#but if a writer writes a story and place subtle indicators you have no right to question it since it's a FACT

[fiftytwoeightythree]

tbh i didnt like mobeomtaksi 1 bec of hanas character. her character was forced &i think the writer wanted more bw her & doki. mobeomtaksi 2 didnt feel that pushy and was more focused on others and the bad guys. but i understand where u coming from :)

oh, oh, oh....

ok, let me put my thoughts into coherent words. so-

i also understand where you are coming from, anon. you're not alone with this opinion. of course, you are all allowed to hate her character & everything, especially that it wasn't in the original webtoon to begin with, so it was given that it'll modify the outcome of the drama. but times like this i always wonder: do people watch dramas as they are or as they want it to be like?

i think these are empty projections to be very honest.

i have never despised her character and i have never seen any implications that they meant to be, therefore i don't understant the general outrage she's getting. it's people and their warped imagination that goes "they'll have a relationship, look at them! the hate they feel for each other is so intense it's nearly attraction and love!" let me ask you: do you also feel attraction to people you hate and have different values from? if not, then why do you force this emotion on a pair that showed no sign of attraction but more likely utter loath (and then some understanding) based on how they're handling justice differently?

kang hana wanted to get rid of dogi and ceo jang from the very beginning while dogi kept his distance from her as much as he could because he knew she means huge danger. why do you all trying to force romantic feelings into plots that have different stories to tell? why do you all think that a story isn't whole without romance when it's obviously not true? it's you all that project that love line into stories, not the writers.

those that complain that "she was annoying, she was everywhere!" of course, you smartass peanut. as a prosecutor, who saw a mysterious car taking away criminals, sniffing out that one of your closest acquitances did it, with a mindset that you 'have to catch that one true criminal even if it means letting go a hundred' you'd also be everywhere near them. if she'd just stood on the sidelines, thinking "something is going on but it's my boss' best friend and my boss also told me to stay put anyway" then she wouldn't do her job right - and that was also the point of the story. kang hana was a prosecutor that took her job seriously & did it right while the other deadbeat prosecutors did what their boss and secured connections told them to do, and was also restricted by idiotic laws these criminals knew like the back of their hand - as that rat park yangjin did. please, be serious for a moment.

i also find it strange that when fans like me point out that dogi showed bigger affection towards goeun, people usually go "but don't they have a more sibling-like connection? i mean, their age difference-" again, if you had actually watched the drama and not let your imagination take over and write a different story, you'd seen that their connection is not sibling-like, (also not love-like, true), but it's obvious that the two have something going on. go eun seeing the bandaid set dogi gave her in the middle of her breakdown, dogi rushing to her after goeun saw the videos of her sister, or concentrating saving her first before everyone else in the end - subtle signs of placing her in front, and not because she's the only woman on board. and the joke is they've somewhat even confirmed this at the end of season 2 when they had a beer on the rooftop. dogi is not creepy towards goeun, and goeun never threw herself at him, but you could see how she was a little jealous of hana and how goeun is important to dogi. apart from this, i don't think age is a matter in here since they've met as real adults. (not to mention that esom is only two years older than pyo yejin, so all this age difference yapping is tiresome the least).

so again: do you all actually watch these dramas or fantasize about a different outcome out of anger? the creators push the signs and clues into your faces, what more do you need to read them?

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Literary & Character Tropes

The word trope comes from the Greek word tropos, meaning a turn or change of direction.

Tropes

Figures involving substitutions of predictable words with terms that deliver nuanced meanings serving an argument.

Now used in cultural studies in a much broader sense as a recurring cultural signifier.

Traditionally the four ‘master tropes’ are regarded as being: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.

Modern Definition: Themes, motifs, plot devices, plot points, and storylines that have become familiar genre conventions.

PURPOSE: All writers manipulate language to create certain effects. At the level of individual phrases and sentences, the skillful use of tropes is key to creating writing that’s fresh, memorable, and persuasive. Poets might spend hours trying to find just the right metaphor (i.e., a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them, as in "drowning in money") to capture a mood or sensation, while marketers might use antanaclasis (i.e., the repetition of a word within a phrase or sentence in which the second occurrence utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first; often found in slogans) to create a punchy catchphrase for a new product.

5 Examples of Literary/Character Tropes

1. all lowercase letters - a stylistic choice in which all text is in lowercase letters. it can be thought of as the opposite of writing in all caps when emphasizing a point, in which case it can be used to give a melancholic feel to whatever you're writing. it is not generally thought of as orthographically correct, giving it (if only in the eyes of advertisers) a casual, hip feel, as if to say you can't be bothered to use the shift key. also used in a visual narrative sense to indicate childishness or, in some cases, idiocy. on a darker note, however, this trope also has a tendency to show up in many an apocalyptic log where it usually is used to denote the point where the unfortunate author has gone insane or otherwise given up all hope.

2. Anti-hero - A character who lacks a handful of the traditional attributes of a hero but is ultimately heroic. They may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely apathetic. More often an anti-hero is just an amoral misfit. While heroes are typically conventional, anti-heroes, depending on the circumstances, may be preconventional (in a "good" society), postconventional (if the government is "evil") or even unconventional. Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, and the grittier versions of Batman are all prime examples of modern antiheroes.

3. Byronic Hero - A character notable for being sullen, withdrawn, hard to like and hard to know, but usually possessing a rich inner life and a softer side accessible only to a special few.

4. Chekhov's Gun - Anton Chekhov, master of the short story, gave this advice: If it's not essential, don't include it in the story. The term has come to mean an insignificant object that later turns out to be important.

5. Unreliable Narrator - In most narratives, there's an element of trust that the person telling you the story is telling the truth, at least as far as they know it. This trope occurs when that convention is discarded. The narrator's facts contradict each other. If you ask them to go back a bit and retell it, the events come out a little differently. Example: Franz Kafka. Due to his famous style, he's able to directly contradict himself within the same sentence, AND make it so subtle that a casual or superficial reader will scarcely notice. The Metamorphosis and The Judgment stand out in this respect.

Sources: 1 2 3 4

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

More: Literary & Character Tropes

[clumsyclifford]

ok hello i absolutely love all ur fics, you’ve just got a certain quality in ur writing that is just… mmm. yeah so anyway, do you have any advice on how to improve or just how to write?? (especially fic cause personally i struggle with that more than original stuff??)

hello!! that is very kind of you to say thank you <3

advice on how to write. oh boy. oh man. well i can try. i will do my best. i will also try to be brief but we all know how that song goes

update from having finished answering this: alright. okay. this is not only long, but decidedly english teacher-y. i’m sorry that i am the way that i am. this is what you get for asking a leo for writing advice. am i joking? maybe. maybe not. anyway. this post got away from me in a big way so here’s a read more. warning: LONG post under the cut.

1. study your characters. for RPF like the band stuff i write, that literally means watching interviews, watching them perform, seeing how they interact with each other, picking up on their mannerisms (behavior) - what they do with their hands, if they repeat themselves or stutter when they talk, the quality of their voice when they're talking about different things, and so on. also keep track of things they mention a lot in interviews especially about each other - for example jack has mentioned before that alex has an annoying habit of twirling his hair when he zones out. that kind of thing. IMPORTANT NOTE!: you don’t have to use all of this information. just like studying for anything, you collect all the information you can and then you parse through it and use whatever you think will contribute or be relevant to your story.

2. remember that characters are people. or at least they’re representing people, which is an important distinction (see #3). still, considering that your characters are people can be a helpful way to get out of your head. see, characters are supposed to be archetypical, and fulfill a role, and say certain things in certain ways and never really deviate from that. but people are highly unpredictable and behave in random ways for random reasons and have thought processes that are unfathomable. people will just do fuckin’ whatever. if you’re worried that your characters aren’t behaving in a believable way, keep in mind that you’re trying to make your characters represent people, and people’s behavior is justifiable any number of ways. people just do shit.

3. remember that characters are not people. sike! no but seriously, this is just as important to remember. unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, characters are never going to be people. that’s a good thing for stories, though. characters can pick up on nuance in senses that people can’t - they can distinguish between different facial expressions, different smells, different sounds - BUT ONLY INSOFAR AS IT MOVES THE STORY ALONG. in other ways, characters are ridiculously oblivious. you can use this to your advantage. in fact, a lot of the time, you have to. if your character notices right away that someone is flirting with him, then you can’t write a 30k slow burn, for example. characters don’t do that thing humans do where they go “what?” but then halfway through the re-explanation they register what’s been said. pretty much everything characters say has meaning. (by this i don’t mean semantic meaning, i mean significance - characters don’t really just say “what?” because they didn’t hear what someone said, they say “what?” because they can’t believe it or they don’t understand it or they refuse to understand it. characters never seem to run into the didn’t-hear-them problem. must be nice.)

characters can do whatever you want or need them to do, because you’re in charge of them. (sometimes this doesn’t feel true - mine do all kinds of shit and i just have go “well alright then” - but it is true.) they are gears in a story. you decide when and how they turn.

4. dialogue is your friend. i am super super biased here, because i looove writing dialogue. if you talk to sam about this i’m sure she would say that description and narration are the ways to go. but you came to me, so i get to say that dialogue is god. i don’t want to say that dialogue is the only method of communication (i know nonverbal communication is real), but dialogue is the fastest and most effective method of communication, and by extension, the most effective way to advance relationships between characters. now. obviously there are exceptions. if characters are kissing, they’re probably not doing a lot of talking. if they’re trying to be undercover or discreet, they’re more likely to rely on gestures and facial expressions than speaking. if you’re writing a very peaceful scene, you might not want to undercut it by adding a lot of chit-chat. but i maintain that dialogue is the best way to move a story along, for a few reasons. 

first, at least for me, too much description is just tiring. depending on how skillful the writer is (sam), i can read a fair amount before i hit my limit, but unlike in mean girls, the limit DOES exist. you don’t want to over-describe the world (see #5). second, i find that dialogue is a really really good indicator of a person’s character. this is especially true and relevant in fanfiction, which is a lot more character-driven than original fiction in many ways. also, in a sec i’m gonna talk about showing [not/and] telling, which is every english teacher’s bitch, but dialogue is a really good way of showing who a person is and also a good way to establish facts about the universe. you could just narrate and be like “Jack hated waking up early,” and that works and in many cases it’s perfectly legit. but you could also do something like this:

“What the fuck,” Jack mumbled, still half asleep. “You better have a really fucking good reason to be waking me up this early. Like someone better have fucking died.”

and sometimes that’s just a more fun way to say it. (for the record you can also show AND tell here! there’s no reason why you can’t have this line of dialogue and then a line in the narration confirming how very much jack is not a morning person!)

the last reason why i am particularly fond of dialogue is because i am also particularly fond of communication, which is a preference thing. let’s face it, guys: characters aren’t gonna communicate if they’re not literally actually talking to each other. dialogue means talking to each other. talking to each other means solving problems, fixing (or creating) conflicts, understanding each other better. i love communication, ergo, i love dialogue. And You Should Too. 

5. describe the world, but don’t over-describe. i opened this fic earlier and it was like “jack was excited to wake up to go to his first class at the university of baltimore” and i just. i was like is this really relevant. do i really need to know this. and i never found out because i closed the fic but in my defense it was on wattpad and i had only opened it out of curiosity. look. there are three ways to use details in fic. (a) introduce them right away (b) introduce them when they become relevant or (c) don’t introduce them at all. let me give you some examples. 

(a) say your character A (i’m using jack because i’m used to him) wakes up. he’s in his room in his house off-campus. character B (rian) walks into the room. this might be a good time to explain that rian is his housemate. to that point: “show not tell” is a good rule, but sometimes “show and tell” is just as good. e.g.: 

Rian walks in, holding Jack’s Green Day shirt and looking irritated. That’s really nothing new; Rian looks irritated at Jack roughly once a day. Being housemates for a year will do that to a friendship.

boom, now you’ve let everyone know they live together without throwing it in their face, and you’ve also told everyone that these two guys are friends and have been friends for at least a year but probably longer. you showed it by having rian walking in holding jack’s shirt - usual housemate behavior - but you also told it in a subtle way that established the relationship and some kind of history between these two. well done.

(b) sometimes you want a certain detail to make an impact. this is the kind of thing you hold onto and don’t specify, and in certain cases you leave the reader wondering, “well what about x?” and then when you finally explain x they go ohhhhhhhhhh. yknow. the italicized oh. consider the following:

(A)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says, referring to Jack’s ex-boyfriend of last year.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

(B)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

the only difference between these two excerpts (which i just wrote lol they’re not from anything real) is that the second one doesn’t explain who alex is right away. that makes it way more interesting when rian reveals who alex is a few lines later. magic.

(c) take this college au that we’ve established here. where does it take place, you ask? easy answer: it doesn’t matter. you don’t need to say what school they’re at. this will make your job easier, because then no one can fact check you, and it also means you don’t have to decide what school they’re at. but even if you do decide, it’s not usually necessary to say. believe me, you can go thousands of words without ever needing to specify what school they’re at. you know why? because it doesn’t matter. and no one cares. and as soon as you specify in canon that they’re at a particular school, you are bound to be accurate to everything that school does, and that makes your job way more difficult than it needs to be. as hazel once said, work smarter, not harder. 

6. adverbs are also your friend. (yknow, words that describe verbs, typically ending in -ly, like “loudly” or “angrily” or “smoothly”.) ESPECIALLY when it comes to dialogue tags. (dialogue tags are the things you add to dialogue to say who’s talking and how they’re talking - like “he said” or “he whispered” or “he earnestly explained” or whatever). a lot of the writing advice you’ll see nowadays will usually guide you away from overusing dialogue tags other than the classic “says/said” and i STRONGLY concur with that advice. things like yelled, cried, mumbled, snapped - these are very good in moderation, when you’re really trying to emphasize the way a person is speaking. the more you use them, the less impact they have. in most cases, a simple “he said [adverb]” will do. instead of “he snapped” consider “he said curtly/sharply/coldly.” instead of “he mumbled” consider “he said quietly/clumsily/softly.” I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THESE ARE NOT DIRECT SYNONYMS. every word has a nuanced and slightly different meaning and that is the BEAUTY of the english language!!!! all i’m saying is that in many cases, a verb can be replaced with an adverb to achieve roughly the same effect, without making the reader feel like they’re scanning a thesaurus.

and speaking of a thesaurus: it’s not cheating to use outside resources like thesaurus.com to help you come up with words. i fuckin love thesaurus.com. i use that shit all the time for everything. i use it when i’m writing emails. i used it just now to write that last paragraph. thesaurus.com is your BEST friend.

7. grammar. (and spelling but that’s really a given.) unfortunately if i tried to teach you all of the essential rules of grammar this post would exceed tumblr’s previously-nonexistent word count limit. so i’m not gonna teach you any of them. this is just a general point to suggest that if/when you’re writing, have someone you trust, with a good grasp of grammar, look over it. of course it doesn’t have to be perfect or AP style or anything like that. readers will overlook a certain amount of grammar mistakes and every reader has a different threshold. but in general, as a grammar geek and former journalism editor-in-chief, i have a duty to my grammurai code to preach the importance of grammar in writing. good grammar does not necessarily mean good writing and vice versa, bad grammar does not necessarily mean bad writing, but bad grammar makes good writing a lot harder to read, and in some cases will even obscure your actual meaning. so please, have someone read it. for the record this is me offering up my services. i am very good at fixing grammar. i have lots of weaknesses in writing but grammar is one of my strengths. please prioritize grammar. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

***

okay so now that i’ve said all of this shit and pretended to be an expert and embodied everyone’s tenth grade english teacher, let me add one very important disclaimer:

none of this is always relevant.* writing is an art, not a science. you are never going to be following all of the rules, all of the time. you shouldn’t. it’s good to know the basics of constructing a plot, establishing a character, showing and/not telling, moving the story along. but a lot of this advice is really subjective and heavily influenced by my writing experience and habits and tendencies and preferences, and those are simply not generalizable to the world. i am a sample size of one and science dictates that that means my results cannot be statistically significant. i am just some guy. earlier i said you don’t want to over-describe the world. but maybe you do! maybe you’re really into worldbuilding and you want people to know what they’re getting into. maybe you’re like sam, and you just don’t feel as confident in your dialogue skills but you love painting word pictures. i said that adverbs are your friend, but maybe you just prefer to use verbs. maybe you don’t want ANY dialogue tags and you want the reader to interpret the dialogue based on context and content. i said that characters aren’t people and they won’t behave like people, but maybe you’re trying to write hyper-realistic characters. maybe you’re just going for believability over narrative. WHATEVER. the point is, rules are made to be broken. no one is going to have The Answer for How To Write Good because there isn’t just one answer. every single writing rule has exceptions and you can be that exception as many times as you want.

*except grammar. grammar is fucking always relevant.

i hope any of this advice was helpful to you, even though i english teacher-ed the fuck out of it. and for what it’s worth, i approached this as if you were a relatively novice writer, but i know absolutely jack shit about your writing prowess and experience and habits. so maybe you already know all of this and none of what i’ve said is helpful at all. if you have a more specific problem, i would be happy to try and help. if you’re hoping for more specific feedback, i’d have to read something of yours first - but again, happy to try and help. i don’t know if you can tell but i loooove writing and english and grammar and all of this shit and it would be my honor. i have now spoken so long that james madison himself is begging me to shut up so i’ll stop here but thank you for coming by and giving me the opportunity to expatiate a shit ton. and GOOD LUCK i forgot the most important advice of writing which is HAVE FUN LOVE WHAT YOU WRITE AND WRITE WHAT YOU LOVE OKAY BYE

[tumblingclockwork]

HI LEAF IVE BEEN HYPERFIXATING ON MC STORY MODE AND ON STAMPYCAT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT STAMPYCAT BEING THE WHITE PUMPKIN IT SOUNDS SO COOL

HELLO HI YES I AM MORE THAN WILLING TO EXPLAIN

Before I start I wanna give a huge shout out to @mephones-declining-mental-health who was actually the first to point a lot of this out. We spent a lot of time putting this all together and she deserves a ton of credit for it. So go check them out.

ok so mcsm is an old game so quick refresher on episode 6: Jesse and his gang end up in another world and are put into a murder-mystery type situation. They’re trapped in the mansion due to zombies and have to survive until the day while the person who invited them all to the mansion (who goes by “The White Pumpkin”) kills them off one-by-one in order to obtain the Enchanted Flint And Steel. Which Jesse is also trying to get. Minus the main cast, everyone in this murder mystery is based off and voiced by famous minecraft YouTubers from the time. This was a pretty genius move on TellTale’s part because it meant the players were already going in with a certain level of attachment to these characters, allowing the game to kill them off in a way that would be emotionally impactful without effecting the plot of the overall story that much.

The people you meet in the mansion are the following youtubers: CaptainSparklez, TorqueDawg, StampyCat, TheDiamondMinecart, LDShadowLady, StacyPlays, and CassieRose

Multiple of these YouTubers are killed off (though some can be either saved or killed depending on your choices) and [spoiler warning] Cassie Rose is revealed to be the white pumpkin at the end. Her motivation being that she’s stuck away from her home world for and desperate to get back.

Now here’s the thing: that doesn’t make Any sense.

Cassie doesn’t have a single line or any piece of evidence that would necessarily point to her being the white pumpkin. The only real evidence that points to her feels so last minute and forced. And just completely disregards any other scene in which you were collecting evidence.

This would be less frustrating if there weren’t multiple other people that had far more evidence against them. But the one who has the most undeniable evidence against them? StampyCat.

Now I don’t know if they changed the story halfway through development or if the writers at TellTale are just bad at their jobs (equally likely but there is some evidence to suggest Cassie was not always the intended White Pumpkin) but Stampy has the most evidence, best motive, and would have just been a very interesting villain entirely.

Let’s go over everything.

So for starters. The first murder.

Spoiler alert! But the first murder is TorqueDawg. He stands under a dispenser that shoots him with a poison tipped arrow and he dies.

Now, tipped arrows were a relatively new thing at the time, and the game makes a point out of this. A lot of the characters in the mansion Don’t Know what a tipped arrow is. But a few do.

After the second murder (which we’ll address in a moment) you have the ability to interrogate three of the characters. LDShadowLady, TheDiamondMinecart, and StampyCat

Lizzie (LDShadowLady) is fully aware of the tipped arrows. Both Dan (TheDiamondMinecart) and Stampy point this out. When you ask her about it, she says she does know how to make them and taught others about it.

One of the people she talked about the tip arrows to is Cassie, aka the white pumpkin. So story-wise it does make sense. But Lizzie also states that Stampy had asked her about the tipped arrows, and specifically how to make them. So we know he has full knowledge of them.

But what does Stampy say when you ask him about the tipped arrows?

“I’ve never seen anything like it before”

This is Never addressed. Not once. Stampy blatantly lies about knowledge of a murder weapon when he seemingly has no reason to do so and he gets away with it.

So Stampy 1. Has the ability to create the weapon used for the murder and 2. Felt the need to hide this ability.

So that’s pretty suspicious right off the bat.

Now these interviews are caused by the second murder. So let’s talk about that.

Second murder: CaptainSparklez is pushed into a sand pit and suffocated by a very elaborate redstone trap. The trap is activated by one of the buttons on the table that they’re all sitting at.

Each of the buttons activates the trap, but only one of them was actually pressed. The connection we’re supposed to make here is that the White Pumpkin set up multiple buttons to keep suspicion off of themself.

The people sitting at the buttons were StampyCat, TheDiamondMinecart, LDShadowLady and Jesse’s friend Lucas.

Now you’ll notice that CassieRose, the actual White Pumpkin, is not on this list.

TheDiamondMinecart (Dan) is the one who presses the button. Dan is supposed to be a Red Herring here as he didn’t know what the button would do and pressed it anyway (though he’s a bad red herring. And we’ll discuss that in a moment). Even with the knowledge that it wasn’t the white pumpkin who pressed it, it doesn’t make any sense for her to have not been sitting at a seat with a button. And this is never really addressed either. Making this scene a complete waste of time, unless of course the original white pumpkin was intended to be one of those 4 people.

The interviews give us a lot of knowledge about the interpersonal relationships of the characters and what their skill levels are. Such as what I discussed earlier about the tipped arrows. But one thing that stays consistent is Jesse’s insistence that whoever the white pumpkin is, they must be good at redstone.

And he’s right. Every trap set by the white pumpkin at this point was redstone activated. Whoever made it must have been very skilled with it. And out of all the suspects there’s only one who has that level of ability. Stampy.

Both Dan and Lizzie make a point of saying that Stampy is a master of redstone and his skill is unmatched. But when Stampy is asked about this, his first instinct is to lie about it. When you catch him in this lie, he immediately back-tracks.

So Stampy

Has knowledge on how to build the first murder weapon (which wasn’t knowledge everyone had at the time)

Completely lies about this knowledge and is never called out for it

Was sitting at one of the buttons that caused the second murder

Is the only one with the redstone knowledge capable of creating the white pumpkins traps.

Lies about his redstone ability

So there you go! That’s a ton of evidence against him! And pretty much no evidence against Cassie other than the fact that she also knew about tipped arrows at the time.

In fact the dinner scene confirms Cassie can’t be a suspect unless we’re supposed to believe she just hoped someone else would do the job for her. Which considering she’s later characterized to be super paranoid and unwilling to leave things to chance, I doubt it.

While looking through secret tunnels you manage to find a secret conversation between Dan and Lizzie where Dan admits that he was the one who pushed the button on accident and that he feels super guilty about it. Jessie spots the white pumpkin looking through a painting at this moment. And considering he’s also seeing Dan and Lizzie, and he knows where Lucas is, out of all the people sitting near buttons, Stampy is the only one left. If the White Pumpkin was someone who was sitting at one of the buttons (which it should have been) it would have had to be Stampy

Now I do think having Dan push the button is realistic and fine. It’s a button. Everyone likes pushing buttons. But the fact that the white pumpkin would Bet On That Happening and not sit near a button at all feels like it couldn’t possibly be right, especially because everything else is so thought through and calculated. It feels out of character for Cassie to do. Cassie being the white pumpkin also means those interview scenes were an entire waste of time. They gave us no real information that could be used in the case and crossed off the real murderer as a possible suspect.

If *Stampy* was the murderer however, this would have made a lot more sense. As the interviews would have given us a lot of info about him and against him. Plus his relationship to the others. Even if Dan turned out to be the one who pressed the button, we still would have gotten that important info on Stampy. Not to mention that Dan just so happening to press the button before the White Pumpkin got a chance is a lot more believable than the White Pumpkin betting on that.

Now the way the story actually goes is that Stampy is revealed to have the enchanted flint and steel (even though before he claimed to not even want it) and as I’ve said, Cassie is revealed to be the white pumpkin.

We learn she’s the white pumpkin because she’s the only one who didn’t have a portrait of herself with a red X over it, which is a sign someone had died. Meaning she was never intended to die at all.

Now because the writing team didn’t put any actual evidence of her being guilty before this, they slip in a Not At All Subtle clue that she’s the white pumpkin.

The white pumpkin’s hide out is Filled with calico cats. The same cats as Winslow (the cat that Cassie had kept with her). And while this is obviously supposed to tell us it’s her, it doesn’t really make much sense as a clue. Considering Winslow is just one cat. A bunch of cats that look like him is sort of out-of-nowhere. She’s had no real evidence against her other than the final connection, meanwhile all signs seem to point to Stampy.

This doesn’t necessarily mean anything but I do think it’s worth mentioning that there is one character who Does have a ton of animals like the ones we see in the white pumpkin’s room. And that’s Stampy. He has a ton of dogs that could have easily taken the place of the cats. But anyway.

This last second Right At The End clue seems to almost indicate that there was some change in writing half way through the process. Before Stampy is revealed to have the flint and steel (which is something that any character could have confessed to and the story would be pretty much the same), the story makes a lot more sense with the idea that Stampy was originally intended to be the white pumpkin. We can also gather that it seems they intended the white pumpkin to be a man, as the protagonists refer to the white pumpkin by he/him pronouns and that assumption is never addressed when they learn the white pumpkin is a girl.

Either that or the writers are just. bad. Which is also very likely.

That’s all the evidence I have. So let’s talk about how story-wise it would have been so much more interesting to make Stampy the white pumpkin.

Cassie is great. But she didn’t get a lot of actual screen time in game until her villain reveal because she really never had any evidence against her. Stampy however got a lot of screen time and was generally the fan favorite when it came to the youtubers that were in episode 6. He was one of the most beloved youtubers at the time and the writers took that into account.

Whenever Stampy was accused of something, he’d play the innocent card. He’d say things like “it’s me! Stampy! I’m everyone’s friend!” In an attempt to get sympathy. Instead of defending himself, he played at the emotions of the people around him. He was played as the sweet innocent character who wouldn’t do anything wrong. I think this would have made him a Great twist villain. It would have made a lot more sense for the end scene as well, as the other youtubers defend Cassie, saying she would “never do something like that”. Which never really made sense considering they all knew one of them must have done it, and none of them had any real connection to her. Defending Stampy or being shocked would have made a lot more sense regarding the relationships of the characters.

His villain reveal would have been so much more surprising as well, as Cassie’s tone quickly shifts to much more malicious once she admits to being the White Pumpkin. And while I do believe shes a very good actor, I do believe the scene would have had an extra punch if the lines were delivered by someone who was previously set up to be the trustworthy friend who wouldn’t hurt a fly

But it’s Cassie’s motive specifically that I think would have fit So Well if Stampy had taken her place.

Cassie wants the flint and steel so that she can return to her home dimension. She’a been stuck here for a very long time and is willing to do anything to get back home. Specifically saying that she needs to get out of this “stupid world”.

Now this will only really make sense for those who are familiar with StampyCat outside of mcsm. But I’ll do my best to explain.

Stampy, as a YouTuber, was known for his “lovely world”. The minecraft world that he loved and cared about a lot. If the plot line was that Stampy specifically was separated from his lovely world, it would have been a great motive that he was desperate to get back it it.

So uh. Yeah! I think that’s all I got. I’m sure me and Worm aren’t the only people who have come to this conclusion but I’m just here to put it all into writing. I’m not sure if this was all a last minute change or sloppy writing but either way I think it’s interesting!

[winterhawk-olympic-bang]

Emotive Writing

Guest Poster: @thepartyresponsible​

Emotive writing is about making people Feel Things. People use this all the time to sell you stuff, but we’re out here giving emotions away for free. Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve found to make people feel the most emotions.

Word choice:

This is the most straightforward part of emotive writing. Your word choices add an extra layer of complexity to your message. You aren’t just telling readers what happened; you’re signaling to them how they should feel. Most writers do this unconsciously, but being deliberate can make it especially effective.

Here’s a non-emotive, just-the-facts sentence: The soldier lifted his weapon and turned toward the enemy.

Here’s the same sentence reworked to make you care a bit more: The exhausted soldier raised his broken shield and faced the invading army.

The actions here are fundamentally the same, but exhausted and broken invoke sympathy while invading skews negative.

The words you choose are sign posts for the reader. They indicate how to interpret the story and help your readers orient themselves and form expectations. Subtly building expectation is important because, while surprise can be effective, shock is generally numbing and confusion tends to be irritating, so word choice helps you frame things and guide your reader along.

One of the keys here is to attempt some subtlety. If every sentence about your protagonist reads like an ad campaign (effervescent, brilliant, impervious) and every sentence about your antagonist reads like a political diatribe (cruel, spineless, malicious), you’re probably overusing your sign posts. People want to know who to root for, but too much emotive language can make them feel manipulated.

Think of word choice like adding spices to food. If you put oats in boiling water, you’re making oatmeal, and the spices you use won’t change that. But if you throw in some honey and cinnamon, I know we’re headed somewhere wholesome. If you sprinkle in little discordant notes of garlic powder and cayenne, what we’re cooking is a tragedy. And if you upend an entire bottle of cinnamon, a quarter cup of nutmeg, and toss in seventeen whole cloves, I am not staying for breakfast.

Narrative distance:

Narrative or psychic distance is the space between the reader and the character, usually navigated by the intermediary figure of the narrator. Your narrator can be an omniscient figure that knows the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of every character in the world. Or your narrator could be sitting on the shoulder of your main character, close enough to hear their thoughts and know their story but not so close that they speak with the character’s voice. Or your narrator could be your character.

If you want to ramp up emotion, you usually want a narrator who is very close to one character (or, alternatively, to separate characters in turn). But you don’t have to stay at one distance for the whole story, and, just like word choice, shifts in narrative distance can be helpful indicators to your reader about the story and the characters.

A sudden, dramatic shift in narrative distance is quite jarring, like a sudden zoom-in during a movie. It can be effective, but it’ll lose its punch if it’s overused. Generally, if you want to shift narrative distance, you should build to it slowly. Here’s an example of shifting from a distant third person to a closer third person:

They wake the Soldier because the archer is missing. He has a habit of slipping his lead, disappearing post-mission. The chase grew tedious years ago, but the Soldier runs it just the same. He’ll do as he’s told. But it bothers him, when he lets it. The why.

Why does he do this? the Soldier wonders, when he shouldn’t, when it isn’t his place. Where is he going? he thinks, when he can’t stop himself. Who is he running to? But he tries to think nothing at all.

Another trick of narrative distance is to suddenly pull back to show a character who’s been compromised, shocked, or deeply hurt by something. Imagine spending a long time in a close Bucky perspective, hearing his thoughts, and then being abruptly walloped across the face with: The machine went quiet, and the Soldier opened his eyes. Zooming out can emphasize what’s been lost. Because you aren’t just taking the soul of Bucky Barnes right out of him, you’re also taking that closeness away from the reader. You’re silencing the voice they’ve been listening to.

Whether you zoom in or out during highly emotional moments depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and also on who’s involved.  Some characters have loud, messy emotions that will get louder when they’re hurt. Some characters will freeze over and push a narrator further away. You can use narrative distance to show a character slowly opening up or suddenly slamming a door. But you need the reader to have a solid understanding of the character in order to follow what the shift means, which leads to the next component.

Know your characters:

So, here’s the thing. You gotta Velveteen Rabbit this. Every character is Tinker Bell. If you stop believing, they die.

If you want people to care about these characters, you have to treat them like living, breathing, fully feeling people. They have favorite colors. They have phobias. They have Friday night plans and blisters from new shoes and sesame seeds stuck in their teeth. They have superstitions and secrets. You don’t need to know all of these facts, but you should try to give the impression that someone could know them. The more real your characters are, the more we’re going to care about them.

Since this is fanfiction, you start with a receptive audience. Your readers are fond of these characters. Figure out why. Figure out which parts of the character you can relate to and dig in until you feel like you can understand the parts of them you can’t relate to.

Try to collect things that make you feel close to that character. I always have music playing when I’m writing, so I make playlists for characters and playlists for stories. If I feel like I’m losing a character, I’ll go back to their playlist. But you could also use Pinterest boards, reread favorite fics or comics, rewatch movies or fanvids, or spend an unreasonable amount of time researching bows and tactical knives. Whatever works!

Also, remember, your characters don’t know what story they’re in. They don’t know it’s going to end well (or terribly). Maintain that tension, because that’s where the emotions are. When you watch a good horror movie, you’re not really scared of the monster. You’re scared for the characters, because they don’t know if they’re going to survive.

Emotions come from the characters. That’s why it’s still sad that Tony Stark dies, no matter how many times you watch it happen. Tony Stark was brave and flawed and usually right and often sarcastic, and it hurts to watch him die because that’s a full, unique human we’re losing. We know him well enough to know he’s choosing to sacrifice himself and why he made that choice and who will mourn him.

Know your characters, and let them be messy and weird and wrong and hopeful and cantankerous and unique. Fear is relatable, flaws are relatable, and awkward, ungainly, stubborn progress is relatable. Just remember what it is that makes their progress their progress because, if you can swap Dominic Toretto in for Ted Lasso and have the exact same story, you’ve probably lost your characters.

Plan your emotional trajectory:

Okay, time to get a bit technical. This is for people who like to plan. For those terrifying, godlike writers who just sit down and write, this might not be helpful. For my fellow planners:

There’s a theory (which you can get a general overview about here or, if you’re very into data, right here) that there are six core emotional trajectories in narratives:

1)      Rags to riches (rise)

2)      Riches to rags (fall)

3)      Man in a hole (fall then rise)

4)      Icarus (rise then fall)

5)      Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)

6)      Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)

Since rise and fall can mean different things, I find it helpful to combine these building blocks with emotional axes, which you can find some examples of here.

So, basically, for my winterhawk baseball au Got a Heart in Me, I Swear, I planned to follow the “man in a hole” trajectory (fall then rise) along the anxiety-confidence emotional axis with some bleedover from the humiliation-pride axis. Which basically means Clint started comfortable enough, nosedived deep into anxiety and humiliation, and then slowly built his way to confidence over the rest of the fic.

If the listed axes don’t appeal to you, you can very easily create your own. Just think of an emotion, identify what links it to its inverse, and then list the related emotions between the two opposites. Disgust and adoration are opposites, but they’re linked by attention, right? You can’t ignore something you find disgusting or adorable. So, here’s an example emotional axis you could follow: Disgust – Resentment – Obsession – Fascination – Reverence – Adoration. Enemies to lovers, anyone?

Emotional axes help provide a natural framework for your character’s emotional trajectory. They can be subtle; you don’t have to start on one end of the spectrum and go all the way to the other. A story that moves just a step or two on an emotional axis can be incredibly compelling. That small progress from discomfort to hope can hit really hard if the progress feels fought-for and earned and real.

Tips for writing emotions:

·         Get physical: If you want to show an emotion instead of telling it, describe its impacts on the body. Most characters won’t think I’m embarrassed. They’ll feel a drop in their stomach like someone cut the elevator cables and a hot stinging in their face like they’ve been slapped by some disappointed version of themselves. The more visceral your descriptions, the more the reader will feel them. If you want your reader to feast on feelings, you have to set the table.

·         Dramatic zoom: When something very intense happens, shift the narrative distance. In or out is fine, but a sudden, dramatic event should result in a sudden, dramatic change in focus. Characters might hyperfocus on their physical bodies (the mechanics of breathing, the ringing in their ears, the mad animal urge toward flight) or they might be kicked so far out of their own heads that they feel like they’re dreaming or watching the scene play out from overhead. This distance is useful for two reasons: it feels real, and it allows readers to absorb the situation in pieces, without being overwhelmed by it.

·         Unreliable narrator: Some emotions can be so charged that people don’t want to own them, like grief, shame, jealousy, rage, lust, and guilt. Characters might unconsciously misrepresent these to themselves as something else. A grieving mother might insist she’s tired. A rehabilitated assassin who’s fallen in love with an absolute dork might tell himself he’s just tracking a target. Everyone knows what it’s like to lie to themselves, so this makes characters relatable. And, also, everyone likes being in on a secret, so, sometimes, this is just fun.

·         Face the monsters: We’re often conditioned not to dwell on unpleasant things, which is part of why it can be powerful to examine them in stories. From small things like inglorious emotional states (envy, cowardice, resentment) to character flaws (recklessness, withdrawal, arrogance) to personal tragedies (loss, betrayal, abandonment), the negative parts of human emotional life pack quite a punch. Acknowledge them. Not only are they relatable experiences, but redemption and recovery arcs are some of the most compelling stories we have.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

What are your favorite soft Azula moments?

Thanks so much for the ask! I really love talking about soft Azula. <3 There are quite a few moments that stand out to me but these are my top 3; 

Starting with an honorable mention; 

This was such a short moment but it was a really good one. I can’t see any reason for her to have reached out to Zuko in this scene, other than genuine care and concern. People like to argue that her apologizing to TyLee was all performative/to avoid the social repercussions of making her friend cry. So they write it off. But here Azula has no one to preform for at all. There is literally no reason for her to pretend to care. Which is exactly why I don’t think that she was pretending. I like this moment because I think that it was a real bonding moment for the siblings. And it’s a very subtle indicator that Azula does care about Zuko she just doesn’t have the tools/understanding of how to express it. But her words, “let’s go, this place is depressing” indicate an ability to empathize. Being in such a solemnly nostalgic place made her feel bad so it must make Zuko feel bad too and so she got him to leave and join the rest of the group. She invited him along so he wouldn’t just sit there alone and overthinking.

3.

I talked about this pic in another post but I like this moment for her because as I interpreted it; her stance/posture & the way that she’s holding that cup indicates that she’s at least a little nervous or at the very least uncomfortable/unsure. This is her first time at a regular party, trying to make mundane conversation. She is very out of her element and doesn’t quite know how to navigate this situation so you get to see a very different side of Azula.

The reason that I choose this over the more overt scene is because of the subtly and because it’s such a rare moment. Like soft empathetic Azula has been seen a few times. But an Azula who is just straight awkward and nervous is...tbh I think that this is the only time where we see her hesitate. But like her moment around the fire later in the episode, this is brushed off and played for laughs so it’s easier to forget about it and the implications. The implications being that she has been so emotionally neglected and touched starved that she just doesn’t know how to bond with people at all.

But I still like this moment because she’s really adorable and I feel like this stance and expression is like the definition of soft. 

2.

This is more of a sad soft moment because I feel like the writers kind of downplayed it/played it for laughs. But I still really enjoyed it because this is arguably one of the most openly venerable moments we have of Azula save for her breakdown and defeat. I feel like this scene was a very quiet cry for help that she ended up playing for laughs. But I chose this screencap in particular because we get to see a more empathetic Azula. Like literally she has no one to preform for and there really is exactly 0 reason for her to lie about anything here. She was listening to the ‘sob story’ (I believe that this was during Zuko’s) and she seems to be genuinely concerned. This is one of three scenes that makes it hard for me to understand when people say that Azula can’t feel empathy. Because she does and it’s canon that she does. It’s not just her expression either, it’s her posture and the way she has her arms folded. It’s just a posture that indicates sincerity. And then she goes on to share her own story and it’s kind of just brushed off by the other characters and the show’s own tone/narrative. Her traumas are seriously downplayed, no wonder she doesn’t like opening up. She got met with sarcasm “because you’re just so perfect”) and no reassurance like everyone else got.

1.

This image alone is why I refuse to believe that Azula is unable to love/is 100% evil. It’s also why I refuse to believe that she was just using TyLee/didn’t actually like her. I think that there are two emotions that you can’t fake; true, genuine happiness & true, genuine sorrow. There is a huge difference between a forced/fake smile and a real one and I don’t think that the above is an expression that she could have faked. She was really happy to see TyLee again and I think that she (at least lowkey) craved that kind of affectionate contact. 

People always talk about how we got to see how ruthless and effective Azula was right off the bat. But this was also one of her first moments (aside from her two lineless cameos) this was in her second episode. So right off the bat we got a little glimpse of a softer Azula too but it was so brief and subtle that I think people just forget about it or brush it under the rug.

[hobbitsetal]

HOBBS I wanna hear your opinions on the entertainment debate pls

Ahahahaha this brings me joy because @throwaninkpot said the same thing! Ask and you shall receive ;)

So. The entertainment debate. Is it sinful for Christians to consume media, particularly media that is not Christian, or indeed contains offensive content? Harry Potter is a popular target. Pokemon and Dungeons and Dragons had their day in the cross-hairs.

What I’ve seen floating around on Tumblr leapfrogs from “this media contains something I think is antithetical to Biblical teaching” to “THIS IS NOT 500% GOD ALL THE TIME SO IT IS SINNNNN.”

As a writer of poetry and fantasy, I cannot convey to you how immature I find this view. As a Christian raised with a healthy understanding of Christian liberty, I cannot convey to you how disgustingly legalistic this view is. But I am absolutely going to try, because this is important and I have seen beloved friends badgered and bullied into questioning harmless pastimes by these anti-gospel gatekeepers.

First and most key, I do not care what you’re watching, your salvation is not contingent on nor indicated by your media consumption. Your salvation is contingent on the love of God and indicated by Christ’s redemptive work and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 10:9-10 outlines the requirement for salvation nicely: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

There ya go. If you’re watching Game of Thrones, that doesn’t revoke your Christian card. It doesn’t un-sacrifice Christ.

But mentioning Game of Thrones does beg the question, are there things Christians should not watch? I say yes, and Ephesians and Philippians say yes!

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

That’s a giant block of text, so let’s break it down a bit. Before we are saved, sin doesn’t bother us. Sexually explicit materials, foul language, violence, depravity of every kind--we might personally not love it, but there’s no deep-seated moral argument against it.

After we have been saved, the Holy Spirit convicts us and reveals to us through Scripture how God wants us to live. Sex is holy and should be treated as an important thing. Foul language doesn’t build others up, so we shouldn’t use it. Violence is not loving, so we should not be violent.

How does this relate to media?

I would argue that it relates differently for different people, but that the effect of the media you consume on your spiritual life and your relationships with others is your best gauge.

I knew a young man who was deeply affected by music, so he was careful to listen to Christian artists lest he be tempted into sin by immoral lyrics. I don’t have that problem. I can listen to a song and not think more deeply about it than whether it’s a fun beat.

What about books? I do need to be careful here. Some people can read books with suggestive content and skip past those scenes, without temptation or without their imaginations being led astray. I can’t. So I don’t read romance novels. I would not glorify God with this.

TV shows, art, and movies are all similar: how do they affect you personally? I stopped watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot because the language and sexual content convicted me. But I watched The Witcher with my husband--partly because I’m at a different stage in my life and what stumbled me as a single adult is no longer as problematic now that I’m married, and partly because the subtle pro-life themes and the themes of good and evil and objective right and wrong outweigh the objectionable content.

Romans 14, to me, speaks most clearly to this:

“One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”

I would not watch certain movies with certain family members, but I would with others. This is not hypocrisy because I don’t pretend that I don’t watch those movies; I make a choice to respect my family’s consciences when they differ from mine.

Were some friends to express dismay that I play Dungeons and Dragons or read Harry Potter, I would explain to them why I’m comfortable with that media, but I wouldn’t shove it in their faces.

~~~

This is dreadfully long already, but I can’t just stop with explaining our liberty in Christ to enjoy media and art.

We are made in the image of God. God is the Great Artist, the Supreme Storyteller, the Maker of Music. We were made to create art, to tell stories, to make music! This is part of how we glorify God! This is what we will spend eternity doing! Do you think Tolkien has stopped writing because he’s in Heaven? or Lewis?

And what is the greatest joy of a creator but sharing? God created us to share Himself with us--not out of need, for He needs nothing, but out of joy and the fullness of His Divine nature! And we, who are needy and who are made to be social in reflection of the Trinity, how much more do we want to share and rejoice in sharing!

As a writer, I love having people read what I write. And conversely, I love hearing my friends’ music and seeing their art.

Those who consume media are taking their rightful place as Audience. Those who create media are taking their rightful place as Sub-Creator.

And those who claim that media is sinful are cramming God into a pitifully tiny box and trying to limit human experience to the blandest existence possible. God did not craft sunsets and constellations and the whole of human history for us to look at each other and say, “Better not enjoy this, it’s probably sinful.”

As Martin Luther allegedly said, “Beer is proof God loves us.”

Enjoy stories. It’s what God created us to do.

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Vanya and the Phantom

I asked and y’all answered (special thanks to @schizoidwire and @the-aro-ace-arrow-ace  and all the people who responded to my earlier post for encouraging me!), so it is time for how The Phantom of the Opera song introduction can be read as a look into Vanya’s self-narrative and also foreshadows future events in a really subtle and interesting way. 

I’m channeling my inner Elliot and going into full conspiracy mode. This is gonna be a long one, y’all. 

Part One: In Which I Expose Myself as a Former Theater Kid

So, for those who aren’t familiar with The Phantom of the Opera, it was originally a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux back in 1909. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber rewrote it as a musical. For purposes of my analysis here, I am just going to be discussing the musical because 1) the score used in the opening scene is from it and 2) I’ve never read the book. (If anyone out there has read the book and wants to weigh in, please do!) 

It’s a very aesthetic show, and draws on a lot of gothic themes and imagery. The plot follows an opera house, and specifically a young chorus girl named Christine Daaé. I’m not going to explain the whole show plot in detail because wikipedia exists, but I will do a quick overview here and point out some things as they relate to things I’ll be discussing later. Also there will be a test after and it will NOT be multiple choice.

The show begins when the opera house is sold to new owners who 1) just want to make money and 2) do not respect the opera house’s resident ghost (who isn’t really a ghost, but we’ll get to that later.) When the Phantom makes his presence known, and freaks out the resident prima donna singer (who will be relevant later) Carlotta, who says she won’t sing under these conditions. It is then that Christine appears. She’s quiet and humble and has always lived in the background, but is incredibly talented. The woman who runs the chorus (also owner of the opera house’s resident braincell) suggests Christine sing the part. She does, and is amazing. Everyone is blown away, and she’s catapulted into instant fame and success. 

We later learn that Christine has been studying under the Phantom, who appears to her in mirrors. She calls him the Angel of Music, and thinks that he was sent to teach her by her recently deceased father. He isn’t. He’s actually pretty malicious, and is obsessed with Christine, wants to control her voice, and doesn’t like her dating anyone. Which is a bit awkward when her childhood friend shows up and promptly falls in love with her. 

Anyways, Carlotta is jealous of the attention Christine has been getting and threatens to leave prompting the new owners to cut Christine from the program. The Phantom doesn’t like it at all, sends a bunch of letters, things escalate, people are murdered, and the whole first act ends with the chandelier falling from the ceiling and crashing onto the stage (which is done with really cool effects, oftentimes beginning the show hanging over the audience. It’s a BIG MOMENT and one of the most iconic ones from the show. This will also be relevant later.)

Act two takes place a few months later, wherein no one has seen the Phantom. Shock of all shocks, though, he’s not dead. He’s been writing an opera and he wants Christine to star in it. More stuff happens, you learn the backstory of the Phantom (which is pretty sad, ngl, but in no way makes him less of a creep) and the story ends with the Phantom kidnapping Christine and giving her an ultimatum: stay with him forever, or he kills Raoul (aka childhood friend/romantic interest guy). She agrees to stay with him and he’s so moved by her compassion that he lets them both go and disappears forever. 

Part Two: Casting the Characters

That’s interesting, Rosie (note sarcasm) but you said this was about The Umbrella Academy? I did, in fact. So, we meet Vanya when she’s playing a medley of songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Since it’s primarily the melodies and not one of the orchestral pieces from her performance later (I don’t think), we can assume she’s just playing it for herself (which is nice! good on you, Vanya). 

Maybe she’s never seen the play and just likes the score, but for purposes here, let’s assume she’s familiar with it. 

You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they connect with (for example, I like TUA because I like fun sibling dynamics, found family, music, and being sad). And I think that it makes sense that The Phantom of the Opera would be a story that resonates with Vanya. The overlooked chorus girl finds power in music, and, after years in the background, is finally given a chance to show how special she is. 

So, yeah. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Vanya sees herself as Christine. There are some discrepancies, sure, but this is Vanya’s self-narrative, which we learn pretty much immediately is unreliable. (Love her, but it’s true.) And if Vanya is Christine, then we can try and tap into her perspective to look at some other characters. 

Anyways remember Carlotta (the prima donna opera singer who always got the spotlight and tried to destroy everything good that happened to Christine because she felt threatened that someone might be as good/better than her whose entire personality and role in the story I just summarized, rendering my plot recap useless)? Carlotta is how Vanya views Allison. (Kind of all her siblings, but her relationship with Allison is the most important here.)

Think about the scene in the cabin? 

“You couldn’t risk me threatening your place in the house! You couldn’t handle the fact that Dad might find me special!” - Vanya, having a mental breakdown.

This always struck me as an interesting accusation to throw, since prior to this moment, I don’t think there was any indication that Allison had ever felt threatened by Vanya. She excluded her, sure, and wasn’t super friendly at times, but the idea that Allison has been pulling strings to keep Vanya out of her spotlight is new. But that is exactly the role Carlotta plays in Phantom. 

Fun fact! At one point in the musical, the Phantom enchants Carlotta so that she loses her voice right before coming on stage. 

Part Three: The Phantom of the Opera is there

So based on everything I’ve said so far, the most straightforward reading is then, that Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins (who for purposes here I’ll call Leonard) is the stand in for the Phantom, which works... really well. Both in helping to understand Vanya and also because it foreshadows the twist of season one in a really cool way.

So, the Phantom appears to Christine first not as an enemy, but as a friend and teacher, who encourages her to be more confident in her abilities. He trains her to develop her singing ability. While the teacher-student dynamic is actually inverted initially with Vanya and Leonard, from the get go, he is showering her with compliments, encouraging her to be confident in her abilities, and, at least on the surface, supporting her in a way she hasn’t been supported before (he’s a trash human but an expert manipulator). 

But, in the play, the Phantom is also very possessive over Christine and her power (er, I mean voice). He also is perfectly willing to kill and/or hurt people who he views as standing in the way of Christine and her success (see the aforementioned Carlotta incident). Which is exactly what Leonard does to Vanya. He kills the first chair violinist to help her get it, and orchestrates a whole master plan to get her to reveal her powers on his terms. 

Even the part where he starts “training” her to use her powers kind of resembles the second act of the play. The Phantom wrote a play for Christine and she’s going to star in it, whether she wants to or not. 

(One could even make the argument of the parallels between Christine believing the Phantom was sent by her father to teach her and Leonard showing up because of his revenge scheme against Vanya’s father, but I honestly don’t have much support for that.) 

Part Three: Two Conflicting Narratives

So, as you might’ve noticed, I sort of have two different threads of analysis going on right now. 1) The Phantom of the Opera parallel is part of Vanya’s self-narrative and in it she mischaracterizes Allison, making her more suspicious of her motivations and 2) Leonard Peabody is clearly the Phantom and doesn’t bother being subtle about it. I hope that I’ve been convincing (or at least intriguing) for you to get to this point, because here is where they come together.

Vanya has this parallel going, but she doesn’t see Leonard as the Phantom. In the beginning at least, he’s her Raoul. If I had to guess, I’d say Reginald Hargreeves is the Phantom in Vanya’s self-narrative (says he’ll train her but wants to manipulate her and keep her locked away for himself, strict teacher who doesn’t really care about her well being, wearing a mask to appear more normal/human... she wouldn’t exactly be wrong). Leonard, on the other hand, is Vanya’s supporter. He validates her, and believes in her, and taker her side when Carlotta and the opera house owners (er, the rest of the Hargreeves children) gang up on her and conspire to keep her out. 

This is all building to, of course, the final confrontation. The Phantom says Christine has to pick one or the other. When Allison comes to talk to Vanya, Vanya feels as if she’s been given an ultimatum and lashes out.

And that’s where everything (including this parallel) starts to crumble. 

(I honestly don’t know a lot about the other characters and how they fit in. I suppose we could have Five = Raoul if we ignore romance plot and focus on the childhood friend that hasn’t been seen in a while angle? And maybe also Pogo = Madame Giry. Vanya doesn’t really have any friends to be Meg.) 

Part Four: It’s All About the Moon

So that is kind of the gist of The Phantom of the Opera as a window into Vanya’s self-narrative theory, but there are a couple of other loosely related ideas I thought I might as well bring up since this thing is already ridiculously long. 

Remember how I mentioned the chandelier is like, THE scene from The Phantom of the Opera back in part one, and said it’d be relevant later? Bringing that back now, because I’m going to pull a Luther and connect everything to the moon. 

So, to get the obvious out of the way, the moon exploding and the chandelier coming crashing to the stage are similar because something falls, breaks into a bunch of pieces, destroys a bunch of stuff, and creates a powerful and memorable image to close off before an act/season break (the next installment of which begins with a time jump). 

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that The Phantom of the Opera is told out of order. The opening scene shows a grown up Raoul at an auction for the items left behind after the opera house closes, and it switches to the past as the remains of the chandelier rise upwards to the ceiling, Phantom’s theme swelling (it’s a really cool moment, tbh). Following the prologue of The Umbrella Academy, we switch to the present with two images: Vanya alone on the stage, and then Luther alone on the moon. Which has a kind of symmetry that might mean nothing, but is still kind of cool. 

(Also the item that Raoul buys from the auction is a music box with a monkey crashing symbols on top of it. Which might mean nothing.) 

Part Five: How is she STILL talking about this? (AKA Conclusion)

To be honest, this is more a very tangled “things I noticed and thought were interesting” discussion than a formal essay with any clear thesis. While there is a chance that this was all coincidental and I’ve gone full Pepe Sylvia, the music selection in The Umbrella Academy is one of the things that they seem to be really deliberate about. 

I would love to chat with anyone about this theory, so feel free to reach out in the notes or message me! My inbox is always open. Much love, and thank you for reading, if you got this far! ❤️

[ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife]

MAG 016 - Arachnophobia

Summary: Jonathan reads the statement of Carlos Vittery, regarding “his arachnophobia and its manifestations.”

Carlos: “I. Hate. Spiders.” Me: “Cheers, I’ll drink to that bro, guess this is gonna be one of those episodes, huh.” Lo and behold, halfway through listening to this I had a mini heart attack when I thought I saw a spider in the corner of my room closest to my desk. (Spoiler alert: It was a piece of dust. I live for the scares, but I think that, like Icarus, I fly too close to the sun sometimes.)

Anyway, from here on I’ll be formatting the titles of these posts closer to how they’re written on the podcast and, from what little I’ve seen, what’s recognized by the fandom. I still feel like an outsider, being so late to things, but at least my posts won’t look as weird now.

So obviously this episode was about spiders. Well, one spider in particular - and I’ll come back to that. But first I’d like to point out that spiders have come up twice before at this point. The first (and more notable) is in episode 8, when hundreds of spiders burst out of the rotten apple that was inside the box at the base of the uprooted tree at the house on Hill Top Rd. The second was only a mention, and it was in episode 9 (the serial killer episode) when the narrator said, of the shed in her back yard, “As far as I was concerned, the sturdy wooden structure was just the home of spiders’ nests and the rusted garden tools my parents would use once a year to attack the overgrown wilderness that was our back garden.” I almost didn’t include this second one, since it’s so fleeting and seemingly innocuous, but it could indicate some kind of connection between the spiders and the creepy ritualistic murder that was being committed in that shed, which is...disturbing, to say the least.

I find it interesting that the first appearance of spiders had them coming out of a rotten apple though. In this episode, Carlos tries giving Major Tom (the cat) food, but he just sniffs at it and walks away, which Carlos points out is unusual (and any cat owner knows is unusual). At the very end, Jonathan tells us that the coroner’s report said that Carlos had “foreign organic material” blocking his throat (though we don’t have confirmation of what the “material” was) and that “his body was completely encased in web.” But spiders typically wrap their prey in silk prior to eating them. Are all of these things related to that recurring theme of bad/rotten food? I’m not sure yet.

As a sometimes-writer, I appreciated the subtle but definite escalation in the threat of the spider. First, it’s on his kitchen wall - unfortunate, since that’s the room where you go to get food, but fairly avoidable. Carlos shuts Major Tom in there for 2 hours and is none the worse for it. The second time, it’s on his TV screen. Its body was physically between him and something he was going to use, and if he wanted to watch TV he was going to be seeing that spider the whole time. And then finally it’s on the ceiling above the head of his bed. A person’s bed should be a safe and comforting place, a place where you can go to rest and rejuvenate - and this marks the end of the last remaining “safe space” for Carlos, as this thing threatens to descend on him as he sleeps. Excellent writing as always.

Building off of the idea of an escalation in the threat is the idea that there’s some kind of malicious intent in this spider’s presence. “I hate spiders, as I have said,” Carlos says at one point, “but I would have sworn that this one hated me back.” He describes it several times as staring at him, and one time describes its “mandibles twitching with anticipation”. Spiders shouldn’t be malicious, no matter how much a person might fear them or not like them. But this one is. Just like caves shouldn’t be malicious either (episode 15). The world of TMA is a scary place and I’m just glad I don’t live there lol.

Especially scary is the idea that this was all caused by an accident Carlos had when he was a child. He says that he tripped and fell into that spider and its egg sac when he was 6 - and nearly 25 years later it’s coming back to bite him in the ass. But I wonder - was there always something supernatural going on with that spider, even when he was a kid? The story he tells doesn’t have any obvious supernatural elements that I can see, and the “ghost spider” (as Jonathan calls it at the end) only appears after the Jane Prentiss worms. My first instinct would be to say that there’s nothing supernatural at all about the spider itself, and that the spider was somehow...activated, I guess?...by Jane’s presence. But I know spiders are important in the series, so right now the whole thing is a big question mark for me. Which came first, the spider or the worms?

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

(Spoilers for the remainder of season 1 under the cut.)

So I’d like to take a moment to share with you a story about just how much of an Absolute Dumbass I am. Here we go.

I’ve been keeping an ear out for familiar names (of people and of places), so when Carlos mentions his apartment is on Boothby Rd, I did a quick mental check and, nope, don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before. But wait, it’s in Archway? At that point I hit pause. I thought to myself, I know I’ve heard that somewhere before... Cue me looking back and seeing that’s where Harriett Lee lived in episode 6 (specifically, on Elthorne Rd), and the last known location of Jane Prentiss! Hmm...well, just how big is Archway, anyway? Are those two streets even close to each other? So I pull out a map - and would you look at that, the two roads intersect! I do a little happy dance from putting that together. Unpause. Carlos’ next words were “While nearby Elthorne Road was full of houses and gardens-”. OK, a little disappointing since they “gave” the connection away right there...but it would still take a really good memory (or in my case, really good notes) to remember Elthorne Rd being mentioned in passing 10 episodes ago, right? I no longer feel great, but I still feel pretty good about making the connection. Some 30 seconds later: “Our building had acquired something of an infestation of some sort of insect I didn’t recognize - small, silvery worms, almost like maggots, but slightly longer, and I assume that they provided a good meal for the eight-legged little monsters.” Friends...I cannot describe to you the deep, deep disappointment I felt in myself at this point. Not only had I paused the podcast and done actual research when the answers were literally in the next minute of the podcast, but I had completely forgotten the worms made an appearance at all in this episode. SMH.

[makoto-nanami]

Miraculous Rewrite: Origins Part 1 (Chapter 1)

Hi, this will be my first Miraculous fan fiction, while I love the show, I most definitely have my gripes with it, how they treat their characters is something that infuriates me, and while this fic may get salty sometimes, I do love the characters, it’s just because of the status quo that the writers are instant on maintaining, they can’t grow or act sometimes completely out of character. So I’ve decided to have a try at writing a fic with my own OC in, to act as the voice of reason when Marinette starts going overboard/borderline cringy or when Adrien is a innocent baby who doesn't understand the world or when he thinks it’s okay to have a tantrum or flirt with ladybug. I’ll be following the episodes, so they won’t be too different, just told from a different perspective. Again I apologise in later chapters if I seem too have ingested a ton of salt, but know if I salt on a character I plan to resolve it at the end of the episode. I hope you enjoy!

- Also, if anyone could suggest which tags this needs because I blanked when I tagged this... (-_-’)

Origins Part 1 - Chapter 1

Many millennia ago, concepts of life were born, however, these beings realised they had too much power, a power that could easily be abused. So, they gathered to a kind human who had chosen to live in isolation from the rest of his kind and protect the world when needed, a bestowed their blessings in hopes that the human would help them. The human was confused by the seemingly god-like beings’ request, how could they trust a lowly human such as himself, a coward who turned his back on the rest of the world after witnessing the corruption such power brought to his brethren? These gods simple smiled upon this man and said you are no hero, you are no villain, you are simply an observer, a helper, someone who despite his hate to the world, chose to protect it in its time of need.

So, the man heeded their call, creating magic jewels embedding them with extraordinary blessings from these gods, the Kwami, binding them to the jewels restricting their powers. These were… the Miraculous.

Throughout history, heroes have used these jewels for the good of humanity. However, The Creator of the Miraculous realised, that two of these jewels were more powerful than the other despite his efforts of balance; the earrings of the Ladybug, which provided creation; and the ring of the Black Cat, which granted the power of destruction. The Creator knew that whoever controlled both blessings would achieve absolute power, a power that the Kwami had feared would be manipulated with malicious intent. After realising his mistake, The Creator promised that no matter what, he would observe the Miraculous, personally in their times of use, as he could not stop humanities tragedy on his own; leaving the Jewels with his disciples allowing them to distribute when humanity cried out in suffering.

However, no one can live forever without a cost. Many have tried, all of them have failed with various degrees of success. Immortality is a fickle thing. Wishing for eternal youth, cursed to never grow, burying loved ones and always begging for an end to your torment. The Creator had witnessed this, one of his many mistakes, one he most definitely wanted to learn from. So, he wished to be reincarnated, to watch the miraculous in humanities time of need. Unfortunately, souls and memories of humans are just as fickle as the body. While he would reincarnate he would inherit the life his successor, cursed to watch as the loved ones drift away, fade and die, cursed to watch with red eyes.

But that’s just a silly story my mother would tell me as a child. She would tell me how maybe I could be the next reincarnation of this strange man; I’d laugh when she would tell me that. Then suddenly out of the blue; I started having strange thoughts, dreams of another time, voices of people crying out for help. My mother, Evangeline, a woman who raised me, a woman who while not connected to me in blood, still cared for me as if her own, one day told me this story again, this time… I did not laugh, I cried. I looked at my mother; realised… she had not aged a single day since the day I had met her all those years ago, she smiled and told me I was ready. She told me of her friend who trained to protect the Miraculous and how she housed and protected him in his early days after the temple was destroyed. She then explained how it was time for me to fulfil my promise to the world and how I would be going to Paris, France to work with her friend to protect the Miraculous.

Why though? It wasn’t my responsibility; I never made any promise to the world! All I wanted to be was slightly successful, hanging out with friends and working towards achieving my dreams as a P.I! I never wanted this! But as I was on the plane to Paris, I couldn’t deny it… I felt the pull of that man’s promise; I won’t give in though, no matter what I will not be that man! I will observe but I will not change myself, I will not become him, not while I still have my dreams of friendship and life.

Once in Paris, I find myself outside of a massage shop… this looks shady. Why the hell would Eva send me to a massage parlour? Well, I need to figure out what’s going on and figure out my living accommodations, so might as well bite the bullet on this shady place.

Knock-knock.

The door opened at the force of my knock; that’s some security for world-ending jewels. I make my way into the shop and spot an old man meditating… this is just getting weirder. As I’m about to announce myself, he speaks. “Welcome, Young Creator.” He opened his eyes, widening as he took in my appearance. “Well… this was not what I was suspecting at all.” Rude. “But worry not, come and I shall explain the gaps in your memory.”

“Excuse me, but I am not that man, obviously. I am my own person, while I intend on helping him fulfil his promise… I have no intention of becoming him.”

“But…”

“I’ll help you but know that I am not him.”

He stared at me considering my words before gesturing for me to sit down. I sit as he pours green tea into cups.

“I understand. Now allow me to introduce myself, I am Wang Fu, Evangeline has told me a lot about you.”

“Likewise. However, I am a little confused about the situation here in Paris. There is no media mention of any Miraculous holders, so obviously neither the Ladybug nor Black Cat is in circulation as the powers they hold are less than subtle when used, so why am I here?”

“I see, you are correct in your deduction of the state of the Miraculous’, however, you were drawn to Paris, correct? We believe that that pull indicates humanities potential ruin. As soon as you started to have visions of the past, Evangeline contacted me, I was already here in Paris so we decided it may be best to let you settle in and learn about your role and responsibilities hopefully before the path to ruin forms. Of course, due to your age as well, we have been forced to enrol you in a local school high school.”

I blanched at this, having already graduated from a high school for the gifted where it wasn’t considered strange for children to skip grades depending on their academic standing. Great… just freaking fantastic… Fu looks at me as if looking for my opinion, I simply sigh and shrug, excepting my fate, begrudgingly.

“So… Where exactly will I be living? I mean, not to be rude or anything, but this shop/apartment isn’t exactly big.”

“Yes, my home is only so big, and I already have a littler of picky roommates. Evangeline and I have decided to let you stay at her old home while she lived in Paris many years ago. She assured me that it would be to your tastes and it isn’t too far from your new school.”

Eva’s old home? I kinda worried now, she’s the sort of person who loves antiques and old dollies, sure she grew out of it when she adopted me but if this is her ‘old’ home… It’s not exactly a place I want to be, surrounded by creepy dolls and old stuff, at least I didn’t have to pay rent… wait…

“What about money? If I live alone, won’t I have to buy food and stuff?”

“Ah yes, Evangeline told me, that while she is more than happy to supply money for food and essentials, it will be sent to an account that will record what you buy, she stressed that I tell you that money is for essentials only.”

“Sounds like Eva… did she mention anything else?”

“Oh, she told me to give you this note when you asked about money.” He hands me a small note.

-       If you want games, junk, comics/books, anything not essential… GET A JOB!

-       Love you, Eva!

Yup… that’s definitely Eva. I laugh weakly, thinking who would hire a 13-year-old kid for more than a paper-round. Suddenly a flash of green whizzed around the room, I instinctively tensed ready to defend myself but quickly feeling foolish, seeing a green Turtle like creature.

“Wayzz…” I find myself muttering, having no idea of where the name came from… perhaps one of his memories.

“Master, Master! Master, the Moth Miraculous, I felt its aura!” Wait, what?

“I thought it had been lost forever!” He lost a Miraculous?! What?!

“But Master, it’s a negative aura. I fear it may have gotten into the hands of a dark power!” Oh just great!

“We must find Nooroo and his Miraculous. If it has gotten into the wrong hands, it means the path to ruin has formed and there’s no telling what evil will come to the world!” He stands raising his fist hand to the ceiling, a green turtle shell charm bracelet reviling itself. I find myself stammering.

“Hh-hey wait a sec- “

“Time to transform! Wayzz- Hack!” He doubles over in pain. If I wasn’t so confused, I’d find this almost comical… almost. Wayzz floats over to him almost exasperated.

“Please Master. Be reasonable. You are- “

“Still young! I’m only 186.” Only?! Then again, I just found out the woman who raised me is an immortal child, so what do I know. “But you’re right, Wayzz. Young One, I can no longer do it alone, it is time… We’ll need some help.” He walks over to the gramophone and revealing a box with symbols I somehow knew all too well, a box that housed the most powerful jewels in the world, the Miraculous.

As we roam the streets of Paris, I notice a school. Other kids making their way inside, chatting about their summer vacation. I feel myself dread at the idea of enrolling during the second year, everyone already knows each other, it’s gonna feel weird, dammit. We get to a crossing and I see a short navy haired girl rush out of the bakery across the street with a box in her hands, as I am about to dismiss her from my thoughts, Fu started to walk forward acting frail and old despite the light still being red for pedestrians. “Hey, wait!”

“Uuuhhaawh?!” The girl rushed out and grabs him by the hand, taking him to the other side of the street, dropping the box in the process. The light changes and I rush over, noticing people stepping on the baked goods that fell out the box.

“Thank you, miss. Oh! What a disaster.” Yeah, I wonder who’s fault that is, old man. I pick the box up and hand her it back.

“Sorry about your macarons, he just walked into the road suddenly.”

“Don’t worry, I’m no stranger to disasters, besides, there are still a few left. Would you like one?” She said kindly, offering the box to pick one out. Fu reached out and took one before eating it.

“Mmmh. Delicious! Do you attend Françoise Dupont? My friend’s child here is enrolling today for the second-year class.” Wait, what’s he doing?

“Oh really? Welcome to Dupont then! Do you know which class you’ll be in?”

“Erm, I believe Miss Bustier’s class?”

“Same here! Would you like me to show you the way?”

“Oh no, there’s no nee- “

“Oh thank you, it’s reassuring that this little one will have such a friendly face in class.” What the hell old man!? As if reading my thoughts, he looked at me innocently. “After all, it’s normal for a child to attend the first day of school, right?” Ack… he goddamned planned this! I don’t know how but he definitely planned this! Aren’t I supposed to help you find the holders for the Miraculous, Fu? Again, he simply smiles as he looks at me. “I’ll inform you of my progress when school finishes.”

“Oh no, we’re gonna be late! Ah, have a nice day, sir! Come on!” She cries as she pulls me along. “Oh, how rude! I don’t think I’ve asked your name!”

“My name? Oh, it’s Alice.”

“Alice, eh? Nice to meet you, and I must say, what lovely red eyes you have!”

[kimkymury]

Blue Rose Tears - Chapter 9

Hey everyone, another chapter of Pascal x Carl fanfic is here, I hope you like it!

I’d like to thanks @depressedoverdrawings​ for  for reviewing the history and help fixing grammatical errors.

Warning:  Just a little warning, some characters have distorted views about sexuality, and those views do not represent what I think in real life. This was written on purpose to suit the environment and the time that the story takes place, since at that time people were more closed minded.

The Portuguese Version of this story is avaliable on Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/963625097-as-l%C3%A1grimas-da-rosa-azul-cap%C3%ADtulo-9

Under the cut!

Chapter 9

P.O.V Narrator

The boy who had been concentrated on the teacher's lecture now found himself exchanging messages with the friend next to him. Carl's every movement was made with care and apprehension, fearful that they'd be discovered. On the other hand, the red-haired boy didn't care so much about discretion. His indifference towards the classes was evident: every time he attended the class, he always counted the minutes to return to the laboratory. The dark-haired boy discreetly unfolded the paper he was given, preventing the act of unfolding it from making any noise and hiding it in one of the pages of the book. The almost illegible handwriting was one of the scientist's characteristics, and it took a little effort to understand what was written. Carl was already used to it, reading what was on the paper was not a problem.

Carl begins to read the note hidden inside the book:

"Latin truly is a dead language, they could teach us actually useful things, like Biology, ne in vobis? (Don't you agree?)"

The last part of the sentence was written in Latin. The redhead liked to make clear that the fact that he found the subject useless didn't mean he was ignorant of it. Complaints on his friend's part were common, Carl just didn't think he would expose his whining during class. Pascal looked at him as if waiting for an answer. The dark haired boy needed to think about what to write and return the paper without causing suspicion. The pencil slides over the surface of the paper quickly, as the writer struggled to make as little noise as possible. The redhead is pleased to receive the small piece of paper back, he opens it and gets ready to read and answer. Carl's careful and beautifully rounded handwriting carried the words the scientist had already expected.

"I know you prefer to study other things, but you need to learn Latin if you plan to graduate someday."

Carl's words were so predictable that Pascal had an answer ready, he just needed to know if it was the right time to make his proposal. The small piece of paper is passed again to the friend, who was eager to continue the conversation, despite being afraid of getting caught.

"We have yet another class after lunch, the teachers must be trying to destroy our brains, like this. I was thinking of going to the greenhouse to pick new species of flowers after noon. Would you like to join me?"

The religious boy repeatedly reread what was written, for fear of being mistaken. Had Pascal just invited him to go the greenhouse during class time? The friend's habit of failing on purpose was known to everyone, and no one was surprised when they didn't see him in class. But with Carl it was different, he was the complete opposite of Pascal, he could count on the fingers of one hand how many absences he had in an year. It would be risky, they could be caught, punished, warned and maybe even their families would know. His good nature and rigidly constructed morals screamed at him to refuse the invitation, the fear and emotion of being doing something wrong mixing together. But the desire to spend some time with the redhead proved greater than all that. Fervently hoping that they wouldn't be seen or discovered, the dark-haired boy internally asked for forgiveness for what he was about to do, feeling unimaginable guilt. But it was his curiosity won the control over his actions, not his guilt. The note is returned slowly. Carl could not believe what he had written, there was still time to change his mind, but he didn't.

Pascal opens the paper and smiles, satisfied with what he'd read. The opportunities to see his friend doing risky things were rare; he liked seeing him leave his comfort zone.

"As long as we don't get caught, I accept." - That small sentence was enough to end the message exchange. Now they had to calmly wait until the right time.

In a way, the scientist wasn't so bothered by how long Latin class was taking now, he seemed distracted, thinking about what was going to happen, with a simple, surreptitious smile on his face. The religious boy, on the other hand, turned his attention entirely to what he was learning. For him the hours seemed endless, as he felt a sickening mixture of anxiety and excitement at the same time. He'd never agreed to doing something so risky before. The truth is that Carl would have refused the invitation had it been made by anyone else, but with Pascal was different, he knew that he would have fun, as long he was with his friend. It was a time that deserved to be spent and a risk that was worth taking, he concluded. And while the religious boy was lost in his thoughts and feelings, the scientist's mind worked at full speed. He was extremely determined in what he did and felt, and didn't make the proposal to his friend without a proper reason behind it. He wanted to put his feelings to the test.

With his chin on one hand and a bored look that watched the professor read the passages in the book, Pascal remembered what it had been like to discover what he felt. It was a strange feeling, it wasn't like anything he'd read in his biology books. It was a genuine happiness, that seemed to have no particular cause. He was surprised, but he was not disappointed, after all, he knew he was liable to have feelings like anyone else. He just didn't expect those feelings to be for the person he least expected. Someone who was by his side all the time, someone who probably wouldn't feel the same way about him. Frustration was part of his life, but the frustration he felt now burned like impotence, it wassomething that even made him feel physical pain. Discreetly, the red-haired boy's gaze turned to the boy next to him; he carefully analyzed his friend, who was concentrated on what he read. The white skin had few imperfections, just a few slight marks, too subtle to be noticed. The hair was as dark as black ink, its texture was smooth, and it looked thin, soft, and easy to comb. The eyes, dark as the night sky, showed a permanent expression of sadness or worry, as if something was always troubling him.

Pascal might consider himself stupid for being enchanted by such common things, things he saw daily and for so long, and yet, no matter how much time passed or how close they were, Carl kept fascinating him. A slight sigh is released, the expression that seemed bored before, now seemed thoughtful. Every second until lunchtime was counted impatiently by both boys, who were surprised at their excitement over going flower-picking together.

After a few hours, the lunchtime bell rang, providing a great relief for all students. The way from the classroom to the cafeteria was walked quietly; Carl still wondered if it had been a good idea to accept the invitation, and whether he should have refused. But that thought changed shortly after they sat down to eat, as Serge was unaccompanied and sat next to Carl just like the night before. The pianist asked some questions about Carl's morning tardiness, but soon his curiosity was placated with some excuses. However, the other boys present, like Kurt and Neka, quickly took the opportunity to make all kinds of jokes possible with the situation.

"Professor Watts often complains that we are late for the first class of the day, next time I'll just tell him that even the Class Representative does it, so there's no reason why I shouldn't do it too." - The boy with curly red hair said, making everyone at the table laugh, even Carl.

It almost made him forget why he had been so excited for lunch, but the exchange of looks he had made with Pascal quickly reminded him. It was as if they agreed on the right time to act by exchanging looks. Conversation between friends flowed naturally, the dark-haired boy was so distracted that his thoughts about the gypsy boy, which had previously disturbed him, were forgotten for a few moments. The minutes passed and the number of students in the cafeteria decreased. The boys' dishes were progressively emptied as they became more apprehensive about how to leave without being caught. The older boy, who sat across from Carl, nodded discreetly, indicating that it was time to act.

The two young men stood up after making up some excuse for their friends who were still eating, afraid that their nervousness was evident in some way. Everything would have gone perfectly, were it not for Serge's intervention:

"Carl, Gilbert didn't come to class today, why don't we sit side by side in Latin class after lunch?" - The pianist asked before Carl could walk away, leaving him at a loss for an answer.

Pascal stopped walking after hearing this. He had his doubts whether Carl would really continue with the plan after receiving Serge's invitation. He wasn't a hypocrite, he knew it was difficult for his friend to deal with unrequited feelings. Yet, he couldn't help but feel frustrated at the gypsy boy's attitude. He knew that feeling wasn't reasonable, it wasn't as if Serge had asked that just to annoy him, he didn't even have any idea about what was going on with Carl. The scientist patiently waited for the religious boy to respond. Carl's conscience was split in two. It was a fact that spending time with Serge was all he wanted, especially now that the blond boy wasn't near. But a part of him, the part that controlled his decisions, made him think that perhaps the time he could spend with Pascal, as risky as it could be, would be more worthwhile.

"I'm sorry, but I promised Pascal that I would help him in today's class" - The dark-haired boy said, trying to look as convincing as possible, feeling bad about lying and refusing his friend's invitation.

It was difficult to refuse the request of a person he so yearned to be close to, but in a strange way, he found himself wanting to be with Pascal even more than with Serge. The redhead understood him like nobody else, he could be who he really was with him, he felt understood and safe. Pascal, on the other hand, was somewhat jealous of the way Serge was deified by Carl. But the scientist made an effort to be rational, and he would not let a feeling or a whim impair his relationship with his friend.

With a gesture of understanding, Serge made no further inquiries and soon went back to talking with the other boys. The two friends then took the opportunity and left the dining hall, which was already getting empty as the students finished their lunch. In the corridors were some teachers and other school staff, who guaranteed the supervision of the students, so that they didn't escape the school or avoided attending classes. Some boys used the last minutes of lunch to talk or rest outdoors, at the small courtyard in the center of Lacombrade.

A feeling of nervousness came over Carl. He walked calmly beside his friend, who seemed to be concetrated on his own thoughts. It was practically impossible to get out without being caught, but the red-haired boy was already an adept truant, and so had a plan already orchestrated in his mind.

"There is no way to leave without being seen! What are we going to do now?" - The dark haired boy asked in a low voice, doubting the possibility of his friend having an answer.

"At exactly five to one, Professor Watts crosses to the other corridor, leaving free passage to a small room used to store materials and other useless things. There's a small window that gives access to the outside. After leaving throught it, we simply follow the path to the greenhouse. " - The redhead replied as if describing an everyday act, which it really was, to him.

While he was somewhat impressed wish his friend's experience in truancy, the dark-haired boy felt the need to reprimand him for taking such risky and immoral actions, but he knew that now was not the ideal time for that. And even if it was, Pascal would not hear his sermons; he was used to his routine of going to look for flowers to pick, and would have no intention of abandoning it. The two friends waited (one of them anxiously) for the moment when the professor would leave his post and the passage would be free. The scientist as naturally, as if nothing was amiss, while his religious friend watched the surroundings in fear of being caught. There was nobody else in that part of the school, it was a seldom frequented place, which relaxed their worries over being watched.

However, it would have surprised them to know that there was one person who watched the scene intently. A young boy who also carried the surname Messier, saw his brother accompanied by the redhead, and was surprised by what he saw.

 In a deeper part of his mind, he had already imagined the scientist's possible intentions, and noticed that he had some sort of strong affection for Carl. Sebastian did not imagine that his brother would go as far as breaking a Lacombrade rule however, rules that he defended at any cost, just to be able to hang out with Pascal. He let out a tiny sigh and started walking in the opposite direction. Sometimes, it seemed that they weren't even brothers, so different they were.

After the short journey was made without raising suspicion, they approached the old wooden door. It was not well cared for like the other school doors, and it seemed to not having been changed in a long time. Carl vaguely remembered this room. He hadn't had many opportunities to enter it, but he knew it was always locked and could only be opened with a key that only the school staff had access to.

"We don't have the key, how are we going to open it?" - The religious boy asked while turning the knob and failing to open the door, wondering if his friend had any solution to this problem.

From inside one of the pockets, the red-haired boy took out a small key that he used to unlock the door, prompting Carl to ask where he got it from. He did not believe that his friend would be able to steal something just for his own benefit. Pascal had many defects, but dishonesty was not one of them.

"This type of doorknob is an old model, similar to those in my house. I just took a key of mine and filed it in a similar shape until I managed to open it." - The redhead said just before opening the door.

Really, he might not look like it, but he was a real genius. An eccentric and even rebellious genius, but one who possessed a greater intelligence than most usually expected. He went in first and waited for his friend, who was still standing at the door, hesitating. The dark-haired boy looked around before entering, asking God's forgiveness for doing something wrong, letting guilt consume him before proceeding. Carl had gone delinquent. He wasn't proud of it, but something was telling him to continue. Maybe it was the strong desire to forget about his problems and get a little distraction, or to just enjoy the company of his best friend, which was comforting. Their friendship was inexplicable, unshakable, they understood each other better than anyone. Pascal didn't show it much, but he was extremely happy that Carl had accompanied him. It meant a lot to him, it meant that the dark-haired boy liked his company.

The scientist's feelings, which were already strong, had intensified in recent days. He knew that he was not reciprocated, that Carl's heart was already broken and he would not surrender easily, but he was satisfied with only his presence.

I loved you from the beginning, Since I saw you, you have won a special place in my heart. I don't know what makes me love you so much, it's irrational, it's against logic. It's like breaking the laws of physics, it hurts me to see you so close, And to know you are so far away. If numbers could describe us, we would be the Riemann Hypothesis*.

Frustrations were part of Pascal Biquet's life. He had already become so used to them that he saw no problem in having one more in his collection.

* Considered one of the most difficult mathematical problems of all time, this equation has never been solved and there is a prize for those who can solve it.

Continued in Next Chapter

[ryanmeft]

My Top Performances of 2019, Part 1

That’s pretty self-explanatory, right?

A couple notes:

I cut myself off at 20. Many deserving performances didn’t quite make that arbitrary cut. Some will be in the honorable mentions section in Part 2. The order is irrelevant. In fact, it is deliberately random. There were a few cases where two performances in the same movie were both great and complimentary, and I wanted to honor them both without using up another slot. So I just combined them.

Last but not least, don’t forget that while writers and directors can’t make movies without actors, without writers and directors actors are just grown-ass adults playing pretend in front of a mirror. That’s also true of designers, cinematographers, key grips, assistants---pretty much everyone it takes to make one of these things. If you really love an actor or a performance, look into the people you don’t see who make it possible, and be sure to mentally send them some appreciation, too.

On with the show.

Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell

While Joaquin Phoenix and Adam Sandler earned a lot of (very deserving) praise for playing men destructing in slow-motion, Elisabeth Moss went almost unseen here as a woman actively shredding herself and her life while holding onto the fading dregs of fame. Playing the wonderfully named Becky Something, she’s a briefly popular rock star whose absolute lack of control and addiction to power destroy her. But that’s not new; it’s so common a theme in rock movies that it’s become a cliche. What makes Becky stand out is the unwavering intensity Moss portrays her with. There is never a moment of calm, never a place to let out a breath.

Eddie Murphy in Dolemite is My Name

After a couple of decades of his early trash-talking persona being de-fanged by appearances in family films, Murphy returns to what made him famous: swearing a lot. But his turn as Blaxploitation icon Rudy Ray Moore is bigger than that. Moore is seen here as a truly ambitious and calculating entertainer for whom cussing and talking about explicit sex is merely a character for the benefit of others. Could it be a subtle comment on Murphy himself?

Thomasin McKenzie in Jojo Rabbit

Scarlett Johansson got the Oscar nod, but McKenzie is the beating heart of this Mel Brooksian satire of the Nazi regime, fierce and vulnerable and never too much of one or the other. From the moment she appears, when you think she’s going to be the typical meek Jewish refugee hiding in a wall panel and she instead lets Jojo know exactly who is in control, she commands the film, leaving us enjoying the whole thing but also waiting for her scenes. After her debut in Leave No Trace was mostly ignored, her lack of awards success here continues to be baffling.

Scarlett Johansson & Adam Driver in Marriage Story

Not that ScarJo didn’t deserve a nomination this year. You cannot look away from her in this unflinchingly realistic story of an imploding marriage---but Driver sure makes you want to. In a gender-narrative-switch, Johansson plays the cool, calculating one, remaining above the fray though, of course, privately threatening to drown in it. Driver is the overly emotional one, relying on instinct rather than reason. When they finally break down and have a knock-down drag-out, it’s both shocking that things disintegrated so quickly, and entirely unsurprising to anyone who’s ever attempted a serious relationship. 

Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems

Despite the fact he’s proven himself time and again to be a fantastic dramatic actor when he wants to be, few people were unsurprised at the unrelenting intensity of Sandler’s performance here. He’s a jewel shop owner and small-time hustler, addicted to the risk and thrill of gambling more than the reward. But that’s a pretty typical character. What makes Howard Ratner unique is that he lever lets us take a breath---the never ending explosion inside his head is manifested by the constant whirl of activity and terrible judgement on the outside.

Lupita Nyong’o in Us

As the hero of the film, Nyong’o is sympathetic and engaging. Yet the highlight of this double role is her evil twin---a twisted, broken psychopath who tells ghost stories that could scar your mind and slowly-but-relentlessly pursues her prey. It’s a testament to Nyong’o’s talent that whenever both are onscreen together, they seem equally real and equally separate. If you don’t think that sounds hard, imagine having to pretend to fight yourself pretending to fight yourself, and make it look good.

Rebecca Ferguson in Doctor Sleep

Look, I’m just gonna be honest here: I might have a little bit of a crush on Rebecca Ferguson, as much because of her until-now underutilized talent as her looks. She’s simply incredibly compelling to watch even in roles that don’t deserve her level of skill. After seeing her as a centuries-old, soul-devouring, child-murdering, vampire-like creature of the night in the latest Stephen King adaptation, though, I…well, still have a little bit of a crush on her. I probably need a better therapist. You know who doesn’t need more help? Ferguson, who with this role takes back the scene-chewing movie villain from superhero films and delivers one of the best of all time. I haven’t watched Doctor Who in a while; do they need a new Master yet?

Antonio Banderas in Pain & Glory

Banderas was a talented actor right from his early beginnings with director Pedro Almodovar. He came to Hollywood, got a few good roles out of it (I’m still a fan of that first Zorro movie), was relegated to the status of a sex symbol, dropped off most people’s radars for a while, and in Almodovar’s latest finally gets the role of his career. He’s an aging filmmaker who suffers from every chronic pain imaginable, unable or unwilling to write and reflecting on a lifetime full of loves and losses. It is a performance that is difficult to describe in words, sublime and subtle let passionate and romantic.

Juliette Binoche in High Life

I usually hedge my bets on statements of absolute fact, but I feel comfortable saying this is the only movie you will ever see in which Juliette Binoche uses a virtual reality machine and ceiling straps to imagine herself having sex with a person in an animal suit. Describing that scene is irresistible, but it is more than mere shock: it’s an indication of the depths of human drives which Claire Denis is willing to explore, and the bravery of Binoche to trust her to do it. Binoche’s character is slimy---an unethical doctor sentenced to a prison spaceship for her gut-churning experiments---but she’s not a traditional villain. Rather, she’s a creature who exists to fulfill her needs, in a ship full of such animals.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse

Two men, one a rule-abiding rookie and the other a rambling retired sailor, go mad together in a lighthouse. Pattinson plays the younger man, who seems to believe that good intent and staying on the straight and narrow will forgive him past sins. Dafoe is the wizened, tough-but-fair mentor---or at least so it seems at first. He’s actually as cracked and despotic as they come, leaving us with two unlikable people---one who reveals themselves as such and one who becomes so. It is impossible to separate one of these performances from the other. Witness the scene in which they use stories as verbal weapons. It is as sharp as any actual knife fight could ever be.

That’s all for part one; look for part two tomorrow. Or the next day. Sometime this week.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

DRUCK reactions - s4 ep2

With special thanks to Michi ( @wodrueckts ) for looking over it to make sure I didn’t say anything glaringly wrong. 💛

CLIP 1: It’s hard out there for a hijabi

Here’s one thing I like about this episode: the shot of the tiara spinning in the air. That said, it’s kind of inexplicable. It’s been like a month since the Abiball, so what’s the tiara doing here? Was Amira holding onto it all this time? Did she have this vision of, like, sorting out her shit as she prepares to move out of her parents’ home, and remembering how her gay friend gave the tiara to her because he hated that his boyfriend was so hot he just naturally won all popularity contests? And she was like, “Imma do a solid for future Amira and get rid of this dollar store tiara right now”?

Anyway.

So far, Amira M.’s season has been the only Sana season not to drop during Ramadan. Seems like the Druck team thought they might not even get to Amira, and then they got renewed at the eleventh hour. So they needed to put that shit out quick because the character was set to leave for Australia and anyway it would’ve been really weird to do an Amira season in uni, and then go back to high school with the next gen. So this season is set in summer, and depending on what Wtfock does with Yasmina, it might be the only Sana season to do so.

I think setting this clip lakeside was pretty clever. Plenty of chances to show people in swimming suits or skimpy clothing, as well as people’s reactions to Amira’s burkini. It very quickly sets the stage for the season, same as the bus montage did for Sana in Skam.

I’m not sure how to feel about Sam thinking cunnilingus is boring. Is she sure she’s having it done right? I thought Abdi had a longer than average tongue.

And thanks to Michi, I discovered that this was a reference to Skam, which I didn’t even know because I still had the gdrive subs for s2, where Chris says getting eaten out in Gran Canaria was fun, as opposed to the new subs, where she says it was boring as shit and she fell asleep.

I can’t remember whether Sana’s prayer app ever went off in front of the girl squad. When Skam España did it, the girls immediately freaked the fuck out at the thought of Amira praying right in the middle of a street party. In this case, Kiki looks at Amira for a second. Amira turns the app off though, so we never find out what the girls would’ve done if Amira were to pray right there. Or if it’s happened before. (I’ve been told by Michi this has happened before but the girls didn’t have a reaction then either.)

“Girls, why does it always have to be about boys with you guys?” GO OFF, AMIRA. I remember when I watched the season live, I became exhausted at all the boy talk, so it’ll be interesting to see if I still get this feeling watching the episodes.

In comparison to Vilde, Kiki is also a good sport about Amira wanting this topic to be over. I mean, she laughs a little (perhaps knowingly?), but Kiki is always up for changing the topic to something else about her… Like her and Carlos’ house hunting!

And also, Druck has sent Mia off to Spain to reassure viewers that this Noora won’t take over the season like other Nooras. (Ahem.)

For lack of something to talk about, Amira brings up boxing. Kiki is immediately interested, since she loves working out. Amira is really not into the idea of her brothers getting to know her friends, so she uses Hanna’s reticence to shoot Kiki down.

Her mood has been spoiled all in all, so she stays back to feel alienated as the girls splash around.

She does look cute as hell in her burkini and sunglasses though.

CLIP 2: Am I a bet? Am I a fucking bet?

I really like the blink and you’ll miss it shot of (I think is) the customized snow globe with the Nadia and Amira pic.

Some other stuff in Amira’s room: A polisci book, a list of lodgings in Sydney open on her browser, and what I’m pretty sure is a save the date card from Nadia and her fiancé. This is a very smart way to set up Amira’s character for people who might not have been paying a lot of attention to her so far. It’s always fun to get a peek at a Skams character’s bedroom for the first time.

Amira’s season came after Imane’s, and one thing I immediately liked more about Druck was that they spent time with the prayer scenes. I remember ONE (1) scene where Imane prayed in Skam France, and we only got to see the tail end of it.

I’m pretty sure the game the Mahmoodis play doesn’t actually exist, which probably has to do with having to pay royalties to show a real game. Interestingly(?), when I searched Dr. Whoo and Chopstick on google, it led me to Doctor Who pages, so I wonder if it’s all an elaborate Doctor Who reference on the part of someone in the Druck team.

In Skam, Sana misses the shot because the balloon squad are talking throughout the whole song, but Amira loses because Mohammed literally leans into her line of sight to make eye contact. In general, Mohammed is a lot more suave and savvier than Yousef ever was.

CLIP 3: This apartment is gonna kill somebody

And on a similar note but related to Amira, she is set up as someone the other girls rely on for advice. Kiki needs her help with the renter, while Sam asks her for romantic advice. I think the reason for this might be that while the girls didn’t exactly rely on Sana for advice in Skam, Sana was the one with the ideas since the start. Amira doesn’t necessarily take charge of situations the way Sana did, but there’s this notion that without Amira, the squad would fall apart.

The Berlin housing market = shantycore goals.

I also like the bit of subtle social commentary in Amira’s speech, about middle aged people helping young adults get started with life, so the latter can support the former when it comes to pensions, etc.

CLIP 4: Huh.

So even though Amira didn’t want the girls at the gym earlier, they are here now.

The day before, Amira posted a story on ig reminding the girls about the boxing class, with no indication that she ever tried to get them not to come.

Hanna gives a quick bit of exposition when she mentions Stefan is already working full time (and in a job that presumably requires a uni degree) while she just graduated high school. Which she finds weird.

As in Skam, Essam calls Amira ‘slave,’ which Kiki and Hanna notice. Amira quickly says it has to do with a bet, and the subject gets dropped.

When the season was airing, I thought for sure this wasn’t the end of it, and it would be brought up again, either through Kiki, Hanna, or possibly Stefan via Hanna. But no, this is really the end of that storyline.

My question is, why? What is the point of recreating this storyline from Skam (even going through the trouble of setting up a week during the hiatus between episodes 31 and 32, where Amira wins and Essam has to be the slave) if you’re just going to drop it in the same episode? It’s bad writing because we’re still in the stage of the season where storylines are being set up for later. It’s bad writing because Kiki and/or Hanna literally never bring up this bet/slave business again after devoting several clips and a bunch of social media to it. It’s like the writers didn’t really want to adapt this storyline from Skam, but they also didn’t have a ton of ideas for this week. Or maybe they were going to go somewhere with it, but then they changed their minds because it made some character look bad, but they forgot to take it out.  

Like okay, fine, it wasn’t my favorite storyline in Skam either. It made Vilde look like an idiot at best, or a racist and a traitor at worst. But then why even have Kiki and Hanna overhear Essam? It’s not like they had to do it for adaptation reasons. Skam France didn’t.

It’s frustrating as fuck, and it won’t be the last time this season will pull this on the viewer.

Speaking of which, Sam thinks Mohammed is hot as hell (she ain’t wrong) and invites Essam, Omar and Mohammed to Jonas’ birthday party. This bothers Amira, because she doesn’t want her brothers to hang out with her friends. Even though she apparently just invited the girls to the boxing class that takes place at the gym her brothers attend.

[SIGH]

But anyway, Sam is being characterized as someone who is in charge of her sexuality (throughout the whole show, but specifically in this episode). While Amira is pining from a distance, getting flustered just from eye contact, Sam sees a hot guy and immediately creates an opportunity to see him again.

CLIP 5: Barbecue pining

There’s such a summer vibe about always finding reasons to hang out at a specific place because your friend got a summer job there.

I gotta give it to the writers. Essam is such a well-constructed younger sibling character. He’s a brat exactly in the way younger siblings are, and yet… That’s also the reason he’s so endearing.

And, on that note, Omar gives off such dad vibes. Not even older brother vibes. Every time I see Omar I feel like he’s thinking, “ha-ha! These little brats are acting out because they’re going through a lot! We just have to understand them!”

The conversation Amira and Mohammed have around the barbecue is so dumb, but you gotta love how pleased Amira is that she has Mohammed’s attention. Though she’s also unused to liking having a guy’s attention.

David and Matteo are back, and they’re still adorable! Good for them.

The way you could describe this moment as, Amira literally turned around for a moment and Sam was already touching Mohammed’s hair, and have it be accurate, sums up what they’re going for here.

Social media

There was a lot of social media content to keep people fed in the hiatus between episode 31 and 32. David and Matteo backpacked through Europe, Mia left for Spain and Kiki made a video about it, Stefan was invited to a game night with the crew, Kiki and Carlos looked for an apartment, and as I mentioned earlier, Essam lost a bet to Amira and had to be her slave for a week. I think that’s about it!

Abdi suggests that he and Carlos give Jonas supplies to make a protest sign as a birthday present and I almost lost it.

I think the piece of social media that most pissed off Skam purists was a chat where Jonas assures Amira he’s already thought of buying halal meat (as well as vegetarian and vegan options) for his birthday, because apparently Druck wanted to show up Skam or something, but like… It’s not like this storyline went anywhere on Skam either, like at no point do the girls learn to order pizza Sana can eat. So what does it matter if Jonas is already aware that Muslims eat halal meat.

I love that Hanna went to boxing class once, posted a bunch of stories about it and then never attended again. What a mood.

And to close the week, Kiki texts Amira that Essam started following her on insta.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When the season was airing, I found these clips cute enough. But on rewatch, I didn’t care for this episode and the reason is that so much of it ended being irrelevant to the season. What this episode did well was setting up the Kiki/Amira friendship, setting Kiki and Carlos’ apartment and the boxing class as recurring settings for the season and some character details. Essam is a really solid character from the get go, and I like the details in Amira’s room. They could’ve left out just about everything else.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

There must be something in the water...

This comic by Dobson, is in my opinion one that really serves as one of the biggest self owns in his history, once you know a few things about the quote and are familiar with the work of the person who said it AND Dobson’s output .

See, the quote “My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.“ is alluded to none other than one of America’s greatest writers in the 19th century. Samuel L. Clemens. Or as he is known to many people worldwide, Mark Twain.

Now let me admit, I have not really read much of Clemen’s work in my life, but I have read articles about him, saw quotes of him, read up on his life as well as his social opinions and thanks to popculture osmosis I am aware of the plot outlines of works like “The Prince and the Pauper” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. I say plot outlines, cause lets face it, those movie adaptations we all know and love obviously miss the point of Clemens social satire he either hid well in his work or was as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head about.

Clemens in a way was an anti-Dobson. He came from a privileged upbringing, but took on a rather “low class” job in his youth before becoming famous through his writing. Similar to Dobson he hated racism, was obviously against conservative Christianity and for his time a “woke” fellow. But unlike Dobson, I think he did not just do it for virtue signaling, he genuinely believed in the cause and if he felt he went too far, he also apologized. Like his takes on Christianity certainly became more mellow later on in life (at least as far as I know)

 Additionally, Clemens was funny. He was critical of society and literature (I highly recommend you to read Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences to get just how brilliantly this man could dissect the work of others. Here is a link to it https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/FenimoreCoopersLiteraryOffences )

Both in a way he would use snark to mock them, but also get a valid point across.

And the water line up there? In a way it is both the greatest ego boost, but also self deprecation he could go for.

See, the line actually goes like this

„My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.“

 The boost comes from the fact that he is essentially saying “everybody reads my books”. Which lets face it, was true. Clemens was read by many people, both scholars and people from the general public. He was legitimately popular, to the point that even 110 years after he died he is still well known. Not only his works, but the person himself has become an iconic figure in our cultural conscious. Or to focus on what was really important: Clemens: I make money through my writing, bitch!

Okay, he wouldn’t have said it like that, but he would have at least acknowledged that making good money through his work was a nice benefit.

But in the same way, the line is a bit of self deprecation and slightly humble. See, he says his books are water. Something basic, something not everyone can afford. While the books of great masters are like wine. Something not everyone can afford, but which is in a way “sophisticated” and will live on too, even in higher regards.

I bet that at times Clemens could be full of himself, but we have to understand, this was a man who could take criticism and give it. A man who understood also something about literature and had certain insights others did not have at his time. A deadpan snarker who when he got a positive review allegedly told one of his first critics something along the line of “You made me as happy as the white slave owner chick who realizes her kid was going to be white after all”.

So what I believe is that he was humble enough to see that there were also people better/more sophisticated than him, which he even looked up too and whose work he compared with wine. People by whom he as a creator was like water in comparison. But thankfully (or rather, fortunately) everyone drinks waters aka “reads” the stuff he writes and therefore guarantees his career.

Which honestly, I consider also something of a truth some content creator should go for. Look, I am not saying that we should stop trying to go for something meaningful when we create art or tell stories, but in a way if Clemens was alive today, he would consider his water statement just further confirmed in the way a lot of popcultur works nowadays. Best example, Marvel movies. Marvel movies, as entertaining as they are, are basically just water (or soda), compared to genuine artistic movies or movies with deeper social issues in them. And yet, those movies make money and seem to connect with people at times better than something more “sophisticated”. Go figure.

 But, back to Dobson for a bit, okay?

See, for Clemens the water line made sense, because again, his works were popular and understandable for everyone, making them as accessible as water. But for Dobson? Oh boy… For starters, if we compare their achievements in life so far Clemens already wins. Cause by the time he was 39 (Dobson’s current age at the time this post is written) Clemens was successful under his pseudonym by writing multiple articles and short stories, including The Innocent Abroad, Roughin It and Tom Sawyer. He was also married and was involved in multiple businesses. Dobson meanwhile had attempted to create the following comic series Patti, Formera, Percy Phillips, Legens/Alex ze Pirate, Danny & Spots, Brentalfloss Comics and they all sunk faster than the Titanic. Okay, not the Brental Floss Comcis, those just ended because Brentalfloss thought it was time to end it, but still.

Four major stories he supposedly wanted to write abandoned because they did not earn him the reputation he wanted and one unpopular out of touch gaming comic strips where the punchline was that a rejected clone of Cubitus with the Marsupilami (go look them up) liked the Wii, while its owner/friend was a hardcore PS3 gamer who obviously always needed to be in the wrong because after all, only troglodytes play non nintento consoles.

All his major books got rejected by the public, because the writing was either not good or the artwork was at best mediocre at worst something people on manag forums could draw better when doing fanart.

And yet here we have Dobson, using another ones famous and funny line claiming “his books are like water. Everybody drinks water” indicating amongst other things “everyone reads my books and they are easily accessible”.

No, that is a freaking lie. No one read your books, most of them are not accessible to anyone because they are either out of print or you could not see them anywhere if you dig up as deep as possible online (see my paywall post earlier this week). And when people read your books common criticisms included how unoriginal and aimless your stories would feel (Formera), how derivative characters were from other fictional characters (Alex ze Pirate is e.g. just Lina from Slayers but with the bitchy temper of a Rumiko Takahashi character) and how unlikable most characters would just be (see everyone in Alex ze Pirate except the Ninja Girl and Sam).

 Or to put it in Clemen’s work when describing the sins of Cooper’s Deerslayer, your works tend to break among other things the following rules:

- … A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

- They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

- They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

- They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

- They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

- They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

And now replace the Deerslayer tale with Alex ze Pirate/Formera and tell me those rules are not broken.

I am sorry, I get Dobson just wanted to be more sophisticated and give himself a slight ego boost and trick his readers into thinking he is deeper in his thinking than he really is. But if Dobson’s books are like water, said water is somewhere in the desert in an almost empty well that has also been poisoned. Either it gets detoxed and filtrated for consumption or you are better off drinking your own piss. Which is Clemens code for “write fanfiction”.

[mermaidsdrowninginthesea]

Where our Paths met

A naruto love story

A NarutoxOC story because I got inspired to finally, actually write a fanfic of my own and publish it, by a wonderful writer;@bonemarroww. It is going to be here and wattpad, and also Ao3, and in the future, there will be links to Ao3 to read all the chapters that are currently out.

Summary: Akina Seto. A terribly ordinary girl who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. A girl who just wanted have a family to call her own, friends to hang out with. A girl who didn't want to be so ordinary anymore. When she moved to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, she knew that this would be her chance to shine. This would be the place she would meet new people and become someone she was proud of. And maybe she gets help along the way by a hyperactive boy who wants to be recognized for his efforts, and become Hokage someday.

Chapter 1: The first step

The day was clear, with few clouds in the sky. The wind was subtle but not unwanted, moving stray leaves from the trees to the ground, causing them to crunch under Akina's foot as she walked the path laid before her.

    She had been walking for days now, trying to find her way through the geography of the land. Though she had a map, it didn't really help that she didn't understand it at all. But, she knew she was going the right way, the wind was telling her so, in its whispers, telling her to keep going on this path and in a days time she will be in front of the gates of the Hidden Leaf village, her new home. A new beginning, a new start. The thought made Akina smile to herself. She really needed the change of scenery, and even more a change of lifestyle.

  In her old home, there wasn't much, just a small town, a part of the village Hidden in the Mist. The town didn't really have a name, nothing worth mentioning. It wasn't even on any maps, that is how insignificant it was. It's even more irrelevant now since it's been burned and raided and looted a couple months ago. This was the reason why Akina left, and decided to find solace at the Hidden Leaf Village, to make a new life for herself. It definitely helps that she doesn't know who her parents are, and the people of the village were strangely wary of Akina.

   She remembered a vivid memory of the village elders telling her to never interact with anybody, to stay and hide, especially when the new moon comes. She never knew what they meant, and to this day she was still confused on the new moon bit, it always confused her. She did get oddly weak on new moons, but nothing bad would happen. And since nothing bad ever happens, she never really thought of it seriously. But then again, the new moon was out when the village was burned and raided, and Akina couldn't really remember what happened...It's like there was a barrier set on her mind to make her not remember, and it hurt to try.

   Her brows furrowing in frustration, Akina walked on, trying to figure out what happened, but just ending up with a headache. She sighs and relaxing her muscles. The tension of trying to remember becoming too much for her mind. "I probably shouldn't push myself so hard..." Akina muttered to herself, setting her backpack down to grab a drink of water from her canister. With a few swigs down, and a refreshed mindset, she put her backpack back on and started to walk faster down the path, a renewed vigor, wanting to get to the village earlier than in a day.

    Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi stood in front of the Fourth Hokage. Naruto yawned, Sasuke looking bored, and Sakura glancing from the room to Sasuke to seem inconspicuous, but failing. Kakashi shook his head, then gave his attention to Lord Fourth. "Seeing as you called us here, I'm sure you have a mission for my team and I?" Kakashi asked. Lord Fourth cleared his throat and nodded.   He fumbled for a few seconds to find the right file. When he did find it, he gestured for Kakashi to take it, which he did.

  "This is a simple C rank mission, you four are to meet up and escort a girl around a year or two older than Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. She is coming from a very small town in the village Hidden in the Mist. Unfortunately, the town was burned down and raided recently, and the only survivor was her." the Fourth explained. Kakashi nodded as he read along the explanation.

   "Understood, we will get ready immediately. Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, you guys get your things ready and meet me in front of the Konoha gates within two hours." Kakashi commanded the three genin.

   "Why are we leaving so early?!?" Naruto sputtered, "we barely got back from the Land of Waves a week ago! And I haven't even been to Ichiraku's since we've been back!"

"You know, for someone who wants to become Hokage someday, you sure do complain a lot." Kakashi sighed in exasperation.

  "Yeah Naruto, stop complaining so much. Can't you be a little quieter, like some people." Sakura chided in, referring to Sasuke who wasn't paying attention to the conversation.

"Sakura! Why are you taking his side?! You just side you were tired to, ya know!"

   "Yes, but I know when to be responsible and suck it up, unlike you, you idiot!" Sakura jabbed. She huffed and looked in the opposite direction of Naruto to indicate she was done arguing. Naruto slumped his shoulders in defeat and sighed. Kakashi chuckled softly and rubbed the back of his head, bowing politely to the Fourth.

"Sorry about them, they never learn." Kakashi said. The Fourth waved a dismissive hand.

   "No matter, just make sure to get her here safely. And Kakashi, I need to have a word with you privately." the Fourth said, indicating for the genin to leave his office. When they were signaled to leave, all three bowed and turned to leave, quietly closing the door behind them.

    "What did you want to discuss with me?" Kakashi asked curiously. The Fourth Hokage folded his hands underneath his head and settled his chin on top of them and looked at Kakashi with a serious gaze.

    "I know I said this was a C rank mission, but there is more to it than I originally thought. You see, the one requested this mission was the Mizukage herself." Lord Fourth said. This made Kakashi intrigued. "She wouldn't give me a lot of detail as to why she requested us to escort young Akina to our village, but what she did say was that this girl is extremely special for reasons that we don't know, that the Mizukage wouldn't disclose just yet. But if I am assuming correctly, this girl is the last member of a very long and very powerful bloodline, and the Mizukage wants her to be protected at all costs, so we must do our jobs as shinobi of the Leaf to make sure she is not harmed." the Fourth said. Kakashi nodded sharply.

   "If I may ask, what clan could she be from?" Kakashi asked. Lord Fourth hesitated for a few moments, debating on if he should tell Kakashi or not. He looked to his advisers, making eye contact with them. In the end, they all agreed to tell him.

"She might be the last living member of the Seto clan."

  Kakashi gasped, his visible eye practically bulging out of his head. "The Seto clan? I thought they were exterminated more than fifteen years ago."

  The Seto clan. Once revered as gods of the natural elements long ago. It was said that they evolved so much in there ninjutsu that they didn't need to make hand signs, and their taijutsu was on par with the Leaf's own Hyuga clan. And in some branches of the bloodline, their genjutsu was just as terrifying as the Uchiha's genjutsu. They were a force to be reckoned with, and many people were scared of them, as much as they admired them. But with power comes the people who wanted them dead. The clan was soon executed by their own village, in fear they would do something to the people. It was a tragedy many tried to forget.

   "Yes well, rumors were spreading around the land that a woman escaped, and apparently she was pregnant with who you are assigned to meet today. Though she probably doesn't know anything of her heritage and blood, and I want to keep it that way. Don't say anything, not even the your team." the Fourth warned. Kakashi nodded sharply. "Good, you may leave now." the Fourth said, dismissing Kakashi. He bowed lowly and quickly, then in a puff of smoke he was gone. The Fourth Hokage sighed and rubbed eyes, hoping to any god that would listen that they would all be safe on this journey.

    When the two hour time limit came to an end, Kakashi jumped to the front gates of Konoha, and saw his teammates already there, packed and ready to go. He landed next to Naruto and waved in greeting. "I see that you are all ready to go." He said, smiling through his mask.

 "You're five minutes late Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura exclaimed, her hands on her hips.

 "Oh, was I? I didn't notice."

 "Yeah, well we did!" Naruto said, siding with Sakura. She nodded her head in agreement. Kakashi chuckled, not really knowing what to say. Sasuke rolled his eyes and sighs.

 "Do you ever shut up, you dolt?" Sasuke said pointedly to Naruto. Naruto glared right back and cracked his knuckles.

 "What'd you say?!?" Naruto yelled out, winding up his arm to hit Sasuke square in the face, but Kakashi caught his hand before he could.

  "Now now, teammates shouldn't fight each other. Besides we need to get going." Kakashi said. He let go of Naruto's fist and pushed him along so they could finally begin their search for Akina Seto.

  In the first thirty minutes of the journey, it was pretty quiet, with the occasional muttered insult from Naruto towards Sasuke, to which Sasuke ignored. But when thirty minutes became six hours, things started to get a little tense.

  "Sensei! Where are we even going?!" Sakura cried out, tired of all the walking they were doing.

  "Well, we are following the path that leads into Konoha, to see if we run into her while we walk down the same path." Kakashi explained.

 "I understand that, but we've been walking for six hours straight and I haven't seen another living soul at all!" Sakura complained. Kakashi rolled his eyes and sighed. He really didn't want to walk either, but what else were they supposed to do.

  As Kakashi was about to answer, a scream was heard throughout the forest, startling all four the shinobi. "What was that?" Sasuke muttered to himself, carefully taking a kunai out of his pouch.

   "I don't know, but it could be the girl we're looking for!" Naruto yelled out and dashed off the direction of the scream.

  "Wait Naruto, you can't ju-- oh nevermind. Sasuke, Sakura let's go!"

  As Naruto ran through the trees, he came to a sudden halt to see a girl with snow white hair hanging upside down from a tree with a rope. She was also surrounded by three ninja. Their kunai were out, and they were laughing maliciously. Before Naruto had a chance to consider going down there to help the girl, there was hand holding him in place. He looked over to see it was Kakashi, with Sasuke and Sakura following quietly behind. Naruto whispered to Kakashi, "Who are they?"

 "Rogue ninja it seems." Kakashi responded back quietly. "Okay, on my command, we'll all go in and surprise them. Knock them out and then get to the girl." Kakashi whispered. Naruto nodded, along with Sasuke and Sakura. He nodded and gestured for them to move out.

 Naruto quickly jumped out with a kunai in hand, and promptly kicked one of the ninja in the face causing his head to move in an unnatural way, and instantly knocking him out. Kakashi made quick hits to the second ninja, stabbing all his vitals points and also instantly knocking him out. Sakura and Sasuke made quick work of the last rogue, them both hitting him in the face on either side, at the same time, knocking him out too. "Well, that was fast." Naruto laughed out.

 "Yeah, for rogue ninja, they weren't that strong. They didn't even sense us." Sasuke said, putting his kunai back in his pouch.

  "You guys have a point. They were pretty compared to most ninja that go rogue. I wonder..." Kakashi concurred, trailing off into his own thoughts. The genin seemed to do the same, perplexed as to how they won so easily like that.

 "Uhm, not to interrupt your brainstorming, but do you think you could help me get down from here?" Akina said from her position upside down. Naruto heard her first and gasped loudly.

  "Oh right! Sorry about that!" Naruto threw his kunai at the rope, successfully cutting it, causing Akina to fall. Naruto made sure to catch her, then slowly drop her to the ground. Akina patted her clothes down for any dust and rubbed her hair down, making it less of a mess than it was when she was upside down. Naruto looked at her more closely. She was really pale, her eyes a deep blue, but yet red at the same time. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were also white. Everything about her screamed fragility. She seemed like the personification of snow. Yet, Naruto got the feeling she was strong, very strong. Maybe it was the way she held herself, or the gaze in her eyes when she met Naruto's.

 She smiled and bowed, then bowed to the other three. "Thank you all for helping me, I was quite in a bind there." Akina said politely. Naruto chuckled and put his hand behind his head in a casual pose.

  "Aww, no problem, what are ninja for!" Naruto said confidently.

 "Yes, Naruto is quite right here. But, are you by any chance Akina Seto?" Kakashi asked. Akina blinked up at him and nodded suspiciously. Kakashi's eye crinkled, signaling his smile from under the mask, and held out his hand to her. "Oh good. My name is Kakashi," she shook his hand," and this is my team, Sasuke," Akina shook Sasuke's hand,"Sakura," she then shook Sakura's hand, "and Naruto here, who cut you down from the tree." Kakashi finished as Akina shook Naruto's hand.

  "That's right, Naruto Uzumaki! Amazing ninja and future Hokage!" Naruto said loudly, a big grin on his face. Akina couldn't help but smile back at him.

  "Well, it's nice to meet all of you. My name is Akina Seto, wandering traveler, trying to find her way to Konoha." she said to them.

 "Yes, we were actually asked to meet you and escort you the rest of the way to Konoha." Kakashi said to her. "Now that we have found you, let us lead the way to your new home."

  "Thank you very much." Akina said gratefully. She looked around and quickly found her backpack behind a tree. Putting it on, she looked to the group and smiled, indicating she was ready to leave when they were.

  They set out again, going back Konoha this time. As they walked, Akina felt eyes on her and looked to her left to see Naruto stealing glances at her every once in awhile. She seem confused, was there something on her face? No, she didn't think so. Maybe something else...But, oh well. She smiled when she met eye contact with him. Naruto blushed a little in embarrassment at being caught. To distract himself, he started to talk with Sakura. Akina watched them interact, interested in how this blonde boy acted. He was pretty rambunctious for how small he was. She smiled to herself. She hoped when she got to Konoha, everybody acted like this. Loud and open. This would be her first step to a bigger, better life.

Author’s notes: I hope it wasn’t too bad, I really really tried on this. Also for my oc, you can totally replace her with yourself lol.

EDIT: A LOVELY PERSON TOLD ME HOW TO DO AO3 SO IT WILL BE ON AO3 TOO.

[love-takes-work]

Why I wish people would stop saying Steven Universe is ending

All right y'all, I know I'm not the only person saying this but maybe I can help put this into perspective for you.

No, there is no indication that Steven Universe is ending or has ended.

It's not difficult to see why some people are suggesting this. It's largely based on how quickly longstanding mysteries were wrapped up in "Change Your Mind" (bringing back Jasper, what is Steven's "real" identity, what happens if he loses his Gem, finding a workable treatment for corruption) and how many long-awaited elements were spotlighted in the episode (Lars and Sadie reuniting; the Off Colors making it to Earth; new outfits for everyone; the appearance of a Steven/Pearl Fusion, a Steven/Garnet Fusion, and a reveal for the modern version of the Temple Fusion). Combined with a reprise of the theme song and a special-length epic episode, it's hard to not read this as a finale.

It's certainly written as one. Not necessarily for the show, but for an arc they built and fed into for a long time.

So I understand. I do. But.

Please stop saying it's obvious the show is over because YOU can't personally imagine what they could do next.

I'm seeing a lot of this. "What else do they have to wrap up? They montaged through all the stuff we had left to see. There's nothing else to do. The dangling threads they did leave aren't enough to make another season about. I can't imagine they have anything left to tell us."

That's right. YOU can't imagine, naysayer. But they can, and they have.

Remember when some scenes from the "Heart of the Crystal Gems" arc and the episode "Legs From Here to Homeworld" leaked, causing popular fan theorists and even reputable news sources to start blasting CARTOON NETWORK SPOILS THE FINAL EPISODE OF STEVEN UNIVERSE?

Remember how people were saying "well obviously if the Diamonds are interacting peacefully with Steven, that's the end, that has to be the last episode, it's over"?

They COULD NOT IMAGINE that we had anywhere else to go from there. They COULD NOT IMAGINE that the show would take us beyond that to a place where conflict and resolution were still out there to explore even if it didn't involve these particular characters beating up on each other anymore. There were so many people who were so sure this couldn't be a thing unless the show was ending--that they said it with confidence, they said it uncritically, they said it in multiple reputable news stories.

They were wrong. Those scenes happened in episode 153 and then there were more than half a dozen more episodes since, proving that those scenes did not come from a final episode.

But now people are making the same mistake again.

I realize some of you are used to seeing this sort of thing when shows end (at least, on the shows that get to choose their ending instead of being cancelled and cut off). I realize that this FEELS very final because of some of the tropes and tells they chose. But I find it really baffling that so many fans are ignoring all these other reasons to know the show is continuing:

The movie was promoted right after "Change Your Mind," slated for fall 2019. If they have nowhere to go from here, what do you think they're making a movie about?

The voice actors, writers, and creators have repeatedly discussed continuing sessions and future plans in all the supplementary materials--podcasts and tweets give you audio and visual evidence that content is still being made. What do you think they're doing with that stuff if there's nothing else to this story?

There are many plot and character threads we can see addressed still--not only those set in place by the circumstances of "Change Your Mind's" ending, but those unaddressed, like what is going to happen to the Zoomans and the Famethysts and the bubbled Rose Quartz Gems, or what the heck is in Lion's treasure chest.

This package of episodes created a satisfactory ending to what episodes had been ordered at the time that they were written. Matt Burnett and Ben Levin left the show following this season (to write Craig of the Creek), and they've discussed how they have come to the end of the episodes that were ordered when they completed their work and departed. (And now they've joked that if they want to find out what's coming next, they just walk over there and peek. It's got to still be going on for them to do that.) It feels the way it does because they did write it with a stopping point. There have been a few of those ("Ocean Gem" was another one). 

TV is a difficult medium to write stories for because so much is unknown about the future of your show, so you have to be flexible. They wrote it so they could go on or not depending on how the dice fell. They fell to give us more.

I know we don't have an "official confirmation of Season 6," but seasons have consistently been meaningless on this show. (I remember seeing Ian Jones-Quartey express frustration with fan fixation on how to define what goes in what season, since it's pretty arbitrary.) Some people took information they THOUGHT they knew (that they did not know) to explain to others how many episodes we could expect and how the story would therefore unfold, but they were wrong. Unless they are insiders, they will continue to be wrong if they keep basing their understanding of how this show will be handled on how other shows usually handle their storytelling.

ON THE DAY THAT STEVEN UNIVERSE DOES COME TO AN END, I believe (but don't KNOW) that the process will be more like Adventure Time's was: Adventure Time was handled very similarly to Steven Universe in many ways, and when that show was determined to be ending, not only was there an announcement that SAID SO, but then we also got little milestones along the way featuring boarders and writers finishing their last episodes, and then more than a YEAR later the finale finally aired. Given that, I'm confused why people seem to think it's logical that Steven Universe would just end there with no explanation and no announcement. You haven't seen an announcement about it wrapping because IT ISN'T DOING THAT RIGHT NOW.

I know I don't speak for everyone, but considering how well this show handles its reveals, I think it's really arrogant for fans and critics to insist it has nothing else worthwhile to show us or will necessarily go downhill from here if it continues.

I feel it has a wonderful mixture of reveals that no one sees coming and reveals that we predicted (or could have). It consistently finds a way to do things we expected in ways we didn't, or to throw curveballs that we retroactively see were supported with subtext and subtle tells. If you're honestly telling me you've watched this show for five seasons and you don't trust it to surprise and delight you again, I'm confused about what show you think you're watching. I’m not demanding people love it, and I’m not saying you can’t criticize it or wish for more content or different content with your favorite characters or plot elements, but if you're still here watching this show and you're not just hate-watching it at this point, give it some breathing room. I wanted to write something comforting here to reassure people that there's no indication the show is ending, but I'm honestly just kinda angry at all the pessimism and naysaying.

I remember when "Escapism" premiered on the Steven Universe Podcast, context free, and everybody had a theory about who sang it. There was so much arrogance! OBVIOUSLY this is a Lapis song. Oh wait no, that doesn't make sense now that she ran away and came back. OBVIOUSLY this is a flashback Pink Diamond song. OBVIOUSLY this is a White Pearl song. OBVIOUSLY this is Steven song, a Blue Diamond song, etc. People thought they were reading black and white messages but they were not. They were developing headcanons and becoming so confident about them that they developed expectations about what this song owed to them. Guess what? The song was Stevonnie's voice as a soundtrack to a possessed watermelon. You didn't know. And you don't know now.

Please listen to what the actual Crewniverse people are telling you about the ongoing production of the show and stop spreading the misleading information that it is known to be ending. I believe we will be given time to handle that news, like we were with Adventure Time, and that like most things with Steven Universe, it will complete its story gently, gracefully, and with resolution to questions and arcs--both for those we've had for some time and for those we don't even know are coming yet.

Trust in the imagination and heart that inspired this show. All evidence suggests they have plenty more to share with us.

tl;dr: Just because someone can't imagine what might come next in Steven Universe doesn't mean the show is ending. There is overwhelming evidence that there is more, and some people in this fandom have a history of unfounded overconfidence in their expectations for its future. Wait and see.