#i wish i wasn't so effected by engagement tbh i will try to work on that

[livecrow]

Not me checking my tumblr today and realizing people like my fic. Givin' ALL of you a lil forehead smooch.

...you know, as someone with previously almost zero social media footprint, I'd always figured that I'd feel indifferent to engagement if I ever did post.

Turns out, I'm not actually that special!

Every like and reblog is a little treat for my dumb lizard brain. Every comment in a reblog or tags got my kickin' my feet, grinning like an idiot. A little morsel of dopamine to my fucked brain.

As sincerely as my ass is capable, thank you to those that leave comments; it warms my heart. If I could thank you individually without feeling like a total weirdo, I would. It makes me way more motivated to make me stuff if y'all like it. Just be patient with me. I'm slow, but I will continue!

My greatest writing aspiration is to give even one person the feeling that I've got from fics in the past.

A rare, little thrill. Butterflies. That niche fic that feels like it was written with you in mind. A fic that makes your day better, makes your heart race. The fic that you go back to for escapism. Daydream about being in.

Even if it's not exactly everyone's taste, I hope it's good enough that it remains enjoyable to even those who don't fully relate with the reader or vibe with everything.

[cryptidsurveys]

Wednesday, July 31st, 2024.

Do you ever wonder how Atheist people raise their kids? Not really…? I wasn't raised by atheists, but religion didn't play a huge role in my upbringing. We went to church occasionally and I did attend a Catholic elementary school (mainly because it offered all-day kindergarten and my parents preferred that; I transferred to a public school after 3rd grade because tuition became too expensive), but that's basically the extent of it. I don't ever feel like I was forced to believe in any particular thing. I guess I just assumed that - minus my church and school experiences - most atheist approaches to raising children would be relatively similar. Now, if we're talking strictly atheist the way some people are strictly religious, then I might wonder… Like, could it have the opposite effect of driving someone toward religion/spirituality rather than away from it?

If you’re atheist, would you raise you kids believing in God or not? I'm not atheist and I don't plan on ever having children, but hypothetically speaking, I would allow them to explore the possibilities and come to their own conclusions.

How long does it usually take you to finish answering a survey? Sometimes it takes me an embarrassingly (almost ridiculously) long time. I have to sit and ponder. Then I have to figure out how I want to word things. Then I have to hate what I said and go back and reword it. Then I have to post it…reread it…and go back and correct all of my inevitable typos. :')

Do you spell it gray or grey? Gray.

If you make surveys, how do you decide about its title? It's been a long time since I last made a survey. I think I used to use song lyrics or try to sound deep or poetic. Then I got lazy and just started calling them some variation of "random survey."

When are you going back to school? I don't know if I will ever go back to school; but if I did, then I would probably study to become a vet tech.

If you don’t go to school anymore, what do you do? I volunteer at an animal shelter (basically full time now).

Do you care about other people’s status messages? I guess it depends on how much I care about the person and how much I relate to what they're saying. If it's someone I don't know very well talking about something I know equally little about, then probably not. I'm happy they're happy, but I don't really care.

Do you like reading self-help books? Very occasionally…? I tend to engage well with self-help books (or videos) that have a Buddhist approach. For whatever reason, that just works well with my brain's wiring.

What is your opinion on sex change? I don't really have one beyond if it's what you want to do, then go for it. It's your life, your body, and your choice.

Do you think that this will take away the essence of gay pride? No? I'm trans, but I can't see how my experience with gender identity and navigating my own romantic relationships takes anything away from…well, anyone, tbh. I mean, at the end of the day, isn't it less about this mysterious "essence" of gay pride and more about finding someone you can love…? I realize this is a controversial subject, but I don't look at my personal relationships as some sort of expression of activism. It's just me trying to live my life.

What do you do when you tell a really bad joke? With my dad, it's fine. Everything between us is a bad joke. In other social situations...probably wish I was dead.

If you’re still a virgin, how important is your virginity to you? I'm not a virgin.

If you have lost it already, do you regret it? No.

Do you believe in marriage? Why or why not? Yeah. There are pros/cons, but if I found the right person, then it is something that I would like to do.

Do you like having a huge group of friends or would you rather have few close friends? I think a few close friends and a large circle of acquaintances would make me happiest.

Do you have any goals for this summer? If so, what are they? Continue to increase my time at the animal shelter. Get out to the Mountain Park more often. Keep working on my art. Develop a stronger work/life balance, especially now that I'm going to be spending so much time there.

Or do you plan on getting a summer job? Or do you already have one? See above.

If so, where do you work and what do you do? I gave a rundown of my daily work routine in a recent survey.

Do you watch the TV show Skins? If so, who’s your favorite character? No.

And which generation do you prefer? Or do you equally love both? N/a.

Do you know someone who still typpe thiszz wayy? I don't.

Would you take a break after graduating from high school (like, postpone going to college for a year or so)? I didn't take a break. If I could go back and do it all over again, though, then I probably would. College was a hot mess.

Do you feel tired after stretching? No.

Can you get a strike at bowling? I have before.

Do you use Facebook? If so, what is your favorite application there? I don't.

It seems like everyone’s addicted to Twitter these days - are you? I was addicted to Twitter around 2020-2021. I was heavily invested in the political scene. However, at some point, something inside me just snapped. I realized I was wasting my time with ineffective anger rather than figuring out my own damn life (which was in a pretty sorry state, I must say). I still stayed somewhat addicted to other forms of political media (mainly on YT), but eventually it got to where I felt like I was in some sort of Plato's Cave situation, and I knew I needed to go out into the world and form my own opinions rather than have them screamed at me from a screen. "See with eyes unclouded by hate," if you will. ;D The world isn't necessarily any less fvcked up than the internet said it was, but at least I don't have a sense of DOOM blaring in my head all the time. I can compartmentalize my own life away from everything else and have a good, albeit somewhat ignorant and detached existence. Like, I've been checked out of politics for about a year now and my bubble has more or less become the animal shelter, home, and various errands/outings. Perhaps this is selfish, but man…life is so fleeting. I don't want to fix the world; I'll just endure it, die, and it'll all be over. I trust those who are interested to either fix it or fvck it up without me. It's whatever.

[darkpoisonouslove]

Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! Review

I know I've watched this before because at a certain point pretty early on in the movie I remembered a major part of the mystery's solution. However, I could not for the love of me remember much else from the movie so, like... congrats on being extremely impressive while also somehow being forgettable? I feel like that's a good summary of the movie but let's take a deeper look under the cut:

First off, the pacing of this movie is extremely weird. You see the ghost pirates and then you spend the next half an hour (so basically 2/5ths of the movie) doing something else and there's pretty much no sign of the actual mystery starting to develop. I know that they had some setup to do there but when your setup is about half of the movie, it means that you need to look at your script again. Don't get me wrong, the premise of the Scooby gang completely ruining a mystery-solving cruise for all the other people that took it is hilarious and I loved it but I would've loved it way more if I wasn't thinking "but when ghost pirates?" the entire time. There is material for two movies shoved in this one and I think the cruise thing deserved its own movie. Like I said, there is a lot of merit to that premise and they didn't need to put in ghost pirates and the Bermuda Triangle in there in order to give it the substance to turn it into a movie. It could have been a movie of its own.

The mystery was, again, weird. There is a lot to explore about the questions around the Bermuda Triangle and they added ghost pirates + space bodies + time travel + hypnosis on top of that and yet, somehow, the story just ends up being underwhelming when they don't really deliver on any of that. Really, the ghost pirates are the element of the mystery that worked best but the entire mystery was really restricted in playing out due to the nature of it. Considering the fact that the mystery takes place on two ships, there isn't much room for them to do a lot with the solution of the mystery. They don't really have many chances to provide variety when it comes to the action or the clues. Which doesn't sound legit if you've watched the movie because there is, in fact, SO MUCH going on in it (even the Scooby gang get to dress up in costumes and pretend to be aliens) but there's a big disconnect between the different building blocks of the movie that exactly demonstrates that they didn't really know how to make this mystery engaging and ended up throwing more and more crazy shit at the audience in order to keep them watching. Which was unnecessary since there were a lot of interesting threads in this movie but what made them fall flat is the fact that none of them were really explored in depths. If they'd picked two-three of the threads they had in the movie and done more with them while putting the others back for another movie, that would have solidified the mystery and made it more coherent and engaging.

The villains are certainly a case here. The main villain is simultaneously so obvious yet so unremarkable that I am getting pissed off that I couldn't even figure out who it was despite the fact that I've watched this already! Absolute insanity. And to clear things up, his plan was much more interesting than what the actual plan ended up being. I liked his plan but he didn't really have much of a presence which I am still struggling to comprehend because SPOILERS: he's a millionaire (or was he a billionaire?) AND he's crazy about pirates AND he wants to time travel to the golden era of piracy. How in hell did he end up not having any presence whatsoever? And by that I mean that he doesn't feel menacing, he doesn't feel like an explorer, he doesn't feel like a scoundrel... He doesn't feel like anything at all. Which I guess could be a side effect from the movie trying to shove so many angles in this one mystery. Tbh I wish he would've been the only villain or at least the one pulling the strings because that would have given him more credibility as a villain and established a personality that could have been memorable instead of clearly molded to the plot purposes.

Now the plot twist villain was actually the one with slightly more presence considering he was the one pulling the strings all along and had all the facts. He'd manufactured a very complicated scheme in order to achieve his goal and he was the one with the actual skills who pretty much devised and executed most of the plan. He would have been a good villain... if his scheme wasn't so tragically banal and unimaginative. If he could hypnotize all the passengers into playing ghost pirates, why couldn't he just hypnotize the millionaire into transferring him all of his money? THAT would've been a hundred times easier than concocting this whole scheme so that you can get to a gold comet that may or may not be an actual thing. And all the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle being reduced to a guy's greed for extraterrestrial gold is soul-crushing. The least they could have done could have been that the comet is made of normal comet-y matter but would still cost an arm and a leg because of its special properties that cause all the weirdness in the Bermuda Triangle. Making this about gold was literally the most boring thing they could have done.

The side characters in the movie are okay but, ultimately, forgettable. I genuinely couldn't remember a single thing about Fred's parents except for the fact that Salty Sea Sally was Fred's mom. Anything and everything about their personalities was lost in my memory. And the cruise organizer - whatever her name was - was also unbelievably forgettable considering that she's the type of cheerful character that usually ends up being so annoying to me that I can't not remember them. There just wasn't that much to the characters and the reason why I didn't even think the millionaire might be the main villain was probably because by the end of the movie I had long forgotten that he even made an appearance. I did not remember that he existed as a character.

The Scooby gang were okay in this movie. I can't really remember anything about them that stood out to me in this particular movie or even anything about their characterization that would help me discern which time period this movie was made in. The most memorable thing about them in the movie is probably the montage where they solve all the mysteries from the cruise and the fact that Shaggy and Scooby do end up being the ones to save the others as well as how the two of them looked like they were actually enjoying being there for once even if they were still plenty scared throughout the movie. That was a nice change of pace.

I liked the moment there where it looked like the Bermuda Triangle's supernatural side is going to be relevant. It really wasn't but I liked the mystical atmosphere that we got from that brief moment. And the pirate ship looked nice. They actually seemed threatening in their first appearance in the very beginning of the movie. The idea of the Heaven's Light was great and even though I don't like actual time travel, that plan at least had more personality than a simple pursuit of gold.

I don't want to leave anyone with the wrong impression. I enjoyed the movie enough while I was watching it but from a technical point of view, it really isn't holding up. Not to mention that the last reveal that the whole reason behind the mystery was greed for wealth really pissed me off when there were so many more interesting possibilities. I was in the mood for pirates, though, and that movie helped ride out the wave.

[jtargaryen18]

Let me get my protective gear just in case. So Brie Larson is terrible as CM and CM is already a mess of character as it is currently, I loved her when she was Mrs Marvel, she wasn't a Mary Sue like she is currently. And tbh I still dont understand why her, out of so many characters, and also why before Endgame? Why not afterwards like how they did in Batman Vs Superman, WW comes in and after that we got a prequel. I feel like Marvel wants to play the woke game, and I dont wike it. 👷🏻‍♀️

Hey, there. Thank you for writing. 🙏🙏🙏

I don’t really recall talking to anyone online or in rl and getting the same answer twice when it comes to Captain Marvel. It varies. It REALLY varies. lol

I liked the movie. I honestly didn’t read a lot of Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel even though I’m a comic fan. It wasn’t one that I ever felt that I had to have. 

In the MCU? I wish I could tell you why they timed it that way. I have no idea. I do kind of wish they’d saved her for Phase 4. It might have gone over better. I think you’re right there.

On Brie Larson? She’s okay. I think she did the best she could with what she had to work with. I found a lot of the dialogue to be flat but that was the writing and not on her. The action and effects were pretty good. But, for me, they presented a character that I struggled to get emotionally behind. She’s powerful, mighty. 

But lovers of fiction whether it’s written or on a screen want one thing: They want something to worry about. They want something to fret over. Here, she was trying to help the race that she’d been told was the enemy for a time. But she wasn’t in any danger. She wasn’t threatened really. That’s important. That’s an unspoken truth of fiction.

Compare that to Captain America. In Endgame, he got beaten to a pulp by Thanos, his vibranium shield destroyed. He ended up facing Thanos, the Chitauri, the Black Order - all of it - alone. He had no idea those who had been snapped were coming back and when. For those of us who were his fans? Terrifying moment. We were emotionally engaged, invested. Scared.

I personally never had that moment with Captain Marvel. Curious to see what the MCU does with Captain Marvel moving forward. If they can’t change this, I don’t see how she’ll keep an audience for them.

Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏