#he would bitch about how they ruined the character or the plot line or whatever the fuck

[clown-slasher]

The one issue with dating Pete is that I don’t think he can appreciate the art of “fun” bad. I show him my favorite goofy horror movies and he shits on it the whole time. Stop being an elitist fuck for five seconds and learn that bad things can be fun! FUCK!

[til-f]

PJO Show Thoughts. Episode 7: We find out the truth (not)

Alright. I just don't even know. I thought the pacing was marginally better here. Scenes flowed nicer. And I thought the dialogue wasn't so useless.

Yay!!!! Crusty scene!!!!!!

Literally right off the fucking BAT, the first words in the episode are percy explaining exactly what's going to happen, who crusty is, no shenanigans, no mystery, no fun villain scene, nothing. oh my FUCKING GOD, it's every good scene THEY RUIN IT its CRAZY. ACTUALLY CRAZY.

It's the same shit every episode. Oh, fun monster scene where the monster tries to trick them and the fight builds while we figure out who the monster is???? NOPE!!! it's actually complete bullshit. it's ridiculous. where's rick????

Okay I see the red ball. yay!

I'll live with the plot changes even though it sucks. I'll live with it. it's just bad show writing that i'm annoyed with now.

OH MY GOD WHY IS SALLY SUCH A BITCH !!! lolollollL

I did miss the scene were percy bribes charon to let them pass. why change that. why take out a fun bit like that. instead they're like, take everything charon!!! we're so stupid, just let us into the underworld so I can save my mom !!!!!

The cerberus scene was way more complicated than it needed to be lol. but I think the underworld was cool

Back to 3 pearls.... I think rick is just trying to annoy us now.

I do like the flashbacks. My dumbass is just hoping that it all transitions very beautifully into percy's fallen hero arc but these are just my dumb dreams !!!!!!

So annabeth is gone? okay

The root/regret/ thing was completely unnecessary psychology that was stupid

The tartarus, shoe bit was good

"is this our stop, or?" LOL

Hades is weird and awkward and way to cheerful. this god is supposed to be a scorned, jaded ass, lazy, arrogant, bastard, dripping with grease and jealousy and grudges.

DID YALL SEE WHERE HADES WAS LIKE, FOLDING LAUNDRY??? LMAO WHAT

Hades sucks

I just wanted the line, "I'll find your helm, Uncle. I'll return it." nope!!

I guess hades is offering to protect them? because there's going to be a war with kronos and he wants the master bolt for protection ?????? SLOW YOUR ROLL WRITERS. WE'RE NOT FUCKING THERE YET. EVEN WHEN THE WAR WAS A C T I V E L Y occuring hades didn't give a FUCK. whatever. now i'm anger. plus, nothing about how hades sent the furies.... it didn't seem like hades thought percy stole his helm, which was like,,,,, teh whole ass point. jesus christ

Poseidon is meh

Sally is meh

I guess their convo was fine, i didn't mind it. I liked when poseidon was saying that he'll be there for percy, when he knows who he is. Which is cool, even though who percy should "be" is very different to sally. I can't wrap my brain around what the writers want me to be thinking, you know?

no mention again of how they're past the solstice deadline??? you'd think that would have been a bigger deal but OKAY

ares is the best god by far at this point

overall, I really shouldn't be spending so much of my limited free time writing these long posts about the episodes, when I have been getting well, not a whole lot of pleasure watching them. but these characters are still my babies, and I will continue to support the making of the show even though it's blowing chunks. Rick

See yall next week for episode 8: Where's the Damn Fishing Chair Throne

[talkingbl]

The Good and Bad of Unforgotten Night

SPOILER WARNING.

The Good

The trope was well-executed. Mafia stories RARELY miss for me, and this one was no exception. This show had some of the more realistic mafia plot lines and portrayals I’ve seen in BL. I really enjoyed how competent Kamol and his people were. Kamol felt like a natural mafioso and in the mafia-related scenes, his people acted with the same level of professionalism you’d expect from the right-hand men of a powerful mafia don.

The relationship between Day, Itt, and Kim. I thought it was really cool for the show to twist the scorned lover trope on its head. Yes, Kim started off jealous of Itt, but it was only as a result of the natural progression of getting over a heartbreak. Once we were past that, it was clear that, despite the awkwardness, Day was not going to leave or cheat on Itt with Kim just because Kim is our hot lead who is shacking up with Day’s boss. There was never any dramatic 'let’s get back together just so I can ruin your current relationship and have it all be for nothing’ plot from Day toward Kim and Kamol. It was actually a very realistic and mature portrayal of what happens after two adults break things off and decide to be friends.

Head Bitch in Charge, Kim Kunanon. Hands-down the most intriguing part of this story was the dynamic between Kim and the rest of the mafia family. The moment Kim became a target of Kamol’s affection, Kamol ordered his people to obey Kim’s word as if it were his own. Kim became an extension of Kamol in this very real and tangible way. On Kim’s first night in Kamol’s house, after he meets everyone, Kim starts making friends as if he’d been there the entire time. He takes Baiboon under his wing, tries to start making changes around the house re: everyone’s roles, and tells his security to go find hobbies lmao. Even more, he defies Kamol in front of the entire inner circle. Now normally things like this would take me out of the story. After all, a powerful mafia boss isn’t going to let anyone disrespect him in front of his subordinates. But what makes Kim’s actions work for me is that there is always this underlying feeling that everyone perceives Kamol as in complete control--that Kamol is simply allowing Kim to make orders and change Kamol’s plans. And it’s not that Kamol is abusive in this way--quite the contrary. He’s allowing Kim to do these things out of love and respect. He understands that there is a give-and-take in relationships and that this is one relationship where, despite having control over the situation, he must give Kim space to control the environment in order to receive the gift of Kim’s presence within the environment. I love this dynamic. This simple touch elevates Kim’s character in the story and it makes Kim an active, rather than reactive character (something many mob boys and wives in these stories often succumb to). It signals to the viewer that not only are Kim and Kamol equal in the relationship, they are, in essence, one voice. Another thing I love about this dynamic is that it implicates Kim in the mafia business. He is, in many ways, more powerful than even Kamol in the business. Think about it like this: the enemies are at the subordinates’ beck-and-call, the subordinates are at Kamol’s beck-and-call, and Kamol is at Kim’s beck-and-call. Kim is the final boss that everything must go through. We see this most clearly when 1) Kim tells Kamol not to kill the enemies and 2) Kim tells Kamol to quit the mafia life. Immediately, Kamol complies with everything Kim requests, even if he does so while claiming he’ll only “consider it.” At the end of the day, we all know that Kamol is going to do whatever Kim tells him. This makes Kim the most powerful character in the story, despite often being the character that lacks the most direct control in the story. Yet another aspect of this that I find interesting is how this dynamic affects Kamol. As I mentioned, Kamol is like putty in Kim’s hands. At every moment you can tell that he is holding back from his original nature because of Kim. You can also tell that he wants to share everything with Kim. In fact, one of my favorite lines is when Kamol says to Danil: “Kim is my lover. My house is his house.” This is only one of many times throughout the story that Kamol either insinuates or flat-out says that what is his is also Kim’s. Yet it feels distinct from the idea of “what’s mine is ours.” It feels like Kamol is actually saying, “no, what’s mine is literally only Kim’s.” It’s the idea that there is not “sharing” in the traditional sense. Instead, everything “shared” ultimately becomes Kim’s, because Kim’s thoughts, feelings, and well-being are the ones that Kamol is concerned with--not his own. This is an incredibly subtle, powerful, and intriguing character expression from Kamol and character dynamic between him and Kim.

The redemption of Cherry. After setting her up to be the bad guy, I am so glad she came out on top and that Kamol never disrespected her and she never got chased away. We need more BLs where men and women are true friends--it’s just more realistic that way.

Kamol asking for unconditional consent during sex scenes and only proceeding once he has it. That’s it, that’s the post. (Now there is some debate over whether Kim could consent in some scenes but honestly, it looked 100% like he could at each of the moments I can remember).

Kim as nurturer. Oh boy, where do I start? From Kim and Baiboon to Kim and Salmon, and even to Kim and Danil, there is so much character development on Kim’s part as a nurturer. When he moves into the house, he immediately wants to relieve Aunt Nee from her duty so that he can cook and be the caretaker of the house. When he meets Whipped Cream and Kemo, he wants to feed them and care for them as if they weren’t 300lb wild beasts with their own caretakers. When he meets Baiboon, Baiboon automatically fills a younger brother/son type of role. In fact, Kamol says at one point that Baiboon is Kim’s son. And then, there’s Salmon. Kim automatically connects with this child and seems so taken with him as if he was interacting with his own flesh-and-blood. Even toward his enemy: Danil, Kim reads this man like a book and instead of fighting fire with fire, he tries to get to know Danil and comfort him. He steps into this very empathic and supportive role that is just never seen in BL. But what’s more interesting than all of these acts of care and kindness, is just how much Kim wants a family. Not only does he sometimes have to take care of people, he actively wants to care of someone. And more specifically, he wants to take care of a child or a childlike figure. He wants someone he can baby and pamper, cuddle and nibble--like a parent with their child. And this is not just in the subtext. In many scenes, he is outwardly jealous of people who get to do this. In fact, perhaps the most telling moment showcasing this (and probably my favorite moment of the show) comes in Ep. 7 after Kim has spent significant time observing Day and Itt with Salmon, he says to Day and Itt “You guys are like a family.” Itt responds, “How could we be a family? I’m a man.” To which Kim says, “So? You’re Day’s boyfriend. [. . .] I like the familial moments between you guys. It’s cute and lovely.” I also want to note here that though the translations all say something like this, with my limited Thai, the literal translations feel even more direct... (Kim literally says “You guys really are like father, mother, and son.” And after Itt responds that he’s a man, Kim says something like, “It doesn’t matter that you’re a man...you’re his lover, right?”) That moment was so incredibly special to me and very telling about Kim’s character. I mean, throughout the show there’s these little nuggets hinting that he wants a nuclear family and it is so incredibly different from anything I’ve seen in a Thai BL. It got to the point where I was literally yelling at the screen: give this man a baby!! He wants a baby! Let him have someone tiny and squishy to call his own!!! It was so very well done and refreshing, and I wish we could see this type of characterization more in BL.

The Bad

Shoes and outside clothes on the bed. Now this isn’t super rare in BL but it’s gross and takes me out of it every time I see it.

Sometimes the acting was too soapy or even stilted.

Cartoon supervillain Danai. I mean it would’ve been okay if he weren’t so over-the-top dramatic (see #2) or so unrealistic as a mafia boss. Worst part of the show for me hands-down.

The intimacy and the sloppy portrayal of BDSM lmao. It wasn’t that they did anything improper, it’s just that it was so incredibly unsexy. And while I’m not in the camp of people who think Yoon and Ton have anti-chemistry, I do think that there’s something about the way they were (or perhaps weren’t) coached in intimate scenes that made them so painfully bad. Like the kiss seemed dead, the so-called sex had no actual (? is that the right word lmao) sex, and the BDSM was like someone read 50 Shades of Grey and decided to cram all the worst parts of the already poor exploration of BDSM into 2 minutes of sexy time. I’m left wondering how much better this show would’ve been with LITA or KinnPorsche level sex scenes (the answer is: much).

All-in-all I honestly enjoyed this entry. So many people hate-watched it and would report back with OTT complaints about the lack of chemistry and the acting. Naturally, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and was a bit shocked when I got so hooked so quickly. The show wasn’t nearly as bad for me as others found it and those saying Yoon and Ton have “anti-chemistry” are reaching lmao. Could they have done better? Hell yeah. MUCH better. But they were good enough for what the story was giving and honestly were better than some of y’alls favorites 👀

Anyway, bye.

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

watched s11ep1

i will provide you with a quick review before i disappear back into the ether of twd avoidance

lots of spoilers under the cut. also i wrote way too much and i worked all night and haven’t slept so i didn’t bother to reread literally any of it, so it might be completely nonsensical, tho if you don’t expect that from me by this point idk whose blog you’ve been reading

enjoy:

hokay, first off, i’ll start by saying that i enjoyed it more than i expected to. i’ve been avoiding any sort of discussion about stuff, but my google algorithm is so fucked at this point that i still get recommended articles and stuff every now and then, so i was already pretty aware of what i was walking into, and was expecting it to be eh, but actually i prob enjoyed it more than i enjoyed the finale

(don’t get too excited tho, the finale was rly boring lmfao)

anyway

episode starts off with a tense scouting mission

it takes .005 seconds into the episode for caryl to exchange a look of longing, establishing that they are still having weird conflict and are both too fucking stubborn to do anything about it even tho they hate it desperately

i imagine that will continue for a while

rosita, kelly, carol, maggie, what’s her face with the bad hair, and lydia (i think that’s everyone?) lower down to some army bunker or something, where a bunch of walkers are taking a snooze, and the girls are very respectful of walker naptime, and do their best not to wake them up

obviously they eventually wake up, but i’ll get to that in a sec

as they’re tiptoeing through the walker tulips, there’s this split second where carol spots a machine gun, and looks at maggie with a face like, “can i plzzzz, i am mad horny for that machine gun,” but maggie tells her no. (i 110% expected her to defy orders and accidentally wake up all the walkers, but she actually behaved herself for once. well. mostly)

never fear, tho, after the girl gang collects a bunch of MREs they go back to wait for the dudes waiting up top to pull them up, and bc men ruin everything, one of the ropes break, and daryl catches it before it falls, but then a slow motion drop of blood falls on a walker’s face, and just like that, walker naptime is over, and carol uses her bow and arrow for two seconds before she is like “fuck this” and whips out the machine gun

yes, she is super hot using it

yes, daryl watches her do it

anyway, all the other girls get rescued, and carol is about to be pulled up, but bc she is a #girlboss, she first makes a beeline for one more crate full of MREs. daryl covers her while she gets the loot, and when she gets back up top they have another charged moment as carol hands him back his knife

just fuck already, jfc

titles!

cut to alexandria where everything is still not smilestimes

BUT, we do get to see uncle daryl run and hug rj and judith (and dog), and FUCKING HERSHEL JR, LIGHT OF MY LIFE is also there

istg, they could not have casted a better child, i a d o r e him

oh, and some friends of maggie’s show up too, idk

cut to a staff meeting where everyone is like, whomp whomp, we’re all gonna starve to death unless we figure out something quick

cue maggie going, “oh, i know where food is, but it requires me to tell you my tragic backstory, in case anyone didn’t watch my bottle episode”

she tells her dramatic backstory about all her friends getting slaughtered by the reapers for no apparent reason, and then she’s like “anyway, let’s go back there!”

no one thinks it’s a great idea, but a group of people decide to go anyway, including daryl and gabriel. rosita is super pissed that gabriel is going, and carol doesn’t go, probably partly bc it’s a shitty fucking idea, and also bc they have to keep caryl apart bc otherwise they’ll fix their problems ahead of schedule and they won’t be able to drag out the needless angst

daryl looks kind of annoyed that carol doesn’t volunteer to go 

bitch, i thought you wanted her to stop putting herself in the line of fire! make up your damn mind!

moving on

cut to a thunderstorm, where, if you look closely, you’ll notice daryl is wearing the STUPIDEST hat i’ve ever seen. just get an umbrella, jfc

for some reason negan is with them, bc ig he knows his way around washington dc, and no one in six years has bothered to figure out how to get around the city and/or get a map, and he is like “hey guys, maybe we shouldn’t try to walk in this fucking hurricane,” and everyone is like “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” 

this will be a common occurrence 

but eventually daryl is even like “actually, it’s rly unpleasant out here, and my hat is mad stupid, can we go inside plz?”

so they go inside an old metro station, which is actually a rly cool cinematic choice. i rly like the idea, and they executed it rly well

speaking of executions

there are some fucking RULL CREEPY walkers. idk why they bothered me so badly, but they were what they at first assumed were corpses wrapped up in tarps, but turns out none of them had been properly put down, so they go through killing these rotted bodies that had supposedly been there since The Fall, and it’s very gross and cool

this entire time, btw, negan is like “hey, i know i’m a shitty person, but i have some rational arguments about why we shouldn’t be doing this right now,” and everyone is like, “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” and he’s just like “god fucking damnit”

(i forgot to mention that at one point, when they’re headed into the metro station, negan is trying to warn ppl of the potential danger, and everyone is ignoring him, and he tries to talk to daryl, and daryl is like “fuck you, you think we’re BUDDIES?” and negan is like “oh, ok, so you’re gonna be like that too? fanfreakingtastic” and it’s very funny)

anyway. a fat monster zombie escapes its tarp at one point, and tries to eat some npc, and negan saves him, again is like “hey, anyone else realize that this is a FUCKING BAD PLAN?”, and everyone is like “we don’t care, you’re still shitty and we’re not listening to you, and you don’t actually care about random npc i would literally not be able to pick out in a lineup bc his face is so generic, you’re not the boss of us!!!”

it’s at this point that negan finally is like, “why am i even here? bc i know how to get around washington dc? do none of you have a map?” and i was like, “right?! that’s what i said!” 

it’s then revealed that maggie only brought negan along to murder him under the guise of “oops, he got hurt in the line of duty, it wasn’t my fault,” and daryl has this look on his face that says, “i seriously need to stop hanging out with lethal women bent on revenge bc it’s gonna give me high blood pressure,” and maggie has a badass moment where she points a gun she has for some reason at negan and is like “i have like, one shred of human compassion left inside of me, and if you keep pushing me i will fucking kill you without a second thought, so shut the hell up”

(in her defense, negan had just dropped glenn’s name to purposely antagonize her, which was rude as hell)

(for the record, i’m completely on maggie’s side here, but negan still is right that trapping themselves in a metro station is a bad call)

anyway, moving away from that briefly

i think this jump cut happens sooner, i don’t actually remember, but whatever who cares, point is, we get to the part of the show that actually matters, and that’s anything involving my love, juanita “princess” sanchez

and also eugene, yumiko, and ezekiel

they are being asked increasingly invasive questions by commonwealth ppl, some of which i wish they actually would of answered (what do they use to wipe their asses with?? surely toilet paper has long since become extinct)

zeke, who is so much more tolerable as a character now that he’s not larping as a king, has this incredibly weird and sort of sexually charged moment with a dude in an orange stormtrooper costume, where he’s like, “i bet you were an asshole cop back before The Fall, you stupid fascist, #fuckthepolice, mb literally? idk, this moment has a lot of pent up aggression that could easily translate to hate sex, it might just be the intense eye contact, but w/e, let’s just move along,” and then he has a coughing fit to remind the audience that he’s currently dying of cancer, and orange stormtrooper is like “lolz, loser, drink some water you dumb piece of shit”

cut to the wholesome foursome sitting at a picnic table in a guarded courtyard eating gruel, and yumkio, who finally has a personality, and princess are like “hey, this place fucking sucks, can we leave?” and zeke is like, “yeah, i met this orange stormtrooper who i think might be dtf and/or murder, so we should probably bounce”

but eugene is like, “but i want some hot stephanie ass, and also some bullshit excuse about how mb commonewealth will save alexandria” which, they left before things went super downhill, right? idr. it was after hilltop fell, but they don’t know alexandria got fucked either, if i recall? w/e, not important

two seconds after he says this, they talk to some people who are like “we’ve been here for four months, or maybe it’s been nine, i don’t actually remember, i’ve stopped processing the passage of time,” and the wholesome foursome takes this as a bad sign, tho that’s just the life i’ve lived as a night worker during a pandemic, so i was like #mood

but then they watch some guy get dragged away screaming to get “reprocessed” and eugene is like “ok, nvm, let’s bounce”

(my theory on what “reprocessing” is, is that they’re stuck in a room and have to watch hours and hours of customer service training videos on vhs from the 90s)

i definitely got my jump cut scenes mixed up bc i think the negan accusing maggie of a murder plot thing happened in between this scene and then the next commonwealth scene, but w/e, i’ll just finish what happens in the commonwealth arch

the wholesome foursome are trying to hatch a plan to escape, except princess, my love, is distracted watching some stormtroopers flirt, and the other three are like “wtf, dude, how can you even tell any of them apart?” and princess then tells them every stormtroopers backstory bc she is brilliant and pays rly close attention to shit, and the other three are like, “this is useful information, thank you for being an insane person”

their plan involves yumiko and eugene dressing up as stormtroopers and leading princess and zeke out of the place, which works fine actually, except on their way out they come across the Depressing Wall of Probably Mostly Dead Missing Loved Ones

they’re about to leave, when princess is like, “wait, yumiko, you’re on here, that’s weird huh?”

sure enough, yumiko  is on the wall, with a note from ig her sister 

the scene ends with yumiko going, “guys...i can’t leave...i have tragic backstory to unveil”

tragic backstory to be continued ig

back in murder metro town, npc and some other npc have stolen all the supplies, there’s a train blocking the track, and a horde of walkers are coming towards them, so things are not going fantastic

they horde is too big to take down, so they start to climb on top of the train car to get away

but dog runs away!

and daryl, being every pet owner ever, is like “gotta go get my dog, guys, try not to get killed while i’m gone, c u soon!” and he ducks under the train and disappears

#priorities

the episode ends with maggie climbing up the train car but getting grabbed by a walker and dangling off the edge, and negan is there and they have a lion king moment where maggie is like, “scar! help me!” and negan is like “long live the king, bitch” and walks away into the shadows, leaving maggie to a potential death

which, while i know isn’t actually going to happen, would be a really fucking funny move on the writers’ part

like, “look, lauren’s back! and now she’s dead, bet you didn’t expect that!”

anyway

my assumption is negan will actually end up helping her up or something, continuing his ambiguous morality bullshit that actually isn’t ambiguous bc he BEAT GLENN TO DEATH WITH A FUCKING BAT WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE IN FRONT OF HIS PREGNANT WIFE

the maggie/negan arch is kind of dumb, but whatevs, i’ll tolerate it, as long as my boy glenn gets justice in the end

anyway, cue credits!

final assessment: good episode. i’m much more interested in commonwealth than the reapers, tho i am hoping that daryl’s personality-less ex turns out to be a monster killing machine with no conscience, that’ll be fun. princess is a gift from god. hershel jr needs his own tv show. needs more carol (and caryl)

the end! going back into my walking dead free chamber! see you next episode!

-diz

[kuh-boose]

My thought on the Halo Show/Series (I hate it)

First of all, I wanna say that if you pay attention and read the books at all, Master Chief is a compelling character with complexities worth exploring. Further, I've seen someone  (snowing-in-cyberspace) say that for something to feel like Halo there is a main theme: sacrifice in the name of continued hope.

That's why 5 felt so out of place. There are these horrible odds and it looks like no matter what you do, in the long run humanity is done for. But you keep fighting, you keep sacrificing to keep going because that's all you have and to stop fighting is not an option. I just don't see the show going there, certainly not skillfully. Master Chief himself has seen this over and over and over and over again. He's made those calls, Halsey has made those calls with children. The show feels like it wants to use Halo and Master Chief to cheat. Cheat it's way through story lines by throwing out what were supposed to be climactic moments too soon, probably with the idea that anyone that knows Halo would recognize the weight of it for those characters without having to put in the work themselves. Cheat it's way to profit by riding the money that follows Halo. Cheat it's way into world-building and concepts so they can make their own story without having to establish a world. None of this works.

Now into me just going piece by piece and bitching, cause they didn’t just ignore the lore, they spit in its face.

 First and foremost. LET HALSEY BE A BITCH. Halsey is a stone-cold, secretive bitch. The shows “Halsey” was anything but. And why is she young? Halsey was quite old by the time the war with the covenant started. And they make her borderline stupid? It feels a lot like they're telling us she's smart without bothering to show it. Why is she dumb enough to keep a project she shouldn't have where anyone who walks into her lab could see it?

I like Kwan, she’s cute, she has cool character potential, but why the fuck is the UNSC so bent over a teenager? Like? Lock her up? Don’t give her a broadcast camera? Indoctrinate her? Interrogate her for intel on the Innies? The insurrectionists already don’t like UNSC, she’s not gonna change their feelings about it. Let alone that the Innies are already getting their shit rocked by this point cause the Covenant were glassing the outer colonies first. Also, they apparently can wipe memories in this timeline/universe/shitshow, so why is she a problem? Why is this the plot? I get you wanna do a “aw he is a person” plot, but this isn’t how you do it in this world with this character. And it’s just stupid. You don’t have to make the military kill a kid for no good reason to establish that they’re morally grey. I mean shit, just establish two out of four Spartan programs. 

Cortana was a SECRET project (and Halsey was competent enough to keep it hidden). Halsey made clones of her BRAIN to create her. And I just KNOW they’re gonna use this to give Cortana a body. I can fucking see it. And it's stupid because that’s a whole moral theme in the games. If she’s human despite being a machine, if he’s a machine despite being human.

 Forerunner artifacts aren’t some deus ex machina that magically power ships when needed. And in most instances they go to the artifact first, they don't just have people deliver that shit unless needed. And Magdirl... whatever the planets name was, doesn’t look like it’s populated? I mean the people were practically Mad Max motherfuckers by the times standards, so obviously there isn’t much of anything preventing the UNSC from setting up shop and studying that whole ruin.

Why do the covenant have a human in a position of power and respect? Like, they’ve had humans among them, but they’ve NEVER treated them well. They’re always prisoners. Even when Halsey defected to the Covenant (at least I guess that's what's implied), they weren't exactly nice to her. They barely respected her. 

 Why is Chief with Silver team? Like I get that’s not impossible, but they couldn’t even give like a quick line explaining it? Especially if they’re going to use this emotional stand for a friend stuff, Blue team would make more sense story wise. There was no real reason to change them and not Chief. Just follow a different group at this point. (This goes back to them just trying to cheat their way into things.)

 Why do they make it that his memories were wiped and the artifact brought them back? John was always aware of his life before. He remembered his mother. He remembered a childhood friend. The Spartan IIs were aware that they were stolen, some of them even tried to escape. But John felt good with being taken and trained because he was useful as a Spartan. These are deep emotional and interesting character questions that they trashed for the generic “he gets his memories back and fights with who he was and what was taken.” It’s stupid and shallow. AND implies that John only values human (Kwan’s) life because of the artifact “waking him up.” When that’s just not true to his character. John has always been very aware of the value of human life, he is very sympathetic. He is gentle with wounded marines, mindful of how intimidating he is, handles fragile (unenhanced) humans carefully, and chose to hide Johnson’s medical condition to spare him death and autopsy. At the end of Halo 4, John basically says that he sees himself only as a servant to humanity. This is a man who loves his fellow man and his comrades with every fiber of his being. That has never not been the case. (And even if the show wanted to have some sort of change in him concerning this, they rushed it too much to be worth anything.)

 WHY IS JOHNS HELMET OFF AND WHY DOES HE KEEP IT OFF. Like no? And why is John talking so much? Like I get it, he can’t be borderline silent like the first games, but he’s certainly not chatty. Even in the books he's not chatty. And not with a stranger. He was more chummy with a strange insurrectionist than with his own team. He gave up mission info. He was speaking about things he didn’t need to. This man was raised from six years old to be a soldier, he would not be doing these things to a rando, especially not this early in his career. Let alone that John is a blunt person and speaks in a brief manner and there was no reason to change that. We don’t need to see his face or have him be a chatty Kathy to realize he’s human and worthy of love. They demolished his character. And what hurts more is that John displays characteristics that neuro-divergent people related to, and they trashed those traits.  I mean, the man has PTSD and survivor's guilt, that’s why he doesn’t like being out of his armor. Why he doesn’t like removing his helmet. He knows people don’t like Spartans, that’s why he avoids talking to others or being around them. 

I will concede and say that I kind of love John failing to make a joke. We know he has really dry and sarcastic humor, and also that he’s kind of awkward. 

 What really fucks with me is that… there are books? Like they had shit already written out that they could have adapted that would have been fresh material for a lot of people and wouldn't have altered the games at all because it's more stories alongside them. And they didn’t bother. It feels an awful lot like they wanted to make their own world and story but wanted the Halo hype, so they just made their own thing and inserted Halo character names. And they went awful on both ends of it. They relied on Halo’s content to build up attachments and emotional plot beats, so they haven’t set up anything good for the show to stand on it’s own. But they also haven’t respected Halo’s lore or it’s characters. Like I said, they’re trying to cheat using Halo, and it doesn’t work. 

[immortalcoelacanth]

Between the Walls, Chapter 1: Roommates (Dream SMP fic)

I've noticed there's an unfortunate lack in Borrower AU content, and as that shit is my jam I'm putting forth the content I wish to see into the fandom XD

To quote my friend, "I do not control the hyperfixation"

Word count: 4497

Summary: At first retirement had sounded like an excellent idea. Make a house far away from everyone else, get some peace and quiet, no longer concern himself with the total garbage that was the local government. Nice things, relaxing things.… 

But then the scratching in the walls started happening.

Techno groaned as he flopped backwards into his chair, tired eyes staring into the glowing fireplace as he relaxed after his busy day. A day full of building, repairing the damage dealt by the creeper population, and…

A day spent trying to find any signs of his thief.

You see, Techno had assumed that retirement would be an excellent way to unwind from the massive amount of blood that had been shed after L’Manberg went up in smoke, as well as the aggravation he felt towards his sweet, innocent cows being slaughtered and his bunker being raided.

Raided and dismantled thanks to Phil stealing his bookshelves and in turn chunks of the wall.

It was scuffed, horribly scuffed, and left him with one option.

Relocation.

That, combined with the wanted posters Quackity had hung up demanding his capture and subsequent execution after what he had done. Honestly, talk about the biggest character arc for Quackity, going from fearing him to taking an active role in trying to end his life.

Too bad for him that Technoblade never dies.

But still, having to constantly deal with being attacked while no longer having a truly safe and secure base was troublesome, so he had sought out to make a new home far from L’Manberg and all other communities.

The isolation did not scare him, on the contrary he liked having a space all to his own with no worries about socialization or someone bothering him. Besides, Phil could always visit him if he wanted some company.

Fortunately, constructing his new home had taken relatively little time once he had found the best spot for it, and with some help from Phil, moving all the important resources and equally important fixtures of his home had taken even less time.

All in all, Techno had managed to acquire a new sanctuary away from all the plotting and scheming, although he had a feeling someone would try to mess with him at some point, and he had plenty of space to make a brand new vault. He had achieved peace and quiet, and was even in the process of planning on making a turtle farm. Surely all these positive developments would mean he was happy, right?

Well, he would be if it weren’t for the fact that there was a thief rummaging through his home.

It started with small things, like his chests becoming less and less organized over time. Yes, there were moments where he simply chucked whatever useless items were in his inventory into the nearest empty chest, but he would never clutter up chests containing important items, like potions and enchanted books.

So, finding several misplaced items as well as random blocks of dirt and stone, practically pebbles given their size, while also finding certain resources such as wood and leather missing was the first sign of something strange going on.

The next was the odd noises that seemed to come from the walls of his home. Faint scratches that would be inaudible to anyone but himself due to his heightened hearing. It reminded of a rat infestation, and he unconsciously shuddered.

Not due to fear or discomfort, but the sheer amount of work it would take to get rid of a pest infestation. At that point he might as well take his house apart and build elsewhere.

However, despite his suspicions and hypothesis, there was practically no evidence to support. There were, thankfully, no signs of rat activity, or activity from any other pests. No scratches, bite marks, signs of wood decaying, or anything like that. Other than the noise and the strangely messy organization of his chests, there was no sign of the thief.

And he had looked.

Intensely, as best he could. Logic and inductive reasoning had led him to this conclusion. There was a thief, so there had to be signs of this thief somewhere. A lack of footprints meant they must use pearls to get around. The fact that his rarer resources had not been stolen, his potions of strength and enchanted books, meant that his thief was either unconcerned with stealing things of value from him and just wanted to mess with him, or they were a cocky idiot.

… So it was either Ranboo or-

His ears perked up, cutting off his train of thought as he glanced over at the nearby wall. His eyes narrowed and he pushed himself up and out of his chair before striding over to the wall, cape swishing about behind him.

He pressed the side of his head against the wall, eyes closing as he tried to focus on where the sound was coming from. It was here! It had to be! There was something hidden in this very wall. The source of his annoyance, his thief.

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Techno readied his axe, and swung it down-

                                                   xxxxxxxxxx

There are times where Tommy can’t stop himself from looking in the nearest reflective surface and asking how he managed to fuck things up this bad. It was painful to recall the steps that had led him to this outcome, the signs obvious but he had been too stupid and ignorant to pay them any mind.

Causing trouble was in his blood, something the local borrower community had reluctantly accepted over the years, helped by how eager he was to throw himself into dangerous situations. Something that should have been concerning to the adults who watched them, taught them how to borrow, how to gather items and even hunt in order to survive, but he had learned that lesson at a very, very young age.

The lesson that no one would step in to help him if he was in danger. That he was on his own and had to prove his worth in order to stay, constantly putting his life on the line for the slightest crumb of respect.

To hear someone say that he had done a good job, to be thanked for his hard work instead of always being brushed off and ignored.

Of course, his friendship with Tubbo helped to soothe that constant within him, dulling the sting of rejection while reminding him that there was one person who truly cared about him. One person who would always be there for him, would lift him up when he was down, and jump into any situation to protect him.

Orphans had to stick together, after all.

And it was a good thing they did end up working together as the duo balanced each other out perfectly. Tommy was far more outgoing and blunt, hotheaded being the best word to describe him. He was willing to do whatever he needed, always ready to speak up when he thought there was bullshit going on, and spoke his mind freely.

It was an ironic honesty, a trait that one assumed would help to attract friends but only aided in driving them away.

Meanwhile, Tubbo was much softer in some ways. Much more reserved than Tommy, he was more of a thinker and planner. Nowhere near as comfortable with spontaneous action as his friend, but he had the knowledge and skills to reign in those impulsive actions before things got dangerous.

They were the best of friends, pals to the very end.

Even though they would never see each other again.

And it was all his fault.

Tommy had ruined everything.

The plan had been simple, easy. All he wanted to do was mess up Mrs. Brigsburry’s house. Just a tiny touch of crime and freaking the old bat out.

She deserved so much worse because of that day. The pot that had been thrown at Tubbo and how much blood Tommy had seen running down the side of his face. The bitch’s shrieks and curses as she insulted them over and over again.

Swearing they both should have died with their parents-

How was he supposed to know he accidentally left one of her rags near the lit stove, the fire within causing the piece of fabric to ignite and in turn allowing the flames to spread to the rest of the house.

It was a good thing she lived on the edge of Borrowton, the fires thankfully only burning her home to the ground.

No one wanted to live near an asshole like her.

Tommy, who had been feeling proud of himself, quickly experienced true regret and fear once the meeting started. Shouts, demands, and insults had flown through the air, many of the people he had grown up with insisting that he be tossed out for what he had done, exiled from the only home he had ever known.

It had been terrifying to see how quickly everyone had turned against him, how they refused to give him the chance to defend himself or even explain why he had done what he did. Not even Tubbo had been able to protect him from the crowd’s wrath, his attempts at standing in front of Tommy and blocking him from sight thwarted when one of the adults grabbed his arm and dragged him elsewhere.

He would never be able to forget the haunting sight of Tubbo reaching for him, tears pouring from his eyes as he screamed his name over and over. It was the last time he had seen his friend, too.

And yet, this was not the worst part of his punishment.

He had been given an hour, one measly hour, to pack up everything he had ever owned before being forcefully exiled from Borrowton. The realization of what was happening had slammed into him all at once, leaving Tommy trembling and unable to move.

He was going to lose everything he had ever known, everything he had worked so hard to build, Tubbo-

He was going to lose his Tubbo.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

No amount of begging or pleading had stopped the adults who dragged him to his shoddy, shared home. He had groveled on his hands and knees, promising to change, to do better, to do whatever they wanted if they just let him stay.

Don’t take my Tubbo away. Don’t take him away. I need him, I need him-

Smack!

The harsh sting of his cheek and the painful sensation of his neck snapping back from the force of the slap was enough to snap Tommy out of his trance. He blinked and looked around, feeling all the more disconnected from reality as he noticed the two bags that had been placed beside him.

One for food, and one for clothes and tools.

… He was really getting exiled, wasn’t he?

“You have no one to blame but yourself for this.” The adult beside him grumbled, dragging the stunned teen up to his feet and shoving him towards the door.

“Front gate. Now. And if I find you causing more trouble, you’ll be leaving with nothing but the clothes on your back.” The man sneered.

For a moment that spark of anger rose up in him, rage flowing through his veins and making his fists clench while he ground his teeth together. The urge to lash out, both physically and verbally, was strong, and yet…

As quickly as those feelings emerged, they faded, and Tommy was left feeling hollow and drained. What was the point in fighting back if all he did was get himself into more trouble. It was obvious they weren’t going to change their minds, he would be exiled no matter what, and if he did lash out-

Tubbo screaming his name as he was dragged away, snot and tears flowing down his face. Thrashing and struggling in a futile attempt to reach him.

… The risk, the damage he could do to his friend, was far greater than the satisfaction of breaking the man’s knobby nose. So, with extreme reluctance, Tommy left the house and made his way towards the front gate. The streets were surprisingly empty, he had expected to see a mob of people cheering while watching him leave, maybe even get the occasional bit of dirt thrown his way.

Treated like the trash they thought he was.

His send off lacked all formality. Only the usual guards of the gate were present, and even then they paid him no mind. He was simply shoved towards another borrower, a lady this time who, based on the immense amount of foliage covering her clothes, spent most of her life out in the wild.

God, how would he ever survive out there. Between the wild animals, the shitty weather, and the mobs that would wander the lands when darkness fell, he was doomed.

He had only ever known how to survive in his community, where you could barter for goods and depend on someone to help you. Now he wouldn’t have any of that. There would be no shelter, no safety in numbers-

No Tubbo.

Numb, Tommy was shoved towards the woman and quietly took note of the presence of the animal he could not see before. It was a fox, quite large compared to him and the other borrowers, and domesticated since it wasn’t ripping anyone apart.

… Or maybe it was just waiting until he got outside, then it would rip him to shreds. Wouldn’t want any blood splatters staining the inside of the gate.

He was so absolutely, royally fucked.

“C’mon, we gotta get moving.” The woman barked, grabbing his arm and pushing him towards the fox with little care for his comfort and the fact that she was adding more bruises to his arm. Tommy hissed in pain and rubbed the aching spot while glaring at her.

Everyone in this place was a fucking asshole.

“Alright, alright, chill the fuck out. I’m moving.” Tommy grumbled as, after a moment of hesitance, buried his hands in the animal’s warm fur and climbed up its side. A moment later, the woman jumped up to join him, taking a seat near the fox’s shoulders while Tommy struggled to pull his bags up as well.

Finally, once his meager supplies had joined him, it was time for them to set off. He had nearly been thrown off as the fox stood up, and when the animal sprinted out of the hidden tunnel and into the fading sunlight-

Well, it was a good thing he managed to grab hold of his bags before they were knocked off. He shuddered in the sudden, stinging breeze, and did his best to hunker down into the warm fur below him. He had no idea where they were going, no clue what far away biome he would be abandoned in, and quietly decided to not think about it further. The last thing he wanted to do was to start crying.

… Even if he had been ever since they first left the front gate.

He quickly rubbed at his face, trying to dry the lingering tears so there were less signs as to his degenerating mental state, and instead decided that it would be best to strike up a conversation, something that would help to distract him from what was going on.

Tubbo, Tubbo. He missed Tubbo. He wanted to see Tubbo again-

“Name’s Tommy!” He called out. “What’s yours?”

Silence was his answer.

“... Well fuck you too then.”

Much like the start of their journey, the rest of the trip was silent as the fox ran through various biomes, fields, and forests. On multiple occasions they stopped, the woman gathering some sort of herb every single time.

… Perhaps she was making drugs.

Tommy snorted to himself at the joke, mood lifting just the slightest bit before plummeting back to bedrock. God, he was tired. His body ached from sitting still for so long, as well as the general discomfort from the fox nimbly jumping from cliff to cliff, ducking around trees, and just being an agile shitbag. It was annoying and he hated it.

… Hated the fact that he was getting further and further away from his friend. Hated the fact that the fox could cover far more distance than he could ever hope of traversing on his own, and that the odds of him managing to reunite with Tubbo at some point were growing slimmer with every block they crossed.

Eventually they reached the coldest biome Tommy had experienced yet, ponds covered by ice and snow layering the ground. The snow seemed to muffle their surroundings, the only sounds coming from the snow crunching under the fox’s paws and the animal’s panting as it started to feel the strain of their journey.

And yet, for as desolate as this tundra seemed to be, Tommy spotted something in the distance. A structure that was definitely man made and appeared to be well taken care of, which meant there was someone living there.

Someone he could mooch off of and boost his chance at surviving his exile.

It had been a stroke of pure luck that he had managed to convince the borrower escorting him to change their route, practically begging her to take him to the lit house that was just barely visible through the snow.

The sounds of Tommy sniffling and sobbing since the start of their journey had probably helped to wear down her resolve to take him to wherever he was originally supposed to go.

In the end, she had agreed and directed the fox towards the house. It was interesting to see her previous confidence of navigating the cold tundra diminish the closer they got to their destination, as though she was unsettled by the house.

Strange, but then again she probably thought the same of him and how much of an idiot he was for getting kicked out of somewhere perfectly safe.

Safe aside from the prying eyes, the cruel words and harsh hands. His salvation was Tubbo and their whispered promises. They would leave one day, set out into the world and make their own home.

The moment they arrived at their destination, the woman wasted no time in metaphorically, and literally, kicking him off the fox. He dropped into the freezing snow, landing face first, and pushing himself up seconds later to cough out the chilly substance that had invaded his mouth.

The memory of Tubbo laughing as his snowball hit Tommy in the face, the other teen turning to the side and yelling about how “cold as shit” it was.

“Maybe you should try keeping your mouth shut for once.” Tubbo teased as Tommy, snow still stuck to parts of his face, flipped him off.

“Fuck you.”

Tubbo’s laughter rang out around them, and the teen kept laughing until his face was red and tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes.

… Damn, it was cold.

Trembling, he stood up just in time to dodge the bags that had been carelessly thrown his way, getting a concussion from one of his tools would definitely be a death sentence in this situation, and he promptly flipped the woman off.

“Oi! Watch where you’re throwing that shit!” He shouted before crouching down to inspect his supplies, quietly relieved that nothing seemed to have been damaged. “Fucking bitch...”

She just rolled her eyes in response to his insults and looked unimpressed as he grumbled, huffed, and got himself organized. No words were exchanged between the duo, no goodbyes or wishes for good luck, just the howling of the winds while the borrower made his way to his new home.

As Tommy had trudged through the too tall snow, he had been oblivious to the way the woman stared at the house, eyes wide with some sort of emotion. Was it fear? Not quite, it was more a combination of dread mixed with reverence, emotions fueled by her knowledge of the being who resided in this place. A whispered phrase floated through the air, much too quiet for him to have heard. It was a simple sentence that made her stance and understanding of the situation clear.

“Blood for the Blood God.”

Then she fled, leaving Tommy alone to deal with whatever fate he had stumbled into by breaking into the house.

And what a house it was.

All pretty and neatly designed, complete with various floors and tons of storage, and even some decorative flowers outside the windows, which meant Tommy had many things to rummage through. The roaring fireplace was an added bonus since the cold was one of the things he had been the most worried about.

Knowing those assholes, they had probably planned to abandon him somewhere in the tundra, leaving him alone and freezing in the cold…

Honestly, all things considered, this was a good place to settle down in. He had basically everything he needed, as well as access to some rarer resources too. It was ideal, practically perfect given how easy it would be to create small, unnoticeable entrances into each chest for him to use to snag items, but there was one downside to his new home.

His roommate.

He was tall, far taller than anyone Tommy had ever seen before, and he looked… weird. Like one of those pig monsters he had heard stories about back in Borrowton. Monsters from hell that craved gold and bloodshed. With his pig-like features, including a set of tusks that poked up from his lower jaw, he was a perfect match for those nightmarish beasts.

… But, they weren’t in hell, and this man seemed to be far less gold and bloodshed obsessed than the stories had said, even with the various scars the borrower had seen littering his body.

It was weird, he was weird, and the weirdness had only increased the more time Tommy spent in the house. Despite his regal attire, consisting of a flowing cape and golden crown, it was obvious that the pig-man was no prince or nobility. Plus there were those shitty reading glasses Tommy had seen him wearing once, stuck together with taping and looking like they were on the verge of breaking again. He was the strangest combination of loud-yet-awkward behaviour, something that the borrower actually related to quite a bit. His roommate was not “normal” and acted how he wanted, whenever he wanted, with little regard to how “improper”, “violent”, or “rude” he was.

Like Tommy…

He found it comforting to know that there was someone else more like him out there, someone else who was unlike everyone in Borrowton, someone else who would know what it felt like to be treated as an outcast, like he did not belong there or anywhere. Stuck in this new place, he did not feel as alone as he originally expected.  

He did not consider the possible problems this could cause in the future, of course. Tommy had never the best at planning ahead since that had been Tubbo’s specialty-  

But, the positives ended there as he realized that trying to survive in this relatively small, isolated house was going to be far more of a challenge then he had originally anticipated, with his roommate presenting the greatest obstacle to his success. Breaking in had been easy, actually situating himself and building a decent base within the walls of the house was downright impossible in these circumstances. At most he had managed to dig out a shitty hole close to the fireplace where he stashed all his stolen goods.

And even if he wanted to leave, it was impossible thanks to all the snow and how bloody cold this damn biome was!

So, here Tommy was, having essentially trapped himself with some creepy pig guy who owned too many weapons for comfort and was decked out like he was about to fight the whole damn world. Sure, his house was pretty nice, there was tons of food for him to steal and snack on, and the resources were plenty, but he would have rather had anyone else as a roommate in this situation.  

At least this guy was in retirement, or whatever that meant.

He let out an annoyed sigh, arms dropping as he allowed his axe to rest against the wooden floor of the passage he had been carving out. While most of the house was made out of concrete, Tommy had focused on carving passages through the wooden supports in order to have a network of tunnels he could easily move around in without being spotted. All in all, it was a good plan, even if it was a massive pain in the ass to make.

It was like every time he started making a tunnel, no matter what time of the day it was, that piggy dipshit would show up and start stalking the walls, looking for him!

… Granted, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make boar-face all suspicious by messing with his chests, but Tommy needed the resources! And it was pretty funny hearing the surprised sounds the man would make echo through the house.

His trouble making nature might have been the cause for his exile, along with some other bullshit, but that did not mean he would try to suppress it, even if it would be better for him in the long run. That was like asking to stop breathing. It was just a part of him that could only be controlled and never truly stopped.

… He missed Tubbo. He missed him so much and the ache in his chest still had not faded, and he felt all hollow and empty, without purpose-

Unfortunately for the borrower, the world refused to give him a break as he spiraled, his negative emotions distracting him and preventing him from paying attention to his surroundings.

Like the footsteps that were slowly getting closer to his location.

Without warning, the wall beside him cracked and split open, and Tommy let out a terrified shriek. He jumped backwards, dropping his axe in the process as light spilled into the carved out passage.

The now exposed passage.

A passage that had been cracked open by a certain pig man who had clearly been awake instead of asleep like he had assumed. Brilliant red eyes met terrified blue, and Tommy swallowed nervously.

Of course, of fucking course! As if the world didn’t hate him enough as is! Now he had to deal with that pig shithead who’d been tormenting him for days with his stupidly good hearing, preventing him from making any progress in creating his new home.

And of course the second he tried to make a tunnel this bastard just had to appear and ruin everything!

On the plus side, he had not actually done anything yet, although Tommy was certain things would turn south soon based on the axe the man was holding. So, he would live for now, and his shocked state allowed the borrower to make the first move.

“How do,” Tommy greeted, tilting his head to the side and smirking. “You ugly motherfucker.”

If he was going down, he would go down swinging.

                                      xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Technoblade, holding up a cup containing Tommy: So I found this, anyone wanna trade a book of mending for him- Tommy: *feral screaming intensifies*

[constellaj]

How about A for Reality Trip for the episode rewrite thing?

my biggest issue with reality trip is that its just a series of travelling around to non connected locations to get the mcguffins, and while danny’s secret being public matters somewhat, it doesn’t really impact the fact that they’re on the move too much. I also don’t like the ‘maddie and jack accept him perfectly and then he wipes everyones minds anyway’ cause that doesnt do anything. i DO like the “our summer vacation plans got ruined thanks to a ghost” angle so i want the themes of the episode to focus on danny’s frustration that nothing ever goes right and how he doesn’t even know what he wants

so i think in my rewrite:

-danny’s secret is out almost immediately, and it’s because the GIW shot him w a destabilizer and he publicly morphed (he got away thanks to shenanigans similar to the onstage debacle in canon) how this is thematic: he thought he didn’t want the secret out at all but, weirdly, a lot of the popular kids are fine with it. he’s still afraid of what his parents will think but he’s also frustrated that he had unfounded fears

-however, when danny (terrified) goes to his parents: theyre gone. freakshow has taken jack/maddie/jazz/etc and frozen them in some magic bubble bullshit or mind control or whatever so they don’t actually know. freakshow is sending danny on a fetch quest for the gems thematic relevance: he just hyped himself up for this conversation and they got yanked away

using these two, i think we can keep a similar opening/setup for the ep, ie freakshow in GIW containment until he breaks out, for setup-payoff

regrettably this still keeps the fetchquest aspect that i think makes reality trip broken in the first place, but since the first freakshow ep was about danny being evil I think it could be neat if we had some of that carried over into this. the ‘reality stones’ (since we live in a post mcu world now, we regrettably would have to change some of this, but i digress) respond highly to ecto activity or whatever, basically meaning that with every new one they get danny becomes a little more powerful. since everything is going wrong for him (see: the theme) and he doesn’t know what he wants, he starts to get a liiitttle power-hungry. A little messed up in the head.

ideally then there should be a way to work Vlad into this plot too. i’m a sucker for dadvlad tbh so let’s say that... when the Fentons first get kidnapped danny begrudgingly goes to vlad like “my mom and dad are kidnapped” and vlad may be a dick but he doesnt want his college crushes (or crush singular if i’m forced to be canon compliant) locked up so he’s helping. at first hes like “oh my boy daniel let Me hold the Magic Rocks surely you trust me haha >:)” and then later hes like “....son these rocks are turning your brain into goo.” course nobody believes him cause its all a ploy all the time forever and always

since danny’s secret is out too that means theyre actively on the run and vlad can’t always be There because he’s relatively high profile in either form, just for different reasons, so we can make him more of a “i did research offscreen and i think this gem is in x location but I can’t go there because i’m a bitch” type character

i DO like the intelligent aladdin-like ploy of ghost envy in the original but ‘ghost envy’ as a theme has to be reworked at least slightly for this, so also with danny being evil let’s say he’s feeling the scales tip especially after his reveal to the point where he’s feeling like he’d be better off if he was living his life entirely as a ghost. 

of course when they get the things to freakshow danny has the gauntlet and hes all like “im evil now and i will kill you” and sam/tucker/maybe vlad are like “but danny. you have friends.” and we get a montage/list of allusions of those times that they actually helped him on this fetch quest, like idk sam at a rock concert using loud horrible teenage music to chase the GIW out etc. they got souvenirs from everywhere they went. so danny sees this and hes like “oh noooo my humanity” and drops and in that split second freakshow grabs the gauntlet

and dannys like “oh great even NOW nothing EVER goes right for me” but because i put vlad here and because i like parallels vlad is like “so what are you gonna wimp out” or whatever he says. they probably had a somewhat heartfelt speech earlier about “why are you helping” “I care about jack and maddie being alive” “bro they hate you” “not everything has to go right for me to give a shit, daniel” or w/e

so before danny can overreact with his rage he remembers to work with what he has and pulls the fast-thinking “oh i bet you wish you were a ghost huh” trick that allows him to put freakshow in the thermos. then danny goes to get the glove and hes like “wait... no... that turns my brain into goo” and vlad is like “how about i get it :)” and danny is like “no youre evil” and vlads like “damn u caught me”

so sam and tucker actually use the gauntlet bc theyre not ghosts so their brain wont get fucky wucky. obvs they make the decision to wipe peoples memories of dannys identity but theyre also like “danny... don’t you at least want to see how your parents would react before we do this” and danny just sorta. shakes his head and repeats some “not everything has to go right for me to give a shit” line from vlad or something and of course its cause hes still insecure but also he’s okay with not having PERFECT control over everything now which is what he struggled with all episode so. character growth!

i feel like me saying “vlad should be here :)” is a staple that might lead to his character losing some of that original allure but like... honestly. vlad should be here :)

before the memory wipe dash makes out with him but that was a given

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Top 5 Character Deaths That Made Me Side-Eye the Writers

There are a lot of character deaths in TWDG... obviously. It a series about the literal dead walkin’ around and eating people, so as you’re playing, one of your favorite characters is bound to meet such a fate. To give this series credit, it does have quite a few well-executed deaths that, while I hate them, they have a purpose in the story that works. 

The best example of this is Lee’s death-- we all hate that Lee dies, but it’s well-done. It serves its purpose, it acted as both a shock and a slow-burn for the player, and left us all an emotional mess. 

However, we’re not talking about the “good” deaths today. No, we’re talking about the character deaths that are poorly executed, cheap, lazy, and just plain dumb... they’re the deaths that make me side-eye the writing team and wonder what the fuck happened there. 

By the way, it was reeeeeeal fun narrowing it down to only five deaths, because it seems like for every great death, there’s at least two bad ones.

5. Mariana and her death that ruined ANF’s potential story

I’ve talked at length about Mariana’s death and how much I hate it. Like, I get it TWDG... you love your sudden deaths and you’re so edgy for killing off a child character because you’ve never done that before... but maybe consider things a little further before pulling the trigger?

Yeah, killing off Mariana the way they did got a reaction outta people when it happened, and we got the burial scene if you stayed with Clementine... but you didn’t consider the future of this storyline? You pretend you did by name dropping Mari when it’s convenient, but then throw it out the window when it comes to characters like David or Gabe.

Listen, I know that ANF is a mess and what’s the point in telling the mess that it’s a mess? Well, I’m still annoyed at the writers for wasting the biggest opportunity for this game’s story, something that could’ve saved it from being a mess.

And I get it, you gotta make a death quota, so instead of killing Mariana off... why not kill Kate off instead? Oh no? We don’t get the stupid love triangle that no one actually enjoys or is engaged in?

Instead of this dumb story about Javi falling in love with his sister-in-law but oh no David’s back.... we could’ve had a story about Javi losing Kate and being left to care for two children by himself. Mariana and Gabe are all he has left, and he going to do whatever he can to keep them safe all while the three of them are mourning Kate.

Then David comes back, and he immediately takes these kids away from Javi.

There is no stupid storyline with Kate, but an actual conflict between two brothers who were never on the same page and two kids caught in the middle.

Plus, Mariana herself as a character really could’ve brought something to the table. She could’ve brought out a lot in David’s character since she seems to be more like Javi.

Her death is just... annoying. It’s frustrating when you know they could’ve told a better story with her alive, something ANF desperately needed.

My side-eye is one of disappointment and annoyance.

4.Luke and his easily preventable drowning

Ugh.... where to even begin? 

Luke really just gets butchered as a character throughout the second half of S2, and the writers end up demolishing the set up they placed at the beginning of the season for a Luke vs Kenny thing. 

Why? Well, Luke vs Kenny was the initial ending they were gonna go with, but because this season went through all kinds of bullshit, they scrapped that and replaced Luke with Jane... and it’s so dumb.

Hell, it kind of ruins a lot. Not only did it ruin Luke, a character that many players loved, but it forces the new character of Jane, who we only get two episodes to get to know, so they can fade Luke out. 

But that’s not all. 

His death is so... ugh. It’s stupid, okay? Stupid and easily preventable, but noooo... we gotta kill Luke off for reasons because all we know is that S1 killed off a lot of characters and we’re gonna do that again but worse because we failed to understand what made those deaths impactful in the first place. 

Lots of character death and despair = good game. 

Yep, uh-huh. Okay. 

So we all know that Luke’s leg is hurt, yeah? Great, so you’d think that the group that has an injured man and a new born baby would be extra cautious and go around the frozen lake. Yeah, Arvo says that it’s safe but let’s not take any chances. 

But no. We gotta go across like a group of dingdongs and whattya know-- the ice begins to crack beneath Luke’s feet. Now, even here, we coulda got him outta there safely... if Bonnie wasn’t a dingus. 

Think about it. If we shot the walkers who were coming towards Luke with all their weight, he could’ve slowly scooted away, even if he’s already fallen through. BUT NO. Bonnie either guilts Clementine into going towards him, adding more weight to the already fragile ice as Luke tells her to stop, or Bonnie will go over there herself... and she’s a full grown woman soooo her weight breaks the ice. 

Good job, you dipsticks. 

When you have to make your characters into morons in order to move the plot along and kill off characters....maybe do some rethinking, yeah? 

 3. Mitch and his shock-value death

This death is so dumb... so incredibly, dumb. Even now, I can’t help but give full side-eye to the writers every time one of them tries to justify this death. 

I’m sorry, but this death didn’t have the impact you wanted it to have. And because there’s always someone who says, “Mitch didn’t die for shock value, you just can’t tell the difference between a good and bad death” lemme tell you a thing. 

What was the point of killing of Mitch? Well, according to those who worked on TFS, it was to show that Lilly and the delta are serious. This is when shit gets real, and when Lilly is established as a bad bitch who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. We should be scared of her now. 

Except no. 

This scene doesn’t tell me that Lilly is a bad bitch. It tells me that she has good reflexes, and going off her reaction after killing Mitch.... I’m not fucking scared of this dumbass. If anything, this scene says more about Mitch than it does Lilly. It says that Mitch is also a dumbass for running at her like he did. 

Y’know what would’ve been more impactful? If Mitch didn’t immediately get stabbed in the throat, but instead, actually got her on the ground and struggled with Lilly. Then, Lilly gets the upper hand and when you think she’s about to send Mitch to the cart, she fucking murders him in front of everyone to prove a point. 

There’s no remorse, it’s slow enough for Lilly to actually process what’s happening and show that she does know what she’s doing. That would scare me. That would show me that these people aren’t fucking around and they’re willing to kill some of them if that means getting the rest for their army. 

You still get your shock value death but it actually does something other than kill a character off. 

I’m really supposed to believe this is the same Lilly who can order to have Louis’ tongue cut off? 

But it doesn’t end there. No, no... there’s another part to Mitch’s death that annoys me, and it’s how insistent everyone was that his death is going to have a greater impact on the second half of the story. It had a purpose within the story, we did it for a reason.

...I mean, it has an impact on Willy and his arc for the second half. 

But that’s it. 

Oh... oh, what’s that? Oh, you were referring to those throwaway lines about Tenn? “He was screwing up again, just like when he got Mitch killed.”

OOOOOH.... I see, that’s what Mitch’s death was really amounting to... some lines dealing with whether or not AJ shot Tenn. Well, I guess I was wrong. Mitch’s death wasn’t just shock value. It really had a big purpose. In fact, Mitch’s death has the biggest impact on the series. Fuck Marlon and Brody’s deaths, and Lilly and James, and hell, fuck Tenn’s death, too. They’re meaningless compared to Mitch’s death. You did it, guys. You really did it. 

....Okay, I’m done. I’m just... salty, I fully admit. 

Being serious again, Mitch’s death is probably the worst in TFS as far as unpreventable deaths go and the real reason I side-eye the writers is because they tried to tell us it was going to have this huge impact in the future and it just... didn’t. 

2. Nick and his offscreen death.

I’m sorry, but what the fuck happened here? Why- what are you- how the hell did this happen??

I’m actually baffled. 

Someone wrote this. 

They set up at the end of ep3 that Nick is shot.... then ep4 comes and we find him like this. I just... did someone on the writing staff not wanna do their job that day? Someone was working on the story and at the last minute forgot Nick was a character, so they were like “Eh, he’s not important anyway, and it adds to the shittiness of everything so we’ll pretend this was 100% intentional.” 

Nick was one of your more interesting characters and you really thought killing him off like this was the way to go, huh? 

Like, his first death is shitty, but in the very least it kind of makes sense. 

But this? 

This is horrible. If I wrote this, I’d be embarrassed. 

I just... I’m so tired of S2 right now. 

This is at #2 because it’s just lazy, bad writing. At least with Luke, Mitch, and Mariana, we got to see their deaths and they had some, even if just a little, impact on the story afterward. 

But Nick? 

Nothin’.

Even Luke, who is the closest person to Nick, name drops him maybe twice? It’s just.... nothing. 

And yeah, you can come at me with the “oh well not every death has to have meaning!” 

This is a story, okay? This is a story crafted with characters who have arcs by people who wanted it to be a success, and usually that means having satisfying conclusions.... or, intentionally unsatisfying if that acts as a natural conclusion to their story or is a reoccurring theme. 

Nick’s death is just the writers falling flat on their faces and hoping no one would notice. 

1. Sarah and both of her shitty deaths. 

Ugh. UGH.

Okay. 

I’m not even side-eyeing anymore-- I’m fully glaring.

I don’t have to tell you how shitty both of Sarah’s deaths are. We all played S2, we all know that no matter what you do, Sarah dies in ep4. You can try to save her, she lives a little bit longer, and then falls to her death... and both deaths have her being devoured alive by walkers. 

Now, this is enough to annoy me. First off, I guess my choices don’t really matter. Sure, you can justify this as one of those “sometimes you can’t save someone, no matter how hard you try” ...and fine. Sure, if they had bothered to execute that point well, then great. 

But I disagree that the writers had that in mind when they were killing Sarah off. 

In fact, I know what what going on in their brains-- “God, can’t wait to kill Sarah off! Give us any reason to do it! She’s so damn annoying!”

The writers have openly admitted that a lot of the team were just waiting to kill Sarah off, waiting for any reason, so when the major part of the community who take everything at surface level because why think? kept complaining about Sarah, they jumped on the opportunity to kill her off.... but the deaths are dumb.

Listen, this isn’t like when the writers planned on killing Lee off. You can plan a death and even be excited about it because you’re excited about the story and execution of it all. You can be excited to see the heartbreaking end of this character’s story that you crafted because you know you put everything you had into it.

These deaths were lazy and the product of a team who didn’t care about the character. Sarah dies and no one cares. 

Sure, you leave her to die the first time and Jane does her thing about how you can’t save everyone, she talks about Jaime, and then Luke exposes himself as the fake Luke by agreeing that leaving Sarah behind was probably the right thing. Like what?

Now as much as I hate that first one, the second one is even worse. 

For some reason, Sarah is standing in the corner while they’re trying to fight off the walkers instead of being inside with Rebecca... y’know, where she would be if this was logical. 

Then the deck breaks and Sarah falls, trapped under a pile of wood. Jane, despite being the one who sees Sarah as a liability, goes down there to try and help her after Clementine begs her to. 

But because the writers don’t know what they’re doing, Jane gets hit by a random piece of wood and can’t get Sarah out in time, leaving her to be eaten alive by walkers. 

Then AJ is born and no one cares about Sarah ever again. 

I just.... 

Could’ve had an interesting story arc with a character who just lost her father in such a gruesome way, a character that already deals with anxiety and other problems that you never bothered to explain other than “she isn’t like Clementine” and you could’ve had her grow. 

But I guess that would’ve taken effort.... and screen time away from Kenny, and god forbid we ever do that. 

---

Honorable Mentions

-Ava falling to her death in the most comedic way possible, made even more hilarious by David’s two seconds of mourning. -Omid.... because hope is dead. Do you get it? Hope? is dead? Because Omid means hope? Do you get it?? -Honestly you could put most of S2′s deaths on this list because oh my god. -Ben because I’m still a salty bitch.  -I also wanna add Louis and Violet’s deaths on the bridge mostly because they die, Clem is sad for two seconds, Tenn says sorry, and then no one cares. Yeah, yeah, they mourned off screen and I call that lazy bullshit. -Hell, throw Tenn’s death on here, too, for similar reasons-- no one but Louis/Violet and AJ seem to care. Even Clementine is like “whatever” after it happens. 

---

Y’know, picking this one seemed like a good idea at the time, but by now I’m just annoyed by all these dumb deaths. So, what are your thoughts? Are there any deaths that make you question the writers that didn’t end up on the list? Do you agree or disagree with my list? Lemme know, we can have a friendly discussion about it. 

Have any suggestions for future T5F’s? Feel free to send ‘em in! :D

---

Next week’s T5F Top 5 Favorite Louis Moments

[liesoverthec]

To add to your post about 9-1-1 not killing any main characters:

Killing any of them also doesn’t make any sense to the plot and cuts out a few other characters as well like killing Bobby will ruin Athena’s storyline because he’s the main connecting link between her and 118, killing Hen means cutting Karen and Denny out, same for Eddie with Cristopher and Carla (plus killing Eddie would be way too cruel for Christopher’s story). The only characters I can imagine dying are Chim and Buck but again Chim is a new dad and future captain, which is a pretty important storyline, and Buck is Buck - fan favorite and is absolutely necessary if they ever decide to develop ‘Eddie and Buck’ into Buddie. So yeah, shock factor of any of their death doesn’t worth the damage it will do to the whole plot line.

Hi anon! 💛

Yeah I absolutely agree! The thing about this show is almost that it's a little TOO well written for them to kill people off. I mean, I always think about Sydney, Hen's med school partner as an example. We've seen for her exactly two episodes, and in that time, I went from "wow this bitch can EAT SHIT" to "oh okay, good backstory, but you were still extremely rude to Hen" to "holy shit, Sydney I love you, if we saw more of you in the future I would LOVE that" when she helped Hen with her mom.

The writers are just SUPREMELY good at making us absolutely fall in love with characters who have minimal screen time, let alone the families of the main characters or the actual main characters themselves. So if they ever want to kill someone, they have to know that they’re removing that entire arm of beloved characters who are attached to them, like Denny and Karen or Carla and Christopher, or they would be removing a much needed link between the arms of EMS. And personally, I just see too many interesting stories there to kill ANYONE - if they’d killed Albert in his car crash, we wouldn’t be able to have him become a firefighter, which is a story that I’m INCREDIBLY interested in seeing in terms of how it affects Chim and his trauma over losing Kevin. Hell if they’d knocked Chim out of the show completely with the rebar, or the stabbing then we wouldn’t have Albert, or Jee-Yun, both of whom I think improve the show considerably (not that it was bad at all before, they just made it even better!). Leaving characters alive allows the writers to bring in new, interesting characters and stories that would completely die if the original character died.

Because I think the thing the show does INCREDIBLY well is acknowledge that people grow and change as human beings. And we don’t do it in a bubble - we do it by interacting with other people. And I think it’s much more interesting to say, “I have grown and changed with and because of these people, that at the end of the day, they have watched me become a better person, and they love me and support me.” And you can’t do that when you kill characters off.

(And lbr, the writers are also GREAT at making us super attached to a patient/victim in less than 30s, so I think when they need to give us that “final permanent loss affecting a main character that we the audience will also care about”, they tend to go that way instead - eg Evelyn, the cello player who died in the ambulance accident with Hen, cuz I mean, who didn’t cry over that, and we’re STILL seeing the effects of that accident on Hen today. So they don’t need to kill mains or regulars to get the same effect other shows are going for - they just need 3 minutes of backstory and then I’m A SUCKER for whatever they’ll put me through.)

As a side note though, I do sort of see the show starting to develop an overcrowding problem, and I think part of the reason for it is that they don’t kill anyone off, so we can’t remove any of those little side characters attached to them 😂 But imo, I think the show writing 100 million different, unique and lovely characters and then having to juggle them and maybe failing every once in a while, is worth them not giving us deaths just for the shock factor.

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

[jq37]

Maybe I'm also being animal racist, but a current guess I have for oMaM is that the rabbit Sly saw at the docks was actually the newspaper photographer who seems to be spending a lot of energy documenting Sly's movements at this party, and the bad lighting/state of intoxicated introspection led Syl to make a wrong assumption. (Also did you ever watch Hoodwinked? Spoilers: the reporter bunny did it)

lol hey guys. So I've been fairly MIA the past couple of weeks due to my job trying to actively murder me but I wanted to pop in for a hot second to talk about where we are theory-wise at this point in the season.

First of all, to address the actual ask, I feel like Brennan must have known Longfoot would be suspicious due to ~animal racism~ and put him in as a red herring and now we have even more info to back that up.

I suspect that what's going on with the stuff in the manor is a version of the Pepper's ghost illusion which involves mirrors to do ghostly projections and look pretty darn good for an effect that was invented hundreds of years ago. If you've ever ridden Haunted Mansion at Disney, that's the effect they use to do the waltzing ghosts (fun fact, because the effect mirrors the objects it's used on and the Imagineers forgot to take that into account, all of the female ghosts are leading in the dance!) But that's just fluff, let's talk plot.

So last week's ep threw a LOT of suspicion on Sly with him literally being painted at the villain and Grant doing absolutely nothing to defend himself. And, I'll admit, it would be pretty delicious to not only have Sly foreshadow it earlier with his coy, "Why yes, it also could have been me," and also that Grant himself would have [REDACTED] Rekha a SECOND TIME (watch the Murder Mystery ep of Game Changers if you don't know what I mean--it's my fave ep). But I talked it over with my watch buddy @camwritery and I don't think Sly is actually a baddie. I think this is a double double cross (Lol a cross from Mr. Cross). Here's my thought process.

(1) Yes there's that stack of letters Daisy found in Sly's hand but those easily could have been forged. I'd like Buck to take a look at those since he has that rogue handwriting checking ability.

(2) Squire Badger specially said something was coming to F Sly up and Sly could tell he wasn't the mastermind. Fletcher would make the most sense as to who the mastermind actually is. Like, it wouldn't be so much a twist to the audience but it would be a big ass twist to the CHARACTERS who thought he was fully dead (for the most part) and I feel like that matters more than "subverting expectations" or whatever. It's possible we find out it's actually another party guest I guess (or more likely, that some number of them are involved as accomplices) but Brennan said last week we've met all the characters and it's too late to introduce a new person at this point. And Fletcher is such a through line in Sly and Daisy's stories, it would be weird to not go for the payoff.

(3) So Fletcher is alive. We know this. What would a dead but not dead criminal mastermind want? To ruin his arch nemesis, obv. So, how do you do that? Maybe you fake the death of some mouse to create an unsolvable murder to drive him crazy? And then maybe you work with the person who the fake murder pissed off (because of Sly's inability to "solve" it) to ruin Sly because that guy hates Sly now? And maybe you involve some element of faking deaths in your plan because a faked death is what was central to the original plot that made Sly's reputation and ruined your family? That's so convoluted but this is a guy who handcuffed himself to his enemy and jumped off a waterfall. He's clearly a drama queen and he has nothing but time.

(4) I think Sly has figured this out to some degree and he's decided that letting himself get captured is the best option for him at the moment. Like, he didn't protest at all. Which, yes, checks out to his laidback, posh casual persona but I think he knows that if anything happens to anyone while he's locked up then it casts suspicion on someone besides him or it means the "murders" have to stop because no one will kill anyone while he's not active as a possible suspect due to literally not being able to murder anyone. Speaking of--

(5) Yeah, I don't believe these are murders. All those dead bodies from the list? Badgers, corvids, horned animals. That's the badger fam and their spouses. And the one guy we "knew" was dead also doesn't seem to be dead (which Brennan seeded from the start with Conor's widow hearing his voice which seems possible if she lives so close and he was alive this whole time). I guess framing Sly for a full family murder or something was the plan? But that doesn't quite check out because presumably they'd un-die at some point and I feel like they wouldn't want to live under assumed identities in animal Bavaria or something. I know news doesn't travel fast w/o the internet but they're prominent people. News would spread I assume. Maybe the death faking was to make Sly believe he was crazy? Or to believe in ghosts? Messing with a genius's mind is I'm sure one of the worst things you can do. There's also Buck's Frankenstein theory which is a little out there but they were trying crazy stuff with electricity and dead bodies back in the day. Kind of a wild pull but cam sent me this about a Dr. Squires from the same-ish time period shocking someone back to life. It would be wild and now we have some alt explanations for the electricity but gotta explore all options. And this would Constance to call her dad a madman, lol.

(6) Grant/Sly has a lot more info than us with all those maddening redacted texts so it's very likely he has some long game happening we know nothing about. I wondered if he might have known about Fletcher for a while--when Daisy revealed he was alive he was surprised but I don't remember if he was surprised that he was alive or if it was ambiguous and it might just be that he didn't tell her. I assumed he didn't know at all (because I feel like that's what Brennan narrated in episode 1) but I need to go back and check.

(7) At the end of the day, D20 is a show that rewards love and friendship over betrayal and the like. This very much could be the first season with a real betrayal but I'm kinda skeptical. Sly could just be a big faker but he seems genuine to me. Also, what would his motive even be here? This doesn't seem like his style and I don't know why he'd do this.

(8) Lars failed their check on purpose and Ian saw full puppydog earnestness. Sly if you've been a bad guy this whole time and Lars didn't know, bitch I'll kill you

(9) Not really on topic but I want to note, Daisy's find of that second trick portrait makes me thing my theory was correct and there's a third somewhere. I wonder where.

(10) Even less on topic but the "Show Her Your Butt 2: Electric Boogaloo" sequence last week made me spit soda everywhere and I think that should be acknowledged.

[literary-spirit]

Bonnie Bennett believed she'd finally discovered her good enough ending. Yet, like most things in her life good enough goes left and leaves her with another ending. Or, perhaps a fire beginning...Journey with everyone's favorite Bennett Witch to the Viking Era for much needed lessons in devotion, courtesy the Lothbrok brothers.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of these characters belong to me. And to add unfairness to poetic injustice, neither does the shows or the books. However, I still intend to pull the characters' strings and make them dance, all while having a ball upsetting canon plot lines!

AN: Alright Bennett Fandom this one here is a bit different from what you're used to. Okay this one here is a bit different than I'm used to. Francesca has recently rediscovered Vikings and with it the sons of Ragnar. And don't you know she wouldn't rest until she brought our favorite Bennett Witch into their mess! As if our girl didn't already have her own problems. SMFH! So thanks to my lovely muse, here we are with a whole lot of trifling savagery that I'm just not so sure about. But as always I'll let you be the judge if this WIP lives to see another update. Flame it or acclaim it in comments.

“You know as much as I’ve savored the joy of tormenting you over the years-,” Klaus began.

“No,” Bonnie shook her head. She’d tried to go along with his final request. Really she did, but how could she? When in the end all he’d be was gone. “I’m sorry, bae. We’re not doing this.”

Rebekah’s eyes rolled. She released a drawn out exhale that hadn’t been necessary for her since wood ash and pointed stick tattoos were a thing. “Bonnie, don’t ruin this for him! Permit him whatever comfort he demands. He shoulders a burden you’d never be able to fathom. Can you not allow him to experience but one moment of grace? A moment Hope will undoubtedly cling to after he’s gone.”

“No, Rebekah! I’m not about to listen as the man I love gives us all a corny goodbye and pretend to be okay with it. And why the hell should Hope have a moment to cling to when she could have her father?” She gave her head another firm shake. “No, this is not okay with me,” her voice rose as she drilled visual holes through each of them. Klaus tried to shut her down with an arm around the shoulders but she curved him with a shrug, all while committing ocular homicide on him in the process. “So why the hell is it okay with you, Hybrid?” Her scorn riddled gaze darted from him back to his so called family. “Or any of you?”

“You must’ve been down on Bourbon sipping on that Absinthe again if you believe any of this shit is okay with us,” Marcel waved her off barely sparing her a glance. “We all just know Klaus is gonna do whatever Klaus wants no matter how any of us feels about it. The most dangerous place you can be when his mind’s made up is in his way. So I suggest you step out of it.”

Her neck snapped back as if she’d taken a two piece to the chin. “You think I’m afraid of the big bad wolf? I wasn’t at seventeen and if I thought for a second it would save him, I’d put his ass back in the dirt again. I take care of my own, Marcel. No matter the dangers or consequences,” she jabbed a thumb at her hybrid, “And make no mistake, that Original pain in the ass over there is mine.”

“Cute.” Marcel laughed as he rubbed at the corners of his mouth. “Bonnie, we’re his family. Each of us have known, feared, hated, respected, and loved him long before even your parents’ parents became an idea. Hell, even after everything he’s dragged me through, there’s not a drop of blood I wouldn’t bleed for him.”

“Then stand behind those words and do something, Marcel,” she pleaded, because at this point she wasn’t above begging for the only bright spot remaining in the dim bleakness that had become her life seven years before.

“What would you have us do, Bonnie?” Elijah questioned in a barely engaged tone.

Bonnie turned to consider him. A perpetual moroseness now cloaked the one she’d once believed to be noble. His arrogance hadn’t been quite the same since the restoration of his memories. More and more he’d begun to remind her of Finn. She squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. Since discovering what Klaus planned to do, she’d toyed with an idea she’d vowed never to indulge. Yet, under the weight of impossible desperation such vows could not stand.

“The eternal witch spell should be evoked,” she said.

“By whom?” Kol questioned. His chocolate browns moved from Freya to Hope. When both appeared to know less than him his disbelieving gawk returned to her. “You?!” Laughter burst from his mouth. “Oh Darling, I’ve witnessed that spell make a supernatural mess of the most talented witches to ever recite a chant. There’s only one destined to master the eternal witch incantation and her sorcery is said to be unmatched.” His knowing gaze drifted to Hope, and then back to her. “There’s no way you’re powerful enough to undertake the task. You’re not even the strongest witch on this block.”

Bonnie flinched. Damn it, if Kol hadn’t DOA’ed her pride. When the hell did he jump on the Bennett hate train? To hear how far his opinion of her plummeted sort of burned.

She nodded. “Okay, if not me why not Davina. You tend to enjoy blowing her horn. If she’s all you claim her to be, get her here. I’ll happily bow down if her being greater than me will save him.” She jerked her head in Klaus’ direction.

“No!” Marcel barked.

“Leave my wife out of this.” Kol zipped across the distance separating them to tower over her. His original face no longer concealed by his human deception.

Klaus rocketed forward to place himself between she and Kol. “Step away from my fiancé, baby brother. For if you harm her then you’ll be joining me in the afterlife. To hell with your bloody dagger and box.”

Ignoring Kol’s and Klaus’ dagger and the box bit, her distressed stare collided with Freya’s. “What about you? Will you help me save your brother?”

“Bonnie, that spell is much too dangerous. Even for me.” The blondes eyes offered her a thousand apologies but not one solution. “I’m sorry, but I can’t risk it…not now.”

Her desperation bottomed out to despair as her gaze took a hail Mary launch to the supposedly most powerful witch in the room. “Hope?”

The room erupted. You’d think she’d offered the girl a crack pipe. When she was Hope’s age she was taking down well…her dad.

“Bonnie!” Elijah yelled.

“This is madness,” Rebekah growled, taking a step in their direction. “Nik tell her!”

“We’ve already talked about this, Bekah.” Marcel shook his head and tugged Rebekah back to his side. “That doesn’t concern us.” Bonnie heard Marcel mutter.

Klaus spun away from Kol to regard her. He grabbed her face and cradled her cheeks in his palms. “Everything’s going to be alright, Love.” He whispered, before brushing his lips against hers. Liquid pain disturbed the stillness of his crystal blue stare and contradicted the hell out of his reassurance.

“How?” She tugged herself free of his grasp. “How’s everything going to be alright? You’ll be dead and then what? Life goes on? Fuck that! I’m not about to stand here and mourn a defeat I haven’t loss yet!” She whirled away and marched from the gathering. Her decision made.

Once out of sight, she hurried towards their bedroom. Inside, she closed the door and locked it. The barrier wouldn’t hold her hybrid, but the fraction of time it would provide may be all she needed to complete the spell. She fell to her knees next to the mattress. Carefully, she tugged the blanket from underneath the bed. The already prepared altar and ingredients slid out. She stared down at the athamae and exhaled. Second thoughts plagued her mental, but she shook them away. She’d come this far already. The time to bitch up and forget about it had come and gone. Now was the time to do and die, literally.

She picked up the dagger and called forth every ounce of mystical energy which bled through her veins. A swell of Bennett sorcery overwhelmed the room. Pictures rattled on the walls. The balcony doors blew open and the glass shattered. Furniture not nailed down whipped about the room like she’d caught a ride in a tornado. Steeling her nerves, she continued. She called forth her psychic energy, her huntress energy. Any and everything supernatural about her she offered to the Goddess of all in exchange for an eternity of knowledge and the fated eternal mate destined to help her defeat the Hollow.

After relinquishing her all to the Creator she sliced open her palm. Blood gushed from the wound and saturated the ingredients. A searing light illuminated the room. The bargain was struck and accepted. Now the sacrifice. She swallowed and raised the blade. Aiming it at the center of her chest, she closed her eyes.

“Bonnie, no!” Klaus’ voice penetrated the white noise blaring throughout the room. “Love, don’t do this. You won’t survive.”

She opened her eyes. He stood just beyond the enchantment circle, attempting to force his way into the barrier. “Neither will you if I don’t. Besides, if it doesn’t work I’d rather be in the ground anyway than breathe without you, Klaus.”

“Bonnie, please,” he pled as he dropped to his knees. He slammed his fist against the barrier. “Please, don’t do this. We’ll find another way. You have my word, Love!”

A sad smile flirted with her lips. “You’re lying, Klaus. If there was another way then it would already be the plan.” She plunged the blade into the cradle of her breasts. A piercing burn penetrated her chest.

“No!” Klaus’ bellow seared layers from her punctured heart. The storm of mystical energy whipping about ceased.

Her knees buckled. Klaus caught her before the ground could and cuddled her close. She attempted to talk, but a wheeze whistled pass her lips instead.

“No, Love, don’t speak.” He bit into his wrist and placed the bleeding extremity to her mouth. His blood might as well had been battery acid because she’d bet dollars to air it burned the same. Hacking coughs damn near shook her frame apart by the joints. “Why the sodding hell isn’t this working?”

“I-It’s the s-spell,” she managed to utter. “M-my death is the p-price of a-admission.”

Tears trickled from his eyes onto her face. “Why did I have to go and love you, Little Witch?” He demanded, looking beyond confused.

“B-Because its what we b-both needed at the time and no m-matter how this turns out I’ll always be indebted to you for giving me a reason. L-Love you, Hybrid…always and f-forever.” His face faded until nothing but darkness surrounded her.

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, none of these characters belong to me. And to add unfairness to poetic injustice, neither does the shows or the books. However, I still intend to pull the characters' strings and make them dance, all while having a ball upsetting canon plot lines!

The abyss gave way to blinding lights. Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut. A cacophony of sounds battered her auditory senses. The eardrum rupturing racket nearly distracted her from the violent rocking motion. A violent rocking motion which would no doubt wrought absolute fuckery on her cyclic vomiting syndrome. Right along with the tang of salt-water, unwashed bodies, and rotten fish. The potpourri of funk came close to singeing the lining of her nostrils.

A familiar acrid burn tickled the back of her throat. On cue her belly spun a series of gold medal winning somersaults. Oh this was going to happen. Her lack of sight heightened her senses and made her that much more sensitive to all the upchuck factors swirling about her. Unable to continue to live in the darkest part of her denial and remain vomit free, she opened her eyes. The brightest day she'd ever had to tolerate greeted her light discriminating gaze. She closed her eyes once more. What in the extreme fuck? Was this some kind of hell dimension? Is that why she was only a five minute drive away from the damn sun? Oh Goddess no!

"Cade?!" She growled.

The acrid burn that flirted with the back of her throat developed a sour chunky consistency. Once again she forced her eyes open...and blinked. She was on a vessel that appeared to have hailed straight out of Vikings. Damning the unnecessary brightness and her afterlife in general, she turned and tossed up the entire contents of her stomach over the boats edge. The seafood gumbo from Rousseau's she loved nearly as much as Klaus shot from her mouth and floated one way while the wind and Hades' cruiser sailed her in another.

As gravity took her down exhaustion fucked her over. She rested her cheek on the boat's wooden ledge. Drops of putrid salt water splashed her face. Yet, her fucks to give was at a negative zero low. Not only was she dead, but more than likely so was Klaus. She'd failed him...she'd failed them. Not even eternity would be long enough to make that shit okay.

Bonnie's vision blurred. Her chest throbbed. She clawed at the pounding ache between her breasts. Goddess, it's a wonder her chest didn't have a gaping hole in it after everything her heart had lost. Shaking her latest failure from her thoughts, she turned to slouch back to the boat's floor. She then lifted her gaze to assess her surroundings. Various shades of irises gawked back at her. She froze. Oh damn! Just her luck the water was sacred. She opened her mouth to offer an apology, but snapped it closed. Wait...why the hell did everyone look like extras from the Last Kingdom?

Slowly, her gaze dropped from the filthy hairy men towering over her to what she wore. The burlap sack dress she donned stopped her ever ticking clock. And based on the breeze cooling her cakes, her La Perla's had opted to skip the journey to the other side. Her back teeth clenched. In what kind of after life had she been dropped? Was this some kind of Viking hell? Had she somehow been granted eternity with Klaus in his hereafter?

The shifting of bodies snaked her attention from Kanye's spring wear to the now parting beefy men. A sight which had her questioning her sanity emerged. Bjorn Lothbrok or at any rate the actor who portrayed him in Vikings. Was he dead and stuck on the Otherside also? Wait, was Alexander Ludwig even supernatural?

"You're not one of the slaves who was captured during the raid. One of your hue, I would've remembered." The head Viking in charge edge that resonated in Bjorn's or Alexander's voice snatched her from her contemplations. "How've you come to be upon this ship?" When she opened her mouth to speak the cold sharpened point of a sword pierced the hollow of her throat. "Speak to me of canards or sagas and I shall open your gullet."

She hesitated for a moment. What could she say? The truth would definitely get her neck split wide. "I-I'm not sure. Before...when I closed my eyes, I was somewhere else and now that I've opened them, I'm..." she glanced from the horror frozen faces of the crewmen to the beyond frightened slaves. The poor shackled souls huddled away from her in the ship crevices and corners on either side of her. She swallowed and allowed her gaze to return to Bjorn. "I'm here."

"Oh my god," she heard one of the slaves mutter in a tone that, to her surprise, sounded annoyed?

His scoff sliced the disbelief inspired silence in half. He withdrew the biting tip of his sword from her throat and sheathed it in the scabbard at his side. "Bind her hands to her feet and toss her over."

The ship erupted in a flurry of movement. Two overfed red-haired and even redder faced Viking men moved to grab her. She nearly projectile vomited her heart from her mouth.

"I know what I'm saying sounds apeshit, but I swear on everything I love, Alexander," she said slowly uttering the name and searching his face for a flare of recognition. When nothing sparked in his expression she stammered on, "I-I'm telling the truth. Please, you have to believe me, Bjorn!" A flicker of curiosity narrowed his glare. Bingo! "You can't let them kill me! Please, I don't wanna die again!"

"Halt!" He bellowed, raising a hand to stop the men from advancing, "How've you come to know of my name?"

Shit! She pressed her lips together as her mind flipped through a too short list of plausible explanations that wouldn't get her burned at a stake for witchcraft. "I-I've dreamt of you a-and of this moment." There, that didn't sound too bad. One thing she'd learned from Klaus, watching Vikings, and Google, is ancient Northman actually revered oracles and seers.

"You've dreamt of me?" He knelt before her, arresting her stare with a penetratingly incandescent blue gaze. At a deliberate methodical pace, his eyes crept over her face. Her lungs threatened to collapse under the thorough scrutiny. "Of this moment?" Unable to look anywhere other than in the irises that burned brighter than the now blazing sun, her head bobbed. A smile enticed the corners of his mouth. "Then why fear what you know will follow? Have you not prepared well to meet your fate?"

"Not if my fate resides at the bottom of the ocean," she said with a firm shake of the head, "That's an introduction I'd like to cur—avoid indefinitely."

His head tilted just so as he continued to regard her. "Name yourself."

"Bonnie Bennett," she answered.

A golden brow lifted. "Bonnie Bennett of where?"

"New-M-Mystic Falls...Bonnie Bennett of Mystic Falls."

"I have never heard of a land with such a name," he huddled a bit closer to her, "in which direction does your homeland lie?"

Before she could answer, thick gun metal gray clouds rolled across the azure sky and swallowed the glaring sun. A sonic boom exploded somewhere in the distance, while blue streaks of lightening zigzagged its way through the stodgy swirls of gloom. And if the situation wasn't already atom splitting serious, fat drops of rain and hail the size of golf balls began to pelt them.

"This storm is unnatural!" A seaman yelled.

"What in the name of Odin will become of us? None of us shall discover the gates of Valhalla at the bottom of the sea!" A ruddy face old man with a scraggly beard roared at anyone who appeared to be listening.

Another much younger seaman, maybe a little older than herself, turned an anxious stare on Bjorn. "Do you believe the All Father has forsaken us, Ironside?"

Bjorn opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by a blonde slave girl who pointed a finger in her direction, "It's her! Her very presence displeases the gods. You should heave her over and pray the sacrifice appeases them."

"You sound dumb as hell! It's no wonder you're in chains," Bonnie snapped, regretting her words as soon as they left her lips. Stupidity had nothing to do with forced captivity. Yet, that bitch had some damn nerve.

"No one will be heaving anyone over," Bjorn said, while standing from his crouch, "Raise the sails and provide the slaves with pails so they may began dumping water from the ship's floor."

A surge of magic thickened the air. The foreign sorcery incited something within her. Something unfamiliar. A bucket was pushed in her face. She took the wooden pail without looking away from the sea. The very stench of alien witchery agitated her own strange mystical energy. The fiery heat of her somehow altered super charged power practically scorched the inner lining of her veins as it raced through her vessels. Who would dare interrupt the supernatural and natural balance on this scale without justification? It was like using a heat seeking missile to take out a mosquito. Un-fucking-called for!

Instead of allowing the now aggressive powers within her the retribution it sought, she settled just to keep the occupants on the ship safe. So, while she dumped water from the boat's floor, she chanted under her breath. Soon, a protective shield formed around them in an elusive form of the previous sunny day. The Vikings and slaves alike erupted in praises to Odin.

"Yep," Bonnie forced a smile. "Praise Odin!"

"Come, Mystical One," Bjorn stood over her, his shadow casting her much needed shade.

Distrust and her impromptu guest starring role on a show which highlighted the fact that Vikings had no problems raping captives, raised her guards. Though realms out of her element, she was far from ignorant.

Her gaze moved over him in an attempt to size him up. "Where?"

"To the prow," He gestured towards the front of the ship before snatching the pail from her hands, and then tossing it aside. "I wish to learn more about you and this numinous land named Mystic Falls." When she took too long to follow he locked his hands behind his back and considered her. "If I wanted to lie with you then all I need do is have you. Do you believe anyone here would be minded to protect you?"

She lifted her chin as she glanced about the ship to see not one person watching them for concern purposes. Every eye she caught on them looked to be pre-historic Shade Room and TMZ reporters. If they had tea kettles back then they'd no doubt be ready to spill the damn things. No, Bjorn spoke the truth. No one on that confoundingly long boat would lift a calloused palm to help her.

"Alright." Exhaling, she stood and leveled him with a glare even a PMS'ing demon would be incapable of exacting. "But fair warning, no one on this ship can protect me better than me. And make no mistake, I'm not above defending my own honor."

He reached out and took her hand in his. "That is a certainty about you of which I'll never be mistaken, Bonnie Bennett of Mystic Falls."

[lampoest]

Unfiltered thoughts watching mission impossible rouge nation inspired by @chaotically-cas

(sorry its so long my brain is all over the place)

this is also part 14 of me watching it every day :/

CURSING WARNING !! ALSO SPOILERS !!!

why is brandt first to speak

starting out with "shit" good call benji

brandt man we get the package is on the mcfucking plane

badass luther 10/10

nervous benji 10/10

that one sound effects sounds like the discord notif

why he in a fancy suit

*jumps on a plane with almost no plan on getting inside*

why did tom cruise think this was agood idea?

but like why would benji even open the ramp?

how is he not winded from that?

classic ethan

THE INTRO 1000/10

SOLOMON LANE !!

wait you can already see lane in the record shop.

how do they tell the agents these little convos?

also damn way to give it away

what if someone just looked in that room and saw the secret message?

also how did the disc get changed? because the imf definitely didnt make that

and how did lane know where he was going?

speaking of lane---

dang that man is pretty

he always sets guns down carefully

i can only see alec baldwin as trump from his snl skits so i dont take hunley seriously ;-;

damn brandt needs to step it up. man keeps letting himself be inturrupted

bruh the imf is only luck

why did no one resrict his legs?

also why is janik such an asshole?

dang she cool !!

why does it take janik so long to get that gun?

bravo-echo 1-1

this man is bleeding but decided instead of taking care of his wound he calls brandt.

i like how you actually see ethan worried and confused trying to plan his next moves. he is rarely caught off guard so it's refreshing to see his more human side

hunley spitting accusations damn bro

also a big fuck you from ethan to hunley

dang ethan is good

brandts little hidden smile

and ethan leaving trails

bitch how you sketch that good???

STAN BENJI !!

youve won, your way out of a job

benji is good

my little brandt x benji shipper in me is happy

simon pegg is such a good actor

the first time i saw this i was like: aww noooo

all dunn with that

TO THE OPERA !!!

TUX BENJI TUX BENJI

i cant tell if that was ethan

it just looks like youre talking to yourself thats more sus than using a phone

want drama? go to the opera

ok but like if you look like that im sorry you are a bad guy. thats like a stereotypical bad guy face

benji-

you can see ethan in the background of that scene

flute gun flute gun

oh no benji is in the closet. dont worry man we love you

if i were there and i just had a good vantage point i could find lane in an instant

ooh ilsa pretty

pipe gun

also pamphlet computer

those key things are cool and plausible

spiderman spiderman does whatever, ethan hunt can?

a W O M A N

what W O M A N?

reminds me of a marshmallow gun i made out if pvc pipes.

why does she not put that thing back?

also the dude loads it and then later it is unloaded

dang that guy is pretty tall.

ethan is so tiny

dis bitch is like uhh gimmie a sec to catch my breath mate

why he only dropkick people?

only 30 mins in ?!?!

the cinematography is exquisite

yes benji goin sicko mode

*gets shot* just a flesh wound

bruh i would've been so startled at that

i love how confused he is at that

ilsa saves ethan once again

they did this on the first day of filming

skdjs

ah yes random package in car = not bomb totally

if she tried to shoot benji then yes she is a bad person

but she didnt try to, she could've easily but didn't

benji being paranoid

she could just say the dude's name

benji being scared

hunley jumping to conclusions

brandt actually cares yeey

why di they approach from different sides of the street they were in the same car.

benji was far away from the sparks why he flinch?

friendship goals

oop plot dump that only mission impossible can get away with

ok...

why this mf's voice so smooth

lane is struggling with chopsticks

also lane :))))

ive chocked on my water so many times watching this scene

lanes voice :))))))

SHE RUINED HIS SUSHI WHAT THE FUCK ILSA

this man dont know what personal space is

gotta look up these peeps mbti types

casablanca references

also benji is wearing dollar store lookin glasses while ethan is wearing some fancy glasses

luther is top notch

as much as i dont like jeremy renner he delivers these lines really well

because atlee is a bitch

oh honey please, impossible is a walk in the park

benji just wants to wear a mask

id be so nervous walking through those

yes...

personal wellbeing who?

why not bring a plastic bottle full of air?

tom cruise can hold his breath for 6 minutes and he learned to do so for that scene

luther big brain

damn cctv

why did they need to break in while benji was going in?

das sus but ok

also isnt et voila french?

she just randomly tapping the ipad

benji being stressed

if he missed the exact center

i want one of those to open my locker's lock

if he just went with the current and didnt try to force his way against the water ilsa wouldn't have had to save him

imagine if he put the wrong one in-

she is breathing heavily to over saturate her body with oxygen so she can hold her breath longer

see ilsa makes it out without well and she went with the current

BENJI'S OUTFIT YESSS :))))))

no you didn't

you gave her a false sense of security

ethan's confused face for the next like 10 mins is great

liar

why does that one man look like sean ambrose?

parkour

skdjdksjdjdkfjs

the facial acting in this

STAIRS STAIRS STAIRS

the glare yesss

vrrrm vrrm

hey its you !

drivin like a grandma

shit !

benji just screaming

im convinced that ethan is indestructible

no you didn't survive that

bonk

dskfh

ethan didnt just-

also why didnt benji just tell ethan he made a copy ???

dont shoot and drive kids

high speed motorcycle chase with no helmet or leather. tom cruise, how?

i wanna learn how to drive a motorcycle

HOW THE FUCK IS HE NOT DEAD YET ?!?!

the lighting

ofc brandt would be the person why sits backwards on a chair. fkn bi vibes

benji to the rescue

fuck off atlee

i am so proud of us ...

the lines are done so well here

benji lookin like how i look when my parents argue

YES THIS SCENE

LANE LANE LANE LANE LANE

im too fucking gay for this movie-

once again no personal space

*inhales* :))))))))))))))

ive like memorized the entire script of this including the music

1 man performance of m:i5 ???

benji's outfit

also i love how youre able to see the characters in the background. props for the attention to detail

i need that haircut because his hair is lookin A+

fuck you atlee

ilsa spitting straight facts

uhh ilsa he still loves julia

NO BENJI NOOOO

EW FUCK OFF JANIK NO ONE LIKES YOU

speak of the devil-

betrayal--

WOULDNT YOU LIKE TO KNOW WEATHER BOY !??

actin sus

BENJI LANE BENJI LANE

his posture shdhskhsj (i cant be talking though)

0 personal space whatsoever

why does everyone have the same haircut in this???

simon mcburney pretending to be hunt prentending to be atlee

manipulation !?

the syndicate you say ? i know a thing or two about them 😼😼😼

damn though renner delivers these lines really well

a black tie? how informal. ..

complimenting hunt right infront of him

but he really didnt

i never realized that they were on the clock for this

huh...

the lil head nod though-

HAHA YEAH FUCK YOU ATLEE

is it bad that i hate atlee more than i hate lane?

ethan big smart wrinkle brain

janik just reading a fucking magazine

ethan has a photographic memory

oh look its benji :)))

lane :))))

ethan being tough

it must be aquward to get the low angle shots

lane is running out the clock to put pressure on ethan hmmm big brain

it isnt working though :\

damn he so cocky that hes telling the villain his plan

ill give you 1/5 of the money you wanted to get my bf back

ok but like does tom cruise just not age?

kill the woman

ugh i hate janik

the trust that is shown between those two is great

yes the score and the chase are so great

also this man really hates windows for some reason

fuck off janik

sneaky sneaky

EYY ITS LANE !!!

yeyy janik is dead

once again dodging bullets and hating glass

couldve killed him but needed him alive

the glass box

badass ethan

all the pretty men assembled

lane really let himself go aster this

dang though lane is my favorite villain ever

i like how for once the girl and the guy just are friends instead of romantically involved

eyy the callbacks to how the movie started.

welcome to the imf

[charmspoint]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABT THE BSD MANGA ILY THANK YOU I FEEL LIKE MY OPINION IS FINALLY VALIDATED WHICH IS: BSD has turned meh. I have become indifferent towards the plot due to the fact there are no real stakes - I feel like the OP characters like Dazai will always have a solution with a deus ex machina feel to it, making it impossible for me to care. With the recent chaos happening in the manga (I too gave up on the manga a year or so ago!), I was baffled to find out I could no longer enjoy it. My memory is poor, and I can't really pinpoint it at the moment, but BSD just... doesn't engage me as it used to. Keep in mind I was an obsessive fan of it and analyzed it to the tiniest details, but all of my great love for the series has long died, sadly. But! I am glad to hear you feel similarly about it because, yes, the potential was there, but it got terribly wasted.

Bruh don't I feel it, me and @autumn-foxfire have like monthly bitch sessions about the state of bsd at this point. I was also super invested in it in initial arcs (Up until the guild arc ended) and then slowly started petering off only to drop it the first time around the hunting dogs introduction. Then after some time i was like okay ill go give it a second shot, came to the vampire arc went 'wow this is really fuckin stupid' and dropped it again. Idk will I pick it up again, maybe I'll just stick to being an anime only, even tho I also have problems with some adaptation things but that's BESIDES THE POINT.

Please click under for The Point

The thing about Kafka is: He's really good at coming up with interesting concepts and ideas and REALLY BAD at executing them in any sort of satisfying way. Like, when I say I only like bsd until the end of the guild arc, I don't mean it was perfect. It could have handled it's female cast better, it would have been fun to see more mafia and agency team ups besides soukoku and shin soukoku, I still don't get why shin soukoku is supposed to be a replacement in training since Dazai and Chuuya still work together perfectly and even if they hate each other they hate each other less than Akutagawa and Atsushi AND have way more experience fighting together but that once again is besides the point. The point being those arcs of bsd were SATISFYING. We got introduced to two organizations, seen them butt heads and then have them forced to work together against a common enemy. It's very simple but it's effective and it's satisfying.

And then the rats struck.

While up until then bsd wasn't perfect it was fun and had lovable characters and an interesting plot and engaging dynamics. Rats arc wasn't horrible per say, the idea of the cannibalization was really fun (Though I think Kafka should have used it to get rid of Mori, nobody fuckin likes Mori) but this is where we slowly get introduced to what I think are two main failings of Kafka's writing: That he's unable to handle characters properly and that he likes writing smart things but doesn't know how to write smart things.

Kafka has a very, very bad habit of INTRODUCING TOO MANY FUCKING CHARCTERS. Every arc is a new massive group with like a bunch of members, one of who may actually end up being fleshed out before they are inventiblely replaced by another large group or maybe two why the fuck not. The mafia and the guild left lasting impressions on me and I can still name all the main members but fuck me if i know a single rat aside from Fyodor (AND ILL GET TO FYODOR). Kafka feels like someone who's idea of rising conflict is 'introduce a bigger enemy each time' and it's just so annoying. Chapters and arcs end up centering around these groups of new characters while old characters, who we loved the manga for, just fall into obscurity. He almost had me in the hunting dogs arc by giving Yosano a backstory. I was so excited! I was like!!! finally development for the agency!!! But that barely went anywhere did it. I've talked about this with Foxy but it really feels like Kafka is just BORED of the og characters and is trying to silently sideline them for his new shiny characters. When's the last time we saw Chuuya again, you know, the ex partner of one of the series protagonists? The next predicted mafia head? Is he important? Foxy tells me Dazai's been sidelined too, fUCKIN DAZAI, for a good while I was sure Kafka liked Dazai a lot better than Atsuhi for protagonist and now he's getting sidelined. I know bsd is still really popular in japan but at this point i think it would have been more merciful for Kafka to just end bsd and start a new manga with new characters instead of doing whatever weird metamorphosis this is turning out to be.

Introducing new characters isn't a bad thing of course, but bsd has become mcdonalds of new characters. They are cheap and disposable. I can't feel anything for them because I know nine times out of ten they'll barely make any impact and they'll disappear as soon as the new group slides in. When adding new characters you should do so while knowing what role those characters will play in your plot, what will they bring. If a character is just there to waffle around until they get shoved away they should probably be cut because they are wasting time and space. AND YOU SHOULDN'T SIDE LINE YOUR CORE CAST FOR UR SHINY NEW CHARACTERS YOU'LL GET BORED OF IN COUPLE OF ARCS ANYWAY, ARE YOU A TODDLER???

I still think that bsd could have been SO much better if instead of focusing on the next big evil group they just focused on shifting tension between the agency and the mafia. I mean they've had to team up for the guild and then they immediately got thrown into the cannibalization. It would have been interesting to see them pull against and pull towards those ties made during the guild arc when they are forcefully pitted against each other again (and decide that killing mori would be in everyone's best interest). Instead we got, idk I already forgot what the rats arc ended up being about, atsushi and aku team up again yadda yadda yadda, Chuuya gets done dirty and never recovers, Fyodor ruins Dazai

SO ABOUT FYODOR. As I said, Kafka strikes me as someone who REALLY likes to write geniuses and who wants people to think he's super smart but also has no idea how to show his work. At first this was okay. We had Dazai and Ranpo who were very good at pushing the plot along and sometimes you'd get explained how they got to that conclusion and sometimes you didn't but it usually wasn't a big deal. But then the writing became more and more and more of 'well he's smart so he figured it out so just trust me' without actually explaining anything and as you said, it ended up feeling boring, unengaging and very deus ex machina. You know what Kafka's writing reminds me off? That video about how Sherlock is so happy to stroke itself to how smart they look while never showing their work, you know the one. Kafka likes writing smart characters but doesn't actually know how to write smart characters so instead of giving us reasons and clues and explanations to how they come to some conclusion, how they predicted or planned or whatever, he just goes 'oh well they are super smart so they figured it out'. I don't think I need to explained why this is bad, annoying and unengaging writing. This is why i say Fyodor ruined Dazai for me, Dazai was fine as a genius but then they had to pit him against Fyodor who's another genius and things just got ridiculous. You know how in that sherlock video the guy points out the one scene that encapsulates every irritating thing about sherlocks writing. This had been it for me and BSD (thank you Foxy for helping me find the panels)

THATS NOT HOW CODES WORK, THATS NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS, THEY WOULD JUST BE COMING UP WITH TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CODES HERE. Even if they were both smart enough to remember every conversation in detail, how on earth are they supposed to 'guess out' what the other means. How are they supposed to confirm or deny that's what a certain word means in a way that can be understood, how can they even guess what the word the other guessed is IF THEY ARE BOTH TALKING IN CODE. KAFKA'S ANSWER: THEY'RE MONSTERS, THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART, NO NEED TO EXPLAIN IT BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART AND THAT'S YOUR SOLUTION AND THAT'S BULLSHIT. This scene broke bsd in half for me and honestly made me dislike Dazai for a long time (I got better), but it honestly shows so well how Kafka wanted to make his characters so smart he actually made his manga really fuckin stupid, ruining very good and interesting concept he had started with.

In the end, Kafka writes how I wrote when I was 15. With no idea where the plot is headed, adding new characters and situations whenever it strikes his fancy whether they work for the story or not, ending up just flopping around plot holes and fizzled out character arcs and boring ass writing. And that's fine for a 15yr old writing fanfiction. It's not fine for a presumably grown ass published author of a relatively popular manga.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[transsexualhamlet]

the many sins of tokyo ghoul :re

or: 13 reasons why :re is fucking terrible not clickbait

Disclaimer: I think no matter how long this post gets I’m missing something, so let’s just outline the worst ones. And I mean to be transparent, the only reason I actually read :re was so I could make this post... (and bc i wanted to see the what, five panels of hide) Well, I couldn’t stand hating it without evidence beyond hearsay and General Vibes. But I knew it was gonna be bad, I knew it was going to ruin me jesus christ. Obviously I’m not hating on people that like it, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with genuinely enjoying it (I do genuinely enjoy parts of it, and by parts i mean chapters 1-50 with exceptions and 75) I think it’s wonderful if you can derive joy from it (lmao) but I can say that through my lens in life, there’s so much fucking wrong with this goddamn fucking piece of shit manga and I feel the need to yell about it because i am ✨autism✨ so let’s get going (this is r e a l l y long just a warning)

tl;dr Ishida stay in your fucking lane

1. Transphobia and Homophobia:

alright here we are first off with the big one and if I had to choose, one of Ishida’s greatest sins here. It’s quite unusual in mangas like these to have any sort of representation for such things in and of itself, and yeah of course that annoys me, but having no represntation at all is like so much better than getting actively harmful representation. Most manga that aren’t specifically about those things shy away from those topics, and it’s tiring but it’s normal. You wouldn’t want a mangaka to try to write about something like that without experience or informed opinions. So I say if you can’t write something correct, just don’t write something like that in at all. Ishida clearly,,, does not get this.

And it’s not just the case of Mutsuki, who, well, gets it bad enough, there are three full fucking trans characters Ishida made like, just to shit on. 

Big Madame- god, made like that specifically to perpetuate the predatory trans woman trope jesus christ is Ishida friends with JK fuckface Rowling. Ah yes the ugly, human trafficking, predatory, pedophilic killer that tried to make their male child more feminine? Has a dick. Really? Could you be a single bit more transparent about your fucking agenda here? I really don’t have to say much here.

Kanae von Fuckwald- Technically Ishida says here that basically this bitch was just like??? Pretending to be a guy for years just to what?? I don’t even know?? Get together with Tsukiyama? Cause he’s fucking gay or something? I don’t even get it but like i read this post yesterday and that’s a whole ass thermian argument. It’s like “oh well this is fine because well this person’s not actually trans and therefore the representation thing doesn’t apply”... it’s useless. You created the character that way and you made it intentionally to for whatever way promote this idea that people would “pretend” to be a different gender and that eventually they’ll realize that it’s a “lie” and they never really wanted it. This is what you’re saying about the real people who are,,, actually trans? Jesus christ. Also thinking that a twink like that would be trans? God yeah trans guys can be feminine but buddy that’s clearly not what you’re going for here.

And of course, Mutsuki- There’s just... so much wrong here. I mean like. Before we even get into anything about his character and what they did to him let me just discuss his entire design. Buddy like if you had to choose one person in that show to be trans that’s the least likely one. Ah yes, the feminine one. With the androgynous haircut and the shy disposition and the physical weakness compared to the others. God that’s like, a fujoshi’s take on ao3 of what character should be trans. As much as yeah of course, trans guys can be feminine, they are in no way obligated to be such and you shouldn’t make them more so to be more “believably” so. Ask any actual trans person ever. A character like that is just perpetuating the notion of trans guys being inherently more feminine or trying to pretend to be otherwise.ThEn, of course, there’s the ridiculous sexualization, infantilization and fetishization of this character, going through a thousand plot hurdles to make him constantly stripped, put in girls clothing, chased by perverts, assaulted, ET FUCKING CETERA. Give him a fUCKING BREAK. Creating this character the way he’s portrayed in canon (including so called backstory of murdering parents because of sexual and physical abuse) is perpetuating a notion that someone would be a trans guy because of internalized misogyny and/or trauma instead of because they’re just... a guy. It’s just it’s just it’s just Really bad. Plus taking his character, demonizing him and making him like, supposedly love haise (which i Really hate for a thousand reasons, god that’s like, a parent and child type relationship they have there not romantic,,, god,,,) try to like fucking murder touka and stop seeing sense, and then just... return him to being infantalized. God. Jesus christ fucking goddamn it I love Mutsuki and he deserves better.

Oh yeah and then the homophobia, this one’s smaller because... most of the trans people are here to go “it’s gay... wait it’s not Really gay so it’s ok” but I would like to leave a small note here for all the gay characters who got thrown under the bus not just in re but in the original, like, you know, Nico and shit? I really do not know shit about Nico but all the things about Jason? God if I had a thing for one person that you shouldn’t try to portray as representation it’s Jason. IDK what’s up with him and Naki but god it wasn’t healthy. (i’d like to say here that i love naki and i think naki deserves the world but honey there are better heroes than yamori) Anyway yeah I think that’s also bullshit and Ishida should stay in his fucking lane. (or her i guess, i just feel like it’s probably a guy bc of just... so much sexism)

Ok, now that we have the big one out of the way-

2. The mishandling of portrayals of various mental illnesses:

I’m not an expert on this one like I can say about the gays TM but just like in general, the whole manga’s very messy and portrays a lot of gritty stuff, and Ishida clearly attempts to throw in some mental illness for fun, but god fUcking damn it they’re bad. I couldn’t really even give you examples bc it’s pretty widespread and i’m stupid, but it was really like trump throwing paper towels “and you get a demonization, and you get an infantalization, and you get a butchered character, and you get a fetishization-”

3. Ishida having no fucking clue how science works

This particular factoid led me to have a very hard time reading this manga because it went from being about like, yknow, torture and fights and crying and stuff to weird experimentation bullshit and mutated whatever and everyone’s a hybrid now I guess. When I heard this thing about the quinxes, I thought that made no sense, because I was like “yeah but wait,,, how tf does that work didn’t Ishida say earlier that kagune literally were fueled by human meat isn’t that like the entire point the ccg is against?” and then Ishida’s explanation of how they’re not just exactly like Kaneki is that “oh yeah well there’s like, metal around it, so it’s different.” OH YEAH OK THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW, THANKS.

The thing is... there’s no way of actually regulating that. You couldn’t move a kagune unless it was attached to your cells, and if it’s attached man, it’s attached and it’s part of you. Also yelling “frame two” won’t like make it any bigger lmao, either you’re gonna have it based on theoretical science in this universe or you’re going to have a dumb supernatural magic pokemon fight deal. The whole thing makes no sense. The science issue isn’t just about this either, it’s also about how the entire thing basically undermines the point of the whole story. When you blur the lines between human and ghoul with little to no real rules or basis in real science, every rule kind of just becomes cheap plot convenience.

So the Quinxes can eat human food unless they use their kagune too much, alright, but Kaneki couldn’t eat human food before he’d even ever used his though the only difference between their bodies was this,,, theoretical metal thing?? And Haise... was never really covered, before he went black hair emo bastard and like vored Eto, did he eat human food like the rest of the CCG? He certainly cooked it. And the squad that lived with him wasn’t aware he was a ghoul until he pulled out the kagune. So I’d assume so, but then how could he have a kagune, how could he survive when his body still was like that?

Is it the RC suppressents? Then couldn’t he just have taken those and lived as a human the entire time? Is that all he fucking needed, is that the only difference between human and ghoul? It doesn’t make sense and the rules are bent so much they don’t function anymore. Ishida like write down your rules somewhere even if they’re bullshit, they shouldn’t contradict each other.

Damn man I’m not even going to go into the dumbass rules of the half humans or the special fast aging thing or the fucking,,, folded up cells deal,,, or the Imagination Kagune, or the fucking,,, Dragon, or the zombie ghoul apocalypse or the “whole new species made of just kagune” i don’t even have the time it is fucking ridiculous and I can’t even with it. Physics. Laws of physics. If not biology, at least follow physics Ishida??? Please???? And if you’re not you need to do that consistently??

4. character glow ups actually being character glow downs 

(with the exception of nishiki, he baby now, and akira, i think her development was valid af)

God, this one gets me every time. Touka was cool. Touka was fucking badass, she had a complex character with many motivations and wants, and in the original having her eventually kind of soften bc of Kaneki is valid. But taking her and turning her into like literally nothing but Pretty Housewife Yearning For Husband At War? God, kill me. She’s a strong person. She can like Kaneki without the guy being her only character trait. Also uh, Touka and Kaneki being a couple was valid before this change, now I honestly can’t stomach it. Like they were the kind of “both bisexual” m/f couple that we stan. No longer I guess.

She’s the most egregious example, but I’d also like to point out Juuzou, not everything they changed about him is bad, honestly we fucking stan his knife legs, but he’s kind of like a rip off L now? You got rid of his ~unhinged~, we do not stan. I’m on the fence about him bc i think that kind of is a valid transition to adulthood and I guess he’s grown up, but again, why change his fucking hair color? What is the explanation for this?

Also Hinami. I mean, I don’t really care about her a lot in general, but it’s weird to see her as like an adult when Ayato emo boy looks like exactly the fucking same and they’re like,,, supposedly the same age. 

There are definitely more I’m missing here. Honestly, Hide was valid. God him with his fucking burlap sack. With a fucking lenny face on it. I can’t with him. That’s so Hide. But there were some bad ones.

5. one hair color change was my limit, enough said

black white black and white black white more white god bitch get some variety

6. Showing me great new characters and then promptly ruining them

And you can tell this one’s about quinx squad, my favorite bastard children. God, I love them. They’re the only good things about Re other than Hide and Haise and like everything else, Ishida took them and went “what if i *guts*” god why. I love these kids with all my heart. Why. Why. Why did you do that to Mutsuki. Why as soon as Haise isn’t in the room they all get themselves tangled up with pedos. Why they gotta break up the squad. Why make all of them lose all the wholesomeness and lessons they learned from Haise. Why do you ruin them all with weird unreciprocated random crushes on each other when they’re like basically siblings. Why fuckinG KILL SHIRAZU HE IS THE APPOINTED CHIEF DUMBASS OF THE SQUAD WHY HIM. WHY. WITH SO LITTLE IMPACT. YOU COULD FUCKING MISS IT SO EASILY. THAT’S NOT RIGHT. AND KANEKI JUST FUCKING ABANDONS THEM BC HE HAS HIS MEMORIES AGAIN N O ? NO ACTUALLY NO.

7. the casual racism and sexism :)

i just :) can you stop having girls constantly bring themselves down for being female :) and making them be oversexualized, less full characters :) always in some way connected to a guy :) more weak and hurt more often :) my fucking god :) also yeah it’s way less prevalent but there were a few racist caricatures thrown in there for taste if you don’t know how to draw lips just don’t

8. Ishida being too much of a pissbaby for a real death scene

Basically: undermining the impact of “deaths” fom the first series while also randomly and badly killing off new characters. Oh that character that died in the original in a really cinematic way that made you cry and think about the meaning of life and how beautifully tragic this story was? Oh lol they’re not Actually dead. (x10) Doing that with Hide (at least in the manga, not the anime, god root A really did it with him but we’re not talking about that) was valid, seeing as I love him your honor and in the manga one of the lessons that his character hinges on was like in chapter 75 to live on instead of giving up even if it hurts and all that... (this is obviously kind of the opposite from root A where his character was like more about sacrificing for kaneki since kaneki had already done so much, i think both are valid but we’re Talking About The Manga) he was done well. That was right (even though i think they should have done More of it) but there were so many characters this kind of thing was done to without the proper adjustment in the handling of the messages given here. 

Like with Koma and Irimi, who,,, honestly should have stayed dead because their entire character arc kinda ended there and showed how they were sorry for their actions and this was how they were making it up. And then they just like... come back. And fight more. Really? This wasn’t the only instance either, same deal with Shinohara (though him coming back made me cry) it like, kind of undermines it if you’re going to have Juuzou derive his character development from that. Either Juuzou gets to keep his unhinged and his dad, or he loses his dad for real and he also grows up. God guys choose. What’s the message you’re playing here. (at least they kept Yoshimura dead, his death made me cry and I would have stabbed something if it wasn’t real, probably Ishida.) And even with Kaneki himself, god, if he can’t die from being stabbed straight through the fucking eye, what COULD kill him? It really diminishes the anxiety you feel about “omg is this person gonna die i want them to be ok” if they basically evade the laws of physics and their own previous character arcs 70 times. I’m definitely forgetting more of the same, Ishida can’t write a good death, he needed the anime writers to do it for him.

9. Kaneki. Just. Kaneki. 

God they fucking butchered this man. I could go on about his character is weird and confusing in the manga from the beginning, but we’re focusing on mostly all his weird :re character development, the bad handling of Haise and his memories, and all his iterations.

Before I read :re, what I could glean from fanart and the occasional fic that wasn’t tagged properly was really confusing and kind of a mixed bag. I knew Haise was Kaneki but without his memories, now in the ccg trying to be a pacifist and going :DDDDD a lot yknow. And what I came up with in my own mind for that change was a deal of (this makes more sense with the anime canon tbh, the manga honestly doesn’t do any of this well) like Kaneki after The Shit Went Down With Hide (whichever canon you’d like to interpret that as) he basically realized that he really couldn’t be a ghoul, he didn’t want to be, he didn’t want to hurt people and he wanted to be happy and make other people happy instead of what he thought was right before (trying to fight to protect others on his own etc) because that mentality had gotten people he loved hurt, and well subconsciously I guess that kind of factored into his development into Haise and maybe caused his memory loss (along with the, yknow, shanked eye.) So when I started to read it that kind of checked out, this is what he’s trying so hard to be now. But then this whole bullshit of the whole other like, 37 different versions of kaneki complicated things. 

Haise was scared that when he got his memories back he would cease to be, well, Haise, and he would just like revert back to what he was before everything. Which I can understand him being scared of and I think was a good point in the plot for him to worry about that, but I was like “oh honey don’t worry that’s not how it works” and was kind of vying for him to eventually get his memories back, come to terms with the fact that those were his memories, he did do those things, he was half a ghoul, and maybe come back to his original fight of wanting to bring the humans and ghouls together, still caring about his human people in the ccg and all. That development was real, and it wouldn’t just go away if he got his memories back, he learned a lot and grew a lot and he has a different outlook on life now. Right?

Fucking wrong I guess. Dude gets his memories back (very ambiguously, it was really hard to tell when that even happened tbh) and like. Turns into a flaming ass looking like ebony darkness dementia raven way. Haise gone. Fucking completely. No trace left. Doesn’t care about his kids anymore. When he’s done with that and goes white again he’s just Kaneki again and there’s really not enough left of things that like, really wouldn’t go away? He loses the flair? The dumbass? The :D? The Extra? WHY? Why would those things go away? Haise shouldn’t have been right that he would disappear when he got back his memories. That killed me. I love Kaneki and all but H a i s e. He is my b o y. H i m. With his e n e r g y  s h o r t s. And his m o m. And his c o o k i n g. And his k i d s, I l o v e him. And Ishida doesn’t seem to realize that they’re... literally the same person. Haise isn’t just some stupid bastard occupying Kaneki’s body, he’s a valid part of Kaneki himself and to be honest, peak Kaneki. Should have stayed that way. Would have been great for Hide tbh. Not just having him pretty much revert to his old self, but basically respond equally to both names and balance the world between human and ghoul. I would have loved that. What happened for real? It doesn’t make sense and it breaks my heart.

Some people on the interwebz try to kind of even that whole deal out by trying to say he like, has DID, which although is obviously a valid thing, like, so does not apply to him. God I’m like so not an expert on this but I feel like it’s not that hard to tell. His 87 little Kanekis in his head aren’t separate personas, they’re metaphorical representations of his past morals, experiences, and ideologies that all conflict. Again Haise here is peak conflict because when he gets his memories back, he has all these different conflicting ideas that were all previously separate. They’re all him. Tortured Kaneki constantly yelling at him in Jason’s chamber is basically again, a metaphor for how he’s denying his ghoulhood and the trauma that he’s been dealt. It’s not that this dude still exists just the way he is ready to show up at any moment lmao. Ishida kind of dealt with that badly too because Haise really said

after his memories happened so I can see why people might, but it’s... not right, and it’s Ishida’s fault about that which is Incorrect

Also just blanket statement, black reaper Kaneki? Fuck him and all he stands for. 0% valid. I can excuse literally every other version of him. But wh y. God he leaves the room and Urie starts misusing his power and getting groomed by a pedo, Saiko is just, left behind and sad, Mutsuki gets captured by a perv and mentally destroyed again, Shirazu dies and the bitch is like like “lol it’s your fault” yeah helpful, die

10. P- the- the porn chapter-

Idk about you but that was so fucking unecessary??? Not even going off of how terribly awkward and weird it was to have it there when the opening was “i’m sad about my best friend who’s gonna get executed what do you do when you’re sad about your best friend” “i simply do not think of him or i might actually just curl up and die” “yo lmao same” “wanna fuck” Like ok um I’m biased bc i’m not straight but I like, really hated that. Even just flipping through the pages as fast as I could to get to the end of it like. God. It’s not a fucking hentai. I’m here for the plot. If you’re not gonna release the director’s cut of kaneki fucking voring hide, i don’t think i need to see 20 pages of straight fucking sex. And if you absolutely must have porn, kaneki is a fucking bottom. That man gets pegged do not try to prove otherwise. You started it out that way god I love how they’re like “oh god wait that looks kind of gay, the woman being dominant, better stop that right now” god Ishida not having a single iota of knowlege about his own characters aND THEN SHE GETS PREGNANT? NO. Excuse me. No. I just. I. Why. This isn’t. A fucking porno. This isn’t tentacle porn i swear oh my god kill me

11. Giving the wrong characters attention

Basically, redeeming characters that should have been redeemed and not going into/discussing characters that should have been redeemed/had more backstory. For example, Tsukiyama can go fucking die. I like, do not even care rich boy. I don’t understand how anyone could think he needed to be redeemed he’s just a gay attention whore who really needs to let this kid get on with his merry fucking life. I don’t care. I literally did not need to read three whole books about his dumbass hangup over eating Kaneki. Kaneki doesn’t fucking want you bitch move on. He didn’t need to be redeemed or seen to be in any way sympathetic, no one wanted it. Same with that bitch ass Furuta, he wasn’t really redeemed but he was given w a y too much time to play out his sob story. God man Rize doesn’t fucking want you. These gross ass simps. I swear.

On the other hand, I kind of liked Eto even though she’s a pile of shit, and I got mad when they didn’t really go into much about her. And you know who could have gotten much more screen time/development? TOUKA. God, I love her and she was just sitting around in the background being straight. Let her have some spicy development. Also obviously, Hide. He was... so underappreciated and underexplained? What happened with him? He didn’t just pick himself off the ground in the sewers and go ‘well i’d better get back to the ccg now’ we have a whole two years which are completely unexplained, most of which he was off mysteriously being involved in things but completely missing the eye of Haise and other major players. Where tf was he? How did he get around? What was he even doing??? I wanna know about that! Not all the characters I hate’s tragic backstories that make me feel 0% more sympathetic towards them :)

12. ARE WE ALL JUST GONNA COLLECTIVELY IGNORE THE WHOLE VORE THING???

Ok like i know i say “the entire reason I read :re was __” but like to be honest this was the turning point, I saw pictures of hide’s vore face and went like

So I was like “god fucking damn it ok, Ishida would you care to explain this to me” *cracks open re*

And then they DIDN’T.

Like. It’s actually laughable how much that entire situation was just glossed over. They gave that maybe like two pages. Like what. I. This manga has more sex scene than no homoing that. They just don’t even bother to. I feel like Ishida had that as a plot point but realized halfway in how it looked (i.e., really fucking gay) and decided that was something that he was just gonna, not deal with. Just act like that’s a completely normal heterosexual bro thing to do. Like of course anywhere would be pretty gay but Kaneki chose his face. His face. Like his face and his wholeass neck and his shoulders and nowhere else. (and assumedly like, his tongue, seeing as how the dude can’t talk... bruh) Dude really said extreme hickey. French kiss to the max. Ishida clearly did realize that generally, you can only get a bitten off face by,,, having your face bitten off, which is just inherently really fucking gay. Like, I’m just at a loss as to how it even makes sense. You wouldn’t think that the skin off his face, and specifically around his mouth, would really be the most nutritious thing to consume? I can get like the shoulders but generally you’d think something like his arm or leg would be 1.less inconvenient, and 2.much more logical and nutritious? But NO, Kaneki was like “you know what i’m gonna do? eat your Face” and hide’s like “lmao sounds cool”

(not to mention, wasn’t there another guy with a vore face somewhere? like that old guy in the ccg with the bigass turtleneck, i wanna know about him) But like... my bro Ishida went “yeah this happened but i’m going to cover it up with speech bubbles and the ends of panels guys they clearly had their socks on” Dude didn’t even TRY to explain otherwise. Like hey man, that’s pretty damn gay, you are kind of at liberty to either tell me why otherwise, or accept those implications and acknowledge them?? It’s really hilarious when you ignore it cause it’s like

kind of

pretty damn

WEAK of you to leave it at that fucking pissbaby

hmmmmmmmmm however could this happen i guess we’ll never know

13. What the fuck was even the plot omg

God I’ve been writing this post for like five hours so like, I’ll keep it short but like it made sense in the original, not to be like an anime fan but the anime made fucking sense (not re i mean like the original) this lore is so fucking stupid god, the horrors of the entire fucking dragon arc bleach my eyes, unresolved plotlines who???? (the whole ‘oh yeah also ur dying of old age’ thing etc, is kaneki like??? still doing that?? or was that randomly resolved with the whole spewing ovary bullshit i’m going to fucking kill myself) and to top it off, good job Ishida at a real fucking cheap ending. 

You gave them. Fake human. Really? They just come up with artificial human at the end. Kind of undermines the entire fucking story my guy. Ah yes throw out our whole plot. That was the whole tragedy. You gotta eat human. The ghouls have to eat human and that’s tragic bc they have to kill people or whatever. Or i guess they fucking don’t well fucking ok. God you could have just had them negotiate a kind of peace where the ghouls can get dead humans and such, there are plenty of them and no one has to kill anyone then, there could be a rule system for it, it would be messy but eventually everyone would be ok with it, and I think that would work a lot better than “quick fix i made some hamburger helper human you can eat it fine” guys wtf. It’s like Ishida started plotting out the ending for re approximately 2 hours before his deadline. Anyway yes I hate re and I love yelling about it thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 2

Continuing on with the midseason finale of season two.

Part 1 is here  https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/628826170657570816/tangled-salt-marathon-rapunzel-and-the-great

Summary: After Adira saves Rapunzel and the group from the hurt incarnation, Cassandra makes her suspicions of Adira known which causes a falling out between her and Rapunzel. Meanwhile Hector uses the dormant power of the tree to try and attack everyone. 

Cassandra’s Motivation Doesn’t Aline With Her Later Actions 

If you’re going to have a character do a complete 180 from her original goal, than you need a better reason than just mommy issues; or validation issues, or career problems, or just simply having a falling out, or jealousy, or a ghost girl whispering in your ear, or whatever the fuck they’re trying to do with Cassandra.  

Going from ‘protect’ to ‘murder’ is a huge moral alignment shift that needed clear and reasonable justification. Cassandra is never given that. Instead they just throw everything at the wall that they can think of in the hope that something sticks. 

Only it never does because her original story was re-written at the last minute.   

Well That Was Pointless

Max and Pascal wind up saving Eugene and Lance from the man eating plant. Which adds nothing to the story. It happens and is then never brought up again. It’s just an excuse to write Eugene out of the Cass and Raps conflict and not an extension of either his or Lance’s own narratives. 

That’s a problem, because Eugene should be a main character and Lance an important supporting side character. Instead Eugene is regulated to side character status while Lance is unimportant comic relief. Not only does this ignore that fact that Eugene was the protagonist of the movie same as Rapunzel, but it also ignores the basic writing rule of ‘don’t add in characters who don’t serve a purpose in the story’. 

Adira Just Saved All of Your Asses, Cass

Boy does Adira put up with a lot of bullshit in this show, and 90% of it comes from Cass being a little bitch. 

She has no biases for this argument. Adira hasn’t done anything to warrant this accusation. In fact she’s proven herself time and time again only for Cass to lash out like a spoilt teenager with an inferiority complex. 

And Cassandra is 23!!!    

The young adults on this show are constantly written like pre-teens while the only actual teenager is constantly forced to be the most mature person in the show. 

It’s mind boggling. 

Rapunzel is In the Right Here, But the Show Wants Us to Sympathize with Cass Instead?

Oh No! Raps raised her voice at Cassandra and made her feel bad, you guys. Feel sorry for the poor paranoid baby who who’s acting like a jealous brat for no reason. 

Bull Shit. 

Cassandra not only has nothing to back up her accusation but the narrative never goes on to prove her right either. Adria is on the up and up, and always had been according to Destinies Collide. For all the show’s efforts to make Cass seem reasonable by having Adira mysteriously pop in and out, it all falls flat once you know where everything is heading. 

Plus, even if she were magically right about Adira that wouldn’t excuse her bossing Rapunzel around and insulting her intelligence. Had she done that to me I’d be telling her something a lot harsher than just to knock it off. 

Oh, But I Thought You Said Flashbacks to Corona Would Be Too Confusing?

So one of the writers, Ricky, has gone on record stating that they did originally have plans to show flashbacks to Corona to show what was going on with Rapunzel’s parents, Varian, and the Saporians. He then said they dropped them because they feared that it would be too confusing for the audience. 

Yet we get this pointless scene thrown into the middle of the mid-season finale. 

And by the looks of it it’s before even Beginnings, or maybe after Beginnings, who knows; so it’s not just a change of scene, it’s also a change in time as well. A point in the timeline that’s not been firmly established enough. So it not only has less reasons to exist then a Varian flashback would, but it’s also potentially more confusing than what a simple single episode set in Corona would have been. 

I don’t know who to blame for this poor decision making, if it’s just Chris, Chris and Ben, or a shared blame with all of the writers, but while the buck does stop with Chris, much of what Ricky has said online doesn’t reflect very well on his writing skills. Cause that’s a huge and utter bullshit excuse. 

So What Does This Add, Exactly?

Cass gives Rapunzel this purse as a gift. A purse that’s not been shown to be all that important before and isn’t made significant again. Then Raps launches into this speech about how good a friend Cass is and how lost she’d be without her. 

I understand what the thought process for this was; it’s to show how far Raps and Cass have grown apart recently and what Cassandra herself liked about being friends with Rapunzel to being with, which was the validation boost of being useful and needed; but there’s a lot of problems with including it here. 

For starters, lack of validation isn’t enough to suddenly switch into ‘kill mode’ which is where all of this is eventually leading.  

Validation shouldn’t be the foundation of any long term relationship and so rather than proving how good of a friend they are to each other, you’ve only given futher reason for why they’re toxic together. 

You needed to be building them up all throughout season one before launching into this break up plot. This scene is too little too late because we’ve spent too many episodes tearing Raps and Cass down for this plot to have the effect that they wanted it to. 

Cassandra is just doing her job. She’s suppose to show Rapunzel around and help her with shit, that’s what a lady in waiting does. Cassandra’s friendship with Rapunzel shouldn’t be so tied to her career trajectory to begin with. Not only is it unhealthy but it then is used to victim-blame Rapunzel for all of Cassandra’s problems. Even though the only thing actually holding Cass back is herself, as proven in season three. 

Timeline Confirmed

So it is indeed six months since Secret of the Sun Drop, give or take a few days to organize stuff before the trip. Meaning we’re now a year out from Before Happily Ever After. I point this out now, in order to prove something later on. 

This Logically Should Have Been the End of the Argument, But the Writers are Dragging Things Out Needlessly 

You know what I hate more than a ‘lack of communication causes drama' trope? Characters taking the time to communicate and still missing the bloody point and not resolving anything. 

Technically, Rapunzel is still in the right. She is an autonomous person capable of making decisions for herself, and Cass does need to get over herself and treat Rapunzel as such and stop getting butt hurt over not being the one in charge. 

But then we have to ruin that message by throwing in this line. 

Like, yes you’re technically in charge here Raps, but making decisions shouldn’t mean walking all over someone's feelings either. Being a leader is just as much about listening as it is about taking charge and neither of these characters understand that yet. 

And they never will, cause the writing for them is shit. 

When I first saw season two I honestly believe that this would tie into Rapunzel’s previous conflicts regarding responsibility and hypocrisy. I thought they had an arc here about learning to balance assertiveness and personal boundaries, with genuine compassion and respect for others. Had they went through with that then this could have been something truly special, but they go and throw it all away come season three. Now its just heartbreak and frustrating to watch. 

Also Stupid ‘Sisters’ Plot Foreshadowing 

More on this later, but just know if you hate the idea of calling Raps and Cass sisters then blame Chris. 

This Song Underlines The Core Problem With Cassandra's Arc

There’s no stakes.

I’ve already discussed at length now about how Cassandra’s goals and motivations are inconsistent, and how her actions don’t line up. But the reason the writers are struggling so hard to find something that fits her, is because the story has grown past her. 

We’ve already seen characters who struggle with poverty, homelessness, neglect/abuse, and oppression. There are now tons of people in the story who are fighting just for survival, and they’re all regulated to either supporting roles, one off appearances, or are background characters. 

So with that in mind what is there to justify Cassandra getting focus over them? What is she struggling with here that deserves more screen time and attention than, Eugene, Varian, Lady Caine, or even Adira? 

Cassandra isn’t poor. She lives well off in the castle and has high ranking connections. She’s not even struggling with a job she hates anymore because we’ve already seen her promoted to the one she wanted by this point.  

Cassandra isn’t homeless, she once again lives in the castle and if she chooses to leave she has plenty of opportunities waiting for her, as evidenced by Goodbye and Goodwill and Beginnings. Plus she’s shown to be capable of supporting herself both in this season and the next.  

Cassandra isn’t oppressed. She can leave anytime she wants to. She can defy the king's orders in SotSD because she’s the princesses’s bestie. She doesn’t face jail or hanging just because she and Raps has a fight now and then. 

The only thing going for her is possibly neglect/abuse, but that’s not been introduced into the story yet and isn’t what she’s discussing here. It also contradicts what was previously established between her and Cap in season one when it does come into play. 

Validation Alone is Not Enough to Connect With Most of the Audience 

Even the stanchest of Cassandra supporter often has to heavily project onto her in order to connect with her. Which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. Everyone projects to some degree or other when exploring media, that’s part of being human. But the problem is that because she’s so thinly written you’re left with little else but projection. And so you’ll hear excuses like, well she’s fighting the class system, she’s an abuse survivor, or she deserves to lash out over not getting what she wants when she’s worked so hard for it. But none of those excuses are actually presented on screen. 

Cassandra doesn’t fight against the class system. If she did she would be fighting for everyone. She’d be singing about everyone’s problems not just her own. 

Cassandra’s past abuse is just slapped on at the last minute and then disregarded when convenient. It doesn’t actually factor into the decisions she makes later on.  

Also, you don’t deserve anything just because you ‘work hard’ nor because you just really, really want it. 

It’s that point that I really take issue with. 

On the surface Cassandra should be the most relatable person in the show. I mean what young adult or teen living in this post apocalyptic nightmare of a capitalist dystopia not ever felt disappointed over not getting the job they wanted or not being given enough positive validation while crushed underneath mounting unrealistic expectations. It’s the main reason why so many of her supporters are teenagers and LGBT+. 

But all of those worries stem from something deeper than just a lack of positive reinforcement. 

You know why I had to give up on my career as an animator?

It didn’t pay benefits. 

I had medical issues and needed health insurance, but since most animation is commissioned and/or contract based, particularly if you live/work on the east coast, then you’re not going to get that most of the time. And this is after spending the majority of my time in college homeless, living out of my car, crashing on friends and families couches. I did this for three fucking years because I didn’t want to wind up in a textile mill or a carpet factory like everyone I else knew growing up, and I was told my whole life that if I went to school and worked hard enough I could have a well paying job that I enjoyed and got me away from my abusive home life. 

People like me, we’re bitter over not getting the jobs we wanted or the support we needed, not because we believe we’re special and therefore deserve it or some such bullshit, but because our very lives are dependent upon it! We’re victims of a class system that lets you starve if you don't find work. Where you’ll be trapped in abusive situations cause you can’t afford a home on your own. Where simply being yourself can be dangerous as there are people who vocally want to deny us rights and even kill us. 

Cass is an entitled whiny brat in canon because she doesn’t have any of those underlying issues. She doesn’t face real discrimination, oppression, poverty, or the looming threat of death hanging over her. She’s just throwing a temper tantrum. 

Once Again Adira is Saving Your Butt Cass

Adira is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in the marathon. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate her more when I first watched the show. 

Also, I’m Sorry I Didn’t Recognize the Awesomeness That Is Hector Until Now Either.

Like this is a good conflict. They both have legitimate reasons for what they do. They’re both in the right here. That’s what makes them interesting. 

They’re both fighting for something. They’re home and the belief that they can fix things, vs the fate of the world and their loyalty to both the cause and their family. All on top of having their own relationship issues. 

Hector so should have been the main villain of season two, because he just has the most reason to be opposed to the mains’ goal. 

That’s more than whatever Cass and Raps are fighting about. The only thing at stake there is their friendship, which isn’t that big of deal when you compare it to the lives and safety of billions of people. 

Plus Hector’s just flat out entertaining. 

Why is Everybody Just Standing Around Doing Nothing Here?

Fucking do something you lugnuts!!!

You’re all capable fighters. You’ve all taken down much harder enemies than one lone guy and two bearcats. Why aren’t you helping Cass fight back? Or heck, if you wanted Cass to face Hector alone then have her be a distraction so that the others can escape. Anything but having them just stand there and be useless!

Yet Again I Have to Ask Why Should Cass Care? 

Or rather why should the audience care? 

Cass isn’t a lady in waiting just because some random jerk who's already taunting her and trying to kick her ass calls her such. Hector’s not from Corona and has no knowledge of Cassandra’s life beyond what he may have heard repeated by Adiria (who is also not from Corona) or what Cass herself said in her very metaphorical song.  Nor does either them have a say in how Cass’s career goes. 

If you want to push the narrative that Cass is still a lady-in-waiting and a maid, despite having earned Cap’s approval and being appointed by the king to guard Rapunzel, then you damn well need to establish that among the mains. 

Or you know, stop trying to go back on what you’ve set up in season one. 

So How Is This Suppose To Work?

So from the backstory that we get on both the Tree and Zhan Tiri herself, this shouldn’t happen. Like Zhan Tiri is currently trapped in another dimension and according to season three she has no possession powers herself. 

Now the tree itself is said to be sentient and that Zhan Tiri took control of it, but how? How is a tree sentient? Why is it sentient? How did Zhan Tiri bend it to her will? Why is it still under her control while she’s been trapped in another dimension for hundreds of years? Why and how does the spear keep it dormant? Why does the tree itself have possession powers when Zhan Tiri has none? Is there any connection between this Great Tree and the cursed tree that was suppose to free Zhan Tiri back in Painter’s Block? If so then why are these things never brought back into play during season three? 

Give me answers damn it! 

Now This is a Good Conflit, Shame It’s Never Resolved 

Both have valid reasons to do what they do. Both are neither right nor wrong. Both however wind up getting in the way of each other because neither will listen or trust the other. 

Rapunzel thinks that this will stop Hector, and she is right it does, but more importantly she chooses this route because it gives everyone else a chance to run away. The problem is that she can’t control it, but from her point of view that’ll only put her and Hector at risk if everyone else will just do as she says and leaves. 

Cassandra thinks the spear will stop it because it’s done so before, and that’s a logical assumption. It also means that Rapunzel herself won’t be in any danger, though the others might. Cass can’t free everyone at once like Rapunzel can. It’ll also be a threat to herself, and there’s the risk that tree will stop her before she can deal the final blow.  

So what’s happening on a personal level is that Rapunzel thinks taking charge means that everyone needs to follow her say without question. Cassandra thinks Rapunzel should listen to her more, not because Rapunzel needs to listen better in general, but because she doesn’t feel Rapunzel is mature enough to make big decisions and that she herself should be in charge of the group. Both girls feel superior to the other and above other people as well, because they’re convinced they’re always right. 

Had this been the actual conflict that they went with in season three, had they actually had both characters held accountable for their actions and learn something, and hadn’t dragged innocent people into their bullshit with so much as a ‘by your leave’ or ‘I’m sorry’; then this might have been a decent story. Perhaps not as impactful as Varian’s, but still meaningful, thoughtful, and well, coherent. 

But that’s not what they did, and we’ll see no real resolution to this disagreement. 

So Why Is No One Affected By the Hurt Incantation This Time?

Eugene here was injured by the tree earlier, that’s why he’s past out, but everyone else remains unharmed by Rapunzel’s singing. Even though just last episode everyone around her were dying from it, and again in the season finale everyone dies from said incantation. But here and in Rapunzel’s Return, Rapunzel can use the incantation without harming anyone nearby so, how does that work? 

Some people have suggested that when Rapunzel focuses her hair on a target like the tree here or the amber later, that it doesn’t spread to other people, but that’s never stated on screen so it’s still a flaw. 

 Well This Goes Nowhere 

I think the writers just like throwing in shocking ‘twists’ and moments like this just for the sake of looking edgy and ‘deep’ but then they never actually follow through on the impact of such moments on the characters nor consider the more troubling implications of including them. 

I grew up on Gargoyles, Batman the Animated Series, the 90s X-Men Cartoon, and The Pirates of Dark Water. I’ve seen far more shocking and edgy stuff than this when I was six years old. In many ways the american animated tv landscape has regressed since the early 2000s when it comes to more mature cartoons, and no that’s not a complaint about modern cartoons being bad; some are good some are bad, just like its always been; but that culturally we’ve shied away more from darker moments like this and we’ve having to push for them all over again in media.   

But the difference between Tangled and those 90s cartoons I’ve mentioned is that Tangled’s darker moments are misplaced. It clashes horribly with the more comedic route that the series usually takes and as such they don’t get the focus that they need too. 

After season two is done, Cass’s hand will never be mentioned again. It does not tie into her later motivations at all nor influences her actions. Throughout the series she’ll be able to use it easily without consequence. We don't even get any on screen confirmation if it’s healed by grabbing the moonstone, by the sundrop incarnation in the finale, or if she just forever has a burnt arm. That’s how little importance it is to the story. 

This Also Goes Nowhere

Hector calls out this warning but it’s then never followed up on. Adira is proven not to be a liar at all and nobody in the group is actually doomed. Yes the wider world is put in jeopardy, but that’s Cass’s fault not Adira’s. 

The writers were too focused on making Adira the red herring for Cassandra that they forgot to make her an actual person, with wants, feelings, desires, goals, and a life beyond her mission. She’s never shown helping her family and barely interacts with them, she’s never given a reason for why she keeps disappearing, and the idea that she’s doing this to save her home is just supposition on my part because otherwise she has no reason. The series never gives us one. 

And ‘Destiny’ Is Not A Fucking Reason!!!

Oh, So Adira Will Help Hector But Not Quirin or Varian?

If Hector and Adira consider each other siblings because they’re both in the Brotherhood, than logically Adira would consider Quirin her brother as well, and Varian would be her nephew. 

She was around long enough to see the final battle in SotSD. That’s why she appears at the end of that episode, how she knows Rapunzel is the sundrop and has ‘seen her power’, and how she knows that the group has met both Quirin and Varian before now. 

She knows that Quirin is trapped in amber. She knows her nephew has been arrested by a kingdom with a poor track record of punishing orphaned teens and poor people with overly harsh sentences. So why didn't she do anything there? 

We find out during season three that the black rocks can cut through the amber, and its established that Adira’s sword can cut through the rocks, so clearly she didn’t even try to save Quirin has just given him up for dead. But there’s no reason why she couldn’t have broken Varian out of the prison and taken her with him. 

In fact Adira hiding Varian from the rest of the group during season two would have been an actual reason for her disappearance and an actual reason not to trust her. That would have upped the stakes and given Cass reasons for what she does. Plus more time for Varian’s redemption, more chances to call out Rapunzel and Fredric on their BS, and ties seasons one and two together better. 

Seriously leaving Varian out of season two was the dumbest decision in television. Putting Varian back in actually fixes everything in the show. 

The Real Reason for the Burnt Hand is a Costume Change for Cass

I don’t know if she even got merchandise for this costume.   

Conclusion 

Much like season one’s arc episodes, The Great Tree held a lot of promise that was then completely wasted by season three. It’s also one of the very few episodes in the season to have actual stakes and conflict so it easily jumps to the top of the pile. But what it sets up is then never resolved or expounded upon, making it a waste. 

Next up we’ll have the mid season recap. 

[harryforvogue]

I know that you’re obsessed with the princess diaries, so how do you feel about the movies? Are they as good as the novels? How do you feel about Michael vs Nicholas? I would love to know your thoughts!

i just want to firstly say that i haven’t smiled in days and you just made me smile so big so thank you very much for this. also this is long so it’s gonna be under the cut. thank you, i love you. so much

***

okay. hi. here’s what i think, and you are more than welcome to disagree with me, but i really think it’s unlikely you will. the movies are really good. the first movie is my favorite movie of all time and nothing will ever change that. it’s not a perfect adaptation of the books, but i will give it credit where it’s due. the second movie doesn’t follow any script. the author of the princess diaries often shades it herself, but it’s good as a standalone. my problem isn’t even that michael isn’t in it. my issue is with how they ruined the actual plot of the books. i’ll get into that later.

i’m gonna talk mainly about the first movie. and then i’ll move onto the second!

mia:

so firstly, the movie characters and the book characters are so VASTLY different. yeah mia is a clumsy girl who’s just trying her best to pass school with a few Cs, but mia in the books is so infuriatingly annoying and teenager-ish, it’s fucking awesome. when we were 14, we were this annoying, can you believe that? book!mia doesn’t have the option of stepping down from the role of princess. she’s born a princess so she stays a princess. her grandmother isn’t a queen because the genovia in the books don’t do kings and queens. the highest form of royalty are the princess and princes, so after her grandmother, the dowager princess clarisse, and her father (yes he’s alive LOL) prince philippe pass on, mia is their only heir so she really doesn’t have a choice to abandon the crown or the line of succession ends. the line of succession thing is true in the movie. it's also true that mia doesn’t accept her becoming a princess as something good. she hates it. she tries to keep it a secret, but you know that didn’t work. the makeover scene was super dramatized, but more or less the same in the book. michael’s reaction to her new look is about the same, but still written much better. man’s is HOOKED.

lilly:

so they got mia pretty good for the most part. they got her appearance totally wrong but it’s fine. they also got lilly pretty good! lilly is mia’s best friend and she’s often very unsupportive and even i’m just beginning to like her because she’s super problematic, but she always has mia’s best interest in mind. mia is, uh how do you say this nicely, dumb as hell sometimes. lilly is her super smart friend who is a bit too mature for her age and together, they’re just a weird duo. 

as an adult though, you realise that lilly is right more often than not, but when you’re younger, you really think mia is the one who is right. anyways, the first movie got lilly perfect. they have that little fight or whatever between them where lilly is jealous, blah blah. that was good. lilly do be scary sometimes though. 

now that i’m thinking about it, michael and lilly both wanted the best for mia, but michael did it the right way. 

tina:

they cut out my favorite character, aka tina hakim baba, who is just the sweetest, most sensitive girl who’s always in la la land reading romance novels. she’s from a rich family so she is also followed by a body guard and, ugh she’s my favorite. i could go on and on about her. she’s literally who i was in middle school.

clarisse:

the dowager princess, clarisse, aka mia’s grandmother is NOTHING like the sweet julie andrews in the movies. in the books she is a stone cold bitch and i love her for it. she’s so hard on mia, she’s unforgiving, she’s a pain in the fucking ass. everything movie clarisse is? yeah, make it the opposite and you have book clarisse. she’s a complete nut case who only wears purple and hates poor people. she calls michael “that boy.” her and michael really do be enemies sometimes and it’s great. it’s awesome. it’s perfect. she drives mia insane. she makes the books bro.

michael:

and finally…. we have michael. the love of my life. the light of my days. the reason for my existence. movie michael is NOTHING like book michael. movie michael is super cute and shy and he fixes cars and he’s in a band (that part is true in the books. he writes mia songs and ... i can’t talk about it or i’ll combust or something) and he’s just the sweetest older brother, but in the books, he’s this hot guy who secretly pines after mia, thinking it’s unrequited. 

michael has dark hair that sort of flops over one eye, really dark eyes that you just melt into and he’s tall. his movie character is pretty accurate when it comes to appearance.

book michael is hopelessly in love with mia and he never says anything about it because she’s his little sister’s best friend. seriously, he’s obsessed with her in the quietest way. he tries to give her hints by offering to tutor her in algebra and he tries to ask her out like 500 times in the two books alone, but mia is very very oblivious. michael is a senior who has been accepted early action into columbia university (and that should give you a clue as to how smart he is). the only way i can describe michael is fucking hot. he is HOT as fuck. he’s not the cute little simp in the movie. 

i’ve said this before: book michael would never say “why me?” he could say “bitch open your eyes, i’ve been here for years.” he’s also super horny in the later books, but we don’t have to go into that. (seriously. he’s horny af. i mean the guy LOVES making out and i don’t blame mia for wanting to jump his bones bye--) he is the greatest love of my life, i literally can’t explain it to you more. he’s perfect.

and he’s so patient. he’s never angry with her, never toxic. he’s always listening to her when she’s being a nutcase and honestly if i were michael, i would have dumped her ass immediately after going out with her cuz JESUS CHRIST she is annoying sometimes. 

movie two:

there are other amazing characters like boris (who i guess would be jeremiah ? in the movie ?) and THE DEVIL’S SPAWN HIMSELF: JP.  ugh. I fuckin hate JP. you’ll hate him too. fuck JP all my homies hate JP. of course clarisse likes him though.

the two reasons why i don’t particularly like the second movie are because 1. it doesn’t follow the books and 2. it completely ignores mia’s struggle with finding herself. in the second movie, she’s 21 and trying to become queen (which we already know is impossible in genovia), and she’s got to find a husband ASAP. uhhhh why? 

here’s my problem with that: the princess diaries is not a romance series. yeah, it’s got elements of romance (the michael and mia romance is the best thing i’ve ever read) but the whole point of the books is that this TEENAGER has just been given a whole ass country and she has to learn to become a royal. but the second movie shifts everything to marriage and romance. it’s just a bit of a shame that the writers shifted the entire story to a romance line when the series itself isn’t completely romance. also, hello? she’s only 21?! why they tryna get her married bro? at least make her a little older?

but the second movie is perfect as a standalone. you can enjoy the second movie by itself but i really don’t think it was right to shift the ENTIRE point of the story.

the books are 500 times better than the movies. and they’re not even that long! you can finish them so quickly. Meg Cabot, the author, is STILL posting updates for mia! the best thing is that no matter how many times you reread the books, you’ll find easter eggs that you missed the first four times, like how michael and lars, mia’s bodyguard, high five after michael and mia dance together in the first book before mia even knows michael likes her. mia is so flawed but as the books go on, she gets smarter and michael is her perfect half. he kinda knocks some sense into her. AS HE SHOULD.

the books also are so nostalgic. i mean, they email each other, they talk through instant messaging, they pass notes, they live in new york so they’re always going to these different places like rockefeller, etc... overall, so GOOD. so 2000s!

that’s all hehe. i have more stuff over at my other blog @iluvromance