#i may or may not need a cast of 100's and i don't want to make them all oc's

[robot-reference]

hey guys can i ask for help to crowd source this? this is reference technically

i am looking for any and all minor (and minor-ish) transformer characters who are/were medics, firefighters, engineers, police officers and first responder types or could be implied to be so, any series is fine but you can specify! (they don't need to be autobots only)

i need this for reasons 👀 feel free to add your unsung blorbos to the list (bonus points for tf wiki links)

this is mostly off of the LL crew list as a starting point (i may have missed some)

medic

Hoist , Lancet (presumably), Medix

firefighter

Fervor , Kindle , Inferno , Hosehead , Hot Spot

police

Ore , Shock , Streetwise

engineer

Huffer

msc.

Grapple (engineer arguably) Rook (unspecified rescue) Heatrock (probably rescue) Skyfeather (probably rescue) Groove (probably rescue, maybe police?)

[prettysunnyday]

The Creeps find out their s/o attends Hogwarts

Jeff the Killer, EJ, Hobo Heart, Nick.

Warning: Mentions of wounds, kidneys, and victims.

Just a quick note: I am going to briefly talk about the House I think each is in. Now most might simply say Slytherin, but I find that obvious. So I am looking at their other qualities and judging what I personally think would suit them.

(I am in Hufflepuff😎)

❤💛💚💙

Jeff

-- How he reacts depends on how he finds out. If you are mad at him and you have had enough of his crap, then I can see you casting a jinx at him. Of course if you did that he would be stunned. So surprised that he'd just stare at you. He is a killer and has seen bizarre things, but NOT that.

-- I can see this going in two ways. First Jeff is mad that you jinxed his legs together, regardless of how you accomplished that feat. Or Jeff yells at you for keeping such a thing from him while internally screaming that his s\o has super powers!!

-- Your number one Fan! Jeff will also try and use this to his advantage. Some creep pisses him off? No biggie. He just whines to you to jinx their butt. If you comply or not is up to you, though he will complain.

-- Also remember to take care of him!!

-- Jeff has lots of confidence and bravado. Despite the "I don't care" poker face he puts on, Jeff gets hurt too. So if he is injured from a wound, be sure to help him with a quick healing spell.

-- You end up being the locater for everything cause you can just wave your wand (or stick, as Jeff would call it).

-- Jeff is either Slytherin or Ravenclaw. I don't find him particularly ambitious, so a point off Slytherin. However, I think Jeff is intelligent and cunning and a quick learner.

-- Over all, Jeff finds you awesome and cannot believe he is lucky to have you.

EJ

-- I don't know how EJ would know. I think you'd just tell him, which he may not believe because he thinks you're joking. Once you prove him wrong... He is in awe!

-- However, despite all the things you can do with magic, EJ will want to make sure you can heal yourself when you are injured. If you assure him you can heal a gaping wound or a tiny scratch he will lay off you a bit and admire you.

-- EJ will especially love your summoning charms. He isn't very forgetful but on those days where he may forget to bring jars with him for his victims, well having you summon what he needs is a blessing.

-- Another spell he will enjoy is transfiguring spells. Similar to the summoning spell, he likes this one because you can transform anything into what he needs as well. That fork becomes a glass. The stick becomes a scalpel. The kidneys he must carry turn into rocks.

-- EJ would be Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. He can be hard working and kind, but he also seems studious and intelligent.

-- EJ would be impressed, but also relieved because his wonderful s\o has more protection.

Hobo Heart

-- He is crying!!

-- His wonderful s\o has magical powers which is amazing and makes him happy that you're happy... But the danger you are in!!

-- Heart is glad you can protect yourself and heal your wounds, but the thought of bad witches and wizards possibly harming you? No, this added to his worries.

-- He already protects you from Zalgo and other rogue creepypastas. Now there is another enemy towards you he knows little about.

-- You will have to reassure him and calm his nerves because he will stress to the point his face face will age to look 100.

-- Heart loves you, alright. It is his job to protect you since you are one of the few people who has expressed love towards him.

-- So remind him of who you are by performing little spells, such as healing yourself and jinxing Jeff or Ben. Heart will calm down eventually and watch in awe as you flick your wand about.

-- Hobo Heart is a Hufflepuff for fairly obvious reasons. I can also see him possibly being in Gryffindor but I think Hufflepuff is best.

-- Altogether, Heart finds you even more amazing and cannot fathom why you love him so much.

Nick Vanill

-- Things just keep getting better!

-- Nick finds out when you decide to prank him or someone else. At first he probably is confused, even if you are holding a wand. But as soon as you say that you can perform magic, darling prepare for anything.

-- Nick is a tease, thief, and wouldn't put it pass himself for a revenge prank back.

-- He will call you out. He will point and say "Warlock! Witch! Wizard!" Whatever enters his mind. He will steal a witches hat for you and plop it on your head.

-- Now be aware Nick will take any and every opportunity to steal your wand!

-- and he will not give it back without a fight (in the playful sense)

-- He will want to pull pranks or do odd things like shape shift into an animal. One of his favorite spells is your patronous (sorry if that is wrong) and also enjoys transfiguring objects, much like EJ.

-- Nick Vanill is Slytherin. I think he is cunning and ambitious. He is arrogant as well but that is not a value.

-- Nick is all for it! You are magical and fun. He couldn't ask for a better s\o to love.

Thanks for reading💐

(None of these characters are mine!! They belong to their creators.)

[graendoll]

I'm almost through season 6 of the queer EMT show and I have a couple of thoughts I really need to get off my chest.

Before I dive in I want to share an observation. It feels like there are two tiers of main ensemble cast and I'm basing this on the character development of each of them. Tier 1 feels like its Bobby, Buck and Maddie who have gone through the most dramatic character arcs, while tier 2 is Athena, Hen, and Eddie. I can't decide which group Chim is in tbh and this is hardly scientific so...

The point of all that is that everything else I'm going to say is based off my observation that Buck is more fleshed out and developed as a character than Eddie.

So now to the point!

First, Buck absolutely adores Eddie. Like is definitely 100% in love with the man. I'm only on episode 14 of season 6 so I haven't even gotten to the onscreen bi realization or the coming out scene outside of gifs on this here hell site. But currently, the way Buck looks at Eddie is so fucking heart eyed its ridiculous.

The hysteria when Eddie is in danger - the screaming at the mudslide, the absolute hard reboot at the shooting? Buck is completely beside himself at the idea of losing Eddie. He literally cries on Christopher's shoulder at the thought of losing him and Chris losing his dad.

This is not standard BFF behavior, I'm sorry.

And don't even get me started on the couch metaphor...I have too much to say about that to include it here.

But what I do want to talk about is the coma episode. Because I feel like that episode was a purposeful "no-homo" episode and here's why:

Buck is in an alternate universe and runs to Hen and Chim, sees Maddie and Bobby. But Eddie is literally just referenced once as "the angry guy" and his contribution to the entire episode is to bring Christopher to see Buck while hes unconscious. Which is weird!

Yes, Eddie rescued Buck and yes he tells the medical team to do better than their best, but compared to Buck literally hauling Eddie's limp body into an ambulance? It's a pretty vanilla response.

And then he doesn't show up in alternate Bucks reality. This is, i believe, one part writers trying to no homo the thing and one part writers implying that Eddie and Chris are a replacement for Bucks "real family" which undermines the entire guardian arc in a very weird way. So it definitely seems, during s6 at least, that Buddie was flat out not happening (again...I'm on e14 only).

So if Buck is in love with Eddie through narrative and acting choices (based on recent PR from Oliver S implying hes lowkey played Buck queer) where is Eddie at? What gives?

I'll tell you what gives.

Eddie is the most repressed motherfucker on the planet. Eddie goes to a call involving a vibrator getting stuck in a woman and he barely clocks that's what's happening.

This man has only had missionary sex for the purpose of baby making and it shows. I have definitely HC'd that Eddie is demi but he's also just locked down so tight. No wonder he spent a whole season beating the crap out of random strangers in illegal fights!

So, what's my point?

My POINT is this. Eddie may be queer underneath all that repression, but he has no idea. None. Zero. Zip. Eddie thinks he can't find a wife and mother for Christopher because he's BROKEN, not because he's maybe just not that into women.

And yes, Buck coming out might give him a clue. Tommy being gay might show him something he hasn't really seen in terms of what a gay man looks like. But that Catholic guilt ridden man has a LONG way to go before he will confess to the fact that he wifed up his bisexual BFF because of non-platonic reasons.

We'll see how the story pans out. But anyone who thinks season 7 is going to end in a Buddie romance is likely incredibly wrong. I mean I haven't seen the episodes yet. So give me a week. But it seems unlikely. Eddie's character is in a very different place than Buck.

Doesn't mean these two don't live together in marital bliss rent free in my head though 😜

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

Amelia's Zelda Calamity Quintet Resource List

Hi there, I'm Amelia (she/they). You may also know me as Hart or Echo (my old handle was echosound). This is a master post of links for my works as well as all the tags I use on this blog. This post will be pinned on the blog and I will update it as needed so check back if there's something new.

You can find my profiles here: AO3 - Wattpad

Expanding Hyrule Community Discord (16+)

Quick FAQs

Is this a main blog? This is a side blog, my main is @amelias-hart.

Can I draw fanart of your characters? Yes, absolutely, you are more than welcome to draw art based on the descriptions in my fics and the resources I put out for them.

What kinds of LoZ fics to you write? All of my fics are fully original legend and long form stories. My average chapter length is 3k and the shortest of my fics (not in a series) is currently drafting to be like 100 chapters.

How adult/mature are they? It ranges, but typically it's pretty tame. I don't really handle gore and explicit scenes, and I'm not a fan of dark fantasy generally as a writer. If fics are rated adult/mature, it's typically because the main characters are largely adults.

Is there romance? We're on that Zelink train, absolutely! There are no explicit scenes, again, so the range here is fluff (GoS, RA) to some more mature flirting with some innuendo being about the most serious content (DAD). Maybe a more intense kissing scene once the slow burn gets through to that or a fade to black (MoaH).

How do you write so much? Autism, baby. Got that clinical hyperfocus going.

Do I need to read your fics in a certain order? No, all of them are stand alone but they do share a linked timeline in the following: GoS -> MoaH -> RA -> CoL -> DAD (And honestly it's really just GoS and MoaH with any "serious" timeline lore connections)

What's the Convergence? To the previous point, it's referring to GoS any time it comes up. Really only a thing in MoaH and MoaH does try to explain it within the text.

Other Custom Tags List

#originallegends/#lozoriginallegends - Pending community tag for Legend of Zelda fics about original iterations of Hyrule. Check out @expanding-hyrule for more details.

#moahmemes - This is for memes and quotes redone with the MoaH cast for fun, mostly for character exploration and cause it's funny.

#moah worldbuilding - In character worbuilding snippets about various topics for the MoaH era of Hyrule.

Open Ask List

I'm always open to asks, but I have a few prompts I figured I'd throw out if y'all want ideas.

Web: Asks for an update to the MoaH Obsidian web

Star: I'll give ya a random factoid about something in one of my fics, you can add fic tags if you'd like a specific.

Character asks: I don't have art, but you can absolutely send in character asks for the cast. I love these, they're great character voice practice. Please keep to one question per ask, but you're welcome to send as many as you like.

Fic List

Goddess of Secrecy (Complete on Wattpad, New Edited Chapters On Wednesdays & Saturdays To Both) - #goddessofsecrecy, #gos, #gosspoilers

Hyrule has only ever dreamt of an end to the resurrection of Demise. With the returning of an ancient power, that dream could finally be fulfilled. Can the Hero of the Fourth Goddess save Hyrule once and for all?

Fic Links: AO3 - Wattpad

Mark of a Hero (Updates on Tuesdays & Fridays, 1 of 9) - #markofahero, #moah, #moahspoilers

Hyrule is at peace, or so the Royal Family would have its people believe. Something is afoot in the kingdom, and someone needs to do something about it. Least likely would be Marksmen Link Sayre- a mercenary and monster hunter doing his best to get by. Until a job goes wrong, and he gets roped into the secret plans of Hyrule's princess. Now Link must play the part of the Hero to dive deeper into the mystery, and maybe stumble into a legend of his own.

Fic Links:

Book 1: AO3 - Wattpad

Book 2:

Book 3:

Book 4:

Book 5:

Book 6:

Book 7:

Book 8:

Book 9:

Series Link: AO3

Arc Progress & Spoiler Reference

Character Reference Page

General Setting Resources Page

Restoration Age (Hiatus) - #restorationage

Hyrule has grown. The fairy tale kingdom that has endured for eons is no more. And while historians argue over what history needs to be preserved, Hyrule endures and thrives in the modern age. With the proverbial guide book gone, where will the kingdom go now? And what would a Hero mean for a country that no longer needs a Hero?

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

Cinders of Life (Hiatus) - #cindersoflife

Hyrule has burned. No more is the vibrant kingdom that was once protected by the Hero. Now is the reign of evil, an evil without end. Hope is a word used without meaning, and hero is all but lost. Could one even stand if the people of Hyrule don't even know what they would be calling on?

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

Day After Destiny (Hiatus) - #dayafterdestiny

Hyrule is beginning its new golden age. The king and queen prepare to hand their crowns to their daughter and her husband. It is a union out of legend, though legend is far from anyone's mind in Hyrule. For who would call upon ancient war heroes in a time of peace? The wars for Hyrule have been won.

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

[maze-of-my-design]

Tell me your favourite things about the p5 cast !!! :D

(HI THIS WAS FOR THAT ONE POSITIVITY ASK GAME SRY I FORGOT)

This got really long so it goes under the cut but people should read this may b it took like 50 mins to type out please

Ren: He literally LOVES HIS FRIENDS it's so insane like HE CAN IMAGINE MARRYONG ANY OF THEM even if it's a joke he can see himself married to his friends and he denies godhood for them and for everyone. He gets beaten up and thrown around by cops for his friends. I don't think he'd ever accept the false reality in 3rd Sem because he loves his friends so much and if he gave them agency once he will do it 100 times over.

Morgana: kitty kat :3 I like how he learns to put his ego aside throughout the story and accepts the fact that he Does need the thieves. I love the scene where he admits that the PTs are his place to belong. He's such a hardass for most of the game but really he's just a little guy. "tch, whatever, you guys are the only idiots who wanna keep me around! You'd be nothing without me. Now let's go get a celebration dinner we need refreshments"

Ryuji: HE'S SO SWEET AND KIND!!! HE LOVES HIS MOM!! HE'S A TRUE PUNK!!! he's the coolest mf the thieves have around he's legit THE reason the thieves exist in the first place. If it wasn't for him yelling out Kamoshida's codewords no one would've met eachother. He's willing to put himself on the line for his friends because he CARES he cares about everyone. He's not Ren's kind of selfless but he's his OWN kinda selfless and I love him for it.

Ann: She's literally just a girl. Just a girl in the world. She's so sweet with her friends and even if she hesitates a lil to say it out loud, she demonstrates it. She loves people so strongly that it saves them. She's headstrong and badass, and despite it all she wants to reclaim what was stolen from her. Sure, Atlus fumbled the bag with her writing, but her wish to take back her femininity and use it as her weapon? So real. Ann I love you so much

Yusuke: MY GUY!!!!!! Unironically, I love how weird he is. That's the face of a guy who is unafraid to be himself. Granted, all the thieves learn to be so, but him? He's literally called weird and eccentric, sometimes to his face, but he just keeps at it! He loves the arts, he loves the world, he is so in love with Life and the people in it he wants to capture it all on paper. He's curtsy, he's flamboyant, he's eccentric, he's weird, and he wears it all with a badge of honour. He's also so pretty like have you SEEN him

Makoto: I really like how she breaks free from those she used to please. Her awakening is one of the most cathartic of the game for this reason. Her biker outfit is fantastic for her, it's legit the coolest fucking thing. BUT ALSO! As an ex-people-pleaser myself, learning and internalizing the fact that you owe Nothing to no one at all does feel like that yk? "Makoto the sycophant is gone" is a raw fucking line for her and I love it. She isn't my favourite, but god damn it she's a certified Cool Cat

Futaba: HER. God where do I begin. Her quick wit, her intelligence, her hacking prowess. Her palace resonates with me a lot (I mean, who wouldn't in this day and age?). Being so deep in a hole that you doom yourself to die in it because you think you deserve it. But the way she handles it? Even if the thieves did part of the work (at her behest), ultimately SHE'S the one in power. SHE'S the one in control. And the way she learns that? WHEN she learns that? The whole conversation with her shadow before the bossfight is so fucking cool. The way she feels indignated, her shadow telling her to, indeed, Be Fucking Upset that these nobodies treated her like crap, validates her anger, and just. "No matter what you say to me, I will LIVE!" is probably my favourite line from the whole game hands down. It means a lot to me, Futaba herself means a lot to me, I love her, I admire her, she's so awesome

Haru: HER REBELLION!!!! The way she stands up to her dad is so amazing. I wish the game had given her the spotlight before the bossfight, but what we got was so good (if insufficient) I loved it. Important to mention, also, the fact that she uses her kindness as her weapon. Have you seen how she treats Akechi? She's respectful, curt, she's one of the first to say he should join them in the fight against Shido. She may hate him, but she remains calm. She remains kind. Akechi probably thinks she hates him and should, thus, treat him wrongly. But no, she is kind. Anyway Akechi aside I love her PT aesthetic she's fuckin ROCKING that hat with the vulture feather. I love her.

Akechi: he's so well written that as much as I want to hate him i cannot. His writing dude. He's made me cry. He's made me want to rip my screen apart. He's such a character. I love how his desire for freedom overtakes so much of the narrative. Think about it: he goes along with the Hitman business, with the murders, with shooting Okumura, with shooting his rival best friend Ren, all because he wants to be FREE. He wanted his MOTHER to be free, or whatever remained of her. He wanted to avenge her, to avenge himself, even if it meant dying he, wanted to have Something for himself. He wanted to, for the first time in years, make a Choice. A choice that Mattered. These ideals, while selfish in execution, are what makes him murder, attempt to murder, and refuse the fake reality in the third semester. Fuck being happy, he wants to be Free.

SUMIRE: oh my god. Ohhh Jesus fuck. Ohhhh. My god. Oghf god. I know I'll write a manuscript for just her but I WISH i finished royal myself. I've avoided as much dialogue as possible to get the gut punch myself on my own, I only got to the Rumi parts of Maruki's palace but that's IT. I'm starved. I need to finish Royal.

Sumire. Where do I even start. She feels so real to me...The jealousy, the self-hatred, the longing to be anybody but yourself to be liked, the admiration and clingyness towards the first person who wishes to lend you a hand (+ it becoming so strong you almost build your own self around them), the disdain towards superficial words of support, the loneliness she feels towards her emotions ("you'll never understand how I feel!"), the inferiority complex, the stubbornness to fight for a delusion you upheld for so long because of reality being so frightening to face alone. Even if Atlus fumbled the bag with her too, in all honesty, being 16 is just. Like that. I get it.

Sumire is far too kind to those who don't deserve it. But she isn't stupid, she KNOWS a bitch when she sees one and honestly? It's a crime how she didn't get to have a 1 on 1 with Maruki. Even if she's the one who sked for it, He ruined her. She deserved to be more upset with him, i don't care what anyone says.

Also, it's amazing how high her confidence can go. During her fake awakening, "Kasumi" decides she's had enough of people stepping over her, treating her like a failure. She reminds the world that "I am Kasumi Yoshizawa!" and that she's willing to fight for her place in this world. Her rebellion surges from her wish to not be shoved aside and pupettered anymore, not be treated as a gossip-target or a tool for good rep, but as a person. Sumire, on the other hand, fights to learn this herself. She fights to believe this, to drill it into herself that Sumire Yoshizawa isn't worth being forgotten about. She fights on to believe that Sumire Yoshizawa is worth more than what her brain believes.

But in the end, both versions of herself wish for the same thing: to live. To live proud, stand tall, to remind the world that Yoshizawa isn't just a pretty name on a golden trophy, a tag on a wooden toy, or the name of a science experiment. To remind all of them and herself that Sumire Yoshizawa is a name worth fighting for. And a name she won't forget ever again.

So yeah Sumire's. Cool, I guess

[wordsandrobots]

002 for Shino please 🙏

For this ask game. Major spoilers herein

How I feel about this character: 

What a perfect dummy.

Norba Shino is the living embodiment of why we care about Tekkadan. Because they are, despite their profession, just as capable of warmth, enthusiasm, care and love as any other bunch of kids. And of being idiots, of being horny, of committing all the mistakes and stupid arguments you'd expect from teenagers.

Which is why it's the right move for him to be the first major casualty as season 2 races towards its inevitable conclusion. All those things -- all that humanity -- leads to Shino's rash attempt to kill Rustal Elion, to him throwing his life away on something that serves very little purpose beyond making everyone feel better about having tried. It's prideful, stupid and reckless, driven by a desperate need to be taken seriously. Everything that makes Tekkadan what it is.

Also he's bi as hell. I adore the great big jug-eared lunk.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: 

Hmm. See, sexually, I could ship Shino with practically anyone. My man is not fussy and he has the kind of personality that could mesh well with most of the cast, frankly. But romance . . . I dunno. I don't actually think, at the point he is in the show itself, Shino is very much capable of romance.

Regardless, current run down of slash-pairings I have written/may write:

Yamagi/Shino = 'I finally got a clue and also PTSD'

Yamagi/Shino/Eugene = 'hey, did you know I'm allowed to sleep with my friends?'

Yamagi/Chad/Shino = 'my partner's boyfriend is having a bad day'

598/Yamagi/Shino = 'that kid we met once grew up hench as fuck and just blurted out 'you're really pretty' at Yamagi while half-drunk - let's go!'

My non-romantic OTP for this character: 

Shino and Eugene are best buddies for life. Poly-shipping aside, I see those two as joined at the hip forever, with their friendship long predating Orga and Mika's arrival at the CGS.

And yes, Shino's been winding Eugene all the time they've known each other but 1) Eugene needs people to call him on his ego and 2) the way he's still prepared to be vulnerable around Shino anyway means something, you know?

My unpopular opinion about this character: 

OK, I don't know if this is unpopular, but I stand by the idea Shino is not actually a fundamentally nice person. That is to say, for all he's an unabashed cheerleader for his friends, a walking bear-hug of a personality, and generally quite sweet in his ignorance, he's also completely at home with violent behaviour. Of all the mecha pilots on Tekkadan's side, Shino is the one who most readily gives the impression of *enjoying* the fights. He's eager for it, wants to prove he's capable of winning, and readily lashes out when he's angry. He is, to my mind, very much a product of being socialised in a military setting and has absolutely no issues with solving problems via beating the tar out of them. A hell of a friend to have at your back but you do *not* want to be on his bad side.

Though obviously my actual unpopular opinion is it 100% took him that long to notice Yamagi was into him and didn't consciously consider being attracted to the guy until then. The pining was *never* mutual.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

*stares at the 600,000 words of fanfic predicated on him surviving his suicide run against the Arianrhod Fleet*

Funny you should ask.

No but seriously though, I would have liked his bisexuality to have been referenced outside the context of Yamagi. Like, it is pretty definitively text that Shino *is* bi, I just think it'd have been funny to establish that, no, he's capable of being attracted to other guys, he just genuinely had it fixed in his head that because Tekkadan were family, sex between them was off the table.

my OTP:

I mean it's not like I'm *not* a total sucker for the doomed in-canon pairing, is it?

What I think it is, is that it's established very quickly that Shino sees Yamagi as a friend and respects his abilities. To an extent, he even thinks Yamagi is really cool! Which, well, he thinks that about all his friends, but it establishes Yamagi isn't pining for nothing. This isn't a 'barely knows I exist' kind of crush, it's a 'I cannot spit out what I actually feel despite the fact the other guy likes hanging around with me and is never less than friendly and complementary'. It feels very 'normal teenager' in a way that, similar to Mika/Atra/Kudelia, contrasts poignantly with the situation everyone is in.

But there are also layers to it, or at least enough attendant details that allow for the possibility of layers. Shino has moments suggesting a fatal lack of self-confidence, for all his bigging up Tekkadan as a whole. He doesn't congratulate *himself* much and he reacts really badly to his skills being doubted, and to letting everybody else down. He's also not a pushy person which sits a little strangely with his otherwise loud, extroverted personality: despite having basically had Eugene confirm Yamagi is into him, he still makes space for the whole 'drinking the night away' thing to be an invitation rather than an assumption.

Yamagi, meanwhile, is blatantly not a shy person in general. He explores ideas off his own bat and presents them to Yukinojo, he's in his element ordering Dane and Hush around, and he gets to be a sarcastic little jerk more often than he pours oil on the troubled waters that are Takaki and Ride. Furthermore, while he lets his crush on Shino show blatantly when it can't be seen, his go-to reaction when observed is to become quite curt and cold. Shino jokes that Yamagi is 'scary' and it's clear the kid knows how to make his displeasure known. Plus, of course, Yamagi rejects -- off his own initiative -- a yearning to have died alongside Shino in favour of picking up where he left off, protecting Tekkadan.

There are angles there, is my point, to explore their similarities and to have their differences run counter to assumptions about who they are based on first appearances. I'm too deep into writing my version of this to be be objective any more but I really do think it's interesting to posit that Yamagi has the more durable personality and Shino a far more vulnerable one, ill-equipped to deal with, say, thinking his failure caused all his friends to die.

In the show, they're a could-have-been. They don't get their chance to be together and if they had, and things had generally gone better, it might not actually have lasted. I don't know how well Shino would have done in a first-time relationship after years of growing up too fast, and I don't know if Yamagi would have gotten what he was looking for out of it.

But give it a few years of Yamagi trying to live up to a Shino-shaped hole in the world and of Shino trying (failing) to live with himself over what happened and they become this wonderful, spiky ball of love, trauma and an enthusiastic openness about sex that comes of learning the cost of taking things too slow.

my cross over ship:

I'm semi-allergic to crossovers (they're just usually not my thing) so I really don't know . . .

a headcanon fact:

I already posted the one about how the thing he wanted to shut Zack up about was getting turned on by a dominatrix so let's go with . . .

Shino is from a big family. Like, over half a dozen kids stuck in one household with over-worked/struggling/absentee parents. That's why he tends to gravitate towards sharing space with the younger boys: it's what he's used to, since he's played the roll of an additional care-giver from the age of too-flipping-young-to-have-that-kind-of-responsibility. He is *really* good with kids, albeit more in a 'on their wavelength' kind of way than actually being anything like a responsible adult.

This is not the tragic part, at least not dramatically so since this is probably the case for a not- insignificant fraction of the Third Group. No, the kicker is that one day Shino's family upped and disappeared and he has absolutely no idea what happened to them. He was off earning money at the CGS and then the next time he went home, the building had been entirely cleared out.

He never talks about it.

------

Well that was probably an unnecessarily sad note to end on. But I really enjoyed writing this! I think I like this ask game :)

[minevn]

WE DID IT!

We've reached 100 followers everyone! Thank you so much for your support! This has been such a journey and never in a million years would I have expected people to like and enjoy my stories as much as I do, seriously, it means so much to me! Thank you all once again for your support, it's been amazing and has made me so happy to read all of your asks

I would also like to apologize for not posting as much recently. My brain has been a little fried from writing, but I'm slowly but surely working on the drafts! Sorry for the people who sent asks and are waiting!! Here's to hoping this event will be a little bit more of a break and motivate me again!

ANYWAAAAAYS!! For the poll, Mine doodles won! I'll be taking 50 requests for Mine doodles! I've also decided to add some flat colors! As mentioned in the poll post, in the beginning you may only request one drawing that way anyone who wants to request gets a chance, after requests start dwindling/ a certain time period ends(still deciding, maybe a week or two!) you'll be able to request more, all a ask is that you don't spam please! No need to worry if you don't get to ask a request, either because you weren't here the first time, or time ran out or all the slots filled up, this event will be repeated eventually and you can ask then!

I do have a few more things you can request/rules and what you can't! Please read carefully and if you have any questions let me know :3

CAN

Request multiple Mine characters in one piece

Request your oc/s with a Mine character or multiple!

If there's a specific pose and/or outfit you want me to draw the Mine cast in, please send in some references, thank you!

I ask that you send requests in my askbox, you can turn on anon ofc!

Also please be kind of specific about what you want. like if you want to suggest maybe like Yani and Jun, like what are they doing, is there any sort of place you had in mind for where they are? Any kind of outfits you want to put them in? If you just want a drawing of one of the characters, you can just say (name) plain and I'll try to come up with something! I'll also assume that an ask with a Mine character and you oc is romantic unless stated otherwise, so please be as specific as you can, even if you think I may not need it or it should be obvious, I need things stated to me clearly :3

CANNOT

Request nsfw(I'll probably have that event on twitter at some point!)

honestly, anything that goes against my rules so like no proship or bigotry or anything else gross like incest(Please dni with my stuff if you're into any of that stuff)

No requesting other people's yandere's(You can suggest your yandere oc with mine though if you want to, just not any solo drawings of a yandere not in Mine.) Also if you're requesting your own yandere, I ask that you keep anon off for that ask, just so I can make sure it actually is your yandere, thank you! Also if you don't want your account to me linked with mine, then you can send me a message of your ask and I'll send the ask to myself :3

Also I'd prefer to not draw any solos of your ocs(Once again, totally fine if you want me to draw them with the Mine cast :3)

Please don't request shading or clean lineart, it tuckers me out quickly and makes me lose motivation, if I did that, this event would never finish LMAO

Please don't rush me either, I have a life outside of Tumblr and Mine. I may also not like how the drawing is turning out(I'm sorta a perfectionist when it comes to my own art) and I may also lose motivation or just may not feel like drawing(Kind of like what's happening with writing rn)

Honestly, for my don'ts I don't think I have to worry, everyone who has followed me has been really kind and respectful but I felt the need to clarify things and say things because of some of the stuff I've seen on social media. Anyways, HAPPY 100 FOLLOWER MILESTONE EVENT!! I appreciate each and every one of you so much more then you could ever know, I wish I could express my joy and gratitude better! MWAH MWAH <333333

With that, let the event BEGIN!!

[pirates-kaijus-and-demons-oh-my]

Hi, love your work! May I request headcanons for Reiju, Hancock and Pudding with a touch starved S/O?

Reiju:

Honestly, is probably a little touch starved herself but doesn't realize until she gets a partner. She was raised as a warrior so anything frivolous or emotional was a waste

Isn't against a lot of physical contact but has to be eased into it. She isn't used to it so she has to learn to love it, isn't going to jump into the deep end.

Likes to start with cuddles on the couch or in bed while the two of you watch a movie or something.

Also likes holding hands while strolling through town while off duty. While she's on duty though, no PDA allowed.

Hancock:

Incredibly touch starved if and only if you are luffy

Is a busy lady so she can't always find time to spend with her partner but in the evening makes up for it with plenty of cuddles.

It lets her relax and decompress at the end of the day too.

Overall doesn't mind so long as they don't let it get in her way of leading her people.

Pudding:

Very touch starved herself. She was always kinda cast aside by her family and doesn't feel particularly close to any of them so she needs someone who wants to be with her all the time.

Reciprocates 100 percent and loves to spend days just cuddled together on the couch.

Doesn't care too much what others say since she is happy.

[nightguide]

IWANNABEAHEROOOOOO: kids police toy starter pack

like ur ass wanna feel good as white as white as black as a 'shutup' is to a hispanic community to a traumatised paki on the interwebs rn

this is how you shut the fuck up criminal minds style.

so you think you're Reid

that yt guy at the back does all the counting numbers for you while the black honcho at the right is all u need to feel buff and strong anyday, i get ya

this is how you outsmart tiktok

forget how beautiful this asshole is

you don't want him as your 'boyfriend' or else he will narcissistically whoop ur ass into a swivel chair working for 'his algorithm', u don't want to become a 'script' (R.I.P Penelope Garcia for speaking up sooner) give the FBI badge to her and she would kill you, this is how you give the ranks to her and do criminal shit ur own way in other TV shows to say ur that cool enough to find shit ur mom is worth looking for

Glibness/superficial charm (basically being nice) = you have to see their motives in the end, 'like i know you killed a bitch, how did you do it?' and you have to make a model of their accusation cuz they do in every way, look like a bitch, use ur music tastes to support that motive straight away, like i know it ain't Nicki but the nigga been listening to Drake and he ain't saying shit, so Drake must have had a initiative to weaken his enemies before making the 'kind guy' look like the demon, (and so on) like you gotta support 'the bitch is dead cuz u listened to X artist' and you don't like everybody but to support your own philosophy as a practicing musician (i was a Lovatic from 2008 and Demi does not have shit for me to say that i like her music but i am a self-made musician of my own genre of kick ass to the brown community (most vulnerable) at the back, so i know my fanbase cuz the mf ain't no God, so u gotta protect ur own agenda cuz celebrities are everywhere like zombies

Grandiose sense of self worth (bitch, i know ur dad personally *or whoever family member u got along with 10 years before meeting them in a people algorithm event in time*) = okay, so you know my blog and i got a list, and so you justify your own list. the Glee cast are the good guys, so associate it with them to ur own equivalent and you know the bitch is a reasonable lore post the year Glee ended, (like Harper wanted more than that cuz Finn annihilated her chances from 2019 on)

Need for stimulation (your role as a police officer) = you have an obsession, make that a reality to your works as a philosopher, police force have a theory of their own doing which is why they always work to their own thesis to outdo the last bitch that did them too wrong or too good to be here, you primordially hate the bitch to no reality that you winning an argument is your smug right back, like fuck. go Robocop

Pathological lying (reasons to be a goddamn superhero) = be okay with anxiety cuz u train that shit for optimism, always take the scenic route

Conning/manipulative (stay being a sex symbol, like fuck. sell ur relative/s to science if that means ur now police officer) = what is a police officer to you, yea go Bowie or be yourself, be gay af. be good with ur aesthetic that bitch whining wiccas will copy u in 100 years now that ur wrinkles will never fade... but will remain the same in your X relatives eyeballs seeing you look this good

Lack of remorse/guilt (reasons to be a good man but never a good guy) = okay, something may have happened to you that 'made you feel like you were unforgotten' so that is another life saved, you saved them realistically and they told your story cuz that life was yours at some point and that is you in actual reality (you hated life too deeply and that is how you emerged in the creative arts in kindness) approach that cuz that is your superhero mind emerging as a gold star martyrdom to a life he/she/them life saved elsewhere like yours (you're not acting anymore, that's reality)

Shallow affect (you being yourself is actually a curse, so you be the teacher: how you actually feel like a badass while you are being true to yourself is how you outsmart every other spoiled brat like you existing (your anger) = you're not wrong. if anybody errs then have a reason to fight their 'philosophy' cuz they're more attracted to their parents or siblings to take you down cuz that's how they want what you have, so protect that by speaking up for yourself, be aware of the things you dream are of you, so you're that minority now

Callous/lack of empathy (blame games) go conspiracy theorist on their ass and see who they literally side with (loser (poor background) is good but reminder of 'that one relative that made you famous' is actually a death sentence, so use that excuse to beat them up, karma is real)

Parasitic lifestyle (creating a new ideal to settle other police force agenda cuz one of them now has a mole, so sabotage their career to make them learn humbly) = everyday is a real crime situation that makes a lifelong goal in the end, you don't 'just go there', you are, money is the root to all evilest ways to you have to make sure you spend well with who you are, be charitable to an extent that you know who your real enemies are in the end (poorer backgrounds make very good private eyes in the end, so take initiative to what the evil eye can do to you in the end) just make sure there are no buddha's in the team

Poor behavioural controls (learn how to be an idiot) = play with the idea that you're too good and be okay with losing a fight so you know how to switch controls on them growing up (arrogance in your opponents makes them more weaker knowing the daily pattern, like in that drama Prison Break) so it works in circles and you know how the cycle works rotationally to see where you can find ways to hack their philosophy on TV (give Garcia a break is learning to see through her bullshit to Reid's 'So Random!' on Disney Channel, all crime drama's hell (emotional cavity to a premature baby's life is nothing helps them but be 'that guy' to your mother's reason to abort the winning idea, so no change in the team) is that

Promiscuous sexual behaviour (stay with your best friends for life) = you know who they are, somebody at some point has told you the ideals of that best friend who is like of the 'Glee- no. that was me. i told you that, but how????? you are a... and you know how good as shit you are against a Schue. that bitch is dead on Pushing Daisies and you deserve to make yourself feel seen on 9gag with an open opinion for you to pin a bitch to a goal you hate cuz you're that of the... and you know who's who str8 away

Early behaviour problems (childhood shit that does NOT leave you til your adult self is truly happy af) = you're petty. now never.. stop being petty, find petty role models (mine was personally the White Witch from Narnia, cuz ur cold self is a metaphor of what everybody thinks ur like when ur pissed and when u meet them, ur mind is blown cuz u never thought u would be that cold until u discover that u got a warm side that was shared in ur group of 5 in a DnD game of supreme DC/MARVEL badass bitches that are supergood at something and that is like... rare in your life cuz that is like ur life goals, yk what i mean

Lack of realistic, long-term goals (best friend shit with that brother u love since life is forever) that is like ur the phone case to their phone charm, but u know that is the only 2 that matters but like, u know everybody has a cute side with that brother u love too much for their own good which is like 'u touch her or I WILL KILL YOU' cuz ur lives is too similar to each other like that

Impulsivity (what do bff's do if the world is actually superhero) yea, die for that world. it is shit af. watch ARY or FOX news on BBC or something 24/7, hear ur relatives complain, now die for those bitches that are not even dead before you cuz they're the ones who ruined ur life long term, think about the teachers who ignored ur life by not seeing you, they're now similar to surgeons who fucked up too hard on looking at you when you were the one who needed saving and not them, they're the ones who are too jealous over your stance rn on living. now kill them

[bzupaunjab]

Tips for Using Pepper Spray Correctly

Self-protection is one of the maximum vital matters that we need to all cognizance on those days, with a purpose to ensure that not anything unlucky takes place to us or our families, on the arms of a predator. After all, there`s simply no telling whilst terrible matters may want to manifest and we'd need to preserve ourselves organized in any respect times. What may be the standard stroll on your automobile from the restaurant, the theater or the mall, may want to thoroughly turn out to be being a warfare for one's very very own existence or that of a cherished one, if a predator makes a decision to make you, their goal! Now, please concentrate to me once I say, if they are attempting to thieve your pockets and/or purse, allow them to have it, you are not wearing whatever that cannot be replaced.

But, if the offender attempts to damage you or a cherished one, then with the aid of using all manner, defend your self, which brings me to the primary topic, Pepper Spray. Personally for myself, I opt for a Stun Gun, however I do apprehend this can be a chunk an excessive amount of for a number of you. Don't get me wrong, I additionally convey Pepper Spray and this may be a completely green manner of shielding your self or your cherished ones, I similar to doubling up on my alternatives. Of course, I additionally, have no troubles with firearms, I do have them, however in case you do not have the manner or the important time, to end up 100% green withinside the use of a firearm, then please, recollect those different alternatives for self-protection. Pepper Spray is the maximum not unusualplace of all self-protection weapons; it's miles non-deadly and if nicely used, can assure a person's safety. It is as a substitute low priced and may be bought without problems online or in brick and mortar shops that deal in protection products.

Below are some recommendations and strategies to help you withinside the right use of Pepper Spray, examine them, exercise them and desire that you may in no way truly ought to use them, however continually don't forget, in case you do, then you'll be organized due to the fact the detail of marvel is the predator's primary advantage! If you're taking that detail out of the equation, then you definitely degree the gambling field, so that you could speak.

1. The person have to continually shout previous to casting off the self-protection spray, for the duration of an attack. This can truly create a few shape of diversion, inflicting the attacker to panic, even if, simply slightly. This is one approach which is likewise integrated in different sorts of self-protection strategies, together with martial arts. The person can surely boost his or her hand it truly is now no longer retaining directly to the spray as a manner of distracting their attacker.

2. It is likewise smart to keep away from spraying with the hand this is prolonged outwards. For example, thrusting the canister proper in the front of an attacker makes it very clean for them to smack it away or maybe snatch it out of the person's hand. This would go away you defenseless and might even permit the predator to apply the spray towards you. So, whilst the spray is used, you have to continually again farfar from the goal at the same time as aiming and shooting, however don't forget to live inside variety that's mentioned in Step 3.

3. Another powerful tip is for the person, is to truly preserve their eyes open at the same time as the use of the spray. You ought to ensure you are concentrated on the assailant on the proper angle. Closing one's eyes at the same time as performing in a protective way is surely a personification of panicking and you may locate it tough to spray withinside the route of the assailant. Therefore, you need to continually preserve your eyes locked at the goal and ensure you are truly making touch with the meant goal. It is likewise smart to ensure you're in variety of the meant goal, as numerous sprays regularly have more than a few everywhere among 6-eight feet.

Read More: Personal alarms and pepper spray are two essential tools to have with you when you leave the house.

[shepard-ram]

The Creeper and The Creeper Whisperer [Docm77 x Reader]

Fluff, Request: Doesn’t have to b a req if u don’t want but imagine doc x a reader who is like somehow really friendly to hostile mobs and despite not being a creeper hybrid they are really chill w creepers and stop ppl from killing them and stuff and he’s like “oh em gosh??? Someone who doesn’t hate my kind???” Or sum

This may not 100% fit what you asked but I adore the idea of reader just being a creeper magnet and somehow cuddling up with the things completely safely so I kind of went with those vibes rather than a normal dude who just doesn't kill them. Sorry if that's not what you wanted but brainrot be rotting the brain

Tw. Death mention? Once I think, nothing happens (especially bc respawn mechanics are a thing) but the boom booms are dangerous and that is pointed out. Also sorry if this a bit directionless but I just wanted to get something out.

--------------------

You were a funny little phenomenon. On most fronts you were a fairly average person. Your skills in both architecture and redstone were much more than praise worthy, but other than that you didn't have much to you at first glance. Except for one interesting quirk.

Creepers were universally recognized and feared bundles of eventual destruction. The cause of many lost lives, items, and chunks of wall. Yet, you adored the walking bombs.

It's a mystery why they were so passive towards you, but it felt like every single one returned your feelings. Your life from childhood was dotted with the unusual memories of them being unusually friendly. From feeding those still left from the previous night to patching up the scratched up ones you'd find in the forest or while mining. You were kind to them and they never posed a threat to you.

You had a similarly symbiotic relationship with other hostile creatures, but it wasn't exactly the same. It was only creepers that actually bonded over to you with (metaphoricaly) open arms, but you would still take care of a stray enderman or skeleton if you came across one.

That's probably why you ran a mob sanctuary out of your base. It was your first season with the hermits, and to be frank- you were overwhelmed as all hell. They were a fun lot and you knew your skills could stand their own here. However, between all the acclimating, socializing, manual labor you've been pulling your mind and body were left in desperate need of some less physically and mentally strenuous work.

The sanctuary was your pride and joy. You had a wealth of knowledge on how to care for all of them and the means to give them a place to stay to match.

It was practically a massive zoo enclosure, walls made to look as natural as possible, shallow artificial rivers, trees you had built yourself, all completed with a faux cave area harder to reach and nearly impossible to see from the outskirts of the area.

Whenever your current projects got too taxing, or you happened to stumble across an injured mob, you would spend days at a time looking after the ever-revolving cast of inhabitants of the sanctuary. Some you planed to keep, (mostly the weaker and/or younger creepers who especially imprinted on you) others you set free once they were sufficiently healthy.

It was a place of peace for you as much as they were for your patients. You welcomed the other hermits to visit when they showed interest. On the condition that they don't hurt any of the mobs. Predictably, when they realized 70% of the population was creepers not many were keen on the offer. It didn't bother you too much, more alone time for you this way.

Doc was one of the first to actually except. In hindsight you shouldn't have been all that surprised that he wouldn't have to worry about all your explosives roaming about. Yet in all your creeper based experiences you haven't met a hybrid before him.

Not that you knew it, but he found you far more fascinating than you found him. A couple of the other hermits suggested he spend some time with you after they payed you their own visits. Always with some look in their eyes that blended amusement, curiosity, and scheming. When you explained your little side business he understood it.

You both were able to find humor in the situation, breaking the ice with jokes of losing him in the crowd and other stupid things of the like. Once that phase had passed you suggested that you sit down and eat the lunch you brought into the sanctuary.

After you both finished eating neither of you moved or talked, silently agreeing to relax a little while longer. He noticed that there was something that felt... just fundamentally correct about the moment. Like a comfortable stillness settled deep in his chest. And like a child running into a landed flock of pigeons, the feeling only fled the more he tried to grab hold.

Still, he attempted to pin it on something. Something. Perhaps like the person sitting a little ways out of arms reach from him. With a dreamy, far-off gaze as you watched the creatures living their lives in safety of your favorite project. As much as he didn't want to stare, the fact that he could see the very spell he was under a moment ago on your face was nearly as captivating as the peacefulness itself.

He found himself visiting you again and again after that day.

By with point you knew Doc enough to see the weight of many sleepless nights on him. You were familiar with his mad scientist shtick and how long and bright those overworking episodes burned.

You knew your probably magic connection to creepers was affecting him to some degree, but frankly you didn't care. If it got him to regularly sit down, eat, and take a nap then it was perfectly moral in your mind.

While you were in thay routine it felt like it could go on forever. It was nice and comfortable, yet it was really just the origin story of your relationship.

It just came naturally. You balanced each other out well. He even got you to loose couple nights of sleep to explain his redstone to you. You may or may not joke that you have since been cursed with "lovecraftian knowledge".

You lost track of when your "hangouts" became "dates" and when every nap consisted of a lot of cuddling. You wouldn't have it any other way, as cheesy as that would sound out loud. You didn't care, you were both happy. That's all either of you need.

[mistress-riddle]

NIGHTMARES. harry potter

❦ CW ━ nightmares, mentions of death, torture, blood. she/her pronouns.

MASTERLIST.

❦ REQUEST ━ may i request prompts #100 and #84 for mr harry james. I know that's a bit of a challenge but you can choose either of the two ❤ i just needed more fluffy protective husband!harry 🥺🥺 — @annemagus .

❦ PROMPT(S) ━ 84. “i had a nightmare and... i just wanted to see if you were okay.”

harry ran around the unfamiliar building, attempting to follow the voice of his partner who was letting out screams and shouts.

the man was successful as he saw the figure of his wife being held by her neck.

he tried to cast a spell on the person holding her but was met with a body binding curse, freezing his body temporarily.

unable to do anything, harry watched as [name] was struck by the cruciatus curse again and again, blood spilled from her mouth as she attempted to muffle her screams. tears fell down harry's face as he looked at his lover being tortured, unable to move.

"no!" a chilling scream was heard throughout the walls as harry watched the love of his life drop to the floor, lifeless eyes staring straight into his as a ghost of a smile hung on her lips.

.

with another yell he woke up.

harry writhed in his bed as he awoke drenched in sweat and he hurriedly made it downstairs after snatching his glasses and putting them on.

a sigh of relief was let out at the sight of his wife peacefully reading a book. he rushed towards her side and gave her a long lasting kiss on the crown of her head. the woman looked up and her eyebrows knitted together.

"is something the matter, dear?" she asked in concern at his slightly shaky appearance.

"I had a nightmare and," he replied after a few minutes of staring at her, fulling registering that she was still alive "..I just wanted to see if you were okay."

[name] immediately embraced the man as she soothingly pat his back "oh sweetheart, if I was going to die, I would've died already."

"what's that supposed to mean?" harry pulled away from her to look her in thé eyes as he furrowed his brows.

"it means, I could've died at least twenty times just by being near you during our school days."

"it wasn't that bad-"

[name] quirked her eyebrow upwards "oh really? wasn't it during our first year when we came into contact with a 3 headed dog?"

"well, yes but-"

"second year, that whole basilisk situation?"

"but you're not a mugglebor-"

"third year, dementors and a werewolf."

"but lupin wouldn't have hurt us."

"in human form." she objected "besides, fourth year. and don't even get me started from then after."

"ok, I'll give you that."

"thank you." she gave him a little curtsey causing harry to chuckle.

"go and have a seat I'll make some hot chocolate."

"can I have some marshmallows on top of it?"

"no, they're only for me."

"pretty please?" she rolled her eyes at him.

"maybe."

harry smiled from his seat on the couch and gazed at her with the fondest look "I love you."

[name] turned her head softly and mirrored his look "I love you too."

© 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒-𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐, 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃 —all content rights belong to mistress-riddle. do not plagiarize any works and do not repost or translate onto any other sites.

[seyaryminamoto]

Leap of Faith: Sokkla Saturdays 2022

Day 4: Sokka dresses Azula

On FF.net//On AO3

And here's the first sequel I've written this year... the sequel to my Dragon Age AU from last year :'D about half as long, so still ridiculously long, but yet again... you can't expect better when adapting such a long game, not even when you're only centering it around secondary characters.

Anyway, it was a wild ride and I was very happy to finally fulfill my main headcanons in that franchise regarding a potential way to save a certain someone from being trapped in the Fade forevermore...

Hope you enjoy it! Read in either link above, since, yet again, Tumblr won't allow me to post the full story here.

Now, as for thoughts you may read after you finish that story...

Regarding the controversial ending... I can't be the only person who finds Aang and Solas can be disturbingly similar x'D There's obvious differences between the two, but even the fact that Bryke described Aang as a "trickster", and the Solas is notoriously known for being the Trickster God? Stuck in an iceberg for 100 years, and dormant for over 1000 years? Both are struck by tragedy when their civilizations were completely wiped out -- and both struggle with guilt over it, though I hold Solas far more responsible for it, in his case. In short... this was a no-brainer. The reason why Aang was never around in the first part of this story, the Prince Sokka and Peasant Azula prompt from last year, was because the minute I wanted to write a Dragon Age AU, I knew Aang would be the ideal Solas if I ever got around writing the Inquisition sequel. I know it was probably weird back then, but I hope it makes some sense this time, especially for people who have played these games.

Regarding Ursa... Flemeth is another big question mark in the future of Dragon Age's franchise as a whole. I recently watched a video with a lot of crazy theories about her being the source of all that's wrong with Thedas, but going by DAI's ending, with that epilogue in which Flemeth/Mythal kind of dies (?) in Solas's arms and Solas takes in her essence? It doesn't feel like Flemeth will be returning as herself in the future, at the very least, hence why Azula is sure she won't see Ursa again. Ursa is such a strange, gray character here because that's what Flemeth is like, but until the universe proves otherwise, I elect to believe that Flemeth's cruel treatment of Morrigan was actually a very twisted way of breaking her own cycle and setting her daughter free from the burden of inheriting Mythal directly... even if, by drinking from the Well of Sorrows, Morrigan is connected to Mythal all over again anyhow. Anyway. Well. I don't know what else is there to be said about this, but the point is Ursa's characterization wasn't so sketchy and strange for no reason, it's all because of the source material.

Regarding Dragon Age 2... I honestly wish I knew who to cast in the place of DA2's cast. I have a soft spot in my heart for most of the DA2 party characters, but unfortunately, I've already used soooo many ATLA and LOK characters, and finding some that correspond really well with the DA2 cast was so difficult it became virtually impossible. I actually thought June would be a perfect Isabela at first. I switched her to Hawke when I realized that I had no Hawke, and I NEEDED a Hawke for this story X'D my personal preference for Hawke is female Hawke too, which helped in that decision, but I couldn't possibly figure out who to turn into Merrill, Fenris, Aveline, let alone Anders (hence why he's not mentioned by name, I really have no idea who he'd be), and so, I chose to just reference a potential physical relationship between Hawke and Zevran (in this case, the old fandom-favorite obscure ship of Jet and June) rather than confirming a more traditional DA2 romance for this Hawke, since I just couldn't sort out who the rest of the DA2 cast would be. I didn't leave them so far out of the story because I wanted to, it's because I kiiind of had no choice, the shortage on characters rendered me helpless.

Regarding the Inquisitor... writing Inquisitor Korra Adaar made me happier than I imagined possible from writing that character. I thought about making her just a warrior, but I suppose she's a kind of physical mage, a warrior-mage hybrid of the sorts I don't think exist in this franchise. In her case, I didn't go all-out to confirm any DAI romances because I honestly didn't want to push a pairing for her, since it was also not exactly important for the story? Therefore, I left it up in the air. If you want to believe Korrasami happened, well, Josephine/Asami is certainly willing to be romanced by any Inquisitor, so that's a valid conclusion to reach X'D I suppose a case of the sort could be made for Mako/Cullen, but I realize Cullen isn't supposed to romance Qunari Inquisitors. Still, eh... it's up to whatever readers would like to imagine in the end, fic writers have been notorious for disregarding all of the canon preferences for characters anyway. Weirder things have been written in fandoms.

Anyway. I think that's basically all the notes I had to give for this particular chapter. Hope you guys enjoyed it!

[tobeornottotc]

I just came across a video of the kinporsche cast and they were asked scenario questions; one if it was...whom will pete choose bewtween kinn and vegas...there were few things said that i was curious about..vegas/bible said don't forget who you chose...something like that can't remember word for word...meaning pete chose vegas...what i wanted to ask is in the remaining 4 eps do you see a scenario in which this could happen meaning they won't cut it and leave it for the coming season...how do you think they might go about it...will the major family (kinn especially) since he trusts pete see this as betrayal and would want to hurt/kill pete

Hi!

This answer is going to be a heavy spoiler for the ending so skip if you don't want to know Thanks.

Yeah I saw that video but knowing spoilers I always laugh at BibleBuild answers. Same when Build laughed as he chose minor family in one of the videos on Iquiyi while everyone else chose major family and him choosing love over his job. Build gets Pete that's why I like him as an actor. About Pete choosing Vegas...

Yeh I do see a scenario in this, I think they won't remove this because they are still following outlines of the novel and in the final fight it's a big focus in fact Pete's perspective is the loudest in this despite the fact Porsche is also going through a lot emotionally and mentally. They both have equal time during this scene and we see them both struggle to make a choice for the next part of their future, Porsche looking at Kinn struggling with the sacrifice he has to undertake or Pete losing his mind slowly as he watches the downfall of the man he loves. Like the desperation of both couples in this scene is chef' s kiss and I wouldn't want them to tamper with that you know? But they may, they may mute Pete's feeling completely and instead make it more angsty that he still pushes away from Vegas, instead I can't imagine this Pete but I would like to try if I see any warning signs or foreshadowings about it. However the foreshadows and symbolisms I've seen in the show for these 2 still adds up and agrees with the novel so I'm not yet fussed.

I think Vegas would probably end up running away into whatever ending they want with him and I think although major family will want to hunt him down they'll decide not to, or he'll go missing and they won't be able to find him as he goes through whatever they want to make him end up as in the finale. Do I think Pete may be part of that? Yes 100% one of my theories is Vegas may be taking Pete to a secret location unknown to everyone and Pete may take him there and hide him away after the mutiny. But I also feel like Korn doesn't really want to get rid of Vegas?

Like he still sees him as useful and he is the one who brought all these businesses that major family leach off of, so I think Korn would make an excuse why Vegas isn't worth chasing, Korn's endgame for the chessgame is to have weapons, pawns at his service to make his mafia throne great. So as long as Kan (who keeps trying to upend that) is not a threat then yeah Korn has no need to care about whether Vegas is alive or not. I think Pete's betrayal will be interesting if they do add it, I think it won't be the same in the book it'll be in the sea of chaos of the mutiny battle like Porsche will still have Korn's attention and Pete may chase after Vegas once he sees him leaving. But I have no clue haha, the finale is a conflicting one for me I think I know how it ends the chessgame conversation but I don't know what else changes, BibleBuild have said it's not the same as the book the ending and that worries me in regards to VegasPete. But I just can't see a place where Pete is not going to choose Vegas at the end of this. Like him doing the opposite would ruin his characterisation for me and what he's meant to represent in the story so ehh... we'll see is all I can say

I think my theory for now until I see how VP play out is that everyone would be too distracted with Porsche and VP will escape and continue their own story, if Vegas rebels and actually causes a mutiny on his own that again I feel will go against the whole characterisation and arc for him that is still being hinted at in the show. If Vegas does rebel and start his own clan then yeah I can see Pete not running away and choosing him at the end. But I trust Build and so far Build knows his character would always choose Vegas unless they ruin that.

Thanks! Sorry I couldn't give a clear answer yet from my evidence and analysis, Vegas is quite different in the series, I still think Pete is the same but that may change after 11-12 once I see what their romance arc is, once I understand who they want Pete to be I'll come back and review this answer and update it. For now I still see the story structure playing out as the book but the details changed. We'll see what they choose to do

[fantrolloftheday]

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS TUMBLR

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[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.