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mlobsters · 7 months ago

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supernatural s1e1 pilot (w. eric kripke)

(this is a rewatch, so spoilers abound)

because my brain is jacked up, i'm weirdly anxious about rewatching the show even though that's been The Plan for months. i watched 15x20 a week (plus) ago and every time i think about starting over at the pilot and writing them up proper like i did around s4-5 onward, my chest kind of clenches up and i look for literally anything else to do. i am worried about having feelings that i'm not prepared to deal with. which is fucking ridiculous.

hold onto your butts, this is gonna be a long fucking post

i've mentioned before that babies in peril is my number 1 hard stop on media -- i stopped watching killing eve mid-episode because of one and never went back to it (i intended to but never happened, brain weasels make everything hard.) so i know the very first time i tried to watch spn (several years ago) i almost turned it off because of little baby sam. that first attempt at watching i wasn't actually fully paying attention, i had it on while i was doing other things and so i missed all the character stuff and only saw it as kind of a mid horror schlocky situation so i never finished the first season back then. when i gave it another go in early 2023, i was giving it my full attention.

one thing this show always got? the cutest, happiest, sweetest babies. 10/10 would recommend

already freaking out how young everyone is and happy clean shaven john is extra wild

demon growl sound effect / padalecki's accent & jerk bitch moment

hey, it's the first instance of the demon growl noise when mary's burning on the ceiling! ooh i'm gonna be even more insufferable about the musical score and sound effects now that i'm listening for it from the jump

also i have called padalecki's accent/speech pattern the crispy r based on some tiktok i heard describing it that way - i associate it with california (but these clips are almost the opposite where the R is getting almost eliminated but not in the boston accent way), and i'd say maybe it was a choice but i think he spoke this way in gilmore girls too? but anyway, his Rs are just very different and it's a very particular and kind of subtle accent that definitely doesn't carry through the entire series ("bear it" in the second clip, the "sorry" in the third). i mentioned it when they had a clip of a moment from 1x10 as well in the pre-ep recap for 5x09

really well done and effective effects on that fire in the nursery

♥️💔

so this picture made it out of the lawrence fire (it was on mary's nightstand) but not the stanford one? i don't recall it being in the collection

i never really understood where sam was supposed to be timeline-wise in college, other than he must not have graduated because it was october? so there's me googling when you take the LSAT. so he could have (assuming it hasn't changed that much since 2005) taken it in june or october of the calendar year before he graduated. all right so that makes sense now that i think about it for more than 30 seconds. so he didn't finish his last year really of his bachelor's. and he's 22. i think in that alex irvine john winchester diary novel thing (don't think that that's considered canon but that's a whole other can of worms), it said sam graduated high school at 19 instead of 18 so i think that would make things line up (someone made a timeline that also includes everything in that novel but the post is loudly wncest dni so i won't link it). i do know it was just a mistake that the pilot said sam had been gone 2 years.

the ever useful canon discrepancies article at superwiki:

One of the most frequently debated potential canon discrepancies. Here are the facts: - In the 1.01 Pilot, Sam is about to be interviewed for law school, which could work on the assumption that he's just about to finish a bachelor degree (4 years). Dean also says that he hasn't spoken to Sam in "nearly two years." - In 1.03 Dead in the Water, Dean tells Sam that he spent "Every day for two years with Dad, while you were going to pep rallies." - In 1.07 Hook Man, Dean says "So this is how you spent four good years of your life, huh?" when they are researching in the library. - The original promo dates Mary's death to September 13, 1985, consistent with Sam being twenty and having been at Stanford for two years but out of step with everything else in the series. Eric Kripke acknowledged during a panel at the 2006 William S. Paley Television Festival that they made a mistake in the script -- initially Sam was meant to be 20, then they aged him up to 22, but neglected to change Dean's line from "two years" to "four years." Therefore, it may have been the creators' intention that Sam has been at college for four years.

this is gonna take me approximately forever to rewatch episodes 🤪

keeping my eye out for hands for drawing. have a general idea of getting something early seasons to go in the set with the 15x20 hands.

SAM Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45. DEAN Well, what was he supposed to do? SAM I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don't be afraid of the dark.

classic john

SAM Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her. SAM But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find. DEAN We save a lot of people doing it, too.

one thing i'm thinking about is how i definitely was under the impression that they really didn't know any other hunters until they start getting mentioned here and there (dropping bits of backstory about working jobs with xyz while sam was at school etc), and that they barely knew anything about demons. so i'm curious to see how much of that is me misremembering

SAM You think Mom would have wanted this for us? The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors. DEAN So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it? SAM No. Not normal. Safe. DEAN And that's why you ran away. SAM I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing.

classic john x2. i know it's the pilot, i know they're bombing us with backstory like they need to, but i'm just like. everything about this ends up being pretty essential to understanding them and how they were raised it's so much 😩

DEAN I can't do this alone. SAM Yes you can. DEAN Yeah, well, I don't want to.

excuse me while my heart breaks into little bits. i knew that line in 15x20 was a callback to this, and it was heartbreaking then too. well actually it makes feel slightly ill rereading that scene from the finale. too emotionally invested

DEAN It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since, which is bad enough. DEAN Then I get this voicemail yesterday. He presses play. The recording is staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up. JOHN Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger.

so he coulda like. told dean he was ditching him for his safety in this sketchy vague voicemail, but then of course we wouldn't have them chasing him down with quite the same mystery. it's just kind of comical.

like this post puts it:

spn season 1 is so funny. they made the main plot line finding sam and dean’s missing father. but like. the guys not missing. he’s just avoiding them.

i'm sure (i hope???) every rewatch post isn't going to turn into a dissertation like this. good grief

hey. i was gonna mention that music was quite inoffensive and not bad at all and was about give old jay a pat on the back, but no! it's christopher lennertz lol. my ear always knows. so that's the originator of the demon growl sound

SAM It's the greatest hits of mullet rock. DEAN Well, house rules, Sammy. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole. SAM You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old. SAM It's Sam, okay?

i mean so many classic interactions i can't handle it. also, real shame netflix didn't/wouldn't get the licensing for the music originally aired. i have the blurays but i'm down a functional bluray player so here i am, watching on netflix with shitty replacement music yet again. that scene should have had ramblin man and back in black. travesty. back when they splashed out for the good licensed music (and i usually was on board with lennertz's selections)

the comment about them being a little young for federal marshals (also in their kinda scruffy clothes lol) and wikipedia says:

Marshals Service hiring is competitive and comparable to the selection process for Special Agent positions in agencies with similar duties. Typically fewer than five percent of qualified applicants are hired [citation needed] and must possess at a minimum a four-year bachelor's degree or competitive work experience (which is usually three or more years at a local or state police department).

so i mean, sounds like it's doable! barely. (i'm not even halfway through the episode lol)

stepping on dean's foot, smacking sam's head. very good sibling stuff

meanwhile we're gonna pop jackles in some bomb ass golden hour lighting so we can get his pretty, pretty face looking even prettier. lighting doesn't match any other part of the scene, but if you can get them lit up in it, we're using it!

SHERIFF Can I help you boys? DEAN No, sir, we were just leaving. As the FBI AGENTS walk past DEAN, he nods at each of them. DEAN Agent Mulder. Agent Scully.

respect to the og (that was the show of my youth and my forever otp and also my first impression of sam and dean's relationship was mid-run mulder and scully)

s1e1 r.d. call as sheriff pierce / the x-files s1e18 as sheriff daniels

oh! and this sheriff was a sheriff in an xfiles episode, that's even better! that's brilliant. love to see it

those jeans and before dean had his signature logger boots which i didn't apparently really notice until s6

DEAN Yeah, Troy told us about you. We're his uncles. I'm Dean, this is Sammy.

uncles??? lol

another thing i remember really liking is these random girls aren't like.. tv pretty makeup. they're just random gothy girls with stark harsh eye makeup and lipstick and matte heavier foundation. like real people do! it just makes it feel more grounded in reality to me when not everyone's makeup is tv-perfect

y'all. look at this! so i have talked a lot about the computer stuff, whenever there's a screen (in any show i'm watching) i'll pause and check out the veracity. teen wolf had laughably fake web page mockups. and one thing i do recall noticing in this episode was real webpage urls! and even in the printouts which comes later. which they did not do consistently in spn seasons after this at all until much later

classic. truly. more smacks and shoves. it's okay, sammy. i also am a little bit of a control freak especially when it comes to computer stuff. JUST LET ME DO IT.

DEAN Monday. Right. The interview. SAM Yeah. DEAN Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl? SAM Maybe. Why not? DEAN Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done? SAM No, and she's not ever going to know. DEAN Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are.

dean's got a point there. which reminds me, did blurry wife know the truth? i remember there was some blurb about the story behind sam's kid having the anti-possession tattoo

wiki to the rescue

Though Sam's son has an anti-possession tattoo on his arm, there are no other signs of hunting in Sam's life after he leaves the Bunker. Jared confirmed at the November StageIt panel that Sam has not been hunting "in honor of Dean" because Dean wouldn't have wanted him to, but that Sam did tell his son about hunting and about his Uncle Dean, and that the decision to get the tattoo was Dean II's.

so probably yes?

(hands)

SAM And who's that? DEAN You're one of us. SAM No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life. DEAN You have a responsibility to— SAM To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back.

oh, sam. these early days he was chafing so hard against what other people wanted him to do. also relatable. and if only we knew about mary🥴

sam enjoying dean's predicament

SAM Salt, cat's eye shells…he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in.

cat's eye shells?? don't think that ever got mentioned again

LOL okay, so the url isn't perfect 😂 missing forward slashes and no underscores in domain names, but they tried!!

huh. another family picture i don't recall seeing again. kind of backwards, longer brown hair on supposedly dean and short lighter hair on supposedly sam

so did dean grab john's leather jacket at this point? since he showered and changed in john's motel room. i hadn't thought about that. huh

SAM You can't kill me. I'm not unfaithful. I've never been! CONSTANCE You will be. Just hold me.

i know this comes up in fic periodically but i don't think that went anywhere, like the cat's eye shells

LOL i didn't remember that the woman in white resolution was her ghostly murdered children conveniently take her out

DEAN Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning. SAM Dean, I, um... DEAN You're not going. SAM The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there. DEAN Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'll take you home.

there's so many moments in this episode that i've seen in gifs and didn't realize were all from the pilot. but it's really interesting to me to see how like.. the show really kind of pushed how much dean needed/wanted sam and sam was resisting, and how i think it really set up dean as the more "likeable" character initially, along with showing off his pretty face and charm and all that. on a brain-characterization level, i always relate more to sam but i was definitely charmed by dean initially.

SAM Call me if you find him? SAM And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh? DEAN Yeah, all right. DEAN Sam? DEAN You know, we made a hell of a team back there. SAM Yeah.

the only thing that i think makes this episode not quite paced right is how they crammed jess dying at the end and the we've got work to do thing. it felt really rushed and slapped on. but other than that, what a great pilot. ranks up there with the hannibal pilot

#supernatural #spnwatch #spnrewatch #spn 1x01 #spn demon growl #christopher lennertz #spn musical score #hiky #spnhiky #the xfiles #r.d. call #spn clip #crispy Rs #eric kripke

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taiblogcomics · 3 months ago

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Fights and Delights

Hey there, anachronistic tacos. It's September now! Countdown is still going! Do you see now? Do you begin to see how this was as a weekly series? And this is me being diligent about it! I genuinely don't know if there were any delays or what have you. I know that 52, for all its splendor, missed a deadline or two in its still very impressive run. And I know that because the trades for it include a lot of supplementary materials, including stuff by the writers about behind-the-scenes work. What do the Countdown trades (which I am reading this from) have? Nothin'. Because Countdown sucked, and they know it sucked, so they cheaped the trades out as much as they could~

Here's the cover:

All right, it's no secret I've been harsh on more than a few covers in this series. But it's this series, so can you blame me? Now this one, though, this is a cool cover! I will absolutely give it that--if Batman actually appears in the issue. That's my caveat! In fact, I will make you a deal. As long as there are no other outstanding major issues (e.g. character deaths), I will give this issue a full pass if Batman is actually in it. If they're just putting Batman on the cover to bank off his personality, it fails. That's the deal, man. The total deal.

So, in the recap, Pied Piper and Trickster are on the run for murdering the Flash and hid out in Gotham, where they're confronted by Deathstroke (not Batman). Donna Troy and Jason Todd are searching the multiverse for Ray Palmer, and are held captive by a magical queen (not Batman). Mary Marvel, in pursuit of magical power, is expelled from her apprenticeship by Zatanna (not Batman). Karate Kid and Una are searching for answers and fought a '90s reject (not Batman). Holly Robinson is recruited by Athena's women's shelter to fight in a gladitorial arena (not against Batman). And Jimmy Olsen takes his new superpowers to the Justice League and is rejected (including by Batman). Now let's get into today's issue (with or without Batman).

So, remember two issues ago where Trickster and Piper tried to pass themselves off as in Deathstroke's employ to escape from Poison Ivy, only for Deathstroke to show up and call their bluff as a cliffhanger? And then the previous issue didn't even feature their subplot? I hope that anticipation and build-up was worth it, because we open today's issue with Deathstroke having beaten them up off-screen. Seriously. Slade must be getting paid by the minute, because he is in one panel in this entire series. "What was even the point" is the tagline for this whole series, but it feels especially fitting here~

So anyway, Piper and Trickster got beat up by Deathstroke, who then tied them up, hung them upside down, and pointed the Bat-Signal to shine on them. So page two does fulfill its promise of Batman, as he shows up where the Bat-Signal is being shone, as he always does. Like Bat-moths to a Bat-flame. Batman's about to pull them up and Bat-interrogate them when they disappear. We then see they got whisked away by the Flash--not the one they killed, but I believe this one is Wally, who has returned from the Speed Force he got stuck in during Infinite Crisis. Batman notes that they're probably in for even a worse time than he was gonna give 'em.

Hey, do you remember how this whole series started? With Duela Dent's murder, and Jimmy Olsen trying to write an article about it? Well, Jimmy suddenly did. Now that he's been rejected from the Justice League, he's back to square one. He reasons that there must be some connection between the murders of Duela, Lightray, and Sleez. To that end, he's visiting DC's resident tech genius, John Henry Irons (AKA Steel). He's got a bio-feedback scanner, and Jimmy's hoping it'll tell him more about his powers. And true to form, if you didn't read Steel's or his daughter Natasha's parts in 52 or Infinity Inc., you probably don't know why he has this.

We cut away from that back to Wally having hauled Piper and Trickster out of Gotham and to Keystone City. To Bart Allen's grave, specifically. Naturally, he's furious. See, both Trickster and Piper had reformed some years ago and were allies in the pages of Wally's own series. So not only did they participate in Bart's murder, they betrayed his trust to do so. So he's even madder about this than he is at the actual villainous Rogues like Mirror Master or Weather Wizard. Mad enough that he won't hear them out, he just starts beating the hell out of them.

Over with the Multiverse Crew, Donna Troy and Jason Todd got captured by a fairy-tale queen, Ryan Choi (the only non-white character in this whole story) got turned into a bug, and Bob the Monitor got thrall'd. Queen Who-Cares amuses herself by turning Ryan back and forth from bug to human, and when Donna comes for her, she uses Bob to blast her away. She's very interested in Bob's ability to move between realities, figuring this will be of great help to her once the Great Disaster strikes. And when Donna gets up again, she calls in her bug squad to have a fight scene.

Speaking of fight scenes, we check back in with Athena's combat arena. Holly Robinson's still squaring off against the combatant in the comedy mask. Holly reveals her secret of how she's survived on the streets for so long: there's no such thing as a fair fight. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to cheat, do it, coz your opponent would do the same. So she manages to get around behind Funny Face and start choking her out with her whip. Funny Face does a scorpion kick to break free, and Athena calls the match. She deems both of them worthy, and Holly's opponent removes the mask to reveal she was Harley Quinn all along! Gee, who could have guessed~?

Mary Marvel, meanwhile, is not in a fight scene. In fact, where she is is actually kind of funny. She's in a marketplace in China called Chung Ling Soo Square. And when I went to look that up to see if it was real (given DC's track record of having over a dozen fictional major cities in the US alone), it turns out Chung Ling Soo was an American stage magician in the late 1800s who performed in yellowface. Like, you get the connection as a magical person, so he has a magical market named for him. But you probably won't find many places named after him in real-world China. Anyways, I think that's some fun trivia for you.

Oh yeah, where were we? Mary Marvel, magical marketplace. Wandering around in her black latex cheerleading uniform, she looks a little out of place in the Asian mysticism-themed stuff. Naturally, the only other person who also super stands out notices her. It's Klarion the Witchboy! Klarion's a fucking delight whatever he's in, the scheming blue-skinned Puritan. He and Mary have a friendly chat, which is mostly all Klarion assessing both Mary's magical ability and naivete, after which he binds her in a bubble and plans to sell her on the market himself. See? Dastardly~

Meanwhile, Una and Karate Kid have finally met with this Mister Orr that Oracle recommended they seek out. That dingus Equus is nowhere to be seen, thank god. Orr asks if they're familiar with the OMAC Project (which resurfaced in the leadup to Infinite Crisis). Whatever Karate Kid is infected with, it bears a resemblance to the OMAC virus. So Orr suggest they track down Buddy Blank, the guy who invented OMACs. And as they leave, Orr calls up a mysterious silhouette, reporting he did as was asked by sending them to Buddy. The silhouette replies that his master will be most pleased. And on the other side of the screen? Desaad, rearranging Darkseid's chess set again.

Back over with Jimmy and John Henry, the machine is showing a visualisation of what's going on with Jimmy. More specifically, it's showing a projection of the Source Wall, the mysterious barrier at the edge of the universe. Jimmy's also getting that classic sci-fi trope of his head swelling painfully from having too much info in it. A brief projection of the multiverse also appears. The machine is overloaing, and Jimmy's brain is projecting it back, catching them in an overload feedback loop. Steel has to smash the machine to turn it off, another classic sci-fi trope. Whatever's going on with Jimmy, Steel can't even determine it.

So for the final page of this issue, we return to Wally beating up Piper and Trickster. Once he's satisfied, he asks them what they were babbling about in regard to a "secret mission". Piper and Trickster state that they were only with Inertia and the other Rogues to act as spies. From there, they found out Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, and other villains are planning to attack Green Arrow's wedding (another well-publicised event at the time). How or where they got this info isn't explained here, so it must've happened in the same off-screen fight with Deathstroke. Wally considers this, then starts pulling on their handcuffs. The ones that will electrocute them if strained too far. The comic ends with Wally's face in shadow, stating they deserve to die for killing Bart.

So! As promised, I'm officially declaring this a good issue. It paid off that Batman appearance, even if not as excitingly as the cover. But I think it deserves the title for other reasons, too. We got to see Klarion the Witchboy, we learned a little about American stage magic in the 1880s, we used some funny GIFs in the review. Equus wasn't in it. All that's good!

Which is not to say even a mostly enjoyable issue is not without its, well, issues. The cliffhanger with Deathstroke concluding off-screen and introduction of new info about Green Arrow's wedding is very badly written and baffling (probably happened in a tie-in, but the comic doesn't even include a little "see issue #whatever of Countdown: The Tie-In!" box to tell you where). Ryan Choi gets constantly mistreated, as is a common thing in his history. And you start to see how Karate Kid's storyline will play out: it's a long fetch quest. He will track down a person, who will tell him to go see another different person. This will continue until the end of the series. So, like, strap in.

Still, no one died, and the comic didn't lie about having Batman. That's basically all I asked! It's sad when that's the minimum~

#comics #reviews #Countdown #Countdown to Final Crisis #Taiblog

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katieputnam18 · 10 months ago

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1,402 views Oct 11, 2023

START AT PART ONE. Idaho 4 Playlist. Corruption at the Top. Tarot. If you know, you know. #truecrime #tarot #idaho4 #moscowidaho #idaho #psychic

For the first time in my tarot reading history, the US Government looks like the good guys in the Idaho 4 case. And, I’m speechless.

***

IDAHO 4 RECAP: In one of the most epic moments of my life, in front of the entire world, I was given the gift of telling a young man's final hours on Earth as he understood it. Although I did not know it at the time, it was as though we were unwrapping a dark enigma from the other side. After a decade of enjoying YouTube with little to no posts, the nudge to "just do it" became so strong I could no longer ignore it. In May of this year, I finally took the leap and made a commitment to do a reading a day. On October 11, 2023, I decided to do a Tarot reading on "The Organization" in Moscow, Idaho. That night I saw that the US Government was going to be the hero in this case. And, to be honest, I was speechless. Watch it here:

• START HERE. PART 1: Moscow, Idaho. | ...

Three weeks later the FBI announced that the Brian Koberger trial would be put on hold indefinitely while they took a look at the house at 1122 King Road. View @Fox59WXIN report here:

https://fox59.com/news/national-world...

Told through the eyes of Ethan Chapin, a 30-part "mini-series" evolved. Because of the complexities of this case, the mystery surrounding the murders of 4 college students, and the bizarre behavior of the "authorities" in the town of Moscow, I ask you to watch it as it unfolds. It is a tale of deception, faith, and heartbreak woven like a spider web in an old abandoned house. In order to understand who each player is and their role in the ultimate deception Ethan experienced the night he was murdered, I ask you to start at PART 1:

• START HERE. PART 1: Moscow, Idaho. | ...

As an experienced Medium and a natural student, it is as though I'd been preparing for this task for over 10 years. With a passion for learning, true crime, and a deep respect for ancient mysteries, The Fool's Journey is a universal metaphor we all understand. Thank you for giving me grace as I communicate between dimensions through energy, not words (as the Universe speaks) to a card, I ask that you be patient with me. I'd also like to thank everyone in this wonderful community, for your unwavering support. I hope that after watching this series from the beginning you will appreciate the gift before us. I am honored to have given Ethan a voice, to help bring the darkness to the light, so that he can now release the ties that bind him. If you would like to get in touch please reach out at moonshine-shop.com. xo *** Tarot Table YouTube Rules. #1. Don't be a Dick. Zero tolerance. If your mother didn't teach you how to behave like a professional adult then you will be reported and removed. This is all allegedly, in my opinion, unless I brought receipts. No facts here. Please do your own research. Connect with Loved Ones Who Have Passed Away ♥ BOOK TODAY:

https://www.moonshine-shop.com/bookin..

. LET'S BE FRIENDS! INSTA: / kateputnam18

TIKTOK: / kateputnam18

FACEBOOK: / kateputnam18

CASHAPP https://cash.app/$KatePutnam

last four: 1948

VENMO: https://account.venmo.com/u/kateputnamnh

YOUTUBE: / @kateputnam

Join the Tarot Time group: / tarottime

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their facts.

Comments on this channel are the sole responsibility of their writers and as such the writers will take full responsibility, liability, and blame for any libel or litigation that results from something written in or as a direct result of something written in a comment.

Please feel free to challenge or disagree in the comments section – but Sounds SUS reserves the right to delete any comment for any reason (abusive, profane, rude, etc) – so please keep it polite and relevant.

#truecrime

#tarot

#Idaho

#tarotreading

#corruption

#idaho4

#truecrime

#cowboys

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#tarotcard

#psychic

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#tarotcards

#truecrime

Watch the rest of the Idaho 4 Corruption Playlist Here:

• START AT PART ONE. Idaho 4 Playlist. ...

#youtube #truecrime #tarotreading #tarot

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hoagmaster · 1 year ago

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Cody's Mission: Impossible Revisit

Several days ago I finished up the latest marathon building up to a new release. Although this one was a new entry that didn't seem like a bad idea from the jump: Misson: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.

We've been getting a lot of part ones lately that pull the move of "Hey, we're stopping the movie in the middle of the climax. Hang tight until the next one!" So I have some thoughts about how this one did it.

I first got into these movies in 2015 in the buildup to that year's entry and because Now Playing Podcast was covering them. I credit that podcast for getting me to watch more movies and to try and engage with them more when I can, along with other stuff since.

Anyway, on with the recap and a few sentences about each one.

Mildish spoilers await maybe?

Mission: Impossible - Here we go with the one that started it all in the mid-90s, which come through in a nice quaint way. This is the entry that feels the most like a spy movie with plenty of slow, quiet moments and an overall focus on espionage rather than spectacle. But the tense scenes we do get, such as the crew breaking into the CIA to steal the coolly-named NOC List, are some of the most entertaining and enjoyable I've seen. A strong start to the series and one I will continue to revisit.

Mission: Impossible 2 - This one seems to be the most divisive for all the impulses of director John Woo coming through along with Tom Cruise's ego being in full force in 2000. He wants you to think he's the coolest person on screen at all times. But all the over-the-top spectacle honestly makes me laugh more than anything. Maybe the most quotable movie of the bunch with all the slow-motion gunplay, explosions, and motorbike antics you could want. I like this one a lot.

Mission: Impossible III - We took a few years off for other stuff before this one drops in 2006. The star is a bit more fine with everyone else doing stuff and Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives us the best antagonist of the series with his calm, intimidating demeanor that gives the impression he's in control in every scene even when he's not. It also has perhaps the most visceral moment in the series with one character's end, so that's something. This one is certainly enjoyable, but maybe lacks that one detail to make me hold it up like the others.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - And now we get to dropping numbers and picking up subtitles of varying lengths! We still have some cool spy stuff in here, seen most prominently when going into the Kremlin, but this is also when the series begins to focus on spectacle above all else. And I daresay it might be better for it, because the Burj Khalifa sequence with the climbing and the running might be my favorite bit in the entire series. It's noted for being the one where everything goes wrong, which we've all felt!

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - The original stopping point for my marathon ended on a high note with a ridiculous action bit on a plane that also works as a slow burn with the opera sequence and bits of espionage. But then we get to the submerged tunnel and subsequent car and motorbike chase and the action escalates until the end. Lot of fun that maybe in retrospect makes it my favorite movie of that year.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout - My first series revisit was capped off in 2018 with what was really my favorite movie of that year. The sequences like the HALO jump, brutal bathroom fight, big car chase and the other chase that led to the star breaking his ankle are just the tip of the iceberg. But it also packs an engaging plot that, even on this rewatch with some time away, got me more than once. All that stuff makes the two-and-a-half hour runtime fly by and, showing my hand, make this one my favorite to date.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One - I'll say up top that I'm hesitant to give a full evaluation because as seen in the title, it's a part one. We have not gotten the full story. I felt this way about Fast X and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse from earlier this year. The second one could totally botch everything and sour me on it! But unlike those two movies that pull the "stopping the movie mid-climax" stunt I mentioned before, this one feels like it does have a definite end that just also has a set-up for the next one. The action remains as fun as ever even if some of it doesn't feel as "grand" as some of the earlier sequences. That said, the one bit that's seen in all the ads, when pulled off in the full context of the movie, made my crowded theater go silent for a good five seconds. It was a rad moment, and the movie is rad. The newly begun (and justified) strikes might impact the timing of the next one, but I'm down if it helps the people making these things get better pay and treatment!

Thus wraps up my latest mission. As I do with each series go, I like to cap off with my ranking of the series. This one feels a bit distinct because unlike most series where I find one or two clunkers, this is a series where I like every entry and love quite a few of them. Hence, this might actually be my favorite movie series ever!

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible 2

Mission: Impossible III

Anyway, time to see series is up next.

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makeste · 3 years ago

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BnHA 323: “I Don’t Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People”

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan was all, “Izuku, I’m sorry.” Bakugou Stans were all, “[sobs for a week straight and tearfully awards him the Nobel Prize for character development].” Deku was all, “[faints in Kacchan’s arms].” Iida was all, “[trying to decide if Ochako genuinely tried to kill him a few minutes ago].” Horikoshi was all, “NO TIME FOR HUGS WE MUST GET BACK TO UA.” The civilians holed up at U.A. were all, “WE TOOK A VOTE AND DECIDED THAT WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE JERKS ABOUT THIS AND MAKE A BIG FUSS ABOUT YOU LETTING DEKU BACK INTO THE SCHOOL.” Deku was all “[stands there looking like he expected nothing less and breaking my heart more and more with each passing moment].” Ochako was all, “that does it, looks like I’m gonna have to do something about this... next chapter, that is.”

Today on BnHA: Flashback!Rat Principal is all “I just want you all to know that I spent nine million dollars turning U.A. into a giant Battleship-style grid that can burrow underground and zoom around in a giant subway maze because Horikoshi lacks a grounded understanding of both civil engineering and economics.” Back in the present day, Jeanist is all, “EVERYONE TAKE HEED, MY COMRADES AND I HAVE DEEMED IT EXPEDIENT TO CONVEY THIS AUSPICIOUS YOUTH BACK TO THIS STRONGHOLD. WE ANTICIPATE THAT WE MAY DEPEND UPON YOUR GOODWILL AND ACQUIESCENCE TO THESE TERMS.” The civilians were all, “NO.” Ochako was all, “EMPATHY, MOTHERFUCKERS, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!” The civilians were all, “oh shit.” Anyway so Ochako is a giant badass, but I’m a little worried that she’s going to get struck by lightning. Please come down from there.

so before we start this chapter, I would just like to apologize for having not posted the ch 321 recap yet, and would like to reassure everyone, and especially Iida who is staring at me with Sad Wobbly Guilt Trip Eyes, that I will get to that as soon as I can

OMG FLASHBACK??

yes please Horikoshi please show us more of class 1-A and their Deku intervention strategy jam sessions

oh dear

Iida you are too pure and good for this cruel world. [sprays the U.A. civilians with a water bottle] NO. BAD CIVILIANS! NO OSTRACIZING SCARED AND EXHAUSTED CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE

EXCUSE ME RAT PRINCIPAL WHAT’S WITH THESE MIXED MESSAGES

???

RAT PRINCIPAL: he’s free to return to us at any time!!

ALSO RAT PRINCIPAL: but it’s too risky for him to return to us

?? ??????? ?????????????????????

so now he’s going on about how strong the U.A. Barrier is, and how it’s comparable to the defensive capabilities of Tartarus. this would have sounded a lot more impressive before chapter 297 lol

OH!!!! HELLO, WHAT’S THIS!!!

A TIMELY CALLBACK TO A CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS EVENT WHICH HASN’T BEEN REFERENCED SINCE USJ? [U.A. TRAITOR MUSIC INTENSIFIES]

so now Rat Principal says he upgraded U.A.’s security systems with his own “modifications”, whatever the fuck that means. I mean look, I’ve been saying for a long time now that U.A. is the best place for everyone to hole up, don’t get me wrong. but that was mostly on account of there not being any other practical alternatives. but you’re making it sound like you figured out a way to actually make it Decay-proof or some wild shit like that

-- hold up, DID YOU ADD A FORCE FIELD. DID YOU TRICK THIS SCHOOL OUT WAKANDA-STYLE YOU CRAZY MARSUPIAL. HOLY SHIT. because that would actually be perfect

LMAO

WHAT KIND OF GALAXY BRAIN BULLSHIT. “NAH THERE’S NO NEED FOR A FORCE FIELD, LET’S JUST PUT WHEELS ON IT”

oh okay so the whole campus is basically capable of burrowing itself underground. that’s insane lol I wonder how they pulled that off. probably got poor Cementoss working overtime

blah blah blah so basically the entire campus is split into a grid and each section of the grid is capable of its own independent movement. lol this is just the Merone Base from KHR. you thought no one would notice this casual plagiarism ten years after the fact, but YOU UNDERESTIMATED YOUR AUDIENCE, HORIKOSHI

“joke’s on you imma just lampshade it” WELL ALL RIGHT THEN

“look at me I’m so fucking self-aware” fucking swear to god. I can’t believe this man is my favorite mangaka of all time smdh

“excuse me, I wasn’t finished describing all the rest of this bullshit yet,” Rat Principal breaks in impatiently. “we also added a steel wall all around the underground of the campus that’s 3000 steel plates thick. that’s fifteen fucking meters of solid fucking steel just fyi. and if anyone fucks around with any part of it the defense system will activate immediately! and also all of the plates are independently motorized, whatever the fuck that means!! in conclusion you’re gonna need a fucking tower crane to suspend all of your disbelief by the time I’m through with this paragraph”

“also Shiketsu is almost as reinforced as U.A. but not quite because we still had to make sure we were better.” but of course. and apparently the two schools are connected via a secret tunnel as Hagakure mentioned earlier

LSDKFJLSDKJFLK

“WAIT WHAT” LMAO YOU HEARD HIM, NOW INASA CAN VISIT YOU BOTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THE WEIRD DREAM HE HAD. GOD BLESS YOU HORIKOSHI

(ETA: moment of appreciation for Shouto and Katsuki having the same thought at the same time and making Knowing Eye Contact and saying the exact same thing out loud in perfect unison like the best friends they are. what a blessed day.)

so Tokoyami is all “but wait if you engineered all this shit all the way back during the Band arc how did you even know that Tomura’s quirk awakening would become a thing, Horikoshi -- uh, I mean, Principal Nezu”

and Rat Principal is all “lol idk”

“basically I just woke up one morning and was all ‘say, you know what this school really needs? a fifteen-meter-thick underground steel wall, and the ability to break up into little pieces that individually zoom around wherever the fuck they want.’ jesus christ. lol if money and common sense were apparently no obstacle why didn’t you just teleport U.A. to the fucking moon or something. maybe I should shut up before I given him any ideas

dsfaelkjldkjgl

you heard it here first, folks, all of this cost a grand total of nine million U.S. dollars. well technically it cost “more than” nine million dollars. never has that distinction been more important lmao. are we sure this barrier was really made of steel and not cardboard? who the hell sold it to them, Ea-Nasir??

this is my favorite manga series of all time. yes I am ashamed

“in conclusion please do your best to reach Deku-kun” SO WHAT WAS ALL THAT NONSENSE ABOUT IT BEING TOO RISKY THEN. anyway thank you for this super informative and edifying flashback, Horikoshi. I will cherish it always. I don’t even want to read another translation of this absurdity lmao, there’s something special about it just the way it is. pretty sure Horikoshi just had a cracked out fever dream one night and transferred it to the pages of the manga verbatim

anyway so back to the unruly mob

not their finest moment. please excuse me while I cover poor Deku’s ears and give him a good shoosh pap

oh wow the parents are out here too

is Mitsuki trying to hold Inko back?? that’s the last thing this fandom needs right now is more Mitsuki discourse fffwlkjs. and even Jiroudad, scientifically proven to be the best dad in all of BnHA, is just standing there silently looking vaguely unhappy. way to rise to the moment you guys

MONOMA

so this settles it for me that Aizawa is not at UA. I know a lot of people have been wondering about his whereabouts, and if I had to wager a guess it would be that something happened with Shirakumo/Kurogiri. I can’t think of anything else -- even the loss of an eye and a limb -- that would keep him from his kids at a time like this

anyway but this is excellent Monoma content right here though. I love that he apparently adopted Eri after a single interaction with her. also WHERE IS SHINSOU DAMMIT. THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW

and Kouta’s there too looking like he wants to run over to Deku but Ragdoll won’t let him :/

it’s gotta be pretty upsetting for him to see his hero like this and not having anyone stand up for him. [taps megaphone] IS THIS THING ON. OKAY YEAH IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING. AHEM. PAGING URARAKA OCHAKO. GONNA NEED YOU TO GET OVER HERE ALREADY AND MAKE THAT BIG DRAMATIC SPEECH WHICH YOU ARE CLEARLY DYING TO MAKE. IF YOU DON’T DO IT SOON I’M GONNA HAVE TO STEP IN, AND YOU REALLY DON’T WANT ME TO DO THAT SINCE MY SPEECH WILL NOT BE VERY GOOD OR INSPIRING, AND WILL PROBABLY JUST CONSIST OF “HELLO, YOU ARE ALL STUPID, PLEASE SHUT UP AND GO AWAY”

so now Mic is telling them to calm down. at least someone’s speaking up here, geez

OH MY GOD

MY MAN JEANIST OUT HERE DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST: MAKING EVERYONE FEEL GUILTY AND JUDGED

OH MY GOD HE IS GIVING SUCH A LONG AND BORING SPEECH LMAO IS YOUR STRATEGY TO PUT THEM ALL TO SLEEP OR WHAT

truly in awe of this man’s ability to take messages which could easily be conveyed in ELI5-speak, and stubbornly convert them into incomprehensible language the likes of which you need a graduate degree in order to understand

“hey guys, so originally our plan was to use Deku as bait for the villains, but that didn’t really work and also we realized it was kinda dumb and was probably gonna get him killed, so we brought him back here instead.” was that really so hard, Jeanist. also are we all really just gonna sit back here and watch Jeanist take full credit for Bakugou’s plan just like that lmao

(ETA:

WHERE DID ENDEAVOR GO AND WHO IS THIS DIABOLICAL MASTER OF DISGUISE. lol I genuinely didn’t notice this because I was too busy digging through thesauruses trying to rewrite Jeanist’s speech; many thanks to @class1akids for pointing it out and making my day immeasurably better. take it easy there Dick Tracy.)

“anyway so please stop being dicks and let him fucking rest so he can save all your ungrateful asses” what an impassioned and inspiring plea. time to see if the masses will listen to reason

narrator: they did not listen to reason

oh my god finally Ochako is doing something. YEAH OCHAKO WOOOO SHOW THEM HOW IT’S DONE

hmm

this entire chapter is truly and utterly nonsensical to me lol

(ETA: on my second readthrough I’m fucking dying at how she stole the megaphone right out of Mic’s hand lmao. and how Kacchan is all “fuck yeah nothing I appreciate more than some quality fucking larceny.”)

oh I see she was jumping on top of the main building so as to scream down at them all more impressively

“ANYWAY DEKU IS PRETTY COOL ACTUALLY, YOU GUYS ARE JUST MEAN” couldn’t have said it better myself Ochako

lol uh

gotta say I did not have “Ochako reveals the secret of OFA to the entire U.A. Citizen Clown Parade” on my bingo card for this week. it’s a bold strategy cotton let’s see if it pays off

SDLFKJSL

“NO, SERIOUSLY, HAVE YOU LOOKED AT HIM YOU GUYS. YOU THINK HE LIKES RUNNING AROUND DRESSED LIKE A RUSTED OIL DRUM?? HE DID THAT FOR YOU YOU UNGRATEFUL SLOBS”

so she is basically explaining the entire Deku Angst arc to them and explaining what a good and selfless protagonist Deku is, YES, PREACH

OMG IT’S THE GIGANTIC FOX LADY

not to insinuate anything, but what exactly were you doing standing out here with the hysterical mob, Gigantic Fox Lady? you’re better than that

-- KACCHAN SIGHTING!!

sdlkfjl. thanks for weighing in with that helpful and important observation. where have you been for the last five minutes. were you asleep. was it Jeanist’s speech

never mind, now he’s yelling at the civilians so I instantly forgive him

THE FUTURE NUMBER ONE HERO, EVERYONE. THANK YOU, THANK YOU. HE’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK

“anyway so I’m just going to end the chapter here” lmao seventeen pages truly do go by so fast. at least he didn’t try to force in a cliffhanger at the end this time. dare I say, growth

so I guess the civilians are either gonna have a Kamino and/or Fukuoka-esque moment where they remember how to be decent people and apologize to this poor young man, or else they’ll remain unpersuaded, and so Kacchan will have to knock a few of their heads around until they become more inclined to be reasonable. either option is fine by me lol

#bnha 323 #uraraka ochako #rat principal #class 1-a #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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vicea · 3 years ago

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dream merch discord recap (june 12, 2021) - disclaimer: i may have missed some things or mistakenly heard other things, apologies in advanced for that!

he has not played the new minecraft update

dream “knows” the date george is coming to florida but he’s not saying it :p

dream doesn’t have anyone muted on twitter

dream guesses his favorite disney princess is belle

sapnap has seen dream’s feet before

he’s not actually connor’s dad in the dsmp lore

dreamnap do not have nicknames for each other D:

dream likes olives but especially black olives

his mother makes homemade pickles

he doesn’t have a phone case

he has dropped his phone from his ear onto concrete in the parking lot before and the screen didn’t crack

dream has six fingers /j

he pours cereal first not milk when making cereal

dream calls sapnap nick most of the time :D

what’s your dream car? “idk the one that gets me to point A to point B consistently”

he finally fixed his sleep schedule, woke up at 8 am today

mrbeast owes dream a tesla because he never sent dream the audio file

dream is a very analytical person - he thinks with numbers/data

creativity is one his strengths that he is the most proud of

3 to 4 years ago, dream used to say george looks like shawn mendes a lot, now he doesn’t resemble him as much

patches is currently sleeping <3

swimming is very relaxing to dream, he swam the other day!

many houses in florida have pools than other places, even the cheapest houses in orlando have pools

dream has merchendise defects (misprints on merch) + milestone merch and he wants to give them away to those who live in orlando (probably to anyone but the event will be held in orlando) though he doesn’t want it to be a covid super-spreader thing so once you pick up your item you gotta dip. just all an idea though

he has been donating them to charity too though :)

dream has likely read Heroes of Olympus before a long time ago

he says that he’ll do a give away of his childhood books with his signature on it

he was obsessed with the series (Percy Jackson)

he really liked the Alex Rider series

has all of Maximum Ride books, 39 clues books

has read the legend series, the twilight series, and the maze runner

has all/read of the harry potter books, divergent, eragon

he would read all the time, to the point he would read more than one book a day (a book worm he says)

dream had a goal to read 200 books in a year and he wind up reading about 150

he doesn’t want to call it a library but- growing up he had something like that that had 600 or 700 or more books in it (privileged he admits it)

he has not read a book since he started youtube (about 2 years)

dream has a folder called Book that has his own writing in it

word count: 76000 words for one of his stories

another one he wrote 5 chapters of

he sounds very excited/embarrassed talking about the stories he wrote he’s so endearing

the very first paragraph of one of his stories (he was young when he wrote this) “What exactly is darkness? is it the lack of light? is it a pit of nothingness? ... your mind is full of darkness...” then he couldn’t continue.

the story is about a kid who wakes up in a cell and has no idea where he is with other people who are in the same situation

dream has a world building document

he has a sequel to the first book he has ever written

he found a query letter that he wrote because he wanted to get his book published- he finds it very funny

he’s calling himself a nerd but idk it’s kind of endearing

“as you can tell i’ve always been incredibly cool and not a nerd at all! ever.”

he cringes at his own old videos

dream took a lot of inspiration from witches and wizards by james patterson for writing

the story is written in a way where the main character is actually writing the story so you’re getting input from the main character during it. there’s a lot of sarcasm in it and it’s making dream laugh

very first person narrator

he feels like it’d be very cool if he were to publish his works he wrote when he was 16 on amazon or something but he probably never would because he’d have to read through all of it and it’s just embarrassing for him

dream used to video call sapnap fairly frequently- even before youtube

he strictly remembers, a very long time (at least 7 to 9 years) ago he was at his old childhood house he video called sapnap. he was wearing a (technically) suit and he remembers specifically that he was giving sap a tour...

“snazzy in a suit”

he had no reason to put on the suit (wow time is a flat circle huh)

drista is pretty close to sapnap’s height, she’s like 5′7″ but sap is still taller than her

dream filmed the whole thing when he and sapnap met but... it’s... gone because when he was clipping that one clip for twitter... it edited the whole video

he’s sure when they meet up with george they will film that too :D

DREAM IS PRETTY SURE THAT HE AND GEORGE WILL MEET THIS YEAR-- HE SAYS A 95% CERTAINTITY the five percent is like either restrictions or visa issues

dream does not play any instruments but he had a guitar hanging on his wall when he was younger...

dream is convinced they’re the same height but also sapnap is probably taller??

they had george compare his height to a door frame and dreamnap were googling for any doorframes to find any possible chance that george is taller than 5′8″ ... nothing came up

there’s a chance they’re both lying about being 5′8″

sap and george will literally just show up in stilts to prove they’re taller than each other /j

dream without shoes is between 6′2″ and 6′3″ with shoes he’s 6′3.5″

dream is talking about awesamdude’s fake height arc again LOL

dreamnap are very private people so they don’t bother each other but george doesn’t care and would just barge into their rooms and start bothering them- they were all joking about that over a voice call

he will visit europe

he thinks that greece would be a cool place to visit because sapnap’s family is from there :) so it’ll be like a nice “treat” to go back with sap :D

dream isn’t entirely sure that the dream team meet up will happen this year but he’s working out the details because he wants to make sure it’s safe

he’s talking to youtube about his face reveal

it’s up to george if he wants to eat healthy when they finally move in

dream just has a lot of meat and vegetables in his house

spinach with chicken is good

not much fruit (only apples and tomatoes)

“DRISTA IS 5″ is trending on twitter LOL (her height got cut off)

dream doesn’t want people flying to different places because he doesn’t want to encourage travel so he wants to do all of the meet ups with a two day heads up at most

he thinks that it’s awesome that ranboo and tubbo are meeting soon !! :D

it’s very cool to dream to see how far everyone’s has come since the beginning of the dsmp. everyone has done so much

dream finalized his youtube plan a couple weeks before he uploaded his video and he was talking to drista about how he was gonna be a big youtuber in a parking lot :”)

she was the first person he really ever talked to about it

dream would love to teach george how to drive it’d be really funny :D (a very good video or a livestream idea)

dream knows how to ride a bike, he used to have to bike to school

he can’t explain dnf.gay he has no clue he is not responsible. sapnap was the one who found it LOL. he is adamantly exclaiming that it was not him

dream doesn’t worry about views/likes/dislikes a lot- mainly views but that’s for the new uploads

he hasn’t uploaded in like a month and a half (*cries*)

he wants to stream at some point but he doesn’t know when

he wants to play geoguessr but not now... he doesn’t want to alt stream rn- maybe tomorrow!

he is insisting that the splash text on his minecraft home screen is by callahan

he asked callahan to send him bunch of text files that are dream team related so that the splash can rotate through it but callahan thought it was funny (it is) to put only dreamnotfound <3 so it doesn’t ever change at all and dream doesn’t even know how to change and he has asked callahan to change it but he said no (even though dream pays him LMAO)

the video referenced in the padilla’s video is still in the works, it might be handed over to sapnap though !

he has no idea if he will be in MCC pride yet

padilla got dream’s input for the video, dream found him to be a very nice guy ! :) it’s the first interview that dream did that wasn’t by a person with a negative opinion of dream

dream felt relaxed doing the interview with padilla

?????? he’s blaming callahan for his “dnfisreal” nickname in bedwars

he’s blaming callahan for a lot of dnf-related stuff

callahan runs the dream fanart account thus the liking of dnf content

he’s so insistent that it was callahan

dream admits that he was lying about the twitter and other stuff but for sure callahan did code the splash text in LOL

dream liking that tweet “the chances of george doing a hot tub stream is the same of dnf dating” was “funny” he wasnt trying to do any commentary...

the inside joke of “oh it’s all just a joke to you” originates from george and sapnap actually always fighting (like them yelling and shouting at each other) and george said something really mean and sapnap was hurt then geroge said “it was just a joke” and sapnap replied with that line and ever since then it’s been a meme LOL

he says that everyone does the hand-on-the-passenger-seat-while-reversing thing

dream is offline raiding with his chat with 6k people

dream appreciates us and will talk to us soon!

#dreamwastaken #dreamblr #long post #really long post xd #summary #not really a summary... literally just everything he said #merch discord

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bepractical · 2 years ago

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Kin: Season 1, Episode 1, Part 2

And we're back for part 2 of the season 1, episode 1 recap of Kin. For part 1, go here.

The previous post ended right as Eric did the drive by on Caolan Moore, thus bringing about the ruin of his entire family. Oh, and FYI, these recaps are full of spoilers for the entire first season of Kin. READ ON AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Here's some sweet and fuzzy Michael to lead us into the cut.

It's morning at the compound and Amanda is trying to drag Jamie into the office with her. He promises to complete his college applications if she lets him stay home. Later at the dealership, Amanda meets with Noel. I’m not gonna lie, I have no idea how their car/money laundering operation works. Someone smarter than me is gonna have to explain it. The main takeaways- Noel is a nice guy and Amanda is in deep with the family business.

At the compound in the snake room, Jimmy shoots some pool, Frank explains exactly how Eamon is trying to screw them over, and Eric stares the stare of the guilty at Jimmy’s snakes. Dotser makes some incredible faces I was unable to capture in this scene, by the way.

Michael pops in and Frank commiserates with him over how hard it is to sleep after prison. Has Frank been to prison??? I can’t picture it, he seems too careful and risk averse to get caught. Eric has started to cotton on to how much he fucked up and hightails it out of there.

Michael asks Frank to give him a job. He doesn’t want anything to do with the family business, as he can’t see his daughter Anna unless he has something legit, or so his defense attorney told him.

At Eamon's hotel, Caolan Moore is meeting with Eamon to ask permission to deal with Eric for the shooting. Eamon says yes. There’s a lot of blame tossed around on this show but, in my opinion, not enough of it gets assigned to Eamon. Eric is an idiot but what did Eamon expect Frank to do if Moore kept attacking his business?

At the dealership, Eric shows up to swap his car. The car he just used for a drive by. Eric is an idiot. Amanda knows something is hinky but lets it go.

Sad dad Michael sits at a cafe and gently stalks his daughter. It's sweeter than it sounds. My apologies to Hannah Adeogun, as I could not get a good screen shot of Anna crossing the street.

At the compound, Frank and Birdy talk about Michael's reticence to work for the family. Birdy promises to have a word with him. Amanda pulls up and Frank tells her to give a job to Michael at the dealership washing cars. Frank is a dick. He's trying to put Michael in his place, something we’ll see more of later. Amanda knows something is hinky but lets it go. Are we seeing a theme here?

Amanda comes home to Jamie and Anthony playing video games. We learn that Jamie doesn’t want to go to college but to work for the family, something Amanda is dead set against. Jamie calls out Amanda's hypocrisy and Jimmy interrupts them to remind Amanda in a very pointed way that Jamie is his son too.

Eric does pick ups with Fudge and Kem at some creepy building before getting a call to see Frank who's at the tanning salon, another one of their covers for money laundering. Eamon has already called Frank about the shooting, which seems pointless to me since he gave Moore permission to take care of Eric. Eric denies, denies, denies, and gets Nikki to back him up.

At Michael's house in the compound, Birdy tries to butter up/guilt Michael. She is not successful, though she does leave him with this zinger: “You’re not like your mother. You’re a Kinsella. We stick together.” This is key to the series. The hierarchy for Kinsellas goes: Kinsellas by birth; Kinsellas by marriage; Kinsella allies; everyone else. Blood comes first, always.

It’s morning at the dealership and Amanda finds Michael waiting for her in a dress shirt and tie, like he expected his family to actually respect his decisions. It's awkward. Amanda tries to convince Michael to let her just put him on the payroll, but Michael wants to work. They speak across the room from one another, like they're leaving room for Jesus and all the disciples.

In other shitty family decisions, Jimmy takes Jamie with him to shakedown a dealer/client. It takes Jamie about two minutes- just enough time for him to watch his dad take an iron to the guy's face- to determine that maybe the family business isn’t for him after all. It takes Jimmy even less time to realize he made a mistake.

An important note: Jimmy LOVES his son. Did he miscalculate here? Yes. I'm only speculating but I think Michael’s return has made Jimmy desperate to prove that Jamie is HIS son, who can work for the family like Jimmy does (not like Michael, who wants out) and he’ll be able to handle the violence of it because this is what his family does and he’s working with his dad. When Jimmy sees how upset Jamie is, Jimmy gives him a kiss and tells him he loves him, because Jimmy wants to be a good dad even while he’s teaching his son how to be an enforcer. I can’t imagine Bren handled Jimmy and Michael’s education the same way.

Back at the dealership, Michael is washing cars in his shirt and tie. He takes the whole thing in stride because he has a one track mind and also, fuck Frank.

Amanda takes Michael on a pity lunch and they talk about Jamie. Michael mentions the "stuff they did at Jamie’s age” and they make heart eyes at each other until a server interrupts them with some plasticware. It’s for Michael; metal tastes funny to him since prison.

Michael explains the deal with Anna and Amanda is surprised. Maybe Michael seeing Anna isn’t what’s best for her? It’s a heartbreaking but important discussion. Being associated with the family IS dangerous to Anna, and Michael did kill her mother. That’s a lot for a teenager to handle. Amanda’s willing to be straightforward with Michael even when it's painful, as opposed to Frank’s passive aggressive bullshit. There’s a lot of passive aggression in this family.

At the compound, the Garda swing by Eric’s house to tell him about Moore’s hit. Eric is a dumbass so he answers the door naked as a power play and ignores their advice.

Back at Amanda and Jimmy's, Jamie’s field trip with Jimmy scared him straight- he filled out his applications and is ready to become a lawyer. He figured it “might come handy around here.” Him and Amanda have a touching moment that turns hilarious as Amanda teases him about the good time she had conceiving him. This is even more hilarious when you know who his dad is.

Speaking of Uncle Michael, Jamie is about to take him on a field trip of his own, to the gym. WHO SET THIS UP? I need to know. There is no answer that’s not deliciously complicated. This is already way too long so I won’t go into it but I suggest you think on it a minute. It should be noted that Amanda doesn’t want him to go but capitulates at Jimmy’s insistence.

On the way to the gym Jamie tries to make conversation with Michael, who’s a bit absent. Maybe he’s still turning over Amanda’s advice. Jamie asks about Michael and Jimmy’s boxing days and about Jimmy as a kid. That wakes Michael up a bit.

Michael (about Jimmy): He was funny and a bit of a prick, like most brothers. Mostly I just remember him always looking out for me.

At the compound, Anthony is grilling up for the family as the adults sit around and talk about Michael. Jimmy asks a good question- can’t they just arrange for him to see Anna without the runaround?

Meanwhile, Michael and Jamie arrive at the gym to find Eric’s new car has a flat. Jamie is delighted in a sweet but shitty teenage boy way but Michael and Eric figure out quickly it was done deliberately. There are gunshots and a familiar redhead reappears.

Eric is shot and Michael goes to help him, taking off his shirt to stem the bleeding. He hollers at Jamie to call for help before he realizes that Jamie was also shot.

He’s dead. Michael holds his hand, then leans against the car in shock, half naked and covered in blood, Eric screaming for Jamie beside him.

What a sucker punch to close out the first episode! You can see the next episode here.

#kin amc #michael kinsella #jimmy kinsella #amanda kinsella #jamie kinsella #frank kinsella #so many kinsellas #kin

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popculturebuffet · 3 years ago

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Sonic Underground Review: Origins Parts 1,2 and 3 (Commissioned by Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! I’m Jake I review comics and animation via detailed recaps. So last week I was a bit low on money and my friend Emma upon hearing this immeditly offered, without any prompting nor hestiation, to comission some reviews for me, which I agreed to. I’d just like to prefice what i’m about to say by saying emma is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I know, one of my closest friends, and the reason I have a vitnage phone of Opus, who if you don’t know, is this fine chap

On my desk. She’s also single so ladies get after that. Point is I tresure her deeply.. even when she has me reviewing things like Sonic Underground.

So for those of you who haven’t heard of it, or if you have have only heard of it in derisive laughter when compared to the other four sonic cartoons currently out, let’s get you up to speed keed: Sonic Underground was a 1999 Sonic the Hedgehog Animated series by DiC, a now defunct animation giant who produced the previous two sonic cartoons Sonic The Hedghog (Often known as Sonic SATAM for clarity’s sake) and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the former known for being darker, edgier and the basis for the archie comics and the latter known for being essentially like a looney toon on cocaine and having a delightfully hammy robotnik to contrast Satam’s utterly terrifying one.

Sega wanted a series to tie in with their new console the Dreamcast and it’s killer app Sonic Adventure, to hype kids up Sonic after the fastest thing alive had spent the last few years in limbo due the cancelation of Sonic X-Treme, leaving him with no major games. This was also back when creators working with Sega on sonic things had the most precious thing of all: Creative Freedom. There were no horrible restirctoins, no iron fisted bullshit that limited creative possiblities, whatever you could dream you could do it, both good and bad.

So NATURALLY given full creative control to make a fresh sonic series, full backing by sega and a 40 episode order to do whatever.... DiC decided “Hey you know wha’ts popular? Alvin and the Chipmunks! That’s one of our biggest hits. Let’s add musical numbers like that to it! It’ll be huge!”

The saddest part.. is i’m not joking. In an interview for one of the DVD’s, Robby London, one of the EP’s of DiC and creator of the theme song. flat out admitted THIS is why underground has musical numbers: because it worked for Alvin and the Chipmunks. And he STILL seemed to think this was a GOOD thing.

I have seen multiple half assed attempt at shared universes, Brian Micheal Bendis speak for any length of time about any recent project, and this tweet from Disney

But even with all that this may be the biggest show of undearned overconfidence that completely misses the point of what your doing I have ever seen. Keep in mind by the time Underground went to air, Alvin and the Chipmunks had been off the air for a DECADE. Not only that the ENTIRE POINT of Alvin and the Chipmunks as a brand was to take famous songs old and new and give them new covers. THAT was why their music was popular. Sonic was popular because the character was fun, the games were intresting, and both your previous shows did something creative with it. It DIDN’T NEED MUSICAL NUMBERS.

But even with this musical tumor on the show’s face.. I was still determind to give the show a fair shake. I hadn’t seen it in a decade since riffing the pilot with a friend and while the music was.. well...

We’ll get to that the show DOES have some good ideas, many of which i’ve wanted to pour into my fanfic idea that’s a frothy mixture of every sonic idea. The question was how well these ideas were excuted, if the show had merit and if the music still made my ears bleed. To find out, join me under the cut as we go into the secret origins of sonic the hedgehog.

So before we get into the series proper we have to talk about the episode order for this pilot. It’s an ungodly mess. The pilot itself, as was standard for the 90′s was buired DEEP in the episode count, 26 episodes in in airing order. Oh an din said airing it’s alternated every episode with the series OTHER three parter, which now I mention it i’m probably cursed to cover it, and i’m fine with that because it has Knuckles’ one apperance in one of the DiC cartoons. It’s somehow WORSE on the actual streaming order on Paramount+: while the episodes are moved up a bit, their also STILL interlaced with the Knuckles eps only now the second two parts of this trilogy are BEFORE the first part.

I.. don’t know how you bungle this or why tv shows back then thought shoving episodes in any order and letting god sort it out was a good idea, but my god. I mean normally for this show it isn’t an issue, it’s episodic and whlie there is a recurring character or two, outside of these two multi-parters there dosen’t seem to be a super strong continuity. I could be wrong, I’ve only watched a handful of episodes including these, but I wouldn't doubt it.

So with that out of the way I can’t put this off any longer, let’s dig into oriigins

Part 1: Beginnings: A Rope of Sand.

So we begin with a theme song by the same boring old white guy who was PROUD this was a knockoff of a show that had been dead for 9 years at this point and no one had gone to the funeral.

Suprisingly, despite EVERYTHING against it with that sentence... this theme song is awesome and he’s rightfully proud of it. It outlines the premise of the show, rocks like all hell, and easily stacks up with the iconic intros for the other two DiC sonic cartoons and Sonic X.. Boom.. well it tried. It has MANY other good features, good humor, it’s insane version of knuckles, Sticks, but a good theme song just isn’t one of them.

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I mean god damn, the guitar, the songs, it just fits and fits the show well. It’s just so damn good it makes me wonder why the hell the rest of their music in the show sounds like

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I also give the guy credit that he DIDN’T cheat in said contest: As was apparnetly the process for theme songs back then they simply had a bunch of people write them, tossed them in a pile and had a bunch of the executives go over them. So Robbie simply threw his in there, and abstained from voting as he normally would be on the selection panel.

But yes this theme song, which gets the premise in, sounds epic and gets you pumped is just great... and sadly ends up reduntant for this episode. I mean normally it works fine, it means anyone who popped on an underground ep can jump right in. It’s just here the first few minutes are a longer version of this without the groovy tunes.

So the longer version that’s not in musical form is this: About 15 years ago Queen Aleena was ruler of Mobius. But everything changed when the evil Dr. Robotnik staged a coup. The Queen was forced into exile but was given hope by the mysterious Oracle of Delphius... who .. who looks like this.

Yeah get used to any character who isn’t sonic having at best an okay design and at worst looking weird as all hell. For some reason DiC decided instead of just going with most characters being funny animals, as they had with SATAM... they’d have a bunch of weird looking creatures and make even the funny animals look weird as hell. And look I have nothing against weird aliens, I love me a good alien, and the idea of having sonic’s world be diffrently populated isn’t terrible in THEORY. In practice the character deisgn for this series is so horribly out of sync with the sonic art style for the classic series, ironic given this was made for adventure the first game that would toss out said style and start over, it clashes horribly and thus makes it all the more noticable that half the cast are weird space creatures and the other half weird attempts at making furries.

So the Oracle reveals there’s a good future: Aleena and her Children will form the council of 4, defeat Robotnik, and reclaim mobius. But there’s a catch. In order for this future to happen she has to scatter her chlidren: Leave them each at a diffrent doorstep and not contact them till the time is right for their reunion. It’s not a terrible premise honestly.

First the part everybody loves: Sonic having Siblings.. is brilliant. It brings in a dynamic that wasn’t there before: while him having a group of buds he fights evil with was the premise of SATAM.. and Archie.. and Fleetway and... let’s just save time and say every sonic property and game except the games that forget “oh yeah there’s other characters. But here it’s given a diffrent spin: By having them be his long lost brother and sister, both raised in vastly diffrent circumstances that we’ll get to, it gets interesting: their now his family he never knew, strangers bound to him by blood and destiny he has to get to know and accept. Granted I don’t get why Tails was written out when he woudl’ve fit in fine in this scenario, and created more interesting tension by adding a surrogate sibling into this mix of long lost blood siblings, but hey missed opportunitites like this just give us the fans more fanfic fuel, so it ballances out.

The Royalty part was something I USED to be against.. but i’m now fine with. It dosen’t really impact who Sonic is as he gets raised about the same as you’d assume, and given Sonic STILL dosen’t have a backstory in the games, it was open season to do whatever. That itself could create character drama: a normal freedom fighting hedgehog, if one with super speed, suddenly findign out he’s the heir to the throne AND the chosen one to end Robotnik’s reign> Tha’ts a lot of pressure and a lot of good stories could come out of sonic and his sibligns dealing with their sudden legacy. So the IDEAS behind underground, are original and pretty good.. it’s just the execution where things start to hit you in the face.

That said where each child ends up is also great, giving each kid a diffrent background: Sonic ends up with a weird looking middle class leapord man freedom fighter living in the woods, a sentence that remidns me why I love getting paid to write this stuff. Sonia ends up the ward of an upper class lady. As for Manic he’s supposed to end up with.. some person we never really get to know.. but is stolen off his doorstep by theives and taken in by their leader Ferrel. If this sounds like Guardians of the Galaxy to you... good I thought it was just me. And I woudln’t rule out this being what inspired James Gunn as he’s a weird motherfucker and I could see him watching sonic underground while getting fucked up. It’s one of the many reasons I wish he was my dad.

So two things here: The first is Sonia being brought into privlage brings me to one of the more intresting parts of Underground’s worldbuilding: See Underground takes the basic background from SATAM: A beloved royal is overthrown, Robotnik takes over and he turns a bunch of people into robots via roboticzation, a horrifying process where he turns them from flesh into souless machine with no clear way out of this. Even after this defeat in the comics his victims were still stuck like this for half the comics run until some aliens just decided “Eh we’ll fix this BUZAP” and suddenly they were all free exept’s sonic’s dad cause it would kill him. I swear to god that’s what happened.

While he does so here.. there’s a twist to it: He leaves the rich alive, and as long as they give him his annual tribute, he lets them keep on, while picking more on the poor. No on paper this sounds stupid: In SATAM Robotnik easily conquered the world, had sent the remntants of mobian kind into hiding, and had basically won simply by turning everyone into a machine. And while that is true.. .this tactic isn’t bad when you think about it. With SATAM while he had the overwhelming advantage, the freedom fighters also had a safe haven from his rule, one constantly under threat of discovery or him destroying what kept it safe sure, but the point is they had some safe harbor.

Here he has tons of cities, all under his tight surveillance, to the point that as we lean he has retinal scans of everyone. It dosen’t take him long to find any bases once he gets looking for someone. More importatnly though by keeping the rich under his thrall.. he has an amry of wealthy, terrified assholes willing to do whatever and sell out whoever to save his skin. Any ally our heroes turn to who happens to have some money could secretly be an enemy, leaving our heroes with little resources to actually fight back. That applies to the less rich civlilians too: all robotnik has to do for some people is wave some money, an exoneration or any sort of bribe around and our heroes are in a trap.

There’s also no risk to it: He can capture these people at any time. The worst he does is loose money he dosen’t actually need on putting one of his backers in jail. The money is simply a tool to keep them in check and remind them whose supreme dictator. So robtonik has a world where he’s in control, hwere most are scared to oppose him and if they do loose everything, and where the poor, the most likely to rise up as in real life.. are easily disposed of. He dosen’t NEED an army of roboticized minons.. he just needs good old fashione dictoral fear and some robots.

So we see each of the three as kids and it’s adorable. Little Sonic zooms around strums his guitar and has to be subtly threatned with no chilli dogs for dinner if he dosen’t take a bath in a nice sweet way that implies his dad probably WOULDN’T starve the poor kid and isn’t that degree of asshole, he jus tknows how his son’s brain works. It’s 90% chilli dog up there. Sonia annoys her mom with acrobatics and shows off her talent for piano. And finally we get Manic, whose scene I consider the best: his thief dad Ferrel tests his ablities, and not only does the kid steal his wallet, but also his gift: metal, high quality drumsticks. The two then have a laugh. it’s just geninely sweet and shows that ALL three parents are nice. Sure Ferrels a thief.. but it dosen’t make him a bad person. “ He’s just doing what he’s gotta to make buy and teaching Manic the same, but clearly loves his son and is proud of him. He also easily has the weridest character design in this entire three parter.

He’s some sort of weird tree man voiced by Muarice LaMarche. I just.. I don’t even know where to begin here. He also has chicken legs for some reason. I’ve given up on these character designs making sense at this point.

Sonic’s childhood.. eventually sours though as we get a geninely tragic scene as his father encourages his son to run as fast and as far as away as he can.. and sonic only finds out why when he sees fire in the distance. He runs back only to see his parents captured by robotnik, and his home burning down, the poor bo in tears. Thankfully he’s found by his Uncle Chuck. Chuck is the only SATAM original character to carry over to this series, for some reason seriously the series could’ve used bunnie or rotor, sally sadly would’ve been redundant. He’s sonic’s uncle, though if i’ts bilogicial here it’s never mentioned. But Chuck takes his young nephew in and gladly trains him.... he also has a weird old coot voice. It probably dosen’t help i’ve heard a LOT of Maurice LaMarche’s voice acting and since he’s doing about 5 or 6 rolls here all his rolls sound like some sort of joke he did on the critic.

Speaking of actors, it’s time to adress an elephant in the room voice acting wise. Back then since Sonic didn’t have an offical VA in the games yet, nowadays Sega prefers to use whoever’s in that roll for everything except the movies, Sonic was voiced by my man Jaleel White aka...

Yeah, URKEL voiced Sonic. Credit where it’s due though; Jaleel was and still is a good actor, and part of the reason he played 80 dozen characters on family matters was to show off his vocal range. As such his sonic voice is not only completely divorced from Urkel, but pitch perfect. It’s easily one of sonic’s best voices, one of the most iconic and my most beloved.

So having him come back, even years later? That was obvoius. No it was the NEXT part of the decision that leaves me asking

They decided to have Jaleel voice all three of the royal triplets. Now most of this bafflement is directed at the decision to have him play sonia: His Manic voice isn’t half bad and is actually so diffrent I forget sometimes that’s Jaleel. Seriously the guy shoudl do more voice acting besides urkel these days, he’s great at it.

But his Sonia voice is just his Myrle Urkel voice, aka Urkel’s cousin who was Jaleel in drag and who stalked Eddie instead of Laura because sexual harassment is genetic in the family matters universe. I haven’t seen any family matters episodes with Myrtle because I don’t hate myself quite that much, but I have seeen enough of the regular episodes, because I do like me some carl and waldo, urkel himself sucks even if Jaleel himself slaps, to be used to Urkels voice and hearing it come out of a woman... it just dosen’t work. IT’s distracting as all hell and takes me out of things, especially since her brothers sound like actual characters and not a 20 something trying to do a squeaky voiced impression of a lady.

We naturally focus on Sonic first though, as he’s working as a freedom fighter with Chuck and has been his secret weapon, taking out Robotnik’s instilations with ease thanks to his speed. Robotnik TRIES to stop our hero with a force field.. but sonic is able to get past it and spin and win.

Annoyed at the constant attacks by a myserious blue streak, Robotnik decides to bring in some professionals.

But since he can’t afford them Robotnik goes with goons he can afford.. to conscript. So we meet sleet and Dingo, a wolf played by Maurice LaMarche and a guy I haven’t heard of respectively. And if you were curious Robotnik here is played by Gary Chaulk, aka optimus primal. He’s not a bad va at all, and does a decent job with what he has to work with which is not much. I’m just curious why they didn’t bring back Long Jean Bauldry or Jim Cummings when both were stil active at the time and Jim STILL is. They got Jaleel back. Jim can do a LOT of voice work so they’d basically have a bunch of free background characters. I”m so confused.

Back to the meeting Robotnik forces the two into his service and then has them go after sonic. Back at Sonic’s house/reistance headquarters, he’s taking a nap when the Oracle visits... just straight up teleports into Sonic’s house, wakes him up after he’s , ya know, been helping fight for freedom all day, and bribes him with chlli dogs because nothing’s ever gone horribly when a creepy old man’s bribed a teenager to spend time with him.

The Oracle reveals sonic’s past, that he needs to find his siblings.. but instead of saying “Play some music you’ll find them” he has to be a cryptic dickhead about it because most of these mystical seers who pupeeteer fate types do. It’s why you really have to be careful writing them so they, say, don’t come off as omniscent jackasses who aren’t interfering because they want some golden ending they saw no matter how many people have to die for it to happen. Seriously this is yet another thing that, were this a better shwo could be decostructed: while the oracle’s intetnions are good, he wants robotnik beaten the fact he yanked our heroes from their mother and is trying to force them along this path brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions about destiny: how much of it is their control and how much of it is something they can’t stop? Is he not interfering to LET THEM have a future or is it because he knows terrible things MUST happen to get to this ending dr. strange style.

So Sonic is left to muse... and then .... and then AND THEN... he starts to sing.

See these songs would be PASSABLE if it weren’t for Sonic’s singing. They woudln’t be good, just decent, but they’d still be listenable. But for some reason not only did they NOT get anyone who sounded remotely like Jaleel to do the vocals, but said vocals sound so horrible.. I can’t even describe them. Heaven knows i’ve tried but their so uniquely squeaky, weird and unlistenable you just have to hear for yourself. I apologize to all of you for this, except Emma, she asked for this.

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It’s like someone hit Samuel Vincent in the nuts and recorded the sounds. And yes that’s Samuel “Double D” Vincent doing the vocals. While I do have to say just how bad they are and they are BAD, I will say he CAN actually sing when someone isn’t putting a gun to his head to go higher or else. He played Russel on LIttlest Pet Shop and did have to sing sometimes and didn’t sound like the notes played to summon an elder god. I just feel a combination of his inexperience at the time and the poor vocal direction lead to absolute madness.

I will not be covering the songs individually: their all about the same: decent beats backed to unlistenable vocals. The only notable one is the second where a monk starts dancin in the background. That and it’s even worse than this one.

So in a show that’s supposed to have the music in this great gimmick it instead usually comes out of nowhere, makes your ears implode, then the episode picks up from there having wasted two minutes that could’ve been used on the plot and done anything those two minutes of ear carnage did for the plot.

Meanwhile we get to easily the most gloriously stupid thing in these three parter. Another bit in part 3 comes CLOSE, but no.. this is the real world champion of stupid: So to find out the blue streak is, Sleet zooms in on the photo, and gets a shot of sonic’s ass. This would be weird enough.. but then he RUNS IT THROUGH ROBOTNIK’S DATABASE OF ANIMAL ASSES, NONE OF WHICH BUT SONIC ARE MOBIAN.

I.. I can’t even make this up. I know some sonic fans probably have their own ass databases but Robotnik himself.. has an archive of animal butts. DR.ROBOTNIK’S MEAN ANIMAL ASS MACHINE. Did.. did he conquer mobius just to stare at them asses? Do I want to know the answer to that? Why are they non mobian? why are there non mobian animals here but nowhere else in the series that i’m aware of?

I love everything about this: I love how accidently dirty it is, I love how stupidly specific it is and I love that it actually DOES come in handy so robtonik can write it off on his taxes. This is the kind of so bad it’s glorious thing that makes my job worthwhile.

Moving from fun stupid to “I need an ibuprofen stupid”, Robotnik is shook when he they match the hedgehog ass up with sonic.... as he realizes the queen’s kids are still alive and thus the prophecy is still in play. Now you may be asking “Okay so how’d he find out, did he interogate some innocents, steal it Voldermort style, tourture the oracle” and nope... because that’d make since. No.... the Oracle of Delphius... WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO TELL ROBOTNIK ABOUT THE PROPHECY TO BRAG TO HIM HIS REIGN WOULD END EVENTUALLY.

I just... this one scene took the oracle from mildy frustrating to WHOLLY unlikeable. In addition to not helping these kids till now because “fate sez so”, he went OUT OF HIS WAY TO TELL ROBOTNIK WHAT WILL DESTROY HIM. Why.. why would you do that? I Get it might be part of what NEEDS to happen to stop him but without saying that on screen or implying that, it instead just comes off as the oracle shooting his own prophecy in the foot by TELLING THE PERSON IT STOPS JUST HOW TO STOP IT. I’m suprised he didn’t tell him where each of their adopted parents lived so he could choke some babies!

God... so Robotnik researches them, finding out Sonia is a regestered citzien. And discredit where it’s do.. Robotnik is also a dumbshit here as he never bothered to look into where the children were or search for them in the , let’s say 14 years since Alleena left them with their adopted parents, nor NOTICED that the young ward of one of his own patrons looked EXACTLY like the queen. He already rules mobius. He dosen’t have much else to do given how automated that process is. Gahhhh.

So at the club Sonic rocks out, and slowly the sounds drawn in the rest: Manic cuts out on a job to go visit, something Ferrel is fine with because he’s a good one, and Sonia drags her fiance Bartleby down with her to visit. The three siblings end up playing together, finally reunited and rocking out.. only for the club to be raided. Sonic agrees to meet them later and they all bounce.

ONce again I have to hit pause to talk about something abotu the series itself. Thankfully I THINK this will be the last time. But it’s the swatbot design. The swatbots are Robotnik’s troops, taken from Satam .. but only in name. See in Satam they had this awesome iconic design

Simple, cold, metallic. Fits robotnik’s distoypian cyperpunk grip on things perfectly, looks neat, taking bits from both stormtroopers and cylons while still having it’s own unique look. Cool. Now here’s what underground has

Overcomplicated, overly 90′s, with a werid color scheme. I don’t mind changing the design, new unvierse and all but if your going to change it so much just give them a diffrent name.

So yeah they bust up the party.. and when the three hogs reunite they find all their parental figures have been rounded up, with Sonia in paticular having to watch Lady Wendimire dragged off. The three naturally plan to go save them.. only for the Oracle to arrive to tell them nope i’ts too late. Which.. I questoin. Having the three TRY to save their parents, either this time or later on when they end up back in robottropolis for a diffrnet rescue mission, would’ve been intresting and heartbreaking. But mope it’s just “their dead, here’s a map to get some training byeeeee”. God I hate this guy. So our heroes head off into the night, having lost their adopted parents.. but found each other.

Sidebar before we continue much like the swatbots roboticizatoin.. dosen’t look nearly as neat here

Just...can we not sonic underground? Can we just not horribly overcomplicate designs so they look terrible?

Beggiings.. isn’t a bad episode honestly. While I pointed out plenty of issues with the series itself, and the whole thing with the oracle TELLING ROBTONIK ABOUT THE PROHPEHCY was one of the dumbest things i’ve seen in a kids cartoon, the first ep does a good job setting up our heroes background, giving them a reason to come back together, and setting them on their journey. It also shows our vilians as a compitent and intresting threat. All in all a far better pilot than I was expecting.... for an episode> It.. gets worse form here.

Part 2: Getting to Know You

So we’ve come to the worst part. The good news at least is parts 2 and 3 shoudl go quicker since I don’t have to stop every 5 minutes to talk about something about the show as a whole.

So the first ten minutes are our heroes trying to make it here, with Sleet and Dingo sent after them only for Dingo’s newfound crush on sonya to trip him up. Simple stuff. What makes it the worst part.. is the hogs.. are just complete assholes to each other. And not in a fun sibling riffing way like the episode seems to THINK it is, it’s just

For 10 minutes. The boys act like sexist ten year olds about Sonya being afraid of getting dirty which on some level I get: thing sare about to get real and they can’t have her complaning, she has to accept she no longer has a maid or any other rich people stuff. But instead of trying to help her ease into normal life.. they just razz her constantly, especailly jarring considering she lost her mom yesterday. So instead of sympathizing with it given their adopted dads were also taken, they just decide to make jokes like a 90′s adult cartoon writer’s impression of a ten year old thinking a girl has cooties.

Sonic in general is just an ass. When Manic TRIES to dance around the fact he was a theif, which is fair he dosen’t know how they’ll respond... Sonic just outright tells Sonia that, as the freedom fighters kept tabs on the theives guild. That wasn’t information that was his to tell, and given Sonia’s never had to struggle a day in her life, something that would be jarring for her to accept, which you know IS WHY HE WAS DANCING AROUND IT. Good good if UK Sonic didn’t exist this might be the biggest show of dickery i’ve seen from the blue blur. Instead of our heroes getting to know one another, the diffrences and simlairties, and getting to really bond... it’s just petty sniping so much it made me run my head into a wall.

So after ten inusfferable minutes of this shit, our heroes find a jaguar man who gets to training them, while Robotnik sends his goons to go get em, since the yfound the map our heroes had left behind (Sonia had made a copy).

So we get your standard hero training and a montage to go with it: Sonic learns to control his speed better, Sonia learns the martial arts and Manic learns pin point accuracy, able to throw his drumsticks like he’s Bullseye. Standard stuff but nothing bad after the ocean of arguing. Robtonik’s goons arrive, get attacked by the trees because that’s a thing and our heroes find out they all have musical powers too, but have ot use them in harmony to do so. So they use it to zap their way out of there, win the day, and go on to their next mentor.. which I feel is a mistake. The show REALLY didn’t need two mentors for them esepcailly when they both serve the same purpose and they could’ve simply gone to the hooded setting at the end to start.

At the end they face a secret test of character, a hallucination of a monster... but react poorly: sonic goes off half cocked, sonia tries to help but only gets herself caught and Manic gets them out via lockpicking but is too late to save them. The hooded mentor guy nearly turns them away... but the three siblings puffing sonic’s ego is enough to convince him their good siblings now and the training can begin tommorow.

As you could tell I didn’t have a lot to say about this episode: it’s mostly endless bickering and endless training. The latter is at least tolerable. Just.. not a good, memorable or worthwhile episode.

Part 3: Harmony or Something

So we open part 3 in bad straights for Sleet and Dingo, as the two are about to be sent to be roboticized since they keep failing to stop sonic. Sleet says he might have a plan though, so Robotnik frees them but gives them one last chance. Spoiler he gives them like... 37 more chances. Still points for actually CONSDIERING getting rid of his comedy sidekicks. The other RObotniks never even bothered.

Back with our heroes.. their in a castle.. fighting... a.. dragon...

Our heroes TRY using their new musical instrument powers, I love this job sometimes, to fight it, but they crap out after Sonic yells at Manic for trying to use his earthquake powers, that’s what his drums do despite the other two instruments, a guitar and a keyboard, shooting lasers on a flying enemy. Because he’s not going to get any ribbing in when their skeletons are all on this dragon’s mantle later so he might as well now.

They escape to a higher level and Sonia has figured out what the thing is. You know that bit from this episode I said was almost as insane as the ass database? Yeah this is it: Sonia figures out the dragon is an AIR ELEMENTAL. And that by touching earth to it, since the thing never lands, they can destroy it.

I have no words. Sonic and his siblings have to fight an air elemental, and beat it using the power of rock n roll. Now THIS is more like it. While the last episode was more irritating nonsense, this is GLORIOUS nonsense, just hilariously stupid and insane stuff thrown at the audience at face value.

This turned out to be a training excercise but the fact Sonia LEARNED ABOUT ELEMETNALS IN SCHOOL, means it was simulating a real creature. You know if this series was about sonic fighting elementals alongside his siblings i’d watch through ten musical numbers just to get some of that. Just saying DiC.

Our heroes soon have to leave, empire strikes back style, as the hooded guy has a vision.. because he can do that: Sonic’s friend trevor has been kidnapped.

Instead of I dunno, bringing Bunnie or Rotor back (especiaally since the head writer of SATAM was undrstandble sore this wasn’t a continuation of his work after it got cut off early), or bringing in tails for the role.. you thought “No we can do better.. a hippie mouse no one cares about. That’s the ticket. Yeah!”

So our heroes go to go save guy we just met, despite the training not being done.. even though they pretty much know everything. So our heroes head to robottropolis. Manic shows his stuff by having them sneak into a chute that he used to as a kid, as their first jobs were small suply runs. Sonya is horrified kids were used for theft.. not getting that she had EVERYTHING because her mother bent and scrapted to a dictator. It’s why I don’t really side with Underground’s constant “manic shoudln’t be a theif” lectures. In a normal setting , sure don’t steal shit’s a good moral. But they live in a cyberpunk distpoia run by a dictator. They gotta steal to live gotta steal to eat. It’s hard to buy this moralizing when the situation the series set up dosen’t fit it and the skills Manic has as a theif are invaluable to their cause.

Sonic later lectures him for taking some random shit, even though it could come in handy. They then spy on a meeeting between Bartlby and Robtonik. Bartlby knows nothing and admits he gladly pays his tributes, and if he DID know he’d of sold out his fiance in an instant. Robotnik, unlike lesser villians, is fine with this,k though can’t reisist using lady windermnire as a warning that if the little prick is lying or has thoughts of betraying him... the robotcizers waiting. instead of you know having Sonya dismayed her ex woudl sell her out she’s jus tdisgusted while the boys for once have a valid cricizim, asking what the hell she saw in him.

We DO get a geninely good scene though as Sonya wants to go after Lady Whatserhername.. and the boys have to break it to her it’s too late, they can’t save her.. and their sorry. So Sonya sobs quitely while her brothers comfort her. It’s the ONLY real bit of bonding we get in these last two parts.

Our heroes also find out Robotnik is going for the oracle though, so they quickly bust trevor out, using the vents which Manic naturally knows how to manuvre. Security is on them though so Sonia suggests the simple solution: take one of robtonik’s ship. Trevor, for what i’ts worth, does her one better once they get to the hangar: he’ll take a smaller fighter to distract robotnik while the siblings escape. And to his credit he not only easily outmanuvers the other ships but lives through it uncaptured. Okay fair enough Trevor you can stay, though i still question why Tails wasn’t in this. I miss my buddy.

Our heroes head to the arctic to go rescue the oracle.. only for Robtonik to take over the ship. Yeah turns out he’s not stupid and can override the systems from a distance, and thus sets it to self disturct. Our heroes ONLY escape because Manic happend to steal an override key. Remember kids: Stealing is fine if it’s from a dictator. The more you know.

Our heroes arrive but fail to pull off their powers at first.... they have a half assed heart ot heart not worth mentoining, and then play an awful song.. that ISN’T what they use to fight robotnik, they just waste two minutes before goign to go fight him with the power of ROCK... which as stupid as this is... I can’t hate it. Sonic is shooting a guitar with laserbeams, his sister has a laser keyboard, and his brother can make the earth move under his feet and make the sky tumble down, tumblin down with the power of his drums. It’s dumb and probably woudl’ve been better not part of the show.. but it’s also gloriously goofy and I just can’t hate it. The songs are vile.. but them using their insturment super powers.. that’s actually pretty neat.

So our heroes have won, getting an encouraging message form their mother as they head off. The oracle also reveals to the queen, who shows up after they leave, that he was fine the whole time and was merely faking his own peril for their sake. Hahaha please robotcize him.

Final Thoughts:

Origins is an ehhh start to a throughly ehhhh show. Underground HAS a lot of potetial, great ideas, a taletned voice cast, and a unique take on sonic by having him as an exiled prince. Even the power of rock gimmick isn’t terrible and could’ve been great had they actually picked va’s who could sing.

But the execution.. is why this series is so thorughly unloved: the animation, which I haven’t had a chance to talk about, is very lackluster, very cheap and shoddy which isn’t remotely okay given how good SATAm and adventures look. Both, especially the latter wren’t immune to animation errors, but they still look good. This... just looks like it was made on five dollars and a can of whiskey.

The designs aren’t better: the characters dont’ really match the classic sonic art style, and instead are just whatevers and whattheheckarethat’s. It just comes off cheap and half assed. It’s not helped a lot of the series backbone is clearly copied form satam.. but without any of the genuine atmosphere or cool designs. It just comes off as a shoddy, half formed version of something we’d seen better. And the sad part is a statam reboot COULD work,and could’ve worked then.. but instead of trying to work on the parts that didn’t work they just copied a few things and made a shoddier product

Undergorund is depresingly shoddy, not really great, and only worth a watch for curosity’s sake. It’s good ideas mixed with a lazy execution for an unstatifyingly half assed result. Will I return to it someday? Honestly probably. I do want to see the knuckles episodes at some point and while the episodes weren’t great, I did get some godo material. But was I dispaointed the show didn’t prove me wrong, and wwas just as bad as I remmebered? .... way past yes. Thanks for reading.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonia the hedgehog #manic the hedgehog #ivo robotnik #doctor robotnik #eggman #sonic underground #DiC #sleet #dingo #queen aleena #90's #paramount+#sonic cartoons #satam #uncle chuck #charles hedgehog #sega

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep15 [FINALE]

For better or worse I think Ryukishi achieved exactly what he set out to do with this series, and I guess everyone’s just gonna be forced to reckon with how they feel about his own perspective on this franchise versus how they feel about it, lol.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I’m not entirely sure where to even start with this, but I guess the TL;DR is that I honestly think Gou/Sotsu was ultimately just fine despite it’s issues, and part me of can’t help but be like ‘I told you so, lol’ about how this really did end with this episode, and also committed pretty hard to the Umineko prequel elements.

It’s not like all of my theories were correct in the end, but I at least think I was pretty spot on in my prediction last week that this would end with the miracle of them side-stepping the sword issue entirely and choosing the third option of forgiveness and reconciliation. And also them ending it with an epilogue where we go back to the Matsuribayashi timeline and get a happy ending for Rika and Satoko that provides a ‘non-magical interpretation’ for the story while also giving us an idea of how Bern and Lambda formally split off into their own entities and start the relationship we see in Umineko.

I didn’t quite expect them to go down the route of having them agree to just spend a few years apart and accept that they don’t need to literally always be together, but I think that was a really good way to wrap things up between them. It’s pretty much the healthiest compromise to their conflict that doesn’t come across like it completely invalidates one of their dreams. I get why it feels too anti-climactic and convenient for people, but when you pull at that thread you get into wider topics of what the entire story is about, since this was always going to end with Satoko being redeemed and forgiven. People might not have taken him seriously, but Ryukishi was 100% genuine about his regrets about Matsuribayashi’s ending, and how part of why he came up with this new story was to create a better ending, while also doing more with Satoko as a character.

Basically I think a lot of the fandom negativity towards this boils down to people fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that Matsuribayashi was even ‘flawed’ in this sort of way to begin with, or that Satoko was badly written. It’s valid to disagree on this stuff, but at the very least we all have to grapple with how Ryukishi has his own specific relationship with this series.

People like to focus on how he’s a troll who likes to mess with people, but I feel like this is a bit of a wake-up call for people about how he’s actually extremely sincere, almost to a fault, and he likes to use his stories as a vehicle for expressing his personal philosophies and ideals.

This whole story is also a good example of how he just sees this as ultimately being a fictional story about fictional characters, and not literally a matter of real people who need to be sentenced for their crimes or whatever. As early as the original VN he was almost being outright preachy about the message that nobody is irredeemable, and that philosophy carries through to this. But to be more specific, nobody *in this story* is irredeemable. He’s pretty open about the fact that in practice you can’t apply this sort of ideal to real life, but fictional stories are their own separate matter.

I think this whole issue of how he views this as a story first and foremost is also the central reason why this ended in a way that comes across as Satoko being let off too easy for her crimes. One way or another, Ryukishi’s made it clear that he sees this as being no different to how other characters had arcs where they committed crimes but still got forgiven, or how Takano is basically a straight up war criminal who also got forgiven for her crimes.

Anyway, this episode at least committed to the Umineko stuff, so that was satisfying. Sure there’s people that still want to deny it, but at this point I think a lot of people are just being stubborn, so it’s not like anything would have really convinced them, lol. I’m also genuinely not sure what people even would have expected them to do beyond what we saw her, aside from having the two of them literally put on their gothic lolita outfits and turn to the camera and go ‘we are literally Bernkastel and Lambdadelta from the video game series Umineko When They Cry’. I almost feel like there’s some kind of misunderstanding from people who aren’t familiar with Umineko when it comes to the idea of what it even means for this to be ‘an Umineko prequel’, or ‘a Bern/Lambda origin story’. I mean, this is quite literally exactly what I expected and hoped for in that regard. It’s not like I was expecting them to incorporate anything related to, like, Beatrice or the Ushiromiya family.

I think this is also one of those things where you just have to decide for yourself whether or not you want to earnestly engage with the story that’s being told, or if you want to assume that there’s some level of malice or trickery going on.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to literally have Rika and Satoko recite part of Bern and Lambda’s final conversation with each other word for word, lmao. Combined with the scene at the end where ‘Witch Satoko’ talks to herself about how she’s going to give her body back to Satoko while she goes chasing after Rika, it was literally just the exact origin story of their relationship as it’s depicted in Umineko.

I still feel like this would all only really be ‘worth it’ if we actually get something like a full on anime remake for Umineko, but at this point I can’t help but feel satisfied with this part of it all.

It’s not like I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is perfect or anything, though. I don’t hate it as much as basically everyone else does, but I think Ryukishi’s the sort of VN writer who really struggles with the shift to writing for an anime. I think a big part of the frustration people have is just from how this is formatted as a weekly anime series spread across basically an entire year, instead of being something like a stand-alone VN chapter that you can read at whatever pace you want, even if it ultimately takes the same amount of time to read as it would to watch all of Gou/Sotsu.

There’s also the whole issue of this being a sort-of-remake, which snowballed into a whole list of structural problems. They absolutely tried too hard to have their cake and eat it too, and they should have just committed to it being made for old fans only, instead of trying to sincerely incorporate elements from the VN that old fans don’t care about anymore because they’ve gone over it already.

And as I’ve said several times before, it was a major issue for them to decide to put Nekodamashi in the middle of Gou and then spend like 20 episodes on flashback answer arcs until finally getting back to that cliffhanger. I’ve been waiting until this all ended to decide exactly how I feel about that, and now that it’s all over I still think it was a really bad idea. I don’t think it was an issue for them to reveal that Satoko’s the culprit that early, but having the gun cliffhanger specifically happen that early just gave people misguided expectations and tainted the answer arcs because people were just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. And then the cliffhanger itself ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, which is what I’d been fearing would happen. It would have worked fine if they shuffled it around so that the cliffhanger happened right before Kagurashi and was followed up in the very next episode, or if this was a VN where you could binge your way through the flashback stuff, but spending like half of an entire real-life year to get back to that point only to have the resolution be ‘Satoko just shoots Rika and the death loops keep going’ just didn’t really work properly.

I’m a lot more generous towards the Akashi arcs than most people are, since I think they really over-estimate how much re-used content there is there, but they still suffer from the central issue of the show trying to be accessible for new fans. It could have been heavily condensed otherwise, without losing anything in terms of Satoko’s whole character arc.

On the other hand I think the first half of Kagurashi was awful specifically because it highlighted how bad of an idea it was to put Nekodamashi so early in the story. They still ended up having to go back to that arc and repeat it anyway, in the most 1:1 recap-y way in the whole show, but that wouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place if that was instead the first time that arc happened in the show.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would rearrange the story to make it flow better while still following Ryukishi’s intentions, and I think they could have condensed it into a 2-cour season with this sort of structure if they did something like this:

-First arc where Rika gets thrown back into the loop and quickly figures out that somebody intentionally caused this to happen, and it’s not Takano because at least in this idea of mine she’d try and investigate her only to find out that this version of Takano regrets everything and is planning to flee the village with Tomitake.

Basically I think this could tie into the idea of Satoko initially wanting to just concoct an idea world for Rika so that she won’t want to leave this time, but sort of like what I think happens in Saikoroshi, Rika would still reject it, and this time around there’d be the additional layer of her knowing that somebody did this to her for an unknown reason. Maybe they could even initially market it as a new adaptation or a remake of Saikoroshi, and then reveal that it’s a sequel, to keep that whole element to the series. Either way I think this would end with everything going to shit when Rika rejects that fragment and wants to go back to St. Lucia’s, and Satoko basically snaps and kills her, and that way the audience can find out about her being the culprit without Rika finding out about it yet.

Maybe there could even be some dramatic irony where Rika’s attempts to meddle with certain ‘trigger events’, and her displaying her looper side, inadvertently triggers people around her to get paranoid, and the whole fragment would start to spiral into tragedy from there. I think they could at least use the whole conflict in Tatariakashi about Teppei actually being good this time as a starting point for that sorta thing.

-Second arc, rounding out the first cour, which is basically just Satokowashi. I don’t think there’s much that you’d need to change here, but like I said above I like the idea of her initially trying to just invent a perfect world for Rika and her to live in, instead of jumping straight to murder. But maybe instead of her literally just watching Rika’s loops, she could instead just be stuck using her looping powers to try and figure out how to create that ‘perfect world’ in the first place, by personally investigating all of the different tragedies and how to prevent them.

-Staring the second cour, a third arc where we basically just get to see those loops Satoko goes through, and her whole process of solving the tragedies and ‘purifying’ characters like Teppei and Takano, until we eventually see her perspective on the first arc, and how she reacts to Rika ultimately rejecting the world she tried to make for her.

-A fourth and final arc which is basically just Nekodamashi + Kagurashi, where she just totally snaps and tries to just torture Rika into never wanting to leave the village again, and eventually Satoko gets exposed and they have their direct confrontation with each other.

With that sorta story structure, you’d keep all the relevant bits of Gou/Sotsu as it is now, while being more focused on Rika and Satoko instead of doing kinda half-assed reruns of the Rena and Shion arcs. It’d also push the big cliffhanger between them until near the end of the show, while still revealing to the audience relatively early on that Satoko’s the culprit.

I’d also like them to do more with Satoshi and Shion, so maybe like with how Teppei gets redeemed and Satoko almost gets to have a happy life with him in Tatariakashi, the central question arc of this hypothetical story could also involve Satoko making sure that Satoshi wakes up from his coma, and Shion also gets to have a good relationship with all of them. You could probably do something interesting with the idea of Satoshi and Shion being in the camp of not trusting Teppei and his whole redemption arc.

Honestly I could spend a long time talking about how I would have done things differently, lol. For one thing, I think the Akashi arcs would have been much better if they just changed it so that Satoko used psychological tactics to make people paranoid, and we completely cut out the whole syringe plot device. I get how it fits with Satoko’s whole certainty gimmick, but it made those arcs way too predictable. Even if we knew the outcome, it’d at least be entertaining to see exactly how Satoko might go out of her way to set up the different tragedies. We kinda got glimpses of that sorta plot point in Wataakashi when things seemed to go outside of her control, but they didn’t really do much with it.

Anyway, this is a whole lot of words to say that I think that in spite of the serious structural issues going on, I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is fine, and was at least working with a lot of perfectly good ideas that could have been executed much better.

Also, on a side note, that one scene during their fist-fight at the start where the art-style changes a bit was kinda weird, but I really liked how it looked, and part of me almost wishes the whole show looked like that, lol. I like Akio Watanabe’s character designs, but I feel like that sort of stylized, almost TWEWY-ish art style would have been really fitting for this series, especially in the horror/action parts.

Oh, and the new rendition of You was so good it almost felt emotionally manipulative, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu #this got kinda long but I still feel like there's so much more I could say about this if I wanted to

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linkspooky · 4 years ago

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Series I’m Reading in 2021

My favorite manga all come from Shonen Jump. A lot of series ended last year, and a lot of new series started, so I thought I’d do a post with a quick recap of all the manga I’m currently keeping up with in jump, and my favorite things about them.

My Hero Academia - My two favorite manga are both reaching the ends of their biggest arcs yet, and that’s been exciting but also exhausting to read week from week.

MHA’s strength lies in its ideas and the scope of its ambitions. There’s few stories in shonen jump that work with such broad ideas, in trying to define hero and villain and giving the villains so much depth that the main character’s ultimate foil Shigaraki Tomura, feels more like a deuteragonist to the story, a second protagonist for the other side of the story rather than an antagonist.

It’s a creative story, with neat little ideas. Giving an entire arc to the villains was taking an actual risk. From a story that began wrapped entirely around Deku’s perspective, the story has evolved to balance the perspective of multiple different characters who all come into conflict with each other. The best part of the war arc is that there’s no real good guys in a story with clear and distinct entities that label themselves “heroes’ and “villains.” The heroes are allowed to have impure motives, and do impure deeds. The villains are allowed to have noble motivations, and genuinely care for one another. This is all good because it’s not boring. A boring, simple, story where good defeats evil has been told a hundred times, My Hero Academia shines the brightest when it tries to do something different.

Jujutsu Kaisen - If MHA’s strength lies in creativity, then JJK’s is in technical execution. If you compare the first 27 chapters of MHA and JJK just in the way that they develop the stakes, story, and ideals, JJK accomplishes a lot more in the same time.

I’m not saying JJK is better, just that it tells its story better in some ways. MHA is in the middle of a tournament arc, whereas in JJK we see the first major emotional blow of the story. A character which was set up to be saved, and who everyone expected to be saved is instead killed and this has permanent ramifications for both Yuji’s development and the threat the villain presents.

That’s why the Shibuya Arc has so much impact , despite only having 100 chapters of build up before it. Jujutsu Kaisen introduces a lot of characters, and then quickly develops them and the ideas that surround that character in a way that it feels like every time they’re on screen they are growing and changing in a way. It’s because things are continually changing in the story all the time, that every single time the story hits you it feels like a gut punch. There’s no one safe, no status quo, just a world that you know is going to change by the end of the story. Jujutsu Kaisen is good. Everyone should read Jujutsu Kaisen.

Mission: Yozakura Family - Katekyo Hitman Reborn used to be one of my favorite manga in shonen jump, which gave me a weakness for manga with big mafia families where everry single character has one special quirky and eccentric power.

Yozakura Family is also reaching a similiar pont that Reborn did, where after a year of publication it’s not doing well enough as a weekly gag manga and is starting to focus to a more serious with an overarching plot, and a fighter. The main female and main male protagonist have a relationship that actually develops which makes me soft for the two of them because I want to see the story improve and see where the author wants to take them.

Our Blood Oath - There’s been a trend towards horror series in the recent newcomers in jump, which is great because I am all about horror. A series full of vampires using their blood to cut each other up is an easy sell to me.

Stories in jump generally don’t tend to develop until they’ve lasted an entire year, but I like a lot of things that Our Blood Oath has started with. I love the series focus on adopted family, and the relationship between the two brothers. The main character genuinely acts like a bratty younger brother, and wields unlimited power exactly like a twelve year old swinging around a blood scythe would. Which is to say, very badly.

Phantom Seer - Another newcomer series that leaves a strong impression. The things that the series has going for it so far is a really strong main character, who’s a pretty far deviation from the standard shonen protagonist of “I want to save everyone.” Rather than wnating to be the strongest, or wanting to be a hero, he just wants a normal life, and instead gets dragged into heroics by the good intentions of the people he’s surrounded by.

The art is also incredibly strong for this series. I’m glad the artist got another chance to draw a shonen junmp series because their art really shines in both the character designs, and the curse designs. There’s incredibly unique monster designs that are equally parts horrifying and fascinating even though most of them only stick around for one chapter.

Undead Unluck - Most Shonen Manga either figure out right away what the central conflict is, other manga never figure it out. Undead Unluck is like “fuck it, let’s kill god.”

Undead Unluck has a bad start, and normally I would never say “keep reading and give it a chance” if it gives you a negative first impression, but Undead Unluck quickly fixes a lot of mistakes in the first chapter. Andy at first says some creepy things towards the main character, but the author seemed to learn their lesson and made a lot of changes later on to make their relationship into a healthy one of consent and mutual affection.

The main characters and the story premise are what sell this one. A bunch of supernatural beings going out of their way to do the impossible and kill god. The plot is almost pure chaos, but I believe the two main characters are strong enough that you want to follow them all the way through it.

Dr. Stone - The best part of Dr. Stone is trying to unravel the mystery of the premise, how the world became turned to stone. Senku is a compelling protagonist because he’s constantly trying to solve the mystery around him, the same way the audience is.

Senku is a strong character, and there are other interesting ones like Gen, however sometimes the series while being a fun adventure the characters don’t really develop that much. However, there’s nothing better for a protagonist than a good antagonist. The best part of the america arc so far has been the introduction of an antagonist and foil to Senku. Instead of trying to rule through strength. Dr. Xeno views everything as a problem to be solved through science like Senku. He just also sees Science as a tool to rule others, unlike the fairly anarchistic Senku who doesn’t care for leadership.

Some of the most interesting charactermoments for Senku lies in his interactions, his similiarities and differences with Dr. Xeno, and the fact that they’re now forced to cooperate while Senku is technically holding Dr. Xeno hostage is an interesting building tension between these two. I’m following this series for two reasons, one I’m interested in how the mystery will be solved, and two I wonder what kind of person that Senku will become when he completes his goal of restoring humanity. Senku is the main draw of the series with his weird charisma, and his unique interest in science above everything else, and I think there’s still a lot of untapped potential to mine in his character.

#shonen jump #jujutsu kaisen #my hero academia #mission yozakura family #our blood oath #phantom seer #undead unluck #dr. stone #spooky speaks

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zoufantastical · 3 years ago

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What do you think of how much more bad ass they have made Sylvie over Loki in terms of action? (I'm not complaining big fan of it) Do you feel as if the show runner herself is giving Sylvie as much screen time and moments that often eclipse Loki bc she may be a character who's main purpose was to uplift and expand Loki's character, and that was her only original purpose? As if maybe she wasn't intended to last in the Marvel universe, at least in this incarnation? Seeing how most of this show is ran by the point of view of some women, that what we have with Sylvie is what we get bc of this reason? Do u feel it would have been different had it been otherwise? Or do you feel differently then my observation? Would love any point of view.

Why First Impressions Matter

Let me just say I was ecstatic over this ask. Finally something different (not that I don’t enjoy the previous asks) that forces me to talk about something that has been lingering in the back of my mind since the show started.

If you guys could be patient with me, I would appreciate it. I’m going to deviate a lil bit and talk about a point that relates to this ask and basically explains this user’s concern.

So, my mother says that she gives a show around ten minutes or so to grab her interest. At first I thought it was a bit ridiculous, since that means she’s missing out on a lot of great potentials because of this rule. I respected her opinion of course. Now, ever since the Loki show started though, I understand why she believes in it.

Marvel is very lucky they have loyal fans like us who will eat up whatever they spoon fed us. Even amongst heavy criticism. Despite people hating on the character Loki in his show by calling him “Larry” , the writers “clowns” or calling him OOC and a sidekick on his own show (please if you have the time, read the short post I linked), I finally understand their sentiment, which in a way is misplaced because of what I’m going to mention:

The first ten minutes of the first episode of Loki could should have been better.

What do I mean by this? Two things actually.

Imagine that you are a new MCU fan and you want to catch up on the movies or someone wanting to binge watch the entire saga again. You finish the first avengers movie but you decide to deviate and watch Loki, which is based on 2012 Avengers Loki. What’s one thing that’s going to throw them off immediately? Guess.

If you did congrats.

It’s the hair.

As a loyal fan, this will ALWAYS confuse me. There’s also the fact that they shot new scenes with the overly long spiky ends wig. So…why the sudden change in appearance? I started headcanoning that traveling through space and dimensions fucks up your evil blowout just for my sanity.

Already we are on the wrong path.

Now you may think this is minor and shouldn’t matter but appearances DO matter and sometimes we don’t pick up on inconsistencies right away, however, they do stay in our minds and form this domino effect later on which is what is happening with a lot of displeased fans.

The second is this joke of a scene.

If there was any time that Loki needed to display some of his abilities we were introduced at the end of episode two and throughout episode three, this would have been the perfect moment. Loki may be cocky, petty and boastful, but he is not stupid.

He just barely escaped with the tesseract. He would not approach ignorantly and all cocky mighty, a group of people who seem to look very dangerous. This is 2012 Loki. You know the dangerous god that a group of talented individuals joined forces to stop because it would have been the end of their world as they know it? A Loki who will be on high alert because not only will SHIELD and the Avengers be looking for him but eventually the Other and Thanos as well.

What I would have done to rewrite the strength and seriousness of the TVA without outright humiliating Loki in the process, this scene instead should have been a fight scene. Loki would have been full of adrenaline, displaying all his feats only to be caught off guard by B-15 and THEN you could make this infamous scene.

We already know that the TVA agents are trash fighters and easily beaten grunts based on later scenes. A scene like what I recommended would have prepared us for that. Otherwise now we are calling the rest of the fight scenes in this show also inconsistent with what we were presented in their first appearance.

Another rewrite I would have done is NOT start off the show using the Endgame Loki escaping scene. A great majority of people watching the show are because they already KNOW this Loki escaped with the space stone. Starting off with a recap, a recap all the way to the elevator scene no less, is not only way too long but unnecessary.

To peek the audiences’ interest, one should have started with a short scene of TVA hunting The hooded mysterious Variant and the latter killing them. It could be anywhere in time. Not only would that peek ones interest and wonder who this figure is, they’ll assume they are trouble and that they might cause an issue with Loki if they were to cross each other’s path etc basically you’ll have the audience’s mind scrambled and excited. THEN after the marvel logo you can put the recap scene.

[If you made it this far, congrats, because I’m finally going to start answering this user’s question]

What do you think of how much more bad ass they made Sylvie over Loki in terms of action?

And this is why I made a big deal of explaining what I’ve said above. Is not that Sylvie is more badass. In fact, Sylvie should have more scenes than the ones we are given. It’s the fact that the Loki actions scenes started off misplaced and were not started strong enough to make an impactful expression. It’s why they are calling him all sorts of things like weak, clown, OOC, stupid, inconsistent etc even though later on he is shown to be intelligent and strong.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) Sylvie’s character has been bound by her male counterpart’s. The majority of her scenes are with Loki, whether they were fighting or developing her character. This…is not the best writing choice but given this is only 6 episodes and time is short, they are pitting these two together as early as episode two in order to establish their partnership/relationship.

This choice sacrifices character screen time so the plot can move forward. Sylvie so far has only three meaningful scenes ever since being introduced (without Loki) and personally I feel that’s not enough.

Being paired with Loki 95% of the time is why you and many believe that she is taking Loki’s shine. We hadn’t had time, as a viewer, to fully appreciate Sylvie despite her not wanting to be called or relate to the name Loki. We haven’t had time to BREATHE and actually enjoy this new character especially since the majority of her scenes she is bounded by the hip to Loki! You are also right to believe that her character seem to have been created to “uplift and expand” Loki’s character-because SHE IS! And the latest episode basically confirms that!

I wouldn’t be surprised if Sylvie is a character exclusively used for the Loki show. So far there are no plans of using her beyond the series. Which is unfortunate because it means that even with female writers behind the script, decisions were made and accepted to have the Sylvie character move and react to the plot along side a male character. It’s fine for that to happen but when it’s the majority of their screen time, then it’s an issue. So your observation is correct.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been enjoying the show so far. Not loving it but it’s been entertaining despite some of it’s…creative choices. One thing that has been in common so far in MCU series is that they aim too high with a big budget only for them to not put the same time and care on a story they want to tell.

It really is unfortunate because there are moments in the show that has been done great! But again many choices has to do with the fact that Marvel and Disney are obsessed with keeping up this schedule and milking a show as much as they can. Because that’s their brand.

I can’t tell you additionally what I would have done differently. I guess we would have to wait till the Finale for me to properly answer that question.

#Loki #Loki show #Loki series #mcu loki #mcu #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #loki friggason #Sylvie #Sylvie laufeydottir #marvel #disney plus #loki negativity #loki discourse #asks

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keiko1183 · 4 years ago

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GW Dinner Show @Gundam Cafe’ Tokyo

So last night I attended the event and it was super fun!

The event heads up here at the official website

Super long post,so...

Ok first, I was so pumped for this I choose a dress that reminds me the space and did some Relena-like hair style (though I’m not the hugest fan)

I reached Akihabara ahead of time to wander around a bit. Nothing new even if it was a while since the last time I went there (just covid- depression all around!)Then finally I met with my friend and we moved to the Cafe’.

First we had a stroll in the merchandise store but I was strong and didn’t buy anything (yet)

As you enter, they give you a face shield. It really makes it hard to eat, drink and look around you during the event, but hey, these are Covid times it can’t be helped!(You can also pay an extra fee and bring it home if you want, otherwise it will be disposed at the end of the event)

Upon entrance of restaurant area there is a display of the event related goods.

You can’t take pictures and videos inside, but basically there are a bunch of tables in front of a small stage with full screen wall.

It was Tuesday night so not too crowded, maybe around 20~30 people in total. You reserve in advance a set menu with appetizer and a main dish. There are 2 options available: Heero &Wufei team’s menu or Trowa and Duo’s team menu. Luckily there were 2 of us so me and my friend had one each (I got Heero&Wufei’s). The dinner show was from 18:30 to 20 ,1.30 hours total.

The show is an interactive one with animated characters from GW series and one real actor playing the show host’s role. Animation is more like Otome game graphics, the characters just show up one by one and only move their eyes and mouth, there is a preview video that shows it better.

As you reach your seat, the animation starts and Relena welcomes the audience as we were guests at this party night she arranged at St Gabriel’s academy. She is hosting this dinner event along with the real host guy which also shows up on the stage and introduces himself.

The welcome drink tea is served and you get your first coaster as a gift. It comes in an envelope so you can’t choose your fav character’s coaster,it comes randomly.

I opened mine and I got Trowa’s one (how lucky!!),while my friend got Quatre’s. And because she is so kind and she knows how much I like him, she gave it to me! My 3x4 heart is fulfilled!

If you order any additional drink on the menu, you can get another random coaster. I ordered Quatre’s drink, yeah again because I like him but also the drink looked delicious: mango,grapefruits and orange juice mix. As a coaster, I got Wufei’s one.

Anyway in the coaster’s envelope you might additionally find a Win ticket. What do you win, it will be explained later. Anyway me & friend didn’t get it.

Next showing up are Quatre and Duo,then Trowa,Wufei and Heero. They all are at the party because there is a secret mission for them (plus Quatre was the only one officially invited at the event, because he is an aristocratic brat eheh)

After some reunion chats - and Trowa bullying Heero because tank top and shorts are not an outfit for a party- Relena,who appearently knows nothing about the mission, asks them to cook for the audience.

They decide to split into 2 teams (Heero&Wufei,Trowa&Duo with Quatre supporting both teams here and there) and have a cooking contest to decide who can cook the most delicious and original dish.

It follows a real funny narration of the two teams wondering what to cook and asking advices to Quatre. We can see Heero sneaking inside Trowa and Duo’s kitchen for a second, pretending no one’s seeing him. Duo actually kind of notices but decides not to argue. Meanwhile the appetizer is served to us: a dish designed by Relena dedicated to the 5 pilots.

After that, there is a digest sequence of images from Anime and OAVs, recapping to the audience the original story from each pilot point of view and also including a short heads up on the main female characters (Relena,Lady Une,Noin,Dorothy,Catherine,Hilde)

Following, main dishes are served and each team does a short presentation of it, explaining the small references - such as the soup in Trowa’s team dish is inspired by her sister’s soup and so on.

Quatre points out how both teams used peppers and that makes Duo realizes what Heero was doing in their kitchen: stealing ingredients! Heero plays dumb on this one.

It follows public interaction where we decide who’s the winner by clapping hands. Winner yesterday was Trowa and Duo’s team, and the 2 of them have a short speech to thank the audience (I guess you could see also Heero and Wufei’s one if audience response is different)

But there isn’t time to relax, at this point the mission details are revealed: according to the pilot’s resources, someone attending the party is there to kill Relena. “Someone” means literally anyone can be addressed, so the guys start accusing each other of being a potential killer and..(surprise surprise) Heero punches Duo and send him K.O.

At this point the host guy (the real actor) super suspiciously offers Heero a special soup to congratulate him for stopping the killer. Heero accepts and drink it, but nothing happens...the host was expecting him to be poisoned.

However Wufei swapped the poisoned soup with a normal one while everyone was distracted looking at how Duo gets punched. So we discover that there is a sort of “clone” of the host guy who trapped the (poor) true host guy somewhere and approached the party to try to get Relena killed.

Trowa cuts down the light and the entire restaurant falls into the dark, pilots voices ask us to use any available light (like your phone’s) and point it to the killer to block him. After the guy is caught, lights back on and the true nice host guy comes back - while Duo complains it wasn’t necessary of him getting punched again.

The final part is (personal opinion) pure fan service: Relena now understands why the 5 guys all were there and feels relived her host guy is also back, however she wonders how they did caught such information. The guys explain they got it sneaking in some different schools. This is were Relena asks them to change to school uniforms to show us around.

The host guy explains us we are allowed to take pictures of the guys as they change into uniforms. As soon as the guys appear on the screen, we got our chance. It’s time for final greetings. We can only receive farewell from 2 pilots out of 5,so the choice is up to the 2 people who got the win ticket in the coaster envelope.

Our winners of the day choose Wufei and Duo, therefore we saw their greetings (I guess you can see others if you go on a different date)

This ended the show, but we all were thrilled by it!

Sad note: I promised myself to behave and don’t buy the goods except this bottle.

However I found out too late that this is available only at the cafeteria next by the restaurant, which was already closed by the time the show ended. I must go back and get it!!!

#mobile suit gundam #gundam wing #dinner show #gundam cafe #event #fun #long post

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remys-lucky-franc · 4 years ago

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I’m Bringing Sexy Back (To Regency England) - Immortal Heart Society

So this happened because I referred to new series IHS’s baddie Lord Montague as ‘Lord Timberlake’ due to the coiffuring similarities and it made @aquagirl1978 LOL and she made me this:

See how alike they look though?! I’m not crazy.

Literally no one in the world wants this fic, and it’s just stupid, but I had a giggle writing it, so 😆 Also, I genuinely know nothing about JT, if any of you are superfans and I’m way off, it’s just a bit of fun, no ill intent or offence meant 💕

Also it’s just in time for all the good old memes... (At the end if anyone needs a ref point)

Word Count ~3500 (yeah, I’ve gone off)

[MORE] [[MORE]]

In the grandiose but soulless marble bathroom of the Boston penthouse, Justin squeezed his eyes tight-shut, splashing his face with frigid water. He inhaled sharply as the moisture hit his skin, opening his eyes and staring intently at the reflection mirrored back at him. It had been quite a night so far. He’d been courted by ‘The Society’ for a couple of months now and on receiving their latest invite, he had finally acquiesced. Over the course of the evening he’d exchanged pleasantries and mingled with a fusion of intriguing individuals - all very different, very separate people, but all who clearly had gotten the memo: convince him to join. Justin suspected before he arrived, from the exclusive address on the invite alone, the sort of members The Society would have on its roster and he wasn’t surprised - even if most of them were no more than masked silhouettes. Initially when he had exited the elevator and caught sight of all those shaded faces, Justin’s heart stuttered: had he inadvertently accepted an invite to some sort of sexy party? How would he explain this one? ‘Hey Honey - funny story...’ But it didn’t take long to deduce that the disguises were all part of the prestige and served as identity protection rather than a conduit to anyone having any real sort of fun.

The mixer itself had been entertaining enough, but the hushed secrets shared in the drawing room were what had piqued his interested and saw him hiding in the restroom searching his own soul for answers. He’d been trading anecdotes with a handful of members before he was interrupter by a well dressed blonde and ushered through a side door, where he was greeted with a firm handshake by one of the top men within the society (apparently), Richard - Something. Initially Justin had smiled but internally rolled his eyes as he considered how these shady types only ever give out their first names - and how that felt particularly unfair when everyone here knew fine well what his surname was... Richard was perfectly charming and charismatic - in the same faux-caring, calculating way politicians are as they try to snare floating voters. His smile was bright and his words were warm, but his eyes were a stark contrast. The Society’s hoi-polloi were obviously deemed to have played their part in warming him up and now Richard was here to give him the hard-sell: and sell he did.

And at first, it sounded relatively normal. At first. Until Richard started with tall tales of how society members held all of the power in the world through power stones. Initially Justin got to his feet and scoffed - weren’t crystals just for spa days and hippies? This had to be a set up. He scanned the room looking for any clue of a hidden camera, Ashton Kutcher’s sneakers showing from behind a curtain perhaps - but nothing. It all sounded truly ridiculous, but as Richard stood, laying a firm hand on Justin’s shoulder, directing him towards a plush chair, pouring him two fingers of whisky, something held him; fascinated him. Stopped him from barging straight out of the room. Justin observed in silence as Richard thumbed through various documents, showing him photographs, pulling up search data online... Explaining. Convincing. Persuading. Justin didn’t trust the suave smarmy suit as far as he could throw him, but the more Richard divulged of the spiderweb of societal involvement in major global events and current affairs, the more sense it made... And in spite of himself, Justin started to succumb to this strange reality. Every word out of Clever Dick’s mouth was revelational, peeling away one layer after another, after another, until Justin’s mind was blown; his brain hurt the same way it did the first time he watched Inception. He couldn’t bend his mind around why Richard was telling him all this, or why a collective more powerful than The Walt Disney Company would want a musician to join their ranks? Richard shrugged coolly as he continued to play for Justin’s buy in, simply smiling and saying that, as a big pop star, it would be quid pro quo - a very mutually beneficial arrangement. The society had access to the best labels, the best A&R departments, they could get Justin as much airplay, fame and publicity as he wanted.

Justin couldn’t deny it sounded appealing - but what did they want in return? So far it was all ‘quid’ and no ‘quo’. He had to ask. Even the easy, practiced grin on Richard’s face couldn’t offset the glint of ice in his dark eyes and menace in his voice that chilled Justin’s blood.

“Justin, come! Everyone knows that music is what shapes the youth of today! The influence wielded by artists, the loyalty inspired by them, their marketability, it’s simply insurmountable! Think about it, dear boy? If The Society control the music, they control the populace.”

Justin cleared his throat as he sized himself up, readjusting his skinny black tie and squaring his shoulders. Richard must be insane. The Society’s logic was fatally flawed: they couldn’t seriously think that it was possible control the entire world’s population through having a singer in their ranks? It was infeasible. Impossible. But what they were offering him in exchange? Now, that was a very attractive proposition indeed. If he agreed to join, and got all of that out of it, it would be worth it? The Society would surely realise at some point that they couldn’t rule the world through the power of song? Yes, the power of a one-line harmony had already been proven by McDonald’s to sell a shit-tonne of burgers - and while it was a pretty convincing argument, selling fast-food to hungry people was one thing - but full-scale global domination?? That was something else entirely. But if he could ride along on their coat-tails and reap all the benefits until they realised just how crazy that idea had been in the first place...

—- two years later —-

Cash carded his hand through his dark hair, exasperated as he listened to Alana’s latest report, “You all understand that Timberlake is completely out of control, yes?”

Emilio grunted flatly as his head fell into his crossed arms on the table like a five year old ready to play heads-down-thumbs-up, “Yeeeeees.”

Cash bristled further as he looked to Rafe and Kiran for their input, both simply nodding back at him as though to say, ‘yes, we know.’

Alana looked down at her phone, worrying her full bottom lip between her teeth, “It’s worse than you think though, Cash.”

He was instantly on his feet staring at her, Rafe and Kiran leaned forward and Emilio raised one weary brow from his slumped pose, concern evident on all their faces.

Kiran was first to speak, “Alana how can it be worse? Richard’s vanished off the face of the earth. Justin’s last billboard count had him go multi-platinum - again, and his lyrics are becoming...”

Rafe offered flatly, “Odd.” He stood, cracked his neck from side to side and headed towards the small stove, absentmindedly filling a saucepan with water and a packet of instant noodles.

Cash shook his head at Rafe then turned back to glower at the rest of the Inner Circle, “Thank you all for the recap. It’s bleak, we know. Alana?”

Green eyes fixed the room as Alana cleared her throat and mouthed, “One hundred and ninety-four.”

Dumbfounded silence filled the room; jaws hung slack. Until Kiran broke the spell, a spluttering cough turning into an uncomfortable laugh, “One hundred and ninety-four what? Because I know you definitely can’t mean stones. We know the exactly location of over fifty percent of them? They’re safe?”

Rafe, back at the table with his ramen by now, paled as Alana shook her head at a loss for words, red curls bouncing around her shoulders, “How is that possible?”

Alana threw her hands in the air, confessing “I honestly don’t know. But he has ones that we knew the location of, and more besides.”

Cash paced the room, clearly agitated as he cursed and barked,

“That’s every stone in existence, except ours and one other.”

Alana puffed out her cheeks before huffing out the breath sharply, “Correct. He has the lot, excepts ours - and the Garnet.”

Emilio’s hand slid under his shirt, a double-check to be sure his Alexandrite remained firmly on the chain hidden beneath the dark fabric, fiddling with it like a child with a comfort blanket as he spoke, “I- I just don’t understand. How? How did he get so many without us knowing?”

Rafe shrugged as he shovelled a spoonful of noodles into his mouth and chewed thoroughly before answering, “Richard’s protege. His pet project. Nothing surprises me when he’s involved. Everything he touches gets tarnished.”

Alana sighed sadly, “Justin seemed like such a sweet guy when he first joined. I really liked him. I thought he could have been part of our Inner Circle someday.”

Rafe shot her a rueful smile before looking down into the noodles, “Same. He changed. Fast.” Coiling his fork in a thick helping, he swung them into his mouth without ceremony.

Cash pinched the bridge of his nose, stopping pacing for long enough to stare and snap at Rafe,

“What is it with you and those blasted ramen noodles??”

Rafe shook his head silently as though to say, ‘I don’t know’: he wasn’t entirely sure why, but every time someone mentioned Timberlake, he couldn’t stop himself from carb-loading. All he wanted a big bowl of ramen in his belly and he couldn’t think about anything else until he was full of noodley-goodness. He’d eaten more instant ramen in the past couple of years than he did during college, and that was saying something.

Kiran cut through the atmosphere between the two men, venturing, “So how are we going to shut him down?”

—-

Richard had been missing for months, and although all trails had gone cold and no one was one hundred percent clear on what had happened to him, there was very strong suspicion within the group of five that Justin had something to do with it. How else had he managed to acquire almost every power stone in existence? He must have dispensed of Richard and taken them for himself - there really didn’t seem, to be any other explanation. The Inner Circle had been aware that Richard was hoarding stones, but his haul had escalated significantly and quickly with Justin by his side - at the Circle’s last count maybe six to eight months ago, Richard only had sixty-five stones in his custody. The dirty duo had been busy.

Emilio shuddered solemnly as he thought about what must have happened to the rightful owners of those stones. He was at the tower with the Inner Circle, minus Cash. Cash would arrive soon, bringing Justin to the table with him. Creating a rouse of support, and then double-crossing him to recover the power stones had been deemed the only feasible plan. Emilio watched the rest of the group: Rafe stirring at a saucepan at the small kitchen set up, Kiran flipping aimlessly though a fashion magazine and Alana tapping at her cellphone. They were all feeling nervous about this, the stakes had never been so high. He scrubbed his brow as he ran through the various scenarios of what could possibly happen with Cash and Justin arrived.

He didn’t have long to wait as the door opened and laughter reverberated around the room. Cash was manoeuvring Timberlake expertly, and Justin seemed to be lapping up everything he said. A round of smiles and handshakes later everyone sat around the table, eyes expectantly on Cash.

“Justin, firstly, thank you for joining the group here today. As you know, with Richard... Let’s say, elsewhere. I’ve been standing in as the ‘interim leader’. And I’ll be frank, Justin, I always thought it would be for me, but it’s not. And it takes a lot for me to admit that. I can do the decision-making, the negotiations, but what I cannot abide is dealing with attitudes and egos all day long.”

Rafe chortled, “He thinks he should be the only one allowed an attitude and an ego!”

Justin grinned and visibly relaxed within the larger group.

Clearing his throat irately, Cash gestured towards Rafe, “Exactly what I’m talking about. Justin, my calling doesn’t lie in leading The Society. I am more interested in having a less ’public facing position’ shall we say, where I can really put my true talents to use. And that’s why I invited you to sit with us today, Justin.’

Timberlake nodded enthusiastically, “ I see.”

Cash stood, wearing a trail in the carpet as he walked back and forth,

“What are your goals, Justin? We understand you must be distraught about Richard’s disappearance, you two seemed close. Do you have aspirations for The Society’s Leadership? We’ve been observing you for some time, and feel that we could all benefit each other within this little group, everyone here wants to progress and wants ‘more’. And we feel like you may have some ideas that could help us all to achieve just that.”

Justin leaned back in his chair observing the group sat around the table. Of course he knew what his goals were. He’d never really considered leadership of The Society until recently - his mind had been consumed with his plan for ultimate pop domination over the past two years. And he’d progressed so far that it was within his grasp - and that was when he and Richard had begun to clash. Badly. Richard’s vision was so- So limited. He couldn’t see Justin’s potential past being a Society tool used to control the public. Justin knew his worth, he was more than a tool for Richard to implement as he saw fit. He felt the anger bubble inside him as he recalled the final fight with Richard. They could have controlled the entire world together: why couldn’t Richard have seen that? Why couldn’t he have got on board with Justin’s plans? As he sized up the twelve eyes watching him, he thought about the dozens of power stones locked securely in the safe in his apartment: these people could see his strength. His power. His star ascending. He leaned forward, his decision made,

“I have acquired many power stones and my plan is, to use our time-travelling abilities to go back in time and wipe other pop stars from existence, so that I am the single biggest pop star in the world today. Then with my influence, The Society will control everything. We, friends, will control the world.”

Alana and Kiran eyeballed each other as the men nodded at Justin.

Kiran interjected,

“There’s no doubt that The Society would benefit from that sort of influence, but what about all of the damage that would be done to culture and humanity without artists?”

Justin looked confused as he stared at her, “But they’d still have me?”

Kiran chewed the statement over before asking, “And who are you going after? Are we talking about Elvis? The Beatles? Frank Sinatra?”

Justin waved a hand as though he’d practiced this very conversation in the mirror a hundred times, “No, no. Only today’s artists. I can’t disrupt anyone who directly or indirectly influenced my career. Butterfly Effect and all.”

The Inner Circle nodded sagely as Justin continued, “And when my plan is complete, who, I ask you, will be the biggest pop star in the world??”

Alana glanced up grimacing, “I don’t know Justin, I mean Lady Gaga is pretty huge? Iconic, even.”

Emilio shook his head, “Right now, Ariana Grande’s the biggest artist in the world, I read it somewhere.”

Justin fixed them both with an affronted stare, “But think about it, if none of them ever existed... Then who would be the biggest pop star in the world?”

Alana and Emilio exchanged a world-weary glance as Justin cackled, “Guess what? It’s gonna be me.”

Rafe scrunched his nose, confused, speaking through a mouthful of ramen, “May? What? Are the Emmy’s not always in September?”

Cash shotshim a withering glance before grinning at Justin, “You’ve thought a lot about his haven’t you?”

Justin, visibly flattered, shrugged off Cash’s praise, “Just a little.”

Cash leaned towards Justin conspiratorially, “So tell us, what more do you need to make your dreams a reality, and how could we, as a group, facilitate that?”

—-

Over the next few weeks the Inner Circle had planned for two consecutive missions. One intricate scheme with Justin, that involved him travelling back over two hundred years to Regency England to secure the Garnet power stone from a Lady Foxworthy. And their own private secondary mission that involved luring Justin back to Regency England where there was no power stone to be found.

When the day to venture back in time arrived, Justin paraded around the tower preening in the mirror at his era-appropriate garb. Kiran had stitched it to perfection, a beautifully embroidered waistcoat over his cravat, fitted cream pants and a midnight blue, velvet long-tailed coat that really made his eyes pop. Rafe let out a low whistle, winking at Justin’s reflection in the mirror, “Looking sharp! Nice work Kiran.” This look was a definitely a step up from double denim!

Kiran moved around Justin turning him, dusting down his shoulders, “Oh hold up, you have a thread. Let me just get that for you. Can’t have you looking less than perfect!” She reached for her scissors and touched the back of his jacket whilst swiftly clipping a tuft of hair from the back of his head.

The corners of Cash’s mouth quirked upwards at her almost imperceptibly as he spoke, “Very elegant, good Sir. You look quite the part.”

Justin gave Cash a delighted twirl to show off his new threads before performing a low, sweeping bow - completely unaware of his missing locks - speaking in a haughty-sounding English accent, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Tarkhan, I am Lord Timberlake.”

Alana had to swig at a cup of water to stop herself from bursting into peals of laughter, it was like the only English person he’d ever heard speak before was Queen Elizabeth herself! Cash raised an eyebrow in her direction before addressing Justin, “You’re definitely comfortable travelling back alone, because it would only take Alana here a few minutes to change into something suitable and accompany you?”

Justin waved a hand dismissing the suggestion, quite honestly he didn’t want anyone cramping his style. It wasn’t Justin’s first time in Regency England - when he and Richard had travelled there previously he’d had a ball. He had exactly eight hours to get there, get the Garnet, have some fun in a previous era and get back - and then. Then a whole new era would begin. His era... Leader of the most powerful Society in the world and the biggest pop star in history. Justin grinned as he stepped forward, placing his hands around the ornate pocket watch and beginning the arcane chant to begin his voyage through time. The rest of the Inner Circle joined the chant, turning back the clocks within the tower as Justin’s world started to blur at the edges, drifting backwards through two hundred years of history.

After Justin was gone, a series of stealthy grins were exchanged around the group. Emilio breathed a sigh of relief, “We did it.”

Kiran tossed the little velvet bag with Justin’s hair inside to Cash - their insurance policy, should he need to be dealt with ‘more permanently’ at a later date. Today’s plan didn’t involve the singer being turned into a surprised-looking statue, just giving him an extended stay in Regency England instead... The garnet wasn’t there - in fact, there were no stones left there. It was common knowledge within the Inner Circle where the garnet was: firmly on the finger of Richard’s blissfully unaware and estranged daughter - passed down by his long-missing wife. A point that Timberlake was sadly remiss of: they all had banked on Richard never disclosing a topic so sore as his failure as a father out of pure pride and vanity - and they’d been correct...

Now there was nothing more to do than wind all the clocks back to the correct time, then sit and wait until Justin would try to get back.

—-

Seven and three-quarter hours later, the group within the tower saw a blurry portal loom in the corner of the room. Suddenly alert, they listened intently as Justin’s voice crackled through,

“Rafe, Cash, guys! Are you there? Help me! I can’t... I can’t get back! Alana?? The ritual, it’s not working, I’m not fading back through??”

Cash drawled as he examined his fingernails, looking thoroughly bored,

“Ah, so our little ritual worked then. Good to know.”

The passage through time became narrower and narrow as a sickening realisation suckerpunched Justin, panic rising like bile in his throat, “You... You did this on purpose!! You screwed me over!! You bastards!!!!”

As the portal flickered and shrunk to no more than a pinhole, echoes of the roars of their names reverberated around the room, until the gap sealed itself trapping Lord Timberlake in Regency England for ever more. Silence settled over the tower for a few moments, until Rafe glanced up at the rest of the group thorough his sweeping fringe, a smirk slowly stretching from ear to ear as he shrugs,

“Cry me a river...”

#immortal heart society #lovestruck

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