#but college is seriously kind of great bc like. you can just Do Shit. no parental convos about the logistics of hanging out

[sergle]

yall are about to piss me off by not having any PASSING basic knowledge of the way the u.s. military manipulates its recruits into joining by typing up one of your uninformed, unresearched, unempathetic, individualistic, unbelievably annoying posts about how 100% of the people in the military ended up there because they just Love America So Damn Much! they're extremely mature and informed at time of recruitment, they can totally leave anytime they want, they totally had tons of other avenues in life they could've taken, there was no rush at all to get income as fast as possible, and everyone in the military also totally is part of the combat divisions and personally enjoys being IN the military very much, big believers of violence. everyone in the military is shooting guns all day, that's how that works. they LOVE BLOODSHED. also I love the "amewicans haha" twang to this type of shit because you're actually TOTALLY stealing our Thing, which is turning systemic issues into Individual Issues. Instead of talking about the powers that be, it's so Personal Choice up in here. It's, "well you shouldn't have done it then. I totally wouldn't because I know better." you don't wanna talk about the military industrial complex as a whole, and you don't want to talk about recruiters, you just want to pin the blame on Specific Individual People one-by-one, as if they're responsible for the system that they're being ground up in. someone was in the military? bad person, no matter what. it's easier to believe that, I guess, than to acknowledge that Normal People (with high school educations) are manipulated and incentivized into joining a system that is Bad. at like age 18. but yeah no that 18 year old should have just been smarter lol haha anyway here are some screenshots for no particular reason

side note this reply of someone going "umm just get loans and go into a high paying field it's easy XD" as a direct response to someone trying to explain how most americans joining the military are being funneled in that direction out of a need for money.

and another person who Decided that americans join the military just CLENCHING their teeth thinking of other people, and not thinking completely selfishly about their own selves and their own income/housing/healthcare.

[elytrafemme]

guys i laurv college like actually. went out w a group of ppl and went to CVS and a mediocre pep rally. had a really sweet exchange w a bus driver. roommates are going out in a large group to have some of that sweet liquid sillies allegedly. i am alone in my dorm despite thinking i'd be the last one awake i am literally the only one here. and i'm happy i think :D

[66sharkteeth]

Do you have any ideas for fun AU's or non-cannon stuff the crew gets into? Even just things fun things to imagine that you don't necessarily want/have time to draw.

i talk about college AU pretty often here, actually. that's the main one and most developed.

it doesn't really have a whole plot like CoB ofc, but is just kind of the cast if they were in college. some quick summaries-

-Mikiah and Rex were twins in this universe and Mikiah still died a few months before Rex left for college, much like in canon CoB. It was an accident that Rex blames himself for, and now he's majoring in some biology degree in honor of Mikiah because that's what Mikiah wanted to do. Rex struggles throughout because he's still grieving a lot more than he lets on and isn't doing well in his classes because he's frankly not passionate about the major he's in for Mikiah's sake. By the end, he's processed everything and actually ends up changing majors to study to be a therapist so he can help people who have gone through similar traumatic experiences.

-This is a recent addition, but just for the sake of being able to have Shnee in the picture, Shnee's his emotional support animal (Lauro did all the arrangements bc as if Rex knows how to go about making that official). Ofc, Rex doesn't really disclose this publicly and everyone is just kinda left wondering how this guy gets away with having a rottweiler in his dorm. He probably lies and says his rich aunt paid off the school.

-I've talked about this one before, but to reiterate for those new: Jericho and Claude are room mates (ofc). They both paid extra to have a two bedroom dorm, just for Claude to find out Jericho is using the extra room to house his 4ft pet monitor lizard, "The Scion." It's an absolute menace and Claude hates it. Jericho has some dirt on Claude (im still not sure what) which is how he's getting away with this entire arrangement. However, the pet lizard hogging the other room means Claude and Jericho share a room wink wink.

-They're both in art school, with Claude focusing in art history to be a museum curator and Jericho BSing his way through a modern arts degree. Jericho is a charmer who has BSed his way through most of his life, and feels he can just slide through art school pretending to make pretentious modern art with fake deep meanings. And actually, it works, but Claude is the only one who can see through his BS and know he actually has some talent and passion. Over time, Claude gets Jericho to actually take things seriously and drop his modern art degree and pursue fashion, which he's actually passionate about (Where Jules is one of his teachers). It's the first time Jericho actually has to work in his life, but he's all the better for it.

-On the relationship front, they do eventually end up together but definitely not right away. It starts with them hooking up and Claude thinking that means they're dating, just to come home and realize Jericho never got the memo they were exclusive if ya know what I mean. This leads to a big fight ofc, Claude not talking to Jericho for a while, eventually them becoming JUST friends again, until Jericho realizes he really wasted his chance with Claude and they do eventually actually date. However, this would be Jericho's first real relationship and he's not great at it, so they do a lot of off and on until Jericho finally kinda gets his shit together (possibly after they've all graduated college) and they finally end up together for good in an actually functioning relationship.

I have more but i feel like that's enough of a wall post for now.

[royposting]

i feel like im missing out so tell me about roy harper's abandonment issues (for educational purposes, obviously)

WELL i am glad you asked, i hope the following rant is satisfactory!! this is more ~vibes~ based than evidence based honestly so bear with me.

the thing about roy as a character when he is written well is that he is quite a subtle character; this is partially bc DC never really gave a shit about him honestly. meaning, a lot of what we can gather about him as a character (&person) comes from drawing logical conclusions from canonical events.

for example in my previous roy thesis where i discussed how logically his heroin addiction should be treated story wise compared to what we get.

so:

roy was very little when his father died (depending on which version of events you follow, he sometimes has a mother, sometimes he is a bit older, etc. i personally like devin graysons run for arsenal mini&will use that to base my canon on) and was taken in by the navajo tribe.

then, again depending on your canon, brave bow (his mentor&father figure at this point in time) either hands him off to ollie, or roy himself decides to leave. what we do know is that brave bow got sick and passed away shortly after ollie took roy in. meaning that is two father figures down before the age of 13. his time with the navajo was difficult as well, as he never really fit in, and would be told as such.

he idolised ollie; things obviously didnt turn out great in that regard for him. i dont like to consider ollie a TERRIBLE person, even back then, but he certainly wasnt looking to be the safe father figure this little boy so desperately needed and wanted more than anything.

a lot of it is, of course, that roy wasnt ever a popular character really, but looking at the older (pre new earth) canon, ollie wasnt really home a lot, didnt bring roy with him a lot, and honestly didnt seem to give many shits about him. leaving us with the image of this young boy left alone most of the time, without a proper place in the world.

he was honestly more of a teen titans character than a green arrow one, back then.

then ollie sets off with hal for a year: he doesnt even mention roy in GL/GA #1 when they decide to head out.

he starts messing with drugs around this time. like, how abandoned and lonely does a young person have to be to start shooting heroin? TT break up around this time, too, and donna breaks up with him, dick goes off to college - he is all alone, once again.

again, we have to imagine what fucked up mindset someone has to be in for all of this to happen. how insanely isolated and lonely he has to be to not call his friends and say hes struggling - he feels completely abandoned by everyone in his life.

then ollie punches him in the face and throws him to the street.

later on, left out of the roster of the NTT. we learn when we see him in NTT (vol 01 #27) that hes trying to build a life for himself. he doesnt do much vigilante stuff anymore.

he gets back into it, eventually, but until then, he keeps getting left behind: never good enough for anyone to take seriously nor stick around for. everyone always has too much other stuff, while he doesnt really.

he even fucking reconnects back with ollie like immediately before ollie dies lmao. which is honestly kind of funny in retrospect but ya know.

anyway he eventually gets back into things, becomes a dad, reconnects with his old friends. even joins the JLA. however there is always that layer of hurt over everything he does that just GETS to me ya know? like.

he is sometimes written in a way that i fucking hate where they essentially make him a chauvinist johnny bravo type dude who hits on teenage girls etc. i do not consider this canon. however we DO get a nice explanation for this in titans: secret files and origins (#1) where its essentially considered a front he puts on - similar in a way to how ollie tends to make jokes and be sarcastic when hes feeling insecure.

he tends to do this when cornered with his insecurities. he is so convinced that everyone he loves will leave him that he pushes them away first - ripping that band aid off before they get the chance to. if he acts horribly, noone will want to get close, leaving no room for him to get abandoned again.

yet he tries so, so hard to hold onto those he loves - consider, like, all of outsiders vol 03. consider how he, too, lost his best friend when donna died, but how he puts all of his own grief aside to help keep dick off that ledge. consider how part of his grief that lead to him joining slade in titans vol 02 (#26-38) is that he thought he was irredeemable after the events of rise of arsenal - he thought he had noone and nothing left.

i dont think much of his current issues are necessarily rooted in FACT - ollie (and debatably depending on your canon, brave bow) certainly did abandon him, leaving deep scars. but those are also what he bases his thoughts on his relationships on - this deep seated idea that he CANNOT be loved and wanted for himself and what he is (the romance with hawkgirl of all people certainly didnt help).

it doesnt matter that his friends and coworkers love and value him - we have to imagine the lens that he looks at his life and relationships through. personally id believe it if you said that his relationship to his daughter, lian, was the only one he ever trusted fully in his life - but he still feels like he failed her, that its his fault that she died, and he wonders constantly if he ever was good enough for her.

idk man this is a bible and SOOOO ranty but i care so so so much about him 🥺 and again this is vibes mostly - almost no writers actually give a shit about him so they dont leave space to actually sit and consider how he WOULD feel about these things. so this is just my interpretation. it shines through at times when you have a writer who is interested in him (such as judd winick, or devin grayson in the batman+arsenal mini) but usually they just pretend like his traumas wouldnt affect him at all. and i take issue with that.

[bodytalkbaby]

Ok but imagine early strokes, if they were already glued by the hip as young adults, imagine as teenagers, them hanging out at each other's houses just doing what stupid teenagers do but it's ok because they were together so it doesn't matter how stupid what they were doing was

right. RIGHT. i always think about the strokes as pre albert and post albert. so let’s talk about pre albert first. (this will all be rooted in rpf, so take none of this seriously). i’m just gonna ramble here because i’m more and have too many thoughts:

julian is back from boarding school. he still has a drinking problem that was not solved by boarding school in switzerland or wherever it was (nice one, john), he also hates school. i can only imagine how annoyed he must’ve felt living in new york again knowing that his family just sent him away. i can’t remember if nikolai went to the same high school as him BUT ANYWAY, he’s still friends with nikolai, and they both now have these little twerps named nick and fab following them around. their age differences are not big at ALL but i remember being a freshman, and thinking it was so cool that all my friends were juniors and seniors, so i can imagine that’s how fab felt. nick definitely did not gaf 😭 i feel like he probably said shit like, “you guys are so stupid, why do i hang out with you.” and they’re all like “wait. no why do you hang out with us???”… he doesn’t want to say that it’s bc they’re the people he cares most about and he loves them.

jules and nick have stated a few times that the high school they went to was weird. and when i tried to investigate a while back, there was this reddit thread that said the school was sketchy. i still have no idea what anyone means by this, but im sure they all bonded over being in a weird ass high school. that part of your life is already SO WEIRD, so i can’t imagine having a sucky school experience would help either. BUT THEY HAD EACH OTHER!!!! i wish i could’ve been a fly on the wall during one of their lunch breaks.

like just imagine… you have a quiet nikolai, a depressed & edgy julian who’s probably at peak I Hate My Dad, and then there’s baby nick would got into trouble and took nothing seriously, and then puppy dog fab would PRETENDED TO PLAY THE DRUMS TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM. i’m sure they had other friends but i think their main group was just fab+nick and then jules+nikolai coming in to form a group together. they had the friendship group where if they were all over at fab’s, jules+nikolai would end up going home, and nick would sleep over at fab’s. they were just four gremlins who kind of new how to play instruments that terrorized nyc. the thought of them sneaking drinks into their houses, or someone’s mom coming in the room after they obviously just got back from smoking and they’re trying so hard not to cough. fab’s mom being so excited to hear about his friends and being shocked when she finally meets them but fab doesn’t care because he’s so unashamed of his love for them.

i think it also got a tad bit better for them once they began to graduate. i wanna say they were all in different classes but idk and im too lazy to fact check rn. also am i wrong in saying that jules never graduated??? well i couldn’t imagine that being a great time with his parents, but he had his friends and his lovely step father.

okay now for ALBERT. OOOH this just gets me. they’re all graduated, they’ve settled as much as a late teens/early 20s kids can settle. it’s obvious that they’re going to be friends for a long time, they’re a constant in each other’s life. they form a band and they’re getting serious about it but they still pretty much all of day jobs or they’re taking classes in college. life is okay but they’re missing something. and then here comes young and dumb, albert hammond jr.

he’s away from his parents, across the country, living in fucking nyc. he’s in college and he plays guitar and who does he see right when he moves to new york, that fucking guy from boarding school. that cool guy from boarding school who didn’t take shit from anybody, and drank like a sailor, and actually talked to him and invited him into his room. and hung out with him because they were some of the few americans there. and here he fucking was. next thing he knows, they’re living together and he’s in julian’s band. AUGH.

i love this little era of pre strokes because they’re so young but they’re even more lawless than before, but now they have rent due, and real jobs, and relationships. whenever i think about The Timeline, this is always where i imagine casamond starting. ALWAYS. julian’s been friends with the same people for YEARS. he’s free in a way but also stuck in all the same places he was in highschool. he wants to start a real band, in comes albert. albert, who he immediately reconnects with and they become even closer than they were before. he’s almost like an escape. he’s a fresh voice and listener. julian can rant to him, and he won’t get the same ideas spewed back in his face. i’m not sure how to really explain it but they’re just so domestic in this era. UGH I LOVE IT

[awsydawnarts]

So I will definitely not be making more of these any time soon bcs school is kicking my ass, but I dug up this drawing from months ago that I kinda felt like sharing??? You get a gold star if you guess who they are without clicking for more lol

Contrary to what the stuff I reblog might lead you to believe, I really don’t inherently hate the concept of reboots, they just have to be *done right*. This is probably not an example of that lol, but I have a little au sitting in the back of my mind about the Magic School Bus characters aged up and attending college, and this is my first attempt at getting an idea of what the girls would look like (we’re going back to the og cast with my girl Phoebe obviously, Jyoti can have a cameo or something). I haven’t actually drawn the guys and I probably won’t any time soon bcs like I said, school’s kicking my ass, but I have Thoughts about them as well. I kind of want to save my full detailed thoughts for if I ever get around to making individual character sheets with outfits and stuff, but who am I kidding that’ll probably never happen so here’s a brief rundown:

Phoebe’s always been big on animal rights and whatnot, so I took that and ran with it. She’s this chill bi vegan chick who lives in an rv and has like five pets that she rescued. I’m not super sure what anyone’s studying just yet (except Keesha) but I’m thinking Phoebe’s somewhere on the environmental science side of things.

Speaking of Keesha, I kind of want them together 👀 Keesha’s getting her BFA in dance with an emphasis on ballet. One of the episodes has her mention a dance class and as a dancer myself that’s all I needed lol (just realized how hard I’m projecting here, since Phoebe was my favorite character growing up).

D.A.’s probably the most thought out of this group. She’s great at pretending she’s put together but she’s actually a huge mess. She’s a perfectionist about every aspect of her life, to the point where is starts taking a serious toll on her mental and physical health. Maybe she needs a certain former classmate to help her realize she doesn’t always have to take everything so seriously 👀 I don’t know what she’s studying yet but it’s some obscenely difficult thing lol, she’s probably trying to get her PhD in like five years or something

Wanda I’m thinking doesn’t have a major decided on just yet, not because I don’t know but because she doesn’t know (I could be convinced otherwise). I feel like she’d grow into a bit of an adrenaline junkie and get a motorcycle and shit. She’s pan(?) with a heavy preference towards women. I’m most sold on her hair but least sold on her face shape, so I guess we’ll see. I have her personal life worked out pretty well but that’s kind of spoilery and not just about her, so I’m probably not going to share unless I post more for this. Maybe knowing that I still have things to tell will keep me invested and creating for this lol.

That’s the girls!!! Maybe over spring break I’ll do the rest of the class? Maybe not. It’s a mystery to everyone.

[lovee-infected]

This idea just hit me like a train. How would twst boys react to WAP from Cardi B?? 😂😂😂

I'm trying to ignore the fact that I might've never discovered WAP without this request...🗿

Warning(s): What should I even tag as the warning idkk ckcjxjsjsjdjdjck- Mentions of WAP's lyrics, mentions of nsfw, Warning for Idia's part bc I think it went a bit too far-

Riddle Rosehearts

Heard of this song named WAP being trending between students -> Searched it up -> Riddle:... Riddle: *Turns off his phone*

Bans WAP from the whole Heartslabyul afterwards, and every student found listening to it will have to face Riddle's: "NOOOOOOO- NO WAP IN THIS HOUSEHOLD - GO TO HORNY JAIL OFF WITH YOUR HEADS YOU UNWORTHY CREATURES- "

Trey Clover

Searches: "What does WAP mean?" before wards and after reading the search results he decides that he doesn't really need to listen to the song itself anymore.

He just clears his browsing history and returns to baking cakes. Nothing has happened, he knows nothing.

Cater Diamond

He is the guy making those "Night raven college react to WAP!!" videos on magicam. His reaction videos get over 100k views and people from all over the Twisted Wonderland start following this dork for them.

Who cares about the WAP itself? As long as he can gain followers over these videos he doesn't care how the song is supposed to be.

But at last Riddle discovers his videos by finding other dorms' students laughing over them and forces him to take them down💀 Man, Riddle really did ruin his once-in-a-life time chance for becoming popular.

Ace Trappola and Deuce Spade

Riddle has banned WAP Heartslabyul so they're going to illegally listen to it. It was Ace's fault though, Deuce is innocent.

Ace searchs up the music video, Deuce just sees the thumbnail and tells Ace that he doesn't think that this is going to be a good idea but Ace cuts him off by asking him not to be such a chicken-

Though they had to stop because Deuce was all shaky and embarrassed after just 20 seconds :"Stop this-STOP THIS- I CAN'T DO THIS- WE'RE STILL TOO YOUNG" and Ace had to stop to shut Deuce because they could've gotten caught at any second because of his unholy screams.

[a few minutes later...]

Deuce: It was saying DOORS in this house

Ace: Bruh what the- we both know it was saying Wh*res.

Deuce: Y-you dirty minded bastard!! It was clearly saying doors in this house!

Ace: Why the hell would they say doors in this house!??? It was wh*res!

Deuce: Doors!

Ace: WH*RES

Deuce: DOORS

Ace: WH*RES

Deuce: DOOOOORRRSSSSSSSSS

Leona Kingscholar

See he might be a jerk but he hasn't yet gotten to the level of appreciating this way of presenting women in songs-

He's just going to pretend that WAP doesn't exist,but most of the Savanaclaw on the other hand are going wild because with WAP, now he can't even take a peaceful nap without WAP being looped in his brain.

Ruggie Bucchi

WAP isn't beyond his power, he's handled stronger songs.✨ He'd regularly rap WAP in public when he's feeling like it.

Now he goes around to recommend WAP to naïve students and taint their virginity by making them listen to WAP without knowing what it is-

Jack Howl

Catches Ace and Deuce listening to WAP and ends up listening to it because of them. He doesn't knpw what to say...

He isn't mad, just disappointed. Disappointed parent noises. Out of all these students, why should he best buddies which these two?

Time to drag Ace and Deuce to a corner and give them a long speech on why young men their age need to be focusing on mastering skills and achieving success through these golden years instead of violating rules and tainting their pure minds.

"Trappola-kun, Spade-kun, you've greatly disappointed me. You need to be more mindful of your actions as fellow freshmen of night raven college. Is this how the future's great magicians are going to be? How do you think your parents would feel about this new habit of yours? Have you thought of how despicable women are being presented through such songs? Are you going to support such a taboo message toward ladies?"

And Ace and Deuce end up having to listen to him and think of their bad actions for the rest of the day...

Azul Ashengrotto

[Before listening to WAP]: He hears of this WAP song being super trending between students. What might it secret be? What kind of magic would make a simple song so hecking popular? He has to find out.

Azul thinks that by learning WAP's ways, he might be able to produce songs that are even better for mostrolounge and even start his very own music company! But before that he needs to listen to wap itself...

[After listening to WAP]: ...He discovers what kind of magic is making it so popular, but decides that it'd be better for him take a step back from the world of music for now. Yes, he's traumatized

Floyd Leech

"Hey hey koooeeebiii chaaannnn have you seen my new dance~?" ah yes, he's got the WAP dance and he's proud of it. These are the time when he's genuinely thankful for getting to have human legs.

But the WAP dance isn't his only target, he realizes that Jamil doesn't seem to want Kalim to know anything about WAP, but thankfully, Floyd is going to be kind enough to bless the young Kalim with his wealthy knowledge on WAP. ✨

Jade Leech

"My...my...that was savage," Jade is amazed, it's quite wonderful how these fragile creatures can go from Micheal Jackson's smooth criminal to WAP in a matter of years.

He's still having trouble keeping up with latest human trends and popular songs but, he's slowly liking humans a lot more than before. These creatures have already reached the level to make put p*rn in music, impressive.

Kalim Al Asim

He hears students whispering about an epic song named WAP during the classes, and of course he'd be intrigued!

He looks up the song but Jamil has already blocked his access to any sources that he might find WAP in, yet Floyd was kind enough to lend Kalim his phone to let him listen to this masterpiece. Later on, Floyd tells him about the WAP dance and bam, Kalim is addicted.

"Everyone watch me! I've got the WAP!"

Poor Jamil doesn't know which is worse, having Kalim signing it loudly in the dorm or watching him showing off his skills in that WAP dance in public. It's time for Jamil to go on a long, long trip and never come back until Kalim graduates from this school.

Jamil Viper

Listens to WAP once, is going to spend the rest of his life pretending that he has never heard or watched it. The most ironic part about it is how he watches the music video instead of just listening to the song and...the snakes. Good lord the snakes- He isn't sure if he likes snakes anymore.

The snakes part seriously traumatizes him but not like Kalim does when he asks Jamil to learn him the WAP dance. And heck no Jamil isn't going to learn him how to dance like a wh*re. At this point, he decides to deny WAP's whole existence.

Kalim: At least tell me what a WAP is!

Jamil:

Jamil: Worship and prayer.

Vil Schoenheit

Hasn't listened to WAP and refuses to do so. He's got standards.

Rook Hunt

"Bravo!!! These Mademoiselles have taken the art of music to a whole nother level! Beaute! 100 points! 💯" (...what else did you expect him to say?)

Just as always, no one can really tell if Rook really liked it or not but from the way he acts he seems to be... intrigued. Apparently WAP starts to get too famous in school and Rook would always be the first one to find out if a student is secretly listening to WAP in public, so he doesn't mind popping up and reminding the students not to listen to such a potentially stimulating song so carelessly: "Monsieur (x), it's adorable to see you appreciating such a glorious piece of art in this lovely day, but I don't think that all of these students staring at us right now are yet prepared for such a beauty,"

Epel Felmier

He just asked Ace for some music that'll make him sound more badass and Ace gave him the WAP:

Epel listening to WAP be like:😳😶😨😕😭

His face is redder than a tomato after the first 30 seconds of WAP, but Ace tells him that he'd be the bravest human being ever if he takes the urge to listen to this in front of teachers.

Tries to dance to WAP and make a video with it to upload on magicam, but Vil catches him in the middle of process.💀💀💀 The video turned out pretty good though. It looks just like a mother (Ehm- Vil) getting into her child's room (Epel-) and finding them doing some crazy shit.

Idia Shroud

He's the silent and seemingly shy dude who's listening to WAP in the highest volume under those head phones during classes.

Divus Crewel: CaF2(s) + Br2(ℓ) → CaBr2(s) + F2(g)...

Inside Idia's headphones: " ~ Wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~ there some wh*res in this house~"

Bonus: He once forgets to connect his headphones to his tablet before playing WAP:

[Wap is being played at max volume inside Trein's class]

Idia: *Thinks that the sound is coming from his head phones*

The classroom: "Beat it up, n*gga, catch a charge

Extra large and extra hard

Put this p**sy right in your face

Swipe your nose like a credit card"

Trein: 😳

Students: 😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳

Crowley about to jump down: 🤭

Idia still not realizing what the hell is going on: 'Lucy lucy baby~ hihihi- wait- why they all staring at me now...? Did they hear me internally flirt with Lucius?'

No need to say what happened to Idia after this...

Ortho Shroud

No WAP for him. You may find him reacting to "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" if you're interested.🗿

Malleus Draconia

Thank goodness he just finds the censored version of WAP... Listens to the whole song, but doesn't understand most of the lyrics. The "Put this cookie right in your face" part confuses him the most, he doesn't get it. Why would you put a cookie in your face? Is this something humans usually to do with their desserts? Like, would they put ice cream in their faces too?

Virgin dragon keeps on asking people, including Lilia, to tell him what it means to put a cookie in one's face, yet no one seems to give him any proper answers ):

Perhaps human music just isn't his thing, he's getting back to sad violin noises which he listens to when he isn't invited.

Lilia Vanrouge

WAP go brrrrrrr. Our sassy grandpa is legit in love with this piece of gold and all of the humans for achieving such a glory. The beat is superb and the lyrics are: Delicious, motivational and creatively written.

Even better, WAP has an unofficial but smexy dance too. Old man Lilia is never too old for performing a sexy physically challenging dance.

You can now hear savage rock sounds combined with WAP playing in the background coming from his room when he's vibing in the afternoon.

(I can totally see him wearing a neko maiden costume while dancing to WAP and you can't tell me otherwise)

Silver

Finds WAP in papa Lilia's playlist...

Silver:

Silver:

Sebek Zigvolt

Sweet mother of love Sebek feels like listening to WAP has taken his virginity away-

He is a good boy, no, he once was a good boy. He's no longer the worthy man he used to be now that this unholy song has tainted his soul.

Legit feels guilty and and sinful after WAP, so you can find him praying for forgiveness to that Malleus portrait in his room every night.

"Oh young master forgive my thoughtless deeds, I beg for your mercy upon me now that I've sinned..."

Dire Crowley

Not saying that a drag Queen Crowley dancing to WAP would be a thing, but a drag Queen Crowley dancing to WAP would be a thing- Everyone bow down to the Headmaster, the most gracious of them all 😩😩😩👌🏻

Please, don't blame him. Birby is under too much of pressure after the very recent overblot cases and he needs a way to let go of the stress😔😔😔

Sam

Is illegally selling copies of the WAP because most of the dorms had blocked access to this song for the students...

"Helloooooo little demons I've got the WAP! In stuck now-"

[homoose]

omg your teacher!spencer HC got me thinking and imagine a school AU where all the characters are different teachers

hotch is the principal

spencer could be a high school chemistry teacher or an elementary teacher (honestly he could teach anything he wants lol)

jj is an elementary teacher

derek is a coach

emily is a languages teacher

and so on...

OOOH YAH (teacher!spencer hc here) were gonna say this is like a K-12 school just because...

Hotch: total principal, are you kidding? no other character has ever principaled quite as hard; comes off very boring and stern, but has a huge soft spot for the trouble makers and is lowkey an amazing mentor; runs one of those young gentlemen’s groups where he teaches them how to tie their ties and shit; coaches the debate team; travels to all the classrooms throughout the year as a guest reader and is surprisingly great at story voices

Gideon: chaotic AP that actually doesn’t really help at all— half the time Hotch isn’t even sure where he is; usually letting kids get away with shit because he thought it was pretty clever; helps with the senior prank

Rossi: replaces Gideon as AP when he retires and doesn’t do much better; always in his office; when kids get in trouble they have to come to him first— only the most severe offenses go to Hotch— so he deals with a lot of kids who get caught with like cigs or other contraband and always “confiscates” it; the kids love him bc he’s hilarious and also bc he knows a lot of pop culture that they’re into

Derek: could go either way for me— either he’s the gym teacher who takes it a little too seriously, OR he’s the English teacher who uses Nas and Tupac in his poetry unit; either way, definitely coaches after school; he’s a favorite among the kids for sure— he jokes around constantly, has a secret handshake for every kid; talks to them on their level, and always lets them play games at the end of the day (around the world, heads up seven up, etc)

Spencer: already talked about this in my hc but he’s just the best teacher; not afraid to be a total weirdo/goofball; very conscious and supportive of different learning styles and preferences; has the most ambient classroom; his students are always the smartest in the whole damn building because he reads up on every single teaching strategy and knows how to utilize them to best support his kids

JJ: elementary teacher for sure; she’s a Pinterest/IG teacher thru and thru— like her classroom is aesthetically perfect (organized, labeled, color-coded) and she probably has an essential oil diffuser or something; she definitely plays with the kids at recess— either kicking the soccer ball around, playing tag, jumping rope, or just laying in the grass and chatting in the sunshine

Penelope: she replaces the stuffy old tech teacher who spent 5 weeks forcing everyone to learn intermediate excel; at first the kids are like 👀 because Penny G is bright— but on the first day she has them all design their own websites and everyone immediately loves her; teaches them to code; runs an after school “tech club” which is literally just hacking skills 101

Emily: absolutely the languages teacher; also, a hot mess; the complete opposite of JJ— her classroom is literally just the furniture that was provided by the school and like three posters that JJ forced her to hang up bc ��jesus Em it looks like a prison in here.” the kids don’t really care— they love her bc she just gets them and she’s always got snacks; also regales them with stories and pictures from all of her travel and years abroad; definitely organizes and chaperones various Europe trips and exchange student programs

Tara: the teacher that does not give a single fuck about what anyone thinks about her style abd methods; teaches some type of social science, maybe sociology; loves her kids and knows they can handle tough/weighty conversations; facilitates many debates and mostly manages to stay neutral; kids hang out in her classroom after school; definitely teaches older kids; very sarcastic with them and they love it

Luke: socially a himbo, academically a nerd; teaches chemistry and makes it super accessible and easy to grasp; always eating in the lab even though it’s against his own rules; his favorite day of the year is the ice cream in a bag day; brings Roxy to work with him occasionally and the kids are obsessed

Matt: definitely teaches some type of history or social studies; always has coffee (he has five kids of his own, he’s exhausted); he’s really into the presidents for some reason and knows like all kinds of random facts about them (like the Taft bathtub fiasco and that Zachary Taylor shat himself to death); coaches cross country or swimming and won’t shut up about it

Stephen: the guidance counselor; literally just the nicest human on the planet; will let you sit in his office and cry any time; writes extremely heartfelt recommendation letters for college apps; has a candy drawer and a collection of stress balls

Blake: definitely everyone’s teacher mom; genuinely loves and cares for every student and they keep in touch with her after they graduate; also teaches English and she and Derek are BFF; they run a literary magazine club after school and do a slam poetry night in the cafeteria; gets a lot of “you changed the course of my life” letters

Kate: the cool teacher; she’s an adult, but she’s still in the know about everything the kids like; has a fun teacher Tik Tok account; uses her clout with the kids to influence their decision making aka gets all the gossip so that she can surreptitiously counsel and educate her kids about being safe and advocating for themselves— in online/social media spaces and beyond

[areyougonnabe]

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus !!! thank u i love to procrastinate on writing by writing about writing

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

110 on my main account (+ 4 on my sneaky sock for Crimes™ lol)

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

614,551 on my main account which is. hm. a lot

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

obvi the main ones are the terror (50 fics) and good omens (35 fics). beyond that: TMA, the OA, doctor who, LOST, red dwarf, what we do in the shadows, the aubreyad, legends of tomorrow, banished, MCU, bbc ghosts, jeeves & wooster, russian doll, true detective, twin peaks, fleabag, & it's always sunny.

so technically 19, but wow a LOT of those are because i am a fiend for crossovers. (true detective x red dwarf... twin peaks x hannibal... the OA x lost.... russian doll x doctor who...) and many of the others were one-offs for yuletide. i'm pretty monofannish when it comes to writing!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

lol they're all going to be for good omens... let's see

1. "it's a new craze" - the podcast fic. imho this fic is the definition of "The Claw," a.k.a. the phenomenon that sees some fics plucked out from the fray to become super popular. i'm not denying that it's good! i still think it's pretty clever! but its popularity was probably as much a function of timing as of quality

2. "what a way to make a living" - the uber driver fic. honestly still pretty proud of this one, it flows well and is structurally interesting and genuinely very funny and the perfect length. i had a blast in good omens fandom writing comedic fic, this one

3. "dearly departed" - another one i'm still very happy with. my first ever finished multi-chapter fic & the story that proved to me i could sustain a plot and original characters and also that people would actually enjoy it. so a pretty big deal!

4. "blame it on my juice, baby!" - the fake love potion one. i wrote this fic while delirious with horrible fever cooped up in a tiny council flat airbnb bedroom in london. i think it's still pretty strong although since writing it i've developed a severe aversion to the "meddling friend engineers a get-together" trope in fic & so cringe a bit when i read it back, lmao

5. "greatest hits" - the one with the original songs! the songs are still good.... the fic is ehhhhhhh i guess.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i don't respond to comments on most of my gomens fic anymore because 🤷‍♀️ but i do try to reply to everything i get on my terror fic/smaller fandom stories! my replies are usually very lame but i do like to take the time to thank people for reading.

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i usually don't write angsty endings because i'm a weenie BUT the one exception is probably my terror/TMA crossover which cannot be said to end well by any means lol

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

dearly departed has a very lovely ending... i will also plug my OA fic heat rises which is GREAT and has a GREAT ending and nobody read it because nobody watched the OA. i'm fine it's fine

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

as mentioned above, yes, compulsively... award for craziest simply has to go to It's Always Sunny In Another Dimension which is, yes, an IASIP x OA crossover. i apologize for nothing

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not that i can recall, [bubbe voice] tenks gad!!!

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

i do i do.... when i first picked up fic writing again after college i thought smut would forever totally beyond me but after some very kind encouragement from friends i tried my hand at it & was off to the races.

i would not say i am an expert at it by any means but i have a lot of fun with it, & people seem to generally appreciate it, so i will keep going!

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

also no, phew

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, a bunch of my gomens fics have been translated into chinese and russian, which is so so super cool!

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yuh, i had a few legendary cowrites in GO! the slow show metafic with cherry @fremulon and the shitscript crossover extravaganza with hallie @kalelraejepsen !!! both tremendously fun experiences

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

that is a very tough one. if you go by my ao3 bookmarks it's aziraphale/crowley, which might be true still tbh... but i dunno. maybe ten/rose because that shit never leaves you.

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

in terms of fic i already started posting, there's my one terror WIP with amnesiac tozer that i swear i WILL finish one day... and same goes for my good omens music & lyrics AU, which i fully expect to pick back up and finish off when i inevitably return to the fandom for series 2.

as far as stuff that never made it out of drafts, i started a hodgson-centric fic a few weeks ago that i got like 4k into before realizing i need to seriously refine my approach. so hopefully after exe fest i will get around to that!

16) What are your writing strengths?

well i am funny. so i've got that going for me. other than that ummmm i don't know. i don't think of myself as a particularly good or strong writer bc i really am just here for a laff. i think i can turn a phrase well and get the most out of imagery; i'm good at coming up with compelling story concepts and weird gimmicks, i guess?

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

i fundamentally don't know or understand how People Actually Act And Feel so i have a hard time getting realistic or interesting reactions and conflicts out of characters. my plots (when my stories have them at all) are very powered by external events, i wouldn't call myself a character-driven writer by any means. for the same reasons i struggle with voice and dialogue beyond superficial signposting via vocabulary/syntax. also, sustaining a long story/finding enough Stuff To Happen to fill it up/having the patience to keep writing... is something i need to work on for sure.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i'm a lame american who only speaks english so honestly i don't really have thoughts!

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

i distinctly remember hand-writing in my notebook two or three pages worth of a story about what happened to the main precog in "minority report" after watching the movie when i was like seven. the first fandom i actually wrote fic for and posted it online was probably doctor who circa 2010 ish? but my warrior cats RP career predates that by a few years and i did a LOT of writing there. oh warriorsforest39 dot proboards dot com you are missed....

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

SEX GHOST AU! SEX GHOST AU!

tagging folks :))) @laissezferre @titleleaf @theburialofstrawberries @girdedheraround @flanneryoconnorfanfiction @wreathedwith if u want!!

[thegeminisage]

Dear Ms Liz: you're a certified adult so I was hoping you might have some advice for a hs senior such as myself who's in full blown paaaanic mode over college admissions. how do i *not* anxiety??

ok disclaimer that i did have to drop out of college so i feel like i may be unqualified to address most of the SPECIFICS re: higher ed, but i AM a certified adult and pretzels are the same, etc - meaning anxiety is anxiety is anxiety & i've had like 20+ years of practice managing it so maybe i am qualified for that much. this is a very sweet ask actually im honored anybody has this much faith in me

anyway first of all address the root of the fear. what EXACTLY are you scared of? not getting them done in time? of doing badly on them? of picking the wrong schools? i've had..."a lot"...of "therapy"... & the most helpful part so far was learning the skill of figuring out WHY you feel a particular way, bc that helps w/ addressing it. if you're worried about not getting them done in time, try to work on them a little bit at a time instead of letting dread paralyze you and then getting into a cycle of fear-based procrastination. if it's doing badly on them, maybe you can get a teacher or guidance counselor* or older relative or friend to look them over for you and give you validation. it's about figuring out what you need to feel less overwhelmed and scared, and then securing that for yourself. it's a good skill to have!!!

(*i might be talking out of my ass here but i feel like unless you go to a completely garbage public school you should be able to find SOMEBODY in that building willing to be a pair of second eyes for you. if not, try online. i just checked and r*ddit has a sub called r/applyingtocollege. bad website yes but as long as you don't venture into the wrong parts you can get advice from all kinds of people bc normies use it. source: i have gotten good advice there before! it's never a bad thing to ask for help or ask questions - at the very least it shows other people that you're taking shit seriously and being proactive, yk?)

secondly i CAN tell you this will NOT be your only opportunity at higher ed. my brother had to drop out at the same time as me (money, sigh) and eventually he saved up and went back. and it was no big deal, and now he has a job in his chosen field! so in the absolute worst case scenario that your cat eats every one of the applications & none of them get turned in, it is still not the end of the world. idk, sometimes i like to hash out worst case scenarios and make contingency plans - this can turn into catastrophizing if you aren't careful, but sometimes i find that doing that makes me realize, logically, how unlikely a worst case scenario is and how recoverable it can be. like, i doubt my house will ever catch fire, but having a plan to get me & the pets to safety and knowing that even if my house is gone me & the pets would still be ok still makes me feel BETTER? if you're playing disaster scenarios in your head anyway you may as well give them happy endings.

AND finally. wow sorry this got long. please remember that emotions are temporary. actually everything is temporary but especially feelings. people are sort of like computers in that if you turn it off and turn it back on again they work better. make sure you are getting enough food, actual water, sleep, deep breathing, enrichment in your enclosure, etc. you'd be amazed at how much seeing to your physical needs will make the mental stress seem less dire and all-consuming. a lot of the time if the FEELING seems too big and too much and you can't handle it like you can just...wait it out. bc it's temporary. like literally sometimes you can just take a nap and suddenly it seems a lot more manageable, yk?

ok this has gotten long enough but GOOD LUCK!! i think youre gonna ace those admissions, but i also think even if you dont youre gonna have a great time doing other stuff and that you'll be ok <3

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

[swimfuel]

okay humanstuck thoughts under the cut

i owe a lot of this to @/rhythmic-idealist's kankri/vantasposting bc holy shit theyve got such a big brain (ill link to their individual posts when im on desktop since im using this to keep all my thoughts straight and i agree with most of what they say wholeheartedly)

general status quo stuff:

signless works in an extremely demanding career involving helping others (i'm leaning towards an attorney who works with organizations and does pro bono work), and is also extensively involved in social justice work outside of his job... he is very rarely home

he loves and cares for his children deeply and tries to express it whenever they're face to face, but the couch in his cramped and messy office has seen far too much use over the years for him to have been able to say it enough

his habits of working himself to the point of exhaustion are handily passed down to his kids btw

the kids had to grow up quickly because signless was out of the house so often and so consistently—kankri, who was already pretty high-strung, has to learn to take care of himself and karkat

they grow up near ms firuzeh maryam, who's their pseudoaunt/grandma (she took in a nine year old kavana vantas when she was about twenty), but they just call her ms rosa

they spent a lot of time in the maryam house growing up, with miss rosa's two nieces. porrim is a year older than kankri, while kanaya and karkat are the same age

kankri grows kinda sensitive to people trying to mother him since it rubs against the notion that he's the "adult of the house" and that he can take care of himself and karkat just fine

(and it also kinda underlines the fact that kankri has no idea what he's doing at the best of times)

and ironically enough, kankri becomes overbearing and naggy towards karkat in his own right, which forestalls them becoming close in any brotherly sort of way

they grow up really just... unable to communicate with one another clearly

karkat develops his ornery exterior in response to kankri's constant stream of opinions and frantic attempts at making up for the presence of a guardian in the house

i think there would actually be some really interesting parallels with rose in this au.. maybe i'm drawing from my own experiences as well but i think he'd begin to assume that every time his brother opens his mouth, he's going to criticize karkat

but instead of reacting like rose with the "making yourself more of a puzzle"/passive aggressive stuff, he gets a more defensive/hackles raised/"argue with you before you can argue with me" approach

and the thing is that they do love each other and would take a bullet for the other etc etc etc.. but they don't know how to express it because they've fallen into these shitty patterns

and it really doesn't help that kankri has grown somewhat resentful of signless over the years... that mix of resentment and fear and love gets more extreme and more polar every time signless gets injured during a political demonstration

i think kankri and signless would also be slightly closer than karkat and signless, as signless' job really only started to ramp up when karkat was less than years old and kankri was in his early double digits

kankri autistic btw its word of god (i am god)

karkat has a pet crab. its name is also karkat. he vents his frustrations to it.

i feel like the vantases exemplify both the best and worst parts of their aspects with one another as well... the strength of their bonds keeps them together and grounded, but TOO grounded. [insert Blood rant here]

the Blood rant:

i define Blood as bonds, responsibility, and the "core". if Life is the fertile soil and everything living on a planet's surface, then Blood is the gravitational core of the planet keeping everything together

i also think Blood, Heart, & Mind work in tandem to define a person just as blood serves to connect the pieces of the human body... Heart is the soul and the self, Mind is the application of one's self through active choices (agency), while Blood defines both the self and the choices one makes in greater detail [and, as an aside, Life provides the physical spark of life needed to keep the heart pumping blood]

OKAY wow that got tangential anyways

SO BASICALLY! too much Blood makes you stagnate, so for example:

kankri is split between staying home with karkat or going to college across the country and being truly unbound for the first time in years

another crisis of Blood: signless is caught between his empathy and responsibility to the whole world and his responsibility to his own children

okay so here's more status quo stuff:

the maryam and vantas kids grow up together and its hilarious because you'll see them all together and its just like (girlboss) (girlboss) (physical manlet) (emotional manlet)

the maryam girls are actually miss rosa's nieces but she took them in when they were both pretty young

the pyropes know the vantases well enough considering pyrope senior and sign have known one another from their respective legal practices for years, but they live on the other side of town

the leijons lived in town when kankri and meulin were very young, but they moved and travelled for a long time before coming back and reestablishing their roots

the captors (psii being one of sign's oldest and closest friends) move into town with the peixes family pretty early on though

the condesce is.. a horrible spouse and guardian, to put it plainly. she's very emotionally manipulative and isn't averse to smacking people around, including her own family. she moves herself and her perfect little family into town so she can properly oversee a new business venture close by

feferi is one of the best young swimmers in the country and has a pretty good shot of getting onto the olympic team.. a lot of this drive to be perfect and to be better results from the condesce's unrelenting pressure and thinly veiled resentment throughout her whole life

so yeah psii, )(ic, feferi, and sollux all live together and it's really not great for anyone involved. (meenah ran away years ago, and crashed on aranea's couch for a pretty long while—mituna moved out with latula for college before psii and the condesce got married)

it gets bad to the point of sollux staying with the maryams for two months while the adults try to sort out that absolute clusterfuck and get the divorce proceedings going (meenah finally convinces feferi to get out and come stay with her and aranea for the duration as well)

in terms of relationships i think latula and porrim were really really close in high school, and probably had some kind of unacknowledged thing going on for a while that never actually turned into anything because latula and mituna were going steady

kankri has had a crush on latula for years but never acted on it for similar reasons

meenah still carries a lot of that give no fucks attitude (it's developed moreso as a defense mechanism here) and can't understand why feferi refuses to leave the condesce with her

okay back to VANTAS MANPAIN i also think that karkat feels the weight of a lot of expectations on his shoulders as well

he feels responsible to live up to the example his dad and his brother set, even if it's to his own detriment—and kankri's oblivious rambling about his grades and his teachers and all his clubs certainly aren't helping the matter

kankri is one of those overinvolved kids taking a million AP's while simultaneously shitting on the collegeboard at every single step

hes this super overachiever anal retentive perfectionist type dude and (just as karkat preemptively criticizes others to forestall their criticisms of him only to harshly criticize himself) kankri subconsciously holds the people around him to the same expectations he holds for himself

so karkat also develops this sense of lacking which, in combination with everything else, culminates in self loathing and thinking he has to solve everyone else's problems and getting horribly mad at himself for every little mistake

GOD i have a lot more but lemme post this before i accidentally close out of the app and lose it all

more little details:

vriska's mom and terezi's mom HATE each other like HATE HATE HATE one another it's so bad

karkat wrote a ten page review of my immortal in middle school

jade is one of nepeta's best online friends

sollux can't raise one eyebrow at a time.. karkat gives him so much grief about it

the vantases eat a lot of shitty renditions of persian dishes until karkat learns to cook because literally the only person in the world with a CHANCE of getting KANKRI VANTAS to make an EDIBLE DISH is miss rosa

kanaya is really good at persian dance too but is VERY VERY embarassed to perform in front of people.. however porrim definitely is not

karkat has insomnia while kankri just stays up stupidly late for assignments that really shouldnt be taken that seriously.. but they both have the same rumination/sleep anxiety thing where your brain goes insane with horrible and depressing scenarios as you try to sleep

and more ideas that i thought were interesting but idk how to fit in the context of this au:

signless and disciple getting married pretty late in life after having been in love for years, the vantases move in with the leijons and karkat suddenly has two sisters

nepeta and karkat are both juniors at this point, meulin is probably in her third year at a local college nearby while kankri is about to start his second year at a university pretty far away

the kids in general honestly but ill figure it out

more random hcs this time with kids:

kanaya and rose get into a flame war online that gradually settles into elaborate courtship rituals

also nepeta + jade online besties

also bec can inexplicably still teleport

the first sbahj movie comes out and the next six months of dave strider junior's high school career are absolute hell

actually hc that dave senior goes by d strider professionally. the d stands for a lot of things

aradia and dave frequent a lot of the same forums but never end up really interacting

meanwhile karkat and john frequent a lot of the same forums and DEFINITELY end up interacting. this turns into grudging (at least on karkat's part) friendship after they find themselves fighting for their lives defending an objectively shitty movie together on the same thread

[noszkass]

topher everette dane.

twenty six. line cook. dylan o'brien.

beware of the dog. he is very sarcastic.

content warning: child neglect, foster care, adoption, drug use (exclusively 🍃; unless his dad asks. then, he doesn't know what you're talking about. mary jane who? sorry, name doesn't ring a bell).

dominant traits: kind-hearted, enthusiastic, witty, caring, sensitive, big lazy unmotivated, comical, energetic, curious, flippant, laid-back, playful, honest, loyal, supportive, protective, inconsistent, immature, inattentive/easily distracted, tactless, anxious, clumsy, people pleasing, a tad insecure, unorganized.

fictional parallels: ace (nancy drew cw); clint barton (marvel comics, not mcu); evan buckley (911 fox); fox mulder (x-files); hannibal king (blade trinity); kenzie malikov (lost girl); scoobert doo (scooby doo); shawn spencer (psych); stiles stilinski (teen wolf); xander harris (btvs).

○ topher was born to a mother who cared more about her next fix and how to get it, than any of the children she kept wracking up. he'd never met his father (none of them had), not that he'd have been able to point him out in a line-up from the revolving door of partners his mother had coming through their small two bedroom apartment. he spent the majority of his youth taking care of his younger siblings the best he could while the eldest did all they could to keep food on the table. which ultimately, was their undoing. one call to cps and a ten year old toph found himself with a new family with no idea what had happened to his siblings. so much for not splitting them up. luckily for him, the dane's turned out to be great people. he can only hope the other prichard kids had the same outcome.

○ the downside to being raised in a good family? there are suddenly expectations of you. and, to cyril dane─who is by all counts topher's father at this point in time─toph just never seems to hit his mark. he never seems happy or as satisfied with the life dear ol' dad strives for him to have. hell, he went to college just to keep the man happy and it was easily the worst experience of his life (that of with his mother, not excluded. what? experience is subjective!) to be honest, he just doesn't have it in him to commit. i mean, other than to the diner he's been working at since he'd practically hit puberty. no desk job or proper title or, hell, even a fireman's badge could make him as content as he is standing in a hot kitchen making mediocre food and bullshitting with his favorite kind of people in the world. much to his father's dismay.

○ toph is the kind of guy who a thousand percent believes in the paranormal and extraterrestrials and all of the not-so-human history of mw, but absolutely doesn't want to go into the looking for aliens? why? why would we do that? for what reaso─fine. i'll go, because you're going, but i'll complain the entire time! and i want pizza after! regardless of his many (and i mean many) attempts of convincing objections, he loves it a hell of a lot more than he lets on. and those weekends he spends with mystery inc? well. he looks forward to that shit all damn week long.

plot hooks;

the dane family. adopted family headed by cyril danes. check out syl's plothooks! (tw: cult involvement in papa dane’s history!)

bio siblings + mother. as said above, toph was adopted when he was younger after his mom failed to be able to take care of he and his siblings properly. at this time he's never really had much contact with them, being separated and such. i think it'd be cool if one of them showed up one day looking for family to connect to? or even his mom which would be... so so much drama. none of the kids ever knew their fathers either, so that could also be interesting?

the rest of the gang. noor made a mystery inc. group that toph here is the scooby of! fred and shaggy are still open and so very needed! i lowkey would love if the fred and toph always bumped heads a bit bc he doesn't take shit seriously and fred is obv the leader and is probably like, jfc dude, take your adderall. and if the shaggy could be his absolute best friend i would cry?? (x)

the rejects employees of starlight diner. honestly, topher is probably working more than he is at home just because he gets bored hella easily and idk if he’s working he can at least not feel guilty about being an active disappointment lol make some co-workers?? (x)

[callioope]

HEY GUYS! I watched the livestream of Rogue One with writers Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz. I took notes. Because that’s what I DO. I jotted down some of my takeaways. Please note I was watching RO, watching the stream, taking notes, and also doing a few other things so these MAY NOT BE PERFECT. Please feel free to correct me if you see something I misrepresented. That said I tried to be accurate. 

YES they DO TALK ABOUT the romantic chemistry between Jyn & Cassian but that is literally at the end, but feel free to peruse the rest of the points because there’s some pretty interesting insights (some good and some bad O_O like Cassian’s original storyline, yuck)

ANYWAYS let’s go

Inglourious Bastards inspired the Lah’mu scene (Gary Whitta wrote this scene, although he admitted it changed a lot but a lot of the structure and ideas stayed in)

In the original version of the script, Lyra was a Jedi in hiding, but this was one of the first things that got killed

Mads thinks he plays a bad guy, but Gary thinks he played a good guy

They talked about how Galen originally wanted to use kyber crystals for energy, but it got weaponized (which is talked about Catalyst)

stormtrooper doll is a gareth edwards touch

idea was that there’d be good people on the Imperial side and bad people on the rebel side

Cassian’s first scene on the Rings of Kafrene was written by Tony Gilroy (who wasn’t present in the stream) later. In the earlier versions, the DS is something that Jyn goes and finds. It was much more like Zero Dark Thirty where she was putting together the clues, and it was a battle for Jyn to get the rebels to take it seriously, but that was too much of a slow burn. So the Tivik scene was to replace that and introduce the idea that Cassian can be dark. Everyone admired Diego’s beautiful bit of acting as he's just lost a little bit of his soul in the fight for justice, the morality is the first victim. It’s very subtle but it’s one of Gary’s fave pieces of acting in the movie

Chris said for awhile they had Ord Mandell, then shifted to the notion of something more like in Casablanca, so a bit of a flavor of that, a part of the Empire that has been taken over that is under violent oversight

Gary said in the original, Jyn went to Ord Mantell (mentioned in Empire?) to find an arms dealer to help her find Saw, then went to another planet where Saw was living on a moon called Yarid

Budget realities played a part in the decision making to scale this back; they wanted to put so much more but just couldn’t fit it in

Originally we were supposed to see the rebels evacuate Dantooine and move to Yavin 4, but it didn’t really accomplish anything in the story accept to nod to SW fans. It didn’t move the story forward and would have cost too much

It was Tony Gilroy writing with Jyn getting freed on Wobani. Some original ideas had toyed with possibilities that she was a deserter or Rey-like scavenger, but obviously you can’t do that once you learn what the the Empire does (chris)

Only time they didn’t use a title card was Mustafar bc they wanted fans to go OH SHIT IT'S MUSTAFAR, also worked bc Mustafar would have been one of those off-the-map planets

Gary was responsible for getting Mothma in the movie

How much did the Yavin 4 briefing get worked on? A lot. sort of inspired by a scene from Apocalypse Now.

“I think this movie really beautifully bridges the gap between the original and prequel” and one of the ways it does that is JIMMY SMITS

Lots of gushing over Yavin. “Gareth just shot the shit out of this movie.” so much praise for Gareth’s vision. “Gareth can compose a shot unlike anyone I know.”

The Yavin 4 set was fully contiguous; you could walk from the inside all the way outside in one continuous shot.

K-2SO is a great example of how one character can have many fathers. John Knoll originally came up with him and he was originally a rebel logistics droid envisioned to be a “black C-3PO” (whatever that was supposed to mean - Gary wasn’t sure). Gary proposed that he could be an Imperial droid that was captured by the rebellion and reprogrammed. K-2 was really limited with what he could do working for the Empire, but once he was liberated, he was going to speak his mind. Chris and Tony and Alan all gave him more life, everyone has a little piece of K-2′s parentage.

Only ever one casting choice for Saw, which was Forest Whitaker. Gary also knew Ben Mendelsohn would be cast as krennic, but no one else was cast at that point -- he knew it was down to 3 choices for Jyn, but wouldn’t say who

Chris brought Bodhi into the story (Gary said so but Chris wasn’t sure)

For Tarkin, they took shots from the ANH and unused takes. There was also a mold of Peter Cushing that had been sitting in a prop shop for decades (I didn’t get what movie it was, something where he needed a large prosthetic eye or something), and they scanned that.

Binoculars that Jyn and Cassian look through on Jedha were inspired from the scene in ANH (like when luke looks through them on Tatooine)

Chris was responsible for Jedha, Temple of the Whills, and Chirrut’s connection to the Force. And Bor Gullet, I think. They said Bor Gullet delights in traumatic memories (more delicious to him). There was a cut idea/scene: Bor Gullet made Jyn trade her traumatic memories for information she wanted.

They talked about the two dudes Jyn runs into that are also in ANH and how they survived the destruction of jedha only to get killed by a Jedi the next day - they must have needed to get a drink at a cantina after narrowly leaving Jedha. Puts their presence at the cantina in a new light.

Screenwriters would tell you this [Jyn saving the girl on Jedha] is a classic “save the cat moment” so that we like that character that otherwise we might not -- like jyn [RUDE, but I think they were joking]  [also i took beginner screenwriting in college and YES the “save the cat moment” was like lesson 1 lol

They wanted this war to look like a proper war, and [Jedha] really looks like something you might see happen. Wanted people to feel like it wasn’t just about stormtroopers hassling the guy on the street corner but there were real lives at stake

Commentary on Jyn’s Awesome Fight Scene: this is the first moment Cassian really realizes that Jyn is no one to be messed with 

They guessed that Tony came up with the K-2 gag after Jyn’s fight sequence

Lots of good commentary here about how action scenes need to serve a purpose, they can’t just be fighting: they gotta reveal character and story -- don’t write the specifics of the fight, but write what the action is supposed to mean, let choreographers make it look good

Chris said Gareth kind of requested a character like Chirrut, and Chris had been messing around with a Force priest and they became the same guy. Baze was originally a murderer and criminal, and Chirrut was his confessor figure, and they had a weird codependent relationship in which Malbus would commit crimes and Chirrut would forgive him for it. But in this they are both Guardians of Whills. Baze saving Chirrut reminds Gary of Indiana Jones shooting the guy with the sword. Good example of action sequence having a purpose: showing Chirrut & Baze’s dynamic

Coming up with names in SW -- no real formula, you just know it when you hear it

Lots of freedom to come up with new stuff as long as it doesn’t grossly violate canon. Two Tubes was Tony Gilroy or maybe someone just before him

Allegedly Bib Fortuna’s cousin is in scene at catacombs

Someone wanted a Tusken Raider to leave Tatooine to be one of the rebels, but that was vetoed bc they don’t leave Tatooine

“you don’t want every star wars movie to feel like a remix of your greatest hits” - gary [me: LMAOOOO not everyone got that memo!!!]

Guardians of the Whills: Chris said when he came on board, he wanted to go into some deep George Lucas stuff so he looked at the OG screenplay of SW which is pretty “cuckoo bananas” but it’s unfilmable because it’s so gigantic. but there were so many cool things in it. Originally the Force was known as “The Force of Others" by Lucas so he had Chirrut often referring to it as such

There had to be physical tapes because that’s what was mentioned in ANH. Similarly, Tarkin said it was the first time they destroyed a planet in ANH, so they had to do a smaller test that didn’t conflict with canon but we still get to see the DS do it’s thing

Gary said he got sick of everyone on the internet saying “If the empire’s so smart how come--” so he wanted to make it happen for a reason

Chris said - John Knoll, who apparently has some kind of engineering background, said a project the size of the DS, there’d be hundreds of flaws that would bring down the station. Gary responded - it makes sense that there would be a flaw, but it’s more interesting if the flaw would be there deliberately

They went back to the idea that SW was a fairytale and “only one key that the lock fits in in a fairy tale”

They talked a bit about the “nerdy stuff” and technical details, like how fast does a Star Destroyer go, how fast is travel through hyperspace,” but they were pretty insistent that Star Destroyers go at the speed of narrative. Hyperspace moves at the speed of plot. They don’t think about the gritty details. Story always wins. You try to hide those bits. If tech stuff comes into conflict with story, the story has to win. If you can make it work great, but story should win otherwise. [MY TAKE: I think it’s lazy and you might as well try to make it work if you can, BUT I agree that it shouldn’t necessarily hang up the process, per se.]

They talked about Jyn & Co witnessing the test on Jedha and how it’s important that Jyn & Co witnessed the terrifying destructive power of this weapon, so they know better than anyone how important it is to stop this thing

They said Saw always died in the weapon test. Originally it was on a different moon, but always planned for him to die like that.

Gary mentioned in ANH, there’s more than one empty chair in the DS conference room, but Gary wished there had been only one chair so it could have been Krennic’s specifically and he wasn’t in it.

The idea was that Mothma and other Generals were desperately trying to avoid a war and trying to find a political solution to this crisis, but Palpatine is stringing them along long enough for the DS to be ready. So the Rebels have been strung along and played for fools by Palpatine, but once we realize the Empire has built a genocide weapon, the Rebels finally wake up to the idea that the only solution now is war. Empire has forced our hand. the movie is about the idea that tyrannical regimes always fall bc they go too far and they do something so terrible that people are forced to stand up and fight back. If the empire had never built the DS, Gary thinks they could have won the war and ground the Rebellion down. but bc they got greedy they forced the entire galaxy to take the war seriously, so the DS was really the Empire’s undoing

The Rebellion was like the equivalent of the Second Continental Congress, with squabbling factions and not able to get anything done, and the Empire was able to win in the beginning bc they are authoritarian, unified top down

Gary came up with Eadu, but it was originally in the first act. The whole movie got restructured. Originally they went to Eadu very early and discovered they were building the giant dish for the DS. That was the first scene that Jyn had the clue that the Empire was building something terrible. Later it became less a place where the dish was built and more just where they were harvesting and refining the kyber crystals.

It was originally Saw’s X-Wings that attacked Eadu

“rain = mood” idk who said it but that line popped

originally there were local people called Eadui who told story how facility had poisoned rivers and valleys and farmland. Gary wanted to put a face on the crimes the Empire had committed

Mads doesn’t believe that what Galen did absolves him

In Gary’s version, Krennic came to inspect final version of the dish

Cassian was always meant to be compromised in both Gary and Chris’s versions. He was a double agent: for a long time, he was working for the Empire. Chris added: he had lost people who had been killed by Saw Gerrera, and all he wanted from the Empire was the go ahead to kill Saw rather than Galen. That transmogrified along the lines post-Chris and post-Gary into a rebel intelligence officer who had done terrible things. In the original idea, he changes heart after seeing the Death Star bc it wasn’t what he signed up for, and he had to win back Jyn’s heart bc that DS reveal happens after his double agent ness is revealed.

In the original, Jyn actually gets Galen back to the rebel base, but he’s beyond saving, but his whole speech he gives Jyn in his last moments happened in a medbay

They talked about the score instead of the awesome fight scene after Eadu so BOOO on that. I mean yes the score is brilliant but still I wanted insight into this scene.

I blanked out a little because I was mad they didn’t talk about the Eadu fight scene argh

They were talking about Krennic standing his ground against Vader. and then someone said it was probably something among the Imperial officers that “you haven’t really made it until you’ve been choked by Vader.” O_o sorry we could be talking about Jyn and Cassian DAMNIT

the debate scene on Yavin 4 was recontextualized. always this idea that the rebellion is not one monolithic entity, it’s a collection of worlds all of whom have own leaders and own opinions. rebellion historically messier because it’s democratic and harder to get things done. 

briefly toyed with a Leia appearance (chris) at the big conference scene, but best for Jyn to give the most rousing speech here. 

Who wrote the hanger speech? Spirit of it might be Chris’, but Chris thinks it’s Tony Gilroy. Big difference from version Gary wrote: Jyn convinced the rebels. But he thought it was cool now that Jyn goes rogue and it’s only when Mothma finds out she’s committed to that that she makes the decision to back her up. But in the original she convinced Mothma, and everyone got around the table and said here’s the plan. Chris thinks it was in one of his drafts that they went off on their own. 

in Gary’s version Jyn was Rogue Leader. 

Chris had grunts complaining all the flyboys create dramatic names for their squadrons but that got nixed

Gary had idea that K-2 had scraped off his markings but had to have them painted back on to go to Scarif and K-2 hated it

Mothma talking to Bail is one scene that survived word for word form Gary’s original script

They talked a little bit about the decision to have the characters die, but I was drafting a question and missed it

They talked about how they came up with Scarif and decided to make it tropical -- what sort of place hasn’t been seen before? sort of coming from production and gareth. but also building these places to fulfill the needs of the story -- like building a walkway that only one person can get across

a lot of extras in Scarif were real ex-military, and Gary said a couple of the X-Wing pilots were real-life RAF tornado pilots

didn’t have Blue Squadron in the ANH bc it interfered with the blue screen

Gareth said “give me a mon calamari that looks like churchill’ and that’s Raddus

Chris and Tony killed pretty much everybody. Sounds like Gary just killed K-2? Unclear bc I missed the main part of that when they were talkinga bout it.

They commented on how RO is one of the darkest tonally movies but also so colorful, beautiful blue sky

They wanted to pay tribute to Battle of Endor

they couldn’t remember who was responsible for ‘stardust’ but it wasn’t gary or chris

who’s idea was it to cut off the “I’ve got a bad idea about this”? gary had a different version of it, Jyn said “I've got a good feeling about this” (which ultimately got used in Solo) 

Someone asked about the footage in trailer that wasn’t in the movie: Chris heard on good authority that the TIE fighter in front of Jyn was actually never intended to be used, was always a trailer-specific moment. he said he didn’t know how she would have gotten out of that one. k-2 died on the beach. chris wasn’t sure but as the scenes get cut together in production and post, the narrative necessities can change bc of logistical needs. but some shots were so cool they were perfect for trailers. Some talk on how trailers and movies are very different things in general.

Gary said originally there were two separate facilities on Scarif: vault and comm tower were separated by stretch of beach. so needed to liberate plans from vault and get across beach to tower. as they looked at what they had, there were too many moving parts and they wanted to simplify, so they put vault and tower in same complex.

did they ever consider letting Chirrut pull the lever using the force? NOPE. 

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me” was Chris. it goes on, it’s supposed to be like a psalm for Jedi, but eh wanted a sort of lord’s prayer type of thing. 

HELL YES someone asked about the romance between Cassian and Jyn! Was there any romantic potential in any script? YES!!! they said!! yes!!! And Chris said he wouldn’t be surprised if a kiss was shot either! 

BUT they went on to say they wanted to side-step the trope that every male and female hero have to be involved.

But clear GARY said yes early on, there was definitely romantic chemistry that got scaled back to a mutual respect, but they’ve obviously grown close. Gary doesn’t think there was anything romantic and they said people found that refreshing. ‘what they’ve been through is the meaningful part” and “‘the stuff that is happening around them is too important" and “it speaks to their character that they wouldn’t let that intrude”

someone said it was like they were walking into a sunset but it was a mushroom cloud and THEN someone QUIPPED that it was sorta like the sunset walking into them RUDE

There was more after that but that was pretty exhausting to keep up with!!!! so i’m wiped. anyone else get any fun takeaways that I missed?

[smwelchh]

Ok so I know I have posted a s2 prediction a while ago but now that we know there is s2 I’m going to post and update prediction/wants

Let’s start with the kooks (since I’m clearly in love with Drew Starkey)

It’s also color coded bc I’m an organizational freak and I like things in a nice neat order. It will probably also have typos and some words left out but y’all will get the gist.

The Kooks

Rafe Cameron (people want redemption, but I honestly don’t think that would be good for him this season. Maybe later down the road)

Still under the pressure of Ward obviously

Still has a cocaine addiction

Trys to be as cool as possible when it comes to the shooting Perterkin

More back story on his life

Obviously Rose is a step mom so maybe his real mom leaving play a part in why Rafe does what Rafe does

What motivates Rafe other than pleasing his father and drugs

Topper Thornton

I think Topper slowly get redemption

I mean he saved John B in the bell tower that has to be a start right

I think he still simps over Sarah

I also think he trys to tell Kelce the truth about Rafe

Slowly starts a friendship with the Pouges

I think Topper and Rafe will still be friends but Top will be more reserved around him now

Kelce (idk his last name in the show)

MORE OF HIM

More

More

More

That’s all

No but seriously I want more of Kelce trying to figure out if he can trust Topper or Rafe

I also want to see Kelce and Pope form a friendship

Yeah just give me more Deion he’s a great actor who needs more credit

Ward Cameron

Eww

Go to hell

We don’t like you

But in actuality I think Ward gets what he deserves hopefully

Hopefully he gets charged with murder of Big John and of Scooter

We tend to forget about that Ward sent Scooter into the storm that killed him

And he should be charged with the murder of the mainlanders bc that was obviously Ward

Yeah jail time for boss man would be great

But he’s the biggest, richest kook on the island so I low key feel like he gets away with it

Rose Cameron

Honestly she is annoying to me

But I think she gets better

Obviously she is going to back her rich husband’s story about what happened

She still hates Rafe

Kinda trys to help find Sarah or something

Still doesn’t really care about Wheezie

That’s about it

Wheezie Cameron

Questions her whole life

Doesn’t know if she should believe Rafe and her father or Sarah

Gets super emotional when she finds out about Sarah being lost at sea

Low key over hears Ward and Rafe going over their story and tells all of the outer banks

Or maybe she hears them but doesn’t believe it idk Jonas work your magic

The Pouges

John B

Struggles to get the gold

Has to go on another treasure hunt

Bc lets face it Ward hid that shit

Deals with his emotions on his father being gone

Deals with how Sarah really feels

Finally calls the rest of the Pouges

His uncle comes back from Mississippi and find out he’s lost at sea and “murdered Peterkin”

I think I would also like to see his mom come back not sure through

Once he gets the gold back he would obviously have to figure out a way to get it back to the OBX.

When he gets back to the OBX he’s obviously going to split with the others but I also think he is going to work on being a better friend

And yeah that’s all I have for now

JJ Maybank

Let me start this by saying he should have been on the boat not Sarah, but that another story

I don’t want to think about this but he has to tell is dad what happened with the Phantom

His dad probably most likely will beat his ass

I think that he will permanently live at the Chataue or with Pope

Maybe forms a bond with Topper and low key work together to figure out what really happened on the runway

I also kind of think JJ gets the HMS and trys to find Sarah and John B that’s just the type of friend he is

I also think he finally speaks up about his abusive father to his the others and has a worse break down than the hot tub scene

I feel like there will be A LOT of crying bc of his story in s2

Pope Heyward

Pope and Kie are like “dating” the 1st couple of episodes but then I feel like by episode 3 they call things off bc it’s too weird

I think Pope gets a redemption interview

Might not get the full scholarship but gets a good amount of it

I think he forms a bond with Kelce and they low key work together to find out the truth

Then JJ and Topper find out and all 4 of them work together idk friends yay who knows maybe not and we still get the adrenaline rush from all the fights

I think Pope kind of drifts from the Pouges in the beginning to work on college stuff but then by the middle is like screw this is my friend still alive or nah

Kiara Carrera

Ditches Pope real quick

Pulls the “no Pouge on Pouge” rule

I WANT A FULL EPISODE DEDICATED TO HER KOOK YEAR

I think she had a thing with Rafe during that year and maybe that’s the real reason her and Sarah weren’t friends for a while

I low key want her to give her share of the gold to JJ or Pope since she was born a kook and knows they need it more than her

Sarah Cameron (she gets both colors bc of obvious reasons)

I think she somehow knew everything that happened was going to happen. Like idk how to explain.

Like I feel Sarah knew Ward was going to buy the Crain the house and take the gold from John B and the Pouges, but idk why I feel that way

I think while I’m the Bahamas she comes to realize that her father is a bad man and in no way can she trust him at all

Obviously she has her own things to deal with and I think she does work through some struggles

I also think once her and John B have the gold back in the outer banks she drops that boy like a hot pocket

I know Chase said he thinks John B and Sarah are end game but I don’t think so sorry bud you and Madelyn yeah I can see end game but not John B and Sarah

And I think that’s bc she lets someone get close gets what she wants and drops them

Hopefully she won’t do him dirty

But all in all I kinda liked Sarah but I have a feeling my view of her is gonna change in s2

The story enhancers

Peterkin

MOMMA IS ALIVE AND WELL

I think homegirl is in the hospital in recovery

I think she had to have emergency surgery to remove the bullet and patch her up and all that

She arrests Ward for what she was originally doing

Arrests Rafe for attempted murder and drugs

Finds out that John B is in the Bahamas and contacts him to let him him know he’s been cleared (since she low key watched out for him) and she knows everything that happens in the OBX

Also she reminds me of one of the principals I work for at one of the local high schools in my city

Shoupe

I think he starts to look into the Ward theory of things under the radar

Obviously the whole island still thinks John B did everything

But I think Shoupe slowly starts to put the pieces together and find out that Ward really killed Big John and Rafe really short Peterkin

I think he also finds out that Peterkin is alive but doesn’t tell anyone

Like I think he starts secret files at his house or something and has a whole different investigation going on outside of the police station

Bc you know “murder was the case that they gave me”

Barry

He is probably one of my favorite characters

Thank you Nick for being awesome at what you do, I know I’m supposed to hate you but it’s hard to do that

I think he keeps the secret about Rafe and Peterkin to himself for a little bit

But 25k is a lot of money that JJ took and he wants that back

He’s definitely going to still sell drugs

He definitely still going to call Rafe “country club”

I think for a while he holds the Peterkin thing over Rafes head

All in all I hope Barry doesn’t change other than like minor things that happen with people

Luke Maybank

For one Gary Weeks stand up job my friend

We were supposed to hate your character and we do we all do so fantastic job for doing your job

Also please don’t beat up JJ for taking the Phantom I know you probably will but please take this I to consideration

I have a feeling we will be seeing more of you in s2

Bc you need drugs and you like to abuse your son

I don’t think Luke gets any kind of redemption like at all

I do think he trys to act like he cares when JJ goes off the grid for a while ( he’s either at the chataue or popes or kies)

Then ends up beating his ass

But I think JJ beats his ass in return and stand up to Luke

So that’s all I have for y’all umm I’m open to discussion if you want or if you have questions. Umm yeah so have a lovely night (it’s 12:19 where I am) or afternoon or day ❤️

[laundryandtaxes]

Hi Julia, I'm gonna push back on your post re: nyc. I grew up in another city in New York State and moved to the city at 17 for work, never going to college. I've lived in three different boroughs, and never held a lease, just for context. I think the divide of "native New Yorker" vs "transplant" is in many ways created as a way of sewing division and doesn't reflect that in every strongly-rooted ethnic group, immigrant or otherwise, there is a certain amount of coming and going. For me, every generation of my fam has come here to live for a time since immigrating, despite moving to the south or Midwest. That's super common for my ethnicity and common in many other groups here.

Many if not most of my friends who grew up here have nuanced views on this, and when it gets down to it see it beyond a binary of "native vs nonnative". I think that viewing it as a binary isn't particularly useful. There are definitely alienated internal migrants and people who move to join elite communties, but most of my friends who grew up here have lived elsewhere for a time, and if there have family or ethnic community here aren't weird about it.

This model of discourse doesnt usually talk about the strongly rooted elite/borgeiouse here, and many people who migrate to NYC internally do it for social and economic reasons. Particularly pre-pandemic, the gay and ballroom scenes were massive draws, and jobs in certain industries are concentrated here. Wealthy residents are catered to, and certain type of internal migrant/wealthy expat/wealthy immigrant is definitely catered to by legislation that favors gentrification and has made the city a playground for the rich. The city has intentionally eroded public housing, but it remains that a higher percentage of residents live in public housing, rent controlled apartments well-below market value or recieve housing subsidies here than nearly any other city in the country. People will get on public housing and section 8 waiting lists and leave the city or even country. To be here and to stay here is very tenuous for many multigenerational residents. Regardless, migration and immigrantion have been part of NYC since it began having a distinct culture towards the 1820's. Culture and social creation has never been the exclusive domain of people born here, and NYC is what it is because of born-residents, immigrants, internal migrants and being a center of cultural and social community that draws people from around the world. If it was just one of these things it wouldn't be NYC.

NYC is a place that feels disconnected from the (rest of) the USA and I think that the politicization of desire to be here will have implications exacerbated by the pandemic.

Re: nyc again:

Many wealthy people leave nyc because there isn't a great bang for your buck in the same way as other parts of the country. It's honestly a shitty and expensive place for the rich lmao.

And many poor/working class people come here bc of enviable renters protections, higher wages, and special education for disabled kids. In particular people come from within the eastern seaboard, New England and south for all of these things.

Thank you for another perspective! I am not from New York myself, so my perception of the city comes largely from the accounts of friends who are from NYC, and media, but just like with anywhere you can’t get a complete picture of what a place is like based on those two things.

I will say that a lot of what you’ve said here strongly contradicts my idea of what the city is like, some of which is based on personal experience. I considered a move to NYC at some point with an ex girlfriend (which, holy shit thank goodness that didn’t work out) and I have to say that in particular the idea of NYC as a place with “enviable renters protections [and] higher wages” specifically doesn’t square with what I saw when I researched those two things. Wages in NYC for work that doesn’t require degrees didn’t look good at all, and as far as renter’s protections go, my current understanding is that rent control is awesome but that landlords regularly engage in tenant harassment to pressure rent controlled tenants out of units and the city does almost nothing about it. The second is based more on recent articles I read and news pieces I watched about NYC, but the last time I looked at wages in NYC I was extremely unimpressed given the cost of housing alone, and when I was running the numbers for myself (this was maybe 2015ish) I came away not understanding how anyone could possibly afford to live in the city unless they 1) made a ton of money, in order to afford the outstanding rents, or 2) got into a rent-controlled apartment, which it seemed it was not easy to do unless you knew someone, like I did at the time, who was basically going to tell their landlord to hand you the lease. Obviously I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I am very surprised to hear that anyone thinks of NYC as a place with genuinely solid rent protections and good wages, because the last time I looked it really did not seem like either of those was the case. If that is the case, that’s awesome and I am very glad to hear it. The story I was told by friends was largely one of intense, almost unbearable pressure from gentrification and jobs not paying nearly enough for the cost of living and being actively displaced by people who came to the city with an absurd amount of money to spend. So if that isn’t actually the case, that’s very very good news because I kind of had what I THINK of as contemporary NYC built up in my head as this horror story of the worst things that could happen to a city.

I also am not intimately familiar with the culture of NYC, but I have to say that I don’t think I agree with the idea that ‘ "native New Yorker" vs "transplant" is in many ways created as a way of sewing division’ because I don’t think that concept is unique at all to NYC- I certainly have a lot of a specific kind of pride in having been born and raised in Chicago, I and most other Chicagoans consider it genuinely offensive and rude when people who grew up in suburbs nearby tell people they are from Chicago, I and most other Chicagoans see ourselves, I would say, as a particular breed of people who share a particular kind of roots in this place, and I don’t think that pride is harmful or bad in any way. I would never tell someone that moving here is an evil thing to do- I consider roughly 10 years of residency to grant you the right to refer to yourself as a Chicagoan and not just a Chicago resident lol- or say that transplants to Chicago are categorically bad people. Half of that is just stupid cultural stuff, really, and shouldn’t be taken very seriously. But I don’t think the concept itself is bad. I have a fundamentally different relationship to Chicago than someone who grew up anywhere else and moved here, no matter how long they moved here, and I don’t think it is harmful at all to be open about and proud of that. I would never make the claim that transplants haven’t made massive contributions to the city, and I would assume most native New Yorkers wouldn’t make that claim about transplants to NYC.

Thank you for sharing your personal understanding of the situation there, and I am very surprised to hear that the proportion of residents in NYC who live in public or rent controlled housing is quite high, and glad to hear it. As needlessly aggressive as Chicagoans (myself included) can be when “New York” is even uttered aloud, I obviously have a lot of real respect for the city and I am glad to hear that it hasn’t just been mostly ruined in the way I had imagined it. This is a good lesson in taking any media you see about a place whose name will get clicks/engagement just by virtue of the aura of the place (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc) with several grains of salt. If I was only familiar with Chicago through media I’d think it was some super dangerous place when it definitely isn’t categorically.