will joke that it’s only because no one will be able to find him and he can sleep in, but when the Ghouls see that III is not in his bed chambers, the next place they look is in The Cardinal’s.

Bonus: Post-Coitus That First Time

“Papa, what are you doing?”

“Is it not obvious? I am cuddling.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Is it not customary to cuddle after a good fuck?”

“Stop calling it cuddling!”

“Why? What would you have me call it? A good snuggle, then?”

“Ai, that is worse.”

“… is it because I am the big spoon?”

“It is not—whatever! Why are you doing it?”

“I meant it, Cardinal. This unholy parish is mine. I take care of all my black sheep. Especially when they are good rats.”

*nose boop*

“You are mine now. Stop being so grumpy. Enjoy the serotonin.”

#asks #thar be thirst #cardinal copia #papa emeritus iii #in this fic they are unrelated #I don't know how cassocks work #SA

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trompe-la-mort · 5 years ago

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Los miserables, 1971 – “Holy Hugo, they included ‘insert rare scene here’!”

Wrote this a while ago and realised I never posted it. So here goes.

Do you have a favourite obscure scene or detail in Les misérables that hardly ever makes the cut in screen adaptations? If you do, this might just be the adaptation for you. If you want to see an adaptation that tells the story well, however, this is not for you.

It's a nineteen-part (coincidence? I think not...) TV adaptation by the Spanish channel RTVE within its show “Novela”, a show of multiple literature adaptations that ran for fifteen years in total!

And the best part: You can see it all online on RTVE's webpage: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/los-miserables/

You can skip all episodes with mod 5 = 1 (except the first one), those are the episodes originally shown on Mondays, recapping what happened last week.

Like the Italian TV adaptation, this is unfortunately hindered by its budget. Unlike the Italian TV adaptation, this has the additional problem of its screenwriter's frankly bizarre understanding of concepts such as “pacing” and “importance”.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's rather cool to have an adaptation that includes many of the more obscure scenes, but I know the book and I know the context for all of these. I think asking how much sense the plot actually makes to someone who only knows this adaptation is a legitimate question.

Time is “wasted” on montages, dream-sequences and scenes of characters tossing and turning in bed, all of them many times longer than they have any right to be. Partially, it feels like the screenwriter couldn't decide which plot details to include and then just tried to incorporate as many of them as possible – continuity be damned. As an example, he took the time to include Mabeuf's death at the barricade, but it doesn't mean anything, since it happens to a character we have never seen before. Because Mabeuf's entire background is missing. To top it off, the watching students call him “le conventionel”, probably just to tick another box on the check list. To get another time saver, “show, don't tell” is occasionally blatantly violated. We get Valjean's entire history from him telling his life story to the bishop. The backstory of Marius and Gillenormand is conveyed in their fight before Marius leaves, meaning all the info is solely for the benefit of the audience, because all characters involved already know this stuff. Yet, bizarrely, they occasionally have time for a “show” where none would have been necessary. We get a far too long montage of Fantine with Cosette in Paris, that includes Fantine getting fired from her old job. Honestly, you can cover the question of why Fantine leaves Paris with a single line – you know, like it's done in the original?

I wouldn't usually mind, but it not only messes up the pacing, but it also takes up time that could have been used to flesh out some of the details. Or even some of the main plot points. We have Marius letting Thénardier go at the end, but Marius doesn't owe him a debt in this one. It might have made the Gorbeau robbery easier, but at the end, Marius has no real reason to not call the police. That is, if Thénardier is even a prison escapee. It's never shown nor mentioned how he got out of prison after the Gorbeau house robbery. On a smaller scale, it leads to a few bizarre moments, where introductions or transitions are missing, as if someone was trying to cut the corners wherever possible. For example, one episode starts with Marius' and Gillenormand's fight, without any introduction to their conflict or any real introduction of the characters (apart from Marius being the cute boy from the park). Or take the Champmathieu trial. The prosecutor asks for the witnesses to be heard and the very next moment, the judge is already questioning Brevet. No scene of the witnesses entering the room or at least the camera pointing out that they've been there all the time (because I definitely missed that in the overhead shots of the fairly small courtroom set); no scene of the judge calling the first witness, which becomes even worse when he does it to every subsequent witness.

Between this kind of overly short editing and long, drawn-out scenes of Marius healing (which commits the additional cardinal sin of making us think that it's finally over with a short conversation, only to continue for another minute or so) or of Fantine tossing on her bed (which we only later realise is prossibly Cosette's birth!), it feels a bit like there were too many people involved and no two of them could disagree over the tone and style of this adaptation.

I have another, if slightly petty, complaint: Why do the opening credits contain pictures of scenes we never get to see? It makes it pretty hard to identify which actor played which character and it also made it look they would include scenes that end up not being there. From the credits, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are scenes in Toulon, that Valjean's sister shows up or that they include the scene where Éponine stops Patron-Minette from robbing the house in the Rue Plumet. None of these actually happen.

Just to finish my list of complaints about this adaptation, let me talk about Javert. Now, I like the basic idea of what they did with the character, if only because it is the opposite to what most other adaptations do. In many adaptations, Javert is portrayed as a far more villainous character than in the book. These guys went the opposite way. Javert is calm and polite most of the time (making his one outburst when he arrests Valjean even more meaningful) and in one scene seems concerned about Fantine's safety (while she's still employed at Madeleine's factory that is), when he meets her in a disreputable part of town after dark and insists on accompanying her to her destination. Yes, it's later made clear that he still uses this to find out what she was doing there in the first place and this is what kicks off the chain of events leading to Mme Victurnien finding out about Cosette, but the two scenes taken together imply that Javert is both caring about the safety of an innocent civilian and spying on said civilian, just in case they're not as innocent as they seem to be. If they had done it like this throughout the movie I wouldn't be complaining.

Yet, it also means they had Javert come up to Madeleine, stating that he is happy to be the first to congratulate him about his appointment as mayor. It makes Javert's later resentment of Madeleine seem quite petty. Or the end of the “Confrontation”, where Javert, rather than leading Valjean out of the room, just makes a hand gesture to ask him to step out. Which again could have worked, but then he would have had to stay polite for all of the scene. Which he didn’t. They also decided not to stick to it for the entirety of the series. The portrayal of Javert in the later parts is more “traditional”, so to speak.

The acting is solid, for the most part, but hardly ever outstanding, although I’m likely not the best judge. Valjean's acting is fairly, occasionally too, subtle and he's a bit too calm for my taste in his entire encounter with the bishop. The actor, Pepe Calvo, is better known for his work in spaghetti western movies and I've by now realised that the reason he seemed familiar to me from the beginning is because of the western “Dead Men Ride” which I saw as a child, in which he plays a Myriel-like character of all things. I've described my thoughts on Javert, but I think that is due to decisions by the director and the scriptwriter, not the actor. Fantine has an annoying tendency to overact, especially in the later parts of her appearance. Cosette, fortunately not played by the same actress, is a bit boring. Little Cosette, however, does outstanding work for a child actress. Both Thénardiers are decent; they went the “Mme Thénardier needs to look sufficiently trustworthy for Fantine to leave her child with her”-route and she doesn't quite manage to be as scary as she should be. Everybody else is rather unremarkable.

Oh, and while we're at it: If you cast as Cosette an actress who actually looks like a teenager and as Marius an actor who might be in his early thirties, you need to specify that Marius is only a few years older than Cosette. Please!

But now to what I like about this adaptation: It's occasionally insane attention to details.

I've complained about the over-abundance of dream-sequences, but some of them really work. Showing one of Cosette's daydreams explains her life, character and dreams much better than any number of “real” scenes could have. Even more awesome is the inclusion of Valjean's dream before the Champmathieu trial. I mean, “Tempête sous un crâne” is usually going to be a weird scene anyway, you might just replace it with a weird dream while you're at it. Also, holy shit, they included Valjean's dream! That's a definite first.

Here's a list of further uncommon scenes this movie has: -Valjean steals Petit-Gervais's coin, although he does it before meeting the bishop -The bishop gets some exposition. It's only done in two conversations with his sister and Mme Magloire, but it's there -The scene of Tholomyès and Co. dumping the girls -A meeting of the Amis verbatim from the book -Gillenormand believes Marius to be dead and faints when Marius opens his eyes.

And here's a list of crazily uncommon scenes this movie has: -Fantine's meeting with the Thénardiers includes the girls using a cart chain as a swing -Details about work in the jet factory -Fantine thinks she hears Cosette outside the hospital -Cosette lying about watering the guest's horse -The coffin-escape! In full, glorious length and details. -Javert has a letter from the prefect in his pocket -Marius' note to identify his corpse -Escaping from the barricade in National Guard uniforms (although Valjean doesn't put in the one he is currently wearing) -Valjean writes the letter explaining to Cosette the origins of his fortune

Also, the ending is really well done. I really recommend you watch it for yourself, I don't think describing it can do it justice.

Generally, avoid this for a first look at Les Mis, but for a fan this is an interesting adaptation to watch and I suggest you give at least some parts a look, if only for the novelty.

#Les Misérables #los miserables #los miserables 1971 #movie adaptation #les misérables adaptations

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 5 years ago

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F! V! and since you asked me, I!

F: Share a snippet from one of your favoritedialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Goddammit woman do you have any idea how many fics I had to search through!?

I could cheat and just say the entirety of Richie Tozier: Small Town Trash because I do not think of myself as funny and yet I managed to write a work that was almost entirely dialogue and people found it hilarious. But as I said, I kind of feel like it’s cheating to say an entire fic. So instead I have chosen Wyatt and Jess’s argument in the car from the beginning of Love is Bright but Casts a Shadow (Its Name is Grief):

“—I never asked you to fucking save me, okay? I never asked for that, you fucking—you chose that, okay? I never asked for it!”

“And I never asked for you to, what, declare a fucking life debt to me!”

Silence fell.

Jess leaned her elbow against the car door, staring out the window. “If you’re just with me because you feel—like you owe me—”

“I’m not, Jess, I’m not, I—I love you, I do, I just—I get angry, I know, I do, I get so angry and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“You’re always sorry,” Jess replied. “Afterwards, you’re always sorry.”

I really love this scene because I basically had only this one scene between them to encapsulate their entire marriage. I had to show Jess’s job as a reporter, I had to show her personality, I had to show why their marriage was falling apart, I had to establish that Wyatt had an abusive father, I had to setup Wyatt’s starting personality, and I had to foreshadow the later revelation that Jess had murdered Wyatt’s father to keep him from hurting Wyatt.

Jess dies after this, so this scene was my only chance to show all of that in “real time” as opposed to Wyatt having a flashback (which I try not to do too much) or Wyatt delivering exposition to another character (which you have to be careful not to overdo). I gave myself a lot I had to do, all in this one scene, and I think that I rather succeeded. Especially with this snippet. Here we see not only the hint of the later revelation, but a huge part of Wyatt’s guilt, motivating behavior, and his cardinal sin (wrath). I’m rather proud of Jess’s line afterwards, you’re always sorry. I think it’s a real gut-punch and showcases a problem that people often fall into: feeling sorry afterwards doesn’t erase what you did, and it doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it again.

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) toany fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

aldjfalkfj well that’s a hard one since I think most fics that I love are perfect just as they are and I don’t want to add to them. Hmmm. I’d love to tackle what happened to Revan after Two With One Stone by @captainofthefallen which is a BRILLIANT take on the Knights of the Old Republic story. I think it would also be fun to tackle Flynn doing spy shenanigans and probably somehow meeting Lorena during one of them pre-The Procurator by @qqueenofhades since I’m sure he was just as much of a disaster then.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (readingor writing)?

I’m honestly not sure what my guilty pleasure is in writing, I mean, I write smut but I long stopped feeling guilty about it. Probably redeeming Wyatt, honestly, since I know he’s one-dimensional misogynistic boring-ass white trash in canon and I’m not sure what it is about him that has made me decide to turn him into a three-dimensional soft bisexual boi who earns forgiveness as opposed to all the other pieces of soggy Wonderbread douchecanoes out there. So yeah. I’m well aware he probably doesn’t deserve my love, but I want to give the people the Wyatt we deserved, not the Wyatt we got. Because we deserve good characters, dammit.

As far as feral idiot gays reading there was only one bed I don’t know ohmygod they were roommates what mutual slow burn pining possible bickering weaknesses sExUal TEnSIoN I could have trash men who fall for one badass woman. I just can’t think of any. Strange.

#lincoln answers things #these are all really great questions from the list so anyone feel free to ask me more #I am rather proud of that fic #I think I only listed like half of my guilty pleasures #what can I say I'm a greedy woman #extasiswings

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cuilective · 5 years ago

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Character Sheet: Cav

CW for mentions of violence/death here and there

BASICS

Full name: Cian Amarante Cavanaugh

Nickname(s): Cav

Title(s): n/a, unless ‘old man’ or ‘actual dumpster fire’ count.

Sex: Male

Gender: Male

Height: 6′6″

Age: Chronologically? Heck, bruh. Thousands of years old in any given verse. Physically stuck between late 30′s to mid 40′s which was around the age he was cursed.

Zodiac: shrug emoji

Spoken languages: Most fluent in English, Irish and Scots Gaelic, and French, both modern and some ancient variants. He is approximately conversational in many other languages, though there’s surely languages even he hasn’t encountered yet.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Black, or a very very very dark brown

Skin tone: Has a bit of an olive complexion

Body type: These days he’s rocking a bit of a dad bod. The muscle is there somewhere under a bit of pudge.

Voice: Singing Examples: [1] [2] [3] unfortunately I currently haven’t found a fitting example for his everyday speech, but hopefully this at least gets the general feel across!

Dominant hand: Right

Posture: Relaxed, tends to rest his weight on one side, droopy shoulders and casual lackadaisical gait

Scars: A gash over his heart is one scar he has in common between every verse, along with various battle scars. In his general fantasy verse he has a scar all the way around his neck from his first true ‘death’ by beheading.

Tattoos: None

Birthmarks: None

Most noticeable feature(s): Scruffy, appears a bit unkempt just about at all times. Never seen without his scarf or gloves.

CHILDHOOD

Place of birth: Near what’s now known as Postwick, Galar

Hometown: +gestures vaguely at galar+

Birth weight/height: What an oddly specific question. He was probably a bit of a chonker, above average birth weight. may his mother rest in peace

First words: an adorable attempt at saying rookidee, though it probably just came out as ‘wookie’

Siblings: Adoptive half-brother. He doesn’t know much of anything of his birth family. Some verses he has a twin sister, I should really flesh one of those out bc she’s just as much of a gremlin as he is.

Parents: Unknown and/or deceased. Death by backstory, they deserved better

Parental involvement: He doesn’t remember much before he was adopted, but he was raised with a lot of love and care by just about every set of parents he’s ever had in any verse.

Children: Also depends on the verse, tbh. Haven’t quite figured out how to go about it, hence why it may not be applicable to every verse, but... in theory, he has a daughter. She is a gorgeous eldritch abomination shaped like a lady and he couldn’t be more proud of her

Prominently: Cav was honestly pretty dense. He was happy and friendly and got along with everyone, but mostly just because he had no idea how some people around him didn’t like him. Ignorance is truly bliss

ADULT LIFE

Occupation: Oh, a bit of everything. In modern times he tends to taxi folk around.

Current residence: N/A, travels anywhere and everywhere.

Close friends: What’re thooooooooooooooose

Relationship status: Single in his pokeverse. Married or engaged in just about every other.

Financial status: A bit complicated. He probably has a slew of secret offshore accounts he’s built up over the years. Probably well off, just doesn’t really show it.

Criminal record: Well! He tries not to get caught because it’s terribly hard to explain why he has a record dating back centuries. Thankfully most just believe it to be a coincidence. He’s done so much freaking crime though, almost entirely petty stuff... maybe a bit of grand theft auto if he’s particularly bored. He loves cars. Oh, maybe even a touch of arson if he’s absolutely certain the target is abandoned and no one gets hurt.

Vices: Yes. If going by cardinal sins... sloth? Gluttony? A sadomasochistic blend of lust and wrath? Nothing like purposefully picking fights to get the everloving crap beat out of you to feel something while simultaneously draining the life of your attacker with every bit of direct contact. How thrilling!

SEX & ROMANCE

Sexual orientation: Straight? Probably? Mostly.

Preferred emotional role: submissive | dominant | switch

Preferred sexual role: submissive | dominant | switch | Doesn’t care

Libido: Lowkey. It’s definitely there but he typically just ignores it.

Turn ons: Loves elegant women, the more confident and authoritative the better. Though anyone’s welcome to stab him 28 times in the torso, that’ll definitely get him excited.

Turn offs: Ppl who chew with their mouth open. Close ya damn mouth. Not very into wild hairstyles or extreme body mods. In that aspect he’s a bit like a boring old man.

Love language: He can and will devolve into a lovestruck puppy. He can be a bit clingy, but more than anything he is just... completely and utterly devoted. Very touchy feely, lots of traditionally ‘romantic’ gifts like flowers and whatnot. Or even just little reminders that he’s thinking of his SO, like a brief text or a little sticky note where she’ll see it. Just wants to be with them as much as possible, even if they’re just silently existing in the same room doing their own thing.

Relationship tendencies: Will brag about his SO to anyone who will listen (and even to those who won’t, you can’t stop him). Probably carries 50 pictures of his SO in his wallet and gets choked up just thinking about them. Will take her to restaurants and be like ‘we’re celebrating our anniversary’ any part of the year whether its their anniversary or not and when called out on it he’ll just be like ‘i’m always celebrating us’ and sappy nonsense like that. (though he also absolutely says it for the free desserts a lot of places give out to couples on their anniversary, but that’s just a bonus)

MISCELLANEOUS

Character’s theme song(s): Slaps this playlist down. I honestly can’t just pick one, buuut... I’m particularly liking Burning Alive lately, it’s very fitting for him.

Hobbies to pass time: Ogling cars, writing absurd Yelp reviews for anywhere and everywhere he goes, hoarding pigeons in his coat and offering them to unsuspecting strangers, heckling golfers, heckling comedians, engaging in fisticuffs with geese, going to chinese restaurants to crack open the fortune cookies and only eat the paper fortune inside, general people watching. likes watching movies in the theater. if anyone uses their phone while the movie is going he will snap the phone in half and eat as much of it as he can to prove a point

Mental illnesses: Uh. Well. I mean. Honestly? I have no idea. If you asked him he’d say he’s totally fine.

Physical illnesses: None. Often pretends to be injured or disabled one way or another if it’ll get him something he wants.

Left or right brained: He has 0 braincells

Fears: Heights, small dogs. Not afraid of dragonfruit but deeply offended by its existence as it is nothing but a flamboyant kiwi with no integrity to flavor. On a more serious note, intimacy of any sort with anyone or anything. Falling for someone knowing that he’ll outlive them anyway.

Self-confidence level: Oh it’s up there. Probably. He’s super confident, even if he doesn’t think he’ll succeed that doesn’t mean he won’t try. Unstoppable. Trust me, people have tried 2 stop him and nothing works.

Vulnerabilities: Genuine compliments from cute girls. Genuine compliments from just about anyone. Children. Baby animals. Cute things in general. Bad jokes. Literally any form of intimacy will make him want to aliven’t because he doesn’t deserve it and he might just up and run away in the middle of a conversation if it starts getting genuinely sappy.

#Cav || HC #long post #enjoy my art i drew him as a minion

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chromacomaphoto · 6 years ago

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Changing Your Photography (or I hope David Bowie didn't die because of me)

Ch-ch-ch-ch changes. Changing your photography is not to be feared. Following a recent health scare and serious surgery to excise a huge tumour from my body, I had to wait for the results of the biopsy on this new part of me which had been removed. The wait was ten days. These were probably the longest ten days of my life so far. During this time I had to face several real concerns and possible scenarios, some of them were definitely not good. Deep, self-existentialist thought and a forced renewed acceptance of one’s own mortality were an unusual way to spend Christmas, but yet strangely not an entirely unfitting mindset with which to face a new year. Perspective. Priorities. Penance. When the day finally rolled around, I had to keep it moving and try to bury the worst feelings deep down in my stomach with all the old time gathered there. The news you get from doctors at such moments can be delivered giftwrapped in mercy or left like a soggy note on the door informing you of a package that couldn’t be delivered, requiring further pursuit of happiness on your part to collect. I don’t know if it’s just Thai doctors per se but the words come from their mouths in such a nonchalant manner. They can hit you like bullets from a rusty old Cambodian revolver in a cheap Thai hit, straight in the abdomen. There are rare moments when I almost wish that I didn’t speak Thai and it was all just noise, I would only then understand the English that people tried to carefully put together for my benefit during such situations and ignorance would be bliss. After he had finished checking on my large, healing wound (as I pretended to be much less worried than I really was), the doctor proceeded to tell me that the lab results had shown the tumour to be benign. The relief is hard to describe but in the words of Shelley “I have drunken deep of joy, and I will taste no other wine tonight’, I think I can relate. Then I found out that Bowie died of cancer on the same day. I have since wondered if the universe had decided that it came down to him or me, and given me the nod. If so, I feel that a terrible mistake might have been made, but it’s like telling the waitress in the restaurant that they forgot to include the coffee on the bill. Sure, you feel a little bit bad but sometimes you catch a break and there’s no time for the guilt fairies…keep it moving. So, in the spirit of the late Mr. Jones, and in order to justify my recent luck, I think I’ll be mixing it up a bit and reinventing my approach from now on.

There’s been something of a photographic trend on the web in recent times to champion the simple approach in terms of less equipment and a fixed style of work. I’ve read countless sorts of articles and posts all over the shop along such lines and I have often followed the advice to ‘stick with one thing, one lens, one camera, one vision’ or other such invariable factor of choice. Less is more, you know the kind of thing. There’s definitely a benefit to that, especially if you are new to photography or looking to get back to basics but I think there’s a lot to be said for variety. Ah, beautiful Bangkok. Shooting a Polaroid of a traffic jam in the rain on a Monday, 120 colour film intense orange tropical sunrise over the city skyline on a Wednesday and rangefinder black and white film noir for the weekend sir.

Mr. Bowie didn’t always get it right, but he kept on trying new things and kept it rolling along with new ideas and fresh style. I think that it’s almost become considered somehow ‘wrong’ by many to play around and experiment with consistently changing up your photography, be it equipment, format or style. This seems to be a paradigm shift of late. People can be quite evangelical about it as though to impose upon you how you are somehow ‘not getting’ the foundation to their self-perceived Zen picture making mantra. There’s definitely a dogma to it. I had previously been more affected by this kind of thinking than I had perhaps been aware of. I belittled myself at the idea of going out with more than one lens on my person. As though I was letting myself down by having a second focal length option. Another classic quandary for me is how much of a big deal it often seems in my head to carry colour and black and white film at the same time. It’s almost like some kind of cardinal sin in my mind, quite ridiculous really. I have decided to be less bothered about such irrationality and have some fun trying out new directions in my photography. I will try things that I haven’t tried before and take some chances.

Bowie inspired chance taking in photography. Take a look at what the late Duffy did for the iconic ‘Aladdin Insane’ lightning bolt across the face series. They were just incredible; ludicrously expensive dye transfer reproductions from colour transparencies on plates custom made in Switzerland. Seriously? Then there’s Masayoshi Sukita’s re-imagining of Heckel’s ‘idiot’ as a hero via Bowie and his hands. Like a lot of the best ideas, it was simple and deceptively obvious. A look later copied by contemporaries of the era on their album covers too. As for his most long standing photographer, Bowie said “Mick sees me the way I see myself”, imagine the changes that the good Mister Rock had to keep up with, more like he probably went through them himself.

I need to catch a wind of change myself. I often feel that I’m chasing something I can’t quite keep up with in my work. On rare occasions, I get just close enough to whatever it is I’m looking for in the Bangkok negatives hanging up to dry that I feel briefly kept in that place I want to be. Yet no sooner am I in it, than it loses its appeal and I question myself as to what I’m doing there in the first place. What is it with my work? It’s maddeningly on and off. When you do eventually get settled in a nice spot with your photography, it can become stale overnight without warning. I used to be blissfully happy shooting at one place in Bangkok; I shot one project there alone which took me five years. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I felt it to be akin to a river in a Hemingway story. It just kept on giving and feeling so right. Now the place bores me, it feels trite, unwelcoming and infertile…more like a dried up Euphrates. I can’t believe the difference but I have to accept that it must be a difference within me. I know the location is still good. I find it easy to get stuck in such a fashion. At times like this, the best way out is always through. The way through this is to make like Bowie and change. We don’t like change, knowing how (and more importantly of course, knowing when) is not always obvious to us. It can be scary and confusing and we will often go to great lengths to avoid it. I think this is why the art of photography represents a challenge to people from the very beginning. Perhaps it also pervades our photographic lives over the long haul. Don’t fear it, embrace it. ‘I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring’, I’m with you David…I’m with you.

CCP

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birchsblog · 8 years ago

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Appropriation art analysed through the three frameworks of Art History, Originality and Formalism

"While appropriation art is critical to art, it’s an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court."

- Lawrence Lessig

I have chosen to carry on, on my journey of discovery of Appropriation art as it's a movement I find myself very passionate about. The frameworks I have chosen to concentrate on in this essay is the way my chosen artists and their work have used manipulation by either the way they changed the art to make it their own or the viewpoint and by so questioning the artist’s originality, is it something new that they've done? or just copying other artists work, and copyright issues appropriation art faces in their journeys of making the art and how the world outside or inside the art world has dealt with such controversial art of its time and finally I will be looking at art in a Formalism viewpoint, and how formalism came to be and how it affects Appropriation. In conclusion, my chosen frameworks are Art History, Originality and Formalism.

Art History

Throughout art history appropriation has been everywhere, as art has progressed ideas and forms have been translated by different artists using media but the same ideas still stand from the original sources, basically, everything is a copy of a copy in a weird way. I have chosen three artworks to prove my point, the first art piece is Six Nudes of Neil by Edward Weston (above left) this is a series of photographs Weston produced in 1925, though for his time this piece was quite extortionary, but in reality, he wasn’t doing anything no one had done before really. Weston was a traditional artist in a sense, classical nude in art is a very common factor and by the forms of photography and using his son in ways was very inspired by work like Donatello's David sculpture (above right) that dates back to the 1430s, they both depicting a young boy in a very nude way, at the time of Weston's work I suppose using photography was quite a revolutionary media for an art form such as Donatello using bronze in his sculpture, but Donatello’s piece was just another appropriation of Praxiteles marble sculpture Eros (bottom right) who was apparently one of the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC, which really is interesting because you have three very different mediums with very similar outcomes through art history, as they say, history repeats itself and it’s always been that way. But then comes along Marcel Duchamp in 1917 with his very controversial Fountain and puts a whole new spin on Appropriation art.

"Fountain, 1917"

It would be hard for me to talk about this art movement without talking about this piece, in the world of appropriation art Duchamp was revolutionary with his band of "ready-made's". Duchamp liked the shock factor almost of people instantly hating his work of slow minded people who thought art was just a platform for still life paintings that looked nice, which it was for a very long time till the camera came along, art was having an identity crisis. Why spend hours upon hours painting when you could just take a photo, paint and in a way sculpture had become unneeded. So, when Duchamp got the chance to enter a piece of art (under a mock name) and presented the fountain people went crazy no one had ever done such a thing, the original even destroyed because of how out of its time it was, so was born the “ready-mades” And the facts are that there is nothing special at all about this urinal, it was manufactured in mass and bought at a store by him, which is why this piece is so ground-breaking because it had made a whole new appropriation, appropriation of mass production. Taking something man made and changing it, just like other artists had done in the past such as Weston, but on a much larger scale and helped pave the way for many artists and is still a controversial piece today.

Originality

Entitled "Untitled" (after Edward Weston, Ca. 1925). 1980-81

Sherrie Levine is a great artist to start within the terms of Appropriation movement goes, the reason I love Levine's work is because so much like other artists in appropriation, her work expresses the art of questioning whether the art is well art?

And the questioning of this piece is, is this really a photograph by Sherrie Levine? And the answer is well complicated, in the sense of looking at different viewpoints. Levine has done something staggering of her time, and even though looking at it from a viewpoint of today’s technology all she has done is re-photographed someone's photo, but that's sort of the beauty in its simplicity.

She's very much following in the footsteps of a great co-founder of this movement of Marcel Duchamp of what makes a great artist, skill? Making? Creativity? And then spitting on it, but also doing something so simple but so very perfected craft, and I’d like to raise the point that people don’t bring up about this piece, it’s how beautifully painstakingly re-photographed this photo is, it’s not an easy task to undertake to take a photo of an image in a catalogue, of the original photo. To my understanding that is, but producing such prints that are nearly meticulously identical to the viewer and that’s where the manipulation comes in, rather not the manipulation of the art because she hasn’t touched the original but the manipulation of the viewer. By putting two nearly identical pieces of art in front of the viewer and saying they are by two different artists is just incredible in itself, and telling the truth too. Because in my views that is her work, she took the photo that makes it her work?

But that's where copyright comes in and raises the question of where do you draw the line? Which comes up a lot when talking about Appropriation art. And it's true in this instance I believe it’s her art and I’m not the only one that believes it’s her work Dr Shana Gallagher-Lindsay and Dr Beth Harri make an interesting point “if is a copy of what someone else did, and there’s no original thought involved, or thinking through things on her part, then what makes this art?” in which they answer “exactly that’s part of the question, that I think that’s really what she wants to raise to some degree” (Smarthistory. art, 2012) and I think that’s the point she wasn’t looking to answer whether it was right or wrong it was more so her wanting people to ask questions that should be raised. But then I also am on the fence about taking someone's work and claiming it as their own, like in my day and age it's so easy to print screen on our devices and claim as our own on our social media sites, but that’s when we need copyright. I feel that Levine's work was very revolutionary of her time and something no one had ever done before, and now something as an artist would be incredibly hard to do with such defined copyright laws, so in that way she will always be classically original.

New Portraits, 2015, inkjet on canvas, 65 3/4 × 48 3/4 inches (167 × 123.8 cm).

But now we go on to someone who has gotten away with Appropriation Art in the modern day and is a truly interesting collection by Richard Prince, and is known for his appropriation art and controversy has done something artists in our day and age would be scared to do because of the backlash of copyright and the world of suing but with such a well-known artist that has a lot of money he pretty much took his style of art into the present day, which can be really hard to do well, and in my eyes I feel he has pulled it out the bag for this one. Prince has changed the game in a sense and made the everyday people famous, and when I say famous I mean each print sold for around $100,000 a pop. But even Prince’s work made it on to MSNBC which is an American news network where they covered the piece in question stating “kind of a jerk move really sums it up Chris, I mean whether or not this is legally fair use is to me kind of beside the point. It’s okay to be a jerk on the internet or in the art world but is a cardinal sin to be a boring jerk, in my opinion, that’s kind of what Richard Prince is here.” (MSNBC, 2015) But this whole cover story makes me laugh because people who aren’t in the art world just hate Appropriation art.

But how has Prince got away with the copyright laws on this one, one of the biggest ones is that he's using a world renown social media site and just print screened and cut out the name of the site "Instagram" and by doing so cleverly Instagram hasn’t really got the right to sue him for copyright, even though everyone knows that’s the site he used. The second big copyright issue is the people and photographers and artists he technically stole work off and I use that term loosely, mainly because different people have taken this platform different ways, he's manipulated the viewer like Levine, but by using the viewer in his work, and by doing so has created a new type of copyright, an Transformative art, and by achieving that he has done so by creating an Instagram account by the name richardprince1234, and by commenting on the photos he has used, so putting his name on the work is almost like signing the piece? By putting richardprince1234 on the print does that now make it his work?

Because this is a really recent collection when it was presented it blew up around the world especially with one company "suicide girls" in which Prince used one of their images from their account, their site themselves is like a self-model site where you pay monthly to upload photos and sign a contract to prevent you to posted anywhere else with chances of being chosen the best and getting a $200 award, but in this instance the owner of the company came forward with displeasing views on the piece “My first thought was I don’t know anyone who can spend $90,000 on anything other than a house,' Selena explained. 'Maybe I know a few people who can spend it on a car.' She continued: 'As to the copyright issue? If I had a nickel for every time someone used our images without our permission in a commercial endeavour, I’d be able to spend $90,000 on art.' Selena went on to say that she was once annoyed by mass retailer Forever 21 selling shirts which featured slightly altered images taken from the Suicide Girls. (TEMPESTA, 2015)

Personally, I think it's because they didn’t get any of the $90,000 it went for, instead they went on their own site and made replicas of the original and sold them for $90 each and stated on their website “Do we have permission to sell these prints? We have the same permission from him that he had from us ;)” which is crazy in an art viewpoint, because it’s like Levine did but using a copy of Prince's original screenshot, it's an appropriation of an appropriation made by a large-scale company trying to profit off Prince's collection, even though I should mention they claimed the money went to charity.

Then, on the other hand, you have the smaller people that he used such as small town artist Sean Fader and his post went for $40,000 and instead of getting mad and listening to his friends saying to sue him he took an artist’s viewpoint on the matter and treated Prince as the curator to his artwork. Which is such a great way to look at it. He used the free platform that Prince gave him a chance to have a moment in the spotlight and made it completely work for him, even going to lengths to go see it and take a selfie in front of it to then re-post back on Instagram, it's like a crazy modern day internet cycle. (Trending, 2015)

The question of originality is that yes he is totally original because he was one of the first artists to take appropriation into the modern day world and also win the copyright side of things too, unlike artists such like Damien Hirst's Hymn, who recreated a child's toy of human body, but enlarged it by tenfold then got a slap in the face by Humbrol Limited, maker of the Young Scientist Anatomy Set who won the copyright battle and sued Hirst but then “settled for contributions by Hirst to two children's charities, Children Nationwide and the Toy Trust, in lieu of royalties on the £1m sale.” Even the original sculptor of the toy “Mr Emms, 57, made the original model for the toymakers Bluebird, which sold the rights to Humbrol. He said: "It is an exact copy, completely and utterly exact - even the hair, the eyebrows."” (Dyer, 2000) Which is funny because it’s just another company doing appropriation art to get money back from artists making money. Prince's collection has so much controversy and that's one of the reasons I love appropriation art much like Duchamp and Levine it's doing something no one had done before in their time and inspiring and offending the close-minded people that don’t get it at the same time just by using the beauty of simplicity... and winning copyright cases.

Formalism

Formalism is taking the phrase “don’t read a book by its cover” and shoving it back in your face and saying instead “judge the book only by its cover” which in a sense is a weird way of talking about art because often we like to know every little piece of detail that went into making the piece, like what the artists intent was, the culture behind it and the techniques used to make it. It’s like a philosophy of making and judging art, to formalism this info was deemed unnecessary for the understanding of the work but instead, all of that is removed and you are left with it based solely on what it looks like to the viewer. Such as line, symmetry and colour. And that’s why it’s an interesting framework for appropriation art, I feel that it has its pros and cons, the thing is with this art movement is that it’s all to do with the back story, what does Duchamp’s fountain become without Duchamp, it becomes a crudely signed urinal-based strictly on looks, which isn’t always bad, it helps the art in a way that makes it about the art again and not the backstory, it makes you appreciate what’s put in front of you and you’re made to focus on what the artist has actually created, because although appropriation art is all about the shock factor, the artists still went out their way to create it, and by doing so we should still respect their craft. “Whereas one tends to see what is in an Old Master before seeing it as a picture, one sees a Modernist painting as a picture first. This is of course, the best way of seeing any kind of picture, Old Master or Modernist, but Modernism imposes it as the only and necessary way, Modernism’s success in doing so is a success of self-criticism.” (Greenberg, 1909-1994) Through reading his ‘Modernist Paintings’ this passage stood out the most to me as he realises that you should just look at the art as art before latching it on to its backstory of how it became art or how controversial it is, even though I don’t find myself thinking about appropriation art in that manner a lot of the time because I get very caught up in such aspects of the shock factor I feel art should be sometimes just viewed on looks firstly to see what the artist has actually achieved, and then move on to how it came to be or how it affects people. Greenberg also mentioned about artists such as Paul Cezanne and how he realised he didn’t want to make art that was something he wanted to make art that expressed something, he went from painting landscapes that looked realistic to landscapes that slightly resembled landscapes because it was all about the medium he used to create the piece and that’s thinking in a formalistic artist. “Basically, what modernism is painters using paint on canvases and not caring about the objects they are painting, if they are painting objects at all anymore, but instead caring the texture and the colour and the application on the canvas” (SneakyMister, 2011)

Conclusion

In conclusion I feel very strongly about all three of my frameworks and Appropriation art never stops amazing me, but I also strongly agree that there is no right and wrong or where to draw the line when it comes to this movement, as an artist myself I found myself arguing about with myself and finding myself loving such art pieces I’ve talked about such as Levine and Prince but at the same time I myself have had people take my work without permission and posting it on their social media without credit, and that upsets me, but then I contradict myself because with them two art pieces they did exactly the same, is it because they are famous artists I’m more accepting of their work of being in the right? Or because they have done something no one had done before on a larger scale. But it seems not to be a problem unless the artist puts the work in the public’s eye and up for sale because everyone feels they deserve the money from the big price tag these works go for. But as I said at the start of the essay, how Appropriation art has been around since art started so it’s hard to come to a conclusion that has such a wide radius of art that is involved, but all the same I feel that’s why I love it so, because it’s something no one really knows the answer to and different viewpoints mean everything, from viewing a piece and the medium they’ve used to the way taking a photo of a photo to just the classical nude that’s been around since the dawn of time. You just can’t have one without the other.

By Emily Birch.

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