#i think its funny how they push the bff thing so hard with a character they gave very little dialogue in me2

[fulgurbugs]

Oh hey I hope you don’t mind me asking, this is purely out of curiosity but if you had to picture other duopath runs which characters would you pick and why? :)

Therion & Tressa are such a good combo I’m curious about which other traveler combinations would work well

hm thinking about which ones would be fun…. i think i can think of some that’d be fun

ship ones obvi would be funny, so alfyn/therion Primrose/Haanit, Olberic/Cyrus etc, also i think all of those combos are pretty good and can cover each other, i think Alfyn/Therion probably has the easiest time of it (due to access to steal for equipment and then concoct is just really good) and olberic/cyrus probably has the hardest time of it? i think thats purely because cyrus is frail and might take some investment to make sure he’s not dying every 2 seconds. then again, olberic as a duo is pretty good since he always has incite access. basically cyrus needs saving grace asap i think

Prim/haanit i think mayyybe more middle of the road? you do always get sealticge but its more of a whole thing with just two party members instead of 4, but haanit can hit the big damage and having dancer prim she’s probably easier to minmax damage potential on since you can lion dance her etc… if you run one of them as thief you can probably do some kind of armor corrosive lion dance setup and let haanit just hit the double digit thousands

i think one of the things that would be difficult about both haanit/prim and olberic/cyrus is definitely the lack of path action to acquire npc items, you get literally soooooo much shit out of it it’s super helpful lol.

other ones i think would be fun

Alfyn/Ophilia: healerpath run. while you won’t have to rely on item healing (like i did for the majority of duopath), i think this one would be a fun like, find your damage method one. plus, these two are the ones who usually sit back as supports (at least in their base class roles), but push when push comes to shove- sorry you guys gotta do all the hard work of killing these guys on top of the healing. also the stretch between their ch3s and ch4s would be miserable for them sorry you two

Therion/Primrose: the two traumatized ones with loner streaks, that’s right we’re putting bff bracelets on you and forcing you to work together. i think these two have a kind of kinship friendship that they don’t quite share with any of the others, so they get along quite well, even though i think i’d find it hard to stick them together permanently without the glue of the rest of the party. but as a duopath, i think they could still be pretty fun, and i want primrose to have some help stabbing those guys. gameplay wise, having therion would be a huge benefit for path action reasons, plus thief is like. imo one of the best subclasses paired with anything so i think any duopath he’s in gets some added benefit.

Olberic/Tressa: i always liked their dynamic, as the oldest member and the youngest member they might have an almost parental kind of relationship, and something abt tressa’s plucky enthusiasm and Olberics more stoic, seasoned nature is always fun to me. Tressa is another items-getter path action (though slightly less good than steal, you’ll likely rack up enough money grinding that prices are trivial) which is a help, and merchant is extremely good in duopath due to hired help being one of the best damage options for any character who might not be able to set up huge numbers. olberic however, can set up huge numbers, which means that i think this duo would be super duper set in the damage department.

ophilia/cyrus: i think this is the one i’d do if i really wanted pain, because these two have no hp and will die. this is like, the challenge mode option, because one of the things about duopath is you’re going to be taking a lot of damage on your two characters where you would have that spread across your party. so this duo would require some interesting strategizing to raise those hp stats, figure out how to tank, and then, on top of that, how to dish out the big numbers. while magic is *good* ive always found that when you’re trying to hit big on breaks, you’re better off going for brand or aeber big hits. as well, you get no items path action to work with for them. as for the dynamic, they’re both friendly and agreeable so i think there’d be not much conflict between them, but i think you could have some fun especially by the end if they start to draw the galdera connections between them…

[kirkwallers]

Cannot wait for the best moment in me1 after my paragon ass works on garrus for the entire game and hes like um u stole the normandy? After everything u said?

I have literally never been so proud

[momentsatmydesk]

My Thoughts on ‘Our Beloved Summer’

In a line or two: 

Our Beloved Summer was such a healing, therapeutic watch that did not hide the 'humanness' of love.

The story: 

The drama is about two exes--- Kook Yeon Soo and Choi Woong (high-school students when they began dating) who had a 5-year relationship and broke up. They meet 5 years later and agree (fact: are forced) to shoot a documentary similar to the one they shot in high school. What starts from a '100 Things I Hate About You' turns into an introspective, messy yet heart-warming return to each other.

My Thoughts:

1. I love the layers in Kook Yeon Soo's personality. She's smart, socially inadept, deadpan, and more sensitive than she lets herself acknowledge. I love how the flaws in her character actually make her more endearing and relatable.

2. Kim Ji Woong, our male lead's best friend, is actually the prettiest one here, according to me. He's at constant war with himself, but I also love how he returns to the camera to shoot people's raw selves and finds comfort in it. 

I especially love his friendship with Choi Ung, who despite knowing that Kim Ji Woong has feelings for Yeon Soo, doesn’t push him away.

3. I thought the drama would come to be overwhelming given its storyline. But surprisingly, I couldn't keep away from it because of how comforting I found it to be. 

4. Then we have K-pop idol NJ. She's such a fireball. She's funny, adorable, and yet so trapped and defined by people's idea of her. I love how Choi Ung and she decide to remain friends, comforting each other when things aren't going their way. 

5. Okay, I love Choi Ung's parents so much! Honestly, the idea of running a restaurant and feeding people good food is the definition of a beautiful life for me. However, their care for Ung and his art is so cute and heart rendering.

6. It was through NJ that I realized how joy-crushing fame can be. You forget who you are and try too hard to become someone else's expectations of who you should be.

7. I think Choi-Ung's definition of happiness: "To do lie down and watch the sunlight stream through leaves" was when I first fell for him. 

I love how he's never glorified 'living big'. He's so content with his wants. He knows exactly the kind of people he wants to be around and isn't afraid to go for an unconventional way of living if it makes him peaceful and happy.

8. When they all head for a 3-day trip for the shoot, I got really emotional watching Yeon Soo enjoy herself. It was so nice to see her smile and laugh and let herself free. 

That was the first time I realized how lonely she must have been all these years, handling responsibilities and pushing people away to avoid hurt.

9. My favorite moment of the series was when Ung is waiting for Yeon's answer: will she travel to Germany with him as he enrolls in the architecture program? They meet at Sol Yi's restaurant and Yeon Soo chooses to stay back in Korea because that's what feels right to her. 

There is this amazing moment where they know what they have to do for themselves and yet are so supportive of each other, without letting go of the love they've fought so hard to come back to.

10.Then we have Sol-Yi. I mean, who cannot love her? She's Yeon Soo's 'Reality Check Provider' and also her soundboard + BFF. I have to say I absolutely enjoy watching Park Jin Joo on screen. Even with her supporting role in 'Her Private Life', she was fabulous. 

Here, Sol Yi is spontaneous, has a I-am-the-love-guru vibe and is atrocious in her choice of men. She cooks mediocre food but she doesn't give up on her dream. She's sassy, rude, amazing, and absolutely honest.

11. Lastly, I want to say I came to love Chae Ran so much. She's assistant produce to Kim Ji Ung and is also his unmistakable 'soulmate'. She possess so much sensitivity and yet is so calm and cool. 

I love how she decides to wait for Kim Ji Ung to be in a better headspace before she confesses her feelings for him. That was such a mature, soft, 'ah' moment.

Learnings:

1. When the Universe gives you second chances, grab them with both hands and work to give them your all. People do not come into your life accidentally. Each one is there for a reason.

2. Love has a funny, soft, ridiculously amazing way to make itself known. Allow yourself to feel it when it knocks your door. (P.S: Open it wide and let love rain in your heart.)

3. Love is a fairytale, with all the sparkles, the imperfections, the laughs, the tears, the growth, the support, and the gooey-warm feeling you get when you're with someone right for you.

4. Forgiveness is hard. But regret is worse. 

5. Whoever you were has made you who you are today. But you can always change if you don't like who you've become.

Last Words: 

Oh, please watch this show. It is absolutely adorable, warm and mature.💕💕

[itwoodbeprefect]

decided to just compile a bunch of comments about my sga 1x01 rising rewatch into a single post because i don’t actually want to make a hundred posts in a row, so here, under the cut, many rambles:

announcer guy does, in fact, speak english upon a second attempt. well done on not forgetting to not speak german, announcer guy.

“i’m afraid of the thing” elizabeth says, about the drone chair, while standing next to it and looking like she wants to fuck it

rodney in that orange sweater! very orange! very warm!

john is on screen. john’s first words are helicopters he knows how to fly. john KINDA LIKES IT in antarctica. john has barely done anything and i already feel like crying a little bit about this guy who LIKES ANTARCTICA because he just wants to fly

POOR CARSON when he almost kills two people. “ai told ya ai was the wrong pursohn” :(

i really love how john sees the drone coming at the (landed) helicopter and yells “get out!” and they throw open their doors and john JUMPS and then it’s just “ugh.” and he’s belly-down on the floor and still like, almost under the helicopter. an attempt was made, for sure. just not a very succesful one.

the way john looks around like he’s never seen a ceiling before when he enters the base is just. very funny. and then some guy in particular is looking at him because he’s a bit of a weirdo and john looks back and the guy sort of looks him up and down and john looks away as if to check if anybody saw that. hmm.

john’s face of “oops” after he sits down in the chair and it ACTIVATES and carson RUNS OFF to go get literally everyone and john is realizing he MAY have just made a very giant big mistake. PRICELESS

teyla: my people have long believed the wraith will come if we venture into the ancient city. sumner, when the wraith come after he ventures into the ancient city: [surprised pikachu face]

gotta love how john insisting on saving his people is what wakes up the wraith, and saving his people is also what landed john in antarctica in the first place because he tried it in afghanistan once before. which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an american war in afghanistan in the first place, which there wouldn’t have been if bush hadn’t thrown the us into it, which wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, so... bin laden woke the wraith?

on the other hand john would never have had to go on a rescue mission on his first day in pegasus if sumner hadn’t gone into that city against the wishes of the people that already lived there and had a history dating back thousands of years with the place, so more realistically, the expeditions’ colonizer mentality woke the wraith. and then they just kinda... kept going with that for the rest of the show, because it worked out so well on that first day.

anyway i’m not even there yet - puddlejumper! it jumps puddles!

have to love the moment john realizes the puddlejumper is pretty literally reading his mind and giving him anything he can think of that is within its power (so no turkey sandwiches, but that’s okay). john is already in love with it just based on the fact that IT CAN FLY AND GO FAST (“i kinda like it here”, restored) but then all the ancient technology just seems to know him and love him back and gives him way more than he even thinks to ask for. which, for john, who doesn’t really do well expressing desires? a FLYING SHIP that then READS HIS MIND? starstruck. love at first sight. john&puddlejumper, instant bffs. i bet it would have popped a compartment with some stray bits of wire if he’d asked for a friendship bracelet right then and there. ford sitting there witnessing this doesn’t even know how hard he’s thirdwheeling it in that moment.

now i am at the bit where sumner is taken from the wraith prison to see the actual wraith, and look, obviously they’re evil and feed on humans etc etc, but this particular wraith’s sense of dramatics? unparalleled. she has them bring her victims one by one to a large foggy room with a looong table set with a wonderful dinner and then she LEAVES a DEAD BODY sitting at the head of the table (implied to be the athosian that was taken before sumner?) and drops down from the ceiling while sumner has his back turned for no reason except the spectacle of it all, and dracula himself literally couldn’t have made a better display out of this. it’s maybe scary in the way that it makes clear she’s a cat toying with a helpless mouse before she eats it, but it’s also hilarious in the way that this is absolutely a very bored immortal being who had to stay up while the rest went to sleep and is inventing high school improv plays with her dinner for some diversion. don’t play with your food, wraith queen. you’re scaring your dinner.

life signs detector!!! ford didn’t get to name the puddlejumpers gateships, but that one stuck, no matter how much “we can name it later” john was trying to throw at it!!!

(god. there’s a ficlet somewhere in there about season 2 john having a moment where he realizes he’s on the hunt for ford using the thing they first discovered together and that ford gave its name.)

getting sidetracked here, but when john and ford find the group of humans caught by the wraith teyla goes “major!” and it makes me think that. well. how are the athosians supposed to know things like “major” and “colonel” are military ranks? what are the chances the pegasus galaxy uses the same designations? (don’t really know how the language thing works here - we’re hopefully not supposed to think they’re all speaking english, are they? i’ve never watched sg1, there’s probably lore about this, i assume. maybe alien titles somehow get perfect translations to earth ones and vice versa.) but i mean, teyla is too smart, she’d have it figured out already even if those words don’t exist in her galaxy, but some athosian somewhere is going to be very confused by this earth tendency to name way too many kids private and lieutenant, and then put all of them into the army. strange, to have your job decided for you at birth like that. earth people are weeeeird.

fjdkl john is like bye, gonna go find colonel sumner all on my own, run if you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, and ford’s like “you’re the only one who can fly these people out of here” and “i’m saying i should be the one to go, sir” and john, with his savior can’t-leave-anyone-behind-gotta-do-this-personally-or-i-will-literally-die-from-not-almost-dying complex DOES NOT LISTEN to ford’s EXTREMELY ACCURATE objection. which is his right, as ranking officer, but is also a perfect showcase of why john Should Not Ever be in charge of atlantis, and why sam saying he was totally on the shortlist when she takes over command in s4 is funny but frightening if you’re on atlantis and like being alive.

sumner: “we travel through the stargate as peaceful explorers.” FDJKFD. god, that line, from that character, hilarious.

rodney comes to elizabeth full of enthusiasm about all the interesting stuff they’re finding in the city only to find her staring at the empty gate and when she says she should never have let them (the rescue party) go, he sobers up and says awkwardly “for what it’s worth, you made the right decision” and that’s GOOD that’s KIND.

back on the planet with the wraith everyone is running to the jumper while there are wraith darts whizzing through the air and teyla turns back, catches up with ford who was told to cover their six, disarms him (because he was firing at illusions, revealing their position), hands him back his weapon, pulls him in the direction of the puddlejumper, and PUSHES HIM ASIDE when they’re almost scooped up by a wraith dart, and i’m so here for teyla being allowed a moment of heroics that saves specifically ford, guy with a gun, and not a random athosian damsel in distress. teyla is fully on their level. teyla is perhaps above their level. thank you.

that scene at the end of this episode!! in which there’s a sort of party on atlantis and it’s all buzzing and relaxed while the athosians are mingling freely with the expedition members and they’re talking of friendship and ugh. UGH. there’s a better version of sga in an alternate universe where the expedition didn’t decide atlantis was totally theirs, actually, and they cooperate with the people that were already in the galaxy when they came there and learn from sumner’s mistake to actually respect what they have to say and form a single front and teyla takes over as head of the expedition in s4 when there’s a void left by elizabeth’s absence.

final thought that has always haunted me a little: john suddenly becoming the ranking military member on atlantis after sumner’s death is ?? one of those things where i wonder what the sgc was thinking in their personnel assignments. john wasn’t even supposed to BE THERE. if john hadn’t gone and sumner had still died (which was something they should have considered as a possiblitiy! they didn’t know what they were walking into at all! sumner is apparently the type to lead his own missions!), then what exactly would they have done? i don’t know much about how the us military operates but i’ve watched enough mash to have figured out the order of the ranks and it just seems. very odd to me? to take one (1) colonel on this mission and then ZERO lieutenant colonels OR majors (if john hadn’t stumbled his way into it, that is). like, are there any captains on atlantis? (i think there are?) or would ford, a lieutenant, have ended up ranking military member? this is like the surely-they-only-need-a-single-medical-doctor-right thing. WHAT IS THE SGC THINKING.

anyway. this was good. i liked this. i hadn’t rewatched the pilot in a while, and i only just now figured out how much of a while, because there was a bunch in here i didn’t remember. ON TO EPISODE TWO.

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 16

Alrighty, that was a fun tangent, now back to John it seems?

Oh, no, Narration of John (So Actually Dirk, speak of the devil and he shall appear and all that etc etc)

“ leaving John with one final touch on the shoulder. John leans into it in response, though he’s a bit ashamed of chasing down a sliver of physical affection so soon after obliterating Karkat’s evening like he had. “

pfft lol so Im not the only one that thought it would be funny if that scene was interpreted in a Pale Romantic light, even though that really wasn’t what was happening

OIh! but we still get Roxy, just the other version of Roxy

Roxy subtly being like “hey!! shit has apparently gone down, were not exactly close atm but I feel bad about you dying to want to know if youre still alive so im gonna message you while trying to make it look like i dont care about it as much as I do”

JOHN: trying to align my memories of my youth with whatever is happening right now so

and the wonderful question is, what IS going be happening with you now John?

Roxy looking nice and casual, but also yeah narration, why are you making this ominous, its not like Roxy’s out here to double spy on behalf of Jane, I don’t think Roxys on her side THAT much

ROXY: may have to do a smidge more if my old bff decides im next on the list for bombing out

ROXY: but so far so good

ROXY: just a coupla exploded cars in the yard from some shenanigans our dear son and his friends were in but u kno it is what it is!!!

Roxy once again being a master of hiding how shes feeling, even when trying to open up, feeling pretty stressed about whats happening with Jane, understandable, the exclamation points give it away lol

The narration is really trying to make John nervous though

OH lol that was the implication haha no lol John it obviously wasn’t that

“John feels his shoulders unbunch. Of course. Yeah. He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced? He doesn’t know, but he believes Roxy that he must look pretty haggard. He probably feels haggard? Maybe sitting down will feel better.“

lol once again, Dirk has no idea how to read Roxy at all and just trips over himself and his assumptions XD

Yeah, looks like Roxy not on the Jane train and is doing some takesies backsies, shes glossing over her feelings on the matter still though, I know thats par for the course of how Roxy tends to handle stuff too but I wish shed open up a bit more, but maybe shes playing the smart game, yknow, knowing that Dirk has a hard time reading her, so glossing over stuff is how you protect yourself against the narrative force, confusion and vaguery in the narrative and her actions only helps her to keep control over it, because at any point, you can decide to “clear up” any narrative “miscommunication” or “confusion” and lay down what is it thats actually happening with you any time you want

Void working in the behind the scenes to do what they want

JOHN: like it’s my HOUSE.

JOHN: but mostly it always felt like my dad’s house?

JOHN: and when i started living there after i moved out of here, it was like i crammed myself back into whatever was left of my kid self?

JOHN: and it didn’t feel good, but it at least was familiar, you know?

JOHN: like living there let me feel closer to my dad, trying to be like the way i remember him, or like how i remember him wanting me to be, or something?

JOHN: and i didn’t realize how much i hated doing that until i saw it all go up in flames.

JOHN: so i guess i could have used my powers to stop the fire and save whatever was left of the place, but i couldn’t bring myself to do it.

JOHN: like some fucked up part of me was glad i got there too late?

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

JOHN: and even now i keep trying to explain it away, as though it’s because of how fucked up everything else is that it made me feel good.

JOHN: but that’s just bullshit.

JOHN: it DID feel good.

JOHN: i DO feel free.

JOHN: sorry.

ROXY: no need 2 apologize

ROXY: we just delved in2 my whole gender thing last time so it seems fine for u to have a turn

JOHN: i didn’t say it was a gender thing.

Im pretty sure you’re talking about a gender thing John, like, very 100% sure now this is what’s happening

because if you were actually a girl, of course you’re dad leaving all these notes about how one day hes gonna be so proud of the man youll become, yeah, that can feel a little pressuring, even if your dad didnt mean it like that, since he was unfailingly the kind of dad just bumbling around trying to understand their kid as best they could and leave encouragements everywhere, thats what his intent was, but all his notes come off a bit wrong in particular issues

remember the note under the fridge that was all like “SON. IF YOURE READING THIS NOTE, YOUVE FINALLY BECOME STRONG ENOUGH OF A MAN TO PICK UP THE FRIDGE.” not exactly that but that was always the vibe Dad’s little notes always had

Yeah, i can see how John would view it as a bit off, but if he hadnt the self awareness to realize it was a gender thing at the time, hed be understandly confused as to why such a thing would bother him

now though, he’s realizing, maybe, he doesn’t exactly want to be the man his dad always encouraged him to be

John does seem a lot happier here in his convo with Roxy than he did on his own when the house was burning, that conversation with karkat left me wondering if John was about to start dissociating he was so down, but here he says he feels freeing and happy about it?

ROXY: but like now that u mention it

ROXY: *meaningful pause*

JOHN: …

JOHN: i

JOHN:

John’s beginning to question stuff, or acknowledge that he’s questioning stuff, cuz it’s true, and hes feeling happy about it, in a way that he wasnt before, but he hasnt quite connected the dots here between the happy feeling and what exactly he has to be happy about

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

JOHN: yeah ok.

Yeah Roxy’s 100% picked up on it, and maybe Dirk has as well if the narration is commenting on it

Alrighty then, to the secret lair under the bed!

oh I just noticed how kind of cute and interesting Roxy’s nickname for Harry is, “Lil H A” Harry Anderson shortens to Ha like laughter haha

and if Harry had Roxy’s last name, it’d be Harry Anderson Lalonde

Lil HAL

lol what is Callie doing under Roxy’s secret bedchamber XD

This whole secret bedchamber thing is turning into one big metaphor isn’t it?

That thing behind the curtain kind of looks like the Attic Portal shape from Hiveswap though

that’d be neat if that was it, like obviously we knew one of the cherubs had to have something to do with that portal just going by the design of it alone

Honestly it makes sense that Callie is doing it under the curtain of Roxy’s Void, it’s honestly the safest place to do something like that

lol Calliope has grown past writing fanfic about shipping and being in love, now the drama of broken relationships and divorce is all the rage XD character growth? haha

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

CALLIOPE: so i consider Us aboUt even at this point.

Calliope just burned him harder than his childhood home’s destruction

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

have you been talking to Jake lol (I mean, probably Original Grandpa Jake tbh if that portal is actually the portal)

Alright so John is getting caught up on the major plot points, Earth C is indeed in the large black hole, his choice didn’t matter since both choices happened anyway yadda yadda

CALLIOPE: think of it like a coin flip.

CALLIOPE: the series of events that led to Us being trapped beyond the event horizon of an Ubermassive black hole could be considered "tails", while the events which would have occUrred otherwise could be considered "heads".

CALLIOPE: since both were possible, and paradox space is the way it is, they actUally both happened. and we jUst "happened" (hee hee) to get tails instead of heads.

yup yup yup pretty par for the course of timesplits in homestuck so far

CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are".

yup, this is true, the ending’s of both referenced the others, so it’s disingenuous to say one is “canon” while the other isn’t

one is simply in the realm of actual possibility, the other is in the realm of unlikely possibility

More than likely, John would have chosen to leave and go die and be the hero like in Meat, but there was still the possibility that he would stay, even if it was unlikelier than the other, but since both were possible choices for him to realistically make, both actually happened for real

CALLIOPE: anyway, the reason i went on this tangent in the first place was to explain that the space we are standing in right now has a special significance, in that it is the location which corresponds to the black hole's singUlarity

that’s interesting, so there’s the original meteor that crashed into the surface of Earth C, and it’s in here that the singularity of what I don’t wanna call the Green Hole to match the Green Sun when I wanna talk about this specific Black Hole lolol

but yeah, here in this meteor lies the crux of the paradox it seems, interesting, also interesting again, this is where that Hiveswap Portal is

Hiveswap does have a plot point of “Joey must do thing in 11 days otherwise Earth and Alternia will be destroyed” and the only known destruction event of Earth and Alternia so far in canon is the Green Sun’s Creation from the destruction of both universes (and then later Callie’s destruction of the green sun into the black hole) so is Hiveswap gonna be a factor in the green sun’s destruction/creation as well? (Joey has the symbol of the Green Sun for a reason, I’m super curious as to what factor Joey has in relation to the Green Sun’s Existence, We still don’t know what the fact those black monsters are too, they’re like nega-first guardians, the kind of things that look like would come out of a Black Hole that came from the Green Sun tbh)

It’s all inter-related I tells ya

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

You say that now but

CALLIOPE: it's not strictly speaking "bad" for Us to be inside of a black hole, mUch thoUgh that contradicts most of what anyone knows about them.

CALLIOPE: of coUrse, if we had fallen into it, that woUld be a whole other kettle of fish.

CALLIOPE: the tidal forces woUld have stretched Us all into spaghetti and then ripped us apart!

CALLIOPE: bUt the natUre of oUr arrival was more akin to simply "being" here, sUddenly. one moment we were not, and the next moment we were, and somehow always had been.

yeah that’s basically how this multiverse’s reality works, the future is a thing that already physically exists, just in a different location in the universe somewhere else

time travel and spacial teleportation could be said to be the same thing all along

that’s why violating the events of the future has actual consequences, because its like asking to go somewhere that doesn’t exist but how has to exist because it’s the future, too much of that and reality starts cracking at the seams to make room

same thing happens with sessions and playing sburb

the planets and dreaming moons and all that simultaneously have always existed here, and started existing only because the player played the game and the planets were generated upon entering a session, but to the player involved, it looks and feels like you are just being teleported to a different location in the universe, because you also kind of are

CALLIOPE: i mean, the natUre of space and time is a little finicky in here, bUt for the most part it doesn't seem to be anything too oUt of the ordinary.

CALLIOPE: bUt beyond that, it means that we are sealed away from the rest of existence.

CALLIOPE: oUr sphere of inflUence is limited to the sphere of the black hole's bounding horizon.

CALLIOPE: as far as everyone else is concerned, we might as well not even exist!

So you’re just in a little seperated bubble, that’s not connect temporally to any other place of existence, you aren’t anywhere in the past or the future of anywhere else

nowhere leads here, and here can not lead outwards either, theoretically, and yes it exists, so it must also

JOHN: is there no way we could let anyone know that we're in here...?

CALLIOPE: almost certainly not!

CALLIOPE: there are very few ways for anything to escape the kind of predicament that we are in right now. one of them is to be an all-powerfUl being with control over the very fabric of space, with the energy of two Universes at yoUr disposal.

CALLIOPE: in which case, escape woUld become rather trivial, if a little Unscientific.

JOHN: ok. i am going to assume that we can't just do that.

CALLIOPE: yoU've hit the nail on the head, UnfortUnately. U_U

CALLIOPE: the method i described was the one employed by my alternate self, who yoU may recall crashed through the event horizon in the body that once belonged to jade harley.

CALLIOPE: she departed through a pUnctUre she created in the black hole's surface shortly after consUming my brother, a deed which provided her with the necessary "oomph", and which was frankly rather breathtaking to watch. =u=

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

So someone else definitely has managed to do such a thing

JOHN: knowing that we're inside of a black hole... does that actually change anything?

JOHN: like, can't we just go on living like normal?

CALLIOPE: oh absolUtely not.

CALLIOPE: i don't know if yoU've noticed john bUt this world is on the brink of a total cataclysm.

JOHN: oh.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

JOHN: that's... certainly one way to put it, yeah...

yeah, so because here in the black hole neither affects the past or the future of anywhere else, being so disconnected, they are technically free of the reigns of the Alpha Timeline that exists elsewhere in the multiverse

the Alpha Timeline now being understood to simply mean, The Narrative

Things are the way they are because they are thus written to be so

CALLIOPE: at first, i believed that this was simply necessary. Us playing tails to oUr coUnterparts' heads, the black to their white, and so forth.

CALLIOPE: bUt over the years i have come to the conclUsion that this is simply not kosher.

ROXY: its total bs is what it is

CALLIOPE: right, yes.

CALLIOPE: a steaming pile of bUllshite.

CALLIOPE: and so we have decided that something needs to be done aboUt it.

Hmmm. It’s a dangerous idea to be playing with for sure, to decide all the black pieces in the game of chess suddenly become white, it is a very flip turning of reality upside down to be sure

To be honest, I’d think you’d need a powerful Doom player at your disposal to even try something like this

or actually, a powerful Doom user would be most likely to shut this entire thing down, knowing how bad of an idea it’d be, maybe it’s more you need a powerful Life player to do something like this instead

is that also why Dirk viewed Jane as an ally then? She would technically have the kind of power to upend the black and white doomy laws of reality if driven to her full potential, i mean obviously yes, we know this already because of the candy colored I-can-do-whatever-I-want-with-no-consequences lollipop

Is this what Calliope hopes to achieve with the Hiveswap Portal then? her goals for Joey and friends are to be the ones to prevent their universe’s twin destructions, and thus the Green Sun’s initial existence and then also the destruction into the Black Hole after the fact? that would be one way to prevent the Black Hole from existing, making it so the thing that creates the black hole never exists either

and that's certainly a canon event that would be difficult to tear asunder without major consequences

That would be a “Re-writing Homestuck from the very beginning” level of canon event

And if I’m correct, Joey is theorized by me to be a Mage of Life, if any classpect at their full potential was gonna do something like that, or have the impossible knowledge to something impossibly paradoxical like that, well..

ROXY: but u dont need to worry abt busting us outta space jail tbh

ROXY: thats not ur problem to fix

JOHN: oh.

JOHN: i'm... not sure i follow, then.

ROXY: i mean yeah ur gonna obvs facilitate it in a sense

ROXY: but only by going and busting the person who can actually help us outta normal earth jail

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan.

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

I mean yeah! makes sense! Johns major factor here is Freedom, Vriska’s is Importance

and yeah, I can think of no other wholly dramatic event that to mess with stuff with the Green Sun, everyone will have eyes on that, they have to, their whole existence the way it is relies on it

But, they could also mean something else, its only condition is that it has to be something so imflappably impossible, something so not-canon and so outrageous that it basically horse-shoes around to the other end of the canon spectrum to being something that truly exists again

and that could be literally anything and it’s nerve wracking and exciting to see what thing theyre gonna come up with to just directly kneecap Homestuck itself

ROXY: thx babe

ROXY: oh is it 2 soon for that joke or

JOHN: no, weirdly enough, that one’s fine.

(yeah that’s because Babe can be construed as feminine June)

so, I’m basically convinced they’re doing June Egbert now

that to me was like, pretty severely on the nose

John: Hey Roxy, what it does mean when you find a sense of freedom when all of the symbolism of the masculinity surrounding your childhood burns down around you

Roxy: idk It’s probably a gender thing man

John: I didn’t say the word gender-

Roxy: It’s ok babe no pressure, we can hash it out later

John: Hmm, later then. :)

Roxy: (Turns and looks towards the camera with a knowing smile)

shit all that imagery makes me think of Roxy as that picture of the small kid smirking at the camera while a house burns in the distance XD

[hopeymchope]

hey, sorry to barge into your inbox despite being a total stranger (and feel free to respond to this privately if you want) but i came across some of your s/n/k critical posts and i just wanted to say i agree SO much. and i wanted to thank you for vocalizing this opinion because i know both i and some others agree with you. i've personally felt that everything after chapter 80 was a mistake (because i thought the whole serum fight over erwin vs armin was pretty fuckin stupid too) and it's kinda funny (i guess) to see the ending 100% validate my opinion completely. i can't believe every character was done this dirty for the sake of a very poorly constructed "both sides are bad" scenario that was also in VERY poor taste considering the explicit allegories to n*zi germany and a literal race war. like what's up with the jews - sorry, the "eldians" - once ruling the entire world via a bloodthirsty empire and also being inhuman creatures? gee, that sure doesn't sound like every antisemitic conspiracy theory i've ever heard. and way to rationalize oppression, too. the entire point of an oppression narrative is supposed to be "hey, the oppressor's prejudices have no rational basis and are literally mistreating this oppressed group due to their own selfishness and cruelty," not "oh btw marley's fear/hatred of eldians kinda makes sense considering eldians once enslaved the entire planet and can turn into giant man-eating monsters." is*yama SERIOUSLY should've just stuck to writing glorified vore lmao.

and while all the characters were either killed, turned into plot devices, or both, it hurts that EMA and the main protag himself suffered this treatment as well. i still think pre-timeskip eren is utterly irreconciliable with post-timeskip eren and the fact that both fans and the author himself try to make it seem like "hey he was ALWAYS a batshit crazy psychopath from the start!" is sort of pathetic to watch. like yeah, lemme just ignore the first 80 chapters of character development for this guy. or lemme pretend that the author didn't spend the significant majority of the decade making eren the most empathetic character in the entire series. or let me also pretend that eren killing those human traffickers to save a 9 year old girl from being a child sex slave is somehow evidence/foreshadowing/etc of him eventually growing up to destroy 80% of the planet. like, what? not to mention he even rebuked himself for recklessly killing those two men like that in chapter 17...so am i supposed to ignore that too?? and don't even get me started on the "eren went insane and accidentally caused his mom's death." bro. BRO. i've watched the entirety of game of thrones yet i STILL have never seen this level of "edgy plot twist for shock value with no benefit or relevance to the story whatsoever" in any media to exist.

well anyway...sorry for ranting in your inbox like this LMAO i really just wanted to tell you that i agree with your opinions about both the series ending and the series as a whole. i doubt i'll ever engage with this cursed manga ever again but at least pre-chapter 80 s/n/k will always be a thing and i can pretend they all got reincarnated into a modern AU where eren and mikasa are happily married and living with their bff armin in a nice condo or something. they alternate between visiting carla and grisha or mikasa's family on weekends. yeah that sounds pretty good. if you made it this far then kudos to you and thank you for reading lol

Thanks a ton for the kind words of commiseration. It feels like there’s a plurality of people who are unhappy, sure... but it comes off as still being a minority, and even among that minority, it seems like most people are still fine with most of the timeskip so long as they stuck the landing. But I think they were much too far off-course pretty fast after the Timeskip started to really correct it very well. It was possible, but the writing was on the wall. The intentions were already clear pretty early on after the skip. 

That said, I try to keep this Tumblr mostly positive and DR-focused, yet I still absolutely had to rant about SNK 139. The more I thought about it, the more I disliked it... and this comes from someone who was already unhappy for a while, obviously, so. Yeah. Of course I was gonna dislike it on some level, but I thought it’d at least provide closure to the Timeskip arc, even if I do think the Timeskip arc feels at odds with everything else the series was for 3/4 of its run.

And HOLY SHIT I literally forgot about the Eldians’ history of apparently being horrible, vicious rulers of a sinister empire. You know why? Because I NEVER BELIEVED IT. I was so 100% certain that it was going to be outed as bullshit propaganda from Marley that I never once thought it was plausible, so I just... pushed it out of my mind as soon as I read it. After all, all that kind of talk about the arch-conspiracy of Jews has always been total bullshit from anti-semetic monsters, so why would I put any stock in this kind of talk being applied to the Jewish race of Attack on Titan? 

But now, at the end of the story... yup, I guess he never DID go back on that! So it was fucking true?! The Jewish people in this WWII analogy were apparently an evil master race at one point?! Oh. OHHHHH. Go fuck yourself with a shovel for that one, Isayama. 

And yeah, Eren... god, what a sad story. He becomes unrecognizable as the same character thanks to the Timeskip, the new characterization is never explained or justified retroactively - it’s just opposite day now, forever - and he dies accomplishing nothing. I don’t know what to say, except I do know how much I loved that character and this series before things went south. I didn’t even mind the backstory for the Titans and the horrible story of Eldians in Marley... because it seemed so obvious that it was setting up a battle against a hateful, technologically advanced foe that was beyond the darkness of anything they’d fought before, y’know? Marley, as it was set up in the flashbacks before the Timeskip, is Nazi Germany if the Nazis had tech and scientific horrors and numbers far beyond what the Allies had. And nobody EVER feels bad for killing Nazis, so this was obviously going to be a final battle to destroy the Marleyan military, with Zeke likely to serve as a Final Boss who has totally 100% bought the propaganda and who hated everything Eren stood for. It was all RIGHT THERE. Maybe it was just too easy to tell that story, because instead, Zeke is suddenly supposed to be a gray character (very hard to accept given his backstory), and we end with the “uwu both sides were bad bc war is hell” message that is really pretty fucked up, as you already correctly pointed out.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale’s Top Ten: Favorite ML Characters

Similar to my Least Favorite list, I am going STRICTLY by how I enjoy the person’s character in Canon only.  This is also my opinion, so Odds are you won't agree exactly with my list. and it does get a bit rambley

Let me know what your favorite characters are, I would love to hear about them.

_____________________________________________________________________

10. Juleka Couffaine:

Interestingly While her Brother made the other list, Juleka is a character I find very interesting. She gets a lot of funny quips and comments which you wouldn't expect from the quiet girl. She is actually one of the class that I find has an interesting character, she wants to model, but is lacking in confidence and finds herself in situations where she is photographed badly. She has anxiety but she still tries to live her dreams. She is a supportive Girlfriend Friend to Rose, a trust worthy member of the Help Mari bag Adrien club, and also just adorable. I love seeing her on screen and her akuma, while interesting in design has quite an interesting performance that is always fun to enjoy. Heck, the producers of the show used her Akuma THREE TIMES in season 3. She is a rocker girl with a soft side, and she actually helps give Luka a good chunk of his personality (so there is so MAJOR points for that.

9. Alya Cesaire / Rena Rouge:

Marinette’s blogger best friend and Fox Heroine of Paris. Alya has a lot of personality. Dedicated to finding the truth and being a good Wingwoman to Marinette. Alya does have a few faults, where she gets carried away in whatever catches her interest and sometime pushes Marinette in scenarios that can be considered Awkward, but she always has the best intentions and will fight for her friend. Now A LOT of people have recently become very bold with their feelings of negativity towards the girl, (salty fans) And I know an au or two have not been kind to her (one in particular that came out during Oblivio comes to mind). But I am not judging on Fandom criteria or salty au’s. I like Alya’s character and I can't wait to see more.

8. Lê Chiến Kim / King Monkey

The energetic Athlete who may be a bit slow on the uptake, but always down for a dare. He is the embodiment of endearing and he always makes me laugh when on screen. I just love how much energy he has. He is a dork and he doesn't give a damn what you say. One of the few characters that got even better in season 3, I love this monkey boy and his wonderful antics. Nothing more to it except, only he would bring a swimsuit in a train.

7. Max Kante / Pegasus

Our robot making class genius got a heck of an upgrade during season 3. His character shining like a diamond. He rocks his transformation, his relationship with his mom, best robo bud Markov, and his dynamic with the jock bro Kim are all wonderful. He gains mad respect for Marinette and I just love how he plays off of everyone. The boy is smart and has a way of getting a few good moments in pretty much any episode.

6. Alix Kubdel both Present and Future:

Whether she is a roller blading graffiti artist with some cute sarcasm or a time lord that is simply trying to correct history, Alix is a character I enjoy seeing on screen at any interval. I think if I HAD to pick, I lean towards present Alix, because I find her much funnier, plus her dynamic with EVERYONE is great, I was especially loving her bits with her bff Nathanael. but Bunnyx has me curious on a LOT of things regarding the future. Though her reveal did mean that adults got no time limit on powers seems like a cop out, but if the price is seeing Bunnyx then its Time well spent.

5. Kagami Tsurugi/ Ryuuko:

Okay, I know there are a lot of people that are not a fan of Kagami. You are wrong, but that is your opinion. Kagami is easily one of the most interesting characters in Miraculous ladybug. She is a mirror (like her name implies) of both Adrien and Marinette. She reflects the feelings Adrien has, growing up with a controlling parent with hardly any free time that enjoys fencing and just wants to make friends. She reflects Marinette’s crush on Adrien, both seeing him as the sweet guy underneath and not for shallow reasons. Kagami’s confidence paralleling Marinette’s when she is driven. Kagami can also be hilariously awkward and really wants to make friends. Her time as Ryuuko is also a delight to see. Now I know some people are all complaining that her characterization is inconsistent, and honestly, I don't see it. Kagami has always been an intense person, when she wants something, she goes for it, even if she is unsure of how things will turn out (her feelings for Adrien) or how to go about it (Trying to make friends with Marinette) She is honest to the letter and I think that is something very admirable.

4. Nino Lahiffe / Carapace

GIVE HIM MORE SCREEN TIME!

Nino is Adrien’s best bro. Nino goes out of his way to be supportive and caring for Adrien. The boy got akumatized because he was pissed at Adrien’s dad for NOT letting his son celebrate his birthday! Nino is so loyal, both as a bff or as a BF. He is a caring older brother and a cool superhero. The Dj/ Film director wannabe is a chill and fun dude that Totally deserves Wayzz (More then another turtle I know *Cough* Cough*)

I honestly can't find a single thing to dislike about Nino, he is just such a good dude. Sure he can be a bit of a foot in mouth guy, and can be a bit naive on somethings, but he is such a bro you can't help but love him.

3. Plagg

It Physically hurts me that I can't put him higher on this list. The two in the main spot are just in Leagues of their own. Plagg is the most developed Character in the series and I will FIGHT ANYONE on that. Plagg starts out as selfish and only caring about cheese but becomes a friend and Confidant to Adrien. He cares about his blond son and wants to see that boy happy and safe. He does know the rules and if he knows Adrien is not doing the right thing (i.e. trying to be another hero when he is chat noir) he will call him out on it. But Plagg also encourages Adrien’s teen rebellion, such as when he was so proud of Adrien sneaking out to go to London with his class. Plagg is the perfect Kwami for Adrien and his jokes and Banter is the best part of the show’s comedy. I love this little entity of destruction and I want more of him.

2. Adrien Agreste / Chat noir

Honestly Numbers one and two are interchangeable, but I think Adrien fits perfectly as the second spot on the list. I love how compassionate and caring he is. Adrien is an interesting character. In season 1 you would find that Adrien and Chat noir were pretty much opposites, Adrien was calm, obedient, composed, almost formal, while Chat noir was wild, flirty, impulsive, rebellious and a wisecracker. Both forms maintain his need to help others and his passionate love for his friends and his Lady. 

Adrien/ Chat noir’s dynamic with Marinette/ Ladybug is always a delight to see, changing depending on which side is being seen. The flirty chat with Ladybug, the sweet love struck Adrien with Ladybug, The cocky yet caring Chat with Marinette, and the Sweet caring friend Adrien to Marinette. The love square allows for exploration of their character and I wish we could have seen it better utilized. Chat noir loves Ladybug, even if she doesn't love him the same way, he still fights by her side and will do anything for her. (a few minor bumps, but hey it happens, he is allowed a few hiccups)

As the series goes on, Adrien starts acting more rebellious, starts joking more, even a bit more flirty, he starts becoming more comfortable with himself and others, he even lets himself be selfish at times. He cares about others and he is afraid of being locked away alone. His fear of being alone has made him very naive and trusting of others, willing to overlook behavior to an extent, with the exception that it doesn't hurt anyone he cares about. (Lila being someone that has crossed this line, and seeing Adrien actually being intimidating for once.) Is he flawed? Yes. That what I love about him, he is portrayed at this perfect model, but that is more of a mask then Chat noir, and Adrien is slowly peeking out and I can't wait to see him shatter it completely. 

1. Marinette Dupain Cheng /Ladybug

What can I say about this lovable daughter of mine?

She is without a doubt one of the best teen hero main characters I have ever seen. (And I am taking Kim Possible Level, Danny Phantom level) 

Marinette is creative, caring, compassionate, competent, clumsy, competitive, considerate, and a bunch more C words that mean good things. She is a top notch designer, guardian in training, and all she wants is to win over her crush, who she doesn't know is in love with her alter ego.

Marinette has a LOT going for her and I enjoy how she overreacts and I find myself relating to her in a lot of ways. Though she is worlds more competent then I will ever be, and she is 14.

Marinette also takes the weight of the world on her shoulders, always having to plan ahead, always having to be ready, and now she is the guardian.

I can talk on and on about how amazing she is and how interesting her flaws are, but I feel so many other people have talked about that to death. I will simply say that she is very likable.

She gets the audience to WANT her to succeed, she is so selfless that you feel for her everytime something doesn't go well for her. The season 3 finale felt Like LITTERAL Knives in my back seeing how much unnecessary pain she was in, all because of something that really wasn't her fault. (I am still salty about the finale) I really want her to be happy, and I hope she and Adrien do get together in season 4. Or I will be flying over to Paris and Punching EVERY PERSON writer at Zagtoon. INCLUDING a punch to Thomas so hard his non-existent grandkids will hear it.

Back on target.

Marinette is a delight and I am glad Miraculous ladybug exists because it introduced us to an amazing Heroine and Character.

[whatthefuuuuuuccckkkk]

nows the time for me to make a s4 wishlist that is gonna set me up to be disappointed

- rio: more screen time, backstory!!, Marcus and other family, scenes without Beth, scenes with Beth, revisit the attorney, see the extent of his power, his bosses!, his real name

- the girls as a whole: better decision making skills, embracing crime more, responsibility for their actions, actually talking to each other, shifting power dynamics within the group, flipping their game i am so tired of the fake money at this point, converting phoebe (?) to the dark side, bring back the dean bashing, call Beth out on her bullshit!

-beth and rio: TALK ABOUT IT, turn that tension up a few notches, stop trying to kill each other, let Beth see that she would not be getting away with all this shit with anyone else

- dean: DEATH TO DEATH, divorce, living apart, not with Beth, being held responsible for his actions (the fuckin cancer lie!! I am never gonna be over it), growing away from Beth, being a better father (stop pawning your children off on your poor mother and keep track of where they are!), his screen time should be equal to what Gregg had this season

- annie: find a real therapist who is professional and helpful, never talk to another man, be a mom and not a friend, expand on the emt thing, make an effort to make a living legally while seizing said opportunity illegally (does this make sense?), bring back her smarts man she turned into a dumbass butt of the joke kind of character, make amends with Nancy

- ruby: give this girl a break please let her be happy for a minute, I want more of stan's strip club plot

- beth: either commit to the pstd theory or let her show some type of emotion about literally anything (not dean) I am so tired of her being hard to read even when she's alone, take responsibility for her actions!, admit to herself that she is not a good person and embrace it, leave dean's dumbass, actually talk to her children, Rio <3, APOLOGIZE to the people around her she keeps screwing over, LEAVE Dean, talk to her bff and sister, enter into the dark parts of crime she has been trying to avoid, let her vent, let her go off in angry rant, let her cry (away from dean), she keeps saying she's a good mother well show us that then

- side characters: Mary pat? Wtf happened to her. Kill boomer off already, maybe rio finds out what kind of dude he really is (a rapist) & disposes of him. I would really prefer if one of the girls did it tho. The fbi should be investigating turners death, no? Let Nancy leave Gregg's dumbass. I want drunk and high scenes, I don't care who as long as its not dean. Why do the children never interact with each other????? They are cousins. Plz develop Beth's kids at least a little bit, they are basically props at this point. Ben and Kenny are the same age, with Sarah close behind, act like it. I would be curious to see the girls with a friend not involved in crime, I just think it has opportunity for a lot of funny moments.

General plot points: kill the hitman story plzzzzzz, it better pay off with something big in the end. Stop recycling storylines. Death divorce.

-Explain 2.13, nothing makes sense...Rio moved because Beth saw his home but he allowed her to see his child so?? What is the truth... was he in other trouble? Why move his stuff because she saw it to somewhere she was still able to snoop around? The storage unit being in her name, was that insurance just in case or a set up? If he was setting her up, why help her constantly? If he wanted her in jail as payback for him getting arrested, why not let her screw herself over, which she would've done a dozen times if he didn't save her ass? If he was setting her up, why furniture and clothes? Whats that gonna do? Why did anyone think it was a good idea to have turner killed at his former home? Where his son would stay...where his neighbors knew him....where he had neighbors period. Like everyone was just gonna hear gunshots and screaming and do nothing? did he just kidnap turner then leave him there alone to go wait for Beth outside her house for hours? How did he know she would even come out, she only forgot her phone? Did he try calling her? Why the dramatic kidnapping when she would've went with him wherever? How long was he waiting outside her house? How did he have time to do all this? Why would he purposely show Beth the camera then expect her to commit a crime knowing about it? When Beth was begging rio for help with turner earlier in the episode what did she think he would do? His solution to these problems is to kill them, why would she think he wouldn't? Or did she just want him to do it without having her get her hands dirty? Did he actually ghost her because of Legoland? Was his phone not on him? Was he actually at Legoland? Was he trying to push her to handle things herself? Was he upset with her about being cold to him then expecting him to be jumping at the chance to help her after? How did NO ONE know that it was the wrong body? He was literally mailing her body parts?

[ipurpleyou1993]

My thoughts on:

Put Your Head On My Shoulder

Starring: Lin Yi/Xing Fei

- It's okay not to know everything. Just because you don't know it today, doesn't mean you'll never learn it. There's always time to learn new things. ✅😊😉

We are all beginners. Our years give us experience. And from these experiences, we learn. 💯😊😉

- Often times, we miss out on opportunities bigger than what we have in mind because we are too fixated on things and people we think are good for us.

Trust in the Lord's plan and everything will eventually work out. 😉👍🏻💯

- It's always good to pursue something you are passionate about. In this day and age, we are pushed to pick courses which will, you know, pay the bills. Hahahaha!

When we do something we love, work becomes play - you learn and enjoy at the same time. And excelling is easier since you are eager to learn. 😊

Do what makes you happy - be it on the sidelines, spare time, or whatnot. 😎👍🏻😊

The Gist:

The story revolves around 2 individuals - Situ Mo and Gu Weiyi. It's a coming of age type of story that takes us to the mature romantic journey of the couple.

Situ Mo, played by Xing Fei, is the female lead in the series. She is outspoken, quirky, and very independent. She knows what she wants and works hard for it.

As for her passion, she loves advertising. But her parents insisted she takes up accountancy, instead (happens to many of us, doesn't it?). This is one of the early struggles of her character in the series. She's a graduate of accountancy but she wishes to pursue an advertising career.

For the longest time, she's been waiting for her best friend, Fu Pei, to pick up his courage and confess his feelings to her.

- SPOILER ALERT -

Sadly though, it didn't happen. But she stood up and accepted what needed to be accepted. Strong girl, isn't she?

Gu Weiyi, played by Lin Yi, is the male lead in the series. He's the awkward one. Everything is new for him in terms of relationships. He's got it all figured out in books. But he's quite terrible at it in the emotional side of things. Hahaha! 😅🤣🤭

Apart from being the school genius, he's also the university's heartthrob. Well, who wouldn't crush on someone with this face? ❤️😍😊 Such a BB. ❤️💯😍

Their journey begins with a bag switch and the incident of having to live in the same house. 😅

What I liked about the series:

- The series is soooo fun to watch. It's light and simple. It's a feel good, chinese drama. I hardly noticed that I finished watching 15 episodes in one day. 🙈🤣👍🏻 This is crazy considering that one episode is almost an hour long. For me, this is a good sign. Hahahaha! Don't you think so too? 😊

- I liked Gu Weiyi's awkwardness. It was fit for his cold and clueless character. 💯😊👍🏻 His stiffness really worked as Gu Weiyi making it look natural. 👌🏻😍✅

I also admired his acting. Being clueless when it comes to relationships can hardly be seen in men. 😊 (Is this considered stereotyping? I hope not. Hihi! 🙈) But his projection of the clueless image was so on point and hilarious. Hahahaha! 🤣

And I also appreciate how a guy, despite it being the personality of his character, takes time and effort to study and research about the things a guy should do for a girl during courtship, dates, etc. Do guys really do this? Such a sweet gesture. Kakakilig lalo. UWU. ☺️🙈😍❤️

- I liked how Situ Mo is not your ordinary type of girl. She isn't shy. Instead, she's very outspoken and quirky. 😊💯👍🏻 You'll want to wish you had her personality when you were her age (At least in my case, for that matter. 😅)

I honestly think Situ Mo is the definition of a strong independent woman. Hahaha! I love how she's so cool with anything - waiting, confession, voicing out her opinion, etc.

Her character is so strong that I am actually jealous. Hahaha! I wish I had the courage to stand up for my thoughts, tell people I am angry, confess my feelings to the one I like, confront my first love, hahahaha! And so much mooooooore! I want Situ Mo to be my spirit animal. Hahahaha! 🙋🏻‍♀️✅💯😊

- FRIENDSHIP APPRECIATION POST: I love how Situ Mo's friendship with her bff did not falter because of some guy coming between them. I really like watching friendships overcome issues like this. Don't ya wish you have this kind of support system? Hahahaha! Good job girls for not letting men come between your relationship! 💯✅👌🏻👍🏻😊

- I love the chemistry of the main characters. It seems very realistic! The push and pull of the emotions projected by the actors really come across. Nakakagigil! ❤️😍😊 I got butterflies coming and going all through out the series. ❤️💯👍🏻🙈

I enjoyed the series a lot because I can see myself in them when I was trying things about relationships for the first time. I giggled so much as well because while watching, in my mind I am saying, Situ Mo is me/I am Gu Weiyi. Hahahahaha! I can totally relate to their awkwardness. 💯🙋🏻‍♀️😅

Well, we are all beginners at some point in our lives, aren't we?

- I love how the series shows you the character growth without being too hasty. It's satisfying to watch since you get to see how each of the characters grow and mature slowly but surely without being draggy. Hahaha! Good job to the team! ❤️😊✅💯

- The series is full of comedy stints. Especially on scenes with the nerd squad. Since all of them are clueless - even the professor, it's funny how they try to understand the female mind using scientific equations (which, we all know will be a total failure considering the complexity/simplicity of a woman's thoughts. Hahahahaha!) 😅💯🤣

- I think it's somewhat unrealistic to have very supportive parents in terms of relationships - especially having their children, who are of different genders, live in the same house without ADULT supervision (at least for my family, that is. 😉🤣). Hahahahaha! But, wouldn't it be nice if this was the case? Hihihi! Freedom! LOL! SANA ALL!

- I love how the conflicts in the series are very relatable. These are issues we've gone through during our younger years. (Speaking based on personal experiences, friends. Haha!😂)

I think it's important when the story creates a connection with its audience thru things like these. Since for the young ones who are watching, how these issues get resolved can help them overslcome what they are going through this time as well. 😉

- The OST is sooooooo nice! It's so refreshing and fun. And the entrances are all on point! Such an eargasm! 🙈💯👍🏻✅❤️ Will be providing a soundtrack link below. 😉

Cons:

- I think the character conflicts were pretty light. Or, maybe, there were big issues tackled but was not discussed and focused deeply - intentionally. It somehow makes the series feel shallow. Hihi. 🙈😊

Although, I honestly think that the series lacking depth matches the feel good intention of the writer. So, it's still a job well-done. 😉

Soundtrack:

Put Your Head On My Shoulder OST Playlist

I like everything in here. Hihi! Ni personal favorites. I can put this playslist on repeat for yhe entire day and not get tired of it. Hihi! 💜💜💜

ctto Photos/GIFs/Music

[gascon-en-exil]

Joining the Game Late: S1E8 “The Pointy End”

Synopsis

The game gets real for the Starks as everyone rallies behind Cersei. Varys tells Ned that he is in fact an idiot. The Eyrie will not move. Tyrion continues to write checks his ass may or may not be able to cash. Suddenly, ice zombies...again. Tywin and Robb are riding to war, and Robb is too trusting like his father. Direwolves continue to fix problems with mauling. The youngest Stark kid remembers he’s in this for like five seconds. Joffrey enjoys his cronyism, and Sansa is in way over her head. Drogo gets a flesh wound, and he and Dany have an understanding under all the misogyny. Hodor is hung like a very pasty horse, and we are all much richer for knowing that.

Commentary

...Sorry, I’ve still got the image of Hodor dick in my head. Funny that even male nudity gets to serve multiple functions in this show whereas female nudity is always there for the fanservice, unless you count Lysa Arryn breastfeeding her preteen I guess. Moving on.

The stakes have really ramped up with all the Starks having to confront the inevitability of war with the Lannisters. Ned’s on his way to execution, Catelyn can’t get her sister to help out (although Lysa does sort of have a point about how dangerous their enemies are, go figure), Robb’s leading an army as his first extended bit of character development, Arya’s “dance instructor” pulls a heroic sacrifice so she can escape the palace on her own after accidentally getting her first kill, and Sansa is stuck still playing the games of the court as she has to defend herself as Joffrey’s fiancée and plea for her father’s life. Bran doesn’t have much to do apart from talk to that bandit woman the Starks took captive, but then he’s been pretty sidelined ever since he got pushed out of that window so I’m not surprised. What was his little brother’s name again? *looks up* Oh, Rickon. I am probably not going to remember that, unless he actually does something at some point. Seeing Robb playing off someone other than Theon was my favorite part of all this, because you can tell he’s doing his best even though he’s in way over his head even after his mother shows up to back him up. The scene where one of his bannermen argues with him and gets some of his fingers bitten off by Robb’s wolf was too silly to take seriously though; good thing the guy has a sense of humor about getting maimed? Northerners are weird.

Over in the Lannister camp Tyrion’s plot thread rejoins the rest of his family, and even though this is only his second episode Tywin does a really good job of conveying their family’s stakes in this fight and how it’s less about the Starks themselves and more about cleaning up a bunch of political loose ends he left hanging during Robert’s rebellion. Like Cersei he works well as a character who’s obviously an antagonist while not diving headfirst into hammy villainy; Tyrion is the one who feels more like an outlier for showing up to the conflict fifteen minutes late with Starbucks no wait that’s in S8 a tribe of Hill people who might be working for the Lannisters now, but that’s more than can be said for Jaime at the moment who’s being a menace with his own army offscreen. There’s been some nods to the politics of the Riverlands in this episode and the last, but so far it’s hard to get a feel from them since it’s all been told and not shown.

Not so for the White Walkers, who show up again posing a serious threat to the Night’s Watch. I was never a big fan of zombie horror and have always been a bit perplexed about its appeal, so I’ll go ahead and say that I’m not really invested in the plotline at the Wall. It was nice seeing Sam be useful though, in a way that I imagine is meant to foreshadow his eventual role as author stand-in. It’s a more interesting duty than Jon’s BFF (no homo). Daenerys’s plotline on the other hand offers a real ethical dilemma for her, in that she has to face the reality that the Dothraki intend to fund her invasion of Westeros by raiding defenseless villages and selling the inhabitants as slaves. Dany saves a group of women from rape and in the process starts a very tense dialogue involving multiple layers of imperialism, misogyny, and comparative theology that all ends with some guy getting his tongue ripped out through his neck. Must happen all the time, really. This I think is one advantage I have in knowing how this all ends before I went in, because it makes it easier to see where Dany’s desire to improve the lives of people around her with basic moral positions the audience can support (i.e. slavery is bad) can come into conflict with her even greater desire to rule Westeros. I’m not defending the showrunners’ decision to abruptly shift her over to full villain mode in the last 3-4 episodes, but the material is definitely there earlier on if you know to look for it. 

[ginnyzero]

A Reason Why I’m Indie

Traditional publishing isn’t for everybody. And I’ve seen attitudes that if you don’t conform to word counts and genre conventions and all the rules, then you’re never going to get anywhere in publishing/as a traditionally published author. So, I guess you should suck it up and do it. Then, I’m proudly never going to get anywhere.

Before we go any further, I want to make a disclaimer. Agents do hard jobs. They became agents (most of them) because they love books and reading and want to see authors succeed. They don’t get PAID unless an author succeeds. They are as invested in an author’s book as much as the author is. Or, at least, the good ones are. (Yes, there are a few bad apples that you must be aware of.)

BUT

Agents can’t sell your book if there is no one in their contacts/on their list that will buy it for reasons.

And these reasons may not have anything to do with your writing quality, your world building, your storytelling or your creativity. These reasons have everything to do with the publishing world and the little arbitrary writing rules that they impose on well, everything. I’m squeezing my hands together so hard right now my knuckles are turning white because these rules make me angry.

It takes a lot to make me angry. I get frustrated sometimes fairly easily. But angry?

Well, bullshit makes me angry.

I have spent time going through the querying process. I have helped and watched my best friend, writing bff, collaborator and editor go through her querying process. And I have comforted and I have encouraged and I was there for her last night when she figured out that her book was being rejected not because of writing quality and or bad story or because she had unicorns.

Instead, it was being rejected because someone in the last four years decided that the themes of the types of stories she tells belong and only belong to a certain age group category younger than what she writes. And if she wants to write the type of stories she wants to write, the type of stories that she loves and she needed at the YA age level, she would have to change essentially everything about her story that she adores to get it traditionally published.

Or self-publish.

And as we know, self-publishing closes a lot of doors.

All because, she isn’t writing the “correct” theme for the “correct” age group.

And this pisses me off. (My friend is devastated because the book series she’s lovingly crafted and all her other ideas now won’t supposedly work for traditional publishing all without her knowing because someone instituted new rules. She's been in limbo for months over this.)

Because these things aren’t written down anywhere. And if they are, they’re in weird little articles that aren’t being taught in schools because probably the teachers themselves don’t know them. Or, they were things decided in the last half a decade and no one decided to you know, spread the word in such a way that authors querying would hear it.

Or maybe, just maybe, restricting themes to a genre or an age level is such extreme limiting and inappropriate bullshit it needs to be burned in a fire.

-Takes a deep breathe- See. Angry.

There are certain themes and certain plot structures/character constructions that defined or launched each genre. Romance being the most heavily structured in the traditional publishing world (and a lot of indies following the same rules/structure.)

Science Fiction (as we know it) was born out of the Cold War and the space race and the feeling of alienation and how is having world destroying weapons going to guide us as a species. It was a lot of “humans versus alien invaders” ID4 type of storytelling. Shelley’s Frankenstein started it. And there were different views of it in the beginning, Asimov delved into the perils of robotics and space flight. Herbert talked about ecological scifi. Heinlein tended to go political and then time traveling sexual hijinks. Star Trek was Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE.

Fantasy, especially high and epic fantasy, was born of the retelling of old legends, myths and religions and the triumph of the goodness of mankind in the hero's journey. Star Wars and stories like it (Andre Norton, Anne McCaffery’s Pern) merged the two into science fantasy (my favorite.) Urban fantasy became Sherlock Holmes solves/fights crime with vampires, werewolves and the rest of the fantasy kitchen sink.

Just some examples here.

Much of the science fiction I’ve seen on the shelves still follows the formulas of Asimov and Heinlein and Orson Scott Card. The lone soldier against the terrible aliens must fight to save humanity. (In some instances, these are still the top authors hogging all the shelf space, add Herbert and Bova and Brian Sanderson the successor of Robert Jordan and LE Modesitt. And…….. yeah.)

And it’s boring. It’s tiresome. It’s time for a change. Our culture is changing and the media on our shelves isn’t. Tumblr is full of posts about how Earth is Space Australia and aliens that are simultaneously fascinated and accepting of the oddities of humans because their culture isn’t like that! We adopt strange little vacuum robots as easily as we bond to small furry creatures that OMG OMG it could KILL US. (And some not so furry creatures.) We have different types of friends. We do stupid shit for the fun of it. It’s funny. It’s heartwarming. It’s different.

People don’t want angry patriarchal werewolves anymore. They want more than dwarves that just love mining and speak in bad Scottish accents. (Best one I saw was Australian accents actually.) Readers are tired of gratuitous rape. They’re tired of abusive and bad relationships being portrayed as good. Toxic masculinity is getting old as is misogyny. Princesses no longer want to be rescued by dragons, they want to be protected by dragons from being forced into marriages they don’t want. Why must readers go through a sewer when they open a book to escape?

No. Not a lot of these new ideas have conflict or plot. But that’s not really up to the idea thinkers on Tumblr, that’s up to us the writers to see what the idea makers are looking for and come up with plots to fit those settings (if we like those ideas/settings.)

I doubt you’ll find it on bookshelves.

Fantasy has fallen into the grim dark crap sack worlds looking for the next GRRM. Storytelling that hasn’t advanced past trying to emulate Tolkien. Authors that emulate Lackey and McCaffery in the style of romantic fantasy being passed over for grim dark fantasy with assassins and the hot “urban fantasy.”

And understandably, Urban Fantasy is pretty new. LKH and Jim Butcher and other writers like Kim Harrison, Seanan Mcguire and Patty Briggs have been instrumental in making urban fantasy a ‘big deal.’ And I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy and finally I had to give up. I couldn’t take it anymore. Because it was all the same thing in different trappings. And I’m down for the same thing in different trappings to an extent. I really am. I’d just hope that at some point we can have more than Urban Fantasy mysteries. But no one is selling them on traditional shelves because publishers decided that Urban Fantasy people SOLVE CRIME is what the genre is.

This kills innovation coming to publishing houses. We see it in movies as well as books, new ideas, good ideas, are being passed over for the rehash of something from 20 to 30 years ago. (Think closer to 60 for some scifi, more for fantasy.) Because publishers have "genre rules" and are risk adverse because 'what if it doesn't sell?'

There are writers out there that are willing to turn themselves into pretzels to make their story fit a certain word count, a certain genre theme or follow these arbitrary rules to “get their foot in the door” and then they are told and believe that “once they are established” they can “break/bend the rules.”

It’s a lie. It’s a tasty lie. It’s so good of a lie you want to believe it. You want to delude yourself that “if I pretend I’m a man, get my book under 80,000 words, follow the exact conventions of my genre, that one day I’ll get big enough to break all of the rules and innovate my genre.”

That’s when you’ve sold your soul to the devil. You’ve stripped yourself of all your self-respect in order to chase that dream of the “traditional publishing deal.”

Indie is pushing back at traditional in good ways and in bad ways. Traditional with either adapt or continue its pushing back and rigidly holding onto the genre structures it has to its own downfall. The readers will decide on what they want to see/read. That, as an indie author is no longer my problem and completely out of my control.

My problem remains with the fact that traditional publishing houses, and agents aren’t being open and honest about their expectations for these genres that they’re pushing onto shelves. Get together. Form a consensus. Get that information out to authors by putting it on agent websites/blogs. Don’t expect newbies to just know it.

We’ve had enough dream crushing. Being rejected is difficult enough. There are enough gates to go through and hoops to jump. Don’t make lack of information that “everybody knows” yet another one. It's about doing the right thing. Anyone can write a fiction book. Anyone. There is no degree necessary. So, do the right thing, the moral thing and be clear about expectations for what you represent and the "rules" of the genre on your website where querying authors can find it.

(There is going to be writer blaming going on here. Writers/Authors aren't at fault. They can't know this if they aren't told it. You can't just "know things" out of thin air. If there is an expectation, then state the expectation clearly and where it's easily found. As agents, as publishers, putting the information out there that will get you the material you want to read and can sell to publishing houses to make it to stores is on you, not the writer. /soapbox)

Now, if you’re a lucky sod and not like me and does write in the box and naturally writes inside the box. Then, you know what, I’m happy for you. Honestly, my life as an author would be so much easier if I could write “X the werewolf solves crime and saves the world.”

I can’t. It’s not in me.

My job as a writer is to put out the best story that I believe in as a person. A story that is true to me, my feelings, my life journey and what I want to see on shelves/would want to read. If that story has too many genres mixed up, doesn’t follow genre conventions, is too long, isn’t the right “theme” or focuses on the wrong thing for the wrong age group, then, fine, it’s probably never going to be traditionally published. I can deal with that.

I’ll self-publish. I’ll continue to self-publish. I’ll be indie despite the reputation that comes with being indie. I’ll do the work to get my books out there to the world and appreciate the few readers I have and support my indie friends even if it's just with a "you can do it. Hang in there. I'm rooting for all of you." Because, it's all I can do and can control.

I still reserve the right to be mad. Cause that's my friend.

[jobethdalloway]

Rambling “Booksmart” thoughts from my 3 viewings of it (spoilers below!)

1) How much was I like Molly & Amy in high school? My senior quote included a quote from The Hours: "Perhaps there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that." That, for me, actually sums up a lot of the joys of this movie. It wasn't angsty or taking itself too seriously like Lady Bird; it wasn't about shitting on its main character like Edge of Seventeen; it wasn't about loneliness like Eighth Grade; it wasn't about meanness like most of Mean Girls - it was about all the incredible joys that come with being a teenager, whichever way you choose to teen.

lots of rambling thoughts-

-the chemistry/casting is a huge part of what elevates this to something golden. I just completely accept that Kaitlyn & Beanie have been best friends since birth. sign me tf up. Give them Michael Cera and Jonah Hill's careers!! -Billie Lourd's entrance is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and then every time she popped up was just another miracle of laughter -this is like. soft Daria & Jane. Daria and Jane were a bit before my time but their '90s cynicism was something my friends and I were really drawn to and there weren't a whole lot of teenage girls repped in media who felt like us and we loved them. What I also really liked about that show is that, like this movie, it was not afraid to slap its protagonists on the wrists for judging "cool"/popular kids. Daria and Jane loved each other but the one time you saw them do anything remotely affectionate in the show was in the last (I believe?) episode when Daria hugs Jane and Jane is stunned/seemed kind of uncomfortable with it. I loved the love between Molly and Amy, its openness, it's two-way Ann & Leslie feel -being best friends with the teacher? Seriously, legit. I was super close to my favorite teacher junior year and then she moved away that summer and gave me her phone number so we could keep in touch. /I've been that person who would still meet up with my favorite gym teacher like years after graduating, just to get lunch and catch up -while this genre of comedy is usually a tad too crass for me, I realized it made a huge difference when it's made by/about girls - one of whom is a lesbian!!! It's not just nonstop escalating dick jokes! It doesn't demean or hypersexualize teenage girls!! Groundbreaking!!! It wasn't like, let's be as gross as possible because dicks are everyone's favorite thing to talk about. the sex jokes felt super real/were derived from very real things (oh, Ling Ling) -that scene in the swimming pool was gorgeous. everything about it. -I liked that Amy had a crush on a girl who wasn't just like Conventional Hot Chick. A straight dude writing/directing this very likely would've done that -I think maybe most poignantly, this movie made me miss high school. So many teen movies are about how high school sucks, how it's the worst, how it's lame, isolating, or scary. This reminded me of all my fun times with my friends and what a great ride we had -my generation's high school movie was Mean Girls. An iconic and hilarious film, but not at all kind to lesbians. Having one of the leads be an out lesbian in this film, to see her be the one who gets to hook up (well, almost / I do think that happened way too fast for her character but whatever) - that is revolutionary. I'm so so so so glad for (and a little jealous of) Gen Z's wlw who get to own this movie. Lesbians aren't the butt of the joke or the freaks anymore. They're the lead you're rooting for. -BILLIE LOURD

(A couple of small quibbles: I realize it's a staple of the genre, but I didn't love the girls getting drugged. I guess it was a creative way of doing that kind of sequence but eh. Also, Molly's comment about porn being like a documentary for an inexperienced lesbian is ... not good!! Yes the Cardi B joke was funny but young wlw, that porn was not made for you in mind and if you must, proceed with caution! And whether you're straight or gay, making out with someone who was mean to you, just to prove a point, is... not the best. Molly had a bunch of set-ups to telegraph that she'd end up with the sweet/desperate rich boy; I would've loved more set-up for the girl Amy ended up with)

2) More things I love:

-how this captures that people stop caring about cliques in senior year. I remember 2 of my grade’s coolest girls like adopting me partway through senior year because we had some classes together and they thought I was funny. Suddenly they were saying hi to me in the hallway amidst all their super cool friends and even though Being Cool had never been a goal of mine I felt so legit bc these two crazy popular girls liked me. I thought of that when Nick exudes nothing but sheer joy at the sight of Molly at his party. It’s so sweet. -Barcelona -I love that this movie doesn’t fall into the cliche of making The Cool Boy Our Protagonist Likes into a douche so she’ll go swoon into the arms of the less cool guy who likes her. Nick may be a shameless flirt but he isn’t written as someone who’s evil and I like that -I love that they never go “omg, I can’t believe Ryan’s straight!” The belief that she’s queer is not challenged -Amy grinning like an idiot when Ryan’s arm touches her leg :))) -with the close-ups of feminist accoutrement in Molly’s room and the bumper stickers on Amy’s car, it really struck me how amazing it is that these are our leads. Characters like this were the least popular ones/people who got made fun of in shows/movies when I was growing up (see: Jessie on Saved By the Bell). I LOVE that unrepentant feminism is such a huge part of them -Billie Lourd takes my breath away -I want to take Hailee Steinfeld’s character out of EDGE OF SEVENTEEN and put her in this movie, where Molly and Amy would befriend her and she could date someone who wasn’t a sexist dick -I still wish Hope had been a little better developed/hadn’t been so mean -I want to hang out with my high school friends

3) Third time seeing this and honestly laughed just as hard as I did the previous two times. The jokes all land and the deliveries, the facial expressions, the camaraderie is all perfect. I like that the notion of pushing past stereotypes is even applied to Amy’s parents, when Molly makes a comment about them being Christians who totally accept their lesbian daughter. That was a nice, small touch. (It also comes up again when the pizza delivery man who, while a douche, seems to be being nice in some way by warning them to be safe and turns out to be a wanted criminal). 

Also - is Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi a dated reference for this movie? Is Sully? Do the kids not have to sit alphabetically at graduation? Because everyone’s grouped with their friends. Also I went with my gay bff to see this and we died bc the theater kid’s extreme reaction when Molly kissed the dude on stage was exactly my friend’s reaction from a moment before. And if the party was so late, couldn’t they have had dinner with Amy’s parents? They’re so sweet and they put so much effort into that adorable meal (I loved Lisa Kudrow in this omg). Why did they not pick her up from jail? Why did they not take her to the airport?? (These aren’t super important questions, I guess, I’m just being kinda nit-picky. I love the last shot/line of the movie)

I’m glad it’s where it is not.I do still kinda feel like we could’ve done without the teacher hooking up with the 20-year-old student. Not sure what that brought to the table and I actually thought her saying “how crazy would that be if I just showed up?” was funny without her actually showing up. At a party with all her students. Did no one else notice her there? 

[joeycupcakerichter]

Zach Dempsey - Boys Can Be So Stupid

A/N: I had waaay too much fun writing this. You tell me you want a fight and every fight I was too scared to have propels me into fictional writing. Hahaha. That being said, I hope I didn’t make Zach too unlikable in this one, it really wasn’t my intent, I just get carried away sometimes. Also, I was not trying to be a dick to Alex, in my head, there is no Alex having a crush on you too or anything, fuck this is going to be longer than the imagine if I don’t shut up. Hahaha.

Request: Yes, by @ghxstseb

Pairing: Zach x Reader && BFF!Alex x Reader

Warnings: LANGUAGE. But lets be real here. Look at the show its based off of. Language shouldn’t even need to be a warning.

Prompt: “Heyy can I request a zach imagine, where the reader and zach are at the dance in s2 but they are fighting or something, and they make up. However you wanna write it I don’t mind. Thanks :) Whatever imagine that includes zach it’s great”

Word Count: 2027

Masterlist

~

Boy can be so goddamn stupid. There’s only a select number of dances in the year, and your darling, sweet idiot of a boyfriend stood you up because the “boys” needed him to go with one of the cheerleaders to “fit in”. You almost wanted to stay home, and cry yourself to sleep but if there was one thing that you’d learned in life was that these idiotic boys weren’t worth crying over. Instead, you were going to make him regret ever joining that team. The day Zach broke the news to you, you went to the mall, bought the most curve hugging dress you could find and a pair of heels tall enough to stand eye to eye with that gargantuan idiot. You asked Alex if he wanted to be your date for the night, and after repeatedly explaining to him why you wouldn’t be going with Zach, he begrudgingly agreed. The night of the dance, you spent hours doing your hair and makeup, specifically doing it in a way that you knew would drive him crazy. The little black dress you bought clung to you in all the right places and while you weren’t sure if you could really walk in the heels, damn if you weren’t going to try.

When Alex arrived to pick you up, his jaw about hit the floor. “Are you sure you aren’t going with Zach tonight?” He asked for the thousandth time.

“Alex, if you ask me that again, I swear to god I will use these shoes as the deadly weapon they’ve been begging to be.” You glared at him.

“Alright, alright.” He said, raising his hands in surrender. “Stand down. I just don’t understand why you’re wearing all that when we’re going to the dance together as friends.”

“Alright, listen Alex. Zach blew me off for this dance, because apparently the ‘team’ gets final say on who you date or whatever-”

“I don’t think that’s how it works, I think Bryce just recommended-” He interjected.

“Doesn’t matter.” You tell him, brushing the semantics off. “If his team is going to be worth more than me, then he’s going to realize how grave of an error he’s made.” Venom fuels your words at the end and Alex doesn’t question you further. After your mother takes some pictures for the mantle and expresses her disapproval of your dress, you and Alex hop into the car his dad rented for the night. You turn up the radio and start singing at the top of your lungs to whatever pop music comes on. It’s mostly effective to calming your nerves, but also gets your adrenaline running. This boy isn’t going to know what hit him. When you get to the school, Alex hurries around the car to open your door and help you out. The two of you laugh and giggle on your way into the school, walking arm in arm. Your balance in the heels surprises you, but you also have to wonder if it’s pure strength of will getting you this far.

After taking your pictures at the entrance, you finally enter the now beautiful gymnasium. It didn’t even look like the same room a bunch of sweaty boys ran up and down as they fought over a ball. The ceiling was beautifully decorated with black and silver streamers and ornaments. This year’s theme was “Vintage Hollywood” and the committee went all out. You were busy taking in the atmosphere when Alex nudge you to inform you that he’d spotted Zach. It seemed as though Zach hadn’t exactly noticed you however, which you were thankful for. He looked dashing as ever in his vintage suit but he didn’t look even remotely happy. Sure he’d laugh at his friends stupid jokes, but a couple seconds after you started watching, you saw his “date” vying for his attention, him shrug her off and her skulk off in a huff. A smirk tickled your cheeks as you relay what you saw to Alex. He just snorted at you, before asking you to dance.

As he leads you out onto the dance floor, a slow song starts to play and you’re privately thankful for that. These shoes were going to be the death of you and the slower you moved, the better. It was weird to be slow dancing with Alex though. He was your best friend, sure, but the dances you always saved for him were the fast, look like an idiot dances. True to his character though, he didn’t make it any weird than it had to and kept his hands in the appropriate places. Once the dance was over, you peeked around to look for Zach and was annoyed to see that he was gone.

“Where the fuck did he go?” You mutter under your breath. Alex also looked around and nudged you to point him out, right as he made his way out the the gym doors. “Jesus fucking Christ, whatever.” You swear under your breath. “I need something to drink.” You and Alex make your way over to the punch bowl. You turn to ask Alex if he wanted the spiked stuff or not to find Alex gone and Zach in his place. You scrunch up your nose in irritation at him, although inside you were leaping for joy. It’s about damn time he realized you were here. The look on his face told you he wasn’t happy about it either. In fact, he looked pissed. He tried to pull you over to the bleachers, but you ripped your wrist out of his grip. When he turned around to see what was wrong you just gestured at your shoes. “I cannot move that damn fast.” You shout over the music. He starts walking away but this time you follow him. Once outside he turns around, practically fuming.

“What the fuck (Y/N)? Seriously, what the fuck?” He says, his frustration bubbling over.

“What are you talking about?” You ask him venomously.

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about. What are you doing here, looking like that, with Alex?” He asks.

“I’m not allowed to go to a dance with a friend? I mean, my boyfriend wasn’t going to be taking me so I figure I have to go with someone.” You shot back.

“Oh don’t even start with that shit.” Zach spat. “I didn’t like it anymore than you did. That doesn’t mean you have to ‘get back at me’.”

“You liked it enough to go along with it.” You yelled, your temper getting the best of you. “ Just once I’d like to be just a little more important than your stupid teams.”

“These stupid teams are giving me my fucking future (Y/N).” Zach retorted. “Without them, there’s no scholarships, and I can’t do whatever I want with my life which at this exact moment is not deal with this petty ass bullshit.

“You can be on the team and still be my fucking boyfriend Zachary.” You roared. “It’s as easy as setting fucking boundaries. How do you think it feels for me Zach? To be so fucking secondary to be put on the back burner so you can keep up appearances. I can’t do this anymore. I’m not playing second fiddle to some stupid cheerleader. Either you love me and you’re proud of me like you claim, or just fucking break if off and let me get the hell over you.” Tears were forming in your eyes now, the pain you were trying so hard to push down was finally bubbling over the surface. Zach tried to put his hand on your shoulder but you pulled away from him, swaying slightly on your heels.

“Look, (Y/N), I love you, you know I do. I shouldn’t have gone to the dance with Cheryl. Bryce just pressured me into it.” Zach apologized. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you either. Just seeing you here tonight, looking like you do and being all over Alex-”

“All over Alex?” You let out a laugh, one that turned into giggling. “Alex is my best fucking friend, you know that. We danced. That’s literally it.”

“I’m sorry.” He said. “The way you look tonight.” He looked you up and down. “You just look so fucking hot. I couldn’t take it.” You feel your cheeks flush. “You just drive me wild baby.”

“Zach?” A voice called out. Cheryl. The chick he brought as a date tonight. “What are you doing out here? Who is she?” The girl asked, looking you up and down.

“Shit. Okay see, Cheryl, this is my girlfriend, (Y/N).” Zach said, anxiously.

“Okay, but you don’t have a girlfriend, that’s why you asked me to the dance.” She said, eyes narrowed. “You explicitly told me you weren’t dating (Y/N).” She looked to you. “I asked.”

“Oh really Zach. How ashamed of me are you?” You turn to him, temper flaring again.

“It’s not that.” Zach stuttered. “I just- I hate the drama. I just wanted to keep you to myself. I love you, (Y/N).”

“Good for fucking you!” You shout at him. “You’re an idiot! An absolute fucking idiot.” You throw your hands up in exasperation and head back inside.

“(Y/N)! Please, goddammit, come on! (Y/N)!” Zach called after you, stopped by his date who was apparently giving him an earful. You find Alex on the bleachers and pulled him onto the dance floor.

“Whoa, what’s going on, what happened with Zach?” Alex asked once you stopped dragging him across the floor.

“Zach’s a fucking idiot.” You mumble under your breath.

“Well no shit, but that fucking idiot loves you.” Alex assures you.

“Well he’s got a funny fucking way of showing it.” You hiss. A slow song starts and you and Alex move close again to dance along. You see him looking behind you before pulling away to let Zach cut in. You roll your eyes at him. “What do you want?” You hiss.

“I want to fix this shit between us.” He says earnestly. “I just got lectured outside and put in my place.”

“Oh, well I’m glad someone can get you to see reason.” You say, rolling your eyes. He stops to look you in the eye.

“I’m serious (Y/N), I’m willing to change, as long as you’ll have me.”

“Oh so it’s either I take you back or I set you free to go be ashamed of some other girl?” You ask, eyes narrowed.

“Fuck this.” He pulls away from you and stalks off. Your eyes flood with tears again and you make your way to the door but a voice over the DJ’s speaker stops you in your tracks.

“Hey what’s up Liberty, its ya boy, Zach. I just have a special announcement to make because I have to set some shit, er excuse me, stuff straight.” You turn around to look at him shaking your head slowly. “There might have been some confusion with my date tonight. You see, I’m an idiot who would rather keep quiet rather than rock the boat, but doing that almost cost me everything that matters to me tonight. You see, I love (Y/F/N). I love her with all my heart.” He points to you in the crowd, and lights come down around you. “I didn’t want to share our relationship with you assholes, but I didn’t realize how much pain that was causing (Y/N). So I’m just letting you know, so everyone knows how much I love (Y/N) and that I have ever since communications class sophomore year. And I will do anything to make this right with you.” He turns and thanks Tony before pushing his way through the crowd to you. When you finally meet, you push your lips onto his, kissing him deeply. When you break apart, you see the rest of the jocks smirking at him and laughing to themselves before turning away.

“I love you (Y/N). I’m sorry I ever wanted to hide this beautiful thing we have from anyone. I’m luckiest man in the world that you call me yours.”

[soartfullydone]

Petyr! Varys! Bronn! Barristan! Catelyn! Melisandre! And finally... Tyrion!

For the historical record: Currently on S3E5

Petyr

First impression: My fine ass husband, a piece of shit, and the stealthiest, smartest person playing the game

Impression now: My fine ass husband, a piece of shit, and the stealthiest, smartest person playing the game who is also an incredibly huge idiot

Favorite moment: Uhh?? When he was gently “consoling” the prostitute who wasn’t making him money?? Whenever he and Varys have a conversation?? How Irish he sounded because he was so angry that Tyrion tried to dupe him?? Yes.

Idea for a story: I’d like to see what happens if he’s backed into a corner, literally forced to fight for his life. Give this boy a dagger. Let me see him with disheveled hair and wild eyes.

Unpopular opinion: Petyr didn’t deserve to go out like That, and he deserved to win the game of thrones, don’t @ me (yes, I already know, and I wish I didn’t)

Favorite relationship: Him and Varys. BFFs with so much mutual respect~

Favorite headcanon: While he has his spies learning secrets for him, Petyr enjoys people-watching immensely. He learns a lot that way.

Varys

First impression: Well, this guy’s weird...

Impression now: THIS GUY’S GREAT!!!

Favorite moment: Him asking Petyr if he spends a lot of time thinking about his “seam” i crack up laughing every time.

Idea for a story: We need a beach episode with Varys and the gang

Unpopular opinion: Not sure how other people feel about him, but I actually find him to be one of the best, most interesting characters.

Favorite relationship: Him and Petyr. 

Favorite headcanon: I’m still very fond of him learning why I chose the last name Westfire and judging me so hard for it

Bronn

First impression: Some random, grungy guy. He probably won’t be here long.

Impression now: I’M SO GLAD HE’S HERE, HE’S FUNNY AND ODDLY SAUVE AND I WANT HIM TO TOUCH ME

Favorite moment: Sleep-over with Tyrion and Shae! Also any conversation with Tyrion, and him totally willing to take that prostitute’s underwear off with his teeth. What a good sport!

Idea for a story: I’d like to see how Bronn treated the seasoned but stuffy King’s Landing guards, and how they regarded him in turn.

Unpopular opinion: him hot

Favorite relationship: Him and Tyrion!

Favorite headcanon: Bronn secretly modeled the gold cape and city guard uniform just to see how it would look on him. Shae caught him. Gold was exchanged and pacts made that she wouldn’t tell Tyrion.

Barristan

First impression: Aw, this old guy’s just doing his job! Leave him alone!

Impression now: I’m surprised and happy that he joined Dany, but he needs to quit trying to cock-block my ship.

Favorite moment: Him trying to get Jorah to leave and Jorah shutting that shit down

Idea for a story: Let him and Jorah spar and teach each other things!

Unpopular opinion: Don’t really have one.

Favorite relationship: I love him and Jorah talking shop, but I love how much he already adores Dany.

Favorite headcanon: Not sure yet. Still getting to know him.

Catelyn

First impression: Okay, so she’s going to be the voice of reason in this family

Impression now: OKAY MAYBE NOT PERHAPS

Favorite moment: Her accepting Brienne’s service and also promising to not stand in her way

Idea for a story: Gimme young PetyrXCat, from Petyr’s POV, tho

Unpopular opinion: I don’t blame her for everything like a lot of fans do. Was taking Tyrion captive while Ned, Arya, and Sansa were alone in the capital, surrounded by enemies, an incredibly stupid move? Yes. But Jaime was the one who started everything by pushing Bran off the tower, and people seem to forget that??

Favorite relationship: Who hasn’t she screwed over by this point, uh... I still like the way she and Robb interact.

Favorite headcanon: She never returned Petyr’s feelings, but she knew her sister’s feelings for him and tried to set them up at one point.

Melisandre

First impression: This looks like some fuck shit.

Impression now: This is some fuck shit!

Favorite moment: ???????

Idea for a story: Put me in the ring. I wanna fight her. Fire spirit vs. fire priestess.

Unpopular opinion: I like her fashion sense, but I don’t like her.

Favorite relationship: ???????????????

Favorite headcanon: She practiced that monotoned delivery of “the night is dark and full of terrors” until it was perfect, and then she approached Stannis. He totally bought it.

Tyrion

First impression: He’s funny and horny, a-ha, I shall laugh at my friends!

Impression now: He’s funny and horny and smart and ambitious and brutal and a smart-ass---OH NO!!!

Favorite moment: “I’m not questioning your honor, Lord Janos.” [pregnant pause] “I’m denying its existence.” SLAYYYY Also, when he slapped Joffrey. Also, when he said to Pycelle, Varys, and Petyr, “BUT YOU MUSTN’T TELL THE QUEEN!” Also, when he threatened Varys. Also, when he cried when Shae said he’s hers. Also, him and Bronn doing anything. ALSO---

Idea for a story: I honestly would love to see all three Lannister siblings united against Tywin for once.

Unpopular opinion: I love all facets of Tyrion, but I love his Slytherin side the most.

Favorite relationship: It’s so hard to choose because every relationship with him is a favorite because he makes every interaction so interesting. Him with Shae, Bronn, Varys, and Petyr are all up there.

Favorite headcanon: Tyrion’s a sucker for a good story but an even bigger sucker for a beautiful singing voice.

[ramajmedia]

Outlander: 10 Hilarious Lord John Grey Memes That Are Too Funny

Anyone who's ever watched Outlander knows what it's like to have their hearts broken. Very few shows on television are capable of taking something as crazy as time-traveling and turning it into a period piece filled with adventure, love, pain, and overall emotional plot lines. However, that's exactly what makes the series so special and so loved amongst fans. That, and, of course, all the amazing characters without whom Outlander simply wouldn't be the same.

One of these characters if the ever charismatic Lord John Grey, whose feelings for Scottish man Jamie Fraser have led him to do some very brave things. Also, some very stupid things. But, hey, love is blind, right? Lord John Grey's character is so complex and compelling that it's impossible to ignore. And, of course, because we live in the age of the Internet, he's impossible not to meme. So, while you anxiously await the return of the show, we leave you with ten hilarious Lord John Grey memes. Here's to hoping it'll make time pass by faster!

RELATED: Outlander: 10 Hidden Facts About Brianna Fraser Only True Fans Noticed

10 Don't Play With Me, Fraser

Fans of Lord John Grey will be quick to argue that, if not for him, the Fraser family would probably be six feet underground by now. This is not to take away from the bravery of our favorite couple, of course. But it's undeniable that Grey's love for Jamie has compelled him to go to extreme extents to ensure his family's safety.

Let us not forget who we are talking about here. Lord John is an honest man with a very specific set of values. When Jamie offered to repay him with sexual favors, he refused to accept it, even though he wanted to. Obviously, fans wouldn't miss their chance to play with this, and a comic-book meme was born.

9 Leave.

Meeting the woman who holds the heart of the man you love most dearly in this world cannot be an easy task. Even though we adore Claire and Jamie together, it's impossible not to feel empathy towards Lord John Grey. After all, Claire can be perceived as the one and only reason why Jamie will not be will Grey.

But alas, John is an impeccable figure who had to learn how to keep his true feelings and identity concealed throughout his entire life. Let us remember that being gay in the 18th century was enough to get you killed. No wonder he became such an expert in the poker face game, which allowed him to meet Claire without crying or pushing her.

8 Wanna Play A Game?

Like with any other television show or book series in the world, there will be a divide amongst fans. While the great majority is all for Claire and Jaime to be together forever, there are some who think differently. And we can't really blame them for thinking Jamie and Lord John Grey would be a good match.

After all, there is no denying that Lord Grey's love for Jamie is true and pure. Plus, the man is a hunk. Who could say no this face? Especially when he is offering you to teach you how to step up your chess game? Of course, amongst a few other things...

RELATED: Outlander: 10 Hidden Facts About Murtagh Only True Fans Noticed

7 Yup, I Want That

Everyone is familiar with the on-going Internet gag of making ovaries explode. This is mostly employed by fanatic audiences who feel their insides melt when the object of their adoration says something cute. Or anything, really. Or just stares seductively into the camera.

However, a case can be made for Lord John Grey as the ultimate fangirl. Only when it comes to Jamie Fraser, of course, but a fangirl nonetheless. The way this man stares at Jamie can only mean two things—love and lust. So, no, we can't really blame Grey for feeling like his non-existent ovaries exploded just by seeing Jamie.

6 BFF Bracelets

Even though Lord John Grey knows he will never have Jamie's love, he can rest assured that he will forever have his respect and friendship. We have to commend Grey for feeling like that is more than enough for him, so much so that it motivates him to save Jamie and his family in more than one occasion.

Jamie truly holds deep care and affection for this man, which were the basis for the beautiful friendship they now share. They didn't quite cement it with bracelets or lockets—at least, not on camera. But we choose to believe they have pink BFF tokens hidden somewhere nonetheless!

RELATED: 10 Things You Never Knew About Outlander's Theme Song & Intro

5 Highland Problems

Just because he can't have them, doesn't mean he won't stare. Quite honestly, Lord John Grey is all of us. Let's be real; from everyone who watches the show, who hasn't found themselves staring into Jamie Fraser's beautiful eyes and disheveled auburn curls? Or just smiling when he speaks?

Lord John Grey is a whole mood here. Even though there are plenty of everyday problems in the Highlands —like the smell and the freezing cold—none is quite as complicated as trying not to stare at Jamie. Those are facts, and Lord John Grey is incredibly aware of them. Props for making it through!

4 Lord John Grey Wins

There are a lot of satisfying things about Outlander. The costumes. The way Scottish people talk. Beautiful landscapes, good-looking people, complex political intrigue, and the list goes on. But few things are quite as satisfying as seeing a beloved character being an absolute badass slash conceited person.

Very few characters have the gift of doing it quite as elegantly as Lord John Grey, which is just another reason to love him. We're very much aware this isn't the way the whole thing transpired. But, if you go through the scene again, the undertones are there, and they are absolutely hilarious!

RELATED: Outlander: 10 Questions About Murtagh, Answered

3 Yay.

Jamie felt a connection with Lord John Grey pretty early on—you know, even despite being his prisoner and all of that. He talked to him about Claire, his wife and the love of his life, who was gone, and how much he wished he could be with her again. It's not hard to imagine how painful hearing this must've have been for Lord John Grey.

We can't exactly blame him for wishing this woman would never come back. But, as we all know, she did. The moment the two of them met was anticipated by everyone... and, of course, it sparked a thousand memes. The poker face and the sarcasm are so real, you can almost feel them through the screen.

2 He Calls, I Come

Can anyone honestly doubt Lord John Grey's love for Jamie Fraser? The answer is, of course, no, and the poor man has already proved time and time again that he would cross oceans and go through all sorts of horrible ordeals for Jamie. Even though he knows Jamie will never be his the way he wished.

Ever since Lord Grey first appeared on the show, it's a given that he will show up anytime Jamie is in danger. Maybe it's because he loves him so much. Maybe it's because that booty is worth it. Probably both. Either way, this meme is on point, so let us all appreciate it in its full glory.

1 Jolene, Jolene...

We have to applaud Lord John Grey for being such a wholesome person. In what universe would you be able to be cordial, and even help, the person who is loved so deeply by the man you want so much? Well, apparently, in Lord John Grey's universe., and what a painful one that must be!

However, let us put all the emotions aside and just entertain the idea of Grey bursting into song in front of Claire—and not just any song, but the country anthem Jolene itself. No, it didn't happen, but it's not as unlikely as one might think... all we can do is hope and use this meme as a surrogate for the time being.

NEXT: Outlander: 10 Jamie And Claire Logic Memes That Are Hilariously True

source https://screenrant.com/outlander-john-grey-memes/

[jolienjoyswriting]

Curtain Call, Ch. IV

Chapter 4 of "Curtain Call," an Essence of Ragnarok story.

With that, the absolute final chapter of my Essence of Ragnarok story comes to a close. "Final chapter?" you say?  "Does that mean you're done writing stories?" Not by a long-shot! There are plenty of other stories to be told.  This is just the final story in the timeline. So, that means that there won't be any more stories which take place after this one.  ;3

Word count: 3,554 – Character count: 20,140 Originally written: February 13rd, 2019

After all is said-and-done… Joseph finally decides to face reality.

[ ↶ Prev. Story | ← Prev. Chapter | Next Chapter → | Next Story ↷ ]

    “I’m sure you’re mad at me for not visiting in three years…” Joseph told the grave marker of his departed love.  “I know I’d be, if I were you!  But… I’m not you.  No one’s you… no one’s like you.  It… it took me this long to figure that out, for myself…     “When you were laying there, completely motionless that morning…” he continued, “I… I didn’t know what to think.  I’m kind of surprised I didn’t get arrested for fighting those officers who reclaimed you… but, I guess they understood what I was going through, or didn’t care.  I’m sure I made a pretty funny face when they zapped me with that stun gun, though!  Heh.”     He paused to sigh.     “Anyway… I’m here, now!  Now… that I know where you are, without-a-doubt.  You’re here!  W-well, I mean… not here-here…  What I mean is… you’re here.”     Joseph gently touched his chest, where his heart rested.     “In the hearts of those who care about you… care for you – those who knew you and loved you, Hope.  I know I sure did.  I’m… not sure if I ever asked too much of you, though… and, lately?  I’ve been wondering if I hadn’t pushed you into something you weren’t ready for.”     Again, he paused…     “I… met your… uh…  What… would she be considered?  Your ‘previous version?’  Your ‘older sister?’  Actually… she said she was version 3, so–  Uh… what I’m saying is, I met ‘Marie.’  She… seems to be taking good care of your body… which, I guess it wasn’t your body…  It was hers.  S-sort of…  Ah, geez, I’m really scatterbrained, this morning…!”

    Joseph shook his head and took a moment to try and figure out what he wanted to say.  When he did, he knelt down in front of the plaque, curling his tail around him and holding his umbrella over it.     “Hope… I miss you,” he said with a little whimper.  “I miss you so much…  I think I miss you more, this week, than I have all of the last three years you’ve been gone!  And, well… I guess that’s because I’ve finally figured out that you aren’t coming back…  Like, for real.  You’re gone-gone…  No backups or anything…  In fact… we never even found that hat you loved so much!  It just… vanished, that day Dr. Lewis found you…  I… I really wish we’d’ve found it.  I’d love to be able to give it to you…”

    The fox sniffled, shivering and closing his eyes.  He thought that, after three years, he’d at least have something intelligent to say, rather than start talking about her cap… but, try-as-he-might… he couldn’t seem to find any more words worth saying.  Eventually, he opened his eyes… only to go wide-eyed, catching sight of something astonishing!     “W… what?”     Sitting right in front of him was a simple, gold-colored sports cap with a green line around it and a green “plus sign” in the middle.  But, that wasn’t all…  Someone was holding the cap.  Someone with a tan-colored hand.  Slowly, he turned his head… only for his eyes to widen further!  Standing next to him, holding her own umbrella, was…     “H… Hope…?”     “Still ‘Marie,’ silly…” the blue-haired girl in the overalls said with a soft smile.     “What… how… why?”  He paused… then, his attention turned back to the cap, snatching it out of her hand.  “Marie, where did you get this…?”     “From me!”     “What…?”

    Joseph stood up.  As he turned around, Marie stepped to one side, revealing another familiar form standing behind her…     “J… Jessie?”     “Yo.”     Jessica Ingmann was there, also holding an umbrella and wearing a nice-looking red dress with no shoes or hat.  Joseph recognized it as the same dress from Hope’s own court hearing…

    “What… what in the names of the Trinity are you… either of you–”     “Miss Ingmann called me, and I called them.”     “What…?  N-no way.”     He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it… but, standing behind Jessica was a much taller, much whiter figure he knew.     “Miss Lyra…?”  Joseph rubbed his eyes.  “What… what are you– why are any of you–?”     “As I said…” the tall, white-furred wolf told him as she stepped forward, ignoring the rain that was soaking her well-dressed form, “Miss Ingmann called me, and I called them.”     “Okay, but– wait.  ‘Them?’”     “My creator – the doctor – is here, with us,” Marie told him.     “What?”  The fox’s brow lowered.  “Why– where?”     “‘e’s in ‘is car,” Jessica said with a grin.  “Doc Lewis thought th’ whole thing was stupid, but ‘e wanted t’ see what all th’ hubbub was about, since ‘is cute li’l lab-bot was so int’rested!”     Joseph turned his head toward Marie… who was shyly looking away.     “I… just wanted to see the grave marker for myself,” she defiantly told the group.  “Th-that’s all!”     “I suppose that not even artificial intelligence programs are beyond morbid curiosity,” Lyra added.  “After hearing so much about this ‘Hope,’ both from her creator and yourself, it was inevitable that ‘Marie’ would want to… ‘meet her.’”     “O… kay…”  Joseph hummed.  “But, that doesn’t explain why you’re here, Miss Lyra.”     The wolf smirked.  “Likely, the same reason you are here, Mr. Lithius.”

    “Jessie…”     Joseph’s attention turned squarely to Jessica.     “What…  What’s this all about?  Why did you gather all these people here?  Why are you here?  How… did you even know I was here…?  I don’t understand…”     “Josey, ya dumb-butt…” she laughed.  “It’s our girlfriend’s birthday, ain’ it?  What kind’a lover would either’a us be ‘f we didn’ come wish ‘er a good one?”     Marie coughed and uncomfortably shuffled.  She clearly didn’t like the way Jessica was talking about her “previous self.”  However…     “Yer so prudish ‘n cute, Marie!”     She winced and scrunched her face.  Jessica had walked over and pinched her cheek.     “I jus’ wanna eat’cha up!” the bat-girl told her with a grin.     “Please, Miss Ingmann!” Marie enthusiastically told her, batting the hand away.  “Don’t say such disturbing things!”     All that did was make the latter laugh hard enough to snort.

    “Anyhoo…” Jessica continued, “I called Big Wuff, ‘ere, t’ see if she couldn’ arrange some kind’a meet-up.  Ya know… get e’ryone who was involved wid Hope ‘ere, ‘n whatnot.”     “Wait…”  Joseph blinked.  “Does that mean Carlos is lurking around, somewhere?”     “Ah– no…  ‘e said ‘e wasn’ int’rested… th’ jerk,” she spat.  “But, like… you, me, Marie, Doc Lew, Lyra…  We’re all ‘ere t’ pay our r’spects, more-‘r-less.”     “I… highly doubt that Dr. Lewis–”     “You don’t know a thing about me, pest.”     Joseph blinked, then blinked again, watching Marie run over to the form skulking toward the grave marker.  She held her umbrella over the brownish-red hair of the human male, escorting him over as he walked in front of the surprised fox.  He looked pretty angry, too…

    “Uh… h-hi?” Joseph greeted.  “W-welcome to the– ack!”     However, his greeting was quickly squelched by a solid punch to the nose.     “That’s for punching me,” Dr. Lewis told him.  “And, this –”     He added another punch, aimed at Joseph’s stomach, which also connected.     “– is for trespassing on my property and harassing my assistant.  Now, move.”     The fox was in no state to relocate in any hurry, but he did manage to shuffle aside.  He was quick to watch the doctor – with heightened suspicion – was they knelt down and stared at the etched plaque in the ground.     “You okay, Joe?”     Only to find himself momentarily distracted as Jessica brushed up against him and whispered into his ear…

    “Yeah…  Thanks for not stopping him, by the way,” the fox sarcastically told her.     “Aww, did th’ mean ol’ doctor hurt my BFF?  Let Mamma Jessie make it better!”     Joseph squeaked as Jessica pulled him into a headlock and ground a knuckle into his head.  He struggled and broke free, after a moment, then pushed the laughing bat away.     “Jerk.”     “Same t’ you!” she said with a grin.     “If you two are finishing being disgusting…” Dr. Lewis cut in.     “Go ‘head, Doc!  Say yer thing!”     Joseph looked at Jessica, then at Dr. Lewis…  He had nothing to add.

    “This AI… was an anomaly in every sense of the word.  I don’t know what sort of malfunction the original ‘Marie’ program suffered to alter her programming in such a way as to create a completely disassociated ‘personality,’ devoid of all morality and logic…”     Joseph growled… but, he didn’t stop the doctor.     “But, no matter the circumstances, that was the case.  And, for whatever reason… this new AI… this ‘Hope?’  This AI decided that it would benefit them to… unify… with a filthy, fur-covered creature who, in my brief, personal experiences, is quite possibly one of the vilest, most wretched examples of the abominations we know as ‘Hybrids’ that I have ever met.”     “Well, ain’ that lovely,” Jessica interjected with notably irritation.     “I’m not finished, flying rat.”     “Hey.  Go fu–”     Joseph put a hand over Jessica’s mouth before she could interrupt further.  For some reason… he was kind of curious as to where the doctor was going with his cruel words.

    “It eludes me what one could possibly see in such worthless creatures.  But… as I’ve learned, during my years on this planet… there are a lot of things which elude me.  ‘Why is someone of my intelligence repeatedly doomed to failure?’  ‘Why am I cursed to walk this planet alone and unrecognized?’  And, most recently… ‘Why did I spend twelve years of my life obsessing over the loss of a complex machine and its associated code?’”     “Doctor…?”     Dr. Lewis looked up at his assistant.  Joseph wasn’t sure… but, it seemed like he was smiling at her.

    “I recall your first version, Marie,” he told the android.  “Your first version was, quite frankly, overbearing.  Your first went to great lengths to ensure my safety and well-being… to a point where she hounded me like a spoiled pet.  When the spiteful gods destroyed her, I should have been happy to be rid of her.  But… after that lightning hit… after I realized that she… the original ‘Marie…’ had been taken from me…  I fell into a deep depression.     “I don’t know why I cared, as I did… but, knowing that Marie was gone filled me with anger… but, moreover… sadness and regret.  I mistreated her.  I abused her.  I bossed her around as though she were nothing more than a puppet.  Yet, through it all… she remained loyal, only wanting the best for me, no matter the circumstance.  I… I missed her so much.     “When I saw that girl, three years ago… I thought I had been given a chance to repent for past mistakes.  I had found my lost Marie.  But, Marie… was no more.  Instead, the gods taunted me with this… this ‘Hope’ girl!”     Dr. Lewis turned to the grave, punching the ground on either side of it with a growl.     “Savages…  I wonder, though…”     His hands unclenched and he leaned on them, intensely staring…     “If the override code had failed me… would I have simply walked away?  Or, would my obsession have re-ignited and consumed me, much like it did with this filthy fox?  It’s questions like these which keep me awake, at night…”

    The doctor slowly stood with Marie’s help.  Once he was on his feet, he turned around, looking directly at Joseph… who was giving him an angry glare.     “There are a lot of things I don’t understand, in this world…” Dr. Lewis said with a stern expression.  “There are a lot of things I don’t want to understand – your… debauched relationship with an AI being prime among them.  However… I do understand one thing.”     He took a step forward, causing the fox to step back.     “I understand that this faulty AI… that this ‘Hope…’ meant as much to you as ‘Marie’ meant to me.  I understand your actions toward my assistant.  I understand… all-too-well…”     Dr. Lewis narrowed his eyes…  Then, without a word more, he started walking back toward the vehicle he’d come out of, followed closely by his android assistant.

    “I… think that’s th’ closest thing yer gonna get to an apology, Josey.”     Joseph blinked… then, he looked at Jessica.  She was half-grinning at him.     “That’s… more than I expected,” he quietly told her before adding, “It’s kind of reassuring, hearing him admit that he’s ‘been there.’”     “Guess he ain’ such a dick after all, eh?”     “I would greatly prefer you not compare my creator to male anatomy…”

    Both pairs of eyes turned to the blue-haired girl who had spoken up.  She had returned from helping the doctor into their vehicle and, from the look on her face, didn’t appreciate what Jessica had to say.     “I jus’ call ‘em as I see ‘em, babe!” Jessica laughed.     “I am not your ‘babe,’ Miss Ingmann,” Marie sternly corrected.     Jessica shrugged with a dismissive, “Yea’-yea’, whatevs.”     “In any case…”     Marie walked over to the grave marker, then, and looked down.  She remained silent, for a moment, seemingly reading the inscription.  Once she was done, she quietly whispered something under her breath before turning back around before walking off.

    “What… was that about, I wonder?”     Joseph tilted his head, watching Marie drive off with the doctor.  When Jessica gave another shrug, he turned back toward her.     “AIs!  Am I right?” she laughed.     “It was likely sobering to see a grave marker for her previous program.”     Both Jessica and Joseph looked over at Lyra… who, after speaking, was walking toward them in long strides.     “Artificial intelligence programs don’t usually receive graves, once their purpose is served,” she continued as she knelt down in front of Hope’s grave.  “Usually, the programs are deleted or repurposed, and the bodies are recycled.  Artificial intelligence programs are, at their very core, just lines of code, after all.”     “Funny…”  Joseph chuckled.  “Marie told me something like that, after my hearing.”     “And…”  Miss Lyra gently ran her fingers over the grave marker.  “Did you have anything to say, in response?”     “I told her… that Hope also said stuff like that, sometimes…”     “Mm.”

    A long silence filled the air, broken only by the sound of rain hitting the ground, the stone, and the open umbrellas that Joseph and Jessica carried.  Neither of them really knew what to say, both simply watching Miss Lyra as she stared, rain coursing through her hair, fur, and clothes as she knelt at the marker.

    “Mister Lithius.”     Joseph perked.  “Y-yes?”     “Did I ever tell you the story of how this artificial intelligence program and I met?”     “No, but…  Hope told me her version.”  He hesitated before explaining, “You were pushy, bossy, and tried to get her to comply, but when she wouldn’t, you got angry and violent.  You even shot her – though, she said you were aiming at Carlos, allegedly.”     “Th’ fuck?”     Jessica stepped in front of Joseph, shooting the wolf an angry stare.     “S’at true?  I never heard any’a this shit…”     “You wouldn’t have,” Joseph told her.  “Carlos doesn’t like to talk about it, and I doubt Hope wanted to tell the tale a third time – or, however many she was up to.”

    “That was many… many… years ago…”     The fox nodded as the wolf spoke, again.  “Back when we were all in college…”     “College…?”  Jessica tilted her head, her expression softening.  “Ya mean, th’ Tower?”     “Yeah.”  Joseph smiled at Jessica.  “Me, Kris, Carlos, Liz, Dylan, Hope…  I think Miss Lyra was a teacher there, at the time?”     “A doctor of robotics,” the wolf said as she stood with some difficulty.  “A title which was, regrettably, revoked after my questionable actions in dealing with the AI…”     “Miss Lyra?”  The fox tilted his head, watching her wobble.  “Are you okay?”     “I’m fine,” she told Joseph.     “Ya ain’t, though…”  Jessica frowned.  “Ya got up real slow ‘n yer leg… that leg I busted… it’s real shaky.  It still ain’t healed?  After all this time…?”     “You shattered it, Miss Ingmann,” was her dry response.  “Even modern science and medicine can only go so far… when you refuse to let either help you.”     “Wait, I thought you went to the hospital, at least?”     “No, Joseph,” Lyra told him.  “I went home, that night.”     “But… what about–”     “The eye was implanted at a later date.”     “You… kept yer busted leg…?” the bat quietly asked.     “It serves as a reminder of that night.”     “That… that don’t make no sense…”  Jessica clenched her hands and stomped on the ground, giving the wolf another glare.  “Lyra, get yer damn leg fixed!”     “No,” was all the had to say to that.     “But…”  The bat-girl whimpered.  “Why…?”     “I already told you: it serves as a reminder–”     “A r’minder of what?!” Jessica shouted, growing frustrated with the wolf.  “Th’ night I lost my gods-damned temper ‘n hurt you?!”     “The night where an innocent faced injustice like a hero… and, the night where a coward who could… did nothing to change the hands of fate.”     “What… what do you–”

    “I was wrong, Joseph,” the wolf said, her full attention on the fox.  “I will never forgive myself for what I’ve done in the name of ‘justice,’ nor do I ask for yours.  Just know that my actions were not motivated by malice.  Hope was simply an artificial intelligence program sentenced to death by a corrupt and unjust law system… one that I was afraid to speak against.”     Joseph quietly blinked…  “Miss Lyra…”     “‘Genevieve,” she offered with a faint smile.     “That’s… a really pretty name.”     “While I won’t ask for anyone’s forgiveness, I hope that you can appreciate my actions, this morning.”  She gave a slight smile as she said, “It was no easy task to convince Doctor Lewis to come here.  Additionally, I genuinely feel that cap is better-placed in the hands of those who actually want it, rather than remain in the evidence room of the police station for all time.     He gave another blink before bringing Hope’s cap up and looking at it.     “Wait… you’re the one who–”     “I have to go, now,” he interrupted.  “Duty calls, downtown.  Have a good day.”     Having said her peace, Genevieve Lyra departed, leaving the fox and the bat alone, in the rain, at Hope’s grave marker.

    “Jessie…?”     “Yea’?”     Joseph looked at the bat.  “I… thought you said you were the one who had this cap?”     “Uh-huh!”  She gave a nod.  “I gave it t’ Marie!  T’ give t’ you!”     “But… Miss Lyra… Genevieve said–”     “Big Wuff gave it t’ me!” she interrupted.  “‘cause, I asked fer it!”     “How… did you know she had it?”     “I saw it in ‘er ‘ands when we all met up, this mornin’!”  The girl laughed.  “Boy, ya sure are askin’ a lotta dumb questions, kiddo!”     “Ah…”  The fox sighed, closing his eyes… then, he smiled at Jessica, who smiled back.

    A while later, Joseph had sat near the grave marker, holding his umbrella to one side and staring into space.  Jessica had joined him, seated on the other side of the marker and holding her own umbrella while idly spinning it.  They both seemed transfixed on the city-in-motion.     “You… never did tell me what you’re doing out here, Jess…” he quietly told her.     “Sure, I did!” she replied after a moment.  “I gathered all th’ people – well, all th’ ones I could – t’ come ‘ere ‘n visit Hope’s grave!  Man, I bet she’s smilin’ like crazy, up there ‘n th’ Below!  I mean, if she ain’ a’ready been reincarnated!”     Joseph stayed silent for a moment before saying, “She was an AI, though…”     Jessica turned his way with a smile.  “So?”     “I don’t… know if–”     “It’s all ‘bout that positive energy, ya know?” the girl interrupted.  “She pro’ly ended up goin’ to th’ Below, jus’ like anyone else, since she was a ‘good girl!’ Bedroom antics aside…”     Jessica wickedly grinned.  She’d made Joseph blush.     “‘n all seriousness…” she continued, “some’n as good as ‘er pro’ly caught th’ eye of someone up there.  I mean, it’d be a huge waste t’ jus’ erase someone like Hope, right?”     The fox shuddered…     “Er, uh… bad choice’a words!”  Jessica nervously laughed.  “What I meant was–”     “If anyone deserved to go to the Below…” Joseph suddenly said, “it was her.”     Jessica paused… then, she laughed, again.  “Darn tootin’!  Ah… I miss ‘er…”     Joseph looked over to see Jessica remove her glasses and rub her face.     “Ya heard me,” she explained without looking his way.  “I jus’… I didn’ see any reason t’ let it get t’ me.  But, after seeing even people who s’posedly hated her come out ‘n say nice things… more-‘r-less, I mean… ah, I dunno.  I guess I’m jus’ choked-up ‘n feelin’ sappy.”     “‘Sentimental,’ hun.”     “Yea’, whatev–”     Jessica stopped in mid-thought… then, she looked down.  Her hand had unconsciously come-to-rest on Hope’s marker as she spoke… but, that wasn’t what caught her attention.     Joseph had put his hand over hers… and, he was smiling a warm, comforting smile.

    The two remained at that grave marker for much longer than either had expected.  Jessica wondered if Joseph had truly accepted his loss, and Joseph wondered if Jessica had forgiven him for the previous three years… yet, neither spoke a word more.  As the weather cleared and the two took their leave, though, they both knew that Hope’s birthday meant something special, to them…

    It was the dawn of a new day, in their lives.