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everybodyknows-everybodydies · 4 years ago

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"carter's master plan??" "CORDANO MOC AU??"

YES HI HELLO THANK YOU

Carter’s Master Plan

the short version: “The Good Place” AU where I once again appeal to an audience of only me by having my train wreck OT3 be endgame.

THE LONG VERSION HOWEVER. picture this: instead of going into medicine, a young Robert Romano decides to pursue his dream of being a world-famous chef instead. what consequences does this have, you may or may not ask? I WILL ANSWER REGARDLESS: Elizabeth never leaves England, never ends up in Chicago. Mark dies having unsuccessfully attempted to reconnect with Jen. SOMEHOW EVERYONE ENDS UP DEAD THEY’RE NOT CLEAR ON ALL THE HOWS YET BUT IT’S THE AFTERLIFE AND NOBODY KNOWS EACH OTHER. also Carter is there as “the Architect,” with help from the most powerful not-a-robot in the universe, a stolen Good Kerry. (yes this does imply the existence of Bad Kerry. yes I am going to squeeze all the inherent hilarity I can out of that concept.) Romano is aware he’s in the so-called “Good Place” on some kind of cosmic clerical error, which seems like it should be painfully obvious to everyone else. luckily his roommates are The Most Genuinely Good Man No Longer Alive and The World’s Stubbornest Brit. (also Romano still loses his arm in a traumatic fashion because that’s important to me.)

and just for fun AN EXCERPT:

Say something else, good grief. He can hear Doug teasing him. Always such a smooth talker, aren’t you. That’s my guy. “Uh, I thought we made a good team. Dr. Greene and Dr. Corday,” he adds, wishing desperately that the whole dying thing had given him any better way to make small talk. “Sounds… good?”

She snorts. “Dr. Corday?” she echoes. “Oh—that’s right, I always forget you give your surgeons that title.”

“You don’t?” He gets ahead of her with a couple of longer strides to grab the door, pushing it open.

“Gentlemanly,” she nods as she brushes past. “No. It’s … reserved for more junior members of the staff. Or GPs.”

“So you’d be—?” He stops, waiting expectantly, the door closing behind them.

“Miss Corday.” Fiddling with a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater, she doesn’t look up, focus intense. It’s—sweet. Her expression is almost the same as it had been when she was rearranging the badly-imagined bones of strangers. An odd relief loosens his shoulders. It feels a lot safer to look at her now that he doesn’t risk being subject to that same scrutiny. “Although if I had been working with you in Chicago I imagine I’d have to have got used to being called Dr. Corday.”

He feels his mouth twitch curiously. “Huh. Why is that? The title difference, I mean.”

“Homage to our great and noble predecessors, the barber surgeons,” she says breezily, finally plucking the thread free and holding it up in triumph. “Objectively, yes, it’s a bit silly, but I did work very hard to be called ‘miss,’ so there’s a certain pride one takes regardless of—”

“Wait, wait, barber surgeons? Can we back up there?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Are you asking me for a history lesson?”

“No, I just want some elaboration on the idea of barber surgeons,” he moves past her to get to the living room, plopping down on the couch. “Do you have to double-major in premed and cosmetology?”

Her laugh is sudden and bright, and she sits next to him, grinning. “No! Why, do you need someone to trim your hair?”

“Maybe, if you’re also a barber.”

Cordano MoC AU

the short version: an improbable and contrived application of an already improbable and contrived trope... the green-card marriage. also eventual endgame OT3 because again, I Am My Own Primary Audience what can I say!!

(alternate short version: Romano: I don’t like lying >:( also Romano: FAKE MARRIED ISN’T LYING IF UR ACTUALLY IN LOVE)

the long version: “so,” says Elizabeth in an extremely casual and not-at-all desperate I Refuse To Go Home kind of way, “marriage fraud. that sure is. a crime. which is terrible.” WHY RELY ON THE CLEARLY UNDEPENDABLE WHIMS OF A WORK VISA WHEN YOU CAN SPEND A COUPLE YEARS ~LIVING IN MARITAL UNION~ AND GET CITIZENSHIP, I say, as the (not-actually-present) narrator. are there easier ways to go about that process? probably. DO ANY OF THEM FULFILL MY SPECIFIC NEEDS OF FORCING CHARACTERS TO TALK TO EACH OTHER. NO THEY DO NOT.

Romano finds out this is actually on the table and is like “oh oops that’s embarrassing maybe I should not have pitched a hissyfit and terminated your fellowship because I was sad you liked Peter better than me” but it comes out more like “u need a guy…I’m a guy… I could be UR guy...” SHENANIGANS ENSUE. also Elizabeth and Gretel are immediate bffs because Gretel Is A Good Dog and I say so.

Susan is there too because I REQUIRE Susan & Elizabeth being buddies and who better to give me the content I crave than me myself? this also means EVEN MORE SHENANIGANS as Susan designates herself wingwoman.

AND AN EXCERPT AGAIN FOR FUN:

“I’ll have you know I’m a great catch, Lizzie. Any woman would be lucky to have me. Are you done reinforcing Gretel’s love of jumping on people that I have spent, oh, several weeks trying to discourage?”

“You’d really say no to this face?” Elizabeth looks up with a grin, Gretel turning her head exactly on cue and thumping her tail against the ground.

“You’ve been here two minutes and you’re already teaching my dog bad habits,” he gripes.

“Oh, shut up, she’s clearly a very good girl. Aren’t you? Yes, you!” The dog’s tail excitedly picks up speed again.

Romano huffs. “Stop that, it’s her bedtime. You can’t get her wound up before bed.”

“Please tell me you tuck her in,” she says gleefully, finally extricating her hands from Gretel’s thick fur to follow him inside. “Why didn’t I know you had a dog before?”

“Family and pets.” He waves a hand dismissively as he shuts the door back behind them. Gretel trots off to sniff at a spot on the hardwood floor a little down the hall. “Obvious boring personal information; you don’t bring it into the workplace.”

“No,” she tilts her head pointedly, “why didn’t I know?”

He stops, looks back at her. “Just never came up, I guess,” he says at last, quiet.

#writing tag #Mouse talks!#Lizzie and the Bald Boys #long post #SORRY YEAH IT'S LONG I GOT EXCITED #waterloo-kitchener

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protectwoc · 5 years ago

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thots on little women (2019)

or, y’all are giving greta gerwig too much credit (part two)

The character arc that was changed the least from the source material, but that still manages to personally offend me the most, is, of course, Amy’s. It’s no secret that Gerwig is an Amy stan, or at least more of a fan of her than most people. I am as well, which is why I am so disappointed with this particular arc.

It’s honestly more disappointing because Gerwig handled parts of Amy’s arc extremely well, namely, her relationship with Laurie. Gerwig did an excellent job of making Amy and Laurie’s relationship feel less like a consolation prize since Laurie did not end up marrying Jo and more like a fully realized and reciprocal relationship, arguably more so than Alcott herself. HOWEVER, and this is a big however, the Amy/Laurie relationship is not the only important part of Amy’s characterization in the novel, and unfortunately, it is in the movie.

Amy starts out the novel as a selfish twelve year old girl, which is evidenced in no other but the infamous book-burning scene. However, throughout the novel, she grows out of that selfishness and into a more selfless, self aware woman. (Again, whatever your thoughts on “learning to be selfless” as a trope in women’s narratives are not necessarily relevant.)

For example, in the first half of the novel, one of Amy’s most notable chapters deals with pickled limes. For anyone who only watched the movie or doesn’t quite remember the book, a short summary:

Amy, the only one of the March girls who attends school, is upset because the girls in her school have been trading pickled limes. The limes are seen as a status symbol, which can be traded for little trinkets, bestowed upon favorites, or indulged in in front of your enemies. The pickled limes trend has become so popular that the teacher, Mr. Davis, has banned them in the classroom, which has done nothing to curb their popularity. Amy, who is relatively popular among her classmates regardless of her relatively lower class status, has been gifted several limes but had no way to return them, is greatly “in debt.” When Meg gives Amy enough money to buy a whopping twenty-five pickled limes, she flaunts and preens her way around the classroom until a girl she snubbed tattles to the teacher and gets all twenty five limes taken away.

This scene is a good example of the beginning of Amy’s arc of overcoming her one major personality flaw. It shows how her selfish nature is really just immature behavior, and as she ages, she matures out of that childishness. Another good example of this arc happens when Beth contracts scarlet fever. At first, she complains, saying that she would rather contract the deadly disease than to go to her Aunt’s house, but as she remains there, we see her mature and even grow fond of Aunt March. Her personal arc independent of Laurie was a big part of Amy’s plotline, and it was unfortunately left out of the movie.

The most glaring example of this is the omission of one of the most important scenes of Amy’s arc in the book: the occurrences at the fair. Again, indulge me in a brief summary for those who won’t know exactly what I am talking about:

The mother of one of Amy’s friends, Mrs. Chester, holds a three day fair for all of the girls in Amy’s social circle. As Amy is the most talented and most well-liked of the girls, she has the best table at the fair, at the very front, where she is to sell her beautiful artistic creations. However, her friend, May Chester, is jealous of her, and seeing this, Ms. Chester takes the table from Amy and gives it to May, relegating Amy to the back corner to sell flowers. At first, Amy is incredibly upset, and takes all of her art back to the table with her, however, after talking with her family, who are properly indignant on her behalf, she resolves to be gracious and humble and gives her own drawings to May to sell. Seeing this, Jo tells Laurie to take all of his handsome, college-aged bachelor friends to Amy’s table, which he does, and they spend the entire next day of the fair flirting with her and buying every one of the flowers from Amy. On the final day of the fair Amy, who has entirely overcome her own selfish wishes, tells Laurie and his friends to go do the same to May. This string of selfless acts is seen by Aunt March and Aunt Carrol (who in the novel has half of Aunt March’s role in the movie) and is the premier reason behind Aunt Carrol deciding to take Amy to Europe instead of Jo.

Leaving this scene out of Amy’s narrative in the movie is, I think, unforgivable. The inclusion of this scene would have exponentially improved Amy’s arc, for three major reasons:

This scene is the culmination of Amy’s “selfish to selfless arc”. Again, regardless of your opinions on whether this is a good lesson for her to learn, it is an arc, and as the movie stands currently, she simply doesn’t have one. The occurrences at the fair show her finally growing out of her childhood vices into the mature woman we see in Europe, and to exclude this scene does her a disservice.

Prior to her trip to Europe, this is one of the only scenes in the novel where Laurie and Amy have any sort of interaction. If Gerwig wanted to more fully develop the Amy/Laurie romance I cannot imagine the logic behind leaving this scene out. It would make the romance seem less rushed, which has been a common critique of their love story since the book came out, and would even provide context for Amy’s “Not when I have spent my entire life loving you” line which Gerwig added to the narrative.

As previously mentioned, this scene is one of the main reasons behind Amy being allowed to travel to Europe with Aunt March/Aunt Carrol. Within the movie, this reasoning is less obvious, especially given the fact that Aunt March had already told Jo she would take her to Europe, and the inclusion of this scene would have made the trip feel more earned for Amy.

Greta Gerwig has made no secret of the fact that she both a feminist and a fan of Amy March. I am both of those things as well, which is why I cannot understand her logic behind robbing Amy of a complete arc. In the movie, the most important parts of Amy’s arc are all tied to a man. Even that arc is not as fully developed as it could be. Gerwig did a magnificent job with Amy’s overall likability, but that is not the same thing as writing a fully realized arc for her.

But even though Amy is my personal favorite character, and I am more personally invested in her arc, Gerwig’s mishandling of Amy is not the most egregious sin committed in this movie. That honor is reserved for Jo’s arc.

Part Two: Jo

A Buzzfeed article entitled “The New ‘Little Women’ Makes Space for Jo’s Queerness” claims that “Gerwig’s adaptation, without being too explicit about it, does gorgeous justice to that [queer] reading.” An Advocate magazine article called “Greta Gerwig Brings Out the Inherent Queerness of Little Women” makes the bold claim that the 2019 Little Women “offers the queerest and most feminist reading yet.” An even bolder declaration by them magazine says that “The New Little Women Basically Proves Jo is Queer”. Gerwig has been lauded both by critics and by her own actors for creating an explicitly queer narrative for Jo March.

As previously mentioned, I do not generally read Alcott’s Jo as queer. However, upon my first encounter with this headcanon, I could immediately see why so many people did see her this way, and why this interpretation is so beloved. Jo has a lot of non-stereotypically straight traits that have made her something of a queer icon in many progressive literary circles. Both the way she bemoans being “born a woman” and her intense desire not to marry spoke to a lot of queer or non-cis readers, many of whom were excited to see her portrayed this way on the silver screen. And though I am not particularly attached to this headcanon, as a bi woman, I too was excited to see her that way.

And then… I didn’t.

Look, I hate to burst y’alls bubble, but there is literally not a single second in the movie where Jo is anything resembling queer. At best, she could be read as aromantic/asexual, but that’s about it. (Note: Obviously I don’t intend to imply that being aro/ace is somehow “lesser than” being L G B or T, but obviously the form of queerness people were expecting is one in which Jo is explicitly attracted to women.) There are no subtle looks in the direction of another woman, no scenes in which Jo expresses any negative emotion towards the idea of marrying a man specifically. She doesn’t even have a single female friend outside of her sisters.

One of the reasons the 2019 Jo (and by extension, Laurie), have been hailed as queer icons is their relative gender fluidity. Jo and Laurie exchange clothes throughout the movie, which was intended to display their “gender fluidity”. I knew about this particular facet of the movie before going to watch it in theaters, so I was looking for these occasions specifically, and I still couldn’t tell that they were supposed to be gender neutral. Maybe that’s just me, because I don’t know a lot about civil war era clothing, but whatever.

The other reason that Jo is considered queer in the movie is her rejection of traditional Civil War era femininity. She doesn’t want to get married, and she has no interest in “girly” things like dresses or parties. But neither of those things are specifically queer. Being “not like other girls” as your premier personality trait is not queer, it’s just garden-variety misogyny.

Even Jo’s big scene where she laments her competing desire to stay unmarried and her intense loneliness, has nothing marking it as explicitly queer. “I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for,” she bursts out. Love. Not love for a man. Not even marriage. She is decrying the entire concept of love.

“But Rae,” I can hear you asking, “what about the ending, where it’s implied she doesn’t marry Professor Bhaer and gets to publish her novel?” To that, there are two important things to consider. One: the ending is intentionally portrayed as optional. Even though it is heavily implied that Jo did not go off and get heterosexual married at the end, it is possible to ignore that ending or do some light mental gymnastics to make the two versions of Jo’s ending coincide. And I’m not just saying this as a worst-case-scenario, I actually have seen people do this, in fandom and my own life.

Secondly, even if you take the ending as completely factual, we still have all the scenes involving Bhaer previous to the ending to give some hint of Jo’s sexuality. We never see her even look at another woman, but she flirts with Bhaer and blushes when he looks at her and asks for his opinion on her work. Even ignoring the straight-as-default setting of most casual viewers, canonically, Jo has only ever shown interest in men. One man specifically, but still.

“But she could still be bi/pansexual, or suffering from compulsory heterosexuality,” I hear. And this is basically the crux of my argument. In fandom, you don’t have to assume straight as the default, and it's probably better not to. Bi/pan headcanons for “straight” characters are a good, positive way of adding to a fandom culture. However, when it comes to canonical representation, the opposite is true. Representation is not representation if it is not explicit.

I’m not saying that queer viewers cannot feel represented by Jo in this movie. I personally feel represented by Hermoine Granger as a black woman, due to her “wild, bushy hair” and her penchant for social activism (SPEW). However, I cannot give JK Rowling credit for that representation because she had nothing to do with it. She did not do any of the hard work to actually make Hermoine a black woman. In the same way, we cannot credit Gerwig with adding queer representation to Little Women, because she didn’t.

Conclusion: The Response

I know reading this essay probably makes me seem like a Greta Gerwig-hater or like I disliked the movie. Both of those things are untrue. As previously mentioned, I loved the movie. I’ve watched the Amy/Laurie scenes of the movie like a hundred times already. I also don’t hate Greta Gerwig. This is the only movie of hers that I’ve seen, but I heard all about Lady Bird and its popularity, and I think the directing of Little Women was excellent. The fact that Greta Gerwig is a very talented filmmaker is not necessarily an arguable point.

I don’t believe that Gerwig had to fully develop any of the sisters. I don’t even think that Gerwig is required to add queer representation (or racial diversity for that matter) to her movies. Greta Gerwig decided to adapt an extremely white, cishet Civil War era book into an extremely white, cishet Civil War era movie. Hot take time: she is entirely in her rights to do that.

BUT. The thing that bugs me the most about the movie, and is basically the impetus behind me writing this essay, is the response to the movie. For whatever reason, Gerwig’s Little Women adaptation has been deemed more “woke” than it actually is. Little Women (2019) has been lauded for its strong female presence (even though there are only white, cis, straight women), for it’s development of the other, non-Jo sisters (even though it doesn’t), and for giving its lead space to be queer (even though she isn’t).

Greta Gerwig made an excellent film, but she did not do anything that has never been done before. I liked the movie, but I’m not about to go campaign for Greta Gerwig or the movie to win an Oscar. In general, we need to be less willing to acclaim those who do the bare minimum.

Again, I’m not good at writing conclusions. At a certain point I’m going to just start repeating myself, so I’m going to go ahead and cut myself off now. Again, if anybody has any opinions on this, agree or disagree, please come talk to me about it! I’d love to hear any other thoughts.

#little women #little women (2019)#raetalks #meta #meg march #jo march #beth march #amy march #timothee chalamet #emma watson #saorise ronan #eliza scanlen #florence pugh #greta gerwig

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justbnhatrash · 5 years ago

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Kirishima Soulmate AU at the Training Camp

Hey, so I was wondering if you could do a soulmate prompt with Kirishima where soulmates share extreme physical pain (like punches or stabbings), like if one gets hurt, the other gets hurt. And can it take place during the camp arc, Kirishima being at the campgrounds and the reader is fighting a villain and gets seriously injured and he can feel it? And then when he finds out about the reader he’s like, ‘oh shit I think this person is my soulmate’ – Anon

~So I don’t think I did this quite how you wanted it, and I’m not even sure how it turned out, but I think it’s nice, and if you want another, I will gladly write a different one for you~

I got the Idea for the quirk from HERE

Soulmates are an odd concept in society today. Odd in that, not everybody actually has one. Let me explain. Around the same time quirks started appearing, cases were being made that people could feel another’s pain at random times. Sometimes it was small, like a paper cut, others it was harsher, like a shattered bone. They wouldn’t find any actual injury on their body, but the pain they felt was real. Eventually, after many studies, some researcher found that people that could feel each other’s pain were always compatible. 100% of the time, the subjects would end up dating, some even quickly got married after just a few weeks. As such, the theory goes that people who feel each other’s pain are soulmates.

As far as I’m concerned, I was one of the few that simply didn’t have a soulmate. It’s not entirely surprising since a little over half the population did, and a little under half didn’t. But at most I would feel small aches around my body. It never correlated to anyone that I knew of, so I guess I could have one, but I was pretty sure that I didn’t. That being said, I was more than comfortable enough going into the hero course at UA. I wanted to help people. I’m not the most sociable, but I have a good heart, and I want to make lives better. And now, we were headed to summer training camp.

Finally arriving to the training camp in early morning, I stood in shock next to my best friend, Kendo. It took a while for my heat vision to adjust to the temperature fluctuations going on in the area, and once it did, I still couldn’t keep up with how everyone’s quirks were being pushed to the limit. It didn’t help that Todoroki was steadily switching a large area from ice cold to fire hot. I found it hard to take my eyes off the captivating sight of the switching colors of the varying heat signatures.

I came back to focus on the lesson when the Wild, Wild Pussycats came into view. I watched their entrance with mild interest. Personally, I didn’t find them super appealing, but their heat signatures were easy to memorize, all being around normal with their own personal flares. They introduced themselves along with their quirks: Ragdoll – Search, Pixie-Bob – Earthflow, Mandalay – Telepath, and Tiger with Pliabody who claimed he was there ‘to beat us to a pulp’ which made many of us worried. He proceeded to punch Midoriya into a tree, telling him to push his quirk. Yeah, I’m happy I won’t be getting put with him. Mr. Kan told us to do him proud and sent us to our training.

I ended up next to Mina and Jirou from class 1-A. While Mina was constantly secreting acid and Jirou was bashing her head phone plugs against the rocks, I was set to stare at the rock and melt into it as much as possible for as long as possible. Mr. Aizawa even gave me extra eyedrops he had on hand so that I could keep going. This went on until dusk, with occasional ‘motivation’ from the pussycats. It was more of them yelling at the three of us to keep going, when we knew we really didn’t have a choice unless we wanted to get punished somehow.

After all that training, class 1-A and 1-B split up for the night. We had to make our own food, curry specifically. It was pretty easy since I was often the cook at my house before my parents came home from work. I tried to help Kendo, but she insisted on doing it herself, which made me smile. The rest of the class had some issues, but I tried to refrain from helping them too much. This was training camp, like Kendo said, we all had to learn how to do things ourselves.

The next day, while we were all back at training, Pixie-Bob brings up a ‘Test of Courage’ sort of thing that they want us to get into. She said it would be a way for us to play, but none of us were sure that would really be the case. Once dusk rolled around, we all started to cook together. I took notice of one boy with spiky hair. I couldn’t tell what color it was, but it attracted quite an amount of heat, which was interesting. From what I could tell, it was Kirishima, the one who was always with Mr. Explodey A.K.A. Bakugou. I remember from the Sports Festival that his quirk was really similar to TetsuTetsu’s, but when they were put up against one another it was a really even match that he eventually came out on top in.

He was rubbing a lot at his eyes and muttering to himself. Something about how they were burning way more than usual. I figured he was tired from his remedial classes with Mr. Aizawa. I had seen him, and a few others trudge out of the building like Monoma. I stared a moment longer, wondering what had drawn my gaze before shrugging it off and moving on. After dinner, the Test of Courage was about to begin. A few members of 1-A looked really excited to get started, including Kirishima and Mina, but their hopes got shot down when Aizawa reminded them of their remedial lessons. After Aizawa dragged the five of them away, Pixie-Bob began explaining how the Test of Courage would work. Class 1-A would be up first while our class would be try to scare them witless.

“Really all we have to do is act like Monoma, should scare everyone right out the forest.” Kendo laughed before telling me to play nice. “It’s not like he’s here. He has to take remedial classes since he can never keep his mouth shut.” Yeah, I wasn’t Monoma’s biggest fan, but Kendo took the job of making sure he didn’t get into too much trouble, so I tended to tag along. I was actually pretty pumped to get into the forest and start scaring people.

The teams entered the forest in three-minute intervals. My place was about halfway to the point where they would pick up their proof of having entered the forest. Along with Bondo, I had arranged some make-shift candles along the path way. They didn’t have actual wax, but his glue looks similar to melting wax, so it wasn’t a big deal. The glue coupled with some decent sticks that I decided to use as wicks, made pretty convincing candles in the darkness. The plan was that whenever the teams would walk by, I would pull a cliché horror trope, and light them remotely with my quirk.

The cliché didn’t work very well on the first two teams that came through. First was Tokoyami and a guy with six arms and a mask, I think his name is Shouji, something like that. When I lit the candles for them, Shouji jumped a bit, but Tokoyami almost looked relieved and walked closer to the light for a moment. I think that first encounter scared me more than it did them. Second up was Bakugou and Todoroki, one absolutely ready to fight anything sent his way, and one not caring at all about anything the happened in the forest. Neither of them was scared by the trick, but Bakugou did want to come and find me to ‘teach me better than to pull a wimpy stunt like that.’ It was a tiny bit insulting, but ultimately fair. This wasn’t the best I could do, but I really didn’t feel like setting the forest on fire.

The third team, things went a little better for me. Jirou and who I assumed was Hagakure, since she had a heat signature of a regular girl, but the same clothes as the one that Kendo explained to me was invisible. Hagakure was scared but still seemed into it, whereas Jirou looked ready to be done with the whole thing and go to bed. Both of them were already a bit shaken when they approached the candles. I waited until they were just close enough before I lit the sticks. Jirou jumped back a solid foot and a half, but Hagakure actually let out a small scream. Team four didn’t serve much better, Yaoyorozu let out a small yelp, but Aoyama let out a pretty girly shrill which made make crack up.

It was when I was waiting for the fifth group that everything went wrong. Hearing all the screams from groups that had already passed me, I noticed the temperature of the air began steadily rising. I also noticed a cool mist that seemed to be spreading through the trees. From experience I knew that if the temperature was rising put a separate gas was staying cool, it wasn’t a good thing. I held my breath and started running through the trees, hoping to find anyone from UA. ‘I’m stupid for telling them that they could leave me alone out here. I should know better than to be completely alone in a dark forest. Or any forest for that matter!’

Running through the forest, I subconsciously began running towards the heat source. When I realized where I was headed, it was too late to turn back, I had found it. A man with patches, burn scars on both his arms and face, from what I could tell, stood with his eyes zeroed in on me, a smirk on his lips. I let out a gasp, thankful that the gas, mist, or whatever from before hadn’t seemed to spread this far yet. Looking closer, I wasn’t sure if they were really burn scars, it almost looked like dead or decaying skin that had been reattached to him by staples.

We were both paused, staring one another in the eye. Despite the smirk on his face, he seemed quite surprised that I had found him. Maybe he hadn’t planned on being caught, but he did seem more excited than I would ever like. Me on the other hand, I was willing my body to run. Find a teacher or supervisor, anyone really. At the least, I didn’t want to face this creep alone. But despite my wishes, my body knew that I wouldn’t have that option. If I ran, I was likely to be killed. I had to fight him, or at least fend him off until someone else showed up to help.

Taking a deep breath, I readied myself. Thankfully I could already tell what this guys quirk was. I didn’t know exactly, but it was definitely fire based; almost reminding me of Endeavor but worse. Villainous. Judging from the scars on him, it was clear he had gone through some sort of trauma, probably due to his body rejecting his quirk. I had heard about cases like that, but I’d never met anyone who’d gone through it. Thinking it over, I figured I might be able to incite some sort of past trauma that he’d been through if I could light him on fire. It was a long shot since he had no problem using his quirk now, but it was the only thing I could think of. Anything else was ruled out by the same point. He can use his quirk, very well judging by the raging flames that surrounded us.

Taking a deep breath, I sent a prayer to whoever I could think of that this would work and I wouldn’t die a gruesome death. Despite my quirk also being fire based, only my eyes ever really felt the heat, the rest of me was as susceptible to fire as any other normal person. Blinking once, I opened my eyes and began to stare a hole into him. The temperature rising steadily where I was looking. I could see a brief flash of panic on his face, but it faded far quicker than I liked. He closed his eyes for a moment. Committing to my tactic, I continued to stare as long as I could. My eyes felt like they were at the same temperature as our surroundings by the time I blinked. I had to keep my eyes closed, trying not to scream from the sensation. I couldn’t help but think to myself, if I do have a soulmate out there somewhere, they must hate me right now.

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Kirishima had always believed in soulmates, and he was certain he had one. When he was a child, around the time his quirk appeared, his eyes would get burning sensations in them. There was no real reason why, not that he could find at least. When he confronted his parents about it, they told him it was likely the same pain his soulmate was feeling. It made him feel bad that someone else also went through this pain as frequently as he did, and he resolved to refrain from getting hurt as much as possible for them.

When he was admitted to UA, he noticed the sensation beginning to return, not searing as before, but a stinging sensation. It actually made him excited, he figured that meant his soulmate was training to be a hero, just like him. With that in mind, he started pushing himself harder, wanting to become a hero now to find his soulmate. Surely, they’d run across each other, or he’d hear about them and put the dots together from their quirk.

After his first year at UA, he still hadn’t heard anything about a quirk that affects the eyes in such a way. The closest he had was Aizawa, but the teacher said he wasn’t sure when he asked half way through the year. Instead of focusing on that, however, he was thrust into the summer training program for his class and class 1-B specifically. Training with Ojirou was rough, for both of them, but that was the point. To push their quirks to the limit so they could improve as much as possible as quickly as possible.

During the first day of real training, after the horror that was the first day, class 1-B joined in the training. He wasn’t sure why, but a particular girl caught his eye. She was pretty, nice (H/C) hair and beautiful skin. Her eyes really caught his attention, but he didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it in the midst of getting hit repeatedly by Ojirou’s tail. He decided to push it out of his mind, and try to approach her later, find out why she was so interesting to him. He continued on training, letting out a small wince when his eyes began burning, like they did when, he assumed, his soulmate used their quirk. He figured it would go away soon and ignored it. It persisted throughout the rest of training.

Unfortunately, class 1-B left pretty quickly after training. There was no way he would have time to find her either, since he also had remedial classes after dinner. He let out a resigned sigh at the thought and perked himself back up and be the usual ball of sunshine his Bakubro needed him to be. He’d have a chance to talk to her eventually, if not here, he could find her at school.

The next day went by quicker but felt longer than he expected. With remedial classes going on into the early morning, he was exhausted when training with Ojirou. Despite this, he did as told, and pushed himself to the limits, even when his eyes began burning, borderline searing, once again. At this point he was sure it couldn’t be a coincidence. Right? His soulmate seemed to be on the same training schedule as him, and what were the chances any other classes, UA or otherwise, had the same schedule as class 1-A and 1-B’s brutality. He wanted to look around, see if anyone from 1-B had a quirk that could be affecting its user in such a way, but he really didn’t have the time or energy. He would find them, just not right now.

The pain lingered in his eyes long after training. He kept trying to rub away the pain during dinner, only to be scolded harshly by Bakugou screaming that ‘if he wanted his shitty eyes to feel better, he should stop fucking touching them.’ Which was true. After dinner, he had some energy back, added into the excitement for the Test of Courage that both classes would be participating in. He, Mina, Sero, Kaminari, and Rikido were cheering, the most excited out of everyone in the clearing. That was, before Aizawa came to drag them away and back to the facility for their remedial classes.

Everything went wrong after about fifteen minutes. Mandalay had used her telepathy quirk to tell everyone that the camp was being attacked. Everyone wanted to run out and help fight, but Aizawa told them all to stay put and left Vlad in charge. They didn’t know why they were being attacked, but Kirishima cursed every villain that stepped into the forest. After all they’ve been through, they couldn’t even have the summer. He wanted more than anyone else to go help, specifically to go help Bakugou. He knew the boy didn’t need it, but he felt so unmanly just sitting here while his best friend could be getting torn to shreds.

After a few incredibly tense minutes, Kirishima started screaming. It started with his eyes. The heat radiating from them was more intense than he could ever remember. It stopped getting worse for a second and he sighed in relief. But it was too soon. He felt like his whole body was on fire. The heat was intense, like he had been thrown into an oven at the highest setting possible. Scorching, he wanted to try to claw his skin off of his body, but he couldn’t even move. He was curled in pain on the floor, trying to quiet his screams to that his already worried classmates wouldn’t have more to stress about. He bit into his lip, biting hard enough for his sharp teeth to pierce the skin and trickle blood down his chin. Clearly this was pain his soulmate was going through. There was no reason he would be feeling this pain, but he had no idea where they were or what was going on.

After a few minutes, the scorching pain lowered to a simmering. Still enough for him to grind his teeth, but he no longer felt the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the room, now including Iida and a few others that had been in the middle of the attack with the Pussycats and had come here for safety, was really worried about him. He could still hardly move, but with some help from his friends, he was now in a sitting position against the wall.

Sometime later, could’ve been minutes or hours as far as he was concerned, Aizawa promptly kicked in the door, a limp body in his arms. He laid the girl across a few desks and told Vlad to take care of her before rushing back out. Doing as told, Vlad and a few others rushed to check the girl’s condition. It certainly didn’t seem to be good from how everyone’s mouths were dropped in horror. Mina in particular seemed to be looking back forth between the girl and himself. “Kirishima, I think it might be her.” His eyebrows furrowed.

‘Her? What is she talking about?’ Seeing the confusion on his face, she walked over to help him stand and get a better look than from on the ground. Once on his feet, they shuffled closer, everyone backing away, other than Vlad who had grabbed the medkit off the wall and began treating her injuries.

Now having a better look, he felt tears rushing to his eyes. It was her. The girl he had been attracted to yesterday. She was his soulmate. He could tell clearly from the blisters and burns the covered the entirety of her body. She most certainly needed to go to the emergency room, but there was no way that would happen. Not now at least. The tears rolled out of his eyes as his hand inched forward before retreating quickly. He couldn’t touch her. Not when she was already in so much pain. Not when he had failed to protect her.

The staggering rise and fall of her chest was the only thing keeping him from a breakdown. Between this and having learned that the villain attack was to capture his closest friend, Kirishima didn’t know if he could hold it together.

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My eyes flashed open, blinding lights greeting them. A short scream left my mouth. Everything burned. I couldn’t move, not a single muscle. I could barely keep myself breathing with the way I still felt his flames crawling across my skin. Shifting my eyes around, I saw Mr. Kan applying bandages to legs. My clothing had either been taken of or burned away judging by the patches of red and blistered skin that I could make out from this angle.

“Kiri, I know it’s not the best circumstances, but she needs you right now.” To my other side I could hear a soft voice. Female, I almost recognized it, but my mind was still hazy from the smoke and flames. Turning my head even slightly to the other side shot pain up my spine. A cry was let out when I did, but it wasn’t mine. Turning my eyes to follow the sound, I found Kirishima. The one who I had almost been curious about during dinner just a few hours ago. Even a stranger could see he was in emotional disarray. Tears streaming down his face, his hand in a constant bob, seeming to want to reach out to me, but hesitating.

“Kirishima?” My voice was scratchy, and I could tell I desperately needed water, but it didn’t matter right now. “I never thought this would be how I met my soulmate.” A small and broken voice came out of him. One very different from what I had heard from him any other time he spoke. Putting a face to the voice, I realized it was Mina. My training partner for the last few days. Her eyes softened as they glanced between me and Kirishima. Soulmate? I always thought I didn’t have one. Do I really? Has he been this close for so long? Tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that, if this was true, he’d gone through the same pain I had.

Kirishima’s gaze hardened as he managed the last few steps towards me. I wanted to look away, I didn’t deserve a soulmate with the pain I had just put him through. Had I known, maybe I never would have ran towards the heat signature. Maybe he never would have had to experience that pain like I did. I could see Mina’s feet slowly back away as Kirishima balanced himself on the desk. I refused to look at him, but even so, I felt the feathery touch of his forehead against mine. Never actually touching, afraid, but hovering so close we could both imagine the warmth.

“Even if I never imagined this would be how we met. I’m so glad that we have now.” The sweet caress of his words was almost enough to wash away the pain I was feeling. My eyes flashed to meet his. I wish I knew what color they are. My world of heat really doesn’t do him the justice I know it could. The tears leaked down my cheeks, stinging as they went along, but I hardly felt it now. I felt much better in Kirishima’s presence. “Once you heal, I’m never going to let anything happen to you. Not again. I promise.” I nodded as much as my stiff neck would let me. I gave him a smile, not wanting to rip at my throat anymore than necessary.

With a small, teary smile he began stroking my hair softly. “Go ahead and get some rest, we’ll talk once we’re all safe, and you’re all better.” I gave another gentle nod. Even through the heat vision, I could see the sincerity in his eyes. I took a slightly painful deep breath before closing my eyes and allowing myself to drift off. And here I thought I didn’t even have a soulmate.

#soulmate AU #reader insert #romance #Kirishima x reader #kirishima scenarios #bnha kirishima eijirou #mha kirishima #Eijirou x reader #kirishima imagine #Kirishima Eijirou x reader #kirishima eijirou scenarios #BNHA scenarios #mha scenarios #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction #bnha imagines

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sophieakatz · 5 years ago

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Thursday Thoughts: Moving On With Toy Story 4

My intention was to polish this out but I’ve been in a funk all day, so have some raw and rambling Thursday Thoughts.

Let’s start with a brief spoiler-free review. I’ll get into spoilers below the cut.

Every step of the way, Toy Story 4 did not do what I expected it to do. It repeatedly chose new directions over old trends, and I came away feeling both grateful and impressed.

At the same time, this story kept continuity with the previous films very well. The characters and world felt comfortable and consistent.

While I like the direction the movie ultimately took, I don’t think I’m ever going to be completely behind “character continually tries to throw self in garbage as comedy” as a concept. Especially given how the Toy Story franchise previously established extremely negative connotations for “trash” and being “thrown away.” This movie raises some uncomfortable philosophical questions about the Toy Story world which I would expect to be played with in the realms of fanfiction and Reddit threads, but which don’t seem appropriate to me to be grappled with in the actual canon content.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the way that this movie, in a brief line of dialogue, redefines the concept of trash, taking one of those new directions that I alluded to before. It felt like too little too late for me to entirely like the concept, but it is a positive note. Similarly, Bo Peep is beyond awesome in this film, and the sheer number of incidental female non-villainous characters in this film blows ordinary standards for male-to-female film ratios out of the water, but it all feels like too little too late to call the franchise as a whole “feminist.”

Another pleasant surprise was the ending of the film. Toy Story 4 delivers a concluding note to the overarching Toy Story franchise that is just as cathartic and satisfying as the ending of Toy Story 3, albeit with a much different message. So now we have a franchise with two endings. This irks my inner writer – I’m a firm believer that stories should have a solid beginning and end, and then we should move on to other stories. A story that ends twice is awkward. But I also really like both endings, viewed separately from each other, for different reasons.

There will be a picture here (of the Toy Story 4 movie poster), and a “read more” cut, and then spoilers!

I said earlier that the Toy Story franchise is not as a whole feminist. That said, Toy Story 4 on its own is a feminist film.

Toy Story 4 is the story of a man realizing that the world does not revolve around him anymore, and that it might never really have revolved around him, and that that is absolutely a good thing. Where Toy Story 3 defined Woody’s emotional journey as growing to let go of Andy, Toy Story 4 transforms his journey into letting go of his purpose (as a toy who supports and is loved by a specific kid) and finding a new one. And that new purpose he finds is making sure that other people – primarily women – get what they want and find their own purposes.

At the end of the flashback that opens the film, which explains how Bo Peep was given away, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “Wow.” Not because of the stunning animation, or the fantastic music, or the nostalgia inherent to seeing the gang in Andy’s room once again – but because Bo asks Woody to come with her. Up to this point, Bo Peep did not have a personality outside of Woody. She was exactly what Andy imagined her to be – his damsel in distress. Every single line of dialogue she had in the first two films were either to Woody or about Woody. She had no desires, no independence.

The opening of Toy Story 4 makes it crystal clear that Bo is her own person. She’s quickly established as the leader of Molly’s room, just like Woody is the leader in Andy’s, and she’s an equal participant to Woody in the rescue of RC. Plenty of films would leave it at that, making Bo a female equivalent to Woody. But Toy Story 4 has Bo take things one step further. When Woody tells her to hide and stay with him, she tells him no. Molly and Andy don’t need her anymore, so she’s going to move on to the next kid who does need her. And then she asks Woody to come with her. He doesn’t go – he’s still too attached to Andy, and to Andy’s need for him. But the fact that Bo asks at all, rather than putting Woody’s wishes first, is a big deal.

Fast forward to the end of the film, and once again Bo doesn’t want to stay with Woody and his kid, and once again Bo asks Woody to come with her. This time, she gets what she wants. She remains a “lost toy,” she gets to see the world, and she gets to have Woody there with her.

Bo isn’t the only female character whose desires drive the plot of the film. Woody’s motivation for most of the film is to keep Bonnie happy. This means sitting in the closet when she doesn’t want to play with him (side note – I smiled when Bonnie took the sheriff badge off of Woody and put it on Jessie instead. I used to do the same sort of thing with my toys, taking the hair off of the Playmobil princess and using it to turn the knight into a girl. Where we don’t have representation, we make our own). This also means keeping Forky around.

Forky. Oh, Forky. I don’t really have much else to say about him besides what I said in the spoiler-free part of this review. I did really like his and Woody’s conversation while walking along the highway. In Toy Story 2, “trash” was a zombie-hand hellscape. In Toy Story 3, the garbage dump was a Holocaust-style death camp. Toy Story 4 puts “trash” in a more positive light – “you’ve fulfilled your purpose.” It’s said once, and passed over very quickly – from that point onward, Forky seems 100% on board with being a toy, and the word “trash” is hardly used again. I wish they’d established this concept earlier in the series somehow, but I’m not sure where I would have put it.

The point is, Forky doesn’t get what he wants, either (unless we assume that he wants a female companion, which… really, post-credits-scene? Really?). Woody wins him over to the cause of making sure Bonnie gets what she wants.

And then there’s Gabby Gabby. She was another pleasant surprise. At first she seemed cut from the same cloth as other animated villains – Lotso Huggin’ Bear from Toy Story 3 is a good example. She wants what the hero has, and is apparently willing to kill in order to get what she wants (that scene where the dummies are ripping Woody apart – dark stuff!). I actually laughed a lot during her scenes, because of how the movie overly plays into villainous tropes in her early characterization, and horror tropes for the dummies. I sighed and rolled my eyes when it became clear that Bo and Gabby already hated each other – girls just aren’t supposed to get along in movies, are they. Gabby uses Forky to learn enough about Woody to convince him to give her his voicebox, but she gets rejected by the child she’s been idolizing regardless.

And I waited for Gabby to snap, to turn monstrous, to try to destroy Forky and Woody, and for the film to summarily punish this woman for daring to take something away from the male hero by trapping her in a shelf or sticking her with a kid who likes to torture toys or something.

But none of that happened. Gabby isn’t evil. She genuinely does want what Woody’s been so fortunate to have – a loving relationship with a kid – and Woody recognizes this, and decides to help her. Gabby Gabby gets a happy ending, with a new child, a new voice, and a new life.

This film could have ended with Woody getting everything he wanted. He could have kept his voicebox. Bo and the other “lost toys” could have come home to stay with Bonnie. For a while, it looked like these things might happen. But they didn’t.

Instead, Woody changed what he wanted. He rededicated his life to making sure that other toys and kids would get what they wanted. He goes on to help the other carnival toys find kids of their own, if they want them, and lives happily with the “lost toys” who don’t want them.

If there’s a villain in this film, it’s Woody’s single-mindedness – that’s what keeps getting other people and himself hurt as he pursues his goals in the first two-thirds of the film. Things start to go right when Woody starts to give up pieces of himself and his identity. Him giving his voicebox to Gabby, and later giving the sheriff’s badge to Jessie, are symbols of someone who has had success recognizing that it’s time to pass the torch to someone else, recognizing that what was once “his” world no longer needs him, and accepting that that is alright.

Where Toy Story 3 closed the circle, Toy Story 4 steps forward into a new world. Both are satisfying to my writer brain, albeit for different reasons. My inner social justice warrior is a bigger fan of the latter.

#toy story 4 #toy story #toy story 3 #pixar #disney #thursday thoughts #reviews #woody #jessie #gabby gabby #bo peep #forky #sophieakatz #sophie a katz

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ruminativerabbi · 6 years ago

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Christchurch

There was something creepy and unsettling about settling into Purim this week as we were all still reeling from the news about the mass shooting last Friday at the mosques in New Zealand. Yes, it’s true that at the heart of Purim is the encouraging story of how a plot to murder innocents was thwarted by a combination of cleverness, bravery, and extreme chutzpah on the part of Mordechai and Queen Esther. But how could that happy outcome provide comfort for the Muslims of New Zealand (or, for that matter, for New Zealand’s Jews, who could surely just as easily have been the shooter’s victims) given that Haman’s plot failed utterly, while last week’s attack took the lives of fifty innocents at worship? There is something to learn from that comparison, though, but it has to do more with the villain’s motivation in both stories than with how either turned out in the end…because what motivated Haman to plan a nation-wide pogrom openly intended to annihilate the Jewish community in his time and place is more or less precisely what motivated the alleged shooter in New Zealand—at least judging by the so-called “manifesto” he emailed to more than thirty recipients, including the Prime Minister’s office in far-off Wellington, just minutes before the attack on the first mosque.

Assuming the authorities have the right man, which they seem certain they do, the shooter seems to have been motivated by a set of grim fantasies that society needs seriously to address. Admittedly, the seventy-four-page manifesto is a long read, although nowhere near as long as the 1,500-page screed penned by Anders Brevik, the man convicted of murdering seventy-seven people, mostly high school students, in a shooting rampage on the Norwegian island of Utoya in 2011 and whose writing covered many of the same topics covered in the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto. (Brevik’s unabashed motivation in undertaking his act of mass murder was to get his book read by the public, an incentive so real in his mind that he actually referred in public to the shooting as his personal “book launch.”)

At the heart of both documents is the deep-seated fear of replacement, a theme most Americans first heard about when the white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville shocked the world back in 2017 by chanting “Jews will not replace us,” a slogan so foreign to most that even I, who consider myself more than knowledgeable about anti-Semitic tropes, did not understand it properly at first. (To revisit what I wrote last fall about eventually coming to understand what the slogan means to those who chant it, click here.) Nor, I finally seized, was this just a creepy mantra intended solely to unnerve or to upset, but actually a slogan fully expressive of the idea that serves as the beating heart of white supremacist paranoia. The concept itself is simple enough: that the policies promoted by liberal Western democracies that permit immigration from third-world countries, encourage racial integration, promote (or at least permit) interracial marriage, justify ever-descending fertility rates as the result of personal decisions with which the state may never interfere, endorse access to abortion as a basic human right, and enact gun control laws intended to declaw the basic human right to bear arms—that these policies are all part of some mysterious global effort to replace “regular” white people (i.e., working-class whites who belong to Christian churches they either do or don’t attend) with people of color in general, but particularly with Muslims from third-world countries.

The white supremacists of different nations promote different versions of this theory—but they all derive at least to some extent from the 1973 novel by French author Jean Raspail, Le Camp des Saints, in which an ill-prepared host of Western nations, primarily France but others as well including the U.S., are at first slowly and then decisively overwhelmed by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, Western Africa, and Southeast Asia. Eventually South Africa is overrun too, as is Russia, with the result that the world as we know it comes to a decisive end even before the book does. (The book is available in English in Norman Shapiro’s translation as The Camp of the Saints, published by Scribner’s in 1975 and still in print.)

And that specific fear—that faceless hordes of dark-skinned people of various ethnic and national origins are just biding their time on their own turf until the misguided members of the liberal establishment in eventually every First World country blindly and stupidly open the gates without caring who comes through them or what those people stand for—that is the underlying emotion that appears to have provoked the mosque bombings in New Zealand, the mass murder of high school students in Norway, and any number of violent incidents in our own country. When white supremacists talk about the fear of being “replaced,” that is what they mean.

It’s not entirely untrue, of course, that immigrants—and particularly in large numbers—alter the face of the host country that takes them in. That surely did happen in our own country after successive waves of immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fundamentally altered the face of American culture. But in the case of our own country, the overall effect was essentially salutary because those groups who came here en masse were composed of individuals, three of my four grandparents among them, who were for the most part eager to embrace American culture and who had no interest at all in attempting to impose the culture of their countries of origin on the citizens of the nation that granted them refuge and took them in.

The accused shooter is an Australian, which adds a strong dollop of irony to his fear of replacement given that both Australia and New Zealand are dominated by cultures brought to those places by imperialist immigrants from Europe who rode roughshod over the actual culture of the actual people they found living in those places when they arrived en masse in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But I’m thinking that the real issue isn’t whether cultures do or don’t, or should or shouldn’t, evolve as time moves forward and the ethnic or racial make-up of the populace alters. On a more fundamental level, the issue has to do with the ability to see strangers as individuals rather than as a faceless horde.

The fear of being overwhelmed is probably a natural response when newcomers are seen not as individual men and women—people with children, who need jobs, who want to play a useful and meaningful role in society, who like to swim or to paint or to make music or to cook, who have their own set of fears and anxieties—but solely as part of the groups to which they belong. And there is irony in this anxiety-driven world view as well because, by refusing to see others as individuals, such people eventually start thinking of themselves in that way as well and end up retreating deeper and deeper into their own communities. This in turn leads to the phenomenon that Canadian author Hugh McLennan once famously called “two solitudes,” a baleful situation in which contiguously situated groups have almost so little contact with each other that they quickly forget that the people on the other side of the line are individuals with whom they could easily engage if they wished. And so the path is laid for once-great countries to become balkanized shadows of their former selves as the sense of national identity that once held the citizenry together slowly erodes and becomes ever more fragile. Eventually, the nation collapses in on itself and something else emerges from the ruins…but the chances of that new entity somehow not facing the same issues of mutually antagonistic solitudes within its borders is nil. And so begins the spiral down towards dissolution and disunity born of fear. It does not—perhaps even cannot—end well!

In the history of the West, the Jews have played the role of the perennial other, of the tolerated alien. The outpouring of sympathy in the Jewish community over the last week for the Muslims of New Zealand—a community that I seriously doubt more than half a dozen Jewish Americans even knew existed before last week—derives directly from that sense that, in the end, what drives the kind of violent animus against Muslims gathering for prayer that exploded last Friday in Christchurch is different only in cosmetic terms from the kind of explosive violence so often directed at Jews. So we add Christchurch to the list of gun-violent massacres in religious settings that already includes (to reference only attacks within the last decade) Charleston, Pittsburgh, Sutherland Springs, and Oak Creek. And we brace for the next attack, which will surely come unless we can find a way to force the haters to look directly at the objects of their antipathy and see, not a faceless horde, but men and women made in the image of God. That sounds so simple when put that way, and so obvious. But you cannot make blind people see merely by forcing them to open their eyes and face in the right direction….

#Christchurch #Pittsburgh #anti-Semitism #white supremacists

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lia-nikiforov · 6 years ago

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Spring 2018 Anime Final Review

So, uh, this is six months late. I’ve had half of this post in my drafts forever. To make it short, as I’ve mentioned previously, mom lost her job, which has not only been a heavy hit to my sense of stability for the last six months, but also means my time to watch anime was seriously reduced and even now a slight change of plans fucks up my whole schedule and sets me back for a full week. Anyway, nobody cares about any of these shows anymore so let’s get straight to it? I’m gonna ommit the two-cours that continued into the Summer - hopefully I’ll be able to make that post soonish? idk. Worst to best, same as usual

The crappy gender politics pit of shame

Darling in the FRANXX: I think everyone has ripped this show to threads at this point and there isn’t much I could add to that. It is quite funny to me to see how many people flipped out when the show went completely bananas in its last few episodes. Feels a bit like KADO, I’ve been telling y’all this was a ton of empty crap since episode 2, it just took the writing to completely self-destruct for everyone else to notice. A part of me feels tempted to do a long post breaking down just how badly the show collapsed in its final shebang, specifically how every single twist and turn completely nulled any remote kind of message or central thesis the show may have had, but at the same time it doesn’t seem worth the time. In the end, I may have given What is Internal Consistency, The anime way too much credit. It’s not hateful antigay propaganda, it’s just dumb as shits, with a writer and creators who didn’t think for half a second of the implications of what they were doing, and who were so incompetent they couldn’t even conserve the minimal plot and character coherency within a single episode, let alone 24. In other words, Darling isn’t saying “gays shouldn’t exist” but “I have no idea of anything regarding gay people”. What makes it egregious is that the show spent so much time acting like it was “meaningful” and “important” and yet it ended saying absolutely fucking nothing. Except mayb “have babies”. Down to oblivion you go, along with the likes of KADO, to the void of shows that couldn’t even be offensively bad and no one will remember a year from now. Bonus garbage points for the half-assed “bury your gays”.

Nil of Libra Admirari or whatever this show was called: I’m not trying to diss on the show, I just genuinely never remember the title because I have the JP and EN all mixed up. Not that it matters much, as far as I could tell, the show could call Shalabalabatuna and it would have the same significance in regard to the content. But the title isn’t important. In fact, it may be a bit unfair to have this show in this section. For the most part, Main Girl is very self-determined and has an active role in the story.... but then the last two episodes heavily featured a lot of rape threats or rape themes and forced pregnancy (real and threat) and I don’t really understand why they’d go there all of a sudden. One of them was treated relatively well, even empowering the victim in the process, but when the ikemen bad guy was rambling endlessly about how he wanted to impregnate the protagonist it really turned me off :/ I’m also not a fan of “main boy was her secret fiancé all along”, but at least they also handled that somewhat decently. It’s a very disposable series, but since I watched all of Amnesia, I think I owe every otoge adaptation at least the smallest chance to clear that very low bar, and Libra of Nil does it, more competently than most other stuff in the same genre.

Hisone to Masotan: I really, really wanted to love this show. Even now, as I put it in the pit of shame category, I’m pained. There was a good show in this, and a lot of it made it to the screen: an adorable, charming little story about a woman finding her place in the world, making new friends, finding her calling and bonding with an adorable dragon. Unfortunately, it got buried down under this opressing, horrendous gender politics that tried to do something with bringing attention to sexism in the military only to cancel it out making the one dude that embodied that sexism getting rewarded with the affections of a girl he explicitly tried to crush. It also called back on the virgin or whore fallacy and even managed to shove in a “bury your gays” trope. Even though Hisone challenges the ritual bullshit, it’s too little, too late, and she does end up carrying it out anyway, so the defiance to the status quo is of little importance in terms of problematizing the ritual itself. Sorry BONES, it wasn’t meant to be this time.

The ni fu ni fa section

Ni fu ni fa is a Mexican colloquialism for “It was okay but it didn’t change my life.”

Binan Koukou Chikyuu Boueibu HAPPY KISS: This soft reboot of the franchise had some really great episodes and did an actually good job of developping its characters. For the most part, it achieved what its predecessor did in terms of satirical comedy and I enjoyed it quite a bit. However, what bunked it down so low in the list was the final episode. At some point, the writers forgot they were doing a parody and made the show somewhat self-serious, way closer in tone to the magical girl anime it was supposed to be making fun of, rather than the satire its predecessor was. Whereas S1 ended with the whole Magical boy stuff being revealed as a crappy space reality TV show, this one ended with a real cheesy conflict about happiness and family and blablabla. Which is not bad by itself if this were a Precure show, but that kind of self-serious plot development just didn’t work for this series. I still enjoyed it, and the fanservice episode is one of the best of the whole franchise, but I’m a bit sad the finale missed the mark so badly.

Hinamatsuri: Hinamatsuri was very hit-or-miss for me. There were some truly brilliant episodes, a lot of funny vignettes and heart-warming stories, and then there was some stuff that made me uncomfortable -like every single Hitomi story- or felt unnecessary and dry. It also threw me off that the superpower dynamic completely disappeared in the second half of the show, especially in Anzu’s part of the story. It was okay but I feel like I needed something that felt like a closing, and choosing to end it with Mao who featured very minimally in the show overall didn’t cut it. It’s a fun show, I’d reccommend people check it out, but it felt a bit too disjointed for me

Persona 5: The Animation: This is a hard show to place because I love the looks of it and I think the concept is interesting and pretty cool, but there is something that’s keeping me from connecting emotionally to the story. The part where changing the villains’ heart makes them repent from their sins and become “good” feels very artificial and very tasteless when you’re dealing with rapists and abusers. I ended dropping it at episode 16, I just couldn’t find the motivation to catch up with the 6 episodes i’d fallen behind on because my schedule is a tragedy

Tokyo Ghoul: Re: I guess it’s fair to say I’ve kind of outgrown Tokyo Ghoul. There’s something messy and confusing about how this season panned out, and there comes a point in which misery porn just doesn’t cut it anymore. I still watch because Ishida has a way to make every single goddamn character extremely sympathetic, which makes for an emotionally engaging viewing even when you’re not sure of what the plot is supposed to be or who you should be rooting for. I tried picking up the new season that just started airing and immediately found I had no idea of what was going on, who was on who’s side and in general, who the fuck were 90% of the characters, so I dropped it.

Nanatsu no Taizai: Imashime no Fukkatsu: I’ve mentioned it before, this second season had the opposite problem than the first one: the pace was too slow. It took more than half of it to get to Escanor, and then the season ends at a kind of random spot. I really thought we’d get further along on the story, since Gowther’s backstory was hinted at in the openings, but no such thing happened. They did manage to give us a variety of cool moments and fights, and I love Ban so his scenes with Zhivago and Elaine made me quite happy, though I really wish the romance between Elizabeth and Meliodas wasn’t su dubious and cringy. In light of some revelations that take place further along the manga, going out of their way to emphasize that Meliodas was a sort of mentor figure for Elizabeth when she was a toddler seems unncessary and just very squeamish. I do hope we get a third season though, and an OVA of the Vampires of whatever side story would be great too.

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori: I was pleasantly surprised by this show, and it’s closer to being one of my top of the season than it is to “meh”. It had some weaker, cheesier segments, but it also managed great whacky moments and a genuine soothing atmosphere. What surprised me most is that the vanilla looking cast of moderately handsome dudes managed to develop into interesting, funny individuals with a dynamic that made every episode enjoyable. A solid reccommendation for anyone wanting to see delicious looking food and moderately handsome dudes being ridiculous. Also, the cat episode is the best episode of anime ever produced.

The I’m probably the only person alive who enjoys these shows

Mahou Shoujo Ore: This is a difficult show to place because it wasn’t quite as great as I wanted it to be and its parodic nature took me by surprise, but somehow I was still seriously entertained more often than not. The twists in the final quarter and the absolutely bonkers finale was a total riot, but I definitely advise caution before going in, given that some of the jokes may seem insensitive or in poor taste in regards to gender presentation, sexuality and there are even some mild harrassment jokes that certainly made me roll my eyes.

Yowamushi Pedal: Glory Line: I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but I think through half of the show’s 25 episode run, I was convinced the title was actually Glory Road. It’s kind of anticlimactic that it’s called Glory Line if they don’t actually reach the final Goal btw. Anyway, I feel I say this a lot, but really, if you didn’t like the previous Yowapeda seasons, there’s nothing here for you, and if you did, you’re probably not gonna hop off this late in the game. This season does suffer from the same dragging than its predecessors, with the added issue of being quite pessimistic for no reason in about half the episodes, and a diminished presence for Onoda. I really wish they hadn’t dragged the Day 2 goal so long, I really hoped we’d see the end of the race, but no such luck I guess. Still love most of it and hope we get one more season or a movie to complete the story.

The favorites of the season

Golden Kamuy: In spite of its pacing issues, terrible animation and general clunkiness, I can’t help but love this show. When season 1 ended my feelings for it had mellowed quite a bit, but as soon as I picked up season 2 this Fall I just fell in love all over again. It’s fun, unique, over-the-top in some ways, incredibly grounded in others, and the dynamics between the characters are incredibly charming.

Hozuki no Reitetsu: It’s hard to talk about this one because it feels repetitive, given how tonally the show remains just the same across its three seasons. It could’ve very well been a one-season, 36 episode show, for how little it changes in spite of the time that transpired between the first season and the second. But in short, the comedy continues to be as spot on as always, the Zashikiwarashi twins are the best addition to the cast. It’s definitely a show I could watch endless episodes off, and the rare case of an episodic series with no overarching plot that I can enjoy wholeheartedly.

Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card arc: Over the course of the series, I’ve expressed a few concerns and misgivings about how the story of this 20th anniversary sequel was playing out. The final episode was particularly troublesome in that it left the story unfinished in spite of deviating from the manga. In spite of this, more than anything I’m very happy that this continuation still retains what made the original so special, that they captured the magic behind Sakura’s “everything will be alright” spell and gave us the chance to spend more time with these beloved characters and see their stories continue. The slow but sweet development of Sakura and Syaoran’s puppy love is a definite highlight. Needs more Touya/Yukito and Yue in general.

Piano no Mori: This show got heavily overlooked because it was kidnapped by Netflix (pls stop immediately), and then when it was finally unceremoniously dumped a month or two ago, it came under fire for the wonky CGI during the piano scenes -and it is indeed very wonky-. But beyond that, I found the story very engaging, especially because Kai is such a fascinating protagonist, his intense rivalry-friendship with Megane-kun (sorry, it’s been six months, i can’t remember names) is exactly the type I can’t help but root for. Kai’s participation in the final episode gave me goosebumps. I’m very happy we’re getting a continuation, can’t wait to see how the Chopin competition develops.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii: Sweet, funny and absolutely delightful from start to finish, Wotakoi was easily one of the highlights of the season. Although there were some aspects about Cosplayer-senpai and Yuri Otaku-senpai’s (I’m really trying to remember the names, I’m sorry!! ;---;) that didn’t work for me -namely the izakaya segment- Narumi and Hirotaka more than made up for it with their clumsy yet adorable romance. I spent the entirety of the amusement park episode screeching. I really hope we get a continuation -and get a chance to see more of Hirotaka’s brother and his gamer friend too- and that in general we can get more anime about adult stories

Megalobox: Who would’ve thought that a show that wasn’t even in my radar before the season started would’ve end as one of my favorites, possibly of the year? Even as someone who’s only marginally acquainted with Ashita no Joe and has no interst in the sport of boxing, I was completely enthralled by the style and passion of this production. As I said a bit above, intense rivalries are very appealing to me, and the build up in the tension between Joe and Yuri was almost palpable, their mutual respect gave me chills. Definitely the surprise of the season, made even better by its optimistic happy ending to contrast with its predecessor’s tragedy. Megalobox is a unique anniversary project that is closer to an homage and it works perfectly. Definitely check it out.

That’s it for the Spring season! I hope i can do the summer season this weekend and maaaybe even my watchlist for the Fall season. Fingers crossed i won’t get swallowed up in other stuff :’D

#anime final impressions #spring anime #god i've forgotten 95% of my tags #darling in the franxx #megalobox #wotaku ni koi wa muzukashii #piano no mori #card captor sakura clear card arc #hozuki no reitetsu #golden kamuy #yowapeda #mahou shoujo ore #rokuhoudou yotsuiro biyori #nanatsu no taizai #persona 5 #tokyo ghoul: re #hinamatsuri #hisone to masotan #binan koukou chikyuu boueibu

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emkayoh · 7 years ago

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Spider-Man: Homecoming Fic Recs

Alright, I snapped y’all. I’m blown away by the quality of writing in this fandom and I want to share some of my absolute faves that I’ve found. Especially since I haven’t really seen any fic recs and these fics deserve to be spread like wildfire. So here are my top favorite reads, mostly Tony and Peter centered because of course.

(Under the cut because this is looooooong):

How to Repair a Broken Heart by InfluentialPineapple (WIP)

Summary: The Mechanic has a lot on his plate; Thanos is coming, the Guardians of the Galaxy are marooned, Thaddeus Ross is reaching right down his throat, and a budding super hero deserves his full attention. He's also dying. No big deal. He can fix it. He can fix anything.

And he can do it all without even opening that stupid phone.

Now, where did those notes on Extremis go...?

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: Mature

Notes: Holy shit, y’all. This is definitely my favorite fanfiction... ever. Out of everything I’ve ever read. It’s still a WIP so beware of that, but I am extremely confident in the author’s ability to finish it. And honestly, it’s well worth reading even if it isn’t finished. It has some of the most spot-on characterization, an amazing plot that rivals whatever Marvel cooks up for Infinity War, and glorious writing. 10/10 I am in the fandom for this fic specifically. (Warning: Violence, torture, lots of death.)

The Long Way Round by undeerqueen

Summary: Tony wants him to hold on. Peter just wants to go home.

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: General Audiences

Notes: Okay, warning... this is a death fic. But it’s my favorite death fic ever written. It’s so beautifully written in a way that keeps you hanging on until the very end and leaves a hole in your heart that never goes away. If you’re like me and enjoy that kind of stuff, please, please, please for the love of god, read this fic. (Edit: This is a whole series now!!! Even more pain abounds.)

three words that became hard to say (i and love and you) by madasthesea

Summary: Tony likes giving gifts to prove his love, but they don't usually have four paws and a tail.

AKA: Tony, Peter, and a dog named Maggie learn how to be a family.

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: General Audiences

Notes: I’m crying???? I’m usually not a fan of fics that kill off May so that Peter and Tony can be a family because she deserves better than that, but this fic is the ONLY exception. May isn’t cast aside as unimportant, Tony struggles to make Peter accept him as his new guardian, and there’s a dog! What could be better than that? (Edit: It’s a whole series now!! Tears from beginning to end.)

Everyone You’ve Ever Loved by JBS_Forever

Summary: “You will lose, Tony Stark,” the man says. “You have taken everything from me. Now I'm going to take everything from you.”

(Or: A masked-man threatens to destroy everyone Tony Stark has ever cared about. He starts by taking Peter.)

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: General Audiences

Notes: I honestly had a hard time picking out a JBS_Forever fic to include in this rec list, because everything they write is amazing and I recommend all of it, but this fic stands out. It’s a classic “Peter gets kidnapped and Tony has to save him” fic, which is a favorite trope of mine lol (are you noticing a pattern with the fics I tend to like?) It’s a oneshot but it’s MASSIVE and really realistically portrayed. I love how she writes Tony and Peter and I was holding my breath the whole time.

Astronomy In Reverse by pansley (WIP)

Summary: A year after the Winter Soldier failed his mission in DC, Bucky Barnes is doing his best to stay under the radar from both Hydra and Steve Rogers. His hope for a peaceful day-to-day life in limbo goes awry, however, when he meets Queens’ newest hero; a pure-hearted kid with a death wish and a ridiculous pair of red and blue pajamas.

The last thing Steve expects when he finally tracks Bucky down is that, not only has the man been living in Queens all this time, right under his nose, but also that, in the two years since they last saw each other, Bucky somehow acquired a kid.

Alternatively: How Peter Parker effectively fucks over Bucky Barnes, and also totally saves him.

Relationship: Bucky and Peter

Rating: Teen

Notes: I guess I should mix things up a bit and rec one that isn’t a Tony and Peter fic! This one took me by surprise. I read it because I was intrigued by the relationship tag between Bucky and Peter and didn’t know how it would work. Spoiler: It works very well. It’s so different from a Tony fic but it’s so precious. Featuring foster kid/homeless Peter Parker. Also a WIP and only in the beginning stages but I sense a really interesting plot. (Warning for attempted sexual assault in one of the chapters! But it’s very, very brief. )

Weak Spot by grilledcheesing

Summary: Peter Parker has been sent back in time hundreds of times after their last face off with Thanos to do the one thing nobody else can: save Tony Stark.

Unfortunately, he has to find a way to kill his past self to do it.

And the last thing Tony is going to do is let him.

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: Teen

Notes: Back on my Tony and Peter bullshit. This author is a very prominent author in the fandom so I’m sure you’ve read at least one of their fics if you’ve read a lot of Homecoming fics, but this is my absolute favorite of theirs. It’s such an interesting (and heartbreaking) concept and it’s another one of those stories that leaves you feeling empty inside. Warning for more character death.

pretending by ace8013

Summary: Natasha reflects on what she noticed.

Relationship: All of the Avengers really, but come on I read it for the Tony and Peter

Rating: Not Rated

Notes: I’m honestly... flabbergasted that this fic has so few kudos. Pls go read it and give it more. It’s really short but so poignant and says so much with so little. I honestly love it so much. It’s in Natasha’s POV which is really interesting and the author really nails her personality. It’s absolutely soul-crushing and it will only take you like 2 minutes to read please just do it. (Warning for so much character death...)

Tony Built a Son by Footloose_Poets

Summary: Peter navigates learning to be human. Tony navigates fathering an android.

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: General Audiences/Teen

Notes: Ohmygosh... this one probably isn’t surprising considering the massive amounts of fanart I’ve drawn for it. The idea is so obvious yet so unique and satisfying to read. The author does an AMAZING job creating a realistic world where Tony builds an android son to keep his loneliness at bay and keeps both Tony and Peter so in character despite the vastly different circumstances from their movie counterparts. And it’s a whole series! Every new installment is a beautiful read, and the author even created a tumblr: @friendly-neighborhood-android to post mini ficlets, art, and factoids in the interim.

5 Times Peter Thought Tony Was Mad by caraminha

Summary: ... and one time he actually was.

Set a few months after Aunt May's death where Tony is Peter's legal guardian. Navigating a new life together and settling into being father and son is a rollercoaster - falling in love with the kid? Easy. Dealing with a grieving teenager, and trying to figure out how to do this whole parent thing? Uh... not so easy.

Relationship: Tony and Peter

Rating: Teen

Notes: Oh no more dead May. But I promise I only recommend these fics when they’re really well-written! And this is a REALLY good fic. I got so many feels reading this and domestic Tony and Peter really gives me life. Tony messes up a little but more than makes up for it, and then Peter messes up a lot but it’s okay because Tony loves him. It’s so adorable and heartwarming and I had the warm fuzzies the whole time.

Only Human by tonysta_k

Summary: When Flash takes things too far - pushes Peter too far by mentioning his fathers and what happened, Peter can't take it anymore.

Or, an au where after civil war, Steve was put in prison, Tony has a hard time facing his feelings, and Peter just wants to see his pops.

Relationship: Steve/Tony (Past), Tony and Peter

Rating: Teen

Notes: Damn. I don’t even ship Stony. I don’t like it, Steve has hurt Tony too much for me to ever see them as romantically involved, but if Stony just so happens to be in an intriguing Tony and Peter fic... fine, I’ll read it, so sue me. But wowowow did this fic hit me where it really hurts. It’s good because it acknowledges Steve and Tony’s failed relationship and puts Peter right in the middle of a REALLY nasty divorce. It’s really heart-breaking and realistic and claws at your emotions. 10/10 had to hug my parents right after reading.

for good by Madelinedear

Summary: "Sorry, May, we can't all be best friends with a celebrity.”

May opens her mouth to retort reflexively, the words 'we aren’t even friends' on the tip of her tongue before she closes her mouth. Because they are friends, now. They’re way past that point.

Oh my god, she thinks somewhat hysterically. Tony Stark is my best friend.

(or; Tony Stark, May Parker, and the road to something like friendship)

Relationship: Tony and May

Rating: General Audiences

Notes: YES!!! YES!!! YEEESSSSS!!! Finally, the Tony and May fic I’ve been waiting for!!! To end this rec list on a fluffier note (because boy do I love angst, huh?) this fic is hilarious, heartwarming, and so in-character. It’s a really good study of how May and Tony’s relationship might evolve over time due to their mutual bonding over fiercely loving Peter. It’s everything I ever wanted in a May and Tony friendship fic and more.

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And these two are not necessarily Homecoming fics but I have to include them because they are on the list of my all time favorite Spider-Man fics:

Weaver of Silk and Dreams by a_stands_for

Summary: Ben Parker sighed as he looked up into The Thing's eyes, so expressively human in spite of the rest of his rocky appearance.

“My fifteen-year-old nephew--who's practically my own little boy!--” he choked out with a tight voice, “h-he can't pass for human anymore. He's scared, and he's isolated, and he just needs someone else to talk to! Someone who can understand. Please."

_____

Some alternate realities are unrecognizable, and some are indistinguishable. This one lies somewhere in between.

Peter Parker's life was derailed when he mutated into a strange human/spider hybrid, and he knows that's not the way things went down for him in other realities. Still, he's determined to forge a new path and make the best of it. Sometimes "the friends we made along the way" really is the greatest treasure anyone could ask for.

Relationship: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson (Peter Parker/Johnny Storm)

Rating: Mature

Notes: Okay so this is more based in the comic-verse, but I pictured Tom Holland Spidey while reading it anyways. I don’t even ship Spideypool tbh but I got curious. I didn’t even watch the Deadpool movie or know anything about Deadpool (or the Fantastic Four, who feature prominently in this) but still... it’s SO. GOOD. More spidery Spider-Man isn’t a thing I knew I needed until this fic, and it honestly reads almost like a fantasy. The world-building is incredible and the fic also comes with great drawings to help you visualize this strange new Peter. (Warning though: There are sex scenes. I was kinda hesitant about whether or not I should rec this because of that, but honestly the fic is worth it. I don’t usually like to read fics with sex scenes, but the plot more than makes up for it.)

I Like Birds by chinashopbull (WIP... possibly abandoned?)

Summary: Peter has Asperger’s/ASD. Yes, of course he’s still Spider-Man. Deadpool tries to accommodate, with mixed results.

Some feeble plot happens eventually, blood gets on the walls, etc. I play fast and loose with canon but try to stay true to (what I perceive to be) the spirit of the characters.

Relationship: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson

Rating: Mature

Notes: Okay, so this fic predates Homecoming so it’s definitely not about that Spidey (even though I picture Tom Holland anyways), the summary doesn’t do it justice, the way the fic portrays Tony Stark makes me sad, and it’s most likely abandoned because it hasn’t been updated since May 2017 (Edit: This totally updated after a whole year. It’s still going!!!)... but hear me out. This fic is worth the heartbreak of reading an abandoned fic. First of all: Autistic Peter!!!!! Written by someone who is autistic themselves so it’s very accurate!!!! I know I say this a lot but the plot is AMAZING. There’s an amazing side story about suicide bombers that’s really intriguing. I love the mystery element of this story so much, it reads as it’s own standalone work of fiction. Also, the slow burn is so slow that the Spideypool never happens, so if that’s not your thing, don’t let that stop you from reading this truly incredible fic. (Warning: A really, really graphic eye injury in one of the earlier chapters that’s pretty gruesome. )

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IS THIS LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU?? If you read any of these fics KUDOS AND COMMENT because the authors deserve your love! Feel free to send me any recs too! You know what I like. ;)

#spiderman homecoming #peter parker #tony stark #fic recs #homecoming fics #i've been thinking of doing this for a long time and i finally snapped #i love these fics with all my heart y'all #a lot of them i've read multiple times #the first two i've drawn fan art for lmao #let me know if you've read any of these!

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its-btrz-blog · 7 years ago

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The Infernal Devices (by Cassandra Clare) Series Review

This is a trilogy by author Cassandra Clare, set in the Shadowhunters Chronicles' universe, which she created with her first series, The Mortal Instruments. Although they are set in the same world, this is a prequel series and can be read first without spoiling her later books. It has three installments, Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince and Clockwork Princess, which were published between 2010 and 2013 by Simon & Schuster, Margaret K. McElderry.

What made me want to read it:

Some of the characters here made an appearance/were mentioned in TMI and I either liked those characters or was curious about them and wanted to know more. Before that, I'd already been recommended this book in Goodreads and I confess I was always very attracted by the promised setting: steampunk in Victorian London! They also have gorgeous covers.

What is it about (no spoilers):

In London, 19th century, a girl named Tessa Gray finds herself engulfed in the magical underworld. This is unknown territory for her and she's looking for her brother. To get help, she allies herself with the city's Shadowhunters, and soon they will also be uncovering a downworlder conspiracy, aided by strange clockwork creatures, to conquer the Empire.

What I thought about it (no spoilers):

Let's start with the setting. The thing is, if you're going to write a book in a different time period, the reader has to feel that they are in fact in a different time. Both the narration (that follows different characters' point of view) and the dialogue read just like a book set in the 21st century. There's some mention of Victorian elements, but it feels more like they are modern teenagers playing dress-up with some occasional references to propriety. The Shadowhunters especially seem hardly affected by the passage of time, as in, they are mostly the same as they will be more than 100 years later.

Then we have the characters. I'll only talk about the main trio since the others are there mostly to fawn over them and have background romances (and occasionally be useful or die). Some of them look like they're more interesting than the main ones, but well. So we have Tessa, our protagonist, and Will and Jem, two Shadowhunters who are also best friends and parabatai (an eternal bond of friendship or whatever it is). They are all teenagers with tragic back stories and they are all gorgeous. They also form a love triangle.

I'll start with Tessa. Tessa loves books. She reads a lot and loves to quote her favorite books and compare herself to their heroines. She's very social inept so she only knows how to act based on what she's read. Aside from that she's basically the most superficial character in the series. She constantly worries about how she looks, about her clothes, about her hair (never mind that she judges another character for being shallow and worrying about class and position and being pretty), about what is proper and what is improper, if a certain character is handsome or not. Please. She's in an unknown place with unknown forces, trying to save her brother and the city and maybe trying not to die. Is this really all that worries her? Also, ignoring what the other characters think about her, I find her to be very childish and insensitive to others. Her involvement in the love triangle is deplorable. The two boys love her, she knows that, and she leads both of them on, and shares clearly romantic and inappropriate (according to her) moments with both, clearly not caring much about who gets hurt. There's even a whole thing with accepting a serious compromise/love declaration from one of them while thinking about the other's hot body all the time. So, yes, I don't find her a character I can like or respect or understand.

After Tessa, there's Will. Will embodies tropes I absolutely hate. He is the handsome, broody sarcastic boy who is actually a jerk with everyone but that you can just tell from the beginning that he will turn out to have a tragic past and good intentions and a heart of gold and everything will be forgiven and forgotten and he will be pitied and loved by everyone. He's also one of those characters who treat their love interests badly. They ignore them are mean to them, then throw themselves at them and kiss them, then tell them to stay away because “I'm so dangerous for you, you don't understand”. Overdone and personally, not something I like.

Then the last person in the love triangle is Jem. Jem is actually the only character from these 3 that I can sort of like. He's kind and he cares about people. He's basically a victim here. All the time I couldn't help but wonder what the hell is saw in Will and Tessa, because he just adores both of them and his world seems to revolve around it.

Moving on to the story. These are 3 books with approximately 500 pages each. That's a lot, and you would expect a lot would happen. Turns out, it doesn't. There's a cat and mouse chase for the bad guy and for Tessa's brother, and they make some plans to find information, and have a couple of fights. When you think about it, these things in themselves don't take up much space. However, it always seems like the story is dragging and things move so slowly. And frankly, that's because this book is more about romance, than it is about anything else. We are constantly told the same things over and over again, as if we couldn't bother to remember from one chapter to the next and a lot of space is dedicated simply to repeat over and over and over again how beautiful a character is (and in Tessa's case, what she's wearing, occasionally). I found this fault in the other Shadowhunters books too, and it is extremely irritating. We constantly get descriptions of the beautiful characters, with eye color and hair color and we are always getting told how beautiful and hot they are! I lost count how many times Tessa says Will looks so fine in his evening clothes. Like, I need a character described to me ONCE. Once is more than enough. If, dear me, I forget how a character looks like, down to the specific shade of his eyes (which leads us to gems like “His eyes were bluer than blue.”), I can go back and read it again. Or maybe not, since that is hardly crucial to understanding a story.

We are again shown how incompetent and not progressive the Clave is and I'm still not sure how this can be a functioning and surviving organization. To top it off, we still get treated with the sickening portrayal of fantastic racism that features in TMI. Downworlders are treated like trash, have no rights, no protection, and still, when they dare revolt against the institution that oppresses them, they are the bad guys and that totally justifies every bad thing they have to suffer. The concept of cause and effect or even historical memory doesn't seem to exist. There could be a great lesson about racism here, but somehow it never gets through. There is never a sympathetic view for the Downworlders, no one ever revolts against this constant system of oppression they keep them in.

So, in the end, we have this mostly superfluous addition to the Shadowhunters Chronicles, who is about 1000 pages too long for the story it is supposed to tell, since it is a fantasy disguised as a romance. Don't be fooled, the love triangle is the main point of the books, the rest is just background. Mostly, I felt that I would've been happier with a simpler version of this story making a chapter of the main series instead of this… whatever it was. I lost respect for the characters and the beauty of their story just disappeared.

Conclusion:

If, like me, you feel the need to finish series, well, go ahead and read it. If you, also like me, were looking for a cool story with steampunk elements in Victorian London, well, sorry, but this is not the right series. That part of the advertisement is basically non existing in the books. If you want a romance with supernatural and historical elements, I guess you could try it, but even as far as romance goes, I don't find this a good example.

I had higher ratings for the first and second book, but in the end and after reflecting I gave one star ratings to the three books, because mostly it felt like a lot of time spent reading for an absent story and a bland attempt at romance.

[My individual short reviews for each book are here, here and here.]

The short stories:

There are two, On the Bridge and After the Bridge, who are available for free on the writer's website. One of them is a sort of prologue, I guess, and the other makes up a sort of epilogue to give a second and alternative happy ending to the story and is basically a sex scene. The second one should be read after the three books otherwise it will spoil them, and other than some wish fulfillment for a couple it adds nothing.

#the infernal devices #tid #cassandra clare #series reviews #reviews #breviews #shadowhunter chronicles

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dear-my-future-love · 6 years ago

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Dear Future Love,

I feel like this is very stupid and not a thing that normal rational people do, but I guess if you love me, you understand me. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now and I don’t know, tonight just seemed like the right night I guess. Sometimes I get sad. I don’t always know why, but it’s just like this ache in my chest and it can be hard to ignore sometimes. Thinking about you helps, which I know sounds absolutely crazy. Whenever I’m having a bad day though, I imagine you. I know you must be out there, doing something. I imagine the day I get to meet you, our wedding, basically everything. I wish that I had a specific person that I was writing this to, but I don’t think I’ve met you yet. I know people say that love at first sight doesn’t exist, but I feel like I’ll just know somehow when I’ve met you? That probably sounds stupid. Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll ever let you read any of these, honestly, I don’t know if I’ll write any after this one, but I’m writing this because tonight I want to talk to you and this is the only way that I know how.

So, I was reading some Matt/Foggy fics, which I’m a bit obsessed with at the moment. I love the trope of best friends falling in love. I think it’s because I want you to be my best friend and so that ship really pull on my heart strings. Reading them got me thinking about you and wondering what you were up to at the moment. You could be doing anything honestly, but the most likely option is probably sleeping. At this moment though, I imagine that you’re awake too and that you’re thinking of me. Not me specifically obviously, but the concept of me I guess? It makes me feel better when I imagine that. I don’t know what you look like, hell, I don’t even know if you’re a man or a woman, but I know I love you. Is that absolutely crazy? I already love you so much that I can feel my chest ache sometimes. I think that’s why I can’t stand dating in high school. None of them are right; none of them are you. I dated someone and he wasn’t right, I knew that from the beginning. I ignored it because as we probably both know by whatever point you’re reading this, sometimes I do dumb things.

Prom is coming up soon. It’ll be in April at the aquarium. I wish I could go with you, but I probably won’t. Most likely, I’ll end up chilling with the otters, but that’s not so bad. I’ll think about you some. I think about you a lot when it’s romantic things like that. I’ll probably imagine what it would be like if we had gotten to spend our prom together. Probably pretty fucking amazing.

I miss you. Can you miss someone you haven’t met yet? I know most people would say no, but I think you can. When I’m sad, I miss you the most. You’re missing and I feel like my soul can feel that. I don’t think the sad feeling would be gone, even if you were here, but I think it would be better. I would have you with me.

You want to know one of my greatest fears? It’s never getting to meet you or that you don’t exist at all. That there really isn’t someone out there who’s meant to be with me. There are a lot of men and women that don’t get married, and I know that being single is okay, but I don’t want that. I want you to be in my life. I’m scared that I’ll never find you. I know I said that I’m worried that you don’t exist, but I don’t think that’s true. I know you exist. I can feel out there...somewhere. Before you met me, did you ever feel the same way or am I just absolutely crazy?

I’ve felt what might have been love only once. I won’t go into detail here because I doubt you want to hear about that (if you do, you can ask), but it’s an emotion that’s so strong and so amazing, even just to feel. I can’t imagine what it would be like to meet the person you’re meant to be with and have mutual love between each other. I know relationships aren’t all sunshine and happy rainbows all the time, but giving someone all your love and then being able to get that love back in return? I can only imagine how amazing that would be.

I guess that’s what’s on my mind tonight. If you’ve read this far, you’re either questioning my mental state or you feel extremely touched. Personally, I’m hoping for the latter. Just know that I’m looking at the stars and thinking about you tonight and that I love you. I hope that you’re happy and I hope that you’re safe. Even if you aren’t, know that I’m thinking about you and that I’m giving you my support. I don’t know if that means anything, so far in the future, but just know that you’ve always had me supporting you. I’ll blow a kiss to the stars for you tonight, my love. I know stars aren’t messengers of love, but maybe they’ll make an exception, just this once. I hope you look at the stars and feel loved, because you are, more than you could ever know.

Always yours,

L. 1/7/19

“I will always love you, even if we’re not together and even if we’re far, far away from each other”

(I thought I would end each of these with a quote that sort of sums up how I’m feeling. Why? I have absolutely no idea)

#love #i love you #soulmate #love quotes

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the-connection · 7 years ago

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