#i had to look at them throughout 3 days of remaking this ok

[puppy-phum]

thank you once again @yibobibo​ for tagging me ♥ even if, like I said, this is pure torture. I have so many sons that I’ve given up on counting them sigh but here goes.

favourite male fictional characters.

I took it that this meant ten so am going with that (tho am not gonna try and put them into order). am also sticking to all the characters I loved this year. and gonna ramble and add gifs so cutting it here. 

1. Liu Sang

The Lost Tomb Reboot/Reunion: The Sound of The Providence

I have so much love for this boy it’s not even healthy. it’s a bit funny tho bc once I started tltr, I didn’t really like him and almost forgot about him as the first season ended. he just felt so annoying and bitter in what I saw him, even if I did get that he had a Tragic BackstoryTM (I felt for him but well. tltr really made him hard to like at first). but then they brought him back in the second season with his sad puppy eyes and inability to handle his thoughts on wu xie and being all touch-starved and pitiful and whatnot and baam, I had the adoption papers ready. he’s wonderful and so strong and so smart and amazing. and liu chang as his actor has been wonderful (and he’s so pretty my god, have you seen him??)

2. Shen Wei

Guardian

never did I expect to just. fall into this hole after a year? I remember what a mess I was when I first watched guardian over a year ago, right after finishing the untamed. I was in shambles even as I knew how it would end. and now I’ve done this all again while also reading the novel and. my love for shen wei, especially bc it’s zhu yilong acting as shen wei? astronomical. I want to write poetry about him and his stupid responsibilities that he chooses to carry silently and his devotion to zhao yunlan and his love for his ppl and his didi and. I hope that one day I manage to write weilan bc I have this one idea and you can come pry it from my cold, dead fingers if it doesn’t get out there (am also super happy about the edit I made bc my god does he deserve at least that)

3. Cloud Strife

Final Fantasy VII

ok so stepping into the video games territory now. I was waiting for the remake like crazy and it was everything to me once the quarantine hit during spring. the game is so beautiful and I felt like I looked at this gorgeous boy once and was ready to give him my heart (tbh am quite sure he owned my heart before I even learned to know him). he is tragic in so many ways (I’ve only scratched the surface of all of his pain I know) and I wish I could just. hug him a lot. he is kind and cares very deeply even if he hates to show it and I love it how remake showed him also just being a human disaster (some of his scenes are just. peak comedy). I would kill for his smile (I have already cried for it a dozen)

4. Geralt of Rivia

The Witcher (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt)

if there’s one grumpy, brickwall of a man I love, it’s geralt. I affectionately call him “papa wolf” while playing witcher 3 and his voice in it does things to me (I am just so fond of him ok, begone you dirty fuckers). I got introduced to him through the books and adored him in them bc he is so prickly and sarcastic and still so full of love even if he will never admit to it. he is the father figure I wish I could have in real life. (and yes, I’ve seen the tv series (or at least a couple of the first episodes) and it looks stunning but. this is my version of geralt and that’s the hill I will die on)

5. Xiaoge

Zhang Qiling, Daomu Biji (The Lost Tomb 2)

(wow finding a gif for him was a pain, apparently I gotta learn how to gif or?) ah, my dear boy who I’ve ended up just calling xiaoge bc he seems to prefer it over his real name/title/whatever zhang qiling really is. I got introduced to him through tltr where we really didn’t get to know that much about him bc he was just... there. huang junjie was absolutely stunning tho and his soft smiles made me super fond, but only in the lost tomb 2 did I really fall in love with xiaoge as a character. I was surprised tbh bc I didn’t expect it to be this drama? I had so many doubts about the cast in tlt2 but they all delivered! and I think cheng yi’s xiaoge is now my favorite bc he somehow captured that softness and the pain of him? (and we do not talk about that buxun storyline tyvm) tho now that ultimate note is on the way, I gotta say that xiao yuliang does a wonderful job as xiaoge too!

6. Wu Xie

Daomu Biji (Ultimate Note)

(sorry we have to go with a pingxie gif now but maybe it’s only fitting) tbh it’s hard to choose my favorite version of wu xie. I think all of the actors for him have done amazing job showing wu xie in different parts of his life (all of them are very distinct but still feel like the same person) but currently zheng shunxi takes the lead. I really wanted to put the reboot version of him here (bc I love that mature, relaxed and somehow very soft version of him and the angst is phenomenal and the thoughts he has about death... yeah) but I already have zhu yilong’s face here once so :’D wu xie is just one of those characters you cannot not like. he is so strong, so kind, so stubborn, so wonderfully stupid sometimes and in need of careful protection. I also adore it how smart he is and I could listen to him spew history facts for 10 hours straight (even if it was in a tomb full of blood zombies) ♥

7. Jiang Cheng

Jiang Wanyin, The Untamed

my darling boy! my beautiful angry grape! I love him beyond words. I love him in all of his raging, misunderstood, stupid, sassy, constipated, abused, tragic, bitter, big hearted glory. I could write novels about him (and I did and am still writing oh boy) and his love for ppl and his inability to show that love and his loneliness and his issues. I could also write another novel for all of his outfits etc. bc damn, what a fashion king. he is just so great. he owns my soul. he deserves happiness and in this essay I will

8. Isana Yashiro

Adolf K. Weismann, K Project

I rewatched k project this spring bc a) it’s one of my favorite animes ever (it just looks stunning with all the colors) and b) I love yashiro to bits. I remember falling in love with him when I first watched k project many years ago bc he was just so kind and bright. this time though, I ended up seeing another side of him and my god did I cry. he is... so sweet. he cares for others so deeply and is ready to sacrifice so much for them and his love for his two clansmen... yeah. I think I finally saw the tragedy of him too, all the pain and loneliness and insecurity he decides to hide behind his smile and obnoxious personality. he reminded me a lot of myself and watching him made my heart bleed in a good way

9. Qi Tiezui

Ba Ye, The Mystic Nine

(wow am going to riot for the lack of all the gifs hhh) yes, we’re continuing with the dmbj universe that sucked me in big time this year. the drama of the mystic nine wasn’t probably that earth shattering for me as it somehow got boring more than once but I did love ba ye to bits. he was just... so nice? I got it that he was somehow this “comedic relief” in the drama with all of his funny scenes and ridiculous mannerisms but I could see the brilliance of him. he is warm and smart and kind of a romantic too and he cares for all of his friends so deeply? it was also sweet how protective of him his two zhangs were (does that run in the family? the tendency to imprint into one smart but disastrous man and keep him safe? maybe) and I really hope I knew more about him bc he seemed to have a lot of knowledge and a lot of impact to ppl’s lives (I yelled when they mentioned him in ultimate note, I miss him ;;)

10. Dorian Pavus

Dragon Age Inquisition

(yes I’ve been replaying DA:I this year, this counts!) another darling boy! my lovely sass master son! I have so much love for him and his story in DA:I. he is my favorite companion (and his romance is my favorite too, probably obvious in the way am currently romancing him for the third time) and he has given me a lot of strength. the way he stands up against his father, how he’s ready to reform his homeland instead of walking away, how he’s so caring for those he sees struggling... it’s very warming and I feel like I’m safe with him. it feels a bit silly to say that but he really is that comfort character I will seek out when I just want to know am doing fine :’) (and I am so excited to see him again in DA4! probably?)

+ 11. Li Cu

Tomb of the Sea

yes I cheated a bit (with my own rules lol) to fit li cu here. I didn’t really expect to like him or tomb of the sea as much as I did once I started it? I’ve seen leo wu elsewhere before this (battle through the heavens, nirvana in fire) and his face always makes me think about a sad puppy so maybe I just grew fond over li cu instantly bc he was... so hurt? the first episode really slaps you in the face with all of it, showing him being abused, wounded, kidnapped, tortured, used and then just very, very scared and broken. he continues being that throughout the whole drama and I feel like tomb of the sea (or sand sea or sha hai idk) is the darkest and angstiest story in the dmbj universe. I know it deserves to be bc this is a dark time for wu xie but... my darling li cu. I wish him only happiness ;; he was so strong and smart and wonderful in this and it was just so amazing to watch him grow and find his own place in the world just bc he did something himself (even when he got dragged into all of this bc of wu xie) also I support the wu xie adopts li cu -agenda

Honorary mentions: 

Zhang Rishan, Xie Yuchen and Hei Xiazi from DMBJ universe. The Twin Jades of Gusu and Ouyang Zizhen from The Untamed. The Iron Bull and Fenris from Dragon Age games. Thane Krios, Kaidan Alenko and Jaal from Mass Effect games. The whole lot of Assassin’s Creed protagonists (especially Ezio Auditore and Shay Cormac). Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch from The Raven Cycle. Neil Josten from All For The Game. Eduon and March from The Smoke Thieves. Qiling from L.O.R.D. Critical World. Luo Fei from Detective L (played by Bai Yu). 

well, with this I can really see that I have a thing for those who are tragic :’D I have a thing for grumpy, prickly and antisocial guys or those who hide their pain behind a smile. maybe it’s bc I am somehow both, even if I can’t show my anger or be mean to others and even if I feel like my smile never sticks either. I just find kinship in all of the characters who are on this list. and I feel like I aspire to be as strong and as kind and as loving despite all the pain I’ve been put through.  

thank you, this was so much fun! and sorry I made this so long and so complicated ^^’ but well, there are just way too many male characters I love haha

at the end I want to tag @i-am-just-a-kiddo​ @ashenwren​ @kholran​ @tiesanjiao​ @lan-xichens​ @aheartfullofjolllly​ @manhasetardis​ and @lzswy​​ ♥ feel free to do this in your own way or not at all! and thank you if you managed to read through my rambling :’D

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: OK Computer

The third studio album from Radiohead was released in May 1997 by Parlophone Records. This would mark the first album that Nigel Godrich worked on as their producer. The band would self produce the entire album themselves, which they have done on every record since. In 1995, Brian Eno asked the band to contribute a song to a charity compilation for War Child entitled Help. They were scheduled to do the recording in only a day, which led to the track, “Lucky.” Godrich would say of the recording. “Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff really fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling fairly euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album." This track would form the foundation of what would become OK Computer. In early 1996, the group took a break from touring because they found it a bit too stressful. Thoughts now turned to a new record with the mindset of distancing themselves from anything similar to The Bends. Drummer Phillip Selway would say, “There was an awful lot of soul-searching [on The Bends]. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring.” The label gave the band a rather good sized budget for recording equipment for the new release. A number of producers were considered for the album, but they kept coming back to Godrich as an advisor on equipment. Eventually, the band hired him as the producer. Ed O’Brien said of the album, “Everyone said, 'You'll sell six or seven million if you bring out The Bends Pt 2,' and we're like, 'We'll kick against that and do the opposite'."

In early 1996, Radiohead began proper recording of the LP at Canned Applause Studios in Oxfordshire, England. Issues immediately came up as the band had difficulty staying focused on one song all the way to completion. Selway would talk about this later, “We're jumping from song to song, and when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song ... The stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them." Although the members of the group were considered equals, the voice of Thom Yorke always represented the loudest one in terms of musical direction. Godrich would talk about his role within the group in an interview. They “need to have another person outside their unit, especially when they're all playing together, to say when the take goes well ... I take up slack when people aren't taking responsibility—the term producing a record means taking responsibility for the record ... It's my job to ensure that they get the ideas across." His permanent role on each Radiohead album would lead to the producer being called the sixth member of Radiohead. After only recording four songs, the band left the Canned Applause Studio for a variety of reasons Including the fact that the studio had no bathrooms or dining rooms. They decided to take a break from recording in order to support Alanis Morissette on tour, which gave them a chance to try some of their new tracks live. Around the same time, Director Baz Luhrmann asked the band to contribute a song to his film, Romeo and Juliet. “Exit Music for a Film” would be played as the credits rolled during the movie, but they did not give Luhrmann permission to place the track on the movie soundtrack. Yorke would later observe that this song became very important to the album. It “was the first performance we'd ever recorded where every note of it made my head spin—something I was proud of, something I could turn up really, really loud and not wince at any moment."

In September 1996, the band began recording again at a mansion in Bath, England owned by actress Jane Seymour. Jonny Greenwood would say the environment represented a much more pleasant change for the group. It “was less like a laboratory experiment, which is what being in a studio is usually like, and more about a group of people making their first record together." One quality that the band enjoyed during the sessions came in the fact that they took full advantage of the natural environment of the mansion. “Exit Music for a Film” utilized some natural reverb courtesy of a stone stairwell. They recorded Let Down” in an empty ballroom at 3 o’clock in the morning. The group worked at its own pace as Ed O’Brien observed later. “The biggest pressure was actually completing [the recording]. We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff." A majority of the album would be recorded live with no overdubs because Yorke hated them. The band completed the rest of the album at the studio in Saint Catherine’s towards the end of 1996. In January 1997, the strings for the album were recorded, then they spent the next two months mastering and mixing the album. Actually, the mixing of the album only took a couple of days. Nigel Godrich would later comment, “I feel like I get too into it. I start fiddling with things and I fuck it up ... I generally take about half a day to do a mix. If it's any longer than that, you lose it. The hardest thing is trying to stay fresh, to stay objective."

Several artists would influence what would become the finished product of OK Computer. First and foremost came the 1970 album Bitches Brew by jazz great, Miles Davis. Thom Yorke would tell Q what he saw in that recording that made up his vision for this album. “It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that's the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." Other artists that helped to inspire the record included Elvis Costello, REM, PJ Harvey, the Beatles, Can, and composer Ennio Morricone. Jonny Greenwood would describe OK Computer as an attempt to recreate the sound on all these great records, but they missed the mark. The band would expand their instrumentation for this album to include electric piano, Mellotron, cello and other strings, glockenspiel and electronic effects. Spin would say this about the release, “A DIY electronica album made with guitars." The lyrics to the album focused on themes much more conceptual when contrasted with The Bends. Yorke would sing about a wide variety of topics including transportation, technology, insanity, death, globalism, capitalism, and more. The singer would say, “On this album, the outside world became all there was ... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me moving too fast." He also took inspiration for some of the lyrics from a selection of books including Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We're In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! and Philip K. Dick's VALIS. Despite the abstract nature of the lyrics on the record, many critics have looked upon OK Computer as a concept album. They argue that there exists a singular theme running throughout the record, but the band has consistently denied any attempt at making such a release. Jonny Greenwood commented, “I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring." They did pay particularly close attention to the order of the tracklist taking almost two weeks to complete it.

The album opens with “Airbag,” which highlights the drumming of Phillip Selway. The track had been inspired by the work of DJ Shadow. The band would later admit that they represented novices in this attempt to base a song on DJ Shadow due to their lack of time with programming. Yorke had actually read an article in a magazine entitled “An Airbag Saved My Life.” Another book that helped to create the basis for the song lyrics emerged in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yorke had always been obsessed with the idea that any time you get into a car you could possibly die at any second. The second track “Paranoid Android” stands out as one of the longest tracks in the band's entire catalog. Two songs inspired it from classic rock, “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” by the Beatles and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. The lyrics are meant to reference the alien from Douglas Adams’s A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yorke got the idea after watching a woman lose her mind after a drink spilled on her at a bar in Los Angeles. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” referenced “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan. The lyrics are meant to refer a person who is abducted by aliens, then returns home to realize his life is in no way any different. The beginnings of the theme for this track actually began for the singer in private school when he had an assignment to recreate a British literary movement called Martian poetry. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare inspired the lyrics to “Exit Music for a Film.” This should come as no surprise as the band had specifically created the song for a remake film. Yorke would use it as a chance to simply recap the entire narrative in the song because Zeffirelli’s version of the film greatly affected him at the age of 13. “I cried my eyes out, because I couldn't understand why, the morning after they shagged, they didn't just run away. It's a song for two people who should run away before all the bad stuff starts.” The singer had tried to replicate Johnny Cash’s Live at Folsom Prison as he sang along to his acoustic guitar. “Let Down” represented an attempt by the band to recreate the sound made famous by Phil Spector and his wall of sound. Yorke would later comment that the lyrics are “about that feeling that you get when you're in transit but you're not in control of it—you just go past thousands of places and thousands of people and you're completely removed from it.” The singer would look upon such lyrics as perfect symbolism for Generation X, which had strongly influenced the direction of it. “Karma Police” contains two major sections that alternate between piano and guitar, which originally came from “Sexy Sadie” by the Beatles. The title of the song was an inside joke between the band during the previous tour. If something bad happened to someone, they would say that the karma police were going to get them. The short Interlude “Fitter, Happier” became something that the Radiohead frontman wrote in 10 minutes while on a break. The voice came from the Macintosh Simpletext software application. He would later describe the words as a “checklist for slogans from the 1990s.”

“Electioneering” turned out to be one of the band’s heaviest rock oriented songs probably ever with lyrics that were inspired by the Poll Tax Riots. Another source of inspiration came in the book Manufacturing Consent by Noah Chomsky. “Climbing Up the Walls” has been described by Melody Maker as “monumental chaos.” The track was arranged by Johnny Greenwood for 16 instruments based on composer Krzysztof Penderecki's “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.” No Surprises” would be initially inspired by “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys, but they really wanted to replicate the mood of “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong or the soul music of Marvin Gaye. Yorke would say the song’s narrator is “someone who's trying hard to keep it together but can't.” The track that started it all “Lucky” was actually inspired by the Bosnian War. Yorke wanted to illustrate the actual terror of that conflict on the charity album, Help. Another theme that he drew upon emerged in his own anxiety about transportation. Critics have likened the guitar on the song to 1970’s Pink Floyd. The final track on the album “The Tourist” was specifically arranged by Jonny Greenwood to create a bit of space on the LP. The lyrics originated from Yorke witnessing tourists in France trying to see as many sites as possible. The title of the album came from the 1978 radio series based on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when character Zaphod Beeblebrox says, “Okay, computer, I want full manual control now." They had first heard the line while listening to the series on the bus for their tour in 1996. Yorke would say this about the title later. It “refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else's. It's to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on ... and the sound it makes." The artwork would be created by both Yorke and Stanley Donwood using a computer. The Radiohead singer would observe this about the art, “It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."

Leading up to the release of the album, the band got very little support from Capitol Records because they did not have too much faith in the commercial potential of it. Much of the pessimism came in the fact that the record did not have any singles to put on the radio. Ed O’Brien would call it the “lack of a Van Halen factor.” The singles that were released from OK Computer included “Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police,” and “Lucky.” All of the singles charted in the top 10 in the UK, while they also did very well making the top 20 on the US charts. Their official website was created in order to promote the record, as well as some non-traditional promotional techniques by the record label. One such idea came in their decision to take out full-page ads in popular British newspapers and magazines with only the lyrics to “Fitter, Happier.” Another promotion sent out floppy disks to people in the press, which included many Radiohead screensavers. Upon its official release, OK Computer would debut at number one on the UK charts, while in the US the record made it to number 21. Please note that this was the highest American debut for the band. By September 2000, the release had sold 4.5 million copies worldwide.

Critics loved the album across the board. Writer Tim Footman would comment, “Not since 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history." Many critics saw it as a very important album. Mojo wrote in their review, “Others may end up selling more, but in 20 years' time I'm betting OK Computer will be seen as the key record of 1997, the one to take rock forward instead of artfully revamping images and song-structures from an earlier era.” The New Yorker would congratulate the band on taking many more risks artistically then their contemporaries like Oasis. “Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme ... This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock." Most of the reviews that were slightly mixed seemed to focus on the fact that when compared with The Bends, this record did not contain as many catchy songs. The release would go on to win the Grammy for Best Alternative Album, but did not win Album of the Year. The praise for the album seemed to inundate the band a little too much. Also, Radiohead did not agree with the universal assessment that they had made the greatest progressive or art rock record since Dark Side of the Moon. Thom Yorke would say, “We write pop songs ... there was no intention of it being 'art'. It's a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it."

The legacy of the album came to be represented in a variety of ways. First, the release of OK Computer coincided with the election of Tony Blair. Some writers have pointed to the pessimism on the record as a sign of things to come. Stephen Hayden would write, “Radiohead appeared to be ahead of the curve, forecasting the paranoia, media-driven insanity, and omnipresent sense of impending doom that's subsequently come to characterise everyday life in the 21st century." Second, the arrival of this album directly coincided with the decline of Britpop. The Oasis album Be Here Now did not attain the commercial or critical success that What’s the Story Morning Glory had received in 1995. Third, OK Computer directly influenced a new generation of artists including bands like Bloc Party and TV on the Radio. The album has landed on many lists over the subsequent years as one of the best releases of the decade and all time. Yet, not all retrospective reviews have been kind to OK Computer as it has also landed on some lists as one of the most overrated records of all time. A New Musical Express column criticized the release as the exact point when Radiohead stopped being good, but instead started to become important.

[silver-wield]

Nobody asked for this one, but I said I was gonna do it anyway. Barret and Cloud's friendship development.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna make a mile long post. I'm just gonna hit on the key moments, but I think these two deserve a bit of spotlight.

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be reasonably long.

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone’s interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis) 

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog) 

Tifa character analysis 

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory – I should probably update this since I’ve had other ideas since then) 

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti) 

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis 

Cloti reunion analysis 

The Promise Analysis 

Andrea’s approval (Cloti ask response) 

Leslie analysis (not mine, but a good read) 

Cloti action touching 

Aerti friendship analysis 

Cloti body language chapter 3 

Cloti healthy disagreement 

Cloti post heliboss battle (chapter 15) 

Clerith playground scene 

Cloti body language plate fall 

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

I'm not recapping the whole game lol

Chapter 1: Barret isn't impressed one bit with Cloud. Watching back their early interactions and I keep noticing this sad look on Cloud's face when he's excluded. But then, I'm also like “Well you pushed them away first”. But I also wanna hug him.

Yeah, so Barret isn't impressed and he's outright hostile, calling Cloud names and antagonising him. He even shoots at Cloud and then raises his gun to take out a security bot. This man doesn't like Cloud and isn't afraid to show it.

You gotta remember, Barret is 6'5 and built like a brick shit house and has a machine gun on his arm. He's not someone to mess with. Taking that in, Cloud's dismissiveness is pretty impressive. I mean he's almost a foot shorter than Barret, after all, and his sword probably weighs more than him lol

Perhaps by the end of the chapter – after Cloud saves Jessie – Barret might have thawed a tiny bit towards him, but he's still mistrusting and doesn't like him.

Chapter 2 and there's not a lot of interaction between them. Barret does actually agree with Cloud when he says “what's done is done” in reference to the destruction. This shows Barret is pragmatic and not against Cloud himself, just his role. After that, Cloud's alone for the rest of the chapter until the above screen when he leaps into the cargo carriage of the train and Barret says, “You had me worried for a minute.”

He looks caught out when the others all look at him because he's been a total dick to Cloud throughout the mission, but this shows he cares about his team, even if he doesn't like everyone on it. Showing concern for his people is the trait of a leader and if the game were showcased differently we could assume that Barret is our leading man.

“The folks down here don't have the luxury of choice, you know.”

Still in chapter 2 and this is such a great moment between Cloud and Barret! There's no arguing, just Barret giving Cloud a different perspective that's not the badass merc “Idc” one he's showcasing. You can see once the conversation is over that Cloud grows introspective, so Barret's words clearly resonated with him. This looks like another marker on Cloud's chart of going from a douchebag to a decent human being. He thinks about how things are for other people. Later, Marle tells him to consider others feelings, too. To listen. I'm loving all these small moments that come together to build a clearer of picture of Cloud's development.

Barret actually removes his sunglasses – why is he wearing them at night? – to meet Cloud's eye. This is a gesture that shows his sincerity and belief in his words. He's not just blustering for the sake of it. He cares about the people and the planet.

Chapter 3 and we don't see Barret until near the end. He's back to being snappy with Cloud – understandable since he's being a dick going on about money.

(aside: can I just squee at Cloud smiling at Tifa through this whole bit. He's such a dork)

And when we see Barret again he's very professional and courteous. There's no emotion in his tone and his words are very formal. He could be talking to anybody. His head dips as he's speaking, in an effort to lower himself more to Cloud's physical level. On an emotional one, he's making himself non-threatening. This isn’t a confrontation is what he’s putting out.

Cloud doesn't look happy at the dismissal and something we know about him is his desire for acceptance, so this probably hurts, although he acts otherwise.

We're up to chapter 5 and this is a turning point between Cloud and Barret's budding friendship. Barret's in battle dialogue makes it clear he's trying to show off in front of Cloud, who's dismissive still. There's a lot of back and forth between them in the kind of guy banter that suggests they kind of respect each other, but they also just have to put up with each other.

The above screen is the second before Cloud says to Barret that he's better than that in response to his arguing with the Shinra manager. Barret seems surprised Cloud even tries with him, but what's more telling is this expression from Cloud shows he gave it some thought before speaking. He considered the right words to address Barret which shows he's thought about the kind of reaction Barret could have. He took in Barret’s words from chapter 2 and Marle’s from chapter 3. This is called character development!

Chapter and Cloud throws some shade and Barret blusters lol

Tbf Barret's grown a lot less hostile since chapter 1. He's not as combative to Cloud, nor is he maliciously insulting him anymore. They've entered a stage of snarky banter, which we all know is one of the big steps on the road to friendship lol

Clearly Barret being able to see Cloud in action and rely on him in battle – not to mention Tifa's enduring good opinion – are starting to colour his own opinion.

(Tifa actually rears back when Barret waves his arm around in this bit lol)

Barret looking to Cloud for back up here. I mean, they're all in the shit, but this is interesting that he's looking to Cloud for that reassurance they're gonna continue kicking ass. The fact Cloud agrees without even the tiniest disagreement is probably the first time they're genuinely on the same page through their own choice.

Let the friendship begin!

Now, I bet you're thinking I picked this one to showcase cloti, well you're wrong. This is an example of how Barret's mellowed towards Cloud from his chapter 1 hostility to now. Cloud disagrees with him and instead of getting pissed that his leader decision is overruled, he lets it go.This could be a moment of contention between them, but they’ve both grown enough over the game to get to the point that not everything between them is a fight.

Now, maybe Barret's saying this because he thinks Cloud is about to die, but that seems selfish and like he's saying it to make himself feel better after being a douchebag, and for a selfless man like Barret I just don't buy it. He's genuinely regretful of his past actions and this is the point between the two of them that they can start again and actually become proper friends.

There's no time for much of a guy reunion between them when Barret does see Cloud again all the way over in chapter 12 -- that’s a long ass time apart for Barret to think about how he treated Cloud -- and we kind of brush past Barret's feelings because the plate collapse takes priority.

After that, Barret is much nicer to Cloud, trying to get his praise in battle and being a proper support to him. There's still that snarky banter between them, but the hostile edge has gone. We see a culmination of their friendship development during the stairs climbing sequence. Where before their banter had a hard edge and combative nature to it, this is very friendly and full of jokes and warmth. Barret has definitely softened towards Cloud and considers him a real friend. You can't fake that shit.

Conclusion

Yeah, I kinda cut this short and didn't do the latter half of the game, but that's because it's much more clear than this early development. Focusing on the small interactions between them that built a gradual friendship, it took a huge shock to get Barret to reassess his opinion of Cloud and him dropping from the reactor, going missing and then showing up to save the day covered it. It was like he got a reset and from that he dropped his prejudiced preconceived ideas about Cloud and opened up to him more. Because there’s such a huge gap between the time Barret sees Cloud again, it’s easy to miss the middle part of their friendship. The part where it goes from dislike to like. It’s easy to remember Barret hating Cloud and then see them being a team after chapter 12 because those moments stick in your mind more. It’s the transition that gets lost.

I love their development and how they become friends. It's not the kind of friendship that Barret shows with Red. Those two are bros the instant they met. Cloud and Barret's relationship is more complicated because of Cloud's role and identity. It takes Barret a long time to see past that persona, especially when he's only got evidence of that to go on – unlike Tifa. Once he does, he gives Cloud his full support and trust.

I, for one, can’t wait to see how they go forward in Barret’s arc.

[yououghtaknow]

5, 29 and 30? Also, I read all four seasons of Skam Brighton over quarantine and it was fantastic! The changed storylines were so refreshing and I’m so excited for season 5 💛

hi!!!!! thank you so much for asking and thank you so much for reading <3.

29. which version (og + adapts) does yours most closely resemble?

hmm. well i would say skam austin, definitely, as a western english speaking remake. also with the dance team/theatre club vibes and the music aspect. also skam españa, definitely, with the centring of the girls' stories and just the beautiful friendship tone of it all, which is what i really wanted to get across. also some druck in there, with the realism and fixing the trans wrongs they did. and alistair fletcher has the drama of skam france, just as a character. what do these remakes all have in common? canon wlw. which was the main thing i wanted to write in this remake. skambr has 11 canon named wlw characters who have all played major-to-minor roles in the plot of each season, with 5 of them being members of the girl squad and three of them being mains and having wildly different experiences with their attraction to women because you can’t sum up the lgbt experience with just one person.

30. free choice! just give us some fun facts about it!

fun fact: i have never physically been in brighton. i would like to be one day, but i will most likely not get there before the series finishes.

second fun fact: i was originally planning to write a skam remake set in derry, northern ireland before i wrote skam brighton. that idea has morphed into something else that i plan to write, but it is a fun fact!!

and now. the big one.

5. what are some iconic soundtrack moments?

here we go lads, seasons 3 and 4, like promised.

season three

tw for discussion of mental illness and suicide, drug abuse and violence throughout.

trailer

WE START OFF!!!! WITH A BANGER!!! "tainted love" by soft cell. it’s an iconic 80s banger that we all know and love, about a toxic relationship, and we see a type of favourite character that is niche to me (the guy with perfectionism/parental issues who did some fucked up stuff in a piece of media who not a lot of people like). it’s jake baby. it’s about him living his life and being like “i feel like i have to run away from all of this” (a sentiment which shall be echoed later on). and jake with all of his different masks…….. i was ahead of my time.

episode one

we open with “say amen (saturday night)” by panic! at the disco which is. kind of yikes now, but the song does have the vibes i desired for the opening scene. a party-esque banger. lyrics like “i pray for the wicked on the weekend / mama, can i get another amen?” for the catholic imagery and mommy issues. also panic! is known throughout history to be an lgbt band. 

then we get “get out of my head” by redlight”, just for the mental illness of it all. also it has been said that i do love a good party song with deeply depressing lyrics about the main playing in the background <3. 

and then we get me ripping off druck with “idontwannabeyouanymore” by the theorist playing because i just wanted to use a piano cover of the song because silence with just instrumental is just very dynamic and mentally ill. 

and then we meet eleanor with “insane” by sonny fodera and biscits, which is basically just the lyrics “girl you make me go insane” because. well. you hate to see it folks, but we gotta foreshadow the internalised ableism and the hating one woman as a treat.

and to close off a very music filled first clip, we got “drive” by halsey, a staple of tumblr culture back in the day because it is just like “all we do is think about the feelings that we hide”. literally when you are gay and alone and are just so desperate for someone to see you but also so deeply afraid of it because that means change coming <3 

AND THEN!!!! we meet the love of my life ms christine love as she hums “express yourself” by madonna as she cleans the house. i wanted to give christine a lot of 80s music in her scenes, to show that she’s living in the past in regards to jake’s dad. also it’s just a good song, “you gotta make him express how he feels” is me writing any of the characters having dialogue.

AND THEN BABY!!!!!!!!!!! we get a moment i love so deeply. “mama who bore me/reprise” by the sweet signatures. an all female acapella cover of the iconic spring awakening song. this song has everything - heavy metaphor about sex, wanting your mum to tell you shit, catholic imagery, teen angst, amazing belting. we get the slow part as jake is alone and just trying to work out how to help his mum, and then get the ANGRY BANGER as jake goes out to play with his dogs to get his frustrations out, because at the end of the say, all of these characters are still kids <3

then we get “young (club mix) by jaded because i just wanted kind of boring straight party music for the bryan and rory scene. 

BECAUSE THEN LGBT COMMUNITY!!!!! we get jake’s dramatic walk down the hallway as “somebody to love” by queen plays. it’s about the catholicism, it’s about the being gay, it’s about the being so fucking lonely and just wanting somebody!!!!! also the parallel between jake’s lonely scene with “somebody” playing and liz’s crowded scene with “nobody” playing…. it’s about mentally ill people being different but also the same <3

AND. NOW. THE MOMENT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. we meet Him. the most valid theatre kid rep in the world. mr alistair thomas fletcher, who enters our lives singing “shallow” from a star is born under his breath as he washing his hands. once again, i’m ahead of my time. but also the first lines al sings are, metaphorically, him talking to jake. like “aren’t you tried trying to fill that void / or do you need more”. and then we begin a piece of foreshadowing most pleasing to me. alistair in season 3 and the recurring motif of falling, which will climax at the end of episode 10. also foreshadowing of his experiences with bipolar disorder with “in all the good times i find myself longing for change / and in the bad times i fear myself”. and we also begin the motif of jake interrupting al’s singing. 

(you may be thinking, isaac tumblr user nickhealy, you’re putting a lot of thought into this. that’s because out of all of the characters, al’s the one who never really expresses himself with his words or actions - he usually expresses himself primarily through music, which is a very fun and autistic thing of me to write.)

(also, the og episode 1 bench scene did make me feel very. not good as a gay trans guy, with all the talk of penises and such. it’s just very sexy of me to change it to al talking loudly about ballet and elton john. and then we get jake up on the balcony and al down yelling up at him. because i have literally never referenced anything subtly in my life)

and we end with “how does it feel” by m-22. like: “how does it feel when your walls fall down /  how does it feel when you're lost and found / how does it feel / it's the sweetest sound”. like it’s about jake meeting al, king of not being Good At Social, fletcher, and instantly being like “yes, husband material, thank you”.

episode two

(yes, this episode is titled after the gay hsm song. yes i’m a genius)

we open, as all good things do, with a fun homoerotic punk song with catholic imagery “east jesus nowhere” by green day. it’s just jake being like “i am Trying to find the instagram of a cute guy outside of church, love being a sinner”.

and now we see the beginnings of Sad Boy Jake, with “it’s ok, i wouldn’t remember me either” by crywank. we got “i am looking for an easy place / to mask my thoughts behind my face” and “i can hide from friends but i cannot hide from you” because he’s gay and he has depression. 

AND THEN!!!! we get “i like you” by dandelion hands playing as he comments supportive things on the youtube video of al….. literally jacob love will see a pretty boy one time and be like “last time i had you i should have kissed you”. also his alternate name being jack valentine…. valentine and love ugh my brain is so big

AND THEN!!!!!!! slow mo time, with “bite” by troye sivan…… a gay classic, if i do say so. like it’s about jake seeing al casually walk past, being all prententious and out, and jake’s just like “please set me free and let me walk beside you” because of the gay experience of simutaneously wanting to be a person and kiss them.

and then we get “the daisy chain” by the growlers. “feeling pressure on every side” and “tired of waiting to be explained / weakest link in the daisy chain”. it’s just the vibes babe.

AND THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!! a brilliant moment in my bare a pop opera stanning career - we get jake watching a bootleg of bare 2004 as “role of a lifetime” from the show plays. literally one of the most gorgeous songs ever written, sung by matt doyle. like everything is an act when you’re pleasing everyone - which could be the tagline of skam brighton as a whole. also jake watching “see me” and beginning to tear up because he’s afraid to come out to his mother and get the same negative reaction….. and him watching “cross” and sobbing because he relates to jason so much and feels like he would also be better off dead than gay….. 

BUT AFTER THAT!!! we smash cut to al as jeremy in be more chill, singing the beginning of “more than survive”. absolute king shit!!!!! also, i don’t remember if it’s mentioned in canon, but eleanor is the person who plays the squip in this production of bmc, because i am not!! subtle!! with!! my!! metaphors!! 

and we return to sad boy jacob with “swear to god the devil made me do it” by the front bottoms, chosen because references to the devil and mommy issues <3

AND THEN!!!! A MOMENT OF GREAT FORESHADOWING!!! we get mister alistair fletcher practising alone in a theatre because he is dramatic, and jake walking in as he sings “broadway here i come” from smash. we got references to saints, we got hints at al’s anxiety, we got the falling motif coming back in a song explicitly about jumping off of a building, that also doubles as a song about wanting to do theatre….. also, al plays the last note wrong as a metaphor for al’s plan of suicide going well until the very end, where he ends up alive and goes home.

(side note, we also got the football team’s jackets and signature colours being black and white (straight pride flag colours babey) and then we see al in bright yellow. it also represents jake’s depression and al’s mania, the everything and the nothing of it all.)

AND THEN!!!! we get manic (in the most literal sense of the word) pixie dream boy al asking jake to dance with him to “movement” by hozier because. it’s literally just such a beautiful song. and jake is just watching al dance like “hm. no thoughts head empty just pretty boy”. also the scene itself is a reference to wicked, with jake doing an awkward and stilted dance and al taking it and turning it into something graceful (the glinda and elphie scene in dancing through life)

and then we get the return of blue neighbourhood with “youth” by troye sivan playing over a smoking montage with the boys, because they’re young, they’re gay, they’re vibing

AND THEN!!!! we get “talk” by hozier playing as the episode ends - a song that of course references orpheus and eurydice, as al also did in this clip with hadestown. it also plays over ellie talking because jake is just Ignoring her to pay attention to al. also the inherent homoeroticism of making eye contact while hozier plays

episode three

we open with “highway to hell” by ac/dc over a fun football montage of jake both playing the game and getting bored and checking out guys. it’s about the thinking he’s gonna go to hell for doing it but he literally Cannot Stop

AND THEN!!!!!! a moment. we get a performance of some of “all you wanna do” from six by al and ellie and their theatre kid friends as they rehearse for something at lunch and jake, bryan and rory watch them. ellie’s doing the whole flirty k howard thing, and not actually getting into the real feeling of the song, and the guy she’s dancing with it awkward as all fuck because he’s her cousin. so we get al stepping in and fucking going the fuck off. and we see how good of an actor al really is in this scene, as he’s legit scary. we also see ellie clearly having feelings towards al and him just being like “yep good acting! moving on!!!” because no thoughts just dance. also bryan and rory not understanding that the song is about assault and jake being genuinely concerned….. and then al and ellie’s kiss at the end as ellie “dies”..... god the real reason this show isn’t made is because i would be too powerful if i could make everyone see my theatre kid mischief.

AND ANOTHER MOMENT!!!! we get “like a prayer” by madonna playing as jake is living his life and taking some “am i gay” quizzes - the questions of which are comprised of actual am i gay quizzes i took to make the scene as legit as possible, and as a gay trans person. Did Not Like. Would Not Recommend. also jake admitting he’s gay to the quiz because he’s pissed about the concept of misgendering al….. also jake forcing himself to pick the straight options even though it’s emotionally hurting him…. and then we hear christine singing in the hallway “everyone must stand alone” because it’s jake pov at the time…..

AND SMASH CUT TO!!! fall out boy’s cover of “i wanna dance with somebody”, because at the last very gay house party “i wanna dance with somebody” played and i love a good parallel

AND THEN!!!!!! literally the hottest of all hot boy summer things, we get al and esther doing some karaoke at the house party with “don’t you want me” by the human league. (which, yes, is a glee reference.) THE LITERAL COURAGE OF THIS MAN!!!! alistair fletcher looked a closeted guy, who he has had three (3) interactions with in person, dead in the eye and was like “i know you want me”. as opposed to esther “just be her friend first and then see about anything else” montner and james “I Will Never Speak To You Again If You So Wish” cohen.

and then, because of course i did, we get “bad romance” by lady gaga playing over the next scene with the beginnings of the boy squad because it’s a gay house party and it’s a fucking banger for the ages

(also just the shift from al hot boy summer fletcher to al gay disaster fletcher with him running literally out of the house because he kissed a guy.)

“left handed kisses” by andrew bird and fiona apple plays after jake and al’s deep conversation outside. like jake’s really out here like “i don't believe everything happens for a reason” and “i don't go in for your star-crossed lovers / in the heart of a skeptic / there's a question that still hovers near” because al info dumped about his love for adaptation of romeo and juliet…. (side note, al is definitely an & juliet stan, as everyone should be, stream & juliet <3)

episode four

we open with a song i discovered when i was in a community theatre rip off version of cats, “the show” by lenka. it’s about a song about indecision in the middle of a church before confession, because jake can’t actually confess to the sins he believes to be true. it’s about the “'cause it's too much, yeah it's a lot to be something i'm not”.

And then we fade to “pink + white” by frank ocean (because mlm rights), and just like “you showed me love / glory from above / good glory, dear / it's all downhill from here” is a very al/jake line. also it’s a bop for a little football montage.

AND THEN!!!! on halloween, we get a little montage of jake dancing to “paradise by the dashboard light” by meatloaf as he makes himself a sandwich - it’s literally about just being happy and having a nice time. and also jake dancing to more old timey music because he’s going up to his parents’ old room and he’s also living in the past a little, with his childish snack and playful dancing.

(also, the phone call where al just infodumps about bare and jake’s listening and asking questions <3 it’s about the autistic love and friendship yet again)

and then we get “i’m so tired…” by lauv and troye sivan as we arrive at the very awkward ellie/jake/al pre drink, because Is Jake Not So Tired Of This Heterosexual Bullshit He Must Do.

(also, it is my personal headcanon, and therefore canon, that al convinced ellie to go with the angel and devil costumes so that he could pull up in his leo-as-romeo get up and live out his baz luhrmann esque fantasy).

AND THEN LGBT NATION!!!! we get “run away with me” by ms crj as jake and al literally run away from the party after al got misgendered and Pissed. it’s about the using romance and whimsy as an escapism from your shitty life, it’s about the being the in darkness and occasionally getting hit by the street light, it’s about the “i’ll be your sinner in secret”, it’s about the bare connotation with the “run away with me” parallels. it’s also about the song being one of the best songs ever written.

(and then we get the wedding, which, before i get into the song, is a reference to So Many Things. we got west side story with the fake wedding and first kiss, we got hadestown with al making the wedding rings from nature (a la wedding song), we got bare with wedding bells and the dream wedding, and in the scene, we get some vineyard scene from spring awakening vibes, with the discussion of the future and religion and philosophy…… quite literally i love art so much)

and then. ladies. a piece of writing written in Peak tender tumblr. al and jake have the kiss of their wedding to “pink in the night” by mitski. it’s literally about the “i know i kissed you before but / i didn’t do it right / can i try again?” of it all. like jake love voice “i glow pink in the night in my room / i’ve been blossoming alone over you”. the repression, the pining…………. i am such a talented man.

and then we end with a doctor who reference, with al saying “run”, taking jake’s hand and the two of them running out of the church as “run away with me” comes back in. it’s literally about al taking jake out of his dull life and helping him find his own happiness. it’s also about the inherent autistic culture of relating to aliens.

episode five

WE! OPEN! WITH! a song about being gay and falling in love with someone immediately after meeting them - “share your address” by ben platt. a bop for the ages. it makes me so happy, it’s a great “early stages of a relationship honeymoon stage” montage song.

(also, i just really love the detail i put in about al’s binder, because the cuddle scene with david and matteo in druck did make me worried because david was wearing his binder. like i understand why he wore it for the actor’s comfort but just the thought of sleeping in a binder…… terrible. awful. pain beyond my wildest dreams.)

(also also, al saying he couldn’t get on hormones because of “problems with his heart” is a lie, because he means because of his mental health, which is based on personal experience babey)

and then we get an iconic skam song: “talk show host” by radiohead plays as jake sits in the back of a drama club meeting, isolating himself. it’s literally about the “i want to be someone else or i’ll explode” of it all. 

and then we get “rock and roll” by led zeppelin as jake walks his dogs - just because it seems like the kind of song jake would like and it just vibed with the whole scene.

(also, the clip where jake texts al at the beginning of it and then asks bree about her family….. literally i’m so good at foreshadowing)

AND THEN!!!!! WE GET THE ICONIC!!! “involuntary teenage rebel” by clout from grandma’s closet plays as we get a jake solo slow mo. literally they were right when they said “they say i'm a teenage rebel / but i'm really just afraid of how i come across to others / and it bothers me when i look weak”. like that’s just another skam statement line babey. also it’s genuinely such a good song and literally helped inspire me to do more songwriting…. stream it 

and then we get “heaven” by avicii, chosen purely for the title being “heaven” because christianity centric season.

AND THEN!!!!! we get jake asking al to come save him from the shitty party, and al says “wait for me, i’m coming”, an obvious hadestown reference, and when he arrives, he’s singing the “la la la la la la la”s from the show. it’s because the party - where bryan, rory and ellie are - is, in al’s mind, hell, and he’s going to save jake from it. 

and then, because, as mentioned, the way al express his true feelings is through Music, we get al trying to comfort jake by playing him a song - “you matter to me” from waitress (put a pin in waitress, i’ll get back to it later). the inherent homosexuality in “come out of hiding i’m right here beside you / and i’ll stay there as long as you’ll let me”. also it’s just about mattering to someone. like, for the first time in his life, jake has someone who’s saying “i love you, you matter, i will be here for you” and he just needed that So Much. 

episode six

AND WE SMASH CUT IMMEDIATELY TO!!! “london boy” by taylor swift, a campy and beautiful bop!!!! because al Is from london and he Is a boy!!! (also, fun fact, i was going to make al be from ireland originally, but then someone in the skambr discord said this song should be used in a scene, and i was like “okay, fuck it, london time”)

(also, you can subtly see al’s mania in the london boy scene, with him coming up with quick ideas, clearly having very low anxiety through the past few episodes, and just taking off his shoes and going for a walk in a park in november…..)

and then we get “landslide” by fleetwood mac as jake lies in his dead dad’s bed. it’s really about the “can the child within my heart rise above? / can i sail through the changing ocean tides?” and about the grieving as a child and your mental health getting worse while you’re still so young and you feel like the world’s on your shoulders and you’re both an adult and a child at once……

and then……. we get “class of 2013” by mitski after christine has her breakdown and jake packs his things to run away. it’s about both of them dealing with their grief by pretending it never happened and having all of that build up inside of them until they can’t take it anymore. And i see the lyrics of “mom i’m tired / can i sleep in your house tonight?” in this specific situation as jake being tired of his father’s constant presence and he just wants to be in a house with his mother the way he remembered her before his father died. 

(and, sidenote, this is one of the saddest scenes i’ve ever written, in my opinion…...with jake being like “she’s so crazy, but i’m nothing like her” because he’s in denial of his own mental health issues and al seeing him saying that as “oh, he’ll see that i’m crazy too and want to leave”...... and al says his final goodbye to jake, using his full name, because he assumes jake will never want to speak to him again, but jake has no idea……..)

(also, jake parroting bryan’s words of “gay marriage is legal, so everything is fine” in the pride clip……. God. and the way jake’s internalised homophobia and ableism manifests in the same harmful way….)

and then we get “don’t threaten me with a good time” by panic! At the disco as they boy squad rolls up to the party in the park. it’s just a party song. no deeper meaning lads.

and then we get jake in the bathroom having a little breakdown (as a treat) to “Give me novacaine” by green day. it’s just about the using alcohol and drugs to cope with your poor mental health because you have no other quick way to make it all better. It’s about about jake trying both to numb himself and to force himself to feel something, but neither one of those things give him the results he wants.

episode seven

we open with another iconic and beautiful song: “life in italics” by clout from grandma’s closet babey. like jake love voice “all these troubles on my mind i’ve been lonely / building walls running from the old me”. thank you clout for literally writing some of the best lgbt music. 

AND THEN!!!!!!! a scene that brings me much joy. “gotta go my own way” from high school musical 2 plays in the other room as jake has a religious breakdown in a literal (storage) closet. and then al leaves the group chat and blocks jake…. like jake voice “another colour turns to grey / and it's just too hard to watch it all / slowly fade away”

and then we get “hello!” by role model as jake goes for a depressed jog and he sees bree out drinking with some random people. like “i never really talk much, keep it inside / to find someone who cares is getting harder to find / we should be dancing in the sun / it's hard when everything is numb”.

(also, at the end of that clip, we briefly shift from jake’s pov to al’s, as we see al filming in the park and he films jake running away…… do i know what this means metaphorically? not really. do i vibe hard with it? oh hell yeah)

AND THEN!!!! after jake and sandy have their beautiful conversation, we get “under pressure” by queen and david bowie, another older song, this time expressing jake’s joy as he finds some small solace with his younger self. it’s also just about the inherent homosexuality of the song and of sitting on the beach, eating chips with your best friend.

episode eight

WE BEGIN!!!! with a youtube video of ellie and al singing “wallflower” from we are the tigers. i chose this basically because i wanted to get more of a vibe of what their relationship is/was across, and also because i love the song (stream we are the tigers original off broadway cast recording). it’s also about the dynamic of the song being “shy introvert vs outgoing extrovert being very toxic friends”, and also about the ellie supporting al stuff, because she has canonically been there for him for years, just not in a very good way. also i wanted to write representation for the “had a very intense friendship with a girl pre-transition and then had a dramatic friend break up and now i’m a guy and feel disconnected from the whole thing, although it was quite homoerotic at the time” people. this scene also marked the beginning of my purely self indulgent musical number scenes, and be warned, this may the the first, but it is by no means the last.

and then it’s very music lite for the rest of the episode, until al returns, and jake’s like “hey, maybe you should stop talking to your toxic friend” and al responds by beginning to make out with him as “fuck time” by green day starts to play. the COMEDY of jake being like “seriously, i think--” and then all you hear is “OOH BABY BABY IT’S FUCK TIME”. skam brighton is a comedy show.

and then we get al “communicates through music and theatre references” fletcher beginning to sign the ASL translation of the bridge of “word of your body (reprise)” from spring awakening with jake - which is another Very tragic show - and al also literally says the line “and so you should”. and al responding to jake jokingly calling him insane by shutting him up with another kiss….. oh ladies.

episode nine

WE! OPEN! WITH! “love shack” by the b-52s as jake wakes up and sees james and al just having some Fun making breakfast in the kitchen. it’s just some boys being boys and having bants.

and then we get jake using al’s love language of music and singing “those magic changes” from grease, singing along to the jordan fisher and aaron tveit version because that song did assist in my gay awakening.

(also, al stanning female doctor pomatter in waitress and james stanning waitress as someone from an abusive household….. my mind.)

and now. we begin The Big Bad Clip. “why didn’t you stop me” by mitski plays over the beginning of jake and al’s london adventure. it’s literally about looking back on the scene as it happens in a montage and al being like “why didn’t you stop me from doing that”..... god.

(also, jake and al go to see waitress, which Has been played before, and it’s foreshadowing for how their relationship ends. jenna and jim’s relationship - the main couple of waitress - begins with them cheating on their parents and falling in love quickly in secret, but they know it’s not healthy for them to keep the relationship going, so agree to end things and part ways as friends who wish nothing but the best for each other.)

and then we get “oops! I did it again” by britney spears glee cast version, because it’s just really Sexy and Fun. also just the mentally ill experience of “oops! i did a manic episode again!”.

and then we cut between a piano version of “last night on earth” by green day, as jake sits alone in the hotel room, and “true trans soul rebel” by against me! as al walks down the streets of london, in a split pov, and then we see al having a full meltdown/breakdown in the middle of victoria station. like al voice in this scene “another night you wish you could forge, / making yourself up as you go along / who’s gonna take you home tonight? / does god bless your transsexual heart?”.

and then we get legit “last night on earth” by green day as jake walks away after ellie yells at him. just because it vibes so much.

episode ten

we open with “mystery of love” by sufjan stevens as jake walks down to al’s house, because it’s just a vibey song, and while i hate cmb//yn with the fury of a thousand suns, it Is a song written for mlm.

and then we get “better alone” by lykke li as jake researches al’s various diagnoses. and it’s just like “nobody wants to be the one to walk away / nobody wants to see the truth, then let it in, run away / nobody wants to know the ways they don't love you right” and then “i’m better alone than lonely”..... mr love

and then we get “let it be” by the beatles, a Very nostalgic old fashioned song with catholic themes and just big comforting and recovery vibes…. jake confessing his real feelings to the priest and then reuniting with christine in the church and hugging her tightly and they both agree on working on getting better….. 

and then we get to the talent show, where we see the end of ellie singing “on my own” from les mis - as jake did at the beginning of season one. is this foreshadowing? is it a coincidence? i honestly don’t know. i just chose it because basic theatre girl song.

AND!!!!! THEN!!!!!! we get the song that acts as al’s suicide note: “the goodbye song” by joe iconis (writer of be more chill and “broadway here i come” from smash). we get the return of the falling motif with “i’m flying away” and the lines that really act as what al imagines to be his final goodbye to everyone he knows, as everyone he knows and loves is in that building: “i'd stay if i could / but the universe won't let me / so please be good / and don't you forget me”, and then al turns the “aahs” at the end of the song from a catchy crowd pleaser ending to a long, painful scream as the audience slowly stops clapping, until the room is silent, and then he bows a la the emcee at the end of cabaret (a bow which is often viewed as a metaphor for the character’s death). it’s literally just al having a breakdown on stage, but he rolls a nat 20 on his performance check, and the audience are like “this is very good performance art”

we then get a flashback to “broadway here i come” because. i am a king of foreshadowing.

and then we get “wait for me” from hadestown (obc version) as jake runs to find al, and it’s about the role reversal of jake running to save al from something worse than al saving him for bryan. it’s about the repetition of “wait for me, i’m coming” because of the fear of “what if i get there too late?”

episode eleven

“a better son/daughter” by rilo kiley plays as jake looks through al’s two tumblr blogs - and the song simultaneously a very al and jake song. with the descriptions of depression and dealing with a mother with mental illness at the start, which are very jake, but then the lines “and sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on / and your friends they sing along and they love you. / but the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap” are just the base character description for al.

and then we get “the archer” by taylor swift as jake goes into the school again…. like he has been the archer and he has been the prey, in regards to being gay (with him helping in outing sandy and being outed himself).....

(also, fun fact about the episode, it was originally written to be from al’s point of view, but then i decided against it and had to rewrite it, which is why there’s only 4 clips instead of the usual 5 or 6)

and then, lgbts, we get “the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us!” by sufjan stevens as jake walks his dogs  out on the beach and al goes to the beach to write his emo poetry…… also, fun fact, al’s poetry is the first time i’ve ever written poetry/lyrics that weren’t about me, which is very fun. 

and then!!!! at the beginning of the final clip, we got “footloose” by kenny loggins, the iconic bop from the film of the same name. just because it slaps and it’s a fun time.

(we also get some Foreshadowing with al referencing rent in this scene)

and then. transgender nation. we get “midnight radio” from hedwig and the angry inch playing over al and jake’s having fun and being dumb kids montage. 

i know riverdale made this song a meme, but it HITS. it’s about the al referencing origin of love in the cuddle clip, al saying “i laugh because i will cry if i don’t”, it’s about the “for the misfits and losers” and the “hold onto each other”. it’s literally about jake finding community and also wholeness and happiness in himself.

(also, jake talking about all the little soulmates and the fact that he believes that the boy and girl squads are all his soulmates in different ways…… and bree actually paying attention and showing some vulnerability at that point because she loves her friends so much!!!!!!!!!!)

season four

tw for discussion of sexual assault/rape, alcohol abuse and abortion throughout

trailer

lgbt community. we begins with the regrettes' cover of "don't stop me now" by queen because a) i think it's fun when women and b) it's about bree's mania that we've already seen throughout the seasons, this time from her perspective, and it's simultaneously a Fun Time and a Foreboding time.

episode one

we open with "hail mary, gentle woman" by the cathedral singers, which is literally just the prayer "hail mary", but a song. i chose this because catholic, women, and church time babey. also because it was always one of my favourite hymns growing up (because, in case you couldn't tell from half of the mains being raised catholic and lowkey fucked up because of it, i was raised catholic)

and then we SMASH CUT to "r u mine?" by arctic monkeys, a sad british teen staple, as we see bree wake up in josh's bed for the first time and take the "walk of shame" to get to church. it's about the "i go crazy 'cause here isn't where i wanna be", introducing the Mental Illness, bree's want to get out of where she's from and go to a good uni, and her literally not wanting to be in some strange guy's bed in one line. am I reading too much into this? hell yeah. but it's my show, so i can read as much as i want!!!! (also "satisfaction feels like a distant memory" is both about her depressive states and josh not being able to make her orgasm <3)

AND THEN!!!!!!!!!! we get "all i really want" by alanis morissette, the beginning of my season 4/jlp parallel hyperfixation. it's about bree kinning frankie healy and "do i stress you out?" being her @ audrey. and just bree voice "it would knock me to the floor if i wasn't there already / if only i could hunt the hunter". it's just a perfect teen angst song and it's perfectly grungy and brianna-y.

AND THEN!!!!! we get "kiwi" by harry styles playing as bree slow mos by herself down the street. it's about the just hot girl energy of the song and also the romanticization of unhealthy behaviour because that's bree, baby!!!! also we get more of the word "crazy" because of bree's internalised ableism, and we also get the chorus of "i'm having your baby, it's none of your business", foreshadowing her unplanned pregnancy done by josh, who we saw in the last scene.

AND THEN!!!!! we get "chandelier" by sia as bree and the girls have a fun party moment, but bree is still Fucked Up mentally by seeing annabell and also men being creepy. it's about the using alcohol and drugs to push away your feelings because you have a lot of trauma and have internalised ableism and have no idea how to get the help you need without being vulnerable, which terrifies you so So much. also we see that bree forgot to take her meds in this scene, which i couldn't explicitly say in the scene because spoilers, but it's a fun thing.

then we get dodie's cover of "when the party's over" by billie eilish because i like the soft piano vibes of it as bree walks home after the party, because we always see bree as "the party girl", but the party's over now and we see her petting her cat, making sure her brother's home safe, taking off all her makeup and pretty clothes, completely non sexualised, and just getting into bed to sleep because she's just So Tired. also it's about bree pretending she's happy on her own, but she's Not, she has a lot of self loathing and deeply loves her friends more than anything. also a bree/rori moment with "call me friend but keep me closer".

episode two

we open with an audition sequence!!!!! because i'm a theatre kid and love a good audition sequence!!!!

we get rori singing "sexy" from mean girls, because it's a very rori show (pink aesthetic, fun female characters, a funny time), and because it's a very maureen from rent song. also rori is just a very funny person and also has a sick high belt in my mind. also it's about her learning to like the way she looks, slowly but surely. it's also a song about changing who you are, which is a very skam brighton theme.

and then we get al singing "vienna" by billy joel, but the shortened version they did in smash, but he also plays the piano like ben platt in the politician because he's a basic white theatre boy. it's also just a beautiful song about growing up and maturing, and also "if you're so smart, then tell me why are you still so afraid?" is a very bree line. 

(also, the part where josh calls milo his "kid cousin" and then bree's like "yeah, milo's the same age as me" but josh ignores it…… creepy!!!!! bad!!!!!! also, side note, milo is canonically genderfluid and uses different pronouns depending on the day, which is why they change throughout the season.)

and then!!!! we get annabell singing "hallelujah" by leonard cohen, which is just a stunning song, we all know this. it's a song about faith and doubt and it's also a parallel to rori's happy go lucky song, which annabell's being slow and sad instead. also they're jewish and gay and lovely. and then the jeff buckley cover plays over the next scene because it's Good.

and then we get "feel it still" by portugal. the man as the girl squad text. it's just a fun song and the line "i'm a rebel just for kicks" is great from brianna "rebel girl by bikini kill" holland.

and then, swiftie nation, we get “new romantics” by taylor swift as bree agrees to go out with josh because she’s being self destructive. like the fact that she says yes to him as the line “we’re all bored / we’re all so tired of everything” plays say it all. and just the whole song is very bree core, as a whole, also it’s a really fucking good song. i am a 1989 (deluxe) stan.

and then we fade away with “vienna” by billy joel because it is such a good song god bless <3

episode three

WE!! OPEN!! WITH!!! “tik tok” by ke$ha because it is genuinely one of the best songs of our generation, and also it’s just a very shopping centre song. i don’t know why but it Is.

AND THEN!!!!!!!!! we get genuinely one of my favourite songs that i’ve been waiting to find the right scene for ever since i first heard it. “dog bite” by stella bridie is just genuinely a stunning song that really Gets bree’s character as a whole, especially the first lines “putting on lipstick in the bathroom at the doctor’s  / i got a party after this blood test”..... the whole Need to be perform feminity whilst doing something as simple as going to the doctor’s as bree draws herself and tries to make herself look perfect because she believes her only self worth comes from her body and just….. the vibes. immaculate.

and then we get “ophelia” by marika hackman, another beautiful song, as we see bree self destructively look through all of the cyber bullying that’s happened to her in the past as a way of emotional self harm. it’s just a genuinely depressing scene with a good song underscoring it.

but then we cut to rori and brianna out for a jog together - because both have issues with their self image, but also because they’re friends and like to do things together - as “it’s nice to have a friend” by taylor swift plays. it is a very homoerotic song, with a lot of childhood friends to lovers vibes, which is kind of what we’re going for here. they are both very deeply sad but also it is nice to have a friend and have someone there for you when you find out the cast list of the musical you auditioned for and you can hug them…….

and then!!!!! we get “...ready for it?” by taylor swift as we get another party sequence because it’s a fucking banger and also brianna is Very reputation as a person, which will be shown with some other taylor songs throughout the season. also it’s kind of a “are you ready for it?” for the Deeply Sad scene that follows the fun party sequence, because this is skam brighton, and i will always write scenes of people being sad outside/after parties.

episode four

we begin with “harlem” by new politics as bree, annabell and dean hang out at the shopping centre and fuck around in clarie’s. it’s about a funky song and about the recurring line of “like you, like me, like everybody else” of the three of them all having their mental illnesses in common and bree simultaneously feeling happy that she can be open about it, and deeply uncomfortable that she has to be open about it.

and then we get “crush on you” by elijah who as bree scrolls through instagram and looks at two pictures - one of annabell and one of rori and nick, and when she likes the picture of rori and nick, she literally taps over nick’s face so that she can just look at rori <3 it’s about the bree being a bicon.

and then we get the theatre club watching rent as a fun time!!!! we get tune up #1 and voicemail #1, just iconic numbers. we get theatre kid supreme al knowing all of the words, cool guy james doing his air guitar, and when the line “let her be a lesbian” is sung, we get annabell cheering and rori awkwardly looking away because she has internalised homophobia.

(side note, one of my favourite aspects of this season is that it’s a subversion of the past three, where we’ve seen sandy, liz and jake deal with their internalised struggles with their sexualities, but with bree and rori, rori’s the one dealing with her sexuality, while bree is in love with her quietly)

AND THEN!!!!! we open clip 5 with the iconic skam verse song “call your girlfriend” by robyn as the girl squad show up at a house party and bree and rori have a homoerotic moment

and then!!!!!!!!!!!! a moment of skamverse wlw solidarity, “blush” by rhiza plays as rori and bree kiss in the bathroom. a) because it’s a good song and b) because the whole “she's just a friend, you know, but sometimes yeah i wanna kiss her, uhm but that's just 'cause she's cute right? that don't make me gay, it's not like i like other girls like i only like her, i mean no, i'm not gay, right?” part is really summing up what rori’s going through in this scene. also the song is just a bree song. 

episode five

WE OPEN WITH!!!!!! an iconic moment, if i may say so myself. an iconic wlw song, “boyfriend” by marika hackman, plays over bree and nick out partying. like it opens with the lyrics: “i've got your boyfriend on my mind / i think he knows you stayed with me last night” and then we get “it's fine 'cause i am just a girl / ‘it doesn't count’”. i mean. come on.

we then get a snippet of “rent” from rent in a rehearsal, with the lines: “how do you leave the past behind / when it keep finding ways to get to your heart” and “how can you connect in an age / where strangers, landlords, lovers / your own blood cells betray / what binds the fabric together / when the raging, shifting winds of change / keep ripping away”, which all really relate to brianna with her trying to bury her past traumas and and how she struggles to connect and also struggles with change - and the reference to fabric in the line when she’s the person who does the costumes for the show.

and then we get “pynk” by janelle monae as bree and annabell go charity shopping together and have a nice time. It’s just a fun wlw song and i like it. also it’s boppy and happy and kind of dreamy to show how their relationship is very on the surface and not as deep as it once was and they’re not really going to get that back so it’s just really awkward. 

AND THEN!!!! we get bree panicking because she’s getting creepy messages from josh so she runs to hang out with the girl squad and works on her drawing of them, focusing on rori as “head over feet” by alanis morissette plays. this is kind of a contrast to “pynk”, with it being a song that uses real instruments as opposed to the more electro feel of “pynk” to represent the two different relationships. also the lyrics “you treat me like i'm a princess / i'm not used to liking that” and “you've already won me over in spite of me / and don't be alarmed if i fall head over feet / and don't be surprised if i love you for all that you are / i couldn't help it / it's all your fault” are just Incredibly rori/brianna.

and then we get “hand solo (acoustic)” by marika hackman as we get a brief scene of bree masturbating to some not very healthy p*rn. i was hesitant to include this scene, out of fear of over-sexualising bree as a bisexual girl of colour, but then i thought i had to include the scene from a non-sexual stand point - to show how bree uses sex, even in her own mind when she’s alone, as a self destructive thing, and to show that masturbation is a normal thing to do, but also it’s a hint that bree’s state is getting a bit more manic than usual, so she’s getting more hypersexual. also for the catholic guilt of her stopping and looking up to see the cross above her bed.

when then get ortopilot’s cover of “basketcase” by green day, which is more of an acoustic version of the song. the song itself is just a Very mental illness song and just has a lot of vibes of guilt with it, and the beat of the song is very quick and manic in itself.

we then get “every breath you take” by the police playing over bree and josh’s Scary text conversation in the fish n chip shop, because it’s a creepy stalker song with Pleasant Music over it, which is kind of the Vibe i was going for with josh. also, the season came out around the same time as skames season 3, and seeing the parallels between josh and miquel, with josh being very emotionally distant and miquel being very emotionally close, but both of them having the same goal in mind and end result was very interesting to me. also both of them being very creepy old guys who should stay away from teenagers <3

but then. oh but then. we get a moment that is genuinely one of my favourites. we get the broadway cast version of “forgiven” by alanis morissette, another one of my favourite songs. i chose the broadway version because i prefer the quieter orchestration and the build up to the chorus instead of going all in on it so quickly. i chose this song because bree does parallel frankie from jlp, yes, but she also parallels mj in the fact that she’s repressing her trauma from being sexually harassed and assaulted by adult men ever since she was a child. and the song itself is very beautiful and bree core, with lyrics such as “my brothers, they never went blind for what they did / but i may as well have / in the name of the father, the skeptic and the son / i have one more stupid question” and “we all had our reasons to be there / we all had a thing or two to learn / we all needed something to cling to / so we did”. we also see bree seeking refuge in a church after being harassed by josh, because religion is the place where she genuinely feels safest, but she also doesn’t feel safe, as a bisexual woman in the catholic church, but she also knows in her heart that she is loved by god. 

episode six

WE! OPEN! WITH! “motion sickness” by ms phoebe bridgers plays as bree wakes up at liz’s house the next morning - a song literally about a shitty older man - and then bree is literally sick in the bathroom, claiming she has food poisoning from the strange fish they got last night because she couldn’t go to their usual place out of fear. but, in reality, this is morning sickness from her pregnancy, because she had sex with josh for the first time 6 weeks prior.

and then we get a scene of bree in a manic state rapidly working on costumes as “my body’s made of crushed little stars” by mitski plays. this scene is directly inspired by me in what i believe to be a manic episode staying up until 5am writing because i thought that if i stopped i would forget everything that i was thinking and never write anything good again. fun times. but also just the fast pace of the song and the very depressing lyrics and the whole “i’m not doing anything” playing over bree doing So Many Things…..

we then get a lot of silence because it’s Emotion Time, but then!!!! we get a moment very pleasing to be, “unprodigal daughter” by alanis morissette playing as bree goes to buy a pregnancy test. the song itself is just one of my favourites, and it’s also about bree kinning ms frankie healy (having a “perfect” white older brother, having an intense relationship with your mother, being artistic and into english, being bisexual and just really cool), but it’s also a song about choice and the singer choosing herself and who she wants to be and having hope for the future and wanting to run away. also the line “i’d invite you but i’m busy being oppressed” once again being used in regards to a young bisexual girl of colour….. genuinely one of my favourite lines ever written. the power it has.

and then. bree finds out she’s pregnant via the tests. and “oh no!” by marina begins to play, because skam brighton is a comedy show, but also skam brighton is a show for depressed british-ish teenagers. bree copes with this Really Fucked News by deciding to go and get wasted because that’s her favourite method of dissociation. also the song is just very bree as a whole, with the wanting to change and the “i'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy” after her making fun of her cousin’s pregnancy in the first episode.

and then we get “bubblegum bitch” also by marina as bree goes out to drink. it’s there to represent how bree is trying to force herself to get into her familiar role of the fun bitchy party girl, but it’s not working because she’s just really fucked, but she’s trying her best.

BIG TW FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT

and then “you are going to hate this” by the frights plays as josh and bree dance together, and we see josh giving her more and more drinks, getting her purposefully drunk as she gives into it, wanting the release being drunk gives her, not realising that he could be doing something bad to her because she’s so distracted by a) the alcohol and b) the fact that she’s fucking pregnant and doesn’t know what to do about it.

and then we get “seventeen” by sharon van etten as josh begins to assault brianna. i first heard this song in sex education, where it played as a group of girls supported their best friend after she was sexually harrassed on the bus, and i wanted to use it here as kind of a parallel to that, but also as a reminder than bree is seventeen years old, a child, and josh knows this, purposefully got her drunk and is assaulting her, because he is a disgusting human being.

episode seven

we open with “interlude iii” by tessa violet, as bree wakes up and leaves josh’s bed again, a parallel to the first clip of the season, but this time we saw the before that presumably happened. it’s just a really pretty song that vibes with the lonely emptiness of the scene.

and then we get “the ballad of mona lisa” by panic! at the disco as bree walks into school. it’s just a really vibey bree song, and the whole “i’d pay to see you frown” line is just about the always masking around people and never showing your real emotions. 

we then get “out tonight” from rent, but the movie version, purely because i just prefer the music production on that version. it just slaps. also, i just used this scene to talk about my love for my interpretation of mimi marquez. she’s just a teenager with a lot of problems who needs proper professional medical help, very much like bree. also, i have always seen “out tonight” as mimi having a manic episode and using the number as a distraction from her actual problems (literally what bree is doing) and i love her. (also the scene of bree watching the scene from the movie and having gay panic is just an Iconic moment)

we then get “funeral” by phoebe bridgers as bree lies in bed, deeply depressed and barely able to move. it’s just about a beautiful and deeply sad song. like all of the lines just vibe really hard with bree and the deep loneliness and emptiness of the song, and the underlying panic really outline bree’s actual emotional state.

and we end with the titular song of the episode, “will i?” from rent. i chose this song because, despite it being very repetitive, it’s always been deeply meaningful to me. and the only lines being “will i lose my dignity / will someone care / will i wake tomorrow / from this nightmare?” playing after bree talked about having to deal with her pregnancy, and following the dream imagery used in funeral, because all of the music Is connected…….. quite genuinely one of my favourite moments, because it’s so understated

episode eight

we begin the music of this episode with “everything i own” by the front bottoms - just a really fucking sad song for a really fucking sad time in bree’s life. with like like “just try to appreciate what you got while you got it” and “sometimes i don't feel like singing / i don't really like these songs / sometimes i don't feel like dancing / dj please, don't turn the beat on / let's keep it quiet, keep me honest, keep me true” just really vibing with her.

and then we get “even my dog” by kathryn gallagher, another one of my personal favourite songs, as bree walks through the hospital. first of all, kathryn gallagher’s character in jagged little pill, bella, does parallel bree quite a lot - being from a poor family, being talented at art, being slut-shamed by her school and dealing with the trauma of being sexually assaulted. the song itself has lyrics describing depression, with lines like “i don’t know how i’m gonna get better / i just know that i’m supposed to / i don’t know how i’m gonna get better / but i’ll tell you i’m good ‘til i believe it too” and “everybody wants me to be happy / everybody wants me to be” and “i can feel it / the life i knew before you / it’s beautiful to be so naive” which i feel just Really fit bree and her situation

then we get a little bit of “musetta’s waltz” played by james, because it’s a rent thing, and rori sings a bit of “over the moon” because it’s a maureen song and i just wanted to include it for a little bit of fun in the hell week

and then. oh and then. we get the funeral scene from rent and “i’ll cover you (reprise)” performed by milo and everyone else. the reason i chose this song is because a) it’s one of the most beautiful and heart wrenching songs in musical theatre canon, and b) i wanted to use the imagery of a funeral to show bree quietly making the decision in her head to go through with the abortion, even though she has many doubts. and the line “a new lease you were, my love / on life” is about the baby bree might have had may be being her ticket to a new life, the way she was for her mother, but bree knows that’s not what she wants and not what she can handle right now. and the moment bree finally break is the climax of the song, the moment death is said out in the open “when your heart has expired”. she hears that, is struck by the reality of what she wants to do, and just runs because it’s a lot for any person, let alone a seventeen year old, to handle.

and then we get the girl squad picking bree off the ground, quite literally, and helping her go to the doctor, all of them together, as “sign of the times” by harry styles played. all of the girls are involved, organising rides and where to go and comforting bree, and al’s staying behind, doing ground control at the rehearsal, because al and bree are siblings and they love each other god damn it. ans the song itself is just. simply epic. and the lines “you look pretty good down here / but you ain't really good” really get to where bree is in regards to her self image and it’s about her finally opening up and accepting help and doing what’s right and good for her, not being self destructive or doing things for someone else.

episode nine

we open with a slowed down piano cover of “knee socks” by the arctic monkeys, simply because i liked the sound of it and it’s a quintessential sad british time, but it’s also about girls being pretty.

and then we get one of my favourite songs from rent being sung by bree, “without you”. it’s a genuinely beautiful song about addiction and the struggles that people can go through with it. the song has a double meaning to bree, as she’s been struggling with her alcohol abuse problems recently and going clean, but the song is also about bree imagining life without her hypothetical child. “but i die / without you” is how bree is seeing it, still thinking she’ll be rejected by her mother, and partially by god, if she goes through with it, but the song goes on. she knows the world will go on without her child, but she’s unsure of how she’s going to be after the child is gone. (we also see james come in and sing too, as he plays roger, but him singing is also a reference to him dealing with his own addiction, as mentioned before in this season, to nicotine).

we then get “you gotta be" by des'ree playing as we go from bree getting herself together after josh gets fired to bree and her mother sitting together and watching ladybird. i wanted ladybird to be playing because it’s a very bree movie, in my opinion, and the “give me a number” scene playing is a really good feel, for me, of what it’s like to be a working class child and feeling the need to pay back your parents, which is something bree also feels immensely. and the song has lyrics such as “challenge what the future holds / try and keep your head up to the sky / lovers, they may cause you tears / go ahead release your fears” and “stand up and be counted / don't be ashamed to cry” and “you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger / you gotta be cool, you gotta be calm / you gotta stay together / all i know, all i know, love will save the day”, which just really vibe with where bree is in this scene, trying to figure out all the things she has to be and can be and the whole thing about standing up is just very bree, because, despite us seeing her insecurities and weaknesses, she’s always been a confident person 

and then we get a scene that i wrote just to make myself cry. bree gets her hair cut by her mother after deeply connecting to her as “slipping through my fingers” by abba plays. it’s a song about a mother watching her daughter grow up and trying to stay close to her despite her always growing and changing, which is how i see audrey. she’s a woman full of love and she will do anything to support her daughter and make her happy, and it took bree until now to see it. and then we see bree’s hair literally slipping through audrey’s fingers, because haircuts are often used as a way to regain control over one’s life, and i’ve used bree’s hair throughout this season as a way to represent her trauma. when she gets morning sickness, she throws up in her hair. josh pulls on her hair when he assaults her. her cutting her hair off is a metaphor for her cutting off her trauma, but then from the hair cutting we transition to:

the abortion clinic, where “soon you’ll get better” by taylor swift and the chicks is playing. a song where a daughter sings to her mother to get better, and we see a mother supporting her daughter as she gets ready to go through surgery. the song itself, though, feels more about bree’s mental health than her physical state. she knows that through this surgery, she will ultimately end up better, but it’s going to take a lot of time.

and then as bree and audrey sit at home, they watch another movie: this time “grease”, representing bree’s desire to get back to her younger, happier self.

and then. we get “wake up” by alanis morrissette as bree gets ready for the rally in support of sexual assault survivors. a song, when used in the jlp musical, is used to talk about how it’s easier to not stand up and speak out against sexual assault. with the line “it’s so much easier not to / and what goes around never comes around to you” being used in regards to the cishet abled white man who will never get back all of the harm he puts out into the world, but we see bree reclaiming the song and her own body, putting on makeup in a way that makes her happy and marching out to the streets as it plays, focusing on her and only her

episode ten

WE OPEN WITH!!!! a moment most pleasing to me - “i did something bad” by taylor swift playing as the girl squad slow mo down the street together, a united front. i chose this song because it’s literally about society saying a woman did something bad, but she doesn’t give a fuck and wishes that she could do it again, which is how bree feels about fucking up a rapist’s life. also, once again, bree rolling a nat 20 on her deception roll as she gets proof of josh having the pictures of her on his phone by pretending to be the manic pixie damsel in distress josh wanted….. and we also get josh using the term “witch hunt”, the same phrase bryan used when he went off on bree, to show that they’re both the same character archetype, but in different flavours (bryan coming in asshole jock and josh coming in adult man incel).

(note: i also wanted to include the girl squad in this scene, because in the og when noora when to go meet nikolai on her own i was just. So Scared for her because she had No One. also, fun fact, i included the fact that the squad call nick “nickolai” as a nickname in season 2 so maybe there would be a theory that he would be nikolai, but i was just playing 4d chess with myself and he’s just a nice guy)

and then we get “seasons of love” from rent, which is, yes, a basic theatre song, but you can’t deny how good it is. and the whole “minute” thing in it lining up with the “minute by minute” iconic skam speech, and we get annabell on the big soloist lines because they’re the person who also heard the “minute by minute” speech before from the same place as bree, because it was said in their group therapy…. and it also parallels “i’ll cover you (reprise)” with them all standing in a line, but this time bree stays because it’s about love and being supported by your friends and not being sure if you’re okay, but knowing there’s always a safe place for you to go where you’re loved.

(also, we get a throwback joke of sandy, once again, being surprised by how strangely sexual all of these musicals are. i love her so so much)

and then!!!!! we end the episode with rori and bree confessing their feelings for each other and kissing for real for the first time, and it ends with “dress” by taylor swift playing. literally just the most homoerotic song, and the whole “i don’t want you like a best friend” line…… they deserve to be in love with each other and i have been building up to them finally admitting it for four seasons. literally the longest slow burn i’ve ever written. 

episode eleven

WE! OPEN! WITH! “watch you sleep” by girl in red, a song i discovered in 2018 and wanted to save for a good moment, and then the whole “do you listen to girl in red” thing exploded, so. (james from derry girls voice) i support wlw, though i myself am not wlw. also it’s just a really sweet song that i like a lot. and we’ve seen bree wake up a lot at the beginning of episodes, and we see her wake up from a nightmare this time, and she calms down instantly when she realises she’s home and with rori…..

and then we get a moment MOST PLEASING to me!!!! we have canon swiftie alistair fletcher streaming “daylight” by taylor swift in the bathroom as bree and rori wait for him to be done. and then they start to dance together to it, with them referencing rent before they start dancing, and rori begins to sing along because rori, as a character, has such “lover” energy. and we get rori singing “i once believed love would be black and white”, which is a reference to her and james’s relationship, with her thinking it would be simple and easy, and then “i once believed love would be burning red”, with her and nick’s quick, passionate relationship “but it’s golden like daylight” and we see her and bree together, calm, best friends who are now lovers, no big dramatics, no fireworks, just two people who care so deeply about each other, holding each other, having seen each other at their worst and still adoring them with every part of their being. and we get the “you’re so pretty”, “no, you”, “no, us” exchange, which is just saying “stop comparing yourself to other girls, just be in love with them and yourself”

and then we get “number one fan” by muna, which is just a really fun boppy song, and just big bree core. with lines like “so i heard the bad news / nobody likes me and i'm gonna die alone / in my bedroom / looking at strangers on my telephone / well, wouldn't you? / wouldn't you like if i believed those words?” is showing her development, going from believing all of the bad shit people say about her, both online and to her face, and standing up for herself and believing in herself

(fun fact, there was originally a clip in this episode where we see bree going to the police about josh, but as i was getting closer to publishing it, i thought “fuck that, i’m not giving them any screentime”, and just gave bree some fun exposition about reporting josh to his school)

so we get “icu” by phoebe bridgers as bree’s walking down the street, just vibing, very happy because she just got her rapist expelled from his university. we get lines like: “and i get this feeling / whenever i feel good / it'll be the last time” which vibes with my perception and bree and her relationship with her mental health, which is currently, in the episode, in a good place because of goos things happening, but she knows that it’s going to come back down eventually, but she’s prepared for it now, she’s not as scared of herself anymore

then we get al’s film of the rehearsal process - which is, once again, him using art and music as a way of expressing his love - as “heroes” by david bowie plays. this is a direct reference to “the perks of being a wallflower”, a very inspiring piece of media to me, writing wise. the film that al makes is just a love letter to being teenagers and making art and noise in a world where people are constantly telling you to shut up.

and then, following two deeply philosophical speeches i wrote at 3am one night, we get the last 15 minutes of act one of a musical because it’s my show!!!!!! and if i want to have a character yell about love and then sing a song i can!!!!!

we begin with “la vie boheme”, the iconic act one closer of rent. quite genuinely, this song has the same meaning here as it does in rent, only with the added layer of “this is the last clip, so we’re just all having a fun happy ending” on it, so i’m just gonna be talking about my favourite fun parts of it.

we got al and bree sharing a laugh as al sings “not to mention, of course / hating dear old mom and dad”; we got al high-fiving jake as he talks about “fruits”, because they’re both gay; we got one of my favourite lines: “to being an us for once instead of a them”; we got milo and bree messing around because i love their friendship; we got bree and nick singing a verse together; we got al making it canon that mark cohen gets pegged with the “mucho masturbation” line; we get rori making eye contact with bree while she kisses another girl, because we love a call your girlfriend reference and we love her character development; we get james finally perfecting “musetta’s waltz”

and then we get “i should tell you”, a song i hated upon first watch of rent, but now i love it so so much. while james and bree are singing it together as roger and mimi, bree is very much dedicating the song to rori, because it’s a song about being scared of starting a relationship but doing it anyway because you’re learning to trust the other person. we also see audrey and patrick in the audience, both so happy and supportive of their children, because i love them so much. i love all of the parents, but audrey is definitely my personal favourite so fa.

and then!!!! we begin “la vie boheme b”, literally one of the biggest bangers of musical theatre history. 

we get rori singing the first fast verse, literally raising a middle finger to the idea of perfection and eating disorders, because while those ideas may be a part of her life, she’s happy to say “fuck you” to them; we get nick voguing to the camera as he sings his fast verse, goofing around like usual; and then we get milo yelling out their verse to the audience, serious, because they genuinely believe in the words they’re saying

then we get the cast all yelling out their lgbt identity in the form of a reclaimed slur. i also changed this part of the show because there’s two terms referring to lesbians in the song and i wanted to a reference just for bisexual people. 

then we begin to shift all focus away from bree and her story, beginning to move onto nick, as he and james dance together as al yells out the title line of the episode: “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation”. and i decided to edit the closing monologue because i felt that it placed too much focus on roger and mimi’s romance and wanted to end the season with a focus on revolution and positive social change, ending with the line: “the riot goes on and on and on and on…”

and then we end the season with the line “we will now take a short intermission” as nick looks into the camera, because it’s time for a break between seasons babey!

and that’s another well over 10k essay on my music choices!!!!! also, as of writing this, i have officially finished production on skambr season 5!!!! i’m way ahead of schedule, which is really good for me, and the trailer will be coming out in about a month’s time!!!! until then, thank you for reading my infodump <3

[peters-starks]

NUMBER NEIGHBOUR

Peter Parker x Reader 

Summary: when texting your number neighbour you got more than you bargained for. 

Word Count: 4,059

Masterlist

The recent trend on Twitter of people texting their “number neighbour” the person who has the same phone number as them but with one number difference had become really popular in the past few days, so much so even the majority of your friends had now done it. So, when you were having a chill night in with two of your friends and they tried to persuade you to text your number neighbours you really weren’t surprised.  

“Guys I’m not going to do it what if it’s some weirdo and they probably won’t even reply so it’ll be pointless” you chucked and shook your head. 

“Come onnnn this movie is so boring and we’ve both already spoken to our neighbours so it’s your turn!” Your best friend, Merise, wasn’t wrong, this movie was like a YouTube comedy remake of an actual horror movie and frankly the acting was beyond awful. 

“What happened to typical fun games like truth or dare” you yelped as your other friend, Amara, threw a pillow at you 

“Just do it” they groaned at you going to reach for another pillow making you put your arms over you in defence whilst laughing

“Okay okay! I guess I have no dignity left to lose!” 

All your friends gathered around your phone as you typed in your phone number and changed the last number at the end and selected the message option. You typed out a simple “hi” and then clicked send. 

“Hi? Hi! That’s so boring” Amara groaned and Merise pinched her side 

“What else were they gonna say?” 

You shook your head at your overly energetic friends and stared at your screen for a moment longer with nothing happening. “I told you there would be no resp-”your words were cut short by a notification noise coming through and Merise grabbed your phone laughing. 

UNKNOWN: hi? Who is this? 

You groaned and watched as Merise tapped away and the sound of a message being sent shortly followed. 

Y: I’m your number neighbour! Have you seen the trend online? 

Your eyes widened at this. “OMG what if they’re like 90 years old? Or like 8? If they’re like underage isn’t this illegal I mean” you typed as you rambled your friends watching you in amusement. 

Y: unless you’re like not online which is super fine and if you’re like really young then ignore this aha :) 

“Honestly I don’t understand how your level of awkwardness can project through a screen that hard like I’m getting awkward radiation poisoning from this” Amara gaped at you making Merise chuckle and mumble something in agreement along the lines of ‘it’s not that deep’.

~|~

Peter was perched on his favourite rooftop taking a break to view the New York skyline at night, this being one of the reasons he loved patrolling in the evenings as nowhere else could you see this view. His phone vibrating caught his attention and he assumed it was Aunt May asking when he would be home as she was probably fretting about him swinging across the city, still not completely loving his new role but all the same supporting him to an endless amount. 

Peter’s eyebrows furrowed when he saw an unknown number on his phone screen and swiped to open the message seeing a simple “hi”. The number looked vaguely familiar but at this point Peter was far too tired to place it. He replied cautiously and waited for the mystery person to answer him. 

When his phone vibrated again he was mildly surprised by the two messages. His number neighbour! Peter secretly loved that trend online much to MJ’s dismay as she found it ‘pointless’ and had sent her number neighbour links to government conspiracies when they had text her to which she had no reply. Peter thought she just didn’t like the trend because she was upset she didn’t make a new conspiracy friend. 

P: ohhhh, of course I know, hey neighbour! And don’t worry I’m not really young 

P: well that depends what you class as really young, 13 is pretty old right? 

P: lol kidding 

Peter face palmed himself at that, god he was such a dork. 

Y: Idk 13 is quite young when you’re 65 

Y: I’m not actually 65 tho don’t worry 

Y: how old actually are you tho lol 

Peter smiled slightly sensing your mild anxiety at texting a stranger and honestly it was most the reason he hadn’t done it yet because knowing his luck he’d message a child and have some very unhappy parents at his door. 

P: I’m 18 wbu 

Y: snap! 

P: thank god! Are you from New York? 

Y: yup lived here for a couple of years now, I take it you are too? 

P: Queens 

Your two friends squealed as you found out this stranger lived surprising close to your apartment. 

“Ask them their name! We might know them considering they’re so close” Merise squealed slightly. Honestly you just thought she was like a puppy who was excited to meet new people. 

Y: so neighbour what’s your name if you don’t mind me asking? 

Peter hesitated at this for a second as even though his identity was hidden, only those the very closest to him knowing him as Spider-Man, giving his name to someone over text who literally could be anyone seemed risky. However, he doubted that any random government agent or evil bad guy would know of number neighbours or be able to joke around so easily. 

P: Peter, what’s yours? 

Y: Hi Peter from Queens, I’m y/n.

Amara braced herself for Merise’s literal yell at finding out the person you were texting was not only the same age and from nearby but also A BOY. 

“I BET he’s cute, he seems nice over text and dorky so he’s gotta be cute ugh” Merise winked at you after her small speech and you simply rolled your eyes. 

“I’m sure he is, if he’s who he says he is” you started staring at your screen waiting for his reply. Time passed and after 40 minutes you gave up on checking your phone screen every 10 minutes waiting for Peter to answer you. He probably got bored of texting a stranger which you wouldn’t blame him. The internet came up with weird trends. 

Just as you let your friends out as it was way past the time they were supposed to leave as you had school the next day, your phone had another text notification.

P: hi y/n :) 

You smiled faintly at this because Merise was kind of right, Peter sounds like a bit of a dork. 

Y: do you go to school in New York? 

Y: that’s if you’re in school aha 

P: yea I go to Midtown actually 

Your eyes widened slightly as that was Amara’s school whilst you and Merise went to one a couple miles away from Midtown. 

Y: no way! My friend goes there. You must be pretty smart. I go to the next school over. 

P: nice! Guess we really aren’t too far away then. 

A few hours passed and you and Peter were still texting back and forth, knowing you both really should be asleep but the conversation flowed so well that time passed without any realisation. Which you both paid for when school started the next day.

Y: I.am.so.tired.

P: I literally slept through 3 alarms and coffee isn’t working. Help. 

Y: at least you don’t have a bio test today I’m honestly screwed. 

P: if you need bio help I’m actually kind of a nerd with that stuff. Text me the questions secretly ;)

Y: oh yea totally not noticeable. 

You smiled and rolled your eyes at Peters texts catching Merise’s attention. “Still texting Queens boy, are we?” She nudged your shoulder and winked at you. 

“Maybe I am” you tried to answer with a straight face but honestly it was difficult. 

Throughout the day, you and Peter exchanged small texts here and there, both your friends seemed to notice you being glued to your phones more than usual. 

When school ended, you went home and tried to get your school work done but honestly nothing was going in so you opted for aimless scrolling for a while. The top of your newsfeed was an alert of Spider-Man ending yet another Robbery only a few blocks away from your apartment which usually you took no notice of but it was the bank your parents used so it caught your attention more than usual. 

Y: yknow I think I’m going to need that study help, literally everything is distracting me. Including bank robberies! Not even Spider-Man can save my grades this semester. 

P: you never know, Spider-Man is probably pretty good at bio. 

Peter laughed at himself, inside jokes about his identity really were the only enjoyable part about hiding himself from the people around him. He was sat back on the rooftop from last night trying to rest up his side as he took a pretty hard blow from one of the robbers and certainly has a bruise. He remembered Ned saying a solution to help bruising the other day and decided to ask him and without looking dialled. 

“Hello?” 

Ok. So that isn’t Ned. 

“Peter is that you...” 

When you saw peter was ringing you it confused you but you did ask him for study tips so maybe he was saving your ass via phone call. 

Peter froze when he heard your voice, checking his phone and seeing “y/n” on the screen. God, he must’ve selected your contact instead of Neds since he was thinking about you. 

“Oh um hi sorry I meant to phone my friend about some bruise stopping thing but I must’ve called you by mistake” 

“Bruise stopper?” You cocked your head in confusion. “Do I even want to know” you chucked slightly. Hearing Peters actual voice was kind of weird but as much as you hated to admit it even his voice sounded cute to you. 

“Ah um I kind of ran into a wall aha yea like super hard” Peter literally wanted to dive bomb off the roof top, god his awkward rambles always revealed too much. And a wall?? Who’s going to believe that.

“Right a wall... clumsy I take it” 

“Yeah you could say that” peter laughed lightly. 

“Well don’t ask how I know this but cold compress it on and off and apply Arnica gel a few times a day and Aloe if you want to be extra careful” 

Peter raised his eyebrows in surprise a thought going through his head that you weren’t some secret vigilantly too or worse maybe some villain. “I won’t ask don’t worry but um thank you” 

You smiled gently “you’re welcome Peter from Queens” 

“Well i guess if you’re curing my bruising you can call me Peter Parker instead of Peter from Queens” 

“Well Peter Parker, y/n y/l/n” 

Peter smiled more until his cheeks hurt under his mask as you carried on speaking to each other, hearing your voice somehow made you more real to Peter and speaking to you was relaxing. You didn’t know him as Peter Parker quiet nerd from Midtown or as the rookie avenger that kind of went to space and saved the world but also helps old ladies cross the road. You knew him as Peter, number neighbour and hopefully at this point friend. Getting to know someone new was really a breath of fresh air. 

It was getting late again and honestly you don’t think you can go another day of school with next to no sleep no matter how much you loved speaking to Peter. And so you and peter began to say your goodnights. 

“It was really nice speaking to you today Peter, like actually speaking to you” 

“Yea it was really nice speaking to you too... maybe we can do it again sometime?” 

“You can call me whenever, especially if you are gonna help me with studying orrr if you need anymore bruises to heal” you smiled as you spoke, the tiredness etching into your body slowly. “Well, goodnight Peter Parker” 

“Goodnight y/n” 

Over the next two weeks you and Peter spoke every single day, most the time through texts and mainly through meme’s as well as evening phone calls. Sometimes Peter would have to leave the call abruptly with weird excuses which made you suspicious, Merise said it’s probably a girlfriend he doesn’t want you to know about but Amara shut that down saying that she doubts it. Amara also went to midtown with Peter but had no classes with him and barely knew his face, she said her friend said he was probably the guy with the Stark internship. When you asked Peter about the internship he got nervous and stuttered a lot which confused you but you convinced yourself it was because there was lots of Top Secret Avengers stuff he had to be careful with. 

“I’m so jealous you get to work with the avengers y’know? I’ve always loved those guys, like how cool would it be to have some kind of power and be able to save people?” You gushed to Peter one evening which honestly made him blush a bit. You were a bit of a superhero nerd too. 

“Yea it must be pretty cool” Peter tried to keep the tone in his voice even but Karen quickly informed him that his voice indicated excitement and anxiety. 

“Have you met many avengers? Have you met Thor? He’s a literal god I mean even meeting Tony Stark alone must have been amazing I’ve always found him so interesting like he’s was so clever and he saved us all like literally! Oh god and SPIDER-MAN he’s just so cool because he’s like our thing you know? Like a New York special hero” you were also blushing as you spoke realising you were fully geeking out to a guy you’d never even met and he probably thought you were a total avengers fan girl. 

“Yea Spider-Man is pretty cool, Thor is awesome though! The dude is massive! And Mr Stark was just a great guy y’know? I kinda owe him everything” Peters heart dropped a bit at mentioning Tony but talking about him kept his memory alive in Peter’s eyes, and that’s the least he could do for him. 

“Right yea, sorry I didn’t even think, I’m so sorry for your loss, he was such a great man” you cringed at yourself for not thinking. Of course Peter would’ve been affected by losing Tony. 

“No no it’s okay, I mean you and me wouldn’t be here without what he did so we all owe him one, it’s good to acknowledge it, bet it feeds his ego a bit really” Peter laughed a bit trying to lighten the mood and make you feel less bad. You had both previously spoken about the Snap as both of you had disappeared for those 5 years and late night discussions had run into the early mornings as you had heart to hearts about its tolls on you both. You both found it so easy to talk to each other it was like you’d known each other for years even though you’ve never even seen each other face to face before, both being too awkward to even suggest meeting. 

-|- 

 You knew it was a bad idea to walk home alone so late, but the extra studying was highly needed as Peter couldn’t make your evening phone call to help you study your math quiz tomorrow and if you failed it one more time you were in serious trouble. The lampposts illuminated just enough of the street for you to feel safe-ish but speed walking was definitely needed. 

You were only a block away from your apartment when you got that feeling. It was deep in your gut and it made you shiver. Something was wrong and you couldn’t put a finger on what it was. You turned your head slightly to look around you and at a first glance you saw nothing however a shadow moving in one of the alley ways made your hair on your arms stand up. This was a big nope. 

You grabbed your phone and kept it close to you ready to call for help as footsteps started coming behind you. However as a rough hand grabbed your shoulder pulling your whole body backwards with a tell your phone was knocked out your hand, tumbling towards the ground like your hope of getting through this. 

Your eyes closed in terror as a small object was pushed against your back. Who knew studying would literally be the death of you.

“What’s in the bag” the voice was rough and desperate causing you to hold your breath. “Give me the bag” 

You turned slowly, hands up and faced the man, his face was covered by some makeshift white mask and a black beanie covered his hair, the small black handgun being pointed at you was shaking slightly in his gloved hands. 

You slowly moved your backpack off your shoulders and moved it in front of you, dropping it to the ground and using you foot to push it towards the masked man. Just as the man moved to pick it up a blue and red blur zoomed past you eyes, knocking the man to the wall and his gun became stuck to it by some webbed material. Webbed material. SPIDER-MAN. 

“Hey I don’t think that belongs to you” the voice spoke sounding weirdly altered. 

The robber attempted to swing at the spandex covered hero but missed as Spider-Man ducked and then proceeded to pull him back with webbing as he tried to flee. 

“You know I think an apology would be in order for this” the robber simply muttered a “fuck you” under his breath to which Spider-Man tutted and webbed the guy to the wall before whispering inform the authorities and turning to you. 

“Um hey sorry about this, are you okay miss..” the hero was shorter than you thought standing taller than you but not by a huge amount and his posture seemed almost awkward as he scratched the back of his head waiting for your reply. 

“Oh um y/n” you whispered, trying your best to process your brush with death and also not crying in front of your favourite hero. 

At the mention of your name the eyes of Spider-Man widened and he seemed to freeze. Peter was shocked. Y/n? As in his y/n? Your voice sounded the same but surely not and he almost hoped not considered what just happened, what if he didn’t get here on time? Oh god I mean he thought you were pretty but this pretty? And everything that just happened you must be so terrified and right before your math quiz... 

You saw the hero frozen in place and became instantly confused. “Um... are you okay?” At this he seemed to snap out of it and laughed slightly. 

“I think that’s my line you know” Peter once again realised he fucked up as his voice changer was no longer on, Karen must disabled it when Peter froze and he bet she did it on purpose knowing full well who you are. 

When Spider-Man spoke your eyebrows furrowed because that voice sounded oh so familiar but you could only place it to one person. 

“Right yea um I’m okay I should probably get home I have school tomorrow” you nervously nodded hoping he would say something else so you could confirm it.

“Of course yea um, is it okay if I walk you home? Just to make sure you’re safe?” Peter knew there was no turning back, you’d either figure it out or you wouldn’t and there was no way he was going to let you carry on walking home alone after this. 

“Um... that’d be nice actually, thank you” 

On the walk home not much was said, Peter tried not to say something accidentally and completely reveal himself whilst you were wrapped up in thinking about what just happened to you and the fact not only was Spider-Man walking you home but you’re pretty sure he is your mystery friend Peter Parker. 

When you arrived at your apartment you thanked the Webster and watched him swing off into the New York skyline and then took your phone out and dialled the only number you could think of. 

“Hello? Everything okay?” Peter sounded out of breath which was very convenient and he also sounded worried which if you weren’t already so suspicious you wouldn’t take note of. 

“You’re not going to believe the evening I’ve had” you went on to explain your half robbery slash attack and Spider-Man’s dramatic entrance and you have to admit Peter is a good actor, although his concern for your emotional well-being seemed to consume his efforts in hiding his fake shock at Spider-Man turning up. 

“Yea it was so weird like I’m totally okay but I can’t figure out what’s the strangest thing, being saved from a robbery by Spider-Man or finding out Spider-Man is my number neighbour you know” you bit your lip with anticipation as you spoke. 

“Well yea u mean it sounds like a strange nigh- wait what” God Peter was so stupid of course you knew! He would recognise your voice anywhere so why wouldn’t you recognise his? “I’m-I’m not Spider-Man I m-mean that’s ridiculous” and he stuttered. Good job Peter. 

“Yea I mean Stark internship? Knowing the avengers and Spider-Man and you sharing a voice is a lot of coincidence huh? It was nice to finally meet you Peter” you didn’t sound offended or angry from what Peter could tell you actually sounded humoured which made him breathe a sigh of relief. 

“Go to your roof top” and with that the line went dead.

Five minutes later you were stood on the rooftop of your apartment complex, glad the door was old and easily pushed open. The hoodie you threw on barely kept you warm from the winds that bashed around you but that was all forgotten as Spider-Man , Peter , landed on the roof next to you. 

“Hey” you smiled and nervously tucked some hair behind your ear as he got closer. 

“Um hi” Peter said, approaching you slowly whilst being kind of unsure. 

“I know your identity is a big thing and I promise I won’t tell anyone about this but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know and I mean it’s pretty cool but also awkward because I can’t BELIEVE you let me geek out about the avengers and YOURSELF to you for ages and didn’t say ANYTHING I mean wha-“ you were cut short by Peters body colliding with yours in a kind of awkward but sweet hug. He smelt really good. 

When he pulled away you cleared your throat and muttered a sorry. Peter only laughed and lifted his hands up to take his mask off. Underneath he was a lot cuter than you expected, honestly you had to hold in a gasp. His brown hair was floppy and curly, slightly messy from the mask, and his jawline was sharp framing his face and his brown eyes honestly were breath-taking as cliché as it sounds. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you too” Peter said playing with his fingers nervously “you um you’re prettier than I thought wait not that I thought you wouldn’t be pretty but I mean you’re just wow like super pre-“ this time peter was interrupted as your arms wrapped around his neck and you kissed him on the cheek. 

“Thank you. For um saving my life earlier and all, who knew Spider-Man could not only save my life but also save my grades by helping me study” you both chucked at that.

For the rest of the evening you sat on the roof top and enjoyed finally being around each other. The conversation was a lot easier in person, mostly because of the flirty body language and the fact Peters eyes told such a story. By the end you were nearly asleep on his shoulder as he wrapped his arm around your torso to help keep you warm and you both silently enjoyed watching the New York skyline at night. Peter had found a new favourite roof top. 

++++++++++++++

OKAY SO my first one shot on this account because the most stupid things inspire me, including twitter trends. i hope you like it as i wasn’t too sure with this one and feel like its a bit rough here and there but overall i enjoyed the concept too much to put it aside. 

Add yourself to my taglist 

TAGLIST: @aesthetic-png @liac2299 @animegirlgeeky @sexysamsungl @mikariell95 @evoutionofkatep  @orowit

[demiiharperr]

The issues I have with That 70’s Show:

The different ways the Intro Song is sang throughout the seasons. I was content until they introduced Randy and then the whooooole vibe in the song changed.

The on and off relationship of Jackie & Kelso. Their relationship was very unhealthy. The way Jackie would speak to Kelso, followed by Kelso repeatedly cheating on Jackie.

After Season 1 Episode 3, we rarely ever see Steven Hyde without his sunglasses.

In Season 1 Episode 2, Eric got the Vista Cruiser and Red told him all the responsibilities that come with owning the car BUT how was Eric going to afford it? He didn’t get a job until Episode 5.

Season 1 Episode 2, Midge mentions their daughter Valerie but, we never see Valerie. In fact, as the series goes on we’re made to believe Donna is an only child.

Bob. Don Stark’s cheesy acting was sometimes almost unbearable. The delivery on all of his punch lines just never stuck. Every scene they attempted to make him funny always seemed forced. Especially when he’d go “oh boy”. Bob was too corny for me to ever like his character.

Jackie wears a sweater vest with the initials JSB. I’m assuming it stands for her name except... we later find out Jackie’s middle name is Beulah. Her initials would then be JBB. I need answers!

The air hockey game at The Hub that was there for Season 1 Episode 4 and then never again.

You never see the entire view of The Forman’s house or The Pinciotti’s house.

Season 1 Episode 5 Donna mentions her little sister Tina. Again, another Pinciotti daughter that winds up disappearing. She only makes one appearance and then she’s never seen again.

The Forman kitchen table goes from having 3 legs (S1E4) to then only having 1 leg (S1E5)

Danny Bonaduce is another character who’s lines never landed.

(S1E6) Jackie’s mom (Eve Plumb) is showing the house where the gang is trying to throw a kegger. Jackie’s mom in this episode is not the same woman we later came to know as “Jackie’s Mom” (Brooke Shields) way later in the series.

How pot is perceived throughout the show with the moving wall, the floating heads, demonic voices etc.

Donna occasionally entertaining Hyde’s crush he had on her. She then gets upset with Eric when he makes out with Laurie’s friend, Kate, from College.

Hyde willing to learn how to dance, buying gifts — i mean, the lengths this man will go & step out of his own character in order to impress Donna. But, when he begins dating Jackie, the poor girl almost has to pull teeth to get a romantic gesture out of him. HE WAS WILLING TO DANCE TO DISCO FOR DONNA!

(S1E8)The customer service at Blanigans is quite appalling. Between the rude hostess and the singing employees nearly running over The Forman’s, what kind of restaurant is this?! Then as The Forman’s are storming out, you can see a casting extra mouth the words “what the fuck [.....]”. I couldnt make out what the last few words were but my guess is he said “what the fuck is that guys problem?” How did no one catch that?!

(S1E8) Kitty & Red get caught hooking up in their car by a police officer. Them getting caught isn’t the part that’s the issue, it’s the way Red speaks to the officer and then the officer cowers away from him. What kind of cop is this guy?

(S1E9) Kate, Laurie’s friend from college, not giving two fucks about making out with Eric, a boy who is underage. Kate being unmoved by the possibilities of jail time is worrisome.

When do they ever actually go to school?!

How does Laurie stay Red’s favorite? She smokes in front of him, flunks out of college, drinks all of his beer, marries Fez, is caught lying repeatedly, & is openly slut-shamed by the whole gang in front of Red. CAN THIS GIRL REALLY DO NO WRONG?! It’s only when she gets caught living with a man that for a brief moment Eric is the new favorite.

(S1E17) That cringe worthy moment when Bob picks up Donna’s birth control from the Pharmacy and Bob recreates the Macaulay Culkin/Home Alone face. One of the many cheesy Bob moments that I mentioned before.

(S1E18) The frustration of having absolutely no idea what Kelso’s dad actually does for a living. Based off of many Google searches he’s a Senior Executive Statistical Analysis Technician. If you read the description of what a Statistical Analysist does I could see how a teenager like Kelso would get extremely confused.

(S1E18) “Gross Edna” aka Hyde’s mom asks Hyde if he has his fake i.d., to which he replies “you know it”. So, if Hyde has had a fake i.d. this whole time then why is the gang always on a mission to steal beer?!

(S1E18) Jackie working on Red’s car with him on Take Your Kid To Work Day. This is so out of character for Jackie and her knowledge about cars is never brought up again.

The show starts off in 1976 but, halfway through season 1 we’re in 1977. We chill in ‘77 until the end of season 3 when we finally enter 1978. But then, we stay there until season 6. We then wrap up the show with the final seasons all taking place in 1979. Time really doesn’t make any sense throughout That 70’s Show.

THERE’S A BRITISH VERSION OF THIS SHOW?!?! Why do we as human beings continue to do this?! I get it that the remake of a television show into an American version or the remake into a British version can be a huge hit! I also know how much of a fail this can turn out to be. The British tried with recreating the classic Golden Girls (UK: Brighton Belles), Saturday Night Live aka SNL (UK: Saturday Live), Friends (UK: Coupling). Then America tried with Skins (UK: Skins) and The Inbetweeners (UK: The Inbetweeners). Sometimes you just gotta leave the originals alone. But, if you’re interested in watching the British remake of That 70’s Show, the show is called Days Like These.

(S1E22) Eric tells Hyde that he can’t leave for New York because they were “gonna paint that pot leaf on the Water Tower”. BUT WAIT — HOLD UP!! We already saw them paint the pot leaf on the Water Tower (S1E21). The painting of the pot leaf literally happened one episode before Forman says this to Hyde!! It’s the same episode where Kelso falls off the Water Tower and breaks his arm while he was trying to perfect the Pot Leaf Painting to Hyde’s liking. How did Hyde & Eric forget all of this happening? How did the That 70’s Show crew forget this just happened?

Danny Masterson (Hyde) is a Scientologist IRL?! This has nothing to do with the show, i’m just shook.

There’s never a discussion of Hyde losing his virginity. With the rest of the gang they would all sit around and speak in detail about how it was for them. But, not with Hyde. I’m assuming he lost his virginity to Christy (S1E22) since this is the first sexual partner of his we are introduced to but, since the gang doesn’t talk about it WE DONT KNOW!

(S1E23) The very odd almost accepting nature of The Forman family losing Bernice Forman aka Mother Forman. Other than Red’s brother Marty, nobody really showed sadness to losing a loved one.

(S1E10) We finally get to meet Red’s mother, Bernice. She’s very transparent about her hatred for Kitty, which causes everyone to be on edge and want to stay clear of Bernice’s sharp tongue. Fortunately for Eric, his friend Fez is an admirer of Bernice’s feet and rubs them until her whole demeanor changes. She leaves The Forman home complimenting Kitty’s cooking, as well as complimenting their car. Which brings me to this.. They left episode 10 on such a good note! What happened inbetween episode 10 and episode 23 (the episode covering Bernice’s death and funeral)?! By episode 23 Bernice was back to her snarky self and I need answers as to why she couldn’t just stay nice!

(S1E23) The Funeral Director walking over to Bernice’s casket to close her eyes. This is 1. confusing to me & 2. kind of morbid if you think about what that must’ve looked like.

(S1E23) What ever happened to Red’s train set? You can clearly see how much that train set meant to him and how bad he wanted it for himself but, we never see that sentimental train set again.

(S1E23) The cemetery where Mother Forman is buried and Eric goes to visit at night looks a whoooooole awful lot like The Forman’s backyard. Change the stucco of the house and the fence, then add a tomb stone... boom! Eric’s backyard is now a cemetery.

(S1E24) The gang all go skinny dipping meaning they are swimming butt naked. The skinny dipping isn’t where I find an issue. The issue is actually in the episode later on (S4E20) when the gang is reminiscing on the time they’ve spent together over the years. One of the memories being that Kelso is the only one who’s never seen Donna’s boobs. WHICH DOESNT MAKE ANY SENSE! They all went skinny dipping together. They were all naked. Kelso being Kelso.. he would’ve definitely made sure he never blinked. Not even for a second if that meant he could see any girl naked. So, Kelso claiming to have never seen Donna’s boobs seems false.

(S1E24) Midge welcoming the members of the Women Warriors group into her home only to have Sharon so disrespectfully flirt with Midge’s husband, Bob. Bob is not clueless to Sharon’s flirting. He actually seems to enjoy as well as entertain this woman making passes at him. This is one of the first signs that Bob & Midge’s marriage may not be eternal.

(S1E24) This is the episode when Hyde moves in with Eric because Edna (Hyde’s mom) has abandoned him. But, what ever happened to the house that Hyde left behind? We’re aware that his mom was renting the place but, he never went back to pick up anymore belongings. Edna was ok with all of her clothes and other things she owned just being tossed out?

(S1E24) Fez’s tattoo. Fez tells the gang that it’s a tattoo of the Blessed Virgin of Yorba Linda. What that looks like we don’t know because we never see it & after this episode we never hear about it again. The only thing Google gave me was that Yorba Linda is a suburban area in California. Who this Blessed Virgin is, we may never know.

(S1E25) Eric attempts to bounce a bowling ball in the living room, resulting in the ball breaking Red’s TV. I understand wanting to replace the television but, I’m also confused as to why they didn’t just take the TV from the basement in place of the broken television until Eric could afford to buy the house a new one. In fact, you never hear of or see Eric purchasing a new TV for the family after this episode. The replacement is all-of-a-sudden there. AND how did Red expect him to buy one? Eric hasn’t had a job since the Fatso Burger episode. Just as soon as he started working, he quit.

(S2E1) The Forman’s & The Pinciotti’s not realizing that they were high. Midge reveals in a later episode(S3E1) that her & Bob partake in smoking marijuana stating “That stuff was right here in our neighborhood? And to think of all the times we have to drive across town..” after finding out that Hyde was arrested for possession. So, if The Pinciotti’s know what smoking pot feels like you’d think they’d know that they were stoned after eating Hyde’s brownies (S2E1). And Red of all people not noticing that something felt a little off after eating the brownies? How’d he not catch on that something felt different? Which would be a solid reason for Red to be mad once he sobered up. But, I guess he never caught on. Weird.

According to an article I read, Red Forman threatened to put his foot in someone’s ass 38 times. I actually question whether or not this is accurate because I swear it felt like he said it at least double that amount of times. Even if he did only threaten people with his foot 38 times, he still never actually followed through with any of his threats. Red was all bark & no bite.

(S2E5) The gang finds out the Kelso is a year older than all of them meaning he could have been buying them beer this whole time. But, let’s not forget that Hyde has also had a fake i.d. and could’ve been doing the purchasing of the beer as well.

There were several times throughout the series when you can see that it was hard for the cast to execute their lines without cracking a smile or laughing. Thankfully they’re playing teenage stoners so, breaking into laughter can be overlooked.

The on going shame the gang continues to throw at Donna for not having sex with Forman. A teenager wanting to wait isn’t a reason for people to not respect her decision.

(S2E7) Donna tells Eric she loves him and he can’t say it back. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK! Eric has been in love with Donna since they’ve met & for him to leave her hanging like that, ugh—- I cant!

The racist references made throughout the whole series. They were mostly directed towards Fez & I’m aware that the 70’s were a different time. But, racism is racism no matter what era we’re talking about. The jokes about not knowing where he’s from or that his accent is weird— this is can be funny. But, once we cross into poking fun at his skin color by calling him by names of people of color.. that’s disrespectful.

(S2E18) Red forgets Eric’s age.

(S2E24) Red forgets Eric’s age AGAIN! His memory is becoming a concern.

(S2E20) How come we’ve never heard of The Pinciotti’s cat, Mr. Bonkers, until now?! & as quick as we’re introduced to the cat he’s out of our lives. RIP Mr. Bonkers’ short lived screen time.

(S3E2) I’m not a fan of watching The Forman’s & Hyde break out into song.

(S3E8)(S3E9)We jumped from Veterans Day to Christmas. What happened to Thanksgiving?!

(S3E15) The way Donna eats this one piece of candy. Very odd.

(S3E16) Red confirms with Eric that Kelso’s parents are dumb. But, in an earlier season we are to believe that Kelso’s dad is a Statistical Analysist. Not a job for dumb people.

(S3E18) The way directors thought we were suppose to believe this poor excuse of a fight between the Girls Lacrosse Team and Eric, Hyde & Fez. The girls were barely even lifting their legs. Unbelievably Unbelievable.

Eric is way too big for his bed. His feet literally hang off the end.

[thatdarnblogagain]

Random’s Gaming Franchises that need to make a comeback

You know when I was younger there were games that were paramount to my recreational life. They crafted my video gaming experiences and made me giggle with glee as teenage boys tend to do when first seeing Mai Shiranui and her “Ninja Tactics”. We gonna talk about that in another article soon!

Sadly some of those games have faded into relative obscurity with fans of them calling for them to be given a second chance at gaming life. So I figured, why not throw my opinion on the pile.

4. Def Jam -

Def Jam Vendetta was in my opinion an, ok, game and also the first game I beat on PS2 without a memory card. Got home from school one day and my mom was working late, so I fired the system up and powered through the game like a man on a mission or a little boy avoiding his mother changing the channel when she got home.

Fight for New York, was a perfecting of the original’s idea and an underrated fighting game with a huge roster and hilarious/brutal combat. This was a game that was fun throughout, from the story to the player vs player, music was on point (of course) and the graphics were animated but none the less great.

Then came the unexpected death knell or nail in a coffin we had never expected in the form of Def Jam Icon. A huge departure from the previous two games. With this came an abrupt stop to a franchise that had garnered a huge following up to that point. The thing is, the game still has a fanbase...just not for Icon (Ok Icon fans do exist, I am just being cruel). If this was to make a comeback on next gen or current gen consoles in the same vein as Fight for NY, people would readily purchase it, myself included because lord knows I want to see what that roster of artistes will look like now.

3. xiii -

So this is not so much a franchise as it is a single entry that deserves to be a franchise. xiii was an underrated title with a great story and action, as well as a pvp mode that was loads of fun. And while the game did decent in sales, it still has a following due in part to the game ending on a cliff hanger, clearly hinting to another game...sadly that is years ago and still not even a whiff of the scent that would be xiii 2.

The fans deserve a follow up to this game, with possibly more playable characters, a rework to pvp, allowing for online play as well as co-op and a remake of the first one bundled in there for those who never got to play the original.

2. Bloody Roar -

If there was a fighting game I was unbeatable at it was this game. If you wanted me to style on someone, it was this game. Primal Fury and Bloody Roar 3 were my jams...4 never happened!!! Well ok it did happen because something had to kill off the series.

I want you to think about how many games bring transformation into their fighting mechanics, even more so with animal attributes. None. This concept was wholly original and well done at that for the most part. Sadly there has been no sign of this one howling again.

1. Capcom vs SNK -

My first fighting game was Capcom vs SNK 2001. I was trash at it but holy crap was it fun. This was the game that got me into fighting games and also made me play the sequel with even greater fervor. Here was a game that pitted two of the best at the time in a knock down, drag out brawl with iconic characters. What could be better? Very little in the end because people, including myself want CvS3.

[theteaisaddictive]

okay but you can't just tease us with a wedding meme mentioning ejts in the tags. spill :D

ask and ye shall receive my dear :D

1) Who proposes? 2) How do they propose? 3) Reaction of the one being proposed to

in the middle of the chaos post-transformation, belle probably whispers to eve that she never wants to leave her side again. 

‘i know, i know,’ eve whispers. ‘i remember. i’ll never leave you again.’

‘no, i-’ belle says. ‘i mean, i want to stay with you forever’, and she drops to one knee right there on the newly-constructed balcony, still strewn with rose petals and the rosy-fingered dawn. she holds out her left hand palm-up. ‘do you?’

eve joins her kneeling on the ground, her legs still shaking from the transformation. she takes her hand, her eyes almost shockingly large now that they’re in a human face. ‘yes. yes. yes, belle, dearest, of course.’ she leans over and they kiss.

they kiss for quite a while. 

4) How they tell the others

chip, of course, asks as soon as the general excitement levels have gone down, ‘are they gonna get married?’

the senior staff all glance at each other wondering who’s going to have to finally teach this emblem of hope for the future about homophobia, but before the silence can get more than half a step beyond natural, eve chimes in with an ‘of course we are, chip. in fact, belle asked me not twenty minutes ago and i said yes.’

while mrs potts is relieved that eve is human again and that she’s no longer cold and cruel-hearted, she notices a certain fire in eve’s eyes that came straight from her father – the stubbornness which means she’s going to get her own way come hell or high water. it used to apply to hunting, and petty matters of daily life. mrs potts is proud to see it used to marry belle. 

(marie doesn’t find out that they’re married for … a while. how long an interval it’s going to be? haven’t decided yet.)

5) Who’d they choose as ring bearer

chip, of course! who else?

6) Who’s the one that spends the most time worrying about preps for the wedding?

surprisingly, there isn’t actually a lot of time to prep for the wedding. neither of them have much of a taste for fancy celebrations and would prefer a simple ceremony, so that’s what they choose. (but yes, eve does manage to get her bee in a bonnet regardless)

7) When they go looking for their outfits

it’s less ‘looking for outfits’ and more ‘repurposing old ones’. belle would be more than happy to just wear her best blue dress, but even though eve had a transformative experience shaped by queer love, she’s adamant that belle has a new, different dress she’s never worn before for the ceremony (so belle is in basically the celebration dress from the remake, and eve is in essentially ella’s wedding dress from the 2015 film but minus the train. yes i am trash. no i refuse to apologise.)

IMAGINE THESE BLUSHING BRIDES. ALSO YOU WILL HAVE TO IMAGINE THEM AGAIN FOR ROSES AND LAVENDER BUT PRETEND FOR A MOMENT THAT LILY JAMES IS PORTRAYING A GENDER-SWAPPED BEAST HERE AND NOT CINDERELLA

8) Fusses over the other before the wedding day

they’re both very concerned about each other and it’s very sweet. they both stay up the night before the wedding in the library, keeping close together as midnight approaches. belle rubs her fingers soothingly against eve’s head and intermittently finger-combs her hair, and eve absent-mindedly runs her hand in circles over belle’s back as they talk quietly about tomorrow. 

9) Reactions to their wedding attire

ok so how i picture it is that since neither of them have people to give them away (léon and cogsworth offered their services, but both women declined), they mirror the ballroom scene so their first glimpses of each other are as they go down the stairs to the landing before descending to the ballroom proper. both of them almost stop in their tracks because of how BEAUTIFUL and RADIANT and HAPPY the other looks to be marrying HER. eve cries two tiny tears before she even reaches the landing. 

10) Who whispers the other “you look great”

belle to eve. they’re holding hands as they walk towards the servants, lefou and stanley, wait why are those two there what plot points will they be relevant to and léon

11) How are they feeling during vows

nervous as all fuck. jittery. excited. overjoyed. eve actually does start to cry during her vows. belle doesn’t, but she gets very, very close. 

12) What do their rings look like?

simple, thin gold bands. they wear them on their right hands. 

13) The kiss

the vows are exchanged. the rings placed. cogsworth looks at eve, whom he’s known and loved for the best part of a decade. ‘and now, by the power invested in me by the princess of this realm, i declared you to be married. you may now kiss the bride.’

belle smiles so wide that it hurts her cheeks, and she and eve take a step forwards at the same time. eve sweeps her into the kiss, one hand resting on her waist while the other cups belle’s neck. belle rests her own hand on the plane of eve’s back, allowing her other hand to brush eve’s shoulder as she kisses her wife. and for a moment in that kiss, it’s like their first up on the balcony – uncertain and desperately tender. eve breaks to take a breath, and belle pulls her back in for another kiss, their lips moving gently as the gathered congregation cheers. because they kissed. because they’re married. because eve is her wife.

14) What do they whisper to each other after vows?

nothing. they just look at each other. they’ve already said everything. 

15) When cutting their cake, and afterwards

the wedding breakfast is basically a garden party in the grounds with the staff and aforementioned guests. there is enough food and cake and drinks for everyone, and as the afternoon fades into the evening the mood goes from bright and joyous to quietly happy, but in that way where the amount of emotion present is the same it’s just expressed differently if that makes any kind of sense. both brides make speeches, and both begin their speech with ‘on behalf of my wife and i …’ (they had to make lumiere flip a coin bc they both wanted to go first but didn’t want to take the chance away from the other and it was halfway to becoming one of those stupid fights that in a sitcom would be the episode one cliffhanger of the wedding two-parter, but luckily lumiere was in possession of the throuple’s two brain cells that morning so he managed to de-escalate the situation.) belle went first, but the line got the obligatory cheer from the guests both times. 

16) The two dancing together

chapeau (or a Chapeau-Adjacent Character bc atm i can’t remember if i wrote him in or not) starts playing the fiddle, and the wives take their place on the ballroom floor (the reception has moved back inside by now). think home (reprise), the high note then gently glissandos down to the beginning of beauty and the beast. (can you glissando on a violin? idk. maybe it’s just a piano thing but you know what i’m trying to get across here)

they dance the steps that they first performed while eve was still a bird, and then eventually devolve into a gentle waltz. 

after the first dance, it’s country dances for all!! poor chapeau has his work cut out for him, but léon can play and stanley brought his accordion so by the end of the night everybody who has to play gets to dance to at least three songs. 

17) Who takes a picture of the other

not applicable! HOWEVER plumette takes quick sketches throughout the day, and in later years belle and eve have official portraits taken in their wedding dresses on repeat wears, so between one and the other they have plenty of memories.

18) Who lifts the other up (bridal style)

eve sweeps belle off her feet (again) (it’s something of a recurring motif for them)

19) The reaction of the person being carried

belle laughs, shrieking a little because she was caught off-guard. she presses small kisses to eve’s cheek and neck until her arms give out and she has to put belle down again. 

20) Wedding night

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

no, no, no, i’ll be genuine (and mildly explicit). they leave (eventually). chip fell asleep about an hour ago. the night is (fairly) young. they go up to the west wing together. eve can’t stop grinning. she has a wife. 

once safely in the west wing, they help each other out of the fine materials of their dresses and remove their stays, but otherwise stay pretty much fully dressed. they pile up on eve’s bed, in a similar position to how they were in the library the night before; belle is lying directly on the pillows, while eve is resting with her head on belle’s shoulder and their legs intertwined. before long, of course, they start kissing. and they clutch at each other, pressing so close they can feel their heartbeats through the layers of muscle and bone and fabric. and eve takes a very long time to roll belle’s stockings down her legs, kissing each inch as it appears. and then she kisses several other areas of her wife’s body (and belle can barely look at her as she does it, but the sight of that blonde head between her legs causes her to dig her fingers into eve’s hair, and that was a rather interesting discovery for both of them). and then belle, after a moment to catch her breath, pushes eve over to her back and pulls off her chemise. and she is just as slow as eve was, tracing her hands over eve’s body, and when she does finally push eve’s chemise away to press her lips to naked skin, the look in eve’s eyes is one she never forgets.

and then, after a long while, eve says, ‘we’re married. you’re my wife.’

‘and you’re my wife,’ belle says just as quietly. she presses a kiss to the top of eve’s forehead. 

‘i never thought this would happen,’ she says. ‘not even before the curse. i thought i would be like my mother, and that the most i could hope for was either to have a husband who would be kinder or to live as an old maid.’

belle wraps her arm around eve’s shoulders a little tighter, as if she wants to protect the girl of eighteen whom she never even met. knowing belle, eve thinks, that’s probably the case. 

‘i’m so glad i met you, eve,’ she says. ‘i never thought this kind of love could be possible. i’m beyond overjoyed that it’s with you.’

she cards her fingers through eve’s hair, the glint of her ring catching in the moonlight. a few minutes later, eve rearranges their positions, so that they’re both covered by the warm blankets and she’s pressed into belle’s back, her arms draped around her. their hands find each other under the covers, and they fall asleep peacefully on their first day of married life.

[slashtakemylife]

What I think made VLD fail narratively and a possible fix-it

Most of us agree it was in S3 when Voltron went all over the place, Voltron’s plot went like a headless chicken from S3 to S6 then S7 looks like filler and S8 took the weight of explaining everything

The main problem is that Voltron doesn’t have a real coherent focal point of conflict, there are power stuggles between the baddies that leaves us an the general story line confused,here’s each season’s conflict or problem and how it went wrong and a possible fix it (Loooong post)

S1 - S2 (The Perfect ones)

Problem: Zarkon

Big Conqueror Meanie, these is not much to say about Zarkon other than he is the bad guy so the paladins have time to start their journey and learn of each other and the situation they are in, along with us the audience and at the end of S2 the big meanie is defeated

S3 - S6 (Headless Chicken)

Problem: ???? Lotor, then Zarkon then Lotor and at times even Haggar

Lotor is now our main conflict focus, his premise is that he is turning the Galra into Good people, so that opens the idea that they could go back to being the peaceful people they were, even be part of the newly forming Coalition, so Lotor joining forces with Voltron for the greater good is not such a crazy idea, in fact, that is the idea

However we also see he is a back stabber, he is always waiting it out for the best moment to strike and you know it’s going to be big but he waits so damn long even his generals get fed up with him and betray him, at some points even Haggar looks like a good contender to be the true big baddie but then...

Zarkon is back alive, pushing the focus of the conflic back to him because this series began with him, we were trained to see him as the main threat so Lotor and Haggar are pushed back, for what? Zarkon gets killed again and Lotor is now the emperor then he is shown to be the good guy working alongside Voltron only for then to back stab them and reveal his true intentions

Ring any bells? This was stablished since season 3, but Lotor only get’s to be emperor and his defeat all in season 6, we went 3 season going in circles, in between baddies, only to end up in the same place, Lotor is crowned, makes Good galra and uses Allura for research

The problem here is, we as an audience don’t have a clear focus on the conflict we only ever feel a general “galra is bad period” conflict that is not strong enough to be a real motive or plausable “why” for the series actions and character development of our heroes and the series story in general, they change direction and focus that the paladins and we as an audience fail to catch up and have the characters do things and stuff that makes no sense at all

Keith, we start with him tryin to be the leader but then Shiro comes back so that pushes Keith away into the Blades only for him to come back to pilot black, Shiro disappears only to come back into his role, Pidge focuses on the threat at hand when suddenly we have an entire episode of her finding her family with it legit starting in a “hey this GENERAL CONFLICT is happening but I need to take a few days” (seriously see the begining of that ep is almost literally like that, I’m really not making it up). Lance swings back and forward from goofball lover-boy to serious team mate to goofball and then back to serious, Hunk, my poor boy gets left behind in development entirely again, and this happens for 3 WHOLE SEASONS, and again, they all go in circles until they end up in the exact same place they hinted at in the beginning of season 3

S7 (Complete Filler)

Problem: Sendak?!

Ok after we stablished our main group of baddies, the royal family pretty much, S7 brings Sendak? A secondary villain that has no depth over Vrepit Sa and Victory or Death? The main drive of the season is that earth is in danger but since this is the focus, all the past 6 seasons feel for nothing, we don’t see anything of the main baddies, the royal family so story wise we don’t get much content per se

We get a lot of the characters’ development and backstory here but this shows how VLD failed narratively, without a clear structure in the headless chicken phase there were never moments to naturally wove in character development into the story (like S1 - S2 showing Pidge slowly getting info of her family as the story progessed without taking the focus of the threat at hand) beause there was no story! we were all confused and runing around like headless chikens from baddie to baddie to really include our heroes stories, so they had no choice but to shove them down our throats in this season

I knew VLDs was at it’s worst when right from the start, the very first episode:

Keith: you have no idea what Shiro’s done for me

VLD: proceeds to show what Shiro did

FFFFFFFFFFF what? This is so so so balantly obvious, as in literal narration, shows how bad VLD got that they just flat out tell you, these little phrases, these nudges of ‘hey hey you remember?’ are meant to be used because you have previously stablished the moment before, an ‘oh yes I remember!’, I read that all those flashback were due to appear back in the start of S2 when Keith and Shiro were wormeholed together and they reminicent a little on their past and bond, but they held back because they didn’t want to put a heavy flashback episode, well they had no choice but make S7Ep1 a heavy flashback episode because they didn’t do it throughout the consecutive seasons, if they had added just one scene, one memory back in S2

“Brused Keith outside of office, clearly he fought someone, Shiro telling him he won’t give up on him”

When we finally arrive at S7 and Keith delivers that line, we know the deep meaning behing it, we feel conected to the show, is the same feeling we get at Marvel movies when they drop a name or a previous event, or when in Justice League Bruce tells Diana about Steve, we feel that, because we know just how loaded that phrase is, in here is just a flat line with no meaning until Voltron shows you in that exact next moment why it has to have meaning, since they went all over the place in the Headless Chicken phase, they had no time to add these things, leaving the creators with no choice but to push important plot things in this filler season and of course, our next and last one

S8 (The Final Choke)

Problem: Haggar, Royal Family

Now here I admit something, I have yet to watch S8 but I’ve spoiled myself enough, comments would be appreciated if I got something wrong.

Not gonna talk on any shipping or the character’s ending, the main problem I see repeat itself is people talking how little there is of the characters, how they go back to square 1 on what their roles are (cook, tech-wiz, fearless leader) rather than the people we saw grow and develop, how there’s little interaction between them and that is pretty much the main reason almost all of us are here (yes there is but is fewer than in other seasons) however the reason is that this season has the job to build up and break down Haggar’s but also the Royal Familys’, despite having 7 seasons it is only now that Haggar gets the full back story and with that tie in the finale, Voltron expects us to be able to focus on the villans and not so much on the paladins (heroes) because, supposedly, they’ve spent 7 seasons telling us who this characters are, what motivates them, what makes them strong, that we no longer need to focus on them that much, meaning we have enough time to give the Royal Family all the story they never had and our heroes just the final touches, the final tie ins that they need to lead them into their epilogue

So that went to shit, unfortunately, by the reactions, they didn’t succeed, they had to drop things, rush things, forcefully add things to give the season a bit of sense and coherence while also adding big robo fights and general stuff like comic moments, bonding and their lay-low/fun episode, it was just a lot and they barely got it

So now on to my main point, the reason VLD has so many plot holes, so many stories that go nowhere is because of that damn headless chicken phase, we wasted time seeing Lotor get to the throne with so many twist and turns, that time should’ve been used to add character development and a coherent story, the story has nothing to focus on, leaving the creators to fill in with sometimes even more things that they should, leaving so many loose ends the audience and even VLD himself can’t keep up, ultimately having to rely on their last 2 season to try and pull it all together, if they succeeded or not is up to you

Also I saw a post saying how VLD built up a world and it’s rules but then did whatever it wanted, making new rules, breaking them or remaking them, there is no logic behind, this also affects the last 2 seasons, since they reach a point were there really is no time left for the resolution, they have to rely on convinient things to solve problems, to make and break rules as they go to try and fix the problem but this can also get confusing and sometimes a little over the top, in S7 they legit say, there’s a lot of crazy science stuff said to make things work, just go with it, pretty much means, don’t think of it too much, we didn’t either, just bask in the glorious thiccness of the Atlas

My fix it is basically to let Lotor become emperor sooner, Zarkon stays dead and Lotors’ defeat to be a season sooner, thus allowing VLD time to develop Honerva

S1 - S2

Those are perfect

S3 - S5

Lotor becomes emperor because he is the rightful heir, he creates a Good Galra but he either

Makes it fake like in the Altean colonies and uses people for making his mega weapon

Threatens the people to tell Voltron they are safe with the Galra (they did something like that at the start of S3)

This gives the Paladins a false sense of trust on Lotor, helping him with getting the material he needed for his ship and the whole Allura thing, ends with his defeat (I would even put Lotor’s squad as the ‘bad guys’, like rebel Galra, so they make Lotor look good but he is directing them, honestly I wanted to see more Paladins VS Lotor’s squad but then they go separate that it never happens again, not all 4 of them at least)

S6

Get back to Earth, basically canon S7, since Sendak is sort of not a main villain, I would start Haggar arc from here the basic info of her plan, it ends with Voltron defeating Sendak

S7 - S8

Start S7 with Honerva’s Robeast we saw at the end of canon S7 (got battle fatigue at the end of canon S7 so putting that last fight to the next season would be great) so that means we get 2 whole season to really flush out what they made in S8, even, EVEN getting a proper Lotor redemption arc were we don’t see his melting corpse

By doing this, you strech the story, give time to focus on what you want to show, I will just talk the only canon pairing, defeating Lotor since S5 gives Allura 3 seasons to get over him and flush out a bit more that ship rather than the rushed out thing we got, give Lance and Hunk more arc, yes I will say it, get the LGBT rep right, focus on the story, show what will help the story, it being how do we defeat this very clear antagonist since we don’t even know who I’m pointing my bayard at, chose what plot you will develop and not put all kinds of plot holes, weave in the character development into the story and not just plaster it into our face because you ran out of time

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

[ais-n]

I had a revelation... 

I re-watched Iron Man 1 and 2 and now and rewatching Avengers. Next I will re-watch Iron Man 3, then Age of Ultron, Civil War, then Infinity War. 

I actually kind of hate Age of Ultron and Civil War. Scratch that. I straight up HATED Age of Ultron. I saw all the people ahead of time, saying how it destroyed the Marvel empire and they weren’t going to watch more and etc etc and I was like come on guys stop being such drama dogs. Then I saw the movie and was like, that’s it. This has destroyed Marvel for me. I will never watch another Marvel movie again.

I seriously though Joss Whedon had to have had nothing to do with it, the whole time I was watching, because it was such shit. So when it got to the end and Joss was involved I was like what the fucking HELL, Joss? How the actual fuck?

There is a huge laundry list of why I didn’t like Age of Ultron. And why I’m not actually a fan of most of the Captain America movies even though I actually really like Steve Rogers himself. That’s for another post I guess.

But one of the biggest reasons I hated Age of Ultron so much was the fucking bullshit with Natasha and Bruce. It made me so angry. It was Harry Potter all over again, taking these two awesome male and female characters who were great on their own and I individually loved, and throwing them together for no discernible reason except to destroy parts of their characters and character development along the way. Natasha is a badass woman. Let her remain on her fucking own. She doesn’t need a man. What the hell?? And if she HAS to be thrown in with someone, Hawkeye made way more sense. Or even Steve for gods’ sake. 

Now, one of the reasons I’m making myself watch Age of Ultron and Civil War again even though I didn’t like them, is to give them a fair second shot after loving Infinity War. I’m watching Tony’s story as the thread throughout because he’s my favorite, and his stories are my favorite because they are the most related to human psychology and how things affect you as a human being.

So, I knew I hated the whole Bruce and Natasha thing, but I also know I can’t change that Joss made that ungodly decision in Age of Ultron, so I decided in Avengers to try to be as open-minded as I could on the topic and try to look for reasons in this movie for what it led to that. I tried to look at it like, ok, you know that shit is coming, so justify it to yourself based on this.

And so I’m about 2/3 through Avengers and I’ve been paying close attention to them and now I’m just more annoyed and even more disappointed and kind of disgusted by the whole thing. Because you know what’s standing out to me the most so far?

They acted, in Age of Ultron, like they had some sweet moment back in the day when she was there to calm him down. Like their meeting back then was something quaint and cute.

But she actually seemed afraid and vulnerable in that moment when they first met. And when you see them interact, they have nothing in common, they don’t seem interested in each other. The only thing he has going for him is that she sometimes actually gets scared for her life.

A woman who is so strong after she’s made it through so much, with a male friend in Hawkeye who allows her to be vulnerable in a way that lets her retain that strength, and who do they decide she has to be with? The man who makes her scared, like a domestic abuse victim stepping back from their aggressor.

Here’s the thing: I love Bruce. I also like the Hulk. I am not saying Bruce is evil or anything at all. He’s awesome. I think his story is great, I think on his own his character is great, and I really like how they’ve dealt with his internal struggles. I have no problems at all with Bruce or how they’ve dealt with him. And I have no problems at all with Natasha and how they’ve dealt with her (aside from shit like this). 

My problem isn’t them as individuals; they fit their individual stories very well. My problem is when you put two people together who shouldn’t be put together, and call it cute when a strong woman steps back in fear. When you make that into some sort of basis for an unnecessary romantic relationship, and make it all about how she humanizes him, instead of asking whether he empowers her. And to do that to Natasha, of all people, just aggravates me even more. 

I’ll keep watching Avengers, I’ll try to be open-minded in Age of Ultron. But goddamn, Joss, why did you have to pull such stupid shit later like that? You’re ruining part of my experience of watching Avengers again. And I LOVED this movie. But now, knowing what’s coming, I can’t see these scenes the same anymore. Because now I know you’re going to try to rewrite her fear as a woman’s gentle vulnerability, and remake her survival instincts as something indicative of some sort of secret love.

I know that in some ways I tend to have a very unpopular opinion on various topics. There’s going to be people who disagree with me on all this, and in those cases, I’m sorry to be using such harsh language which may feel like I’m saying you’re wrong for your opinion that differs from mine. You aren’t. You have your reasons for how you feel, and I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. 

I know I do have my sensitivities to certain things, one massive pet peeve of which is taking a woman who is great on her own and forcing her into a heterosexual relationship just because. I’ve always hated that, and so I stood to hate Natasha being forced into any relationship that didn’t feel necessary. I would have been okay with Hawkeye, though, because they seem to understand each other as human beings, because they seem to bring out the best in each other, and they seem to be willing to accept the faults of each other, not just look past them. They had rapport. I kind of shipped them because they actually seemed happy together. But I would’ve been just as happy with her being her own thing the whole time.

So anyway, I recognize that certain things are likely to piss me off from the start, and so I will have less patience for those topics. But it’s also been done so well in other cases where I do end up agreeing with the relationship even if I didn’t see it coming. And that’s why I have so little patience for things that feel like they go against characters for no other reason than dick + vag = gold. 

Like. Fuck off. Seriously. Let a fucking man and a fucking woman just coexist without making it into a thing, for fuck’s sake.

Anyway, that’s my current revelation. But if you saw things differently, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying I’m wrong, either. We just see things from different views, and there’s nothing wrong with that :)

I frickin love the Marvel universe. I still love Avengers. I love the characters. I am SO excited for the coming movies. I loooooved Infinity War. I’m very happy overall with the franchise... it just struck me that going into Avengers expecting to be able to try to convince myself that okay fine if I HAVE to I can try to read some whatever extra shit into this or that scene, on the contrary I actually got angrier on Natasha’s behalf as a character that THIS shit is what was being used as reason for future events. Taking her greatest strength and trying to twist it into a weakness, then twisting that into a vulnerability, and rewriting that as something sweet instead of sick. It just pisses me off, dude. idk.

[jeoncooky]

My WINGS Tour Experience (Hong Kong 14052017)

After remaking I’m posting this again to have this somewhere safe in my blog lol

I was wondering whether I should write something down about my experience from this Sunday. As some of you know, I went to BTS’s concert in Hong Kong this Sunday (14th May) and even though I don’t know whether any of my followers are interested to hear about my thoughts of the experience, I thought I would write this anyway so that I would have some written memories left in a few months after this date.

I booked the tickets through my friend back in March during the pre-sale, so unfortunately I can’t help you much if you happen to have questions about them. I got a B2 standing zone ticket (the last one they had on pre-sale apparently!!) and it was 1705HKD in total, so not too bad considering the concert was 2,5 hours in total. Asia-World Expo in general is actually not that big arena, I was actually surprised how small the Hall 1 was! The standing area was not full at all even though the concert was sold out, so there was a lot of room to move around!

Okay, back to the day of the concert. As I wanted to buy some merch, I went to the arena at 10am in the morning thinking there wouldn’t be much people. Turns out, of course there were a lot of people. I ended up lining up for about two hours to get my t-shirt (which luckily didn’t sell out omg i was so worried!!) and I even had a really nice American army with me as my company and we got to talk a lot during those hours haha. All the people I met were super nice and friendly even though not everyone spoke English, but I appreciated it anyway! There were people handing out things (as always i guess) and one girl in the line to the security check asked which member was my bias (I reluctantly responded Tae, but I was so conflicted HOW CAN I CHOOSE OK) and she handed me this cute bag with tae’s picture on it omg (I get excited about the smallest things ok?).

After getting my merch I returned back to my hotel and only returned to the arena just before 4pm. Turns out, they opened the doors from the holding area at 4pm and I just lost my queueing place by being late (like 15 mins)… But it wasn’t too bad, as I said, there was a lot of space and I was actually in the second row at the back (like really close to one part of the stage!) I’ve never been in a concert where my ticket has been checked so many times but lol maybe that’s just me.

Personally I think the first part of the concert was musically the best (Not Today, Baepsae, Am I Wrong(?) ahhh I don’t remember to be honest), or perhaps I was just the most hyped during those few minutes because they were the first minutes after seeing BTS for the first time. The moment the fabric covering the stage dropped and the first notes of Not Today started blasting around the arena were magical! It’s just my personal opinion, but some songs clearly worked better live than others. Cypher 4, Not Today, Baepsae, First Love, Awake, Reflection, Wings, 2,3 and Spring Day were my favourites, while I didn’t really feel that much during 21st century girls (even though I love the song!). I gotta give it to the boys tho, they had so much energy throughout the concert that even I was exhausted (and I didn’t even do anything but sing along and dance and scream ehe). They looked semi tired though, but that is given considering how busy they’ve been in the past few weeks and months. I hope after this tour they get at least some time to rest!

During the first part they also introduced themselves and it was even more amazing and cute than i expected! Suga’s *i-pretend-i-didn’t-hear-you* is hilarious and Hobi’s I’M YOUR HOPE IS THE CUTEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD.

After the first part they did together, Jungkook appeared on stage alone with some dancers to do Begin. LET ME TELL YOU I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DANCING BUT HE IS AMAZING AND I LOVED IT AHHHHHHHHHHHH DID I REALLY HEAR THAT SONG LIVE OMG YES.

Next was Jimin’s Lie, and tbh my mind blanks when I think about that stage. He is gorgeous and omg the part where he dances with his eyes blindfolded AND THE PART WHERE THEY LIFT HIM ahhhhhhhhh. And his vocals were amazing, I really loved the high notes!!!

Suga’s First Love was simply beautiful. Unlike other songs before, the audience actually quieted down and mostly just listened to Yoongi’s rap and only shouted a few words along him. When the song ended(?) the audience started repeatedly shouting Yoongi’s name (Min Yoongi, Min Yoongi, Ming Yoongi - I felt like crying tbh it felt magical how taken the whole arena was by him)

Next was the vocal line’s Lost, and it was also the first song that was performed semi close to me (on the middle stage). The song is not my favourite, but I still loved it (well I loved the whole concert so is there really need for me to stay this over and over again lolololol). Then the rap line appeared for Save ME and OMG YES PLEASE SAVE ME. Was Dope next? I just remember Jungkook doing something but idk. And INU came as well (the audience exploded ok but that was expected INU IS THAT GOOD)

Out of the solo songs Reflection was actually one of the best live - it’s not my favourite from the album, but it really works live. I could feel the emotions in Namjoon’s voice and when the audience started chanting “We Love You” towards the end of the songs I got chills all around my body I swear.

For some reason I don’t remember much of Stigma??? BUT V BBY I LOVE YOU AND THE HIGH NOTES AT THE END OMFG B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!! There was supposed to be a fan project for V’s song but for some reason I didn’t see people holding up the sign? :///

Then MAMA! It works really well live and it’s such a fun song to sing along! It was mother’s day, so it felt even more special that day. AND THE END WHEN HOBI SMILES AND THANKS HIS MOM AND THE AUDIENCE SINGS ALONG AND OMFG

Awake was amazing! Jin’s vocals were on point that night, and he is one of the members who really stood out that night. The long high note really hit me personally and ahhhhhhhhhhh I loved it so much! There was also supposed to be a project for Jin’s song as well but idk what happened to it???

THEN CYPHER 4 OMG I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER BEEN THAT HYPED ABOUT ANYTHING THAT SONG WAS GREATER THAN GREAT AND DON’T LET ME GET STARTED ABOUT HOW GOOD THEY LOOKED AND SOUNDED AND OH HOW AM I ALIVE

I think Fire came after that? Maybe? 3:33 was as impactful as I thought it would be! I think Jimin fell right after that though, and I was so worried for a few moments but he seemed to be okay afterwards. Jimin seemed probably the most tired that night tho, or maybe I just imagined it but I really hope he’s getting a lot of rest!!!!

During N.O I lost it because that was the first time BTS walked right by me I WAS LIKE 3 METERS AWAY I COULD SEE SWEAT ON THEIR FOREHEADS I AM STILL NOT OKAY LIKE HOW DO THEY LOOK SO PERFECT IRL IT SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. Like I knew they are good-looking but guys, it really isn’t photoshop you’re seeing YOU’RE SEEING BASICALLY PERFECTION omfg. Suga, Jungkook and Namjoon walked right past me (Suga was so cool?? That’s what I remember thinking… JK did a cute little spin and NAMJOON DID A BODY ROLL AND I THINK I DIED I WAS NOT READY FOR THAT RUDENESS RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY EYES AND I STILL CANNOT UNSEE IT NAMJOON WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY can you see how struck i was by rapmon)

Because they were so close for the rest of the concert I think my judgement of anything musical was just gone, but oh well. During No More Dream and Danger rest of the members came by my area too (first V, then Jimin, then maybe Jin and Hobi ahhhhhh i don’t remember??). Jimin was so cool as well omg!

My mind kinda blanks after that, but Boy in Luv, Run and 21st century girls happened. I remember screaming a lot. Yeah.

BOY MEETS EVIL IS IMPORTANT wow Hobi is not from this world. He was far away but the song just makes you so hyped and his dancing is out of this worldddddd. It’s kinda sad they cut the song just before the chorus thing at the end lmao the audience started to sing it and then it cut :((( Before they disappeared for a while they did BS&T, and I just remember V’s parts tbh but it was great ok it was great.

They obviously had some small speeches in between, but they were mostly in Cantonese-ish (sometimes Korean), so I cannot tell you much about what they were about. But it didn’t take away from the experience tbh! Suga’s face at one point was hilarious (I think he forgot how to pronounce his line?? I was thinking “same yg, same lmao). And Jin’s hanger heart was so extra but cute hahahaha.

Then came a short VCR in Chinese so too bad, I still don’t know what i was actually about SO ANY OF YOU WHO KNOW PLEASE TELL ME I WAS SO CONFUSED AND LOST hahhahaha

Photography and videos were actually not allowed in the arena and there were people stopping audience from filming but i think they kinda gave up in the end?? Because everyone basically had their phones up (I might have done that as well for a few seconds tbh, but I really tried to focus on the concert and not touch my phone for the most of it).

After some time Bangtan appeared back on stage to do Outro:Wings (and we did the BTS HK fan union fan project, slogan saying “Together let’s fly even higher” in Korean. Afterwards NJ told us they saw the signs and thanked us (and told us what it means in English haha. I also held the sign upside down for like the first 20 seconds because they were walking towards me and I panicked ok). During that song they came to my part again, and wow they were suddenly so energetic?? I’M PROUD TO SAY I’VE SEEN JIN’S HAND KISSES LIVE AND THEY ARE CHEESY BUT GREAT ahahaha. I remember looking at JK’s earrings and thinking that they looked cool (now that i think about it afterwards why on earth did i spend time looking at his earrings lmao). V came by as well and did his adorable flower pose right in front of me ;__; I’m not ok. Suga just walked coolly by us again ahahaha he didn’t really waste time posing much lol ‘S OK I STAN THE RIGHT MAN GOSH I ADORE HIM. Hobi flew by us as well (like literally flew with his hands on his sides OMFG HOW IS HE SO EXTRA AND CUTE). Towards the end they returned back to the middle to do Hobi’s rap (Tae looks at Hobi so lovingly when he does his part???? wow he is a fan)

Then Namjoon thanked us and told us our time was approaching the end so they would do two more songs. 2,3 started playing and I legit started crying (ehe). As it was May 14th (Rose Valentines day?) we did a pink ocean for Bangtan - it was really pretty!

Last song was Spring Day and did I cry? Yes. The song is very meaningful and personal to me, and only then I realized Bangtan would be leaving soon and wow it was depressing but beautiful. Afterwards they walked to the end and bowed and thanked us a few more times and then returned back to the front AND WOW THE POSES THEY DID I MEAN YOU’VE SEEN JIN&JK&YG etc videos going around wow they are beautiful and cute and precious I love them so much.

Oh wow this is way too long, messy and probably not even good but I wanted to write something in order to have something to read when I really want to remember things. The night was amazing, even though I didn’t eat the whole day and almost fainted at some point and apparently screwed up my knee (it’s 2 days later and I still can’t walk properly LOL) and the flight tickets cost a lot but IT WAS DEFINITELY 100% WORTH IT. If you ever have a chance to see Bangtan, I recommend it, it’s worth it.

So yeah, this Sunday happened. It was beautiful. I love them so much. I basically owe them my life, my happiness and I’m so grateful. I wish them great things in life and I hope some day I’ll have a chance to see them again ♥

[chubbybeaver77]

I thought it was obvious enough about the points I made, but it seems to require some extra explanation.

1. Cloud ran for Tifa, NOT to cross the bridge.

There are cinematic techniques to build a film sequence. The close-up shot of Cloud is also called a reaction shot. The reaction shot shows the character's reaction toward the thing presented in the previous shot. Eg. A character sitting in front of a table with an orange and an apple. The screen shows the apple only then shows a close-up of the character drooling. Do you think the character wants the orange instead of the apple? If Tifa was alone in the shot prior to the reaction shot, why do you infer Cloud thinks about the bridge? For more detail, his eyesight was at fixed on Tifa, not down on the bridge. He ran for Tifa.

2. That Cloud reaction differences are caused by the levels of danger is a negative and illogical take.

Look at Cloud's reaction to Tifa's situation. It turned from surprised and worried right into action mode. It was super fast. I even had to slow down to watch his reaction in full. At what moment did he pause and think? He ran to her without thinking. I don't want to spend time to create an example sequence of Cloud expression if he thinks it's dangerous enough to run cos' I don't have time.

If you think Cloud thought it was not dangerous enough for Cloud to take action for Aerith, you made him look like a mean person. If you truly care about someone would you think it's ok to let them 'swim' in the sewage as long as they are not injured/dying? You won't act unless they might get injured? No, Cloud didn't treated Aerith like that. It was just him treating Tifa specially. He didn't mean to be mean to Aerith. He wasn't too petty to reason that it wasn't dangerous enough to save her.

3. Cloud apologized to Aerith was not because he felt embarrassed for failing as her bodyguard.

If he was saved by both girls, and he felt sorry for falling, why did he apologize to Aerith only? If Cloud is Aerith's bodyguard for 1, he is Tifa's hero for 3 4 5. Cloud trying to be Tifa's hero was reiterated throughout the Remake. How many times did he try to be Aerith's bodyguard in comparison? If he feels sorry for failing as Aerith's bodyguard, he will feel sorry for failing as Tifa's hero, too. But, he didn't even try to save Aerith here so he didn't fail as her bodyguard. He failed as someone else's hero. He was also pretty occupied with someone else being in danger. It was all at once very fast, you know.

Btw, if Cloud was so embarassed he wouldn't look at Aerith's face when saying sorry. He would have looked away. On top of Shinra building when Tifa rescuing Cloud, that's where you truly see the face of someone being disappointed for failing to be a hero.

Have a nice day! Cheers,

FF7 LTD: CLOUD’S TRUTH REVEALED - Chapter 10 [scenario analysis]

Honestly, I was re-watching FF7R footage to get some illustrations for another analysis and came across this, so this is a totally accidental catch about the LTD of FF7. I didn’t ask myself questions this time.

In Chapter 10 of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we have Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith as our team members and it is probably an amazing chance for the story to tell and develop the relationships between them. In the sewer, the game set up two bridge collapses and there are intentions behind those cutscenes just like probably any other cutscenes the devs put in this Remake and I am, as a fan, very grateful for their attention to detail. I also like to compare because sometimes you need to place one thing next to another to understand what it truly is. By comparing the scenarios of the two bridge collapses, I think I have found the truth about the LTD from Cloud, at least up until this point of the story (after all that happened between Cloud – Tifa and Cloud – Aerith from the beginning till Chapter 9).

With the first bridge collapse, you see Cloud crossing first and then Tifa. Both crossed the bridge successfully. Then, it was Aerith’s turn. Aerith had trouble. When she was in trouble, we saw the screen showed Tifa and Cloud. Cloud was at the back and Tifa at the front. Cloud was out of focus and Tifa was in focus. At its peak, the bridge started sinking. It was Tifa that immediately took action and reached for Aerith. Cloud, however, stayed out of the screen, implying he either didn’t take action or his action was not important enough to be displayed on the screen. Then, we heard Cloud telling Aerith what to do: “Jump!”. Aerith jumped and Tifa was ready to catch her. Cloud was back on the screen, holding onto Tifa while his eyes focusing on Aerith.

Because Cloud barely talked or expressed his feelings openly, we - fans -  have been watching his action carefully to find out what he really meant/felt/thought. So at this moment, who did he care about? My answer was Aerith definitely because she was the one he looked at and she was the one in trouble, even though he had that tendency to touch Tifa. But, let’s check the second bridge collapse.

The second collapse came shortly after the first one. It happened when both Aerith and Tifa crossing. However, if you looked closely, the one truly in trouble this time was Tifa. The screen shows only Tifa being in trouble, not Aerith. You also heard Tifa saying “Huh? No way!” which tells you how she was in trouble. Actually, Aerith was closer to the other side so she was in a safer position. Tifa was near the middle of the bridge and she probably thought she could not make it to the other side, so she turned around to run back. This time, Cloud was in focus. Even a close-up shot was used to tell the audience how he felt.

His face had a stunned and scared expression and it quickly turned into a determined one. Cloud didn’t just stand and told Tifa what to do. He instantly ran toward her. Aerith noticed Tifa was in danger and Tifa was wrong by turning back. So, Aerith took Tifa’s hand and pulled her forward together. When Aerith took Tifa’s hand, you would see Cloud was already in action in the back. As the two girls moving to the other side, Cloud continued rushing behind. I think the force of such action was too much for him to stop while it also seems he didn’t even want to stop (because he couldn’t feel assured enough if he wasn’t the one that rescues Tifa himself?). The bridge collapsed completely.

You can see him falling almost at the same place that Tifa was at the last shot before the trouble occurred. It’s safe to say that Cloud saw Tifa in trouble, and without thinking, he immediately rushed to rescue her; within such a fleeting moment, he was so determined and projected himself precisely to where she was. That’s how he got himself in trouble. Luckily, the girls rescued him. Then, Cloud turned to Aerith and said “Sorry ‘bout that” and she replied “No need to be”. Why did he apologize to Aerith? Because to him, she was a bystander in that circumstance. How was Aerith a bystander? Because Tifa was in danger and he was so reckless about saving Tifa, thus he bothered Aerith. When Tifa and Aerith went ahead, Cloud was caught looking down sighing. He caught himself. He was such a cocky and try-to-play-cool dude, that sigh was most likely not about his own danger. It’s more like a sigh of relief that the tension of Tifa being in danger was over or he was disappointed about himself for acting recklessly and thoughtlessly because he wanted to protect Tifa.

So we see here, in almost two identical situations, Cloud responded differently when each girl was endangered. It really shows how deeply Cloud cares about Tifa and how much she means to him compared to Aerith. Through his action, Cloud has involuntarily revealed who matters the most to him. However, I don’t think that the devs would go this far just to compare how Cloud cares for Tifa more than Aerith (at least true till this point of the story) just for the sake of the LTD. Remember in FF7AC, Cloud was the one that felt guilty about Aerith’s death more than any other team member? Remember in OG, he acted weirdly before Sephiroth appeared and killed Aerith?

I think there is a high chance the Remake will show in detail how Cloud’s role/Cloud’s failure played in Aerith’s death, which caused his deep guilt in AC. Had he been determined to protect Aerith as he could for Tifa, would have it been different?

After all, here I include the video with slow-motion so you can see it for yourself.

If you have enjoyed this, please check out my other analyses for FF7R:

TIFA AND THE MOON SYMBOL – WALL MARKET [symbolism analysis]

WHAT DID CLOUD CALL BEAUTIFUL? [cinematic analysis]

BONUS only for Cloti: Cloud lost his shit and rushed toward Tifa without thinking the same way.

[the-naked-christian]



With the recent freezing temperatures hitting us pretty hard, my friend and I decided to grab our blankets, popcorn and hot chocolate and binge watch a TV show. We settled on The Bible series on Netflix. It is a remake of the 1966 film The Bible: In the Beginning. We are both artists and proud critics, so a good deal of the day was spent pointing out all of the inaccuracies in this series. And trust me, there were quite a few. The overall theme of the series seemed to be God’s covenant(s) with Israel. This started a discussion about the promises God made throughout the Bible. So, we decided to breakdown the dispensations on our own. In doing so, we see that even though mankind has had a tumultuous relationship with God since the beginning, God’s grace has always been present but with conditions. That is until, the mystery was revealed.

To get the big picture, let’s look at the different deals God made with His people.

The First Promise:

This promise was made with Adam and Eve in the period of innocence where God put Adam in charge of the earth (Genesis 1:26) and promised that they had a home in Eden forever unless they ate of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:15-17). How hard was that? But you know how it goes, we always want what we cannot or should not have. And so, Adam and Eve blew it for everyone. For their disobedience, God evicted them from the garden and cursed them with the hard life we all have to endure today. At this point, mankind is still in charge of the earth. The job just got much harder.

Promise 2 Noah:

Let’s move on to Noah. If you attended any Sunday school class as a child, you know this story. Noah was seen as a righteous man in the eyes of God. If you do a more in-depth study, you will see that Noah had his faults. However, compared to the wickedness in the world during that time, he was a saint. God was sorry that he made mankind. He was so disappointed in what His creation had become he decided to destroy everything. Wipe the slate clean and start over.

So, God sent a massive flood over all of the earth and literally washed everyone and everything from the face of earth except for Noah, his family and the animals taken with them onto the ark.

Here comes the second Promise. In Genesis 9:9-16, God promised Noah that he will never again destroy the earth with water. And, as a symbol of that promise, blessed us with those beautiful rainbows we see sometimes after rain. Pretty awesome!

Promise 3: Abraham

Next, we have Abraham, the father of many nations. God made a couple of promises to Abraham. He assured him that he will have many descendants and God promised him specific tracks of land. These descendants will go on to birth kings including the one and only Jesus Christ. Abraham fathered children with his wife Sarah and his servant Hagar. They went on the become Israel and Palestine, respectively. This land will be and still is the subject of much controversary. But it’s not like they were not warned. God told Abraham’s offspring that they will get the land, lose it but it will be returned to them, eventually (Ezekiel 32, Leviticus 25, Genesis 15,17, Exodus 23).

Promise 4: Moses

Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, was close to God but not without his faults also. He won the heart of God and through him, God formed the nation of Israel to fulfill his promise to Abraham. God renamed Jacob Israel and Israel’s offspring became the “nation” that will birth the son of man, Jesus. Through Jacob’s lineage came Joseph, who rescued his family (the nation of Israel) from starvation through his connection with Egyptian royalty. The nation moves to Egypt and becomes slaves. Years later baby Moses is rescued from Pharaoh’s decree to thin the Israeli population by mass genocide when Pharaoh’s daughter decides to adopt the child as her own. Moses grows up and is used by God to lead Israel out of Egypt and back to the land God promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But this journey to the promised land is complicated by the children of Israel’s disobedience. Therefore, God had to lay down the law, literally. He not only gave them the ten commandments but hundreds of other laws that they were to obey and rituals they were to keep.

If they did not keep these commandments, God promised them curses. If they did obey the law, God gave them blessings (Deuteronomy 11). Pretty simple, right? I suppose it should have been but…

Promise 5: David

Now the children of Israel wanted a kingdom complete with a king, the works. God granted them their wish and gave them Saul. You can read Saul’s very sad story, but we have got to keep this train moving. Ok, here we go. Saul died and the next King is the multi-talented beautiful David. The crowning of King David continued to set the stage for the coming of Christ. Nathan shared God’s promise with King David in 2 Samuel 7:16 where he told David “your throne will be established forever”. We are reminded of this promise in Luke 1:32-33.

Promise 6: Jesus

So, Jesus came from the lineage of King David. Jesus was sent to fulfill the law of Moses. In other words, at this point, the prophecies that were passed down is coming true. God always keeps His word. And with the fulfillment of this prophecy comes a new covenant to save the children of Israel from their sins (Zechariah 9:9).

The Mystery:

Now beloved, comes the plot twist. When Jesus came to earth, those who believed him to be the Messiah thought that He was there to restore their kingdom. They believed that Jesus was their next king (John 12:13, John 1:49). They were under Roman rule and while they were free to practice their religion, they had no real kingdom or freedom as they did in the days of King David. Jesus’ disciples even asked Him when He will restore the kingdom (Acts 1-8). Jesus basically tells them not to worry about the time table. And part of this is because the mystery, yes mystery of God is about to be revealed to the most unlikely person.



Now, at this time, the disciples were teaching Jesus Christ to the children of Israel. Afterall, he was their Messiah, the one prophesied to come. Some believed in the name of Jesus and some did not. What none of them knew, was that Jesus Christ was slaughtered and resurrected for the sins of the world, both Jews and the Gentiles (non-Jewish people). Jesus Christ chose Paul, a proud persecutor of followers of Christ, to deliver Jesus Christ’s message to the world. This mystery was withheld since the beginning of time (Romans 16:25). The message is that salvation is available to anyone who believes that Christ died for their sins. Simple. Your sins are forgiven. All you need do is believe that. And you are saved.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

[polarisport]

Big Bare Bear on gaming: ME:A

Mass Effect: Andromeda this time it’s… I dunno something.

First thing that went through my head when I read there was going to be a sequel to the final installment of the Mass Effect series was ‘well I hope it fixes everything that the last one broke’. I’m not going to get into Mass effect 3’s ending or the furore that followed its release. You know why? Because, it has been done to death, dissected, reanimated, killed and then dissected again. Personally as a writer I was disappointed in the story, more because they promised us that our choices would matter, but they didn’t their endings invalidated everything we had done. Also because, well it didn’t make much sense as a story.

Anyhow, I knew I would have to play MEA because I am Bioware’s bitch. I love RPG’s and these guys do pretty darn good ones. Ok, they ain’t all great but you can usually count on them for a solid game. Which, when you think on how much their games cost to buy: between around £45-£60 / $50-£70 for standard depending on where you buy, it may be possible to get it cheaper I ain’t done the market research to be sure. Slightly off point now, my point was when I shell out that kind of cash I want value for my fucking money!

Multiplayer

My first experiences with MEA were on the multiplayer section. I have friends who love shooters and love to team up. So for the first two weeks I played multiplayer only, I haven’t actually finished the storyline single player mode yet, but I have several max level multiplayer toons. The multiplayer is quite similar to Mass Effect 3’s, which was a damn fun game. Quick paced, small maps which means you need some fast reflexes. A wide variety of classes to suit everyone’s tastes. My particular favourites are the Asari Adept and the Krogan… anything (melee and Krogans is just fun). There hasn’t been much change powers wise, a few new classes but nothing groundbreaking, except for...jump-jets.

The jump-jets are just plain fun, you ping around like a flea and can hover while aiming to snipe as you gently fall. Not only that, pressing melee while jumping causes you to plunge downwards like some Marvel superhero and land with an AOE splash that just looks and feels awesome. This is very very different to Mass Effect 3 where you were nailed to the god damned floor. It is so freeing and adds a new layer to what would be a fairly bland remake without it.

The guns are fairly...ok I guess, nothing mold breaking or new really. There is one other new thing and that is dash, or dodge. Pressing it makes your character charge forward, or sideways. It is wonderful for sliding into cover or jumping quickly out of trouble. Alternatively there is something fulfilling about dashing forward as a krogan and headbutting your enemy into oblivion. It again adds something new and good to an established and solid platform. (I actually didn’t learn how to use it until I started playing the single player game. There I was forced to by boss fights which are not too tough...once you learn to fucking get out of the way.)

Unfortunately there is one word that casts a shadow over multiplayer and that is ‘microtransactions’. In ME3 multiplayer you leveled up classes, say engineer you got your human to 20 and then when you opened that rare salarian engineer card you could automatically get your new character all the way to max and try him out. Now not only do you need to find the card (very frustrating as many boxes just contain guns or random boosts or augments), you need to take the character from 1-20 and you need to find that same card 10 FUCKING TIMES!. That is what you need to do to get your favourite class to max level. I have a couple of level 20’s that I love playing but they will never be complete until I grind my way through thousands of matches...or open my wallet (over my dead fucking body Bioware, you already got my money) and then get really fucking lucky.

Single-player Story Mode

So now to the story and RPG part of the game, I will try to keep this review spoiler free as I think the fun in these games is experiencing the story yourself. However I can talk about the stuff you all know. This story is both 600 years after ME3 and at the same time between ME2 and ME3. The basic premise is that before ME3 the races of the Milky Way discovered a cluster of habitable worlds in the Andromeda galaxy. Obviously they couldn’t just sit there knowing there was all these worlds going to waste so they built a new version of the Citadel, called the Nexus and shoved it off. The Nexus was followed by 4 Arks (a human one, asari one, turian one and salarian one with other races arks to follow the quarians are mentioned as coming next and bringing other races with them). The Krogans do go along on the Nexus as security forces so never fear those of you who love those big chunky quad swinging badasses.

However, this change has a big impact, in that the biodiversity of the universe of MEA is greatly reduced. A list of aliens that are currently missing in my playthrough :batarians, drell, volus, elchor, vorcha, geth, quarians, hanar, reapers and I suppose technically the protheans as there was one. In their place are the Angara and Kett… yes despite this part of the universe being rich in ‘golden worlds’, only two alien species exist. The Kett who are the mysterious antagonist and the angaran who are the down trodden good guys (and who the game really really wants you to like and constantly compares to the krogan, because they know we all love krogan. This lack of diversity makes Andromeda feel so much smaller and less epic than the original galaxy. The little bits of universe building, that were so prevalent throughout MEs 1-3 are greatly reduced, no Elchor Shakespeare, no Volus biotic gods… it makes the game less immersive and for an RPG immersion is a vital component of greatness. *honest sad tones* I miss the Elchor and their unique speech patterns.

(mild spoiler warning from here on, though I will not be going into heavy detail)

You star as the ‘pathfinder’ and your job is to find viable worlds. Arriving on the human ark which is about a year late and yet the only ark that made it so far. The ark crash into this weird interstellar web thing called ‘the Scourge’ (some writer really pulled a muscle thinking up that great and unique name).

The human ark arrives after a 600 year journey (blissfully sleeping through the abomination of ME3’s ending), to find the Nexus in disarray, because none of the others arks arrived and they had no pathfinders. Your father is actually the pathfinder, but he dies early on and gives the role to you, someone who was just a soldier and not trained as a pathfinder.

I want to take a second to point out how stupid this is. When you arrive on the Nexus you find that they have utterly failed to establish any colonies and a huge part of this is blamed on the fact the arks didn’t turn up and they therefore had no pathfinders. 1) if pathfinders were so vital why didn’t they have a couple on the Nexus, 2) you are not trained as a pathfinder so really you should fail too. and 3) after nobody showed up for years why didn’t they train someone up as one if they are that bloody essential? You inherited your position when your daddy died. I hate chosen one storylines, and this has heavy overtones of being fated to save the galaxy crap.

Anyway it is what it is, a very poorly thought out mechanic to make the galaxy your responsibility. In honesty the story doesn’t feel that clunky and it moves along ok. However, for me those early stages felt kinda jarring because the needs of the game heavily stamp the narrative into an unnatural shape. You get your team really quickly in fact by the time you finish the first world you have all but one and you get him on the second world. None of that pesky slow building and getting to know them through gameplay while you explore alien worlds, just here they are deal with it.

You find that the scourge has made all those golden worlds pretty much uninhabitable. However, fortunately each world also has some ancient terraforming machine left there so all you have to do is fight your way in, switch it on and then plant the flag. There is some story that goes alongside this, but essentially each planet has that similar theme.

The story with the Angarans is they are the native species, the Kett turned up one day as aliens and conquered them, the Angaran resistance fights back. There isn’t a lot of detail I can share without getting into heavier spoiler territory.

Negatives of the narrative aside, I actually am very much enjoying the single player game. The quests move at a reasonable pace, it is up to you if you do all the side quests or just barrel through the main questline. I like to complete everything on each world before moving on, so I have only actually completed the first 3 worlds.

Your team is not too bad. You get one of everything pretty much. Drack the krogan is my favourite (big surprise huh?) He has the best lines. While on the planets you have a pretty sweet vehicle that can be ungraded. I enjoy driving it, unlike pretty much all vehicles in the Mass Effect universe this thing can actually move and steer. It also has two modes, high speed mode for flat and high traction to get up hills. With thrusters and jump jets it is a fun ride and makes getting from mission to mission a joy and not a chore.

Overall I would have to say this is a solid enjoyable game, it was well worth the cost. It is not the near perfect game that ME2 was. I haven’t got to the ending yet to find out if they fucked it up as badly as they did ME3, I suspect not. They are playing it safe with this game, all the top species and a very safe basic functional story.

Last word I know some of you will want to know about the gay romance options. Honestly I don’t play these games for the love story, because as a writer of erotica I know where to go for a good love story. However, from  what I have seen...meh they could have done way better and way worse. If you are looking for a good romance story just ask and I’ll send some recommendations*.

Seriously last word, I have to mention the glitches. They are many and varied there has been some patches that remove the more insane ones...sadly the removed the one that allowed up to seven Dracks on your ship. They do kind ruin the immersion, but honestly they are not too bad now and the story, as already stated, kinda hinders the immersion anyway so why not enjoy a chuckle or too at Bioware’s expense.

Super seriously last word...bye.

-Sisco

*(like “big bulky bare bear’s bollock bangers: Vol 2 KroQuad”)

[thotclaws]

A rant that I need to get off my chest. Please don’t take any of this seriously, this is just a ramble that I need to calm myself down..Soooo All of this is just my personal opinion. You may have yours, which is fine. Write down what else do you think about this situation?

So. I’ve been a fan of a small show that has grown into one of the best animated show’s ever...not Steven Universe. NO, Star Wars Rebels.

During it’s first run, it has been known throughout the community as the worst thing to ever happen and no one gave the show a chance for it to shine and it did. It’s now becoming very popular in the SW community. That and the show has gotten good ratings on Disney XD, but also seeing that there are shows that get lower raters due to Disney XD being more for teens but that’s not really the main focus. 

I’ve seen ships and fanfiction throughout the net. I’m glad this it’s gotten the love and attention it deserves but there was a time when it was hated and it still is. I don’t know why but I may have to explain. 

You see. Not everyone is STILL taking the purchase of Lucasfilm too lightly and has gone far as to say that the fandom will forever be tainted. BITCH that’s been happening since the prequels and I know that they’re not good movies, but I still like only a few things to come from it. There’s good things and bad things from everything. Nothing is perfect. So let the prequel lovers love it!

*Clears throat*

I like the show, is it perfect? no of course not. I have my problems with The Clone Wars but that doesn’t mean that its superior over Rebels, not exactly. Rebels and TCW are equally good. I remember watching TCW when it started to become popular and I started getting into the SW fandom during that time. By then I started wanting to watch anything Star Wars related. Even the prequels (even though their mediocre in my eyes but they could be better in script. The script was shit). In my eyes, I liked anything that came out of the fandom. I also remember TCW not being very good during it’s first season run, and now that it’s gone on to have 6 seasons, it’s not good for some odd reason. This is why I still won’t get the fandom and it’s spoiled fans. Once something new has been made with different characters and a different setting. Now here’s where the rant starts and how it just when down hill from there. 

By the time of my graduation in 2014, Disney announced that all of the Expanded Universe material is now considered non canon and rebranded as Legends. The fandom went into flames over this. I couldn’t believe that they would erase most of our beloved stories and characters. Now I understand why they needed to be wiped away. For one thing, there was a shit ton of contradictions and another is giving the freedom to write whatever the fuck they want with the characters, and most of the time, they end up either lame, stupid and or OP AF! Either way, I’m glad that it’s wiped away. Do I want some material or characters to be canon? Of course! I’m not saying every piece of good material should be canon. I’d much rather have it worked into the actual canon. 

I’ve seen many posts bashing Lucasfilm, sending out death threats and it was insane. Who the fuck has the audacity to be a terrible person that has no control over you? I mean seriously. Just chill. Disney is doing a good job of taking care of the canon. They have writers and on lookers in Lucasfilm to make sure that nothing contradicts each other and has the freedom to go all out on what they want. Not what the fandom wants, only time when someone has a petition to get something canon. So the fandom was really in rage. I didn’t understand the commotion cuz I haven’t read any Legends material up until recently. I never understood why so many people hated the fandom or still hate it to this day. All just because Disney wanted to go in a direction that fans weren’t anticipating. I’m glad it’s like that. If you please ALL fans, then there wouldn’t be any imagination left to write. Having an open mind is a good thing, and that what Disney wanted. They wanted to go in their own direction, they wanted to make Rebels and that got hate for no damn reason just because Disney wanted to make another 3D animated show that was like TCW when the only reason why it never got a proper conclusion was the purchase of Lucasfilm. TCW was airing on CN and CN isn’t owned by Disney. If they did decide to remake it and finish it, then I’ll be happy but being patient is the only answer to what the fans want. 

I hate it when a show gives the audience what THEY want, it’s ruining what I love about shows and writing. I love it when creators don’t give a fuck what the audience want. That’s why Game of Thrones has such a massive fanbase is because George R. R. Martin is someone who doesn’t specialize in pleasing everyone. If a show is running out of idea’s, it may be a good time to end it. I love it when creators know that if a fanbase is ruining or doing good (for the most part) job of being a balanced fandom. The only reason why I left the DW fandom was because it wasn’t for me anymore. It gave me what I wanted to see in an adventure in time and space and I still love the show, but the problem is that once you’ve done everything that you wanted. What do you do now? Do you continue and get more money? Or do you end it and say that’s it. That’s the main problem with what I have with this show. Is that once you have all of the idea’s told, that’s it really. 

For Star Wars it’s the same. Legends was good at making planets and giving us good characters and an few excellent stories that were recognized by George Lucas himself. Timothy Zahn is just one of my favorite authors that hasn’t lost touch with who they are. If you look up his interviews. You can tell that he’s just so humble, he just has a lot to say. That’s what I love about a person who’s still continuing their passion. So he’s has a fanbase of his own. That goes the same for the entirety of Legends ALL of it is fan fiction, and some pretty damn good ones if I do say so myself. 

Speaking of which. I think the point I’m trying to make here is that. Once a team is doing something that you don’t personally want. That’s totally ok, but some just had to be a bitch about it. Thrawn is canon, Are you happy that he is? Let me talk about Thrawn for a second. I’m going to be honest, I never knew who he was and what his back story was. I just known him in Legends and passed it off as just a character. Now Mara Jade. I knew who she was. For Thrawn, I didn’t know how his character worked and now that he’s canon. It made me want to look him up. I read about his character in Heir to the Empire and loved it. (I’m still waiting to get Dark Force Rising and it’s taking me a while). Now I’m obsessed with his character. It puts me in the shoes of someone who has grown up with these types of stories and seeing them being wiped away...it made me sad. I understood how the Legends community felt. 

*Wipes away a tear and clears throat again*

Let me talk about Rebels for just one second. I love this show. Does it have problems? yes. Not every show is perfect but for a show for me to love and watch is more different than what I do. I look and criticize what I’m watching. Is it a bit too kid friendly at times? Yes. What did you expect from a TV-Y show? Hehe. Anyways, the show has gotten hate the first time it was announced. When I read the comments on some of the SW’s YouTube videos on Rebels. It breaks my heart to see that they haven’t given it a chance, now when season 2 was announced. They started to see that it had some potential and watched it. I was super surprised that they wanted to watch it. Now that season 3 is here (AND IS ON HIATUS AND IT’S KILLING ME!! ><) Thrawn is announced to be the main antagonist. That’s when the flood gates of the Legends community spilled to the fandom and thanked Lucasfilm for giving us back our blueberry Grand Admiral. I’m happy that he’s canon. He’s the perfect character for our hero’s to go up against. He’s a great antagonist and I can’t wait for the novel to come out. I bet Timothy Zahn is so happy that he get’s to write Thrawn again! :D 

Now this is also where the hypocrisy lies. There have been fans complaining of the lack of “quality content” (which is bullshit) and that Legends is SOOOO much more better than the actual canon and that Rebels is stupid and Oh...Thrawn’s in Rebels? OH SOOOO NOW YOU WANT TO WATCH THE SHOW JUST BECAUSE THRAWN IS IN IT?! WTF? REALLY?! THAT IS A LOAD OF HORSE SHIT! Are people this egotistical or just assholes IDK? But that part pisses me off the most. Some fans clam that Disney is not going to do a good job of holding the mold of the canon and it’s going to get messed up like Legends were, and they don’t take a moment to think of what they just said. Disney is a BEAST of a company, so they’re going to make sure there aren’t anything left out of place. They just don’t have faith in the continuity of Star Wars and it makes me sad beyond belief. 

I thought the show would suck, but I watched it and I love it. I think Rebels has a lot of things that surpasses that of TCW and vice versa. I love Kallus’ character. I thought he was a good villain, now he’s developing as a character and it’s nice to see that the team and Filoni is making a good show and taking care of the characters. If it was a bad show, then they wouldn’t have these explanations that I’ve mentioned above. It would have poor ratings, bad character development, terrible CGI, and awful writing. It would be spread through out the community as a bad as it is, but it isn’t. There are fans flocking to see what happens next, and now that there’s the hiatus...K. You got me there hehehe. They’re just doing some touch up’s and that’s good right? Keep a show running smoothly is to make it better. So even though I don’t mind the hiatus...I’M JUST DYING TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WITH SABINE! FILONI WAAAAHHHYYYYY!!!?! ;-; 

 fijodfiohhkdf h; ag rhiorg oih4weijeworji.kfrz.kjewg dbjgs dkfesdhkjaegrihk

That’s how I feel about now. I may be cynical, but I’M A CYNICAL FANGIRL! WOOO!! I’m like an old man sometime...heheheh. I’m like old man Rex.

I’m not forcing you to watch the show. I’m asking for those who haven’t gave the show a fucking chance. DO IT NOW before you pull some random bullshit out of your ass. I always have everything to support my opinions. This isn’t really a rant on just Rebels but just the fandoms views on Disney and how they’re being ‘effected’ even though none of them contributed to writing anything good from Legends. Sooo...

Like I said. I’m cynical ;) doesn’t mean I can still enjoy something. 

I think I’m done with this rant. Hope this was enlightening on my opinions on the fandom as a whole. If you want me to rant on anything else. Leave me a reply and I’ll see what I can do. I’m pretty good at rambling. 

[thatdoublenine]

2016

My overdue 2016 drama review...

My ultimate favourites of 2016 are:

Dear my friends

Squad 38

Bring it on, Ghost

Jealousy Incarnate

Goblin

2016 is really the year for drama lovers.

In the beginning of the year, we were still getting all heated up over the war between Taek and Jung Hwan. Unfortunately, Jung Hwan turned out to be the new Chilbong. Nonetheless, Reply 1988 was a great drama. A great great family-centric drama.

Around that time, Six flying dragons, one of the best Sageuk of all times, concluded. I think they did a really great job in the fighting scenes. I also liked how the script was written. Different teams, eg. Sambong VS Moomyung VS Bang won could be pondering about a common issue, and then they came to a conclusion at the same time, separately. Thrilling.

I have considered the two dramas above as dramas of 2015 and made a post about it last year. (here)

Shortly after, came the drama that made the biggest hooha in 2016. Needless to say Descendants of the Sun is the most hyped drama. Its nice to watch, but I gotta say the storyline was a little absurd. 

Comeback mister had a fresh story but bad luck with the broadcasting slot. Of all competitors, they got Descendants. So even though the rating was bad, the making of the drama is not. It was a touching story about two Ahjussi’s last moments in the mortal world.

Signal, another fantasy time-travel drama but not the usual stuff. It involves, two groups of people conversing across time-space. They didn't really physically travel through time, but their voices and their thoughts did, with the help of a magical walkie-talkie. It was the most thrilling drama of year 2016. I thought I was watching a blockbuster movie every week during its run.

Dear my friends is a dear story about friends. About relationships. Between husband and wife, between best friends, between parents and children, between siblings. Park Wan is a dedicated daughter. She cared not only for her mum, her granny but also the whole bunch of her mum’s friends. I cannot agree more that it is not within her responsibility that whichever Yi-moo (aunt, in Korean) is in need of her help today. Her cellphone number is not their emergency hotline. Sometimes I get frustrated that they keep bothering her in the show. But that’s because the scenario is just so realistic. You won't understand unless you are put in that situation. The angst between saying no and giving in to that soften heart of yours (and then grumbling to yourself why on earth you agreed to help in the first place on the way home, especially when its late and there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done).

Lucky Romance. Its quite entertaining to watch the female lead going around looking for a tiger (someone who is born in the year of the Tiger). Other things aside, I cannot appreciate the romance between Ryu Jun Yeol and Hwang Jung Eum. I cannot feel the chemistry. I’m sorry!

Oh Hae Young Again is partly fantasy. The deja vu part. 

I really enjoyed Squad 38. The conmanship is spectacular. Why can’t they just give us the OTP finale even though it was just an significant part of the whole drama.

Doctors. Argh. When it premiered I was in South Korea. I watched it on TV. It was so nice! The filming location was so pretty. The story is meaningful. But then gradually it got draggy. The progress slowed. I wonder why they kept it at 20 episodes if they couldn't but keep adding more filler scenes. 

The Good Wife. I haven't seen the original so I cannot compare. But among other dramas, I think it deserves more attention. The struggles of her and her children, her selfish husband and her best friend who fell in love with her, the characters, are all so realistic. She re-entered the workforce and needs to compete with fresh grads, at the same time, she needs to cope with divorce and household chores and an unforgiving ex-mother-in-law who would give surprise visits to her grandchildren intermittently. Technically, she isn't divorce yet, but she is thinking to. Her character is extraordinary, but also very human.

Bring it on, Ghost is the cutest drama this year. Apart from all the ghosts scenes, I love every interaction between Taecyeon and Kim So Hyun. Even though they had a 12 year age gap in real life, it doesn’t really show in the drama. In fact, Kim So Hyun’s character is older than Taecyeon. I have to nominate Park Bong Pal as the best boyfriend-material character of 2016! 

Age of Youth is a pleasant drama to watch. Its about strangers living under the same roof and eventually become friends. We have a flirtatious Kang-unnie, a stern Yoon-sunbae. There is a Chinese drama this year that has a really similar concept with this one, and its called Ode to Joy. I enjoyed that too, albeit a little long. Its also about 5 girls living together. Not under the same roof, but on the same floor of an apartment.

W is a drama I said many times that it is great in many ways but has its own unique flaws. It is so complex, there is no boundaries to the variability of game rules, so the writer gets too creative and at times, its hard to be convinced. For instance, after the reset, Kang Chul mysteriously fall in love with Oh Yeon Joo. Whenever I rewatched this, I have this burning question, who is the higher being? Is it god? If the writer is not the one telling the story. Is it that the illustrator has a spirit? Like in Transformers? Or what? Who is writing them? I figured it is the character’s will. OK. So the characters are telling the story. Kang Chul just got this power of will. Very convincing indeed.

Scarlet heart. Having seen the original, I have the rights to compare them! I’ve seen the original drama while it was airing back in 2012. So that was quite sometime back. The original felt a little more tragic than this one. Also, they talked more about the historical events in the Chinese version. In the Korean versions, emotions of the characters are the priority, and they handled this one well. I gotta say the fashion and music teams aren't doing a good job. The robes the princes are wearing made them looked like peasants, especially 13th Prince. Further, polkadots!! This printing technology aren't suppose to exist in the Goryeo Era, even Hangeul is not invented yet. And The OST team!!! Stop putting english lyrics in your songs!!! Its a SAGEUK!!! But I’m quite surprise that they can find an era that a Korean King had this many princes and their characters fit the Scarlet heart fiction so well. For example, what are the odds that both 4th Princes in the Qing dynasty and the Goryeo dynasty are both after the throne? At the same time, the biggest contender for them is both their 8th brothers respectively? I've never been exposed to the Goryeo culture before watching Scarlet heart: Ryeo. I always knew that relatives get married in the olden days. But siblings getting married? That’s new. Even if they are half siblings. They’re still siblings! And the fact that Yeon Hwa princess took Hwang Bo, her mother’s surname, as her surname from birth so that she could one day marry her brothers who took, Wang, the King’s surname as their surname. All for the sake of preserving the royal blood.

Jealousy Incarnate

I LOVE this drama very much. In the first part of the drama, I think I would choose Sun Woo over Hwa Shin. Then afterwards I think I won't choose either. Hwa Shin is good but he’s pride is torturing the girl. Luckily theres Chi Yeol around to kick his ass. Pyo Na Ri is an independent woman. She just had a crush for Hwa Shin for 3 years. 

Shopaholic Louis

I watched this right after Squad 38. In Squad 38 he was a conman, and in this show, he keep getting conned. It was so funny to watch him in these 2 contrasting situations.

The K2

People kept commenting this and said that Ji Chang Wook did better in this other show. But I didn't see that other show so I cannot comment. Comments aside, I think this show is a well produced show. I like its German OSTs (even though I would appreciate it if the singer try a little harder to pronounce the words properly), anyway, I wondered why German, and not Spanish where Anna was at in some parts of the drama. Senior Yoona did an excellent job. This is a weird character. She is clearly the villain. But at the same time, we see her struggles, so at some point I rooted for this villain. It is also rare that the villain is portrayed as one of the protagonist (as oppose to antagonists). Fighting scenes, special effect, cinematography were all well too. Feels like a blockbuster. NICELY Done!

1% of Anything

The MOST underrated of the year. Why is it on DramaX. This remake certainly deserves more attention. I have never seen a couple so lovely on screen before. It feels so real and genuine. I kept wondering what would Ha Suk Jin’s wife feel when she watches this (which was quite disturbing though, cos I keep thinking about it throughout the show). Yup, he is very professional so we will leave this issue at that. 

Weightlifting fairy

A story about college is ordinary. But one about athlete college is quite fresh. Even though I still think Lee Sung Kyung is too skinny for a weightlifter. But there are many categories in weightlifting, she just belong to the light weight types. Nam Joo Hyuk who almost became a swimming athlete is perfect for the role. This story is overall a light hearted one and it is a good compliment with the other complicated dramas that I watch concurrently, for example: Goblin.

Goblin

Easily my favourite drama of the year. Fresh and slick production. I won't comment more. Because I will next year end.

The dramas I’ve watched this year:

Descendants of the Sun (KBS 2016) Come back Mister (SBS 2016) Signal (SBS 2016) Dear My Friends (tvN 2016) Lucky Romance (MBC 2016) Oh Hae Young Again (tvN 2016) Squad 38 (OCN 2016) Doctors (SBS 2016) The Good Wife (SBS 2016) Bring it on, Ghost! (tvN 2016) Age of Youth (tvN 2016) W (MBC 2016) Scarlet Heart Goryeo (SBS 2016) Jealousy Incarnate (SBS 2016) Shopaholic Louis (MBC 2016) The K2 (tvN 2016) 1% of Anything (Dramax 2016) Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (MBC 2016) Goblin (tvN 2016)