#im willing to suspend my disbelief actually

[djevelbl]

Alright, so, final thoughts, the short version: gET ON WITH THE NEXT SEASON, CHOP CHOP STORY BOY--

Seriously tho, GREAT story — there's something about it that has made me go existential crisis levels of poetic over it that NOTHING ELSE has made me go which like. props to Evbo, he's doing great! I WILL be going feral over that ending and Parrot and that Clown cameo and Zam and all things I liked and so on so forth, like always. I wanna make character designs but it feels... wrong, I guess, in a sense to give them all designs beyond the cubic space they inhabit — I don't do well with simple and detail-free designs (like Zam's and Wemmbu's like seriously, 5 year old in paint level of detail smh /aff) and I believe that giving them ANY amount of detail they don't already have is doing their characters a disservice?? ESPECIALLY with clothes???? Idk how to say it or explain it, but the fact they don't wear armor is VERY intentional, right? I mean, PVP typically involves armor and the fact that acquiring armor is OPTIONAL is intentional for whatever reason so, again, in my head giving them any more detail than they have (or lack I say as I side-eye Zam and Wemmbu) is a disservice to how PVP Civilization works. But that's honestly just me

More spoiler-y territory up ahead, gonna put in one of those good ol' "click here for more!" thingamabobs that tumblr has. Don't say you weren't warned.

Alright, now that all the cool kids are here, let's discuss details:

When I say I went "existential crisis levels of poetic" over this thing, I mean "I wrote a whole thing about being a spectator willing and wanting to help, but unable to due to the nature of being in different levels of reality" type shit, might drop it on my ao3 (y'all should go by my ao3 i have fun stuff there and might start dropping some other stuff as well wink wink ok. self promo over) and it was honestly fun! Will DEFINITELY do some MORE of that around this new episode! Unironically frothing at the mouth waiting for a new season to start slowly being drop-fed to us like little fish being thrown those fish food chip things idk I'm too drunk to think (not really. but it's fun to say anyway)

I LOVED Zam but tbf I've been loving that motherfucking asshole bastard /aff this WHOLE TIME so like. nothing new lmaooo. I ALSO love Clown's little cameo! (not counting it as a SPOILER spoiler cuz like. it's 2 mins or so in. I won't count that shit as spoilers c'mon) but uh. ALSO nothing new lol I'm a HARDCORE (not really) Clown fan I WILL be bought and EASILY swayed over with the promise of Clown content, I'm REALLY that easy; anyway it was really fun and OFC he's an antagonist smh — he's either a bad guy protagonist or an antagonist, NEVER on the same side as the protagonist/a good guy who DOESN'T wanna murder ppl (I see what kinda theater kid he is. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MR. CLOWN. YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME)

I said it already but I'll say it again: Tabi had ALWAYS been fucking sus to me from the start, what with being SO AT THE READY to exploit Evbo's respawning ability for her own gain and all that, so her backstabbing him ain't a surprise to me; but what someone (I'm too lazy to get to the computer to give proper credits or quoting. y'all are gonna have to make do with paraphrasing) said in the comments is actually fucking interesting: Evbo respawned; after the cut to black Tabi is seen holding her diamond axe and while that serves to show the audience what she was really born as, it could very well also show that Tabi gave Evbo a mercy — she let him respawn. She — potentially — didn't kill him with The Eternal Sword, and instead delivered the final blow with her diamond axe: an object that would allow Evbo to come back from death. She's gone soft.

That's gonna be her downfall, one way or another. Clown was right in doubting her — while she's physically strong and knows all the techniques, she's not detached enough from her emotions that she's fully capable of pretending to form friendships without actually making friends; aka: she can pretend she doesn't care, but something deep inside of her does care what happens to Evbo. Until proven otherwise I'll take this scene as bEING RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS, I READ TABI LIKE A FUCKING BOOK LET'S GO--

So all in all I'm gonna be OBSESSED over this for the next while — well done Evbo, well fucking done

The end to the story. whatever happens, I guess it happened — I have hopes, idk where they're placed or what they mean, but I have them.

Whatever happens, I know Evbo is going out with a bang.

[ei-mugi]

im not a even a fan of the "hellaverse" but i have seen helluva boss and with all the twitter uproar over the hazbin ep4 leaks i went and found a reaction video of the full ep on yt so i could see how bad it really was and. jesus christ. theres certainly analysis of the visuals that could be had regarding the original criticisms but for me the episode was more like... 1. angel dust is the exact same character as fizzarolli 2. hellaverse is never going to break away from writing its characters like a whump fic is it and 3. this is an absolutely horrible portrayal of sex workers. vivienne pleaseeeee get your head out of the yaoi bin and remind yourself of like. women and misogyny. and stop writing all your sex worker/sexually abused (notice how that is grouped together) characters in the same way. sex workers arent all victims who need to be saved from their jobs

[theclampdown]

dump of scattered lad:iw thoughts because i have. a lot to say about the game. i have not proofread this at all. these r just my opinions please don't me mad at me lol

[IT WAS NOT GOOD]

im able to put up with a lot of stupid bullshit in media i like so its pretty impressive that this game pushed me to my limit in what im willing to let slide lmao

i do wanna say that i actually really did enjoy playing it though, i think it smoothed out a lot of what i found annoying about 7 (mostly the leveling system and skill jumps and stuff) and added a lot of new content. i did like the new map and i thought they did a pretty good job making it feel different than the other areas of the game. the battles felt very fun and were challenging but didnt ever really feel like a slog for me which is usually my biggest gripe with games that involve leveling like this but i had a good time! loved his fucking scooter. to be quite honest.

enjoyed the drink links and party chats and party bingo and stuff they were very silly but it was enjoyable! did really like the party members overall but ill talk on that in a sec

also ill say it ran much better on my shitty laptop than most of the recent games have which is definitely a bonus. my graphics for rgg7 were so fucking awful but i didnt have to change a single default setting for this one so idk i guess the only plusses for this one is that the gameplay rocked and they optimized their shit a lot better. like it genuinely was enjoyable to play

unfortunately the story was just dumb. i cant even say it sucked shit it just felt stupid.

the initial premise wasnt even bad tbh. ichiban and co get fucked over due to ~society~ or whatever and perceptions of ex-cons and such, coinciding with ichiban seeking out his mother since her identity was left pretty open ended in the last game. like not bad at all imo. idk how they fumbled it that bad. Actually i do know how. they just overshot it too much. they could have just kept it to something related to that like with the seiryu clan and ebina/hikawa whatever. that could have been interesting! unfortunately the tie in with whatever palekana was doing just turned the story in a completely other direction in a way that just didnt make sense? i just found that whole part of the plot shallow and difficult to suspend my disbelief about. and this is the same series that had the whole baseball betting and idol concert as a serious plot point in the 5th game so maybe my standards are too high but idk that actually felt meaningful even if it was stupid and silly. this just didnt make sense and felt too overblown. i think in general my problem with the series as of late is that its conflicts reach Too High and are Too Grand and concern world governments and massive schemes and shit in a way that takes away from anything actually interesting thematically.

in terms of character i actually did quite like tomizawa and chitose and i think they were good additions and balanced well with existing characters. at the same time though i feel like the game kind of forced their friendships with ichiban too early and it made it feel kind of flat. i also feel they lost the plot with tomizawa a tad as to Why he was even sticking with ichiban at a certain point (ie what stakes he had in the conflict after he got what he wanted out of dwight). but i did like him. i thought the rest of the party members from the last game all factored in pretty well otherwise and i VERY much enjoyed having seonhee as a party member this time she rocked and i think they made the right choice including her. And also her being bisexual?

sorry quick seonhee break. anyway. my beef with characterization otherwise was like 80% with kiryu. Personally i believe his ass shouldnt have been in any of the games after the 5th game at least because im a hater. if they were gonna kill him off to retire they shuold have let him retire in the 6th game and not come back. Okay fine they had to give him his stupid cameo in 7 but that was supposed to be him 'passing the torch' to ichiban and then he could go fuck off again. THERE WAS NO REASON FOR HIM TO BE A CENTRAL PLAYABLE PROTAGONIST IN ANOTHER GAME. LIKE EVER. GAIDEN ASIDE. THEYRE DRAGGING THIS MANS CORPSE AROUND THEY'RE WEEKEND AT BERNIES'ING HIM. on the one hand i was nostalgia baited by them intentionally making parallels to rgg1 and also the whole memoirs thing unfortunately because i see 1 mention of haruka and lose my mind. but if they were gonna make intentional parallels wrt lani and haruka then they should have put their whole pussies into it and leaned into it and explored it bc as it was it just felt shallow. the cancer thing was okay ig they did explore like why he was refusing treatment so much and him seemingly accepting his death while everyone around him was trying to drag him out of it but idk. it was just okay to me. but just with kiryu being there in general it was just so annoying because i specifically just want him to fucking retire. i dont care about him. every game for the past 4 games has made it out to be kiryus last and they keep bringing him back and its just tiring. i dont careeeee. will say takaya kuroda did another phenomenal job voicing him though. and the black shirt black slacks and belt was doing somehting for me. Who said that.

on the topic of lani and also akane i wish they would have explored that more since akane is half the premise as to why ichiban is stateside and they insisted on the paralel with haruka for lani. like i just felt like they got very little screentime when they were arguably pretty plot central characters. like why did they get less dialogue than like fucking yamai. i wish they would have explored akane and ichiban more specifically though that one cutscene of them actually talking was really sweet

SPEAKING OF YAMAI. in a vacuum i honestly did like him he was kind of funny and i respect him for his taste in women and his weird little ragtag syndicate. i feel like hes nishitani part 2 if nishitani was in literally any way enjoyable or likeable and not a piece of shit (wasnt there a nishitani in gaiden or something?) but i cant explain my thinking often. but the treatment of yamai and his syndicate vs wong tou and the ganzhe vs dwight and the barracudas jsut stood out to me as. particularly not good? yamai and co as the japanese group were portrayed as very sympathetic and were fully humanized and fleshed out. wong tou was characterized decently well i think and was given a point of sympathy with his son and like literally everyone betraying him. but was also killed pretty quickly and the ganzhe otherwise were portrayed as just being infallibly loyal to bryce. and the barracudas and dwight were portrayed with no nuance whatsoever and were arguably seen as the most violent of the three organizations. which tbh i think definitely has something to do with the barracudas being largely Black and brown otherwise (its noted in narration that they consisted of all nationalities and ethnicities but in practice in the game most of their models seemed to be men of color). because rgg studios has shown its ass time and time again to be generally racist and colorist and nationalist. that really stuck out to me throughout the game tbh

i dont want to speak on this as much just because i dont want to talk out of my ass but it also gave me a bad taste in my mouth that the big evil cult palekana utilized indigenous hawaiian religion and language but was also run by a white guy. also was not a fan of some of the job options such as 'fetishized depiction of a hula dancer that resulted from american tourism and imperialism' and such. was just not good.

side note i just thought the whole palekana brainwashing cult deal was stupid it was just dumb. not in a fun way. maybe thats just me being a hater but it was just STUPID and far fetched. it was like the part in rgg5 (sorry to always bring up rgg5 but actually im not sorry because it was a good game) where it revealed that there never was a nagoya family and everyone was fucking with shinada specifically. which was silly then but this was just worse. it didnt really make bryce any more formidable or hateable as a protagonist it just fell short in any of their efforts to make it believable and to raise the stakes in my humble opinion.

the daigo and saejima and majima tie in was also jsut kind of stupid. I just cannot believe they would have ended up in a fishing shack like that. Saejima definitely i would see him fucking off somewhere like that. but i just dont see how daigo or majima would end up there man it just doesnt make sense. i thought their goodbye in rgg7 was kind of dumb and if the game leaned more into the struggles of being an ex yakuza or ex con trying to reintegrate into a society that wants nothing to do with that, maybe their story could have been more interesting! unfortunately the game went another direction and their inclusion felt stupif and it just felt bastardizing of these characters that have also kind of been weekend at bernies'd for the last few games. I just cant see daigo being there. Daigo wheres your fucking mom. Can you call her. She misses you. Shave that ugly beard. Just leave the damn country at that point all of you.

this is not a problem unique to this game but i hate how allergic they are to making these characters look their age. i appreciated that they made kiryus hair gray but his haircut was stupid though tbh he looked quite nice when he put it back up at the end and looked probably closer to his actual age. saejima and daigo were pretty okay. WHY IS MAJIMA ALWAYS SO DAMN SMOOTH i know hes been doing like coke since the 80s he literally should not be looking like that. actually did love the part where they were support party members in the finale sequence though it was just really fun. but they shuoldnt have been there at all. All of you go retire.

in terms of the finale honestly ebina/hikawa was kind of right tbh. and i think the game wanted me to agree with him in a sense? he was right to hate arakawa these games will never make me like these deadbeat father figures (except genda he ruled) but what i didnt agree with was kiryus whole... deal at the end. i dont know. i dont think he was ever wrong for fucking off out of the tojo clan and i definitely dont thing he was wrong for not taking on the responsibility of chairman and trying to 'change things' or something like its not literally a massive criminal organization. wasnt a big point of this game that people should be allowed to leave the criminal life and reintegrate in society? so why should the game be blaming kiryu for fucking off from being chairman in the first game to do exactly that. we COULD be blaming him for never actually cutting ties with the tojo clan fully and always having one foot on each side and not ever doing much but trying to maintain the status quo through that rather than change anything. which honestly would make much more sense than blaming him for not trying to do anything as chairman. but i digress. i guess. wild that this was like one of 4 or 5 times that this man has ever cried on screen and its him cradling another man on the floor and then passing out.

the fact that they didnt have the haruka reunion on screen is criminal i was so fucking MAD. they HATE ME SPECIFICALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the ending with eiji made no sense to me in a lot of ways. that was the major part of the plot that they didnt wrap up very well besides just having his ass go to jail -what for? collaborating with the yakuza? that wasnt clear to me. i get it that they were trying to show how manipulating or releasing information can sway public opinion very easily. but how did he grow his hair and beard that quick how much damn time had passed??? is that a nitpick? maybe. i did just have to go on the wiki for a plot summary about him if that shows how it was kind of unclear how he ended up in that position. but also tbf i am usually having to go on wikis after i finish rgg games because im stupid and these games are annoyingly complicated. #1 media understanderrrr

with eiji otherwise he was an okay twist villain but the wheelchair thing was just stupid.

why bring back sawashiro anyway i truly didnt see a point to it. i dont think it needed to have been him at all in that role it could have been any other new game character. Did like how everybody took every opportunity they could to dunk on him though

in general the theme wrt atonement and doing over. on the one hand i always believe you get a second chance and i think the 7th game already did a good job showing it with ichi and co. but i always am annoyed that their insistence on atonement must be done through the legal system because im a communist but also in-universe its stupid because of how often theyve shown that the legal system is innefficient and corrupt and i know theyre never gonna challenge the status quo like that bc theyre a generally reactionary series overall but like. its annoying. im over it. im not. anyways back to the theme of atonement i dont think its really bad at all but the rest of the game didnt make me feel anything enough for it to mean something.

liked that the theme of friendship was once again so prominent though and that the cast was dragging kiryu out of being a lone wolf kicking and screaming. did make me smile admittedly. the whole thing with saeko. honestly i was willing to just let it happen after a certain point ichiban is allowed to be happy i guess . the ending was just. i dont know. it would have been silly on its own but after the trainwreck of the rest of the game i was just sitting there like. ._. they hate on my man ichiban for his communication styles and his comprehension of directions and subtleties i guess. though they were right to criticize his stupid ass proposal lmao

sorry i forgot about this point earlier but the whole seiryu clan -> bleach japan thing was also fucking stupid and i found it very diffiuclt to suspend my disbelief for that ie i did not. it was just out of left field and lame and didnt really fit in well with the message of atonement I DONT KNOW like i dont care about believability in a lot of ways their machine gunning the millenium tower again theyre always blowing shit up and doing silly action movie stuff i dont care about that. their plot point choices just tend to be stupid.

side note. the kashiwagi and kiryu initial conversation was genuinely so fucking funny. their more genuine conversation made me tear up actually. sniffle. theyre brothers.

i think im running out of steam here i think i hit all my major points that i didnt like in the game. tldr it was very forced and many of its plotpoints werent believable, and it lacked direction and a strong message in the end, and it bastardized a lot of recurring characters and generally was very flat emotionally. was fun to actually play but it was just stupid.

they could never make me hate you ichiban.

screenies dump

whatever. everyone play rgg5

shinada palate cleanser

[starleska]

Im officially blaming you for bringing me Dave brain rot. Got any headcannons of this boi?

blame gratefully accepted, i'll never shut up about Dave 😂💖 OOOH this is a tough one because there are so many ideas!! okay okay i'm not going to give a list of general headcanons but i DO want to give voice to a slightly off-kilter headcanon (incoming long post) i think Dave's unhealthy relationship with humans was present well before the penguins ever showed up.

hear me out. it's been established that ✨Dave is the King of Human Simpage✨, and for good reason: poor guy went from being universally adored by every human who discovered him, to neglected and unwanted in a super short amount of time 💔 you know what's odd about that, though? octopuses are solitary animals. it's strange that Dave felt such a need for external attention (if we're suspending disbelief about a children's movie). here's my question. if Dave was so lonely, how come he was able to employ so many octopus minions? do these octo-henchman receive a specific kind of payment (such as in food), or did they know Dave beforehand? my personal headcanon is that these octopus henchmen were actually rescued by Dave while he was posing for Dr Octavius Brine, and becoming involved with human-led genetics experiments. there's no way Dave's original zoo would've had that many octopuses given that they are usually singular and territorial...which means they must have been sourced from elsewhere 😖 i've built this headcanon because Dave's interactions with his octopus minions is a familiar one. yes, Dave is clearly their overlord and they respond obediently to his commands, but he knows them on a first-name-basis, and they are willing to go along with his absolutely insane scheme. unless there is monetary compensation involved (and I busted out my artbook of the movie and there wasn't much about them), there are only two possibilities:

the octopus minions feel similarly slighted to Dave and no longer want to be perceived as 'ugly' - which i think would be strange, as this seems to be a uniquely Dave preoccupation.

or:

the octopus minions genuinely like Dave and they're either friends, or they respect him in some way.

so, what are we left with? well, unless all of the octopuses have some Dave-level trauma and anger at humans, it's clear that Dave is a weird octopus. he's likely the only member of his species in the franchise to take the humans finding penguins cute over him so personally, and i think that happened because he put so much emphasis on the attention humans gave him. not only is Dave rich and successful in his human guise, but he has a plethora of members of the same species who he knows well working for him. Dave actually isn't without affection at all...he just refuses to acknowledge it because of his pain 😭 Dave took so much pleasure in performing for humans, entertaining them and making them happy...so much so that when he was hurt by them, he couldn't even begin to process his anger at the people who were actually harming him. he made the penguins a scapegoat, and he literally made himself a humansona to blend in with humans, earn their respect, and influence them on a mass-level so they would agree with his view of penguins. rather than, like...just trying to find a human who would like him, an objectively easier task. so tldr; it's not really about penguins and their cuteness for Dave, it's about the humans. but from the start he put way too much stock in his relationship with those he entertained, and it severely warped his self-image to the point that he can't relate healthily to himself, or even to members of his own species. hope this is what you were looking for 😉

[ankhisms]

im glad that theres actually a lore reason for enter being french but i really was just totally 100% willing to suspend my disbelief and be like yeah he just says random french phrases because hes like that. i was on board with him just being a weirdo who decided he was going to spice up with vocab with whatever french phrases he could google and call it a day. but no theres actually a reason

[thepersona]

Under the Queen's Umbrella: Midseason, spoiler-free review

*Warning: This is a long post that no one asked for.

If you're still on the fence about starting this show, then let this be a sign for you to give it a shot. It's a real shame that people seem to be sleeping on this series just because it's not driven by romance and cookie-cutter characters from other popular historical dramas.

It's a refreshing take on the genre, and if you're willing to suspend your disbelief even a little bit regarding certain historical inaccuracies (it is totally fiction / AU after all), then this show will be worth your while.

The Premise (if you don't already know): Queen Im Hwaryeong, played by the majestic Kim Hye-soo, is the wife of King Yi Ho (Choi Won-young), with whom she has five sons. The Crown Prince is picture perfect, but the other four have been branded as underachieving troublemakers by palace gossip. The Queen has to run around to keep them all in check, manage the ambitious concubines, and go toe-to-toe with the Dowager to protect her children. Further intrigue ensues, and the fight to restore honor turns into a war to stay alive.

Cast / Acting: This is yet another vehicle for Kim Hye-soo, who has been so amazing in choosing roles and stories since her small screen return in Signal (2016). Queen Hwaryeong is commanding, ruthless, and witty, but also loving, warm, and vulnerable. I live for the sarcastic bows she makes towards the Dowager, her eyebrows (!), and the physical comedy especially in the first two episodes. Just as the queen can move in any direction, KHS once again proves that she can do it all.

The small but terrible Dowager is so masterfully played by Kim Hae-sook (Start Up, Tomorrow). She knows just what to say and how to say it to get under your skin. I don't know how they do it, but between her acting and the editing / lighting, the Dowager's beady eyes have this dark vibe and you know that she's up to something lethal but in the blooper reel the actress' eyes sparkle with joy (?!) Talk about attention to detail. The scenes where the two women standoff are definitely the acting highlights of the series so far.

The casting is pretty solid for the rest of the supporting characters as well. Choi Won-young plays a wise king in a real bind. He's empathetic and insightful, and has a calming presence I rarely feel in the portrayals of kings in the sageuk genre.

The Grand Princes, princes, concubines, court ladies, and ministers all gel together quite well, but if we're talking Baeksang Awards, Kim Hye-soo has a real shot for Best Actress next year along with Park Eun-bin. (If one of them gets Best Actress, then the other should get Daesang, I don't care which, just let both of them be recognized.)

Writing / Characterization: I'm limited by my desire to keep this review spoiler-free, but it really is a refreshing take on the sageuk, and oddly enough, of the family/political drama genre in general.

The motivations are easy to follow but the alliances aren't always clear cut. Among the antagonists, you just know they're going to stab each other in the back and that no one's putting all their eggs in one basket. And based on the ep 9 preview, even the Queen seems to initiate an alliance with one of her biggest foes.

The Queen may have some plot armor but no one seems to benefit from deus ex machina (yet?). The twists and turns have happened within reason so far, though there are a few flashbacks that have yet to be explained in the latter half of the show, particularly regarding Grand Prince Seongnam's childhood and the Queen's early days as the Crown Princess.

I don't know if writer Park Ba-ra was actively aiming for a feminist show but she's done a splendid job so far. The women definitely run the show, and are far more nuanced than just "strong", but that doesn't mean the men have to be useless either. The King actually has something to do beyond believing the first piece of fake news that he gets?! And the princes have different goals, motivations and, methods to get what they want (Ep 8 is quite the masterpiece).

Ultimately, the central theme is motherhood, with the show being both an homage and a critique of maternal love. The Queen's relationships with her sons are used to represent the ideal in the modern sense (she's literally a working mom who needs to drag her kids to school). She nags a lot because she's worried but is affectionate and loves them unconditionally.

But through the King and the Dowager, the other princes and concubines, we get a kaleidoscope of how the same maternal love can yield vastly different results. It can even be harmful for both the children and their mothers.

There are some questionable points in the scenario. There aren't any princesses and the previous queen also had exactly five sons which is odd considering the infant mortality rate of the period. But it's forgivable once you give the plot a chance to unravel. I did have a hard time keeping track of all the princes' names at first but that, too, falls into place right away.

Direction / Visuals: Gorgeous. The cinematography is really something to behold. I especially love the overhead shots, wide shots, and the use of light and rain in general. They also like making the two women look bigger than everyone else because they literally have the most power. Episode 1 has my favorite shot when the first tragedy strikes, and episode 3 has the best painting at the end before the title card. (Can't put them here or I might spoil it for you, sorry.)

I did have a few qualms with episode 2 since they tried something a little too modern and unnecessary, making a family discussion look like a video call / chat room. It also had a running/crying scene with less than perfect backgrounds that were so obviously green screen. It distracted from KHS's acting, unfortunately. But quality has been uphill since then by allowing the stellar cast and intrigue to take center stage.

Midseason verdict: 9 / 10

TLDR: Watch it without expecting a documentary and you should be ok.

P.S.: None of the beautiful gifs are mine.

[violetshine-appreciation]

tbh i dont think tigerhearts shadow is that bad; the thing that bothered me the most is just. how tigerheart behaves with the guardian cats. i LOVE the guardian cats i think theyre one of my fav non clan groups, but the way tigerheart thinks abt them in his head is so annoying. like hes constantly calling them strays or thinking of them as weaker or lesser than warriors, only approving of them when they do things that warriors do like mark borders or defend territory, something they got by just fine without doing until HE came along. and he never apologizes for thinking of them this way either, he just thinks abt how much he wants to go home.

but yeah that was my biggest problem w the book. and its honestly a huge problem w the series in general (see how the clans view the tribe, kittypets, etc). but i didnt hate any of the other things ppl hate abt this book, like tigerheartstar or his bizarre resurrection or shadowkit and spiresights powers. its warrior cats im willing to suspend my disbelief enough to let that stuff slide. i just wish the xenophobia would just Stop bc aside from that i actually rly liked tigerheart as a character. and ofc all well written characters have to have flaws, but tigerhearts xenophobia is never properly addressed and it never goes anywhere, and the narrative even frames him as being Morally Correct in these instances.

but anyway. those r my thoughts. cat books

[maschotch]

Not people saying you’re mysogonistic for not liking jj 💀💀 I don’t love jj and I’m a woman.......I dunno how that adds up. Hate it when people say that about female characters who are written by sexist men even tho they don’t realize plenty of women don’t like that character BECAUSE she was clearly written by a man. I don’t even personally dislike jj, but I definitely don’t care for her all that much because the writers just kinda....drop the ball with her (tbh if they went with the closeted lesbian storyline or gave her any sort of real character development outside of torturing her then maybe she would be one of my favs)

I also love that you bring up the occasional bigotry of the team. For me, it’s definitely more reflecting the writers’ values then the characters, like they’re projecting. If the writers weren’t so bigoted maybe they could have shown Morgan growing out of his sexism (instead of dumping it in there that hotch is when there’s no proof of it????). Hotch luckily doesn’t really have moments after The Tribe where he says the dumb shit that he did there, but I wish they could have given him development in the episode? Like maybe understand that imperialism is real and these people are actually still affected by it (and it’s promoted by the very government he works for). That would have been a super interesting development for him out of all characters to have.

Maybe have an episode where Emily recognizes her privilege? Idk she never gave me entitled vibes but she did kind of get the job rather easily because of her connections. Maybe have it drive some tension with people like Morgan who literally had to fight tooth and nail (as a black man too) to get to where she is.

But no. The writers on this show just love their bigotry too much 🤪🤪

yeah.. and again i feel bad for hating a character just because the writers are shit, but honestly i dont think i wouldve liked her anyway. i dislike the very core of her character because its solely founded on the emphasis of their ignorance. i can project and rewrite all i want to at least make her bearable or somewhat coherent, but at face value? she has that mean humor that makes me uncomfortable, she’s quick to get annoyed/frustrated which is just not something i ever wanna be around, her hypocritical displays of empathy rub me the wrong way, and i think she treats her friends/loved ones like shit. theres not a single thing i like about her character.

there are definitely times when the writers’ bigotry shines through some of the other characters—in more than easily dismissible dialogue. as much as i love hotch, his extreme view of justice and promotion of an authoritarian government is something that is fine in a show as a fictionalized fantasy of a benevolent government protected/implemented by morally upstanding law enforcement. but thats so fucking far from reality that its practically inapplicable. again, this is copaganda, so all this is expected to some extent. their faith in the criminal justice system is why they have these jobs lmao its kinda hard to ignore that. but while im throwing jj under the bus i figured i should elaborate on hotch’s very real flaws stemming from the same root. jj’s not the only one with some less-than-stellar traits based on problematic values

it is fun to work around it a little bit and maybe give some reasoning that makes their ideals a little more understandable: derek’s father was a cop who died in front of him, of course he’s gonna glorify law enforcement at least a little. this was the job best suited for emily that she had a foot in the door for through her mother. but at some point ya gotta just accept the copaganda for what it is and suspend disbelief that any of these characters would actually pursue this line of work. its a show about fbi agents. theres gonna be some dumb shit. comes with the territory. but theres a limit to how much im willing to ignore for the sake of casual media consumption. i tend to just avoid the episodes that focus on that kind of stuff, but jj’s constant presence is a painful reminder of the kind of show im watching and why criminal minds is a guilty pleasure of mine

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 12/7/21

tuesday again no problem will be taking next week off. also a reminder that if information is in a trailer or back-of-book blurb i do not consider it a spoiler.

also also i am a smidge superstitious about posting these on a day that is not actually tuesday but i’m going to be extremely fucking busy tomorrow and i want to go to bed now and i do not trust the post scheduler

listening dirty little animals by bones uk from n/etflix’s ar/cane

this is one of my favorite bands and i’m so glad they’re getting some of that sweet sweet n/etflix/riot money. however, this feels more “produced” or like, tumble-ground smooth? and clubby than the rest of their stuff and i’m not sure if i love it. there’s some sort of digital fuzz happening instead of their natural pack-a-day voices. while i like the drop into the third repetition of the chorus (lyrics below, around 2:35) very much, that kind of strobing blippy electronica is not present of much of their other work. it’s a good song! it’s fun to listen to! im being a bitchy old lady about it!

Slide, shake your bones out if you wanna ride Throw your head back, make you feel alive The kind of bad that make you feel good, good God, the kinda wrong that make you feel right The little death that make you feel alive The kinda shouldn't that mean that you should, should, should

reading sometimes you only roll around to a book your friend recommended in fuckin mid-2017 or some shit through sheer chance bc the library happened to have it available. anyway i’m reading a book that seems tailor made for me, Wool by Howard Howey. ebooks aren’t photogenic here’s a pretty cover fuck this is gonna be huge

almost did not continue with this book! starts out with a Dead Wife Guy! but i sat there and thought “my dear friend @morrak would never rec me some shit like this” and forged onward. anyway it faked me out with the Dead Wife Guy and we’re following just the crankiest lady mechanic with a misplaced sense of duty instead. i am a smidge under a third of the way through and kind of rationing it out for myself

this is a weird tangent but i have at times been accused of being mysterious/inscrutable/Hard To Get To Know. this does baffle me while also making me feel a little bit like a secret agent, bc while that is true for stuff about my personal life and/or my tragic backstory, my likes and dislikes are quite clear (i think). i am a weak and simple woman, and i am not immune to a butch mechanic lady.

like yes, it did take me four years to pick this book up but morrak absolutely figured me out inside of like. two months

watching good evening. riot games would like you to forget that they have numerous ongoing lawsuits, and are one of the worst places to work period, anywhere, let alone the extremely toxic workplace culture of bideo james. now let’s talk about their show on n/etflix, a/rcane, which unfortunately i liked the visuals of a great deal.

i have never played this game and i never will bc i respect myself too much to get into esports so i went into this totally blind.

anyway The Series gave me a satisfying amount of worldbuilding. i was very willing to suspend my disbelief within the framework they gave me. always a slut for an airship. love an undercity, love urban magic, love steampunk art noveau. there’s a certain quality to the design here, and something about the brushstrokes, that is very Ah! Video Games! and translates well to full-budget animation without looking like cutscenes. you’ll know what i mean when you see it. i think it will be very hard to properly review this show without comparisons to d/ishonored and b/ioshock (particularly infinite).

i have some thoughts about chronic pain, addiction, deformity as morality, disability, prosthetics, and quality of life as depicted in this cartoon. i feel i am being perhaps too measured when i say “well real life societies fucking suck at this too.” i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this aspect of the show, but because several of them hit very close to home, i am going to end this section on: viktor did nothing wrong and i would have done the same things in his position.

when i write these up, i don’t like falling into the (very easy) trap of just listing “representation FAIL” type shit. however! i do not love how the criminal underworld is nearly all non-human or non-white. i especially do not love that the one powerful black nation we see are warmongerers intent on securing new weapons tech. i think possibly the league lore is just Like That bc, again, video games are bad. i also do not think this is a good excuse. r/iot has done essentially nothing to curb the worst parts of their fanbase, but at some point they will need to improve or die as a company and a franchise.

this show almost gets to the frantic teetering careening edge of “you’ve finally got what you wanted and have been working for all along, are you willing to do more to keep it? you’ve got the thing you wanted, but it doesn’t actually matter any more bc the world has kept turning while you were so focused on getting the thing you want. also, you can get everything you want, are you willing to pay the price?” i know and understand this is a silly little video game cartoon adaptation. i want more victories to be hollow and feel like ash in my mouth. i did not expect ANY victories to feel like ash in my mouth so honestly this show is doing leaps and bounds better than i expected re: basic political structure. 

anyway if you’re willing to sit though a bunch of cops, just a lot of Stuff regarding race and gender dynamics i’m not qualified to talk about, a well-meaning (?) but heavy-handed portrayal of ptsd and schizophrenia (possibly? jinx has whatever mental illness will give her the most fun to animate flashbacks), in order to watch some very pretty animation in a cool city and get queerbaited while being stabbed in the heart with nesting father/daughter stories, this show is what it is. maybe it’s not for you. personally i’m fine with watching through it once, i don’t necessarily regret watching it but the disability stuff alone soured me quite a bit.

can people who’ve already watched this shout to me about silco bc i have Thoughts and Feelings

playing portal to empire https://aidanquinlan.net/empire/index.html this is neither a visual novel nor a walking sim. it’s sort of a meander through the back halls of capitalism. i got used to the ticker tape text display pretty quickly so if it’s really bugging you stick it out a bit? for me? you can pause it by hovering your mouse over the text

making too fucking busy this fall/cash is a smidge tight/didn’t want to trust things to the inconsistent mercies of the postal service and not have them get there in time, so this is the first december in a long long while where i’m not scrambling to get gifts done. feels weird. don’t like it.

[guardianofjunmyeon]

Finding Atlantis (part 14)

Genre: Action/Adventure, Enemies to Lovers, PirateAU

Description:  20 years ago the seas became angry. Unruly and unkind to any sailor, to  any ship that dared venture too far out in her waters. Many a man has  heard the tales of Atlantis, the lost city, the key the ocean. But fewer  men know the tale of it’s missing child. The key to the ocean, the key  to Atlantis but a lost little one. The power one would hold should they  find this child would be nearly that of Poseidon himself. Thus, the hunt  began.  

A/N: wait i forgot i left you all on a cliffhanger akjfhjf. Here’s an update (finally) im a bitch blocked about where the next chapter is going so it might take...about as long as this one took to be uploaded. Its gonna have some smut tho. This chapter has new characters and PLEASE appreciate my fucking bubble conversation, i wanted to use the whole “she came down in a bubble dawg!” convo but i didnt

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18

There are certain experiences you’ve lived through enough times to consider yourself a pro at handling. Situations like being handcuffed to a bed. Like being left on an island with no food or water. Like having to fight your way out of a bar when someone is getting too rough with the other patrons.

Drowning is quickly becoming a situation with which you are getting too closely acquainted.

When the ocean swallowed your little dinghy, your life flashed before your very eyes. This was truly the end. The last thing you would ever live through would be the song of Atlantis tickling your ears, the sight of Junmyeon glowing blue, and the feeling of Baekhyun’s skin beneath your palm.

All in all it wasn’t the worst way to go, but there was still so much more that you wanted to experience.

You’d never gotten a chance to return home, to sit at that cliff where you sent off your mother’s body and tell her about all of the things you’d done with your life. To describe to her the ship you’d bought, the friends you’d made, the adventures you’d gone on and the memories you’d made. You wanted to go find Victoria again and thank her for taking you in.

You wanted to find that boy that saved your life when you were but a child and to thank him properly. You wanted to tell him all that you’d done and repay him for giving you that chance at life. You wonder if he’s grown up into a handsome man now. If he has a spouse and kids and a happy home on that island you once called home that you left as soon as you could. You wonder if he’d even remember you.

You’d never gotten a chance to get the Storm Chaser those new upgrades that you’d been saving up for. An extension to the crew cabins, sturdier masts, a new set of sails.

You hadn’t gotten the chance to fall in love, to have your heartbroken, to have a baby or even hold one for that matter. Would you have made a good mother? Would you have made a decent wife? Would you have been able to find someone willing to spend the rest of their life with you, on the seas, on land, wherever your hearts could make a home?

Would you have tried to make a home with Baekhyun?

The feeling of being sucked down into the depths of the ocean doesn’t get any less terrifying the second time that you go through it.

As a matter of fact, having it happen again is more terrifying than the first time. Maybe it’s because you can actually feel the pressure of the water crushing your chest. You can feel the way you’re being sucked farther down and the way the water rushes into your nose from the shock of being suddenly dragged under.

It’s nothing like the storm, nothing like fighting the waves and catching the flashes of light as you fought to climb to the surface. Of being tossed around and dropping and rising hundreds of feet seconds at a time. At least then you had a purpose. You aren’t trying to save a life this time. You aren’t able to fight the invisible force dragging you farther and farther down into the water. The water around you is calm, the movement of your body whizzing through the water feels scarily misplaced.

Magical. Unnatural.

Then it all finally stops.

The force pulls you into a pocket of air and gravity takes you by force. Your body collapses on solid ground, and you can breathe. You gasp frantically for air and cough violently as you attempt to catch your breath and your bearings.

You sit up and position yourself on shaky hands and knees as you heave on the dark basalt beneath your splayed fingers.

It takes a few moments of panicked breathing to realize –you’re alive.

You’re alive.

You realize that you’re alive and then you regain enough brain power to panic over if Junmyeon and Baekhyun are also alive. You hear dramatic coughing and hurling to your left and when you investigate you find Baekhyun on his ass with his head between his knees as his spits out salt water.

He looks like a miserable wet dog. You would laugh if you weren’t sure that you look the same.

But where is Junmyeon?

You look left and right, in front of you and behind you but you see no trace of him. No sign of him in the underwater cave you’ve somehow found yourself.

“How did we even get in here?” you spit more salt water on the ground and look for your area of entry. Down. It felt like you fell down. So maybe there is something above.

A gasp gets caught in your throat at the sight above you. Open water somehow suspended above. If you weren’t nearly positive that you somehow fell from there, you would think there was some extremely strong glass blocking the water from falling through the hole above. You can see the glow of deep sea fish swimming by and you’re hit with just how far below the surface you are.

Dizziness pounds through your skull and you hurl out more water all over your hands.

Disgusting.

“Are you guys alright?”

You lift your head at the sound of Junmyeon’s voice and feel your remaining strength seeping from your bones. He looks between you and Baekhyun’s pathetic forms with distressed eyes.

Baekhyun looks up from between his legs with an incredulous open-mouthed frown. He looks your first mate from his toes to his head. “How the hell are you dry?”

It’s then that you notice he looks remarkably put together. As if he never even experienced the sensation of being pulled straight towards hell through water. The patterns on his skin have dulled down to a pale blue, but they are still there as clear as day.

“An Atlantian thing,” Junmyeon answers with a shrug and a smile. He reaches out a hand to help you to your feet but you wave him away with a shake of your head.

“No, give me a second. I just- I need,” you point to the hole above, “This is just-” you close your eyes and wave him away weakly. “Fuck, I need some time.”

He laughs lightly and chooses to help Baekhyun up while you gather your wits. This is overwhelming. “Did you just materialize down here what the fuck?”

“No, I came down in a bubble.”

“A…bubble.”

“Yeah you know one of those things filled with air-”

“You couldn’t lend us one of those bubbles?!”

“I didn’t know how. I don’t even know how I got it around me. Must be an Atlantian-”

“If you say ‘Atlantian thing’ one more time I will, and I swear to Poseidon, strangle you with my bare hands right here.”

“…Atlantian thing,” Junmyeon finishes cheekily. Baekhyun groans loudly and you can hear the weak thumps of him trying to smack your first mate and being deflected.

You struggle onto your feet as Junmyeon and Baekhyun argue. Typical back and forth between the two of them, you know Baekhyun is all talk when it comes to most people; he won’t hurt Junmyeon.

Letting your eyes fully wander the cave, you take in the shiny crystals in the rock around you and the way everything glows a tranquil light blue.

You hear the thundering footsteps before you see the people coming charging towards you out of the alcove hidden from your view.

“INTRUDERS, DROP TO THE GROUND NOW!”

“We just got up,” Baekhyun whines at your side. You lower your still shaking body back down to your knees and hold your hands up in the air to show your willingness to cooperate. In the corner of your eye you catch Junmyeon landing a swift kick to the back of Baekhyun’s legs with his good leg and sending him to the ground with a painful crash.

You flinch at the noise and the people in matching outfits in front of you hold out their swords, ready to strike at any moment. Once Junmyeon has lowered himself to his knees, the group of people break apart to make way for who you assume must be the leader. If the aura of dominance and the extra sparking pink embellishments on their otherwise plain white uniform is anything to go by.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” The man asks gruffly. He’s tall, handsome, big eyes rimmed in dark black kohl. His analyzing brown eyes drag from you, to Baekhyun, and finally land on Junmyeon. You catch the exact moment that recognition crosses his face.

His eyes widen and he blinks rapidly in disbelief, the sword in his hand clatters to the ground and resounds through the cave. “S-Suho? Prince Suho is that you?”

You turn to look at Junmyeon who has locked eyes with the leader with a look of confusion on his face.

“Do they know each other?” Baekhyun whispers to you.

“Shut up,” you hiss.

Junmyeon gasps and climbs to his feet. “Minho? Minho! I can’t believe it,” he says elatedly. The two of them run (Junmyeon more hobbling than running with the shitty cast still on his leg) into each other’s arms to embrace and you watch with a kind of fond sadness as they grip one another as if the other will vanish into thin air.

The other guards slowly lower their swords and break out into disbelieving whispers. Baekhyun grabs your left hand and lowers it to your lap. “I think you can lower your hands now prisoner. I don’t think they’re going to kill us yet.”

“It’s as if nothing in this world is enough to keep you from annoying the absolute hell out of me,” you grumble.

He beams, a wide and happy smile. “It’s my charm.”

You snort out a laugh while he stands up on both feet and holds out a hand for you to take to get up. You slap your hand in his and let him heft you to your feet.

Junmyeon calls out your name and you whip in his direction in alarm. He drags over the leader of the guard with a hand on his bicep and matching grins on their faces. “I want you to meet my childhood friend Minho!” He looks up at Minho with eyes beaming with happiness. “We grew up together, and Minho here is the Captain of the entire Atlantian military.”

Minho looks down at the ground bashfully.

“It is an honor to meet you. Junmyeon says that he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I, as well as all of our people owe you our highest form of gratitude,” Minho says with a deep bow.

You blink at the gesture, stupefied into immobility. Junmyeon gives you a pointed look and a subtle bow of his own to hint that you should bow back. You quickly bend at the waist and rise up. “It’s- Uhm, thank you. It wasn’t just me though, there are lots of people to thank for his return up on the surface,” you say with a nervous smile.

Minho laughs. “I’m sure. You can all amaze us with tales of your time above at breakfast in a few hours. I’m sure you would all like a moment to settle and…” he looks at Baekhyun and your soaked clothing. “…clean yourselves up.”

The two of you frown indignantly.

As if you planned on showing up soaking wet.

Minho whistles loudly and a smaller man comes scrambling out of the group of guards. “Hendery, show our two outsiders where they can rest. I will take the prince directly to the Queen.”

The smaller man nods vigorously. “Yes sir. I would like to have Xiaojun assist me, if I can.”

“Take who you need,” Minho gives you both another once over before leaning down to whisper, “Make sure there is plenty of soap in their bathrooms.”

You squawk in embarrassment. Junmyeon offers an apologetic smile before coming to place both of his hands on your shoulders and lowering his voice to talk to you and Baekhyun as privately as he can. “Just follow them and relax. I will come find you once I am finished talking to the Queen. They won’t do anything to hurt either of you.” He squeezes your shoulder. “I’ll make sure of it.”

You nod in affirmation. Baekhyun grunts at your side.

Hendery and another young guard lead you away and out of the cave. You are only allowed one final look over your shoulder before Junmyeon vanishes from your sight.

The bleakness of the cave gives way to a wide low hallway covered from top to bottom in blue crystals, or maybe it’s glass.

“You’re awfully quiet,” you murmur to the man at your side. Neither of the guards bother to turn around at the sound of your voice.

“I’m trying to take it all in. This is insane I never thought I would ever actually see this place,” Baekhyun whispers back. You’re shocked by the genuine way he explains himself. “Why? Do you already miss the sound of my voice? I can keep talking if you want.”

“I’ll pass. I already miss the silence.”

His giggle resonates against the walls. You bite down on your lip to keep from smiling in return.

Your group reaches the end of the tunnel and the guards suddenly stop. Hendery turns around first. “Because we are unable to trust you we will have to transport you while keeping our city and location a secret.”

“Huh?”

“I think we’re going to get blindfolded,” Baekhyun whispers to you.

The other guard reaches into his coat and produces two pieces of cloth while Hendery slams a fist on the wall. A hole opens up where seamless wall once stood. You watch dumbly as the other guard, Xiao…Xiao something sits in the human-sized hole and then lies on his back before disappearing through a tube.

What the fuck is this place?

You’re blindfolded first and led to the hole. “Sit.” So you do. What kind of transport requires you to sit in a hole blind? You’ve lived a couple of years now and that's long enough to know that this doesn’t feel quite safe.

Before you can argue your way out of it, you’re pushed and then careening through space. With your eyes covered and the jolt of bewilderment at sliding too fast to be humanly possible you don’t have any choice but to let out a scream.

You’re on your feet again before you know it –albeit dizzy and shaking. The blindfold is removed and you’re met with the impassive face of the guard. You look around yourself to figure out what in the deep sea hell you just slid through.

“You might want to get out right about now,” he suggests.

You hear the telltale sound of Baekhyun’s yelling and cursing getting closer by the second, so you hobble out of the exit compartment and watch in wonder as the top of the compartment opens up and air blasts from the bottom to decrease the force of gravity as Baekhyun drops to his feet.

He’s shaking like a log and his wet hair and clothes are even more disheveled than they were before.

Maybe it’s the overload of being exposed to all the new technology and scenery, but you can’t stop yourself from loudly laughing at his appearance.

Xiaoxi…Xiaode…Xiaojun, that sounds right-

Xiaojun walks forward with a smile twitching on his lips to remove the blindfold from the once one-eyed troublemaker. But, Baekhyun has his eyes squeezed closed, refusing to open them. You take it upon yourself to physically pull him out of his spot.

“It’s over, you’re on solid ground now,” you tease. He peaks open one eye and it darts around distrustfully before he opens them both and leans forward with his hands on his knees to let out a dramatic exhale of breath. Another humored giggle escapes you. “You look like shit and the way you screamed-.”

He stands up straight with reddened cheeks. “Never speak of it,” he threatens in a low voice. You roll your eyes and lift a hand to fix his messy hair. You hear the hiss of air from the tube, knowing that Hendery will be arriving soon, but you busy yourself with smoothing down the unruly strands.

The red darkens on his face as you rake your fingers through the hair at his fringe. You aren’t sure what compels you to initiate the act, but he doesn’t stop you so selfishly you continue to take what you can. Satisfied with your work you smile shyly and turn away to hide your face and the heat you can feel creeping up your neck.

A cough snaps you back into attention.

Right, the guards.

Hendery has a creepily knowing smirk on his face while Xiaojun covers his mouth with his hand, but you can see mirth shining in his eyes.

Baekhyun clears his throat and crosses his arms over his chest. “So…where are we supposed to rest exactly? Or are we supposed to wander around and find it ourselves?”

Hendery motions to the right. “Down this hallway.” He nudges Xiaojun and they both walk forward. You resist the urge to smash your head into the wall as you follow behind. Into one of the…beautiful smooth white walls. For the first time you take in the interior of the building where you have ended up.

High ceilings and pillars. Enormous windows that go from ceiling to floor to show an expansive view of what awaits outside.

You’ve had plenty of time to image what Atlantis would look like, but seeing it in front of you now, bathed in a light like that of early dawn, with the reflection of water moving over the architecture…it’s too unreal, too magical to put into words.

“Keep up. You’ll be able to see the city after breakfast with the Queen,” Xiaojun advises. Both you and Baekhyun pick your pace back up after having fallen behind trying to take in all that around you.

Attempting to keep your gawking to a minimum you keep your eyes ahead and try to quickly take in as much as you can.

“We’re here,” Hendery says. You almost tumble into his side when he suddenly stops; and Baekhyun trips over his own feet at your side. “These will be your rooms. There will be drinking water and a bathroom for you to clean up. We have already notified the castle staff of your arrival and there will be clothes delivered to you for you to change into for the meal.

“Breakfast will be served in 3 hours. One of the castle butlers will come for you to show you to the dining area at that time. Until then we advise you entertain yourself inside of the room.” The door is opened and a grand suite awaits you. Your mouth drops at the extravagance of it.

A large bed rests at the very center of the room, draped in iridescent white curtains that look as creamy as milk. The floor is covered in cold white marble and speckled with shells and pearls embedded into it. A large couch is perched near the entrance, a lit fire in front of it keeping the room comfortably warm. A book shelf stretches across a third of the room only stopping at a golden archway that you assume leads into the bathroom. The room is decorated in soft golds, creamy whites and pale blues. You catch little accents of pink in the wall paint and on the couch pillows.

The dome-like shape of the room makes you feel like you’re in a bubble.

“What is with you guys and bubbles?” You grumble to yourself.

Xiaojun shrugs. “It’s an Atlantian thing,” he says simply.

You close your eyes in frustration while Baekhyun grumbles at your side.

“So whose room is this?” Baekhyun asks once he’s done cursing Atlantis and its obsession with bubbles. Hendery and Xiaojun share a look and you catch the sneakiness on their expressions.

Hendery is the one who decides to answer, cheerily as if he isn’t intentionally planning to ruin your time here in Atlantis. “Both of yours.”

“I’m sorry what did you just say?”

“This room is for the both of you.” Hendery casts Baekhyun a wide smile. “You’ll have to share because…uhm..”

“Because we’re low on rooms,” Xiaojun chimes in.

“Yes! Low on rooms,” Hendery agrees quickly, conspicuously. You narrow your eyes. “You see we have a lot of guests recently because of a…” he looks to Xiaojun for help.

“For a uh, for a wedding!”

“Who is getting married?” Baekhyun asks, just to catch them in their lie.

“One of the princes! Ah we must be returning to our Captain now. Rest well!” Hendery says quickly before he and Xiaojun rush away with their hands over their mouths, giggling like school children. You’re adults, you can share a room. You won’t let the giggling of the younger boys worsen the pounding in your chest.

You exhale and shake your head. “Come on.” You enter the room first and immediately feel relaxed by the colors, the roundedness, and general softness of everything around you.

The fire feels like it’s calling your name so you wander over to warm yourself up by its flames. Your wet clothes are beginning to feel bothersome again now that the excitement of being in Atlantis and being alive have begun to fade.

The sound of something sopping wet hitting the ground heavily pulls your attention from the flickering flames. When you turn around you don’t expect to see your roommate getting ass naked…

But alas that is what your eyes land on. His shoes and shirt are already in a wet pile by his feet.

“Baekhyun,” you admonish. He stops with his pants halfway down his legs. You look at his soft naked dick only momentarily before you raise your eyes back to his anticipatory face. “Really?”

“I’m cold and wet. I need a shower do you want me to get sick?”

“You couldn’t even wait to go change in the bathroom?”

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he responds before shucking the last of his clothing and standing in the middle of the room proudly.

In all his naked glory.

You can’t help but feel a bit put off by the fact that he doesn’t have any issue getting naked around you. He’s not even hard. It’s like your presence doesn’t affect him in the slightest.

Bitterly you wonder if you’d been Jongin would he have a different reaction in this situation. You stand up abruptly. Fuck Baekhyun.

Pettily you strip out of your clothes as you walk towards the bathroom, leaving the wet articles in your wake. “I’m cleaning myself first,” you state coldly as you all but rip the last of your clothing off at the archway of the bathroom.

You don’t turn around and you don’t bother to investigate why he seems stunned to his spot or why he averts his eyes as you walk by.

~~~

The bathroom is just as opulent as the main room. A creamy white with pretty pale pinks streaked through the marble and coloring the crystals that illuminate the room in a soft pinkish glow.

A tub the size of a small pool is carved into the corner of the room. Oils and scented salts in jars cover the expansive shelf built into the wall at its side. A wide mirror stretches across the room with a spout and basin to wash your hands in front of it. A varied range of brushes and facial oils and paints are neatly organized across the counter, settled in front of a thick patterned chaise. You find candles nestled snuggly beneath a shelf of towels and unused sponges on ropes.

Looking at your appearance in the mirror, your hold in the need to physically recoil. You skin looks blanched from the overexposure to water, and the hair on your head is knotted beyond belief. Not wanting to look at your naked form for too long you twist the knob at the tub to release a steady flow of lukewarm water. You toss in some oil that smells good and a soap that catches your attention. The bottle is make of glass and has writing that you can’t read as it must be in Atlantian, but it smells and looks good and bubbles up when it comes in contact with the running water.

Grabbing a comb from the counter of goodies and the specialized hair soap left at the side of the tub, you decide to make an event out of pulling your appearance back together. You will be meeting the Queen in a few hours.

Gingerly, you lower yourself into the water and shove your head under the spout before lathering it in hair soap and detangling the strands on your hand. Rinsing out the suds and then turning off the water, you allow yourself to be semi submerged in the water.

“Yah, you can’t steal the bath and then spend an hour using it. I could have been in and out already.” You crane your neck to find Baekhyun’s complaining form leaning against the archway.

“You weren’t fast enough. Not my problem. You can wait.”

“No I can’t.”

“You can, and you will. I’m not fucking moving.”

In the month you have spent time more intimately with Baekhyun aboard your ship as a fellow crewman, you’ve learned one thing about him that you didn’t know before. He can be astoundingly petty.

His intelligence, his wit, his strength and skill as a pirate, his ability to charm and talk his way out of anything –you knew of it all before. But this petty level of childishness is new.

That being said, you aren’t surprised to find him padding over and then climbing into the large tub across from you. He settles and then his bottom lip juts out.

“Happy now?”

“No.”

You snort loudly and his pout breaks off into something like a smile. You push a handful of water in his direction, not enough to do much and not with enough strength to even be called a splash.

The little shithead he is takes your push of water as permission to send a small tidal wave in your direction, splashing you directly in your face.

You splutter and wipe the water from your eyes while he laughs his loudest most punctuated laugh at your expense. When you squint at him through the water still in your eyes you see pure relaxed happiness in his features, and you can’t find it in you to even attempt to be mad.

This Baekhyun is the real one. The one he covers up with cocky smiles and biting words. The one he leaves locked away and protected from the heartlessness that is required of your jobs.

Happy Baekhyun is a vulnerable Baekhyun. A soft version of him that makes your heart hammer in your chest and sparks a juvenile desire to keep him at your side safe from anyone who dares try and take that side of him away.

His laughing calms to muffled chuckles hidden behind his hand. “Okay, now I’m happy.”

“That makes one of us,” you scoff out. The water begins to agitate your eyes so you run the water from the spout to flush out the fragrance laced liquid. Blindly you reach out for the stream only to continuously miss.

“Come here,” you hear at your side. “Here, lean back.” You’re moved to the side and you lean backwards only to come in contact with his chest. You tense before giving in and letting yourself relax against him. You feel his muscles shifting as he reaches around you to cup water and pour it over your eyes. You blink away the water and scrunch up your face in discomfort. “I’m not done, try and keep your eyes open this time,” he says gently.

You reach up and hold open each eyelid as he cups the water and lets it flush out the soap. Finally you can blink without agitation. You contemplate thanking him, but decide to do it once you’re safely on your side of the bath. As you’re making your escape, arms wrap around you and pull you back securely down between strong thighs and against a warm chest.

“Can you…uh can you let me go?”

“Nuh uh,” he grunts with a head shake.

You look down at where his arms are crossed over your chest and swallow thickly. He perches his chin on your shoulder and takes in a deep relaxed breath. You feel stiff as a board. “This is nice,” he sighs out.

This is too intimate. This is too intimate. This is too intimate.

“How long have you been in love with Jongin, Baekhyun?” you ask in a rush of breath. His grip on you loosens to nothing and you pull yourself away from him, crossing your arms over your chest to hide the hardening of your nipples. From the cold of the air and the all too close embrace you’d found yourself enjoying just a tad too much.

He splutters. “I- wh-” he starts to cough violently. You feel your heart sinking with each noise he makes. “I don’t- I’m not in love with Jongin!”

You let your silence and your frown portray your disbelief.

“I’m serious. I’m not in love with Jongin he’s like my younger brother, what would make you think that?!” He fake gags. “Oh gross, just the thought-” he covers his mouth to fake gag again.

You gawk at him. Is he overcompensating to hide the truth?

“What in Poseidon’s name would lead you to believe that I’m in love with Jongin? I nearly raised the kid.”

You feel embarrassment creeping up your neck like snakes. “You- the…Minseok said…”

“Minseok said I was in love with Jongin?!”

“No! Wait let me-” you smack a hand to your forehead. “Minseok said that you took the compass with you when you came to find the three of us and I guess I just I don’t fucking know assumed you had to want to find your crew most in the world and then I figured you were actually in love with one of them and Jongin seemed like the most likely of him and Chanyeol because Chanyeol doesn’t really seem like your type but I guess it could also be him since he’s kind of goofy and airhead at times too-”

His hands come out of the water to cup your cheeks and then –lips.  

“Stop talking,” he says softly. Another quick press of his lips against yours. “You’re wrong and you’re stupid and you need to stop thinking before you overload your dumb little brain.”

“Hey-”

“Ah ah. What did I say?”

You purse your lips and let him squish your cheeks closer together until your lips are puckered ridiculously. The look in his eyes is fond almost, the smile on his lips and the shine in his eyes soft as he squishes and unsquishes your face.

You bat away his hands. “You still didn’t answer my question,” you whine despite yourself.

“Aw the baby getting upset?” he makes a face of exaggeratedly fake concern. “Come here, sit on daddy’s lap and I’ll make you feel all better.”

“Baek that was gross.”

“The invitation still stands.” He waggles his eyebrows and shimmies his shoulders. When his gaze drops down to your uncovered chest and a bit of the playfulness gets swallowed up by want, you feel a bit of that desire rushing through your veins again.

He isn’t in love with Jongin?

That only leaves more unanswered questions, but you let them go easily at the sight of Baekhyun reclining lazily against the side of the tub, rubbing up and down his thighs slowly and watching you with predatory closeness.

He is so sexy, you are so fucked.

Squashing the tiny feeling of shame, you crawl over and wrap yourself around him. You can feel him rising in excitement from beneath you. You let your arms rest lazily around his shoulders while he busies his hands with massaging circles on your hips.

“That feels nice,” you whisper in a puff of breath. You know that he can see how affected you are –can feel it in your impatient squirms against him as you attempt to subtly relieve the ache growing inside of you. He hums in agreement and focuses his eyes on your mouth.

You can take a hint when it’s staring you in the face like this. You lean forward and connect your lips softly. A peck. Another one. A kiss on the corner of his mouth. A kiss on the tip of his nose. Another on his smiling lips.

When you pull back there’s emotion swimming in his irises that sparks a heat in your core. You nip at his bottom lip.

A lick, a nibble, a juvenile laugh against pressed lips.

He sticks his tongue out through pursed lips, waiting for you to try and kiss him with his ridiculous expression. You pull away to grimace, only to laugh and lick a messy wet stripe from his upper lip to the tip of his nose.

“You’re a dick,” he laughs, wiping your saliva off his nose.

“And you’re a bastard,” you respond easily. You look at your deeply pruning skin with disdain. “We should dry off.”

“But I like it here in the tub; I haven’t even scrubbed the dirt off.”

“We can clean ourselves properly after I get your cock inside me.” You feel him twitch from beneath you. You cock your head to the side teasingly. “Oh, now you’re ready to get out?”

He scrambles from under you and over the edge of the tub right to the towels. You roll your eyes playfully and climb out just as he plops a towel on your head and quickly tries to dry your hair, only messing it up further.

“Hurry up. We’ll get sick if we stay like this for too long. We need to go to the bed and warm up, I can already feel a cold coming on.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

hi ash! i know you said before that you're not autistic you just did a lot of research to depict chris realistically- do you have any advice for finding resources on writing disabled characters that isn't like... horribly abelist? im writing someone with an intellectual disability from head trauma and who is nonverbal, and i want to get it right but everything online seems very autism-speaks-y. im autistic and semiverbal but i dont have an id and i want to be realistic and respectful.

I cannot speak with any expertise or sense of speaking from enough experience to be taken as an expert here, and defer as always to those with lived experience with intellectual disability!

But I will give a few more general tips for what to do when looking to write a character with a neurological makeup that doesn’t match your own, as far as what has worked for me with Chris:

1. The story should never be ABOUT their lived experience if you do not also have it. Chris’s story is not about autism, or being autistic. I would never presume to try and write a story like that because, whatever my intentions, I don’t have that knowledge that comes from living it. I would at BEST be taking the experiences of others, their voices. At worst, I would be someone standing with a megaphone shouting over those who deserve to be heard.

Making the disability what the plot revolves around is... generally just not going to be a good idea, in any sense. It’s moments like this where I feel like it’s best to defer to the writers who have lived it, instead. 

This is not to say “never write someone different than yourself”, because... I don’t think that’s at all good advice. I think that way lies stunted writers who never push themselves. But it does mean “do not center the story on this thing if you have not experienced it and don’t have that knowledge and understanding”.

2. At the same time, don’t try to be coy or dance around or hide the disability behind purple prose or refuse to acknowledge its reality. Trying to make a disability sound cute, or talk around it instead of speaking it out loud, can be minimizing or shaming in ways that I think it’s easy to miss, if you don’t live with that disability yourself! To me, this touches on one of my hugest pet peeves - characters who are written as having a particular neurodivergence in media, or shown on tv, but they never expressly admit to it or name it. 

I know I hesitated with Chris, more because I didn’t feel comfortable giving him a diagnosis until I understood autism better myself, and I do regret how long it took me to embrace that reality about him. I just thought it better to err on the side of researching before I embraced. But I do feel some guilt about waiting so long when I had readers who were identifying so heavily with him, and I kind of knew, but just didn’t feel comfortable owning it yet.

3. On a related note - disabilities in a story that become melodramatic tragedy or turn the disabled character into a ‘redemption story’ for an abled character. This is so, so prevalent in common media and pop culture and once you recognize it for what it is, it’s so hard to not see it in so many places. Think of how many movies, novels, etc contain a disabled character who exists to teach abled people some virtuous lesson about living life to the fullest or ‘what it really means to be human’ blah blah blah blah blah. Don’t do that. Please. (I mean, I kind of feel like you definitely won’t, but I’m just speaking very generally here). If you find the story going in a direction in which abled people learn something from the disabled person, please think very carefully and critically as to why the story is heading in that direction.

Language alone can also be a problem here - think about the difference between openly describing a character moving around their life with a wheelchair vs. calling them “wheelchair-bound” or “reliant on a cane”, when the cane or wheelchair may actually represent freedom to that person - an aid they need, yes, but one that allows them to live with far more agency than they might have had otherwise. 

To describe them, especially from their own POV, as “wheelchair-bound”, may ring false to disabled people who understand that the wheelchair isn’t a cage, but a tool that allows that individual person to feel less caged by being able to more freely leave home.  

(This varies person to person, just providing an example)

4. Educate. Research. And don’t just do so by asking people with disabilities to tell you their stories. I often express gratitude to the autistic readers, those with ADHD, etc who spoke up about Chris, talked about their own experiences, identified with him, found him very resonating for aspects of their own lives. 

These stories, this information, this sharing of their lives was given freely to me, and I’m fucking amazed and grateful for how welcomed Chris was, and how willing readers were to share about themselves when talking about him.

Their willingness to speak about these things is something I treasure. But I absolutely would never believe that a single person owed me the story of their life to make sure I got Chris right. That was my responsibility, you know? I try to keep in mind the concept of ‘emotional labor’. Asking a disabled person to be your resource is asking them to give, and give, and give of themself. They may want to give you that kind of labor, they may not. But I definitely wouldn’t ask it of anyone without understanding it was something they were happy or felt comfortable giving.

Research, on the other hand, is essential. You mentioned things being “autism speaks-y” when trying to research on your own, and oh god, do I feel you. It sucks that autism speaks is the first thing to pop up when trying to research the lives of autistic people - and in my research, I was lucky to already know AS sucks and write them off and anyone who heavily referenced them as not helpful. I can see how someone might not know that, though, and stumble on them and believe they were a helpful resource for writing autism when they... well. Nope. 

Try to think about the express disability you are writing for this person, and why, and then go research! I looked up “books on autism recommended by autistic people”, and found some invaluable books, yes, but also papers published online, websites, etc! Each of them vetted and looked over and recommended by autistic people, so I knew I was getting information that came from people with those experiences and that understanding. A good example - I picked up a book on the history of diagnosis and treatment of autism in the United States, mentioned it here, and @redwingedwhump recommended a book called Neurotribes... which turned out to be immensely more helpful, spot-on, and provided some really excellent foundational information I wouldn’t have found in the first book at all.

There’s a lot of information out there on Traumatic Brain Injuries and their lasting effects on individuals who receive them, so I would start there. What you’re describing sounds like a TBI with lasting effects! So I would start your research there, and also look up being nonverbal separately, as well as combining the two. Make sure you’re not just looking at the top links - often paid ads or problematic organizations that are able to pay more for better exposure - but also scanning for blogs, nonprofits, lived-experiences stories, too.

I found a lot of information on the second or even third page of results i would never have seen if I only stuck to the first. Remember the algorithm on search engines is usually showing you what other people are clicking on, not necessarily the best source.

5. This is one you the asker already know, but I want to include it for general reasons: do not ‘dumb down’ the thought processes of a nonverbal or semi-verbal person. I see this in fiction surprisingly often, and I think it’s this sense we have as abled people (’we’ just meaning I’m including myself) that being verbal is required to have a highly complex thought process, and it’s... it’s just fucking not. Speech and though are related but not completely wound around each other, and the ability to verbalize is not the same as the ability to think. 

Like I said, I know you know this, asker, but it’s something I see in fiction/media and it drives me up the wall. So I wanted to include it.

6. For the love of God, do not use medical terminology unless you actually know what you’re doing/talking about. Many disabled people or those with serious medical conditions become what amounts to experts on their own diagnoses, because they have to. They have to be experts to receive the care they should be able to rely on. If you constantly fuck up terminology - trust me - it will be noticed, and it will take people out of the story or hurt their ability to suspend disbelief while reading.

There are ways to do medical scenes/conversations with doctors that avoid falling into this problem! I would just be very very careful to heavily research before using any complex terminology.

7. This disabled person does not exist to evoke pity. They are a human - nuanced and multi-layered - living their life, and their story should always, always reflect that. I don’t really have anything else to add to that.

I would love to hear further advice from anyone with anything else to add.

[smallcomebacknowyhear]

unforgivable SV sins

(not an exhaustive list) (includes s6 spoilers)

-I feel like im not equipped to list every sin the writers committed against jared but there are Many (and please feel free to reblog with examples if you are so inclined)

-the STARK difference between Dinesh and gilfoyle’s friendship at the end of s4 (they were really vibing!! Gilfoyle was actually being hospitable towards Dinesh!! they were getting celebratory churros together and abandoning richard together!!!!) and the beginning of s5. I think the writers decided their best frenemies dynamic had run out of material which is ofc bullshit because it has infinite potential

-Gilfoyle’s degradation of personality/lack of development- they made him too untouchable to be relatable and too mean to be sympathetic. Plus the only real thing we know about him is that hes a satanist and its just kinda lazy that they tell us at every opportunity that he is one (goat plush AND baphomet plush on his desk, inverted cross tattoo AND baphomet tattoo!! give him another trait or interest besides being racist please!!!)

-setups with no payoffs: they introduce Jeff as a mole, then show that the guys know there is a mole but they dont know who it is, setting up a plotline that could have lasted the entire rest of the season, but instead the next episode they explain how jared and gilf found the mole offscreen in the most boring way possible (Jeff is STALLION coder. how could he be dumb enough to use his PP email to talk to Gavin? Jeff use ANY OTHER ACCOUNT its not hard.... also encrypting all your emails takes more effort than just using a different account to send normal emails)

(-plus the entire “jeff has to spend time with Dinesh as punishment” thing- not only is Dinesh someone jeff should enjoy spending time with bc jeff is at least the same level of dork as Dinesh, but dinesh’s personality seriously deteriorated in season 5 from someone who was a little awkward but would still be nice to hang out with, to a guy who tries way too hard to be cool and has absolutely no self awareness. Plus the jokes surrounding this whole arc just seemed “big bang theory” level lazy to me- Dinesh wants to go to battlebots with jeff and thats the entire joke, etc)

-and ofc the setup with no payoff that was “gwart dumped jared, how will jared get back in with PP?? - oh we’re not going to show or tell you he’s just back in the next ep like he was never gone”

-I dont think any human being would act the way Dinesh does in the episode where Danny tells him his code had less errors than gilfoyle’s. And honestly when you rewatch season one it’s like Dinesh is a completely different guy, they completely flanderized him but its not really flanderization because they kinda added in the characteristic “unjustly inflated ego” in like season 4?? 

-they took the concept of an engineer who builds a robot and falls in love with her and just.... didnt do anything to make it interesting or different from the current well of narratives surrounding that topic. Honestly making one change to the episode would vastly improve it- if they’d cast someone who looked more like the Blood Boy to play the engineer, and given him a charming and charismatic personality, it would have been way more interesting. First of all you would have never seen it coming, whereas I saw the reveal coming a mile away because it was so obvious, but it would also actually say something about a guy who has absolutely no problem forming bonds with human beings who CHOOSES to interact on an intimate level with a robot instead of putting that energy into relationships with other humans.

-I’m willing to suspend disbelief wrt plotholes when the episode was actually funny or had some overarching theme that was satisfying, etc. But Russfest had two plotholes (how exactly did entering Yaonet through the backdoor result in kicking laurie’s devices off Pied Piper networks? if this made sense they did not explain it well enough - and the whole thing with the lights turning off suddenly but then magically turning back on when Russ “voice command”ed them to) and its the friggin penultimate episode, it’s supposed to make sense and be funny and be narratively satisfying and although it did have some good moments (gwart betraying laurie and richard stomping on his laptop) those plotholes are just not excusable 

-this is more the HBO marketing teams fault but I’m really mad that they put Dinesh saying “you turned down a billion dollars” in the promo material. not only did it completely ruin the suspense of whether richard was going to agree to maximo’s offer, but it also ruined the reveal that he wasn’t offering a few million but a billion dollars. maybe its just my fault for watching promos?

-speaking of maximo the fact that he was a big focus of the beginning of the season and then he just kinda dropped off the face of the earth. I’m sorry but when season 2 sets up the standard that “plotlines that get introduced in the first episode of the series will remain intact and be resolved in a climactic manner in the final ep of the season” I’m disappointed when plotlines just kinda fizzle out after two episodes. especially in a SEVEN EPISODE SEASON

-just generally not enough boyfamily bonding/interpersonal bonding in general. Its very unrealistic that they never so much as MENTIONED any of the guys birthdays or the bashes jared would obviously throw for them. its also very unrealistic that........ Dinesh and jared werent friends and its absolutely a sin that Dinesh picked on jared so much :c

[astronomyparkers]

(1/2) The few things I didn't like about Avengers: Endgame is Thor and Steve's ending. With Thor they just kind of played off his depression and weight for laughs. Why didn't anyone else get this treatment. I feel like it should have had a more somber tone. I actually don't mind Steve's decision but I'm still conflicted on it. I get he loved Peggy and that is all he ever wanted but why would he leave Bucky after he fought through a

(2/2) trilogy of films for him. Also a new timeline would have been created so how would he have been on the bench at the end. 

i kinda agree with you about thor???? like i wish he wasn’t played as such comedic relief but i did like his moment with freya and i loved that he gave the crown to valkyrie. the line about him him becoming who he is instead of who he was supposed to be???? i Felt That. but i wish his guilt and depression was addressed more instead of a joke.

as for steve.....i really liked his ending!!!! i’ve been a steggy stan since day one so it was very satisfying for me lmao and the thing is like. i think bucky knew that steve wasn’t coming back. their goodbye??? when bucky says he’s going to miss him???? it was way too loaded for someone who was going to be gone for five seconds. even if steve didn’t know that he wasn’t coming back, i think bucky did. i don’t really know how the time travel works tbh but im willing to suspend my disbelief bc of peggy and steve

let’s talk about endgame!

[dcarevu]

Batman TAS: The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne

“Sunshine. Clean air. I hate it.”

Episode: 37 Robin: Yes Writers: Judith Reeves-Stevens (teleplay), Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Teleplay), and David Wise (Story) Director: Frank Paur Animator: Akom Airdate: October 29, 1992 Grade: B

Whoa! Wait a minute! Didn’t we just talk about the episode Eternal Youth? And wasn’t that episode #29? Now we’re going to jump all the way up to #37? Did I miss something?

That was supposed to be an imitation of you. Not in a condescending way. Because yeah, we did jump ahead! Oh, don’t worry, we will be taking a look at every episode between Eternal Youth and Strange Secret, but we’ll be doing so in a “split timeline” fashion (term ripped from StephenVlogs/Zelda). I have been really behind with the posts for a while now because of the work I had in college. And I’ll keep getting further behind unless I do something. So today, we have jumped up to where I actually am with the episodes. This way I am caught up, and then I can go back and review the episodes I have missed when I have the spare time to do so. It’s as simple as that. And if you’re someone who would prefer not to read ahead, feel free to wait for me to catch up in the past timeline.

In the present timeline, we’re looking at Dr. Hugo Strange’s debut, as well as the first time we have seen some of Batman’s major villains work together. This episode is important, because it sets up possibilities for the future (ex Almost Got ‘im and Trial), but aside from that, it ends up being pretty inconsequential, and simply a fun episode with some laughs along the way. When we see the title and the title card, though, it is hard not to expect more. Char figured that this would be a deep episode about Batman’s past, and while we do go back in time a little bit through Bruce Wayne’s mind, it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before, and it’s incredibly short. Also, I don’t exactly know who that is on the title card. It looks like it is one of Strange’s men, but it’s also entirely possible that it is Bruce. It has virtually nothing to do with the episode, honestly, and because of that, it’s not one of my favorite title cards. Maybe this episode was much different in an earlier draft, and they had to water it down for kids. That wouldn’t shock me, this episode is a lot more cartoony than most. The main plot features a mind-reading device that leads its victims through personal, repressed memories, and then displays these thoughts as video onto a screen that Strange gets to look at. It also records the thoughts onto tape. Look, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief when it comes to invisibility (See No Evil), or even when it comes to transforming people into trees. This is a little silly. And this is following a pretty tense scene at the beginning, where a Gotham judge is desperately trying to buy one of these tapes back, which shows that she was the one who caused a major fire long ago as a child, and has kept it a secret ever since. She doesn’t have enough money to pay for the tape, so Strange’s goons don’t give it to her, and they tell her that she now owes even more (they also have a duplicate tape as backup, seen later. Evil bastards). She’s so desperate to get the tape, that when Batman swoops in to settle things, the tape happens to find its way onto a dangerous-looking metal beam, suspended above the water, and she crawls out to grab it (nearly falling). It may not be animated that well, but it makes for some good set-up. From here on, though, the episode receives a big tone shift.

After Dr. Hugo Strange reads Bruce’s mind, he discovers that Bruce is Batman. This is a major thing, no one so far in the show, villainous at least, has figured out who Batman is. Shouldn’t this be a super dramatic moment? But it’s really not. I question why Bruce didn’t simply look backwards to see what was showing on the screen or why he was so trusting to begin with, but even more so, I question how Strange deduced that Bruce is Batman through the footage shown. Yeah, we see the bat-signal and Batman’s glove, but this could be a simple metaphor or a desire to be Batman. It proves nothing, to me. But in the show’s logic, we must accept that this is enough to count, and now, armed with Bruce’s secret, Strange attempts to auction the tape to Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face. We get to see all four of these goobery characters interacting, and it is truly great. It’s what makes the episode so watchable. They have such strong personalities, and not once do they ever feel out of character. Even Penguin is a blast, only making one bird pun that I remember. And this bird pun is one that anyone would be likely to make, so it didn’t feel overly gimmicky. This is how to do Penguin right! As he sips his tea in the airplane as they are about to throw Strange out of it, I immediately realized that Batman in my Basement would not taint the character for me. Penguin, we have hope. Don’t screw it up. Two-Face being there wasn’t played seriously either, and this might bother some, but I was fine with it. It is sad to see Harvey stooping at such a low, but he’s a gangster now. It’s just how it is. Not every day for him is going to be that first episode with him all over again, y’know? And with him getting roasted by the Joker the way he did, I am totally open to having such a depressing character in such a casual episode. “Get out of my face, Clown.” “Which one?” Ouch, he walked right into that one.

The one major gripe that I actually have is the ending. I know I haven’t talked about it yet, but it has the same problem that I have with The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy where it is completely unbelievable. You’re telling me that not only does Bruce happen to have a perfect costume of himself that Dick can fit into, but also that Dick can do a 100% perfect Bruce Wayne impression? Get outta town! And then we got that exposition at the end, showing how Dick was able to appear so tall in Bruce’s clothes. I probably would have questioned it otherwise, but that could have been done more elegantly. Just show Dick stepping out of the stilts. We don’t need the “stilted” dialogue explaining it. I really don’t like when the show takes this route of Batman, or someone else, being disguised as someone else, because it always follows damn-near Scooby Doo-logic. Costumes aren’t that perfect. I just don’t buy it. It seems very “kidified", and like the writers simply had no idea how Batman would weasel out of this situation. If Loren Lester can actually do an impression of Kevin Conroy that well, I will eat my coffee cup.

I want this as a poster.

I’m sorry, but her hairline looks like it should belong to some middle-aged dude trying to be hip from the 70′s.

Seeing Batman walk along the top of the bridge was cool. Stealthy Batman is just as great to watch as brutal Batman.

But sometimes he’s both!

Sorry, but that judge was a lot thicker than that. Don’t skimp out.

Gordon chatting with Batman while appearing to be deep in thought, simply peering into the water was a nice touch. 

Gordon witnesses Batman disappearing for once. It would be funny if from this point on, he thought that Batman always escaped via plane.

The large tombstones are cool, but this scene lacked the fluidity it required to be interesting. 

The big reveal that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Ummm... Okay. 

Looks kinda like Keaton Batman. 

This face was really creepy. But apparently she started the fire on accident. Doesn’t really come across with a crazed look like that.

The animation didn’t destroy the episode or anything, but some of these characters have seen better days.

Like, I mean, it’s passable, but I’m not feeling the grotesqueness associated with Two-Face.

This was a rough shot. I’ve noticed that episodes tend to have trouble with shots featuring the Joker’s closed mouth. 

Yikes. Look at. the henchman’s facial structure. What happened, dude? 

I like the Joker’s popcorn-eating as Batman’s identity is about to be revealed. 

And Hugo Strange rubbing his hands together with greed was delightfully silly. I also wonder how the rogues obtained so much money. I bet most of it is Penguin’s. Joker probably contributed the cents.

Got a nice screenshot of Penguin shooting the tape. 

Nice badge.

Compare this to a similar scene in the Batman Beyond pilot. One has a much easier time climbing on a plane, given the suit.

Oh, Penguin. Thinking he’s so damn sophisticated as they drag a screaming man into the sky and threaten to toss him out the door. See, that would be absolutely barbaric, but the tea.

What a dreadful shot. Also, Strange’s voice actor (Ray Buktenica) knocks it out of the park with his pleas. 

Once Gordon and Strange are gone, we see “Bruce” get a bit more of a smug expression that we don’t often see. This is actually Dick, and the change in expression I will praise. Still doesn’t excuse the overall scenario, though!

Char’s grade: A Next time: Heart of Steel (Part 1)

Full episode list here!

[pojkflata]

since ive been bringing up mysteriet på greveholm a fair bit recently i guess i might as well bring up a bone i have to pick with it

this is smth that applies both to the 1996 original and grevens återkomst, though i am more willing to let it slide in the 1996 version because it’s on the whole more enjoyable and atmospheric than grevens återkomst

how and why do the ghosts eat? ...they’re dead. i thought a big selling point to being a ghost was that you are no longer bound to the limits and needs of a flesh prison. ergo, there is no need for a ghost to eat and imo it shouldn’t even be possible for a ghost to eat, yet these fuckers eat ostkaka like its nothing

of course, people love to eat recreationally and sometimes not even death can change that, but they are still ghosts? and what makes it even more confusing is the fluctuating tangibility of these ghosts. y’see, the ghosts of greveholm can turn themselves intangible. and yeah, their tangibility is very inconsistent in its own right. shouldn’t a ghost turning intangible make their stomach contents pass through their bodies and spill everywhere? bc that’s never ever mentioned. i know it’s gross but you made your somewhat intangible, covered in basically-vomit bed and you better fucking lie in it

not to mention it’s implied in grevens återkomst that the ghosts can actually physically experience hunger. it’s all but confirmed that these ghosts, despite being, y’know, dead, are freaks of nature that possess digestive tracts and require sustenance despite not having actual bodies. you can’t just imply that and get away with it, not on my watch, nosire

it would be so much funnier and more logical if it was set up similarily to what mother 3 did with the concept of ghosts eating; yeah, they’ll try, but in the end it just ends up on the floor

i guess i should chill considering this is a series in which the villain is killed off by getting soft drink poured over him because he’s a skeleton and sugar can allegedly dissolve bone (which has no grounds in real life) but im too autistic to suspend my disbelief sometimes

[daeneryses]

I’ve been reflecting

I’m not angry or sad anymore (i am a little sad im ngl), i’m genuinely confused at how d&d chose to end the series. All jokes aside, these men are not stupid, I mean they created the most successful show ever and did it gracefully for the most part. I have had issues with it ever since s5, but the GA seemed to love it MORE every year. Each year the show grew larger, more ambitious, more successful. And welp, by s8 it was a full blown cultural phenomenon that we haven’t seen in a while. And honestly, the story was right there, fleshed out for them, esp bc the mainstream audience doesn’t spend hours analyzing every detail of foreshadowing, and lbr, GoT has been more spectacle than substance for a while now. Why not have the long-awaited NK-jon confrontation, and some grand sacrifice by dany in order to win the war which leaves the throne free for jon (IK ITS GROSS BUT DO U THINK MOST CASUAL FANS WOULDN’T SCREECH WITH JOY? DANY DIES A HERO AND JON GETS THE THRONE, OR HAVE IT BE THE OTHER WAY) and there u have your bittersweet ending. It’s quick, it’s easy to follow, most people would be happy.

why on god’s green earth would these two men who were clearly tired of the show go out of their way to create this needlessly contrived plotline that, ultimately, left everyone unsatissfied in some way? d&d aren’t the best writers out there, but whenever thay changed martin’s plotlines they simplified things, they never made it more complex. 

and the actual ending. god the actual ending. did anyone get closure? there was no closure. it all felt so hollow (maybe daenerys was the heart of the show hmmmm)

so yeah idk, im just so confused by their choices. listen im ngl and say that I now despise GoT and that I regret watching it bc it isn’t the case. I’m very easy to please lmao, and I made peace with the show being a totally different thing than the books a while ago, and I also made peace with the fact that ever since season 5-6 the show’s been mere spectacle, and I didn’t really mind bc I still loved those characters, I was invested in whatever story they were trying to tell, and as long as it was somewhat believable and was compelling I didn’t have a problem... but I, for the life of me, cannot comprehend how they thought that what they did this season was compelling. Do they really think audiences are stupid? Did they believe no one would question why euron greyjoy (OF ALL PEOPLE) shot down a DRAGON? also, what’s up with all the things they chose NOT to show? arya and sansa’s reaction to jon’s parentage? The actual aftermath of the Long Night (which rly just lasted one singular night I-)? SOME OF DAENERYS’ SUPPOSED DESCENT INTO MADNESS? how missandei got captured? what happened after jon killed dany? why did greyworm let him live? where are the dothraki? what do the lords and ladies of westeros think of the events in KL? WHO REPAIRED THE WALL? that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there are so many unanswered questions, and that’s just plain bad stoy-telling :/

and lbr, the storytelling has been bad for some time now, but this was their final season!! they had to go out with a bang!!! and they didnt!!! it’s literally the worst ending i have ever seen!!! of any show!!! (granted i dont watch many shows but eh) and that makes me incredibly sad, bc up until last episode I was willing to justify MANY things, to suspend disbelief as much as I could, but there’s a limit u know?:/ when your finale leaves more questions than answers, you know you did something terribly wrong.

And I, for the life of me, cannot wrap my head around the fact that a whole writing team came up with that and said “ah yes! perfect!” like these men were comparing it to the BB finale (THE DISRESPECT) I- I don’t have words.

Maybe this is Martin’s ending, but if it is then I hate the fact that they followed it. That doesn’t mean that I will hate his ending, but GoT parted ways with ASOIAF since like season 3; they should have known they wouldn’t be able to deliver the same ending in a satisfying way, simply because it is a different story. The characters are different, so many plotlines have been merged, simplified or just completely ignored, and that’s okay, but don’t try to copy an ending and force it onto a storyline that you haven’t been following. I love both for different reasons, GoT became its own thing (for better or for worse), and it should have continued to be its own thing till the very end.

my blog is a stark blog rn bc that’s the one thing that I didn’t LOATHE tbh. sansa’s ending mostlty. bc arya, jon and bran got mediocre endings for such amazing characters. but they are still alive, which is something that cannot be said for the female protagonist of the series (a big YIKES). i love dark!dany, if we get to see the creation of a villain while being in her head and rooting for her that’d be incredible, but jesus did they butcher it on the show. my poor girl couldn’t even die with dignity, she couldn’t get a proper burial, she never got a trial, she wasn’t avenged, she didn’t fight, she just DIED. and she died a fucking boring death like at least let her embrace her “madness” and take the world down with her. 

so yeah, idk where im going with this, im just very confused atm bc they complicated a very simple story (GoT became fairly simple last season) RIGHT AT THE END..... Y I K E S

In fact, the stoy became so simple that I was worried abt a cliche ending...u know, all the supposedly good guys were at WF ready to fight ice zombies!!! and big ol’ bad cersei was at KL!!! there weren’t many ways to finish that story... god what i would give rn for a cliche ending lmao

I guess i was s u b v e r t e d

in their attempt to pull off martin’s twists they DESTROYED their narrative and I am just so so sad lmao

don’t get me wrong, I still like GoT, I am rewatching the entire series and it will always hold a place in my heart, but I can’t help but feel cheated