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kiragecko · 4 years ago

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Reviews of Christian Allegorical FANTASY

Note: Christianity is a broad, varied thing. I can only write from my perspective, and it’s hard to describe that perspective to an international audience. Words have different meanings in different countries. But this is what I think about the various Christian allegorical fiction I’ve read, measured by writing quality, allegorical quality, and ability to make me happy. Your perspective may vary.

Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis –

Writing: Y’all know this guy is good.

Allegory: Shockingly strong for something with such mass appeal. And deeper than you thought as a kid. Never sidelines the story, because he’s integrated the two so well.

Problems: So, you don’t notice the colonialism, racism, classism, sexism, and mild ableism as a kid. Dude was a white British man during the early and mid 1900s. He does not entirely rise above his culture. Some of the dehumanization of species/cultures that are obvious stand-ins for real world cultures horrified me during my latest reread. And it’s subtle enough that it’s hard to point out to kids.

Story: The story is great. I’ve read ‘The Horse And His Boy’ so many times that my papa’s copy is held together with tape. He wouldn’t let me take them when I moved out. Had to buy my own. It was tragic.

The Archives of Anthropos, by John White –

Writing: Reminds me of Terry Brooks, a little. In that the writing is servicable, and some of the fantasy is pretty derivative, but it’s definitely not bad. The roots are strong, but he didn’t have enough experience to cut all the weaker bits and ruthlessly rewrite.

Allegory: Solid. Not tacked on, not super deep. Really good for a Narnia imitation.

Problems: Not sure, haven’t reread in a while. Pika didn’t like a battle near the beginning, so we had to stop.

Story: It’s set in Winnipeg!!! Unashamed about being heavily inspired by Narnia, this series is a delight. Not as good as it’s inspiration, of course, but it feels like a heartfelt fan letter. Some of the ideas are REALLY cool. This series is worth reading, you guys! Especially the first 2 books.

The Circle (Black, Red, and White), by Ted Dekker –

Writing: Readable. Slick. Masculine.

Allegory: Lacked both the desired subtly and the necessary depth. Felt like it was written for fantasy fans that felt guilty about reading secular books, rather than to say something important.

Story: Don’t like Narnia-esque books aimed at adults. Allegories shouldn’t be trying to be cool. Not a fan. (But please note that these opinions were formed 15-20 years ago. I may have been missing something.)

The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis –

Writing: Again, this is C.S. Lewis. He’s good at writing.

Allegory: A little weird, for me. But I struggle with allegory for adults. One of the books is Adam and Eve on Venus, with original sin working slightly differently? I don’t get it.

Problems: My problem is that I don’t like it! Sometimes it reads like Douglas Adams, but not funny. That makes no sense!

Story: Don’t like Narnia-esque books aimed at adults, even if they’re written by the authour of Narnia. This is Sci-Fi. There is romance. Really not for me.

The Story of the Other Wise Man, by Henry Van Dyke –

Writing: Good, if I remember correctly. Feels dated and classic, like it should be from Victorian times. (I just checked, it’s from 1895.)

Allegory: Like most morality from more than a century ago, it reads a bit weird. Just, life was a lot harsher then. Nice clear simple message, just taught from a mindset I don’t totally understand.

Story: As a kid, this one made me SAD! He loses everything and feels like a failure! Does have a good message, teaching is sound, good storytelling, but it wasn’t fun enough to make the lesson stick.

Left Behind, by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins -

Writing: I remember the writing being fine. They read like thrillers, which isn’t a bad thing. I’ve enjoyed some thrillers.

Allegory: Revelations is ALREADY an allegory. This is just an uninspired expansion.

Problems: Everything.

Story: I hate apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic stories. This series wasn’t written by someone who was bothered by the suffering of everyone who made ‘wrong’ choices, and that makes it hollow and awful. ‘We’re so good and smart and better than other people!’ NO. That is not Christianity.

A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L’Engle –

I still don’t get how this series is Christian?? Really freaked me out as a kid. Had quite a few nightmares.

After a little research, it turns out that she has a very different understanding of Christianity then me. You’ll have to get a review from someone who can see from that perspective.

Duncton Wood, by William Horwood –

Writing: Extremely good. Heavy and beautiful. Kept me reading as I got more and more weirded out.

Allegory: Not a Christian allegory. And yet Christian enough, in a weird Anglican(??) way, to make it difficult to interpret as non-Christian. There’s a Jesus figure who gets martyred. There are schisms. It’s weird.

Problems: Almost certainly shouldn’t be on this list, yet I spent half an hour searching for it because I was so sure it was supposed to be on this list.

Story: Moles and their experiences with religion. There are similarities to Watership Down and Redwall, Narnia and Lord of the Rings. (The last mostly in language/writing style). If it wasn’t so close to Christian allegory as to be in the uncanny valley, I would have loved it! As it is, I would have prefered LESS Christ.

Christian ALLEGORICAL Fantasy

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by Paul Bunyan –

Writing: (Note: I’ve only read versions rewritten for kids. At least one was heavily abridged.) This was written in 1678. That is a LONG time ago. The worldview is really different from ours. Also, the versions I read were not inspired updates.

Allegory: This was written only 100 years after the Protestant Reformation. Punishments are incredibly disproportionate. Rich people have completely different rules than the poor, and this is seen as Godly. It’s been over 20 years since I read this book, and I don’t remember much, but it’s a weird read if you’re expecting modern concepts of right and wrong.

Story: Fascinating! Did not enjoy. Might as an adult. Reading an allegory that you can’t relate to at all is a weird experience.

Hind’s Feet On High Places, by Hannah Hunnard -

Writing: (Note: I’ve only read the version rewritten for kids.) Writing is really good.

Allegory: Names that are just English words have always annoyed me. Other than that pet peeve, this is extremely good. Straight-forward enough to be read to a 7 year old, complex enough for me to reference when I’m trying to describe my experiences to my husband. Solid Christianity, with enough hard stuff to challenge you, while still managing to be fun.

Problems: We’ve got some nasty ableism baked into the setting (disability as metaphor for sin and bondage), and the images are painfully white.

Story: I love this book! This is a Pilgrim’s Progress that actually matches with Christianity as I understand it. If you’re looking for a fun fantasy with a good message, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for a distillation of Christianity, told as a story because that makes it more accessible – this is a good one.

The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri –

Haven’t read it.

Tales of the Kingdom, by David and Karen Mains -

Writing: The first collection of stories is really strong. The next 2 get weaker. Short stories read differently than novels, and the writing style works well for that format.

Allegory: TOO strong. Some of the stories still make me mad to think about, because the messages are HARD. (Also, names that are just English words still annoy me, no matter now much I love the series.)

Problems: Ableism – true selves don’t have disabilities and are always beautiful. Art is not 100% white, but all the most beautiful people seem to be. And I love lizards far too much to handle the dragon story.

Story: These stories mean a lot to me. They are very much not something a non-believer is going to enjoy. They tend to focus on the parts of Christianity that are hard, uncomfortable, and/or different from mainstream culture. They also stick with you for decades. Narnia is my favourite series on this list to read, but Tales of the Kingdom might be the best for exploring your faith. Highly, highly recommend.

#religion #christianity #gecko recs stuff #people write things #these were the ones I could think of #anyone else know good allegories #(preferably aimed at kids but not tiny kids)#?

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opbackgrounds · 5 years ago

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Alright, friends, you know the drill by now. Here’s Part III of Sarcasticles’ overblown thoughts on sexism in One Piece. If you haven’t already, go read Part I and Part II before proceeding.

I promise after this I’ll be done. By hook or by crook, we’re getting through the point of the original question. To the Anon who originally sent the ask, sorry it took this long to get here, I hope it’s helpful.

Also, I allude to some very, very minor Wano spoilers, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing here’s your warning.

Characterization? I Don’t Know Her

What makes a good character?

I’ve spent an awful lot of time talking about character designs, when, funnily enough, it’s one of the aspects I pay the least attention to when it comes to deciding if I like how an author portrays their characters. I personally don’t care for fanservice, never have and never will. But unless it’s particularly egregious, I tend to ignore it because there are other factors I think are more important.

The secret sauce for building characters is hard to define, because a good writer can take a concept that has no right being any good and turn it into something incredible (Oda does this all the time) where bad writers will seemingly slot all the right information in the right holes and still have their characters come out of the developmental oven flat and under cooked.

One of the biggest buzzwords floating around these days is agency. Is a character active in their own story, or are they jerked around by the needs of the plot? Is their voice heard? Is their voice unique, or do they blend in with the background?

This is particularly important, because the term Strong Female Protagonist has been warped into shorthand for “girl who fights a lot and looks pretty doing it”. You can have a girl strong enough to lift mountains and still have her be a shit character. You can write a girl who’s main motivation is to get married and have babies with phenomenal depth. What matters is execution.

The Petition to Call A Group of Rescue Arcs a ‘Damsel’

Both Nami and Robin had to be rescued, their main arcs bearing similarities that are impossible to ignore. But these aren’t copies of one another as much as variations on a theme, and with the existence of Marineford and Whole Cake Island I think anyone would be hard-pressed to say that One Piece’s rescue arcs are a girl’s thing. At this point it’s a feature, not a bug.

Which makes sense given how fundamental the idea freedom is to the series. Hell, the first thing Luffy does after becoming a pirate is free Coby from Alvida’s tyrannical reign. Then he frees Zoro from an unjust authority that would have killed him had Luffy not intervened.

Notice a pattern here?

One Piece is written like Pachelbel Canon, in that a very simple core of ideas are repeated over and over with layers of complexity and nuance added over time, examining the same themes from every possible angle.

And when you look at the Four Big Rescue Arcs -- Nami, Robin, Ace, Sanji -- you’ll see that it’s Ace who’s given the least agency throughout his arc. Nami chose to hijack the Going Merry, repeatedly chose to push away the Straw Hats until she reached her breaking point, at which she chose to ask for help, with Luffy only intervening once she does.

Robin is a little less obvious, but during the post-Water 7 party chapters, Aokiji makes the interesting observation that Robin could have escaped CP9, but chose not to

Remember that before Robin’s backstory was shown, Luffy specifically said he didn’t care if she wanted to die or not, so long as she was with the Straw Hats when she made her decision. No one bullied her into “I wanna live”. It was a choice she made of her own volition after realizing the depths the Straw Hats would go on her behalf.

I know there are people who disagree with me, but Nami and Robin are well-written characters. I’ve expounded enough on my reasoning both here and on my main that I don’t want to spend the time belaboring the point. What I do want is to note that Luffy wouldn’t be able to attain his dreams without them. Nami keeps them on course while also severing as a sort of moral compass for the crew -- remember she was the one who insisted on saving the giant kids at Punk Hazard -- while Robin’s ability to read the poneglyphs is what’s going to get the crew to Raftel.

Robin admittedly doesn’t have the same presence within the Straw Hat Pirates as Nami, but I would hardly call that sexism. Since Water 7/Enies Lobby she’s been pretty content to go with whatever Luffy says, and the fact that she’s literally quieter than anyone else in the crew means she doesn’t get as much focus. I think there could be more scenes with her using her specific skill set, like her investigations in Wano and the forensic anthropology scene in the pre-Jaya chapters, but I’m okay with her being a supporting character.

The East Blue Crew have consistently gotten the most focus of any of the Straw Hats. They are the core of the crew, something Oda admits in a roundabout way in the Color Walk where they all appear together for the first time in a color spread

With the main cast as large as it is, not everyone is going to have the same amount of focus or development. Robin is given a unique voice within the story because she doesn’t overreact the way literally everyone else does. Through her silence, she stands out. I find there to be very meaningful character development when she feels comfortable enough with the Straw Hats to start calling them by name in Thriller Bark, relaxed enough with her friends to comitt her first facefaults in a series lousy with them in both Dressrosa and Wano.

In an ideal world, Oda would better rotate through his cast, much like how Brook was the unsung MVP on Whole Cake Island (where Nami was also excellent in a supporting role) but I don’t think people realize how hard it is to juggle almost a dozen different people in a story that’s bloated exponentially over time. To his credit, Oda has handled his expanding crew better than most writers.

I also find it hard to judge this aspect of the series because the manga’s not done yet. I don’t know how Robin and Nami will be used in the future. I mean, Robin never got a chapter title declaring her “The Seventh” which I find suspicious, so Oda could very well have events in store that completely turn our perceptions upside down. It’s impossible to say.

I will acknowledge that the lack of big fights is somewhat disappointing, but neither Robin nor Nami’s dreams revolve around them getting stronger. Robin doesn’t need to use her power to make people explode from the inside out, Nami doesn’t need to fry end-game bosses with her lightning stick. That’s simply not their narrative purpose. With the exception of Tashigi, I’ve found that the female characters advertised as fighters have lived up to their billing. Hancock came out of Marineford unscathed. Carrot’s sulong form was awesome, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The whole climax of Whole Cake Island revolved around surviving Big Mom’s wrath. Not beating her, not fighting her, it took all the Straw Hats had to just survive. Once again you’re left with a number’s game where where there just aren’t enough female characters to even pretend things are balanced.

All said, I think if you’re going to complain about the lack of Robin fights then I think you also have to complain about the lack of Brook fights, and that’s just not something you hear about, especially after Whole Cake Island. You can’t have it both ways. Either there needs to be more even distribution of major fights throughout the entire crew, or you have to acknowledge that a character’s worth isn’t dependent on their fighting prowess.

One Piece is a battle manga, and I do think that it’s fair to criticize when a character isn’t allowed to fight when they’re perfectly capable of kicking ass. But it’s also an adventure story, and that opens up entirely new space for a character to occupy, and that’s where I think Nami and Robin (but especially Nami) really shine

That Moment You Realize Humor Isn’t A Universal Language

I’ve spent so much time defending Oda’s designs and characters that it might seem like I’m perfectly okay with everything that’s portrayed in the manga. To be clear, I’m not. If the messages and comments I’ve gotten over the past several days have taught me anything, it’s that many fans share the same sticking points I do, namely in regards to some of the gags.

I again want to be careful here, because I’m hardly an expert on Japanese culture and it’s really hard to tell if Oda writes his jokes because he thinks they’re funny, or if he thinks his audience will find them funny. I’m again going to default to somewhere in the middle, because if Oda truly found the perviness distasteful he probably wouldn’t have included it, and I’ve read enough SBS to know the guy likes his dick jokes.

First and foremost, one must address the culture gap. Japan ranks last among G7 nations on gender equality, In 2004 two-thirds of Tokyo women in their 20-30s reported to being groped while on public transport. There are numerous barriers that make it difficult for a woman to succeed either in the workplace or politics.

From what I can gather, some of these trends are reversing, albeit slowly and with great resistance. Contrary to what many people seem to believe culture is not always value neutral. And I say that as an American, recognizing there are plenty of things about my culture and country that are really fucked up.

But who gets to decide who’s right and who’s wrong?

When inside that kind of environment, that kind of culture, it’s a lot easier to understand how a character like Sanji can exist. It’s easy to understand why Momo shoving his face into Nami and Robin’s boobs might be played for laughs. It’s not an excuse, but an explanation. And with Sanji failing more often than not, being the butt of his own joke as he slowly turns into a parody of what he once was, one could almost say Oda is pointing those types of people and saying, “Look how pathetic this guy is. Now go laugh as he gets a nosebleed so bad he needs multiple blood transfusions in order to not die.”

I say almost, because Sanji is never condemned for his actions, nor does he learn from them. Instead you have this character who’s supposed to be one of the kindest characters in the series decide to immediately go peep on a woman’s bath house after gaining the power of invisibility.

Stay classy, Oda.

As distasteful as I find it, I don’t find fanservice to be an inherently evil thing that must be eradicated at all costs, and with Oda doing things like putting his entire cast, male and female, into skintight leathers you can hardly say that he’s excluding the men.

Everyone will have their line in the sand, and mine goes back to agency. When Nami did her Happiness Punch way back in Alabasta, that was of her own volition. When Nami and Robin dress in clothes that show everything but the nipple, that’s something they chose and feel comfortable in.

But when Smoker and Tashigi swapped bodies at Punk Hazard, Tashigi specifically asked Smoker not to strip, and he did anyway, opening her coat and removing her bra. This is especially egregious as Tashigi is one of the very few women in the series who is always shown wearing very conservative clothing. Oda specifically showed Tashigi getting upset at Smoker’s actions, and Smoker repeatedly refusing to listen to her.

That’s where I draw my line.

Some Final Thoughts I Couldn’t Fit Anywhere Else

Thought The First--Oda has an interesting habit of turning his most despicable, scummy pieces of flaming human garbage into the butt of the joke. Villains like Crocodile and Doflamingo are certainly evil, but it’s the idealized, cool type of evil that makes you almost admire them. There aren’t very many real-world Crocodiles, but just about everyone knows a Spandam, or an Absalom, or a Vander Decken. These kinds of villains aren’t scary because of their physical prowess, but their unyielding obsessions and the power they’re able to wring from the system, and -- surprise, surprise -- all three are either actively trying to be creepy sex pests or coded as such with the visual language of the comic.

And Oda turns them into a mockery.

While there are some who feel like not treating serious issues like sexual assault seriously are doing a disservice to people who have endured similar experiences I think there’s merit to turning them into a laughingstock. As someone much smarter than me said once, if an opinion cannot withstand mockery it’s revealed to be ridiculous, and these scummy-scum villains are certainly ridiculous.

Thought The Second--It’s hard to say how much sexism is a thing in-universe. Kuina is the only one who is explicitly told her dreams were impossible because of her gender, but with the recent reveal confirming that her family came from Wano, which in turn is based on Feudal Japan, it’s hard to say how widespread these beliefs are. Tashigi brought it up again at Loguetown and Bellemere specifically told her girls that they lived in an era where “girls needed to be strong, too”, but otherwise it’s not a topic that’s been explored in any depth

Thought The Third--The in-universe fetishization of mermaids has some implications that I think are unintended but worth discussing. Shirahoshi has a reputation of being one of the most beautiful women in the world despite not leaving her tower for over 10 years (she’s 16). Mermaids whose tails have split are worth less on the slave market than those whose are intact. Even Zoro erased Kokoro from his memory after meeting the more attractive Caime. It’s one of those odd things that when combined with the more obvious racism themes could have some unfortunate implications, and I think could have been avoided had Oda show a little more restraint with some of his jokes. Unintended consequences are still consequences.

Thought The Forth--There are many other instances throughout the series that people bring up with talking about sexism in One Piece. I feel like a lot of these can be explained away individually -- for example, both Belo Betty and Rebecca’s stripperific outfits were inspired by other media, the painting Liberty of the People and Red Sonja respectively; Lola chasing after an obviously abusive man makes a whole lot more sense when you meet Big Mom; Hancock’s love sickness could be seen as an emotionally stunted woman experiencing her first crush, etc., etc -- it’s when they’re all put together that they begin to read as “Problematic”.

It would be impossible to go over all these individually, but I tend to fall on the side of leniency. In the end, everyone has to make their own decisions based on their own values. I’m hardly unbiased, and my enjoyment for the series will undoubtedly make me look the other way when another might call the exact same incident The Worst Thing Ever. The thing is, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most are convinced that theirs don’t stink. I include myself in that statement. In the end it’s a comic for kids. It’s supposed to be fun.

Thought The Last--I have spent entirely too much of my time writing this up, but in the end I guess I have to go back to what I said when I talked about my thoughts on Sanji: Everyone has their own personal line of acceptable bullshit, and for me Oda does more good than bad. Sanji specifically gets very little leniency from me because I don’t like a lot of the gross behavior Oda passes over as a joke. But the female characters themselves, generally speaking? They’re fine. There are other mangaka that have more equal male to female ratios or have women play more active roles in the story, but Oda does a lot better than most other shonen titles I’ve read.

It’s okay to be critical of media you enjoy. It’s okay to complain. But remember that One Piece is a very long series, and there are some fans who have been a round for literally decades. I myself started reading weekly around the time Duval was introduced, way back in 2008. Every time a new batch of fans comes in the same old arguments get stirred to the top of the pot: Sanji is a creep, Oda can’t draw women, why doesn’t Robin ever get to fight?

It can be exhausting to go through the same hoops time and time again. So if you’re someone who is being critical and feel like no one is listening, or that a bunch of fans are going out of their way to defend Oda, that could be one of the reasons why. They’re tired of having a series they enjoy be shit on.

There are other fans who legitimately don’t think that Oda’s done anything wrong, that jokes are just jokes. If you happen to fall in that category, remember that not everyone feels that way. Art reflects life, which in turn reflects art. One Piece is a few million copies away from outselling Batman. To say it isn’t influential to young readers, both in Japan and abroad, is beyond asinine.

I thank everyone who’s taken the time to read this so far. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how civil the discussion and my inbox as stayed. Even if I didn’t respond to your message, I promise that I did read it.

I wrote as much as I did because I know this is a topic a lot of people care about, and also so I hopefully don’t have to write about it again. A lot of hours has gone into this project, and it’s been exhausting, but in a good way, if that makes any sense. I’m ready to put it to rest.

I was joking with some friends that I think I’ve hit just about every hot topic issue now, so hopefully I can go back to fun questions like speculating if Wapol can eat a person and poop out a devil fruit.

Until then, Sarcasticles, out

#sexism #one piece #long post #sarc talks

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Critic Valentine’s Day Double Feature (Pilot/Sherman, Woman and Child)

Vivia Jay Sherman! Viva Quebec! Viva Valentine’s Day! And Viva WeirdKev who as happens for a good chunk of my content payed for this wonderful double feature for one of my favorite shows. The Critic was created by Al Jean and Mike Reis of The Simpsons fame, a comedy team supreme. While I knew the two wrote for the simpsons, more on that iin a minute, I had no idea just how many classics the two churned out: There’s No Disgrace Like Home, Moaning LIsa, The Telltale Head, The Way We Was, Stark Raving Dad (Sadly tainted by it’s guest star being a horirble monster but that’s not their fault), Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington, the treehouse of horror segments The Bart Zone and Clown Without Pity (The second of which may be my favorite treehouse of horror segment), and later coming back to write the story for one of my all time favorites Round Springfield and to outright write the classic “SupercalfragalisticexpalliDOHcious”. And to his credit Jean would later go on to write some classic post-golden age simpsons episodes during his tenure as producer: Lisa’s Sax, Mom and Pop Art, and Children of a Lesser Clod, which is notable if nothing else for this gag.

So yeah the guys are legends and were right to start their own show under Simpsons producer James L Brooks over at ABC. The show followed the adventures of film Critic, Jay Sherman, a parody of film critics with high brow tastes, impossibly high standards, and a huge opinon of himself, having won the pultizer at least once. Despite this he was also constnatly spat and shat on by society, divorced, lonely, depressed and eats like a thousand pigs combined in some horrific science accident. And given the last three parts describe me, as well as my profession of b eing a critic, naturally I love the guy and this show. I’ll get into his cast as we go as the first episode does an excellent job of introducing the entire cast so there’s no sense repeating myself. But the show’s style I can and will talk about: It’s basically Golden Age, i.e. season’s 1-10, simpsons, but with more pop culture refrences and movie parodies, since the show would often feature multiple on Jay’s show coming Attractions and took place in the celebrity hot spot of new york and was a love letter to the city.. and sometimes a hate letter but only when those digs at the city would be funny, which to be fair depsite never having been to or lived in new york most really are. That’s the series key asset: while a LOT of the jokes haven’t aged well as a lot of the celbreity refrences are dated as are some of the movie parodies, most are hilarious wether you get what their making fun of or not and to me tha’ts a good parody: where knowing what their making fun of HELPS, but you can laugh regardless. The show had the charm and pace of the Simpsons while having it’s own unique style and cast that was just as charming and I love it dearly. The show sadly only lasted two seasons, with ABC canceling it after one, and Brooks having it moved over to FOX, which was a good idea and lead to what’s probably my faviorite simpsons episode, a Star is Burns. Ironically despite you know, the show being created by two simpsons writers, backed by one of their producers and perfectly in line, creator Matt Groening was against the idea, publicly ranted about it to the press, and generally was an ass about it. Look I love the guy and even Brooks, Jean and Reiss were all nice enough in thier criticsim of the guy, but sitll very much understandably pissed off. .and i’m with them.

It gave what’s again, my faviorite episode and what is not a “30 minute add” but an episode that easily stands on it’s own and also you know, pokes fun at itself for being a crossover a few times. You don’t need to see the critic to enjoy it, and episodes most iconic gags, Boo-Urns, Man Getting HIt by a Football, Senior Speilbergo, all don’t involve jay. And again the shows were not at all dismilar: While the critic was it’s own thing it still had the simpsons sense of humor and pacing so I saw it more as a petty rant against having a crossover in general more than a legit critcisim. Especially since Groening had no such complaints decades later with the family guy crossover after both shows had all tehir talent surgically removed and had the gall to NOT remove a cheap shot at Bob’s Burgers. And yes i’m still bitter about seeing that in a promo for the special, Bob’s Burgers is fantastic, to the point that now, in a fabulous case of history repeating itself, it’s got it’s OWN show like the critic made by talented former crew members using a similar but sitll throughly unique comedy style , The Great North. My point is that controversy pisses me off, and The Great North is spectacular go watch it while you read this.

So yeah the Critic is awesome, me and Kev are both fans, and there are plenty of romantic episodes abound as the show digs into Jay’s love life quite a few times and has episodes about his son’s first love, his boss finding a wife towards the end of the series, his parents rekindling their spark and in what’s easily my faviorite episode, his sister dating a grunge rocker. So there was no shortage of choices but the choice made was brilliant.. and i’m not saying that because i’m being paid to, as my review of splatter phoenix’s first episode in darkwing duck and woops should show, paying me does not guarantee that I have to LIKE what your paying me to review. But here I did and he pointed out the first episode of each season, with season two being a soft reboot that while keeping the premise and supporting cast changed a few things around and added two new main characters, and both involve jay finding a new love intrest and intorduce a lot of the cast. I found him to be right, so where we are and after the cut i’ll dive into the good and bad of both episodes and see what changed inbetween seasons.

That gag will make sense.. later. Right now it’s time for our very first episode, the show’s very first episode as you could probably tell by the title.

Pilot: The pilot starts with Jay getting touched up by his Makeup Person Doris. Jay is played by legendary comedian John Lovitz, who this show gave me a deep and lasting appreciation for. Lovitz was at the time best known for his 5 year long stint on SNL, and film wise is best known for Three Amigos, the Brave Little Toaster, The Wedding Singer and Rat Race. Sadly while I do geninely love the guy.. he has been in enough crap to destroy the New York Sewer system, as everyone needs money and sadly not everyone appricates the talents of John Lovitz like I do.

So naturally he’s also been in The Stepford Wives remake, Grown Ups 2, The Ridiculous 6, Eight Crazy Nights, North, Benchwarmers and Benchwarmers 2: Breaking Balls. Yes that’s an actual movie, though it’s already better than the first one for virtue of not having Rob Schnider and David Spade starring in it despite.. that title. The irony is not lost on me that Lovitz has essentially made his money starring in the kinds of films Jay was forced to see for his job. Still a VERY talented, very lovely man.

Before we get to our next voice actor up, no profile of Jon would be complete without mentioning that time he slammed Andy Dick’s face into a bar. To make a very long story short, Lovitz was friends with the late great Phil Hartman, who even did some voice work for this very show, whose wife who had severe drug and mental ilness killed them both. Phil had told Lovitz he saw Dick give his wife cocaine, so after Phil’s tragic murder when Lovitz and Dick ended up on the same show, Lovitz ended up exploding at the guy out of grief and blamed him for her death, but later apologized like a gentleman. Living up to his name though Dick later went up to Lovitz at a restraunt Lovitz owned and said “I’m giving you the Phil Hartman curse, you die next”. Granted he was drunk but still...

Naturally Lovitz banned the guy and Lovitz later demanded an apology when the two ran into each other when they ran into each other at Lovitz regular gig at the comed store. Dick not only refused to apologize even when Lovitz put him against a wall, but said it was because “you blamed me for her death”... which was a decade ago with change by this point, the actions of a man GREIVING for his best friend whose wife’s relapse you caused which inadveradntly lead to her and her husband’s death, and something HE APOLOGIZED FOR. Naturally Lovitz took this how you would and did what we’d all like to do in general and broke the shit out of his face and only didn’t do more because they were seperated. IN short this man is a hero and I wil lbring up this story at every opportunity. Doris was played by the late voice actress Doris Grau, a script supervisor who worked on a LOT of films as one , the most notable I could find on wikipedia being Clue. This is a fact I just learned today but boy if it isn’t neat. Grau mostly did aditional voices for shows, most notably Ducktales and the Simpsons, where she played Lunchlady Doris, and of course this show. Still she seemed like a very funny and talented woman and it’s sad she’s gone. The two start the series mostly sniping at each other and while that never ENTIRELY goes away, Doris gets more supportive after a spotlight episode where she and Jay bond and Jay thinks she might be his mom. And while she’s not this surprisingly sticks and for the rest of the series while still not above making potshots at him on occasion, she’s far more supportive. She also informs him she’s out of spray on hair “I’m bald and ugly, get more!”. This show is naturally comedy gold and a lot of it relies on Lovitz sense of timing, though the rest of the cast aren’t slouches but we’ll get to them as we go. She ends up putting a hat over him and we get our first film parody, Rabbi PI starring Anuld, which is alright. Not one of the series best but passable and gets the gimmick of having film parodies on jay’s show across, which was a nice way to set it apart from the Simpsons. Jay reviews it on the Shermometor, a gimmick jay hates and that disappeared by season 2, giving it a bellow zero to the ire of his boss Duke Phillips. Duke is one of the best parts of the show, an unhinged southren billlonare who was a modeled after Ted Turner, down to the mustache, who built up his fried chicken franchise into a multimedia congrlomorate and is also mildly nuts, though that part would be more of a thing in season 2. In season 1, he’s mostly there to make Jay’s life hell, with about half of the seasons episodes having him either fire jay or put his job in jeapordy versus 2 the next season. He’s still not unfunny, but most of his best stuff is in season 2 when Charles Napier’s allowed to cut loose a little more and the character wasn’t shoehorned into just being a clueless executive. Charles Napier is a longtime character actor who showed up in TONS of films and tv shows too many to list.. and trust me with some of the lists of credits before and after this that’s saying something, his biggest voice rolls being in this series and Men and Black the Series as Zed. But needless to say he was ALWAYS this awesome and sadly passed in 2011. Jay’s guest for the day is Valerie Fox, an up and coming actress whose first film kiss of death is coming out soon.. and whose age is an engima and it’s only a problem because if she’s 20, like the episode mildly suggests giving her starting career and her voice actress being that age, then this gets really gross as jay is 17 years older than her then. But given she looks older than that and sounds certainly older than that, i’m going more with 30, since she looks more like it, and sharon stone, who she’s mildly based on given she stars in a basic instinct knockoff and does the leg thing, was 32 at the time of basic instinct. Valerie is voiced by Jennifer Lien, aka Kes from star trek voyager who I only know about because of reviews done by SF Debris and Allison Pregler. She was the childlike love intrest of Nelix, the ship’s resident pain in the audience asses who made them BEG for early seasons wesley crusher and who once, and I saw footage this wasn’t SF Debris exagreated, lunged at a crewmate in a jealous rage, unfounded by the way since Tom was AVOIDING kes depsite being attracted to her as he just wnated her to be happy and to not mess up her relationshpi, and screamed “i’ll kill you!”. Point is she hasn’t had a huge career, but was still worth noting and does a fantastic job here. Again I did not realize she was that young at the time by her voice, and that means she did a great job.

So Jay’s smitten with her, finds her super attractive and she asks him out.. but to the show’s credit, and Jay’s he does try to rebuff her because he knows ther’es a conflict of intrest there.. but ends up giving in. However at least the show not only is upfront that there’s an issue here but that ends up being the thrust of the last act. Granted there’s still some.. questionable stuff like when she does the basic instinct leg cross and he says “can we get a shot of that”, which no.. Jay.. no you can’t. Ewwww. Seen far worse, like It’s Pat, which was a VERY real SNL sketch about people trying to guess the titular pat’s gender because that’s not creepy or invasive even for the time. And they made a movie out of it because Wayne’s World was popular forgetting that Wayne’s World, one of my faviorite movies by the way and one I need to cover here sometime this year now the thought’s occured to me, was a labor of love, with a talented director and actual ideas from it’s two leads who actually fleshed out the character versus a concept that was NEVER funny to begin with and has gotten down right horrifying with age. And wasn’t I talking about the Critic? Not the abusive jackass mind you, Jay Sherman.

Ah yes so Jay takes Valerie to a date at Lane Riche, the rich jackass where we meet Vlada, a vaugely european man whose your typical hollywood suckup. As Jay puts it in a later episode Vlada: I love you too Jay: You only love my money Vlada: That’s true but it is a love that will never die. He also naturally scoots Jay to a less nice table in the Critic’s section once Conan O’Brian shows up... which WAS supposed to be a different kind of joke, as at the time Conan was just a writer on the simpsons and SNL, but now given he has a decades long career in late night and famously said fuck you to NBC during that whole Tonight Show debacle, which netted him his own show on TBS, it comes off more as the kind of self deprciating gag Conan makes about himself. So in other words it’s actually funnier now?

As for the critic’s section that’s a part of the series I’ve neglected to talk about so let’s do that: The kind of critic Jay is, one who plays clips of the movie and reviews them.. on television. And were usually academics who looked down on popular film, the kind Siskel and Ebert popularized, and both suprisingly had a huge guest apperance in season 2 and even reviewed the show on their show. This kind of film criticism just dosen’t exist on tv that i’m aware of anymore, and mostly lives on with internet reviewers , many of whom were inspiried by critics like this, and who range from acadmeics to average joes to some mixture of both. It never went away just simply went to a younger generation. Some of which squandred it and somehow still have a career like certain abusuive jackasses i’ve mentioned enough with that one gag a few paragraphs ago. Point is it’s a much more varied and different game now so the critic ended up as one of those shows or movies where the main characters very job feels like an artifact of it’s time, like our heroes in Wayne’s World hosting a public acess show, when nowadays they’d just put it up on youtube or the entire idea of a UHF station in well.. UHF. It’s not a BAD thing, just something to note.

But the date goes well as Valerie shows she’s really into jay and even takes him oggling her in stride, though we do get an utter classic of a gag when Jay says something about women being drawn to him.. and cue an old woman asking to rub his nonexistant hump for luck “You hunchbacks are all alike”. She does so anyway to his understandable annoyance.

But the two go back to Jay’s place, talk about his acomplishments including a pulitzer and then well.. the obvious happens they go to bed together and the next day after Valerie is horrified at his just woke up fac,e he gives her an easy out but she’s fine with it. It honestly shows just how low the poor guy’s self esteem is that he just.. assumes a woman will regret having slept with hima nd walk out and while played for laughs it really gives a clear look into Jay’s mental state: He’s so full of self loathing, not helped by the world being out to get him, that it’s really oddly endearing. And VERY releatable. The two are interupted by Jay’s son Marty. Marty is played by the very recognizable and very wonderful Christine Cavanagh, who sadly passed away in 2014. She voiced Chuckie Finster, Gosalyn Mallard, Oblina, Dexter from Dexter’s Lab and the titular pig from Babe. She decided to retire in 2001, so while her career was only about a decade she made quite the impact and is sorely missed. Unsuprisingly her usual voice is perfect for the very awkward Marty, who Jay asks to tell eveyrone about the beautiful woman in his bed especially his unfaithful and utterly loathsome ex wife ardith.

This scene demonstrates two problems. The first is just the pilot as Jay’s kind of sleazy. While Jay being thirsty wouldn’t go away, especially in the episode Lady Hawke, it’d be made more awkwardly endearing. Here there are moments of him just plain being creepy like the aformentioned oggling, which while not bad in itself, if a bit awkawrd, also has him creepily muttering to himself while doing so which removes any charm or relatability and just sends it straight into needing 10 showers just to wash this scene off. The rest of the series would just turn him into a bit desperate at worst. It also explains why the only other romantic story the guy has in the season is a pastiche of misery. Thanfully this would be GREATLY adjusted next season but we’ll get to that.

The other problem is just the tone... we get a good half a minute of Marty talking about how he calls Ardith’s boyfriend “Uncle Al” because he likes him a lot.. to his dad’s face. And granted his dad is being creeptastic this episode but the early episodes just pile on the Jay hatred by the world a bit thick, to the point one episode puts him as “worse than hitler”. Granted the audience is full of idiot teens who have no idea who hitler is, and the gag is kinda funny, but it makes my point: Jay is just utterly shat on by the world, and while he does get a few wins, most are undercut by something awful and it gets taxing sometimes. The guy is just too loveably pathetic to hate, too relatable even as a teen and not snobish enough to be really loathsome or WANT to see him knocked down by the world. It’s not overwhelming enough to ruin the first season, it still has good episodes but this episode does highlight a LOT of these problems. He does get to spend the day with val though, dancing outside the trump buliding, seriously even back then he was a joke and his lack of money half the time was well known.. how did the last four years happen, and they tell each other they love each other. I’d aww if I didn’t know how this ended. So jay relates the good news of how he feels to his best friend, Jeremy Hawke, played by Maurice LaMarche. LaMarche is one of the most talented voice actors alive, a master of impersonations paticuarlly orson welles, who was naturally brought on board because they knew they were going to need a lot of celebrity voices for the film parodies and needed one or two guys to do them to keep it cheap. The guy is like most of this cast a legend in the industry, having voiced the Brain, Squit, Dizzy Devil, the Human Ton, Big Bob Pataki, Egon Spengler, Sleet, Kiff Kroker, Headless Body of Agnew, Morbo, Various other Futurama characters because that list is long, Mortimer Mouse, Blue Falcone, Father, Yosemite Sam, Vincent Van Ghoul, Doctor Doom, Abradolf Lincler, and Odval. Point is the guy has been engranged in my childhood and adulthood and will probably even after he’s gone come back from the grave to do some voices. He even got the part of Jeremy Hawke here because he happened to do a REALLY good australian accent depsite not being australian. Jeremey was a combination of paul hogan, the star of the Crocodile Dundee movies and at the time sex symbol and at this time known anti semite Mel Gibson. Obviously neither of those refrences has aged paticuarlly well, but since hollywood ALWAYS has room for a super hunk from australia, just ask Chris Hemsworth or before him Hugh Jackman, the character still works and his breakout role, Crocodile Ghandi is so ludcrious it works. I.e. a white australian man playing the mahtma and saying before he brings peace “First a tasteful shot of my bum for the ladies. Jeremy, while sometimes increidbly oblvious, is still a fairly nice easygoing guy and an extremley loveable character. And whie Jay worries about Valrie meeting him because he’s sex on a cracker she ignores him and jay gloats for a bit, paticuarlly with the great bit “take your genatalia right back to australia”. And while Jeremy’s happy for him he tries to reign Jay in when Jay talks asking her to marry him. As Jeremy later relates on Jay’s fire escape “Bubala, i’ve learned there’s two things you should never do: Marry an actress and wear blackface to the naacp image awards. Two things I found out the hard way. “

So Jay takes her to meet his parents and finds out he’s adopted.. and their also rich. Jay’s waspy parents are his cold and overly honest mother Elanor, played by Judith Ivey, his kooky dad and THE best part of the series Franklin played by Gerrit Grahm and his loving and free spirited teenager sister Margo played by Nancy Cartwright. Okay (cracks knuckles) here. we. go. Judith Ivey is a tony wining stage actress and has also directed numerous plays and is mostly known for her stage work but I know her from Designing Women where she played BJ in the last season. Garret Grahm apparently shows up in a lot of brian depalma movies, including Beef in phantom of the paradise, a lot of tv work and to my shock the asshole dad from Child’s Play 2. Another thing I genuinely love I wasn’t aware an actor or actress from this series had a part in. Finally there’s Nancy Cartwright, who you DEFINTELY know from the Simpsons, where she plays Bart, along with Nelson, Ralph, Kearny, Database, and Maggie, and Kearny. Other credits include Pistol Pete, Mindy from Animaniacs, Chuckie Finster picking up for Christine Cavanagh ironically enough, Lu and Rufus from Kim Possible. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad sh’es still around. Whew.

Okay so yeah I do love the shermans and fraknlin is again easily the best part of an already excellent series and unlike Duke that’s in full display here, with him saying, when his wife mentions they were going to give jay back at one time, “Son if I’ve said it once I said it a thousand times.. who are all you people. “ and he’d only get better. Sadly he’s NOT in sherman woman and child. Our loss really. But he’s in pretty much every other episode of season 2 thankfully and most of this season so eh, fair trade off. Also we get the classic line, after Jay says he’ll love valrie even when he’s decaying in the ground, his mom quips “Cna’t we go one meal without talking about your rotting corpse?” Though Eleanor understandably thinks Valarie is using jay for a good review. Margo suspects her of the same and takes her on a horse ride, though all she can gleam is that Val genuielly loves jay and welcomes her to the family. Jay however does decide to duck out of the inteview by faking sick, which leads to a really sweet moment where Valerie visits him and they dance, in a hilaroius but oddly sweet parody of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and King Dork. Despite the title and the song insluting him a LOT it’s still just endearing. This is a problem but we’ll get to in just a moment WHY all these touching moments are a problem. So naturally things don’t go that well for Jay as Duke has a tape of the film sent to him “My shrink was right: GOd does hate me!”

Naturally kiss of death is bad and valrie is bad in it and Jay is left uncertain what to do, but eventually decides he has to do what he feels is right,.. though he does take a picture of her while she’s sleeping. “In case you do leave”

So in a tender and heartbreaking moment Jay is honest, the movie does suck and she’s not good but he does compliment her, for her personality not her body despite his skeevy behavior and say she could get better. Instead when he arrives home.. she dumps him to his face and leaves never to be seeen again while he assumes she’ll come back. And that’s the issue it’s GENUINELY hard to tell if we’re supposed to side with Jay. On one hand he genuinely loves her and does the right thing and on the oth er he’s kinda creepy. It’s a mixed tone that just sorta hurts thing and something the series DID fix after this, as it found a better ballance of the guy being pitable while also still being an ass and ONLY usually being punished when he does something actually wrong, the only exception being Dial M for MOther which is easily the weakest episode of the series. The episode does close on a really funny moment as Jay’s dispondent because “I’m sitting on top of a volcano of rage and I don’t knwo where to direct it”. Marty mentions a new Sylvester Stallone movie where “He plays a concert pianst who” And jay dosen’t even need the rest of that to shout “To the multiplex!” The man is back

Final Thoughts for Pilot: This episode is not bad. It has it’s flaws as I said, mostly in tone, but the series would iron that out and it’s still a great pilot that organically introduces the entire main cast in one episode and really gives us the full idea of who Jay Sherman is. It’s also REALLY funny, as the series should be and it would get better, but i’d still put it over some more awkward first episode like Letterkenny’s “No Reaosn to Get Excited”, even with it’s brilliant ending or Bojack Horseman’s first episode whose title is way too long to put here in an article that’s already long as hell about about to get longer. But like those series this pilot worked pass the awkwardness and the result is a damn good series. but if you want a better idea of what it became.. wellllllll

Sherman, Woman and Child: So yeah as you can tell JSUT by contrasting images a few things were changed up between seasons, part of it at network instance. The designs were softened , the color palette was brightened with jay being the most noticably alterted between seasons.

The execs wanted jay a bit warmer, so his face was given wider more expressive eyes and was also scrucnehd down a bit. He was also made slightly less of a jackass, with his elitisim toned down a bit and his creepeir moments gone. For instance he no longer had a split personality/imaginary secretary named ethel. That was actually a thing. It didn’t even really change Jay as a person, this very episode mentions him not liking the Lion King, and he’s still snooty, he’s jusst not as punchable about it and that was for the best. But the cringe comedy in general was taken down a peg and replaced with more fun weirdness, which wihle present in season 1 really pops more here, especially with Jay’s dad who sadly dosen’t show up in this episode, but at various points dresses up like El Kabong, puts on the mask from the mask (”He did the same thing at Nixon’s funeral”), and blows up famous works of art while babysitting. But yeah things get a bit more surreal like the simpsons from season 4 onward, ironically enough given these guys left to make their own show, and it’s to the show’s benefit.

But besides a lighter tone, they also wanted two things to hook viewers in: A permenant love intrest for Jay, and an adorable kid character. The former.. was acutlaly quite resonable, as i’td both give jay a “win” as it were, allow the cast to have another femlae character and give him someone else to confide in besides Doris or Jeremy, to give those characters a break. The other was less so and we’ll get into why when we meet her.

This episode really is a second pilot, reintroducing about half of the main cast. Marty, Elanor, Margo and as I said Franklin are all absent. But their reintroduced soon enough with the fourth episode in both broadcast and dvd order, and my personal faviorite “A Song for Margo, is entirely focused on Jay’s parents and sister, while Lady Hawke has marty breifly at the start for broadcast order and he’s in the frmaing device for Sherman of Arabia in dvd order. So the characters all get a proper reintroduction to new audiences, but it was the right call to NOT shove them into this one, still introducing new people to the new cast, but letting the two new additions to it breathe and get properly intergrated into this universe.. well more Alice than Penny but we’ll get to that. It’s part of why, besides the genuine extra coat of polish aand seasonal changes I feel this is the better episode.

So we open with Jay on his show and two parodies in a row. The first is a few good men but with Jack Nichelson making fun of Christan Slater for sounding like him even though. they honestly aren’t too similar other than both doing that pause thing a bit. So yeah not their best but the second segment makes up for it “The Nightmare Before Channukah” a parody of the nightmare before christmas that was so beautifully animated and funny, that they actually bumped it up to the season premiere. But while the parodies are good Jay’s show is once again, this happened a LOT in season one, in jeapordy, being beaten by the Benedictine monk variety hour. Which while the Bendictine Monks are VERY much an artifact of the 90′s a choir of monks that somehow went mainstream, the whole segment is so absurd and wonderful it stands on it’s own and is still funny to me in 2021. Duke comes in anda fter trying to softball things shows the change I mentioned: He’s actually sorry the show is in danger and is genuinely sincere that he’s sad he’ll probably have to cancel it versus season 1 where he was ready to cancel it what felt like every other episode. And I prefer this, where he can still mess with jay or flex his power over him, but is more cordial with the guy and it allows more jokes between the two.

So Jay’s not doing so good.. and during his crappy day he spots a 30 something woman and her young daughter struggling in the rain and stops his cab to help. And gets maced for it “MMM, Jalapeno”. Though Alice does apologize and Jay does understand as it is New York and she graciously takes the offer. It’s in the cab their properly introduced. Aliice thompkins and her daughter penny who in a great bit punches jay in the nose for not liking the lion king (”rex reed did the same thing”) and then kissing him on the nose in apology (”Rex did that too” And he acompanies them in.. and also gets conked on the head by a potted plant and put in a materinity dress.

So we get to know Alice and what her deal is: Alice was once married to and supported the career of country star Cyrus Thompkins who was.. less than subtle in his music about how faithful he was

Easily one of my favorite gags of the series if in part for Pat Overall’s delivery. So she moved from Knoxville to New York to prove to her daughter a woman can make it on her own, and proves she’s smart, talented and driven she just needs a break. She seemingly gets one in a man in a bright white outfit who says “this is your ticket out of this rundown flophouse” only for him to cheerfully exclaim “Your being evicted!”... PFFFTT. Cue where the commerical would be

So during this lull in the action let’s talk about Alice and Penny’s voice actresses: Alice is voiced by Park Overall, though for some weird reason I thought she was voiced by Hollly Hunter. Dunno why. Park is an outspoken liberal, supporting my boy bernie sanders in 2016 and in general seems like a fascenating lady. Naturally like with Jay’s parents I know her from something more oddly specific, the sitcom Reba, as I did not realize she voiced alice depsite using a similar voice for her character there, Reba’s best friend Lori Ann.. And while Park TRIED her best.. the character didn’t work out: a combination of it being simply funnier that barbra jean tried to wedge herself into the roll and the fact Reba really didn’t need a horny abrasive sidekick meant the charcter had a very short shelf life and the audience had very low patience for her. I did like her constnatly insulting Brock as he was not a good person andi t was nice SOMEONE besides Reba actually got to roast him on a regular basis.

Penny was voiced by the one and only Russi Taylor, who sadly passed in 2019. She voiced Huey Dewey and Louie, Webby Vanderquack, Minnie Mouse, Fantasma, the imcomprable martin prince...

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Among tons of smaller rolls. She’s sadly missed. We’ll get more into what they add or subtract from the show in a minute, as the next day at work Jay wonders how to help, though Duke’s interjection gives us two great gags: his “30 second workout” which involvees throwing jay around like a medicine ball and.. well this.

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The man is a legend for a reason. He earned that golden statue. So Jay TRIES slipping alice the money only to give it “To my good friend crazy postman”, and Alice refuses the money due to pride.. even if you know, she has a small child and new york is expensive but Jay finds a better solution, hire her.. even if it’d make it impossible for them to date. For all of one episode. What keeps the power dynamics from feeling EUGUUUUGGHH here is that Jay treats alice like an equal partner at work and dosen’t let their relationship really impact things outside of one episode, and dosen’t use his position to get into a relationship with her nor does she use being responsible for a turn in his fortune for hers.

And yes turn in fortune, as a makeover and a change of attidue under Alice’s direction, which is utterly amazing to watch and wow’s duke and hte audience, wins back his fans and his job is secure. Duke meets alice and we get more great duke stuff. including something truly iconic...

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I want bears who sing for me, doo dah, doo dah. But yeah things are well though Jay ends up admitting to Jeremy he can’t stop thinking about her “Her merest smile is like pedals of the empreror’s bathwater, BATHWATER I TELL YOU BATHWATER. “ So Jeremey encourages him carpe canum “Seize the dog”. He does so.. and the day but instead finds Alice with her ex Cyrus whose trying to win her back. Wuh oh. Once the asshole leaves, and agrees to give her the night to think, Alice admits the only reason she’s considering it is she has a weakness: his singing melts her like butter on a bagle (”God i’ve been in new york too long”. ) Jay tries to talk her out of it at the critics meeting for “Dennis the Meance II Society” which involves Dennis pulling a drivebye on mr wilson.. why wasn’t this the second live action dennis the meance movie? WHY I ASK YOU. But Jay gets a good idea, as Alice TRIES to tell the asshole to get to stepping (And to see penny often, she’s not a monster), he works his evil song magic.. only for Jay to undercut it with his own amazing song on acordian. “Cyrus is just a virus, he wants to tie you down while your still young. Your potetial, is what’s essential, you could someday be another connie chung!” And that ultiamtely shows WHY jay is the better man. He just wants what’s best for her and dosen’t care if it’s him, he just wants it not to be THIS asshole. He’s not even trying to win her over, which a lot of these gestures creepily lead to. He just wants to help her be who she’s MEANT to be. And that’s why this works better: Instead of a fake relationship built on lust and someone conning the other person, it’s a real one built on genuine chemistry. Also Alice you know dosen’t just.. vanish after an episode but is a permenant part of the cast. I mean she does for the webisodes but we don’t talk about those.

So our hero undercuts Cyrus one more time Cyrus: “Loverrrr, without you there’s no other” Jay: Give him a chance he’ll do your mother....

I mean he’s not worng, So Cyus is sent packing and we get a nice romantic moment between the two.

Final Thoguhts: Sherman, Woman and Child This one is truly excellent. It relaunchs the show on all cyllanders. And frankly Alice was a fine addition to the cast: her own fully fleshed out woman with her own personality outside of jay, who was tough, smart and a good counterpoint and confidant to Jay and it felt like she’d always fit. Penny on the other hand, apologizes to the late Russi Taylor who tries her best, just dosen’t work and feels ultra cloying and out of place in the series and unspurisingly is barely used after this. But overall a better pilot than the actual pilot was already pretty good and a fine pair of episodes. Check em out whenever the series eithe rgets on a streaming platform or pops back up on youtube as Sony’s struck it down... despite not putting it up anywhere i’m aware of. Seriously sell it to HBO Max or Disney I want a reboot. But for now this series is awesome check it out and until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#the critic #jay sherman #alice thompkins #marty sherman #duke phillips #pilot #sherman mother and child #jon lovitz #the simpsons #mike reiss #al jean #abc #fox #animation #the 90s

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jamielea81 · 6 years ago

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Conversations

Chapter 3

Description: You accompany your friends on a day trip to Animal Kingdom Theme Park where you meet Scott Evans by chance. This one afternoon leads to a year long friendship with both Chris and Scott over text messages and phone calls.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: Cursing and fluff. I think that’s it.

A/N: Italics are internal thoughts.

Chapter 2

Deciding not to keep the fact the Chris texted you a secret from Scott, you quickly fired off a text to let him know about the exchange. He probably already knew. After all, he did give him your number. But just in case he didn’t know, you wanted to give him the heads up. Not that it would become a regular thing. Of course, it wouldn’t. Sure, the two of you texted for almost two hours last night, but it was probably a one and done kind of thing.

Y/N: Are you just passing out my number to random dudes now?

It was pretty early in the day for you to text him, but you were already at the venue for the Jonas Brothers concert and you weren’t sure what time you’d be home.

After grabbing a beer and picking out a seat in the press box of the arena, you grabbed out your trusty notepad and favorite pen and waited for the show to start.

The boys opened with Rollercoaster which got the crowd pumped, not that it took much to get the screams going. When they sang your favorite song Cool, you couldn’t help but sing along. You recorded yourself singing along with Nick to Jealous, sending it to Jana and then to Scott.

With traffic, it was close to midnight before you got home. Changing into your pajamas and washing away today’s makeup, you fell into bed. Tomorrow was Sunday and you had nothing on the roster besides writing your review of the concert for Monday’s paper.

You were attempting to read a novel Brooks had recommended to you on your Kindle for the third time that week when your phone buzzed from the night stand.

Scott: Are you home?

Y/N: Yep. All snuggled into my bed.

Not five seconds after you hit send, your phone was ringing.

“Good evening Scott,” you answered.

“Hello Pavarotti. Who knew you had those pipes?” Scott greeted you.

“Pipes? Are you talking about my chest?” Fake shock in your voice.

“Har-har. Did you send your little video performance to my brother?” he asked.

“What? No. Why would I do that? It’s not like we’re friends or anything?”

“So, it was strictly business last night? He just texted to apologize and nothing else?”

Is he a mind reader?

“Well, no,” you hesitated. “But it’s not like I’ll hear from him again. He was just being nice.” You shrugged your shoulders even though you knew he couldn’t see you. You really needed a dog or something for times like these.

“We’ll see. How was the concert?” he asked.

“No. No. No. Let’s back up. What do you mean we’ll see? You can’t just change the subject like that on me.”

Scott chuckled through the receiver. “I just meant that my brother has a habit of not letting people go once he likes them. He said he thought you were funny.”

Hmm. Funny. That’s as good a compliment as any. Chris Evans thinks you’re funny.

You’d have to try really hard not to let that go to your head.

Scott ended up being right, though you wouldn’t tell him that. Chris didn’t let you go. He technically didn’t have you, not that you would have complained, but he kept texting you. The two of you didn’t chat as often as Scott and you did, but it was more than you would have ever expected.

It started casually enough with him texting you a few nights after reaching out to you the first time.

Chris: It’s my right to be hellish, I still get jealous

Y/N: He sent you the video, didn’t he?

Chris: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

A day or two would go by and you’d get another text similar to the last. Just a random musing reaching out. You never initiated because you still weren’t sure what the two of you were. He was your friend’s brother and you weren’t one to push boundaries.

Chris: If you overnighted me a Mickey Premium Ice Cream Bar, what are the odds it would get to me not melted?

Y/N: Aren’t you in Cali? Can’t you just go to Disneyland or send someone to get you one?

Chris: Send someone 🙄

Chris: I’m in New York for Fallon

Y/N: Oh, fuck, that’s right. Don’t tell Scott I forgot.

Y/N: Most grocery stores sell boxes of the bars now by the way.

Chris: It’s not the same.

Y/N: You’re right.

Chris: Usually am sweetheart.

You’re stomach flipped at the nickname. You wouldn’t be telling Scott about this conversation. Nope, you’d keep that one to yourself.

It was just after seven when you walked in your door, two grocery bags in hand and your phone ringing in your purse.

“Hold on. Hold on,” you called out as if the person could hear you.

Dropping the bags on the stovetop, your dug into your purse, grabbing your phone, catching the call on what was sure to be the eighth ring.

How many rings before it goes to voicemail?

“Hey Scott,” you answered out of breath.

“Hey Sassy,” he replies. You hear someone repeat the nickname in the background. Chris, maybe. You’re not sure. “Chris and I are having dinner with Jimmy and his wife, so I wanted to give you a quick call. Just wanted to let you know the show was completely a snooze fest, there is no need to watch it.”

“Don’t listen to him Y/N. Watch it. A few times maybe,” you hear Chris say in the background.

You hadn’t talked to him on the phone, only via text. It was kind of weird to hear him say your name. Sure, you exchanged a few words on the ride at Animal Kingdom, but this was…different.

You chuckled at their antics. “Jimmy and his wife. As if I’m on a first name basis with him. Cute,” you replied.

“I don’t know who else you know. You’ve got two Evans brothers as friends, who knows what other friends ya have,” he replied.

“You are a dork. I’ll be sure to watch tonight and give you my notes tomorrow. Have fun Grumpy. Say hi to the other dork for me.”

You hear him tell Chris what you said.

“Bye sweetheart,” Chris shouts.

There goes your stomach again.

“Bye sweetheart,” Scott mocks. You hear a muttered “shuddup” before the call disconnects.

Since the Tonight Show didn’t start until eleven thirty at night, you made sure to be ready for bed before it started. Pajamas on. Check. Teeth brushed. Check. Makeup off. Check. Glass of water on your night stand. Check. Cellphone on hand to harass Scott if need be. Check.

You sent a text to your friend April back in Minnesota to let her know Chris was going to be on. She was a huge Chris Evans fan with a Captain America merchandise collection that could rival any extreme collector. She of course already knew he was going to be on but thanked you anyway. She didn’t know about your new friendship. No. Acquaintanceship with Chris. No one did besides Scott, Jana, and Brooks. It was better to keep it that way.

Chris’ segment was great and you expected nothing less. Revealing that he spoiled the end of Endgame for Anthony Mackie was both funny and sweet. He looked good in his stripped shirt and navy blazer and you expected nothing less in that aspect as well, even if his white sneakers were a little too white for your liking.

When Scott joined Chris on stage to play “Know Your Bro”, you knew the segment was going be hilarious.

The audience as well as yourself were giggling after Scott told the story of Chris pushing him as a child, causing Scott to split his head open resulting in the need to get stitches.

“You know you pushed me. Listen,“ Scott said

“Yeah, but that was between us,” Chris replied, finding it hard to keep his laughter under control.

It was Chris’ turn to tell a story and it was one that you would be sure to bring up in the future. Scott had stomach issues when he was little and for lack of a better word, pooped his pants three times while out skiing with his family. This was not the story Scott expected. You were laughing so hard you were crying. It was great segment. You spent the better part of a half hour searching YouTube for past segments with the two of them.

Before calling it a night, you sent Scott a text knowing you probably wouldn’t get one back tonight.

Y/N: You two should hit the road together. Like a traveling two-man act. I’d pay top dollar to see this act in person!

To your surprise, you did get a text back.

Scott: You couldn’t afford us.

Traffic was a nightmare with cars on the road at a virtual standstill and you weren’t exactly sure why. Traffic would move a little with your car reaching fifteen miles per hour and then the brake lights would all hit at once again. Really, on I-4 it could be anything causing this back up, but you usually were able to time your day so that you missed most of the congestion. You had a meeting at the office that you couldn’t be late for. Part of the agreement with planning your own schedule was that you had to be at the paper for meetings. This would be the second time you were late in the years you’ve worked there, but you weren’t sure if it was three strikes and you’re out kind of thing. Your phone started to ring, figuring it was the office, your answered it via your steering wheel since it was hooked up to Bluetooth.

“This is Y/N,” you answered.

“Hey sweetheart, it’s Chris.”

There goes your stomach again.

“H-hey Chris. What’s up?”

Chill out. Breath. This is cool. You are cool.

He had never called you before, so this was different.

“Not much. Just wanted to see how you were. Do you have me on speaker phone or something?” he asked.

“Um, kind of. I’m driving.”

“Oh, anywhere fun?”

“Nope, just to the office. What are you up to?” you asked, trying your best not to hit the person in front of you.

“Just hanging out in New York for another day. Not much. Scott disappeared on me, nothing new there.”

“Oh, yeah,” you said, clearly distracted from the stop and go traffic you were stuck in. “Fuck,” you swore under your breath.

Chris laughed out loud which brought you out of your haze. “You okay, Y/N?” he asked.

“I’m sorry. I’m going to be late for a meeting and am stuck in traffic. I really can’t be late.”

Chris didn’t say anything for what felt like a minute and you thought maybe you lost the call.

“What’s the address of your office?” Chris asked.

“Why?”

“Just answer the question Sassy,” Chris teased.

“Now you’re both calling me that?” you chuckled. “Um, it’s six three three North Orange Avenue.”

“How far are you?” he asked.

“Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes probably with this traffic,” you replied.

“I’ll call you back in a few,” he said, ending the call before you could reply.

“Well that was really freaking weird,” you said, turning the volume back up on the radio.

True to his word, Chris called you back about five minutes later.

“When you pull off the freeway, you need to go to five five seven East Amelia Street,” he said.

What?

“Chris, I don’t think you understand. I’m late for work. There’s no time to stop anywhere,” you said, clearly exasperated.

“It’s a bakery. There will be an order there under your name. It’s already paid for and they promised it would be all boxed up and ready for when you arrived.”

“I don’t understand. An order? Chris.”

“If you’re late for something, it’s best to show up with a peace offering. Just trust me sweetheart. Call me later,” he said.

“Okay. Um, thanks, Chris.”

“No problem. We’ll talk soon. Bye,” he said.

You pulled into the bakery a few minutes later, sure enough, two twelve count boxes of cupcakes were waiting for you. One box was marked vegan. He really did think of everything.

Walking into the conference room was nerve racking to say the least. Your boss James eyed you but didn’t call you out. You set the boxes on the table before taking a seat. Once he finished his thought, you cleared your throat.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” you licked your lips and steadied yourself for the lie. “I wanted to pick up a treat for everyone and it took longer than expected.” You stood up, and got to work opening the boxes. “Please help yourselves,” you said with a smile.

At the end of the meeting, everyone had a smile on their face, including James. There was one cupcake left, you grabbed it out of the box and walked it over to James.

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” you said, placing it in front of him and offering a wink while everyone cleared out of the room.

He offered you a smile before you turned to walk away.

It was just after eight when you picked up your phone to call Chris. You were nervous, so nervous. Even though he was the one to call you first, it was still nerve racking to call him. The two of you had been texting for a couple of weeks, but talking on the phone felt more intimate. Before you could change your mind, you clicked on his contact and the line was ringing.

“Heeeelllo,” he answered.

Immediately he put you at ease. “Hey, you dork,” you replied.

“How’d your meeting go?”

“Much better thanks to you. That was very sweet and really smart thinking on your part,” you said.

He scoffed. “You think so little of me?”

“Well, I was led to believe Scott had all the brains.” You couldn’t help the smile on your face.

He scoffed again. “Wait a minute. Where do you get off lady? Thinkin’ my baby brother has all the smarts. I’ll have you know, I read.” Boston accent on full display.

You started to crack up. You tried to get your breathing under control, but it was coming out as wheezing. He started to chuckle and you shook your head.

“I apologize. Truly. Please forgive me sir.”

“Fine. Fine. As long as you never doubt me again,” he said.

“Never.”

You went to bed with a smile on your face that night and woke up with one as well. Chris was your friend. As strange as that was, it was true.

Unplugging your phone from the charger, you saw you had a couple of texts from Chris.

Does he ever sleep?

Chris: 'Cause you're too sexy beautiful And everybody want to taste, that's why, that's why I still get jealous

Chris: Heading to LA. Have a good day sweetheart.

Chris was your friend. Yep. He was just your friend and you needed to remember that.

Chapter 4

Tag list: @mustangshelby04 @bellaireland1981 @carolina-thiell @straightforwardly @torntaltos @denise1605 @mcuclintasha @southerngracela @iam-cj @trynnabemultifandom @chrisevansforever-blog @kelbabyblue @broadwayandnetflix @kyjey @thevelvetseries @i-just-feel-like @daddieslittlefangirl @hista-girl @stankface @denisemarieangelina @im-not-an-armrest-im-short @whymalu @the-doctors-fallen-angel @mariswritingforfun @tessabb7 @chrisevansfanfic @lakamaa12 @thinkxlovexloud@deidrashouseofpain @nea90sweetie @the-murder-strut-murdered-me @tanelle83 @pinknerdpanda @allaboutthebooz @estillion14 @panicfob @patzammit @heartislubbingdubbing @collinsstanharbour @twittytelly @linki-locks11 @mywinterwolf @ab-baybay @rda1989 @impalaimages @jesseswartzwelder @rainbowkisses31 @xostephanie

#chris evans #cevans #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x y/n #chris evans reader insert #chris evans imagine #chris evans au #conversations #Chris Evans Fan Fiction #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fan fic

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likemymask · 5 years ago

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One Piece Daemon AU

Presented with only slight spelling corrections and some elaborations, the mess of a One Piece Daemon/His Dark Materials AU that would not leave me alone and would only let me work on it at 1-3AM.

Also now I’m writing snippets for it just like my Gundam Wing and Star Trek daemon AU. Because.

Luffy: sea king with Conqueror Haki so they can’t be controlled. Separated but not because that’s as free as you can get. Fuck yea, she’s in north blue chilling the fuck out (heh) half the time and being absolutely chaotic as shit the other half. Her attitude is diametrically opposed to what Luffy is doing at the time. LOL she runs/swims into Shanks when Luffy’s still barely a pirate so he has no idea (not that the marines do either) one time. This 2000ft tall monster is squinting at him, and he thinks he’s about to get ate and then she goes “oh you’re so much smaller now!” Cause of course she spent her formative years as a baby version of his daemon. The entire crew is goddamn losing it, cause what kind of monster is this that even Red Hair’s Haki can’t control it, until Shanks yells out her name and then everyone loses it further still. I have decided Eastern dragon aesthetic but water/earth theme as opposed to Kaido’s air/fire theme. Still blue, but blue-green, tiger stripes cause camoflage and also badass and maybe she settles after Luffy meets Zoro’s daemon *whistles*

Zoro: tiger obviously normal colors or green and black cause why the fuck not, Zoro is not into stealth really. ”The only one who can call me stupid is me. “ “.....stupid” Cat vs sword fight ensues. Can be found cuddling Chopper when Zoro’s tired, super sloshed, both.

Nami: monkey? Lemur: small, fast, quick hands, caring but only when you prove you deserve it. Absolutely torments Zoro’s when she’s pissed because tigers can’t normally climb fucking main masts but a) she parkours and b) when has that ever stopped Zoro/her? Likes to hang out in the tree grove, absolutely pick pockets people while Nami plays distraction.

Robin: cat some kind of cat not big CARACAL. Looks aloof but absolutely ready to be ridiculous at any opportunity.

Franky: dog or dolphin. Something excitable loyal ready to throw down Newfoundland? Big, friendly, over-excitable, likes water and sailing...yes.

Usopp: Corvid or monkey; curious, intelligent, stubborn, inventive, tool solving/using. Lives in groups/troops and cares for others. Probably corvid, too similar to Nami otherwise. Crow most likely.

Sanji: swan. Black, and absolutely a viper and very sorry about Sanji’s attitude towards woman cause she’s more refined about it. Same intensity though. Will bite the shit out of you. Tiger vs swan fight, GO. Do also groom each other though cause human affectionate displays are stupid sometimes.

Fishmen don’t have daemons its another conflict and excuse for racism.

Law: wolf but like starved and Eurasian crazy with it. LONG leggos. Spiky black fur around the head, grey black white speckled cause T R A U M A

Ace: was a fire hawk, no actual fire but red as hell and BIG tail and wings. Her species not liked on most islands cause they don’t leave once they’re settled. They stand their ground. More angst ha ha. Never met settled Luffys daemon because I’M A MONSTER.

Sabo: never settled until he learned Ace was dead and then she settled as fire hawk because trauma and angst and also he knows who he is now. Not being settled was useful for a while when he did infiltration etc but now they’re both happy/sad about it.

Garp. Big dog. Bull mastiff dog. Not good with kids only with attacking things and defending but very loyal. Also big. “ Bullmastiffs are also difficult even for adults to control, so they aren’t a good choice if your child wants to help walk the dog. They like to please and crave attention, but they’re so big that even a well-intentioned nudge can end up hurting small children. ” HMMMMM RINGS A BELL, THIS DOES

Chopper: also no daemon or if so then monkey because HANDS. OH BOI THAT MUST HAVE BEEN A FUN THING. EAT SOME FRUIT, WAKE UP WITH A SOUL. Wait no people think he’s a pet. No daemon then.

Mihawk: literally whatever Shank’s daemon is he insists this is why they’re friends while Mihawk wine aunts in the background. He’s more refined though than Shanks and his soul (this is not a challenge). Like absolutely cold as ice until he cracks a pun, but no one believes the victim cause no way Mihawk would do that. Soooo proud, regal, loyal but willing to have a good time. Some kind of dog or cat. Big and fast and POWER. Could do big cat to be more like Zoro or a dog/canid to foil it. Maned wolf?

Vivi: it’s lazy to say her bird Caracue I can’t spell it’s one am but imma do it. KAROO HOW THE FUCK DID I MISSPELL THAT.

Crocodile: big fuck off alligator cause fuck you that’s why. HOLY FUCK I FORGOT HE HAD THE BANANA ONES IN HIS CASINO THAT’S GREAT

Logias turn to same element so Ace’s daemon is now a literal actual fire hawk, fuck the history books I’m writing this shit.

Don fuck face Flamingo: is what it is but like Kipo And the Age of Wonderbeasts it got TEETH, cause anything that survived acid water and shit is not cool. In fact, you know what, she’s albino and thinks that makes her special, honey you just don’t got shrimp vitamins, you buffoon of a bird.

All the dino Zoans are modern descendant of those animals so chickens. Or birds. Chickens would be so goddamn funny especially the 3 foot tall fluffy ones...fuck what’re they called(Brahmas). Oh wait. Emus. Ohhhhhhh fuck emus as an option.

Mammoth Zoan can have a Mammoth daemon because I want to see that on a ship.

(Makino) Bartender lady I can’t remember her name starts with m capybara cause she’s chill as shit and friend shaped.

Dadan: is not friend shaped but is friend. Big fuck off bear or buffalo or wildebeest

Brooke: Laboon, Lampoon whatever Moby Dick. There’s some trauma, they had to leave him, but they didn’t want to and Brooke offered to stay but Laboon thought he’d be fine. Spoiler alert He Is Not. No one is fine.

Ohhhhhhh fuck bad good idea: Rogers daemon also a Sea King but the marines never goddamn figured it out, hoooooo my gods Shanks is having goddamn flashbacks.

Momo and Kaido both have Eastern dragon daemons cause fake fruit.mythical zoan fruit but Momos is the size of a gecko and black so she’s hide-able. Kaido’s isn’t as big but is still Fuck Off huge. Red because I said so.

Beastmen also do not have daemons because fuck the amount of significant characters in One Piece

Cora(zon): also had a wolf, because yay trauma and repeats and trauma bonding!But she was like, pretty yellow white and dog-ish up until the moment she ripped your throat out for offending her/harming her pack. Law learned much from her about appearances, being underestimated, and then for the most part did the exact opposite.

Slime man: *Aka Trebol* has a hagfish cause fuck him and Doflamingo

Boa: her snake weapon thing. Big noodley boy. The skull is for A E S T H E T I C

Ace's daemon named Picaro: Spanish for naughty/badly behaved and that is a synonym for rogue cause MOMMA'S BOI and I keep misreading Rouge as rogue cause PIRATES, and this way it's a little better than naming the fire hawk Red though Ace does call her that sometimes . You know what, he has the same daemon as Rouge/mom actually cause stubborn enough to not go into labor for 20 months is bonkers and that shit deserves recognition. Also because FUCK the number of characters in One Piece. Celestial Dragons don't have special daemons but they do splice/separate cause they're fuckers that's why AU of AU Luffy's daemon close enough to WRECK MARINEFORD'S SHIT THAT'S RIGHT BABEY ACE LIVES, ASL REUNION AND SUCH Sabo's daemon settles as a dog but one of the CRAZY breeds, like poodle or husky.

AU OF AU PART TWO: originally when thinking about a One Piece daemon AU Luffy was gonna have a cheetah; long, fast, use recoil to increase speed and change directions, males live in groups with their brothers and are highly affectionate. Tendency to run into walls. Has a fur pattern presentation named King Cheetah, looks like a more Armament Haki version.

#daemon #daemons #hdm #his dark materials #one piece #i have no goddamn control over my brain at 1AM

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ace-pervert · 5 years ago

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Ive finished watching eleven seasons of rupauls drag race and now feel I am ready to briefly review each season

S1: A good start though it must be said, ONGINA WAS ROBBED! Also there was favoritism.

S2: Not a bad season but at least somewhat ruined by Rupauls rather overt favoritism towards Tyra and dislike of Pandora. While I didnt like Tyra on the show his callout of the entire drag community after leaving drag has given me massive respect for him and feels like karma for RuPauls rather blatant self promotion and attempts to turn himself into some kind of rolemodel. But aside from the callout and Jujube, and Pandora the season is unmemorable.

S3: The top three were all highly skilled and the winner seemed to deserve it though that was later put into doubt after it came to light that Raja had worked with RuPaul before the show aired, and lets be honest Manilla Luzon was much more talented.

S4: One of the best seasons in drag race history, has the best music video, and Sharron Needles is hands down the most influential and versatile queen in drag race history. The only bad part, aside from the editing against phi phi, is Latrice Royal, who, and I feel this needs to be said, wouldnt have been in the top four had Willam stayed, and certainly wouldnt have made top five if Alaska had been allowed to join, mostly because she kept showing a similar outfit, her not being a particularly good actor, being thrown off really easily, and quickly relying on a shtick.

S5: Good season, but I feel that Roxxxy really did end up in the top three only because Visage and Ru love drama and the Jersey Shore look that was at the time Roxxxy Andrews trademark look, and the Coco Alyssa drama was really dull, neither deserved to be as high as ended up, and ultimately both queens are unmemorable.

S6: Not a bad season but i'm not a fan of Courtney Act or miss Lake, mostly because I think they both get away with looks that really they shouldnt have gotten away with, though arguable so did Bendelacreme. Though it was nice that there wasnt any drama, and Bianca del Rio is really funny.

S7: Ive tried to come up with words to describe this season, I cant, its just that bad. No not bad just dull, really dull and awkward, and the worst part is that its not the queens who drag the season down, the queens themselves are fine and Pearl stands out as being a particularly interresting person when not on drag race, its RuPaul being a tool off camera and coming up with challenges that play to the queens weaknesses rather strengths.

S8: Unfortunately I found Bob the Drag Queen so attractive out of drag that I stopped caring about what he looked like in drag with the end result being that I have no idea if hes a good drag queen. But ignoring the moments where I was drooling over Bob it was a good season with some truly great outfits,and a good Snatch Game, that wether for good or bad did very quickly become the Bob the drag queen and Kim Chi show, making it in hindsight the second most plann

S9: The season started off with an appearance by Lady Gaga , whose reviews of the outfits consisted of little more than name dropping and not much else, unintentionally setting the tone for a dull and awkward season with a cheerleading challenge that causes one person to crack a rib and another to almost permanently lose their ability to dance, a Reality Star Rusical that is well just dull, painfully bad lipsinks, uninterresting outfits, and perhaps the blandest wierd drag queen in the history of the competition. Its also in this season that introduced the lipsink for the crown format that I personally despise as it takes the power away from the viewers and puts it back in Rupauls hand.

S10: Solid season, mostly focused on returning contestant Eureka but the other contestants are given enough focus that it feels natural. The challenges are interresting to watch, the snatchgame is funny, and the dresses are well made. The top four are all stars in their right and the winner of that season could have easily been any of them, making this the only season where a lipsink for the crown made sense.

S11: Starts off strong with people like Miss Vanjie, Brooke Lynne Hytes, Nina West and Yvie Oddly revealing a high degree of skill both as actors and as dress makers. Unfortunately the blatant favoritism of Rupaul, the judges, and the producers towards Silky Nutmeg Ganache (honestly they seem like a nice person in real life, but on the show they just seem like a tool), unimaginative challenges, distracting and irritating cameos by former drag race contestants including by Bianca whos dull and unentertaining appearance shows exactly why contestants shouldnt return at all, a rusical so god cringeworthy you'll pray for death (Trump the Rusical), the worst snatch game in drag race history, and painfully predictable twists result in a terrible season, with the only interresting things being the romance between Vanjie and Brooke (they broke up four months after the last episode before the reunion due to conflicting schedules), Miss Vanjie being well himself, Nina Wests acting, and Yvie Oddly's outfits .

S12: Havent seen it, but lets be honest this season is the one where the star is a sex offender. By now many fans have analysed the season and its become clear that the person who was intended to be the focal point and possible winner was Sherry Pie, which means that editing them out for very well known reasons also makes them the focal point just in a different way than intended. Hell it wouldnt surprise me if this season becomes known as the one with Sherry Pie, not the one where the winner won. Though it might also be the last season that RuPauls on, as there are rumors that hes stopping with drag race.

The Christmass Special: To short for a christmass special, to much like the other episodes to be special, to blatantly commercial to be Christmass, and to scripted, even by drag race standards, to be drag race.

And now for a review of the Judges themselves

RuPaul: On the outside a warm, outspoken, well meaning person whose done things which are truly groundbreaking. But beneath that warm exterior beats the stone cold heart of a businessman. He's calculating, manipulative, greedy, has no qualms about setting queens up for failure, and ultimately hasnt done much that could be seen as groundbreaking. Perhaps the worst part is that its clear that in terms of humor , mentality and fashion hes never left the 70s, which combined with his callous way of treating the enviroment (as shown by his fracking empire) and his history of transpobia, makes him a liability to the show. Even if you manage to ignore all of that, the show is ultimately about the drag queens, not about Rupaul, and Rupauls attemps to make it about him really drag the show down

Michelle Visage: Shes a mother of two teenagers with a stay at home husband pretending to be a bitchy whore on a tv show about drag queens, yeah thats her career. Now in truth thats not the biggest issue, the biggest issue is that shes got hangups and makes the same jokes over over again and that after being on the show for ten years she hasnt developed as a judge so the routine, to paphrase miss Visage herself, has been done to death. In truth the show needs something other than the same damn shtick and same damn comments all the time, and if she cant do it then she should quite so someone else can do it for her. Ok maybe thats the second biggest issue, the biggest is that she kisses RuPaul's ass untill it shines brighter than a mirror.

Valentino Rice: Good judge, and had great chemistry with the other judges.

Ross Mathews: Cute guy, wierdly charming, and interacts well with the others.

Carson Kressley: He comes across as a very tired, very frail, very gay but very very very dull ninety year old man, which makes sense given the fact that his entire career is based on being gay, and hes, well old. Ok hes not really old, hes 50, but on camera he looks and acts closer to 150. And the issue isnt that hes gay, its that hes doing a shtick, a very dull and fairly offensive shtick. Possibly the worst choice for a judge, and the show jumps in quality whenever hes not there.

Now for a few things that just bug me.

Favoritism: Unfortunately one of the biggest issues of the show is that seasons tend to be structured around Queens who are intended to be the winner, or at least the hero, from the get go, which has the advantage of allowing the creators of the show to change the structure and challenges from season to season, but also makes it hard to watch if the season is blatant in its favoritism, if the intended winner isnt that good, or if the winner gets eliminated for one reason or another.

Cameos by former contestants: Cameos are a great way to get people to say "I know that person" which is great in a tv show because you know that the cast wont change in the next episode, but not great in a competition where all it does is take away screentime from competitors and giving it to competitors who most likely did not do well enough to win in their own drag race, and even if they did, the show is not about them, but about the current contestants. As such if Ru wants them to return he should put them in All Stars.

Cameos by celebrities: Add nothing. Its drag race not the red carpet, i'm watching for the up and coming drag queens not famous people trying to boost their careers.

Adding politics to the show: No, just no. Dont do things like Trump the Rusical, dont have steven colbert do a voiceover, theres no way that can go well and it comes accross as virtue signaling. If Ru wants to do something good he should double the prize money and have half of the money go to a charity of the winners choosing, or stop fracking.

Adding politics outside of the Show: Drag queens are celebrities and entertainers, as such are constantly in the public eye and dependent on being in it for their income which means that anything they say in public, wether its gossiping, or discussing politics, needs to be viewed as being some form of self promotion. Now this might make things difficult for them, but it is a well known part of being an entertainer so it can be assumed that they were well aware of this before they joined Drag Race. If they do want to talk about politics without being viewed as self promoting, they are free to make an anonymous account on one of the many sites, like tumblr, where its assumed that no one knows who the other people are.

Family Friendly Drag: Lets be honest its men shoving their cocks up their own asses while dressing up as women, and naking refferences to sex, for the sake of entertainment. Thers nothing family friendly about it. Nor should there be as part of the appeal of drag is that its something that is restricted to adults. Likewise they arent heroes, they are entertainers, not doctors, not construction workers, entertainers no more worthy of praise then a person on a sitcom.

Drama outside of Drag Race: While drama on the show is to be expected and is part of what makes it entertaining, drama outside of the show is different its more personal and something that in truth should not be shared. However by presenting it as gossip on various shows they are saying its part of the show, which is unhealthy at best.

Final note.

While I am critising the Drag Race, I am not doing it because I dislike the show, I am infact a big fan of the show but at the same time I want to get my thoughts out there see how others view these topics.

#drag race #rupaul

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oh-phineas · 5 years ago

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21. 10 Characters You’d Like to See

Lmao I was gonna go in order but honestly WHATEVER people started doing this and I wanted to join and everything is crazy rn and I needed a distraction

STARTING WITH WHO I WANT (but also tbh most of these I would just like to see as well do not interpret this as me staking my claim lol)

1. Corey from Onward. I’ve been thinking about her for a while and even wrote an app but other stuff took precedence because I wanted to get in on Pride U stuff. I just love a character who used to be a big star and now... works in an office. I’d have her be a manager at Interpride maybe in accounting or marketing who occasionally makes appearances on DnD podcasts or gives motivational speeches. Just your average semiretired manticore dragon hunter :) And I love Danielle Brooks for her but maybe I’d make her a little older so I’m not sold

2. ROZ. When the skeleton for Roz posted I was like something about this calls to me and Pet said that she thought it would and like idk this is a similar impulse to wanting Corey I just love the idea of an older lady who’s been through some shit and now she just has an office job. Also I’d give her a wife of like 20 years and they would be cranky but v cute. And I mean come on I can never resist joining another ~society~ I’d love to get in on RAS stuff.

I don’t really have a FC idea at the moment I just love her.

3. Evelyn Deavor. Okay she honestly might be my next for real. I’ve been thinking about her since like May but I’ve had other character ideas take precedence and I feel like playing her would require a lot of plotting/planning and when I first came back I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that. But I feel like I am now. And I just love villains who think they’re doing the right thing and I think especially in light of the election and all the magic drama lately she would fit in so WELL I would love to plan a magical disaster that she created and I feel like she would really stir things up in a fun way. And could partner with other villain characters and really get some stuff moving. We’ll see though because I’m not allowing myself to get another character until Thanksgiving I just don’t think I can handle 5 characters at school.

Bouncing around a few fc ideas tbh

If you couldn’t tell the theme is hot lady w/ pixie cut suggestions are welcome

4. Isabella Garcia-Shapiro. Actually the whole Phineas and Ferb Crew Thank You. Okay now we’re getting into the characters I don’t actually think I would play but who I would just REALLY love to see. Isabella because I love her energy and she was so great in the new movie and she’s so cute but also will Fight You and I love teens who want to take over the world just give me more of that energy pls. I just don’t think I have enough ideas for her as a character but here are a few things I would like to see: take advantage of the canon hyphenation of her last name and make her parents queer! Make Fireside Girls a normal Girl Scout Troop by day and amateur mystery-solving girl squad by night! Make her a witch!

I think Ariela Barer would be really cute for her.

5. NAVEEN. PLEASE. Pls give me Naveen as a waiter at Tiana’s Place who gets on her last nerve. Maybe he turns out to be a really good musician and tries to make “singing waiter night” happen that could be funny. Also I just think his skeleton is hilarious now that we have lost our beloved Fflewddur please bring us another narcissistic prince of a foreign land who plays an instrument.

6. Remy, Our Ratatouille, The Rat Of All My Dreams Give me REMY. I know this is partially because of all the time I spent on RatTok but the fact that we have no Ratatouille characters rn is a crime. And I have ideas to incorporate this with Tiana’s Place stuff and I think it would be really fun. Please please please.

7. Sadness from Inside Out. I actually had like half an app written for her and I think there are some cool things that can be done with that character. I would love to see her as someone who got “gifted” (cursed) with magical empathy (feeling people’s feelings by touching them or being near them or something) and that’s why she’s sad all the time-- she’s overwhelmed by people’s feelings. Idk I just thought it would be a cool idea for a character but I didn’t end up having enough muse. But I’d love to see someone run with that idea.

As for FC suggestion my main one is my beautiful amazing former FC for Merryweather Belissa Escobedo she is so cute and she even has GLASSES in the majority of her gifs. She would be perfect.

8. The Boy and the Mom from Bao or the Man and the Woman from Paperman. THE VOLCANOES FROM LAVA. Disney Shorts in General. I noticed that “Disney Shorts” is a category on the main but there are no characters in it. Let’s change that! Disney shorts have very little character development lol but they can be real tearjerkers sometimes (See: the three I named above). And I think it would just be a cool challenge to figure out how to adapt them as characters.

8. Rapunzel or Rupi/Ruby as I would rename her because seriously what kind of name is Rapunzel. That is the main basis for what sparked my interest in her in addition to thinking that Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever would be so great for her. And I think she could have some cool plots with the fairies-- maybe someone could pick up Blue Fairy or Merryweather and she could track them down.

9. DARLA. Bring back my crazy queen please. She was so fun and now that I play a mermaid I would love to give the merfolk some more stuff to be scared of. There are so many possibilities with her!! I just don’t really have the muse but someone else could do an amazing job.

10. Tow Mater. Come on, guys. Ladies love him. Everyone loves him. The cars fandom wasn’t built around Lightning McQueen, it was built around Tow Fucking Mater. He would be such a cute country boy. He’ll fix your car. Another character I thought about but abandoned. I could see him and Launchpad being buds. Just imagine the possibilities.

This has been my TED Talk thank you for your time

#bdrpwrimo #bdrpwrimoemma #bdrpwrimo2020

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fanfic-scribbles · 6 years ago

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Tie a Yellow Ribbon For Me

Fandom: Supernatural

Summary: Roses are red, Violets are blue, Even death can’t keep him From finding his way back to you.

Quick facts: Romance – [established] Gabriel/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Angst-ish with a happy ending, many flashbacks handle it, use of ‘sugar’ as a term of endearment for a gender-neutral reader

Prompt: Written for @gabriel-monthly-challenge’s February prompt: Spin the Wheel. I landed on “A Dozen Red Roses”. Tagging @archangelgabriellives, @archangel-with-a-shotgun , @archangelsanonymous, @ttttrickster, @warlockwriter, and @revwinchester.

Words: 2459

Special Context Note: For people who might not know: “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” was a popular song in the seventies (I think?) performed by Dawn feat. Tony Orlando (I do recommend it; it’s a good song). It’s told from the perspective of a man writing to his lover after having been away for a few years. He tells her that if she wants him still, she can tie a yellow ribbon around a certain tree and he’ll come home, but if he doesn’t see it, he’ll assume she doesn’t want him back and he’ll keep going and never bother her again.

A/N: That summary is a little more sinister than I intended. Sorry, no dark!Gabriel here. Or “The Crow” AU. (Though hm, that’s a possible idea.) This is kind of an alt S5 post-“Hammer of the Gods” where Gabriel doesn’t go to Loki et al. This is sort of similar in premise to some other stuff I’ve written so I apologize to the people who follow me. Ironically, despite the title, this story was actually written to repeat listening of “11 Minutes” by Halsey and Yungblud feat Travis Barker ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Please enjoy! (PS: In case my formatting gets fucked up, flashbacks are encompassed by tildes (~).)

You feel like you’ve gotten used to the silence.

Sure, you had periods of it before– spending 24/7 with a sometimes-manic archangel is a pre-requisite for madness– but those quiet moments without him had always felt like in-betweens. Small breaks, or minor reprieves, sometimes purposefully taken, and sometimes just waiting. Gabriel could have popped in at any moment.

Now he can’t.

You can say you’re mostly okay now. Mostly. You’ve lost before and you’ll lose again. It’s the nature of things, just being in the world as it is. Being a hunter in it means you’ll do it over and over and over again.

It doesn’t make it ache any less.

But you’re still going, because it’s what you’ve always done and it’s what you’ll always do. Right now you’re on your way to a small desert town that seems convinced it’s living out the movie “Tremors,” and going by the reports, you can see why. You feel a smile creep onto your lips. Gabriel would have found it funny.

“Have you been terrorizing a small city in Wisconsin in your spare time?” you ask and flick Gabriel with your big toe.

“Ooo, Wisconsin. Sounds like a party,” Gabriel says out loud, but the look he gives you asks, ‘Really?’ and he holds out a piece of whatever candy he’s focused on now. You trade him for the paper and take a bite while he skims the story.

He snorts and tosses it down. “Amateur. Credit for style though; there’s worse you could do than a Mel Brooks homage.”

You roll your eyes and finish swallowing. “I’m sure the three victims would agree with you, if they could.” You fold up the newspaper and set it aside from the massive stack of other regional papers that Gabriel had whined about, and yet gotten for you anyway. “I’ll head out tomorrow.”

“So you’re done working now?” Gabriel asks. He sits up and puts a piece of chocolate between his teeth, makes sure half of it is sticking out, and waggles his eyebrows.

You laugh and lean forward, bracing yourself with your hands as you stretch to meet his mouth with yours. Just as you’re about to gently bite on the chocolate, it vanishes, and Gabriel slips his tongue into your mouth instead.

Once you’ve had your fill of each other (for the moment) you can’t help how big you smile. “You’re so cheesy sometimes.”

He grins. “Sugar, you have no idea.”

You need a shower.

Badly.

You don’t feel the slime as much as you did when the constructs first exploded, but you don’t count that as a good thing, because it’s still there and you keep getting reminded of that whenever you shift. The day is dry and warm and a wind rushes across the desert landscape. When you step out of the car a strong gust blows past you and you shield your eyes until the air settles back to its steady pace. You get to your room and put your key in the lock when something catches your eye.

All down the sidewalk are cutouts in the concrete, just spaces of dirt that look like they’re supposed to be planters. Some of them have scattered cacti, but most are empty. Yours was empty, you're fairly certain, but now there’s a spindly long-stemmed something, being blown to the side and clinging to the dirt with nothing but tenacity. You kneel down to get a better look and–

it’s a rose.

Your breath catches in your throat. Not even a desert rose; a real, thorned rose, with petals that have obviously been sandblasted for a while and a thin stem that looks sickly.

But a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

There are flowers everywhere.

Gabriel really likes this place. He’s been here for a couple of months, and it shows; every day he’s seen you (almost every single day, as of late,) he’s given you flowers– a bouquet of twelve red roses. And, as you haven’t exactly had places to put them, he has graciously offered to ‘keep them somewhere safe.’

So of course there are dozens (of dozens) of roses scattered all around the room, still miraculously alive. Heavy emphasis on the miracle.

“You're the one who said I was cheesy,” Gabriel says and sits down, but puts his drink on the side table. Champagne, of course, and he’s even wearing a ridiculous red and black patterned robe. It’s a testament to how much you like him that you are not making fun of him right now.

But you can admit you do like the roses. The petals are soft and they smell nice. You look up from your bouquet to see Gabriel smiling at you. The softness of his expression throws you off and you hide the lower half of your face in the flowers. “Why always roses?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” His smile turns all trickster. “It’s just what they have at the grocery store.”

You hit him with the bouquet hard enough that he falls off the bed. Well, his mad laughter probably helped, but you’ll still take credit for it. Asshole.

Someday, sentiment is going to get you killed.

You pick the rose anyway.

The young couple currently having their first date is pretty cute. Now that you’re not annoyed by them blocking the door, you can appreciate the beginning a new relationship. And it’s going to be one; they’re both all soft smiles and longing glances and dumbstruck lovelorn expressions. One of them keeps fidgeting with their hands, and the other shifts an enormous bouquet from arm to arm. You note the roses, of course, but it’s made up of a lot of other flowers too. It’s very pretty– and must have cost a fortune. You smile. Explains the coffee date.

“You work too much.”

“You’re a needy guy, aren’t you?” you ask and glance up from the screen. “Five more minutes, Gabriel. Then I’m all yours.”

He huffs and flops onto the table, head in his arms and pouting and grumbling enough to draw attention. You roll your eyes and, while he’s distracted, kiss the crown of his head.

He stops grumbling. But the next time you take a sip of your drink it’s like shoving pure sugar down your throat and you choke.

His smile is almost as saccharine. “I just wanted to make it as sweet as you.”

You stare at him and calmly wipe your mouth. “Twenty minutes.”

He sputters in protest.

“I’ll knock it down to ten if you walk up to the counter, wait in line, and buy me a replacement. With money.”

He starts muttering again. But he gets up.

You look at your computer and think about actually trawling for hunts, but, well, your coffee cup is empty and who can be asked to work under such inhumane conditions? You hop off the stool and almost crunch a stray rose underfoot. It must have been dropped by the happy couple by the door. As you pick it up you wonder how you’re going to interject and give it back, but when you stand, they’re already gone.

You look back at the flower. It’s truly lovely; obviously well cared for (and not just shoved in a fridge at a grocery store, Gabriel). You smile at the thought of his indignance, and set the rose on the table. It would be a shame to let it get thrown out, so you’ll take care of it.

Even at the end of the world, there are still mundane monsters to kill. You’re leaving a very shaken family with one less poltergeist and a lifetime therapy to look forward to (at least they have a have a lifetime, now,) when the youngest daughter runs up to you and holds up a rose. “Here! This is for you.”

Though you thank her and take it, the mom echoes your concerns when she asks, “Honey where did you get that?”

“I found it,” the kid chirps, like that’s all you need to know.

It’s a real rose with almost no thorns and a yellow ribbon tied around the stem. That’s an odd thing to just find. But the house has settled and you figure you can burn this and stick around for a day or two, just in case. You thank the little girl again, bid goodbye to her sisters and parents, and as you go you start to tuck the flower away when you see a small embroidered symbol on the ribbon.

An Enochian symbol.

As you speed away, you barely resist the urge to chuck that fucking flower out the window. You want to. But at the same time, you can’t bring yourself to do it.

Fucking asshole.

“I need to understand!”

Gabriel shoves you up against the wall. Not hard enough to hurt, but it does stun you– for a second. His grip is too light and his expression too conflicted for him to convince you what a ‘monster’ he is. “You’re not that kind of person,” you say and stare him down. “So why do you want me to think you are?”

Gabriel jerks, but you grab onto his jacket and yank him back in. “What are you so afraid of, Gabriel?” you whisper. “I’m the one thing in the universe you don’t have to fear.”

Gabriel leans in, close enough to kiss. Your eyes shut on instinct. Or maybe it’s Pavlovian.

“You're the one thing in the universe I have to fear the most.”

Air brushes past your lips, the pressure of his body releases, and you open your eyes to empty space.

He had come back within a day, as soon as you had asked, and said ‘I’m sorry’ in every conceivable way without ever saying it with his mouth. (Well, verbally, that is.) At the time, you figured it was fine.

And maybe it was. Now that you’ve had a few days to freak out, get your hopes up and down and all around, you feel a little calmer. You have the roses set aside and the ribbon spread out on the bed while you sit with your Enochian dictionary. Gabriel wouldn’t lead you along willy-nilly. You have faith (just a little) that this means something.

And if this does turn out to be some “Drink your Ovaltine” bullshit you are going to find out how to travel back in time so you can murder him with your own two hands.

It takes a while, but you find the word, and then use a few other dictionaries and translation sites to get it into English. You check it five times, in different ways, and then sit, chest swelling with hope that you’re not sure you can handle.

‘Healing.’

You want to believe, but a rough translation boiled down to its essential part can’t make you Mulder. You put the books away and lean back against the headboard, just trying to process, when something ‘thump!’s against your door. You grab your gun and stay alert as you check the outside area, but as far as you can see, there’s no one.

But there are three roses, piled neatly just in front of the door. You smile. Because really– you’re skeptical, but you’re not stupid. You pick them up and put the flowers to your face while you mind the thorns. You’re pretty good at that by now.

“Okay,” you say and nuzzle the petals. “I’ll wait.”

You find five more roses over the next couple of weeks in utterly random places. On your pillow. In a sewer. In your water glass after you turn away for a second. In the basket you grab at a grocery store. On your passenger seat. That last one makes you ache.

That night, when you open your book and find eight perfectly placed rose petals, you almost cry. Twelve roses. It’s always been a dozen, so that means he’s coming back, right? He doesn’t appear right away, but you go to bed hopeful.

Except he’s not there in the morning.

Or the afternoon.

Or the evening. Or…

It’s late on the third day of waiting and hope is fading fast. You hit your forehead on your steering wheel and whisper, “Where are you?” Did you misread things? Was this set up in advance? Did he mean for you to heal? Was someone messing with–

Your radio comes on without any prompting and you jolt up. You’re so busy trying to look for danger that you don’t recognize the song at first.

“–nt me, if you still want me Whoa tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree…”

You blink. You stop being afraid. And start being annoyed. “Are you fucking serious?”

But the song plays on, and the volume even gets jacked up. “A SIMPLE YELLOW RIBBON’S WHAT I NEED TO SET ME FREE–”

“Okay!” You turn the radio off and sit in silence for a few moments before you burst into tears and laughter both. “Fuck; you’re such an asshole,” you say, with wet eyes and a smile full of teeth.

You consider trying to track down a bonsai or some plastic palm tree, but you’ve waited long enough. Still, when you get back to your room you go through all the motions of getting ready to go to sleep. Once you’re actually sitting on the bed, you put the yellow ribbon to your wrist and manage to tie a messy bow.

You lie down, exhausted by days of constant, immense stress, and sigh. As you drift off to sleep you think, ‘I’m ready, Gabriel.

Come home.’

It happens without fanfare. You simply wake to an arm around your stomach, and a morning still dark.

“Hey,” you say, sleep-addled.

Gabriel chuckles. “Hey.”

You’ve never heard anything so beautiful, even as rough as his voice is. “You sound tired.”

“Yeah.” Gabriel presses closer to you. “Almost getting murdered by your own brother is pretty exhausting.”

“Hm.” That’s a conversation for later. Or never, depending on how stubborn Gabriel wants to be. Either way, not now. Not when you’ve got him back. You turn over and wrap yourself around him. “It’s okay,” you say. “Go to sleep. I’ve got you.”

He gives you a wry smile, but whatever snarky way you expect him to say ‘I don’t sleep’ doesn’t happen. He shuts his eyes, and you hold tight. “I’m glad you came back,” you say. “Even if I don’t have a hundred ribbons.”

He shifts with quiet laughter. “That’s all right.” He holds your wrist and places a kiss that straddles the ribbon and your skin. “I only need the one.”

#spn gabriel #gabriel x reader #spn fanfic #spn reader insert #Supernatural fanfic #red roses #tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree

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shortsunshineposts · 6 years ago

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Finding You part 1

People liked the idea so here’s part 1

Alright so this first parts a little cheesey but trust me it gets better I promise 💜

Part 1 Reagan POV

“This crazy right? We’re crazy. This whole thing is crazy.” Your friend Brook said sitting on her suitcase. She began gently rolling around the hardwood floors, her small frame easily balancing on top of the overly stuffed suitcase that just barely made it through customs. You had just arrived at your almost empty apartment in downtown Seoul.The large apartment building sat smack dab in the middle of the city amongst many other high rise buildings. It was a not too recent build that mimicked the loft vibes you might see somewhere like New York or Boston. The walls were half drywall half exposed brick, and you could clearly see some metal ducting towards the slightly higher than usual ceilings. It smelled of freshly dried paint and cleaner. The landlord had told you the complex had recently been remodeled to accommodate a younger generation hoping to attract a new population who have become attracted to South Korea’s culture and human geography. Though you would be happy with four walls, a microwave, and a working shower the place did seem to fit your aesthetics.

You and your two best friends Brook and Cassie had made the decision to move to South Korea as a group. Brook would be teaching English and working at the national museum as an intern. Cassie would be finishing her last semesters of college as an international student. And I landed a job as an assistant mechanical engineer for a large technical company. Brook was right this did seem a little crazy. Though you were pretty familiar with the language you wouldn’t call any of you completely fluent and none of you had ever visited the country previously. However, the city called your names and you all hoped to live comfortably here. You looked around at the simple apartment, a small kitchen, a living area with large windows at the far end overlooking the city, it also had two bedrooms going off either side of the living area and a small full bathroom. Because there were two rooms you knew you would be sharing the larger of the two with Brook, but that was fine you had shared a room with her all through college and to be honest it would be weird if you weren’t sharing a room. Her strange sleep patterns and soft snores were oddly comforting.

“Okay it’s a little crazy,” Cassie said sitting cross legged on the floor. “But we’re here, no going back now.” She was right you went through all the trouble of getting here, the visas, convincing your families, there was no turning around now.

“Alright y’all,” Brook proclaimed. “I say we unpack and then go out and explore! I’m starving and I don’t think any of us want answer the question ‘what’s for dinner’ today.”She rolled away towards our bedroom.

“She’s right we might as well start now or we’re never going to start.” I say as I pick up the nearest box and walk it into the kitchen.

It takes a lot longer to unpack a house than it did to pack it up. You were currently sitting on the floor looking through a box labeled random when Cassie waltzed out of her room hands full.

“Hey Reagan, what do you think we should do with all our BTS albums?” She said plopping our three combined stacks on the table. Between the three of us we’ve managed to collect almost all of them and a few other group’s albums as well. Brook was the literal definition of a multi stan. “Like do you want to separate them out? Or im thinking we could have one combined shelf on display.” She seemed very excited about the idea of proudly displaying our love for the very talented boys.

“Whatever you’d like Cassie” You chuckled at her enthusiasm. You’d be lying if those seven boys hadn’t had an influence on your big move, but it wasn’t that you had expected to ever meet them, they simply made you more interested in their home country. Though you all did label yourselves as ARMYs, their official fanbase.

Your stomach rumbled and you looked at the clock. It was almost seven pm and none of you had eaten anything except the occasional snack since you’d arrived. “Alright I think it’s time to consume.” You said laying down flat on the floor. Your arms and legs starfished along the wooden surface.

“Thank god.” Brook said coming out of our room already changed and ready to go. “I think I could eat a horse.” She had discarded the leggings and sweatshirt she’d worn on the plane for skinny jeans and green sweater. It was just a little too big for her so she tucked the front behind a black belt.

Looking from her attire to your sweat pants and cropped T-shirt you decided it wouldn’t do. You and Cassie got changed into clothes slightly nicer than your airplane outfits, Cassie opting for similar look to Brooks only with a grey turtleneck and you threw on your nicest mom jeans and salmon cropped sweater, and bravely left your apartment building for the first time since arriving. You all had your phones out looking up restaurants that you could all find something to eat at. None of you were too picky, well Brook was, but so long as they served meat you were sure she would find something she liked. You all decided to play it safe and found a small restaurant that served food that you were relatively used to. Pictures on their website looked similar to that of a pub. It had a bar as well as normal seating, and the menu actually looked surprisingly like a mix of American and Korean foods.

You arrived at the restaurant in a timely manner, well as timely as you could. As per usual you got lost a few times. You all depended too much on the gps in your phone on top of being directionally challenged. Inside you were sat at a table the waiter surprised by your abilities to speak the language somewhat coherently. You were sure he was thankful for that.

“Oh thank god they have wine.” You gasped ready for a glass after such a long day. You didn’t drink a lot considering you were big lightweight but you could still throwback a few glasses of wine easy. Brook laughed across the wooden high top table and scooched in her stool.

“Of course that is the first thing you look for.” She rolled her eyes at me knowing my history as a wine enthusiast. “I may have to join you on that one.” She said looking around. She tucked her hair behind her and played with one of her earrings.

“Maybe that would be a good idea.” Knowing Brook for a few years now I knew that new places, especially busy ones, triggered her anxiety. Alcohol usually relaxes her and makes her a bit more outgoing.

“Well I’m going to stick with water thank you very much.” Cassie said raising an eyebrow at the two of us. Cassie was the youngest of the three of us at only 20, being in Korea now meant that she could drink legally without having to wait until her 21st birthday, but she was very okay with waiting.

“Alright Cassie then you have to lead with directions on our way home.” Brook said pointing her chopsticks at her.

“Brook do you even know how to use those?” You snickered.

“Hey as long as the food makes it into my mouth it matters not to me.” She said matter of fact. She made a point. You and Cassie giggled remembering Brook’s past attempts at using the utensil. Most times you ended up having to ask the waiter or waitress for a fork because she was to embarrassed to ask for one herself. “And besides my hand cramps up most of the time.”

About an hour and a half passed in which you spent chatting, eating and drinking. Others in the restaurant had come and gone but your waiter did not seem to mind that you had stuck around. Probably because you seemed to be enjoying yourselves. While Brook was telling us about the new job she was about to start Cassie’s eyes started to wander. Looking around the room at various patrons and the atmosphere. It was a surprisingly popular little spot. Popular music filled the speakers and people mixed and mingled across the floor. You saw her eyes quickly widen just enough for you to notice and she turned her attention back on Brook, a slight red blush appearing on her cheeks barely visible in the dim lighting. Brook and I looked at each other and back at Cassie.

“What?” Brook asked her eyebrows narrowing taking another sip of her wine.

“Nothing, it was nothing.” She said quickly and quietly trying to avoid the question.

“Seriously Cass what was it?” You pressed.

“Okay fine, but you have to promise me that you won’t look.” She spoke quietly. “There’s a few people here we know of.” She looks at us suspiciously.

“What do you mean that we know of?” You were very confused, you hadn’t known anyone before you moved here. Cassie rolled her eyes.

“Remember don’t look but there’s a large booth that’s behind us, over in the corner. At that booth, I am most certain that there are seven idiots we know.” You and Brook shared one more look of confusion before our eyes widened. We quickly composed ourselves as to not draw any special attention to the table. Brook took a nervous sip of her drink.

“Cassie are you sure? Like really sure? 100%?” You asked still concerned she was freaking out over nothing.

“Am I positive I almost made eye contact with the boy of my dreams? Yes Reagan I am sure.” You all took in the moment that you were sitting in the same room as the people you had adored for almost a 2 years now.

“Alright y’all, just be cool, don’t be suspicious, and subtly change your lock screens.” You were about to protest but Brook interrupted you. “Reagan don’t lie to me I know bunny boy over there’s been your background for weeks.” You stayed quiet and changed the background.

Not wanting to move from your seats you all ordered a round of drinks, even Cassie this time, obviously more nervous than before. After a little while the alcohol really started to kick in and you stopped worrying so much about them. You discussed other topics and told embarrassing funny stories about each other. Out of the corner of your eye you saw someone look over at the three of you but you ignored it, and continued to attempt to get your two friends to laugh hard at each other. You were a little loud but not any louder than any other young person hanging out there that night.

After a little while this person and a few other persons began to walk towards your table. At first you thought they were walking up to you but they slid past you and walked up to the bar. Brook who was currently facing that way suddenly turned bright red trying to look anywhere but straight ahead of her.

“What? What’s happening?” You questioned.

“He’s looking at me.” She said a little quietly.

“Who?” I questioned.

“Oh my god he is looking at you,” Cassie exclaimed. “OH and you will never guess who has their eye on you Raegan.” Cassie giggled.

“Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on?” You asked still very confused.

“Let’s just say there’s a Kookie waiting for you at the bar.” She said winking at you. You put your hand to your head. Brook still refused to make eye contact with anything except her phone and her glass in front of her. “You don’t think you guys should talk to them should you?”

“Do you think they’d think that’s weird?” Brook said breaking her silence.

You poked your head around to try and get a look at the supposed boy looking at you. You weren’t being very suspicious about it as you made direct eye contact with him and he flashed you a small bunny smile. You felt yourself start to blush and you quickly looked away.

“Oh well now you may have to talk to them.” Cassie said. You were hoping not when you felt a sudden presence behind you. Cassie looked nervous all of the sudden, sitting up straight in her chair and playing with the ends of her hair making sure they were laying nice across her shoulders. Brook was looking behind you holding her breath like she wanted to say hello, but didn’t want to be the first to do it. Suddenly there were three boys standing at your table drinks in hand.

“Hey there.” You recognized that voice anywhere. You turned a little in your chair to be greeted with a smile from Jeon Jungkook.

#bts #yoongi #bangtan #suga #jimin #jin #jungkook #hoseok #j hope #rm #namjoon #taehyung #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts scenario #bts reactions #bangtan soyeondan #fanfiction

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sparda3g · 7 years ago

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One Piece Chapter 921 Review

One Piece is back. After the revelation of the Samurai from 20 years ago, it’s finally time to reclaim the rightful glory to Wano Country. If only the two-week break in real life applied to the series as well. You can feel the hype and it’s only going to rise higher. This chapter was more of a follow-up discussion with elaborated pre-planning details with new outfits for the crew and a dreary reminder of who will they be dealing with in two weeks.

It does make sense to continue on with the discussion since the last chapter was more about the backstory of the 5 Samurai from 20 years ago. Therefore, this one is about the preparation prior to the decisive battle. I still believe Luffy’s fleet will get involved and 2 weeks is plenty of time to call them over. That all said this chapter is text heavy from the start, though it is interestingly necessary to be aware of its world. It’s also humorous, so it’s good enough to keep my attention.

As said before, the decisive battle will take place at the Demon Island, Onigashima, where Kaidou and his Beasts Pirates’ HQ are located. Here is where the battle plan is explained. Kin’emon already has a ship to sail there and they don’t really have to ride a full-sale ship since they are so close by. The setting will take place during the Fire Festival, a grand festival that is celebrated annually. It sounds like a recipe for a major background stage for an epic battle.

Kaido is considered to be a Wise King. Yeah, a wise king who tried to kill himself dozens of time already. Sure, okay. Orochi and his followers continue to show their despicable nature by acting like they cherish the theme of the festival and pay their respects, but in reality, they’re just party animals. Well, if you include the Beasts Pirates, then jokes on me. Basically, they want to use the opportunity of when they’re drunk and out cold to reach for the Commander’s head. Not a bad idea.

There’s another revelation to be said. Apparently, Kin’emon is married already, well before a time warp. Here I thought Kiku was hitting on him. Then again, maybe she doesn’t have any shame when approaching to a married man. Speaking of married man, judging by Kiku’s words, Tsuru is his wife; the same woman who looks nearly identical to the traditional art style. He has yet to meet her, so there’s one reunion to expect. I like Sanji’s reaction towards him and his sudden popularity with women. He’s not wrong for some reason about a married man attracts women more than ever…

Going back to the serious discussion, Kin’emon has a symbol or symbols that marks the Will of Rebellion. It looks like a mask design. It’s kind of neat to learn each of the symbol’s representation. The crescent moon is the giveaway for who is behind the message, which is honorable. The cards need to be spread to issue an alliance from various places. This idea could play out similar to Vivi and Strawhats with their X mark on their arm, only this is about the mark of a new beginning. I like this concept. Funny how they said Zoro hasn’t been useful. Well, he did save Kin’emon’s wife (assumingly), so there’s that.

Franky works as an apprentice of the man who built Kaidou’s residence. That way, he can obtain the blueprints of that building. That’s a good idea and the most suited person to do the job. As for Robin, she’s masquerading as a Geisha to make Orochi grant her to his sitting room. That’s one risky task, but it’s Robin, so she’s used to it. Sanji would have love to see her as a Geisha. Who wouldn’t? I got to say, I’m impressed with Kin’emon with his crafty planning. I guess I was used to him being comical, so this is a good change of pace. He even has an idea for others based on their characteristics.

After the crew feeling the hype to change appearances and become part of the country’s culture, it is time for Clothes-Clothes no Jutsu. Is that seriously a jutsu? Because I want to learn it. Now, everyone dress their part. Brook has me laughing with his outfit as a ghost who still has battle scars or in this case, arrows sticking out. Chopper is an adorable ninja. Curious how well he will do with skills. Carrot is like a villager who is still doing chores. Sanji is normal, but the difference is he is mesmerized by Nami’s outfit. She dressed as a Kunoichi, but more revealing than necessary. I know they have a technique to seduce, but Kin’emon, ease your urge. Even Nami thought this is too much.

What got me laughing a lot is the proof of Kunoichi’s outfit to be what she’s wearing. Throughout the chapter, every time you see Sanji on panel, his reaction is towards the ladies more so than himself. Even when he was told that he’s going to suit up, all he thought was Nami as a hot ninja. It’s time for the real Kunoichi to appear and he was super hyped. Shinobu arrives at Kin’emon’s command and well, she is a Kunoichi but old as one can be. Not only this proved Nami’s thought is right, but Sanji is dying from disappointment. Take notes, Kaido. In Kin’emon’s defense, there are two types of Kunoichi. I think…

In One Piece, you can’t get enough of new characters, so here comes another one. Shinobu is a veteran and apparently, she has mastered the Art of Bewitchment. Sanji is slowly recovering, but the damage is severe. If Nami didn’t appear sexy earlier, he probably would have died. Death by disappointment; now that’s new. Hilarious how she believed her attractiveness is a threat to men. Sure, let’s go with that.

Right before the scene shifts elsewhere, Kin’emon was about to explain The Three Samurai they must recruit. Their names are Kawamatsu, Denjiro, and Ashura Douji. They are a must if they want increase manpower significantly in their squad. It stops there, which implies that perhaps next chapter, we will learn more about them and probably their backstory. Kin’emon sure has a lot of knowledge to tell, so be aware of more introductions.

Just when you think you are done with Okobore Town, we return there and this time, trouble is happening. Scums are roaming around and stealing everyone’s food. I thought it would be Beasts Pirates, reclaiming “their” stuff, but they’re bunch of thieves instead. The one in charge is a fat Samurai, Shutenmaru. I was wondering what the chapter’s title referring to, but can he be any larger. It doesn’t help with his nasty attitude towards the country, despite being a Samurai himself. I wonder what the deal with his introduction at this time. Connection to The Three Samurai maybe? One thing is certain is the demonstration of his skills.

Jack returns from slumber and gets ready to fight Shutenmaru. I thought it was time for Jack to get hype boost as Shuntenmaru gets annihilated. Instead, that large Samurai comes off as a shock and cut Jack with a quick slash. Only One Piece could this pull off. So yeah, I was surprised he’s that good. Hell, he matched up well with Jack. Hard to say who would have won, because it was interrupted by the highlight of the chapter.

The moment the sky was swirling, I knew it had to be Kaido. Hell, I thought he was trying to fall down and see if he can die this time. That said I got chills from the sequence of the devil’s arrival. Ironic since he arrived from above. Everyone stopped fighting and Jack even feels intimidated. After Strawhats and others felt anticipated for the day to reclaim the country, they have a grim reminder on who they’re dealing with. Actually, this is their first time to see Kaido. He emerge from Heaven (Hell), but not as himself, but as a damn dragon.

It was bad enough with him being a giant and considered as the world strongest man. Now he can turn into a dragon. So what does this all mean with Momo? His design isn’t like the innocent or cutesy one like Momo; his is like a lost brother of Shenron from Dragon Ball, back when he was intimidated. Not to mention, he’s seriously huge as hell. Every time I see him, I go back and say, “The series is concluding earlier than I thought.” If Big Mom really allied with him, game over?

This was an intriguing chapter to boot after a break. It may not be the chapter fans have been craving for, well, depending if you’re all about action, but with its elaborated details of the plan and amusing moments such as Sanji’s near death experience from heartbreak, it doesn’t come off as bore. The art is pretty good as well, especially Kaido’s design as dragon. It also leaves expectations for future events, including The Three Samurai. Kaido continue to be the most fearsome foe. If this arc supposedly makes Marineford War Arc look childish in compare, then a god-like enemy is a good start. Where do we go from here is anyone’s guess.

#one piece #chapter 921 #review #spoilers

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eene-fangirl · 7 years ago

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Stand By Ed Chapter 7 [An Ed, Edd n Eddy Crossover]

Note: Here is the next chapter of @impano and I’s crossover of Stand By Ed! Enjoy!

Now it was completely dark all across the Lemon Brooke woods. Having traveled at night before the boys made camp in a safe place. It was an open grassy area surrounded by trees. If only they could sleep in the location they had last time. The city lights made them feel safe. At least the moon was out. Eddy especially felt much safer. It was still embarrassing to admit that dumb fear.

It took some time, followed with great patience, to start a campfire. After vigorously rubbing together two sticks as smoke fired out his ears, Eddy made the fire.

The humorous event reminded Eddy of a funny story he wrote.

As the Eds munched on marshmallows Eddy entertained his friends about a boy with the biggest ears. They’re length was similar to Dumbo. The boy had hearing better than any bird. One day he was in school and heard a girl whisper to a friend that she was going to ask some guy by the name of Brad out when she already had a boyfriend. But the friend already asked Brad to go out. But, Brad was asking some other girl out as they spoke! The boy with the big ears followed the commotion only to learn that the fight was occuring in another state!

Ed and Edd laughed as Eddy took a little bow. “Thank you, thank you, and thank you!”

“That was very good, Eddy,” Edd complimented.

“What happens after?” Ed asked.

Eddy’s smile faded. “What do yah mean?”

“Does the boy fly to the other state to see the drama? Ooh, that would be funny!”

Eddy uncomfortably scratched the back of his head. “Uh... I don’t know. That’s all I came up with.”

“What’s the reason why the boy has big ears?” Edd was next to ask.

Eddy shot Edd an annoyed look. Edd immediately felt guilty. He should have known better. Eddy just wrote to relieve his anxiety. Eddy enjoyed writing more then he let on Stacks and stacks of papers scattered around his room. He made up little stories about random characters, his own feelings, or even about his disco ball. Eddy had a unique mind. It was a shame he wouldn’t make it more of a hobby.

“It’s just a dumb story, guys!” Eddy huffed scarfing a half burned marshmallow down his throat.

Ed and Edd guiltily frowned. Putting another marshmallow on a stick Ed hit his against Eddy’s forming a gooey string of the dessert. Eddy laughed and playfully punched Ed’s arm.

“If only we had some buttered toast!”

“How would a marshmallow and toast go together?” Edd asked.

“Anything tastes good with buttered toast, Double D,” Ed stated matter of factly.

“Best not argue, Double D. The first thing I ever saw lumpy eat when I first met him was shrimp, two donuts, an apple, dsome steak tips, and even a turkey under two slabs of buttered toast.”

The conversation moved on to a ‘would you rather’ match, to movies, and betting which characters could beat out the other in a wrestling match. This is what the boys missing out on. Their time with no worries was quickly fading. That’s why Eddy was so anxious. There friendship would fade for sometime until they became closer. What if they actually split up in high school?

Eddy’s concern was soon forgotten when the howl of a wolf prowling some near distance alerted the boys.

“What was that?” Ed shivered grasping Edd’s arm.

“The call of a wolf, no doubt,” Edd gulped.

“A wolf?” Eddy questioned, his voice noticeably higher.

“It’s the wilderness, Eddy!”

“We never heard no wolves on the way to Bro’s!”

Before Edd could argue further another wolf howled which sounded even closer from the first one. The three boys huddled together in a tight hug. The fire didn’t light up much of the campground. Were the wolves lurking right outside the dark shadows ready to feast on their skin?

“This is not good! We won’t be able to sleep like this!” Edd deemed holding Eddy tightly. Eddy didn’t mind so much. He wondered if Edd noticed him holding him holding his hip.

“Not unless we take watch,” Ed recommended.

Both Edd and Eddy looked startled by their friends advice.

“Would you take watch, Ed?” Edd asked feeling quite humbled. Ed always looked out for them.

“Sure! Then Eddy can take watch and then you. We could keep watch by that tree.”

“You sure you’re gonna stay up, Ed?” A skeptical Eddy asked.

“Of course! I’ll just count chickens!”

Eddy grabbed something from inside his bag. “Wait Ed, take this!”

It was the gun. Terror flooded Ed’s face. He refused to take it. Edd was also giving Eddy a reproachful eye. Having learned that there were bullets inside the weapon earlier that day they had no idea how many more there were.

“Only use it if you really need to,” Eddy carefully instructed.

The crickets were chirping. Any little sound set Ed off. He tried to relax but if a stick snapped Ed picked up the gun and pointed it in every direction. Edd could hardly sleep fearing Ed may harm one of them by mistake.

As night went on Edd’s eyes grew heavy. He snuggled into his sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep.

Eddy took the next watch. He wasn’t at all tired. His mind kept him awake with irritating thoughts gradually bringing his mood down. His hand tightened around the gun in anger having to listen to his brothers voice on constant repeats like a broken record.

Noticing their fire slowly dimming Eddy left his post. He tapped at the burning sticks. What good would it do? He couldn’t even start a fire.

A moan alerted Eddy.

It was from Edd. He head tossed and turned in his sleep. He made another moan of discomfort.

Surrounding Edd were bodies. The kids were all injured. A little girl stared up at him with frightened teary eyes. That’s when Edd snapped out of it realizing what he was doing. The kids... they all looked... dead. Then there were flashing cameras in crowds of people with blurred faces asking why he injured a number of a children with dodgeballs. Someone ripped his hat off revealing the scar. People laughed. They pointed. And laughed. Edd searched for his parents. He called for them but no answer.

Then, there was his father.

The crowd of people diminished and it was eerily silent. Just Edd’s father staring coldly at his own son with no hat to cover the scar.

“Father...”

“I hate you, Eddward.”

Edd gasped away.

“You okay?” Eddy asked concerned.

Edd panted, grasping his beating heart. Tears threatened him. His whole being ached wanting a hug to relieve it all. No. Monsters don’t deserve hugs.

“Nothing.”

Eddy stared at him in pity much to Edd’s dismay. His focus returned back to the fire which steadily grew making them warmer. Without a word Eddy walked back to his lookout position miserably holding the gun. The way Eddy faced away from the campfire alerted Edd.

Years ago when they were outside of Mondo-a-Go-Go Amusement Park Edd remembered Eddy staring into the night sky for what seemed like an hour. And then the whole night turned into a deep conversation between the three friends which changed their friendship for the better.

Edd stood up and tip toed over to Eddy so he wouldn’t disturb a snoring Ed.

“Mind if I join you?” Edd whispered.

Eddy jumped, startled. “Y-Yeah, sure, sockhead.”

With some company Eddy looked a little better. Even Edd. The dream didn’t settle his worries.

“A penny for your thoughts, Eddy?” Edd asked with a nervous smile.

Eddy leaned his head against the tree. His whole body looked strained, holding back any pain. Then he shut his eyes, biting at his lip.

“I wish I could just drop out of school.” Came Eddy’s answer.

Edd’s heart ached. “Eddy, why?”

“I ain’t smart enough,” Eddy mumbled hardly looking at Edd.

Edd sighed an irritated groan. “Eddy, stop thinking that about yourself! You’ve come up with the most brilliant ideas. You always have a plan B.”

“You’re just sayin’ that.”

“I mean it! You always catch me when I overthink my studies.”

“So what?” Eddy huffed, waving his arms out. “If I’m smart then why don’t any of those wise ass teachers ever think so?”

Eddy growled staring at the ground hatefully. He still had the gun in his hand. Frim a short distance away Ed still snored.

“We’re going to the high school, Eddy.”

“Thanks for the reminded again!” Eddy snapped.

Eddy’s behavior confused Edd more and more. His friend was known for his angry spouts. “I meant that we have a fresh start.”

“Fresh start my ass! They all know me! As soon as I strut into that school they’re all gonna run for cover knowing I’m Terry McGee’s little brother.”

And with that Edd completely understood. “Eddy, they’re not...”

“Uh... earth to sockhead! Weren’t you payin’ attention at all these past three years?!” Eddy’s voice howled through the woods. Little did Eddy know he actually scared off a wolf. “None of them trusted me! I never got a say! No one ever took my side! They knew I was an evil destructive, cheating lowlife!”

“That’s not true.” Edd said calmly.

“Oh it is, don’t you try to defend me! No one ever asked if I made all those copies of an embarrassing school photo! Nope, they thought I wanted a gazillion copies to have as my headshot for when I was famous someday! And then I cleaned ‘em all up for two stickin’ hours without a ‘thank you.’ And then they go and give me a week’s detention for your impersonation of the principal.”

Edd’s heart swelled. “Eddy, I said...”

“I know! You told me and said you were sorry. It’s all in the past, Double D,” Eddy said to him. A tear escaped his eye. Eddy quickly brushed it away.

“Who were they gonna believe?” Eddy continued in a low voice. “All the kids who were torturing the victim or the kid brother of ‘Terrible Terrel’ McGee?”

Eddy sniffled. He bit at his knuckle forcing his sobs down. The skin broke, bleeding. Edd placed a hand on Eddy’s shoulder trying to calm him.

“Nope. They’d believe you. And a jock who gets bad grades. Three witches who hardly show up for school. And a spoiled brat! But not me! A kid who was abused by his own brother for no reason whatsoever! Did they even care?! No, they didn’t ask. They just assumed! No one trusts me! They all...” Eddy hid the tears and shook his head.

“I just wish I could go some place where nobody knows me!”

Edd pulled his best friend into a hug letting him cry into his shoulder. Eddy held Edd closely, shaking as he sobbed.

“I’m such a sap,” Eddy was trying to laugh it off but he couldn’t.

Or the remainder of he night the two boys held one another tightly. Once assured that nothing was coming after then they went back to the campground and slept. Eddy's hand stayed connected with Edd’s as they fell asleep to crickets chirping.

#ed edd n eddy #eene #eene fanfiction #EddEddy #Stand By Me #Stephen King

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miragerules · 7 years ago

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The 15 Best Current TV/Streaming Series

Well we are closing in on the end of 2017 and with most series having had or are soon going to have their mid-season finales I thought I’d update what I believe are the best current TV series airing or have ended this year. Now I don’t watch a ton of television as I have not seen Outlander, Legion, The Man in High Castle, American Gods, Star Trek: Discovery, Runaways, and among others that people have recommended to me. Anyway here are in what my opinion are the best current TV series.

1. The Expanse: Some have called The Expanse “Game of Thrones in space”, and it does have some of the same vibe, but The Expanse has surpassed Game of Thrones as the best show on TV or streaming. Through two seasons, The Expanse has been excellent with a detailed mostly realistic compelling story about the near future with a diverse cast of characters with interesting stories that brings each characters journey to life, beautiful effects, a wonderful soundtrack and some intense action. For more read Brian Tallerico of the Rolling Stones article Why ‘The Expanse’ is the Best Sci-fi TV Show You’re Not Watching.

Rating: 10/10

2. Westworld: Westworld is based on the sci-fi western novel by Michael Crichton and film starring Yul Brynner. Jonathan Nolan brother to Christopher Nolan and creator of the underappreciated and excellent Person of Interest created the series. Westworld brilliantly expands on the ideas and concepts from both Crichton’s novel and the film delivering a thrilling and mysterious story that stars the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, James Marsden, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, and Tessa Thompson.

Rating: 10/10

3. Black Sails: Black Sails has officially come to a conclusion with the wrapping up of the excellent fourth and final season this past April. Black Sails through four seasons took audiences on somewhat of a historical look at the life of pirates in the Caribbean during the early 18th century. The writers delivered compelling characters helping the audience root for these criminals even though we shouldn’t, and the writers didn’t hide from showing the good, the bad, and the downright ugly that was the life of a pirate. Unlike any other film or show Staz’s Black Sails showed the viewer what it was like to be a pirate. Obviously there was the violence, action and nudity that helped make the show great, but really it was the stories, and characters that made Black Sails so good throughout its four seasons

Rating 10/10

4. Game of Thrones: Game of Thrones though out its seven seasons has always been excellent, but this past season with its shortened season had some issues mainly with continuity and plot holes. What I mean is that time and distance seem to have no meaning this past season. I know Westeros is a long continent from north to south, but why has it taken so long for the White Walkers to get to the wall. Another is how even though it just seemed like a day or maybe two did the Dothraki go from Dragonstone (at least that is where the Dothraki were at the time) and cross all of Westeros in what seemed like a day. Yes, Westeros is short from east to west, but not that short across. I loved the battle and the scene of Jamie charging at Daenerys on horseback, but thinking about how Daenerys and the Dothraki just does not make sense. These are still minor criticisms in what is otherwise an excellent show with just one more season left. Sadly, it sounds like we are going to have to wait to early 2019 to see who ends up sitting on the iron throne if anyone.

Rating: 9.75/5

5. 12 Monkeys: The final season of 12 Monkeys is coming up in 2018 with its fourth and final season, and from how quickly the Scfy channel aired season 3 the network will be happy to see the series go. Scfy may be happy to see the series go, but that doesn’t change the fact that 12 Monkeys is one of the best shows around. The show is obviously based on the Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt starred film with the same name. Only the series follows James Cole and Cassandra Railly as they travel through time trying to stop the rise of the group The 12 Monkeys and stop the plague that nearly wipes out the human race from happening. The series has some outstanding writing, and action sequences, but perhaps one of the best elements of the show is the friendship/relationship between James and Cassie. Their relationship is most likely going to be doomed, but is beautiful to watch thanks to that acting and chemistry of actors Aaron Stanford and Amanda Schull.

Rating: 9.75/5

6. Godless: The first of four Netflix shows on this list. Godless is technically a mini-series so it won’t be on a similar list like this next near, but Godless is still a compelling series neither the less. Godless mainly takes place in a small mining town of La Belle where the majority of its men died in a mining accident leaving the women to run the town. The series follows the lives of Roy Goode, Alice Fletcher, Bill McNue, and the antagonist of the series Frank Griffin played brilliantly by Jeff Daniels. In modern Hollywood, westerns are a risk, but thankfully, there is a streaming service like Netflix that took the chance and writer/director Scott Frank who brought Godless to life with a compelling story, riveting characters, great cinematography and some great action sequences.

Rating: 9.75

7. Jessica Jones: Technically Jessica Jones wasn’t on air this past year, but season one was excellent and the second season is premiering in early 2018.

Rating: 9.5/10

8. Daredevil: Like Jessica Jones, Daredevil wasn’t on air this year, but the first two seasons were great and the third season probably premiering in late 2018.

Rating: 9.5/10

9. Rick and Morty: I know most wouldn’t expect an Adult Swim cartoon to appear on a list of the best shows on TV or streaming, but Rick and Morty is the exception to the rule. What Dan Harmon has helped to create with Justin Roiland is truly something special as Rick and Morty is one of the most funny, tragic, complex and fascinating cartoons….no Rick and Morty is simply one of the most funny, tragic, complex and fascination shows on TV or streaming.

Rating: 9.5/10

10. The Punisher: The Punisher could have easily failed as a series with the climate we live in today with all the gun violence and mass killings in the United States today, but Netflix’s The Punisher is pretty much a rousing success that’s mainly thanks to Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle and Steve Lightfoot, and the rest of the writers that shied away from glorifying violence and guns. There are many elements of the series that are good from the story and relationship between Frank and David Lieberman and between Frank and David’s family as well as the action sequences, but for me one of the best elements of the series was the growing friendship between Frank and Karen and the will they won’t they vibe. Sadly, we don’t get enough of the two, and I am hoping for former and Frank and Karen end up getting together and the writers steer away from so-called “canon” when it comes to Karen from the comics.

Rating: 9/10

11. The Shannara Chronicles: Like The Expanse, The Shannara Chronicles is a show very few people watch and judging by the ratings on Spike I doubt the series will get a 3rd season, but through two seasons The Shannara Chronicles has been great. The Shannara Chronicles series is loosely based on the fantasy novels by Terry Brooks, and you’d think with the first season airing on MTV and the second on Spike that there wasn’t much to the show besides a simply story and hot characters getting it on and you would be wrong. Yes, the series follows the formula of the fantasy genre, but The Shannara Chronicles has a fascinating cast of characters, a pretty well developed story, and some good set pieces for the obvious limited budget the series has. I highly recommend everyone check out the series.

Rating: 9/10

12. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Rating: 9/10

13. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Rating: 8.75/10

14. The Orville: Going into the series premier with Seth McFarland staring I thought The Orville was going to a half hour Sci-fi comedy after all McFarland is the mind behind Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, American Dad, and Ted, so I was pleasantly surprised when The Orville turned out to be much more than that. McFarland’s The Orville is an hour-long sci-fi dramedy. The first season does have some issues mixing comedy with sci-fi drama, but overall McFarland with the rest of the cast and the writers do a good job with mixing the two elements creating a fun and compelling hour-long series that honors Star Trek.

Rating: 8.75/10

15. South Park: After what is now, 21 seasons you’d think South Park would end up like The Simpsons in that South Park wouldn’t be funny anymore and only relying on their name and nostalgia for what they once were, but South Park continues to be a hilarious show. This past season Matt and Trey Parker tried to move away from the season long story, and focus from episode to episode. You can tell Matt and Trey are just as frustrated with the current state of affairs in America and dealing with Trump/President Garrison as the rest of us as often times they didn’t know what to do in each episode or tried to cram to much in a single episode, but the two handled it well. The best episodes of the 21 first season were "White People Renovating Houses", "Holiday Special", "Doubling Down", "Super Hard PCness" and the season finale "Splatty Tomato" that introduced us to the conservative White family and the hilarious use of the term “Thank god for the whites”.

Rating: 8.5/10

Honorable mentions: The Big Bang Theory, Arrow, The Gifted, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Defenders, Iron Fist, and Lethal Weapon.

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