#in which I take a scene that lasted less than a minute and base a 1.6k word fic off of it

[holy-puckslibrary]

just a lil firefighter!sid fluff for y'all :)

gif from @ehghtysevenarchive + per this ask and others

Surely, the chief of Canada's oldest fire department has more important things to do on a crisp morning, the last one preceding a fresh week, than this. He most definitely does. And, yes, Chief Crosby is known for his pragmatic approach to, well, everything.

But neither carries weight here—not when she calls.

Leaky faucet, dead car battery, unreachable spider... It doesn't matter. One ring, and he's rushing home. He can't pin-point when the pattern began, likely sometime shortly between the day you moved into town and his first off-day, but it's a routine he's come to enjoy despite the extra strain on both his schedule and his body; Sidney never thought sharing a property line could be so tedious or time-consuming.

He knows he shouldn't enjoy the distraction as much as he does. You aren't together, Sidney doesn't ever allow his imagination wander that far, but he can't help it. He can't help but help. He rarely turns down anyone in need, which has done wonders for his reputation within the community, but with you... With you, it's different, and embarrassingly so.

He doesn't have the words to explain it. Not that he needs to, it's written plainly across his face.

There's a reason you're regular fixtures in the town's gossip column.

When he arrives on scene—not ten minutes after his F-Series crawled down the gravel drive—Sidney shakes his head and laughs. Collecting his cell and his radio, he slips out of the truck, watching as you fret like a mother hen.

Still in your slippers, you're stood at the base of a decently-sized red spruce wedged between his yard and yours, your crumpled face angled up into the yellow-green needles. You're the very picture of worry, wringing your trembling hands and muttering to yourself.

A stray kitten caught in a tree, that's what's got you in a such a state.

"Well, this is a new one," he bellows in lieu of a greeting, slamming the door shut as his boots hit the ground.

Briefly, your glassy eyes dart in his direction. You're midway through your customary apology when he arrives at your side and quiets you, just as he always does.

"They're more than capable of holding down the fort for however long it takes to rescue our new friend, okay?"

"I know, but what if—"

"But nothing," Sidney huffs, and he dares to take you by the shoulders. And, externally, he ignores the way you shiver under his palms. "If I didn't think it was safe for me to step out for a couple of minutes, I wouldn't. You believe me, right?"

You nod, bottom lip pinched between your teeth.

"Good. Now, how 'bout you keep an ear on this," Sidney sets the clunky satellite radio in your hand, "—and I'll grab the ladder from the shed?"

He doesn't really need your help monitoring the channel, but he knows you'll feel better if you feel like you're doing something. Like him, you find comfort in your utility.

In less than a minute, Sidney re-emerges, rounding the corner with a ladder in hand. You're in the same spot, now fidgeting with the radio, anxiously dumping it from one palm to the other and back again. He follows your gaze to line up the simple equipment necessary for the rescue operation.

Sidney's heart swells as you quietly step forward to spot him.

Lucky for everyone, the ball of orange fur is on the branch nearest to the ground. Sidney needs only to step up onto the first wrung to safetly coax the frightened creature into his waiting hands, he's back on the ground not long after.

He gives the kitten a gentle parting scratch under the chin, then transfers the purring fluff to you. The soft bundle takes to you immediately, nuzzling into your chest like that's where it wanted to be all along.

"I think he likes you," Sidney observes with a cheek-numbing grin.

Your lips are tipped up at the end and there's fan of happiness rooting itself around your eyes. Your mouth opens to reply, but before the words come—

"Well, would you look at this?"

Across the quiet street and a few houses to the left sits an audience of two. Both of which are now cooing as loudly as two ladies in their sixties can manage. Coffee cups in one hand and their cellphones propped up in the other, they fawn over the two of you as if it's live theater.

Sidney curses their sons, who he'd completed the explorer program with as teens, for enabling this technological torture.

"Smile, you two! Oh, Denise is just going to eat this up," one of them, a spitfire in a 4'11 frame by the name of Mrs. Bouchard, exclaims to her co-conspirator, Ms. Johnston.

Then, to no one's surprise and Sid's chagrin, they giddily type out their respective messages to the local paper's equally-nosy editor-in-chief.

"Looks like we're front-page news again," you hum bashfully.

The tabby mewls in your arms. You curl into the little bundle of fur, lips landing between its delicate ears.

Sid studies you in his periphery as he slips in and out of heady contemplation, ultimately deciding he doesn't mind as much as he once did. "That we are..."

—

eek! wait, why do i luv them already 🥹

as always, i would really appreciate if you reblogged my work, left a comment or dropped by my inbox w some feedback :) fandom runs on engagement, and so do writers!! thx a mil in advance!

READ MORE OF THEM HERE!

[fuckyeahisawthat]

dune part two timeline (a guess)

One of the things I had to do for Maybe I'll Show You the Way was figure out roughly how much time was passing between different events in the film. Fortunately, we have a convenient calendar, which is Jessica's pregnancy. We can only get so precise, because we often don't know how much time passes between one scene and the next, but we can set some outer bounds for a timeline. (We are also forgoing the complications of measuring time in a multiplanetary society and assuming something approximating Earth-length days and years here. Which is not very interesting from a worldbuilding point of view but vastly simplifies things.)

In Part One, when Paul tells Jessica he knows that she's pregnant, she says, "It's only been a few weeks." How many is "a few," given that Bene Gesserit have preternatural awareness of and control over their own fertility? Four weeks? Six weeks? Up to you, but seemingly not long enough for Jessica to expect anyone else, including Leto, to be aware of it.

The Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen seems to take place that very night, and the remainder of Part One takes place over only a couple of days. So let's say Jessica is six weeks pregnant at most when they arrive at Sietch Tabr and she undergoes the Water of Life ceremony.

We then have some indeterminate period of time when Paul is learning the ways of the desert and getting to know Chani, before he starts actively fighting with the fedaykin. Chapter 1 of MISYTW starts in this time period and continues through the morning after the harvester attack.

The next time we see Jessica after the day of the Water of Life ceremony is when she is talking to Alia in the sietch hallway. She says Paul is "training" with the Fremen and will be back at the sietch soon. She is this much pregnant:

Just barely showing, so maybe three months? Maybe a little more?

The next scene after this one is the harvester attack, but we don't know how much time passes in between them. We also don't know for sure that the harvester attack is Paul's first battle with the fedaykin, but that seems likely based on the reactions afterward--he seems to have proven himself, gets "sworn in" as a fedaykin and gets his Fremen names.

So there's some wiggle room, but it seems like a solid guess that the period from Paul and Jessica arriving at Sietch Tabr to the harvester attack is somewhere in the neighborhood of two months.

After the harvester attack and the next morning, when Paul and Chani have their first kiss, we have this approximately one-minute montage of Paul fighting with the fedaykin and Paul and Chani falling more in love.

Those 58 seconds actually cover several months--long enough for Paul's eyes to turn blue.

I perpetually forget that this montage is a mere one minute long because it manages to pack in a lot of subtle detail in just a handful of shots. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of MISYTW all take place in the span of this 58-second montage. The three-sietch joint operation that Chani describes at the beginning of Chapter 4 is this one:

Let's just say I have watched this 58 seconds of the movie a lot.

After that montage, we have a very short scene between Rabban and the Baron, and then the next sequence after that is the worm ride. Once again, we don't really know how much time passes between, say, the shot above and the worm ride. But we know that we next see Jessica on the day of the worm ride, and she's now this much pregnant:

Six or seven months, maybe? In any case, significantly further along than when we last saw her. I think it's safe to assume at least three months pass between the harvester attack and the worm ride.

Jessica leaves for the south shortly after this, and by the end of the movie she has not yet given birth, although I am assuming she is more or less full term by that point. So there are at least a couple (two...ish?) months when she is in the south before Paul arrives. This is the time span in which the spice depot attack, Paul's reunion with Gurney, and the attack on Sietch Tabr all occur. (Chapter 6 of MISYTW takes place some time after Jessica leaves for the south, and the entirety of Chapter 7 takes place on the day of the attack on Sietch Tabr.)

This means that the entire arc of Paul and Chani's relationship, from them meeting each other to the end of Part Two, takes place over the course of about...seven months at the absolute max. And in plenty of normal circumstances I would find that an implausibly fast burn, even for two young people who are clearly experiencing their first Big Love. But they are not in normal circumstances--they're in some of the most intense circumstances of both their lives. They're risking their lives in combat together, they're engaged in a high-stakes, all-consuming political project together, and they are living together 24/7 on the Known Universe's most dangerous Outward Bound trip. Those are all things that will bond people together hard and fast. So their comrades-to-lovers speedrun actually makes TOTAL sense to me, and imo feels a lot more plausible than their relationship in the book.

But fucking hell, man, it really heightens the tragedy to shorten the timeline this way. Because Paul has this window of time in his life when he's not the future of House Atreides or the Voice from the Outer World or the Kwisatz Haderach; he's one among equals fighting for a better world and he has friends who are his peers for the first time in his life and he has the love of his life by his side as an equal partner in the struggle. And that window of time is measured in months.

[ninjatrashpanda]

Figured I could share this here.

I'm currently working on a Tevan Little Mermaid AU/Retelling and these are four "blueprint" scenes I have written so far (as in, they're scenes I had clearly in my head and decided to write down, but they'll probably be different in the finished product.) Any thoughts are appreciated.

Also, full disclaimer, yes, I cast Hen as the sea witch, but she is not the villain! I based her on the original fairytale's version of the witch, who was a true neutral party who did what she was paid to do, no more, no less.

Also, Eddie's a seahorse and Bobby's a crab. Feel free to read under the cut.

"Buck, for Neptune's sake, slow down!"

Without missing a beat, Buck turned on his back, his tail still cutting through the ocean without slowing down even an instant. He felt a slight ping of guilt upon seeing how far Eddie had fallen behind, his little fins flapping on his back, but he couldn't afford to care right now. Chimney had told him that the prince's ship was coming back to town tonight, and that they humans would shoot their colorful exploding lights into the sky in his honor. He had to see it, he just had to!

"I can't slow down!" Despite himself, Buck quickly rushed back to grab Eddie and press him against his chest before turning again dashing in the direction of the shore again. "I've calculated everything to the last minute! We're gonna arrive just as the ship comes to port, watch the exploding lights for a bit, then go home! We have to capture the right currents at the right time for it all to work out!"

Eddie, pressing his little body snug against Buck's chest, grunted at that. He didn't understand. Buck knew that, had never had much of an issue with that because Eddie was still always down to explore the shipwrecks and sunken treasures the humans had lost at sea.

"Your parents don't want you at the surface, Buck!" Eddie tried with a huff, but Buck chose to ignore it and push on. They were almost at the last current, the one to take them to the beach in front of the castle. He couldn't stop, not now. "They'll go insane if they find out you went!"

+

"Look, Eddie, there it is!" Buck exclaimed, excitedly pointing over to the large vessel. It was still several yards away, Buck knew better than to get too close, despite what his parents and Bobby thought. He respected the old crab more than he cared to admit, but Bobby still had the incredibly annoying tendency to see him as nothing but a silly little guppy instead of the 18-year-old merman he was.

A small splash at his back told him that Eddie had also breached the surface, but Buck's eyes stayed locked on the royal ship, which was still on its course toward the human city's port. Dusk was turning into night rapidly, so the exploding lights should begin any moment now. The anticipation of the spectacle Chimney had described to him warmed Buck's chest from the inside out, his patience wearing thinner and thinner with each passing second.

"Buck, come on," Eddie started to plead once more, and Buck had to actively bite back the groan that threatened to escape him. He knew Eddie didn't think of him as stupid. Eddie was worried for his safety, and was rightly scared of what Mother and Father would do if they ever found out he had come up here. He was still tired of having the same Neptune damned conversation for the who-knows-how-oftenth time. "Let's just go back, whatever the bird said, a bunch of lights can't possibly be worth all this!"

+

The witch—Hen, her name was Hen, Buck reminded himself—quickly made her way around the room, collecting ingredients, from a diverse array of corals, and various bottles, to what looked like some strange kind of seaweed, all of which she put together by her large cauldron.

"Here's the deal, little prince," she addressed him once she seemed satisfied. Her figure, though shorter than him, was imposing, commanding respect and authority. Buck was almost envious of how confident she was. "I'm not a fairy godmother. My magic has its price, and it has its conditions, and I don't control any of it. Every spell has its own unique consequences. If the spell is strong, so are the drawbacks, you understand?"

Buck's brow creased in confusion. Price? Drawbacks? What was that even supposed to mean? Granted, Buck had never been taught much about magic, but he had figured Hen would just cast an incantation, and poof, he was human and able to live on land with Prince Thomas happily ever after. But now magic had consequences he had to consider?

"Buck, this isn't worth it," Eddie whispered in his ear. He had diligently kept his post above Buck's shoulder throughout Hen's explanations, his eyes always narrowed, always studying every move of every single finger and tentacle Hen was moving. Buck wasn't sure what exactly Eddie planned to do to protect him, given his rather tiny size, but Buck appreciated the sentiment. "You can't trust her."

And as eager as Buck was to be human and to be with Prince Thomas, he knew he had to contemplate this. Eddie certainly had a point. Hen was a sea witch, who lived in a cave in the darkest part of the ocean floor, the entrance of which was decorated with the skull of a... creature, he had no clue what the hell that thing was, but it wasn't any kind of fish he was familiar with, and everyone in the kingdom shunned and warned of her (the teachers told the guppies daily to stay clear of her, even). And yet... Buck somehow felt that he could trust her.

+

Tommy hummed lowly to himself, every row of the paddles bringing a new tone, while his eyes kept studying the stranger. There was something about him that intrigued him—and no, it had nothing to do with the fact that he was beautiful, or that Tommy had found him naked on the beach with only a small crystal around his neck, no matter what Gerrard said—but Tommy couldn't quite put his finger on why there was a small part in the back of his head that seemed to scream every time he looked at the young man.

"Y'know, I don't even know your name yet," he said, a soft smile playing on his lips. The stranger, who had been almost entranced by the trees and flowers along the lagoon's bank, looked over to Tommy, his wide sapphire colored eyes shining in the light of the moon. "I could, I don't know, guess. And you nod or shake your head?"

The man's surprised expression softened, a light, almost bashful smile making the corners of his eyes crinkle in it's stead. The slightest hint of pink blushed over his cheeks, making the butterflies in Tommy's stomach go ever wilder. He nodded, and gestured for Tommy to begin.

[saltygilmores]

Thoughts While Watching Gilmore Girls, Season 3, Episode 11- "I Solemnly Swear..." (That I Have No Memory Of Anything That Happens In This One Based On The Title)

The opening credits of this episode confirm we will finally be introduced to Alex (yay)! Alex stan here! Although quite honestly, I'm interested to see whether or not he lives up to the hype I've built up for him in my memory. .Stumbling almost totally blind into a mid-season episode is thrilling in a really pathetic way. I am being informed this is one of the lowest rated episodes of the entire series, but some low stakes mid season filler can still be good for the soul. Emily's former maid, Gerta from Germany, is suing Emily for wrongful termination after she was fired for being a Noisy Walker. Ah, rich people.

Lorelai sits amongst the delicious looking fake food whilst observing Sookie and Jackson having a loud culinary-based argument.

Lorelai puts Michel in charge while she and Sookie attend the seminar where Lorelai will meet her new totally fine and criminally under-rated B-Tier-Not-Luke Boyfriend, Alex, who shines bright but quickly burns out like a falling star, never to be seen or mentioned again. Presumably he is the second victim to be sucked in by the Male Gilmore Girls Character California Wormhole (Max was first, but eventually escapes). We learn Michel attended a fancy French hospitality college, while Lorelai has to attend a seminar at a Radisson called "How To Run an Inn". But then a witch put a curse on him so he ended up working for nickels at a tiny bed and breakfast in Nowherefuck USA. Tale as old as time. I made that last part up, but The Hollow is still where dreams go to die. Something had to go wrong in his life for him to fall so far. Michel: I predict it will be a total waste of time and money and I will be here to laugh at you when you return. So will I, Michel. So will I. Some more newspaper/Francie crap. Skip skip skip, skip to my loo... Maybe I'm missing something important, but it's a risk I'm always willing to take. The scene goes on forever (4 minutes). Lorelai recives an answering machine message from Emily's lawyer, who is voiced by...Seth MacFarlane. Peter, Brian, and Stewie Griffin and the guy who was bullying Lorelai at her college graduation. It's hard to unhear this dude as anyone but Brian Griffin. Anyway, Stewie is calling to request Lorelai give a deposition at German Gerta's trial to which Lorelai steadfastly refuses, but then a few seconds later changes her mind. Yawn. Lorelai and Sookie go to the boring seminar, then leave the boring seminar. They eat some free cookies in the hallway. ALEX, ALEX, ALEX...

Wheee!

He was just as hawt as I remember. Teehee! The first piece of Alex Lore we are blessed to recieve is that he is a business partner of some spazzy dude that Sookie used to party harty with back in the day, 14 hour booze and pot benders and what not, and the two fellas want to open a chain of coffee shops together. Well, at least they're not attending the Luke Danes School of Serving Folgers And Pretending it's Gourmet seminar. Alex, why are you so hot? Even his voice is hot! And funny too! Damn it Salty! You know what happens to him. Remember the cardinal rule you learned in Recapping 25 Year Old TV Shows School- Do not get attached to single-digit-episode guest stars! It's been less than a minute since he first appeared on screen, and I'm already enamored with their immediate and obvious chemistry. They tried to force that same type of chemistry/ dynamic with Jason through an entire season and it fell completely flat on its face. And I can tell you why (besides the fact that Jason and his storyline sucked eggs). In my humble opinion, JasonDiggerStiles was too similar to Lorelai. And it's never wise for Lorelai to date herself. It opens up a terrifying vortex, one which the world's premier Vortex Scientists have dubbed "Season 4".

An incredible businessman and probably good in the sack, too. Uh, just a hunch.

You two are going to break my heart. Until then I'll just try to enjoy the ride. More Francie crap. I am going to skip skip skip but I do want to observe what's on the lunch menu at the Chilton caf.

Mashed potatoes with gravy, asparagus, an apple and a can of Redbull for Paris. Rory is having her favorite beverage, a Hansen's soda (Raspberry flavor); along with a bag of Doritos. Plus, some kind of sandwich, but it's not her usual Prison Cafeteria Special of two slices of white bread. It looks to be some kind of wheat or rye bread with unidentifable innards. Possibly a BLT or roast beef with tomato? And a book for some nourishing carbohydrates.

A better view. We have deli meat.

I'm still skipping past the Francie crap, but I have several important questions first. Since when does Chilton have a parking garage? A dimly lit, empty one at that? Are there enough students and faculty for a parking garage to make sense? Is this parking garage ever seen again? Is this somewhere off campus?

Ahhh! There has been one Dimly Lit Confrontation per episode for the last 3 episodes. Dean vs. Jess on the dimly lit street. Dean vs.Jess in a dimly lit school hallway. Rory vs Ginger Spice in a dimly lit parking garage. But this one lacks the steamy sexual tension of the previous two. Pass. Back at the Inn, Michel admits to Lorelai he once...killed a dog? I think? Doggy annoyed Michel and doggy went bye bye? Wink wink? I don't want to think about this. Sookie's spazzy friend from the seminar shows up at the Inn sans Alex, which means he is irrelevant to me. Mr Irrelevant Joe doesn't know Sookie is married and admits he's had a decade long crush on her. Now she has to break his heart. Oh, sweet, sweet, pointless filler. Lorelai exclaims "That's some real Gatbsy pining." I mean, Luke came pretty close to Gatsby levels of pining. Where's his recognition?

Worth a shot. Sookie tells the Joe guy that she's married. He understands. We will probably never see him again. The end.

Embrace it, my Lesbian Whore friend. Rory and Lorelai rehearse sample questions for the upcoming court deposition. Yawn.

The kid has a lot on his metaphorical plate these days, you know? Cut him a break. You know what fucking bothers me? I have this clear memory of Jess making a brief appearance in this scene where Luke berates him (in person) for screwing up the food order! Time to go full conspiracy theory mode. What are They hiding from us? Where is Jess? How deep does the rabbit hole go? Since when is Jess responsible for placing supply orders for the restaurant in addition to waiting and bussing tables for meager tips, working at Walmart, and going to school (sometimes)? That's your job, Uncle Luke. And if he screwed up the order, you're still his manager, why weren't you supervising him? Is he getting a raise for these additional responsbiltiies or is he still getting paid in acorns? Stop the madness! I KNOW HE WAS IN THIS SCENE! More Francie crap. This time its between Francie and Paris in a bathroom with a tampon dispenser serving as a lovely backdrop. LET'S WRAP IT UP, PEOPLE. Rory and Paris vent their (sexual) frustrations through a fencing match. Paris is mad at Rory for reasons I don't understand or care about. Emily is mad at Lorelai for being both too honest and too unserious at the deposition. Jackson is mad at Sookie because he thinks she cheated on him with Irrelevant Joe and blows up at her. Yawn. Then more Francie crap. There is way too much estrogen in this episode.

But with less than a minute remaining, Alex calls and saves the day. He provides a much needed boost of testosterone to wrap up the episode. And I get to see his furnishings. Well, I was already informed of this, but if i didn't know, now I'd know...what I'm saying is there are fingerpainted pictures on the wall behind him. The dude has small kids. He's a confirmed DILF! Michel leaked Lorelai's phone number to Alex and we thank him for that. I'm still not going to overlook the whole erasing a dog thing.

You mean like how Luke buys Folgers and disguises it as his own blend?

Smooth as a fresh jar of Skippy.

...Says the woman who doesn't know when she's being duped with supermarket coffee (even when its being scooped from the can 2 inches from her face) and puts coffee grounds in the freezer.

Yayyyyy Alex and Lorelai! Yay! He is the only Luke Substitute I will accept for Lorelai. So I'm just going to go LA LA LA LA! for now while pretending this ship doesn't sink as quickly and spectacularly as the Titanic 2.0. Salty is quite pleased with this last-minute-of-the-episode, predictable turn of events. It will make up for the complete lack of Jess (and Luke) in this episode. Jess appeared in name only through The Great Lettuce Screwup of 2003, and in my hazy false memories. On the brighter side, it was also a Certified Dean-Free episode. This show is BORING without Rory's stupid boyfriends.

I do not get why we are suddenly looking at Lorelai through a window like someone is stalking her from outside the house. Dean, is that you? This episode was so threadbare plotwise that it was my first one-shot recap in a LONG time (it still took me over 3 hours to write, though! So your comments, feedback and reblogs always brighten my day and make all the effort worth it). As is the new tradition, here's the (wimpy) End of Episode Bingo Card.

[snowblack-charcoalwhite]

I just want to know what Ewan meant by Aemond being gray this season as opposed to being completely black last season (which he wasn't). Aemond's "different shades" so far have only been shades we've already seen in s1, he actually had more emotions after Luke's death than he did in s2 and we saw glimpses of his vulnerability in ep9. He even felt grief for Viserys of all people (confirmed by the script). Was Ewan really talking about the two brief brothel scenes that took less than two minutes of screentime? And if Aemond does banish his mother.... That's something I can see the showrunners doing because women must always suffer from evil men, but that's so cartoonish at this point, I can't take it seriously. They can't have Alicent leaving her daughter but they have to remove her from Kings landing before the fall because god forbid show Alicent would defend the city like her book counterpart... This is insane. Why does everyone get new storylines and Emond just becomes a scapegoat for the showrunners who have to take the blame so everyone else gets whitewashed, but he can't even get proper time for his villainy? They're only turning into a boring villain. But I'm just really confused why would Ewan say that one of Aemond's motivations is to make his mother happy (in his mind) if he treats her like that? And that Aemond remembers Driftmark and how she was the only one who stood by him. Or this is another lie from Ewan just like "Aemond's redeeming quality is his loyalty"? I don't like it when the cast is setting the expectations only to subvert it on screen.

Hello!

Right, I (just like pretty much everyone in the fandom, I believe) noticed the discrepancies between the things Ewan said in the interviews and what we have (or haven't) seen on screen. To be fair, it concerns other actors as well (like Tom stating multiple times that Aegon and Aemond love each other no matter what and talking about Aegon's growing respect for Helaena, Fabien mentioning "he wants what she wants" thing about Criston and Alicent, Steve painting Corlys and Rhaenys' marriage in a better light that it actually looks in the show) with Aemond/Ewan situation merely being the most glaring example. And the reason it is the most glaring example is that Aemond IMO got the clumsiest and most meaningless character butchering of them all.

As for the reasons the actors (Ewan among them) keep misleading the viewers, there are several possibilities (that can - and IMO do - coexist):

While I don't think HotD cast are merely parroting the words put in their mouths by HBO team, the latter definitely give them some instructions with regards to the way they are supposed to talk about their characters and the things they need to/can't say. So, in some cases, the actors basically have to deceive the audience.

For some time now I've had an impression that the actors don't have full information on which scenes actually make it to the final version and which get cut before they see the show (once again remembering Matt Smith not knowing about "Daemon fighting Crabfeeder and his army" scene being a silent one for his character). And even if they are actually told beforehand which scenes are included in the show, I think that actors' perception of their characters are influenced by every scene they filmed (and even by some they didn't - but that's point number 3). So, during the promo the cast might take into account some scenes or plot points that we, the viewers, might never even learn about.

Each actor has their own view and opinion on their character - and this view is based not only on the script but on their own thoughts and even headcanons. I believe that is the case for the brotherly love (albeit a "weird" one) that Aegon and Aemond feel for each other according to Tom (by the way, he also mentioned the readiness for backstabbing between them being a mutual thing - define backstabbing) or for Aemond having some kind of love for and loyalty to his brother according to Ewan (define loyalty). In part this also might go for the "coloring" assigned to Aemond by Ewan.

There could be one more adjacent reason - and the saddest one: Ewan is not happy with the way Aemond's story is being told in the show (it could be noticed during several moments in the promo) and was trying his best to make the audience see the Aemond that he sees. And, well, I can't speak for other people (either fans or casual viewers) but I personally don't have it in me to judge him (or any other HotD actor doing the same thing) for it - even though, just like you, I'm not fond of being misled. Imagine giving so much thought, time, energy and love to a character, having high hopes for his development - only to be given... this. Combine it with the point number 1 (at best actors are not allowed to reveal much of what's actually going on with their characters during the promo, at worst they are told to tell lies or half-truths) and the fact that Ewan has very little experience in the 'doing promo' department - and we might just get what we, in fact, got.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Tragedy of the Trix; Rehabilitation vs Punishment

Saw this post on reddit asking if the Trix are tragic characters and at first I almost said no. And then I thought about it a bit. On the outside they seem to handle things very well and they seem to be delighted and content with being evil for the lols but honestly, that happiness is probably super hollow and fake. And they might not even realize it. It has the same energy as someone super wealthy who has a lot of nice things but very little love. Anyways I decided to share my response on tumblr.

I've got several points here that I might elaborate on later if I get some time because I feel like there are a lot of topics here that the fandom doesn't talk about a lot; like Light Rock and the treatment of witches overall.

Honestly yeah I kind of do think that they are tragic characters. It is mostly self-inflicted and we don't really know what happened to them (unless we're counting Icy's last minute backstory) to make them the way that they are. So I can absolutely see them having grown up in rough environments.

The thing that I think makes it a real tragedy as that no one really ever tired to help them. Griffin actively encouraged their mischief and bad behavior until it became a little too evil. In the 4kids dub they didn't even get expelled for the deed itself but because they got caught. And Griffin took little to no responsibility for her hand in all of this; she's the adult, they were still probably teens when they started at Cloud Tower. So in some sense she did have a duty to guide them (and every other student). She praised them for the things that they would eventually be imprisoned for. Which is the next issue; they just kept getting imprisoned and punished with no real attempt at rehabilitation.

I would not call Light Rock rehabilitation. Based on the 4kids dub it had cult vibes more than anything else; not even the guards were allowed to leave and one of them said he felt like a prisoner rather than a guest. The whole scene opened with a debate over the morality of trying to force people to be happy. Light Rock was less about rehabilitation and more about brainwashing. So the Trix never really did get a shot at true rehabilitation and help. It was all punishment. I feel like Light Rock overall was a waste of potential; there were some implications there that really could have made for a cool plot point.

But yeah I feel like not only were the Trix neglected and heavily misguided but they were actively pushed in the wrong direction. The witches in general (not just the Trix) have such a stigma about them that even when they're doing good or minding their own business, they get accused of being evil. And so no one should be surprised when they just embrace the image.

I also feel as though some of the punishments were disproportionate to downright cruel. Like them getting sucked into a void in season 7. Heck, even Light Rock was cruel; it's brainwashing, an attempt at manipulation, and psychological abuse. It's usually passed as a joke but honestly, they have experienced the horrors. Of course they're going to come out more resentful. The comics are almost worse for this. Again it's usually the result of their own schemes but their suffering in the comics is literally played for laughs.

I think that that's why I liked season 8 upon rewatching it; more compassion was given to the Trix. Bloom told Icy that she saw good in her. And, what do you know, Icy was receptive to it. Instead of taking the power for herself, she helped the Winx save the magical dimension. I really would like a follow up on that story line. It was nice to see them humanized a bit more.

Tl;dr: Yeah the Trix brought a lot of their troubles onto themselves but they were actively being praised for doing evil until they did something too evil. And there was no genuine attempt to help them.

[doctorlombax]

An Observation on Murder Drones and the Current Landscape of Stories with Female Leads

I’m guessing most of you have probably heard of the terms ‘girl-boss’ and ‘girl-power’ within the last decade or so. I see it a lot with action-based shows that center around a woman as a main character. The idea being that in the past most of our female characters were relegated to one-dimensional and helpless love interests for male leads. Now entertainment companies are realizing that women want to see themselves as the heroes of the story, so they went ahead and… over corrected.

What do I mean by this? I mean now we get shows about heroic women who and kick and punch and beat the boys around them in anything from pool to knife throwing. The lesson that writers should have learned from the past is “hey, let’s balance the skills and flaws of our girl and boy characters”. What they did instead was “okay, we will subvert the trope by having the girl take the guy’s place, and vice versa. She’s the hero and he’s the damsel. Audiences will love it!” Well I don’t. In fact I find it to be miraculously annoying (achievement unlocked: shade thrown).

For one thing, it makes the love story boring. Why would a powerful, kickass woman keep dragging around a guy that always messes up and needs to be rescued? What does he bring to the table? I don’t see the appeal because the writers are too afraid to put in a scene where she actually has to lean on him for assistance, because tHeN shE WouLd be WEAk and ThAt’s MiSOgYny.

And it’s not just about the fact that it makes the ships annoying. Even more to the point, as a woman I find it patronizing. Have you ever watched an adult play a game with a kid, and the kid trounces the adult (because of course the adult will let the kid win) and everybody is cheering the kid on and clapping? It’s sweet and cute when that happens because the person is a child. Not so much when it happens because the person is a girl.

Whenever I see these ‘girl-boss’ and ‘girl-power’ characters who never need to be rescued, always save themselves, and triumph in the face of every hurdle, it feels like the writers are saying to me “You go, Girl. Don’t worry- we’d never give this woman character flaws. That’s like taking feminism out behind the shed and shooting it. We would never bruise your delicate ego by having her be anything less than perfect!”

In the immortal words of Uzi: Bite me.

Speaking of Uzi, let’s get to talking about Murder Drones. I had heard about the show before, but only ended up watching it recently (which was lucky for me, just a couple weeks after the finale aired). For those who aren’t familiar, Murder Drones is an independent animation project on Youtube with 8 episodes, each with a runtime between 20 and 30 minutes. Quick spoiler-free synopsis: Uzi is a teenage worker drone living in a dystopia where her kind are fighting murder bots. She has a confrontation with one of the murder bots which sets off a chain reaction of events that leads her on a hero’s journey.

Uzi is every middle schooler’s edgy emo self-inset character. She’s filled with angst, has daddy-issues, and comes with a tragic backstory that is slowly revealed throughout the series. On the surface, she appears to be the exact kind of character I was complaining about disliking. Not only is she a child prodigy (built a weapon that can injure the murder drones, who up until then were believed to be indestructible) but she’s also far braver than any of the adults around her. And (SPOILER ALERT) she had a demonic form based on powers she inherited from her mother, as well as regeneration and telekinesis abilities (I bet some of you are thinking I made up those last two for giggles).

But she does not fall into ‘girl-boss’ territory. She also has moments of genuine weakness that she does not overcome by herself. She relies on luck, and has to lean on the people around her, specifically N most of the time. This is shocking because N is her male partner in the show. I know many writers of these kinds of girl-power shows balk at the idea of the main girl character being saved by her love interest, but there you have it. Uzi also has a ‘dark-night-of-the-soul’ moment where she needs her mother to pull her out. This is not some invincible character, she is flawed and needs support from those around her.

Now let’s talk a little more about N. On the surface, N appears to be your standard bumbling male-sidekick. He’s goofy, he makes mistakes, and tends to go along with whatever Uzi decides they should be doing at the moment. That being said, the writers clearly weren’t afraid to give him moments of depth and competence. He is silly, but he chooses to be kind in a world that has been incredibly cruel. He can also be protective, and is shown to have good instincts in a fight. N does drink his respect women juice, but it’s not that ultra-processed, high-fructose ‘all-women-are-queens’ garbage. He treats the women around him like people (worth noting that aside from N and Khan, all significant characters of the show are women and girls). He’s kind to them whenever he can be, but he also calls them out when they’re wrong. And when he has to fight them, he doesn’t hold back. He gave Tessa multiple chances to see reason. When she made it clear she wasn’t going to change her mind about killing Uzi, he did not hesitate to cut off her head #ActualFeminism.

I just find it so ironic how a story that touts itself as a cringy, self-indulgent and having ‘Mary-Sue energy’ ended up having one of the most well-balanced dynamics between their female lead and her male deuteragonist counterpart that I’ve seen in recent years. Thanks, Murder Drones.

P.S. Just in case there’s any confusion around my use of the word female, this post and blog are 100% trans inclusive. Terfs don’t even touch this post.

[justlightlysedated]

It's been over a month since my last update on the secretly married malex fic i've been writing! so, out of the ten new scenes i added, i've only fully written two lol, so eight more to go! The goal is to be done before the new year, so wish me luck!

But here y'all go, a deleted scene:

Alex shouldn't be doing this. He has a flight in less than ten hours, and it's going to take at least three of those for him to make it to his flight on time, but he doesn't really care.

There is something he has to do right now, before he can't do anything about it.

He'd spent the last week since he left Roswell thinking about this, and he'd gone online last night and set an appointment just to see when the soonest available one would be, just to convince himself that it was a bad idea to do this. Only for the closest available appointment to be the next day, in the morning. 

Alex automatically calculated the amount of time it would take for him to pack his things, drive to Roswell, make this appointment and then get back to base to make his flight. He would have at least an hour of time to celebrate afterwards.

The only thing he's unsure of in all of this is what Michael would do.

Alex isn't dumb enough to think that it doesn't hurt to be the one left behind. It hurts him and he's the one doing the leaving. But he's hopeful enough that Michael wouldn't say no. He looks at the time and sees that it's a little after three in the morning.

He messages Michael on AIM an innocuous, i miss you.

Michael's phone barely gets any service in the junkyard and is a hassle to text with, so Michael probably won't ans-

The computer dings before Alex can finish the thought.

Miss you more

Alex packs his bags and is out on the road before the hour is up.

He drives and makes it to Sanders Lot before the sun has even risen, just before seven in the morning. The appointment is in two hours. Alex thinks he made excellent time.

Michael's truck is parked next to the airstream, so Alex knows he's there. Or at least he should be. Alex hopes that he's there.

Still he hesitates for a bit too long, fifteen minutes to be exact, before he can convince himself to get out of the car.

It's just Michael. Even if he does say no to this, it's not like it'll stop him from being the most important person in Alex's life.

Alex stares at the airstream for a second longer, before the lights flicker on, announcing that the occupant was awake.

Alex gets out of the car then, and he barely makes it halfway to the door, before its opening, and Michael is standing at the entrance.

Alex stops in his tracks, feeling his heart leap up into his throat.

Michael looks visibly startled to see him.

Alex gives him a second, eyes darting all over him, drinking him in like he hasn't seen him in months and not just a week.

He's standing there shirtless, jeans hanging open, hair a frizzy mess, eyes too bright, unshaven with blood staining the corner of his mouth and smeared across his split knuckles.

It's an image that makes his heart ache. And he hates, hates, hates that he's the one responsible for this.

Alex is boarding a plane in a couple of hours, and he really has no idea if he'll ever come back home. 

It's that thought more than anything that propels him forward.

Michael drops down from the entrance, taking a couple of steps forward.

"What are you doing here, Alex?" He asks, voice hoarse. "Don't you have a flight in a couple of hours?"

Alex opens his mouth to answer the question.

"Marry me," falls out of his mouth instead.

Michael gapes at him momentarily, while Alex feels his face flush a little with embarrassment. He'd meant to ease into the subject, not blurt it out first thing.

"Unless I'm mistaken," Michael says slowly, eyes darting all over Alex's face. "We're already married."

"That's a domestic partnership," Alex says, a little impatiently, and pushes forward despite the hurt look Michael throws at him. 

"Which becomes void in the event of my death," Alex continues. Michael makes a sound, taking a step forward, hand lifting slightly only to drop again.

Alex keeps speaking, "And if anything happens, the last person I want making decisions for me is my father."

Michael stares at him for a long moment. The silence between them feels heavy with tension.

Alex clears his throat and waves a hand around in the air, "And we can get married now."

Michael continues to look at him without speaking.

"So, what do you say?" Alex says, a little desperately taking a step closer to Michael.

Michael takes a startled step back before he turns around and heads back inside the airstream. 

For about five seconds Alex feels the absolute heartbreak, before Michael stumbles back out of the airstream, holding his shirt in one hand.

He holds out a clenched fist towards Alex, giving him an encouraging smile.

Alex starts to feel the embers of hope flickering in his chest.

He opens his hand, holding it towards Michael.

Michael drops two rings into Alex's palm, and he feels as though the entire world stops for a crystal clear second.

Michael pulls his shirt over his head while Alex tries to process what's happening.

Michael clears his throat, and Alex's gaze snaps back to him, as he stuffs his hand in his pocket, putting the rings safely away.

"I got them right after I heard that they passed-mmhp."

Alex stumbles forward and kisses Michael, one hand to the side of his head, fingers curled around his ears as he pulls him in, falling into the kiss at the same time, trusting that Michael would keep them on their feet.

Michael just barely manages that, wrapping his arms around Alex's waist as he stumbles to catch his balance. Alex's skin feels like it's buzzing as his entire focus narrows to Michael's mouth. He doesn't care if they end up falling to the ground.

He barely notices that they're moving until he's being tumbled back onto the still warm hood of his car. Alex protests digging his fingers into the back of Michael's neck to pull him in. Michael laughs a little, almost deliriously, wrapping his hands around the backs of Alex's knees and pulling him closer.

Alex lets Michael tug him wherever he wants him, hooking his knees around Michael's hips.

Michael presses his hands to Alex's face, fingers around his jaw, tilting his face up as Michael leans down, stopping close enough to rub their noses together.

"Marry me?" he breathes into the space between their mouths.

Alex hums low in his throat as he wraps his arms around Michael's waist, "I asked you fir-"

The rest of the words are caught by Michael's lips as he kisses Alex again, pressing their mouths together softly once, before tilting his head to change the angle, and kissing him again.

Alex tightens his hold on Michael, pulling him in even closer, and they lose several more minutes just kissing languidly, pressed close together.

Michael parts their mouths with a gasp, pressing his forehead to Alex's.

"Yes," Michael breathes.

"Yeah?" Alex questions, not thinking about anything but kissing Michael again.

Michael laughs a little, "Yes, I'll marry you."

Alex smiles, feeling so happy and light, "Yeah?"

"Yes," Michael repeats, kissing Alex once quickly. "You?"

"Of course, I will," Alex says, bumping their noses together. "I'll marry you as many times as you want me to."

Michael kisses him again, hard and biting. Alex holds him close for a long moment, before he pushes him back, parting their mouths with a slick sound. 

"Let's go get married," Alex says, grinning stupidly.

Michael smiles back at him, and just tugs him in for another kiss. Alex kisses him back, they still have time before their appointment.

[hikennosabo]

#tristampparty day 6, episode 6: once upon a time in hopeland

THE HALFWAY POINT OF @tristampparty BABY!!! this is another episode i've watched multiple times on its own so... LET'S GOOOOO

and we start right out the gate with

wolfwood vial count: 2

i don't think i need to keep saying that masaya onosaka is the radio dj... he's been a constant...

LOL, LMAO, EVEN

"disposal," though... we know all about the last run, but what else does disposal entail. like what do they do with the. um. the corpse? and the word "disposal"... yeesh...

so they say, even though it's obvious bullshit. but i do wonder. conrad is in charge of july, EoM's base is in july, etc etc... but how many people actually know what's going on? who does "the july government" consist of besides conrad? what about the civilians living in the city? EoM's cover is flimsy at best, they're suspicious as hell, so how deep and how far does the propaganda machine reach that this can just... keep going on?

all this planet has is radio and newspapers, no TV, no internet, and everyone is struggling just to survive... we saw just last ep how EoM had a grip on one village to the point where it was normalized to sacrifice children... just how good are they at controlling information? jeez. roberto and meryl's job as reporters is more important than ever.

we see that part of wolfwood's designated role is to go after deserters and traitors, so that's another way of controlling information, but. he's just one guy. so they probably have more assassins than just him. maybe the rest of the ghg that we haven't seen yet? there's livio, too, but... how long has he been with EoM at this point? the timeline's so unclear on this, i don't know... we know it took "months" between wolfwood being taken by them and his escape attempt + livio(/razlo) joining, but we don't know how long ago that was either... presumably it would also take "months" for the experiments to be done on livio, or maybe even less time? uhhhhh (steam comes out of my ears from thinking too hard)

......i'm less than 3 minutes into the episode. let's continue.

it's cute that they shrug simultaneously. mad at each other but still in sync... :')

no idea why the orphanage would be highlighted on the map except for foreshadowing purposes, but it looks like the steamer stops at... uh... *squints* taradiddlescoast... deucedump?!... orange bazoo... who tf is naming these places?!

:') aha. ahahahahaha. ahahhahahahaha. ah. uah. ue. ueeeeeeaaahhh

we already know that the sandsteamer route passes by the orphanage. so i like that there's a sandsteamer visible in the distance. very nice subtle attention to detail here

i feel like people are always quick to point out that livio and wolfwood being siblings is specific to stampede only but i DON'T care, this is my FAVORITE interpretation of their relationship, i really love it so much and think it enhances the narrative and nicely contrasts the relationship between vash and knives. orange was SO big brained for this and i'm not kidding. they're brothers in the manga too, to me.

the dub line here is "stop, livio! he's not who hurt you!" which just tears me into a million pieces, thanks!

...if i remember correctly... the "great sand ocean" is called as such because things just sink into it, right? (hmm... wonder how many crashed ships sank into the sand ocean...) hence the boat-like vehicles that are used to cross it. as we can see, the bad lads gang uses what look like windsurfers. and yet wheeled vehicles seem to fare just fine...?!

we never see what the test is. huh... i'm reminded of the promised neverland all of a sudden

nicholas gets selected and the bell rings... can i point something out? the bell's presence in scenes... what the bell represents... it has the EoM logo on it. well, so does the building. but notably, we see the bell in the scene with livio and wolfwood on the roof at night and also in the scene of them cuddling which i posted above. they're bonding and they love each other but the eye of michael is quite literally looming over them... and over the orphanage as a whole...

i've already talked about this in my bookclub posts but i want to talk about the orphanage's relationship with EoM again. it's literally run by them... there's NO cover story here, they're CLEARLY suspicious as hell. in the manga, chapel came by himself to pick wolfwood up and the cover story was that they would be repairing churches, right? and everyone genuinely believed he was going off to live a better life. here it's just. a bunch of guys in suits and masks. obviously suspicious. they run the place, so i guess there's no need for a cover story...? but iirc in the manga EoM was also using the orphanage as a "source" for soldiers, right? like i think chapel says something like that, doesn't he? am i misremembering?

i have so many questions. there's no confetti. what does that mean. this is a lot more lowkey than wolfwood's departure in the manga. no cheering, no invitation to come back/saying this is always his home, just... polite waves. and melanie looks... unhappy. how much does she know? how much of a choice does she have here? ...huh. i'm reminded of the promised neverland again.

what does this mean for... y'know. The Scene. like. the confetti is important. the kids loving nicholas so much and cheering while saying goodbye is important. why did orange take those out what are they planning what does it MEAN!!!!

wolfwood is "test subject HL1-06" and i have no idea what that means and we can't determine from this how many kids came before him either.

wolfwood vial count: 3

hi sweetieeeee i love youuuuuu i love youuuuuu

see this gets the gears turning in my head regarding the timeline again. legato says this, and we see some flashforwards (i guess in this context that's what they are) to wolfwood killing people, including the guy from the beginning of this episode and monev from the last episode... (over which legato calls him a loser, lol?! even though that's very much not the reason why wolfwood killed him, and we know it) so how long was wolfwood working for EoM before he was given the job to "babysit" vash?

i already talked about this in one of my bookclub posts but there's the change in livio's motivations, too... he's chasing after wolfwood... as opposed to (razlo) wanting to be needed... what does it mean. man, i really hope orange doesn't do razlo dirty whenever he shows up for real.

THIS CLEARLY ISN'T STRINGS. WHY IS LEGATO'S POWER DIFFERENT IN EVERY VERSION OF TRIGUN I SWEAR TO GOD like it's telekinesis, right?! what does this mean for legato?! and his backstory?! strings are so fitting for him thematically, so i don't know what they could be planning here!!

kouki uchiyama will see a guy with blue hair covering one eye and say "is anyone gonna voice him" and not wait for an answer (and then fight akira ishida over it)

CONRAD I'M GOING TO THROTTLE YOU. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR EXPERIMENTS ARE DOING HUH. HUH!!!!

HGORHGHGHG.GHG. AHGHGGG.HGH.

thinking about the previous episode and eating rocks

livio hears wolfwood's name and that's when he opens his eyes and kicks vash off him... i initially thought maybe he just took the opportunity because vash was distracted, but he was distracted by the military guys right before this, so...?!

say that to knives and see what happens. also hello pretty boy you are so pretty i love you i'm blowing you kisses mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah

whenever legato talks about his confusion over fraternal love i can't help but remember nightow's comment about him maybe having a younger sister. which is interesting to think about but has never been relevant for any version of legato ever... buuuut... with orange's attention to detail, hmmm, who knows...

also i'm obsessed with legato driving hands-free and I AM ONCE AGAIN ASKING HOW HIS POWERS WORK IN THIS VERSION.

*wipes brow* let's end it there i wrote too much. i know i'll have a lot to say about the next episode too. they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming

[fandomwave]

Tcoaal Dev Update and Thoughts You know the drill it's under the cut for those who wanna cut and run on my infestation of thoughts on The Coffin Game

OK I'M

I WANNA TALK ABOUT THE TCOAAL UPDATE BC IT'S BEEN ROTATOING AROUND MY HEAD AND I THINK IT SAYS A FUCKING

L O T

ABOUT ANDREW WITHOUT REVEALING THE TOTAL CONTEXT (which could change this entire yell that I wanna have but that's the thrill of the game theory)

The fact that there is SOME rumor going on (Which if I had to put my finger on would be either that he's boning his sister, ((which would further Andrew's want to put distance between himself and Ashley that's permeated)) or that they killed Nina ((Which would also explain why Julie of all people came to Andrew to say she thinks he should ignore them)) Or I guess a secret third thing, that's always possible but listen, we live on the edge here and I'm not above base jumping some logical leaps

The fact that Andrew did not ask Julie and Nina to be Ashley's friends because of a concern for her, but more than likely a concern for his own standing. The fact we have a scene of their mom and Andrew looking at least sad, saying "I'm trying" makes me feel like Mrs Graves was less an Absent Parent who accidentally foisted Ashley's care onto Andrew by proxy of just not having the time to take care of them both herself, and more that she in fact DIRECTLY tasked him with her care. When she got into trouble, Andrew got into trouble, if there were concerns in her behavior, Andrew was tasked to solving it.

It would explain why he says it means a lot to ME (even if he did cover it up with 'Her' afterwards) because it means that he is no longer tasked with 'solving' this issue.

Not only that but the fact that it SOUNDS like they have been dating or at least flirting since high school. This is a flashback from the past. Andrew's hair is shorter, he has acne, there are rumors of Andrew and Ashley floating around meaning Ashley is more than likely at the same school, and as far as we know Ashley was not attending college so.. Anyways this means that lets say generously Andrew is 18 here, last year of high school, and is 22 in the current time. Lets say it takes.. a year for them to date. I doubt it but lets just say. That means they've more than likely been an item for 3 years. 3 years is a.. it's a significant amount of time for a young adult, so the fact that Andrew, when reviewing his memory of her dorm and of her, admits

You'll never see her again. And the fact that it doesn't bother you, bothers you

W O O F buddy.

Not only that but lets assume both rumors here: Andrew clearly saw that Julia was interested in him. He wasn't oblivious to her intentions and even CONSIDERS the whole gambit with her for a few minutes before asking if she had anything going on after school. That moment of him looking away, I would bet cold hard cash was him doing the mental math of how much this would benefit him in the long run. 'He's fucking his sister' > He gets someone to superimpose his fantasies on, he gets an out to the rumors concerning Ashley, he doesn't have to work too hard to establish a relationship because Ashley and her have been… f r i e n d s…. since they were kids. Since before Nina died. (Young Andrew asks Nina and Julie if they would be her friends) OR 'They killed Nina' > Again the clear interest in Andrew offers a little bit of a shield of guilt. Why would Nina's best friend date someone who she thought killed her. Julie and him dating would mean Julie could herself defend him against the rumors, and by proxy Ashley since he's established that Ashley and her are 'Friends'. And again he doesn't have to work hard on getting her attention because she's here and interested.

What a fucking garbage man. I love him I just can't get over the IDEA that he might have used her entirely as a moral meat shield and then when she broke it off with him, just wasn't even emotionally compromised by it. He's been lying to her face for years. He's been lying about Nina He's been lying about his control over Ashley's actions He's been lying about his entire attachment to her

Ashley was so on the fucking money, even if those voicemails were real or a fabrication of Andrew's inner thoughts: Julie really was just a hole for him to fill.

[bookinit02]

s5 script info/faq

hi guys! in exactly a week, i'm going to start posting my original stranger things s5 script. here's a general info/faq post for easy reference :)

about the script:

what: this script is designed to be a culmination of my ongoing rewrite series, which is a fanfic version of each season of stranger things, written through the lens of alternating byler pov. since season 5 hasn't released yet, and we've still got a ways to go, i decided to write an original script to base my last installment off of. the script will be 10 episodes, at about 60 pages each, and serve as a companion to my season 5 fic.

where: script episodes will be posted here on my tumblr, and be linked to a pinned post (which will go up in a few minutes). fic chapters will be posted on my ao3, as usual.

when: currently, i'm planning to have at least one post a week: the script episode will release on a sunday, and then the two accompanying chapters on the next two fridays. so, for example, the first few releases will look like this: script 1 on sunday 9/3, chapter 1 on friday 9/8, and chapter 2 on friday 9/15. this gives you about a week to read each new post! of course, you can read however you'd like: script first, or fic first, depending on your preference. i decided to post the scripts first to try and mimic the rest of the rewrite experience: "watching" the show, then reading the fic. if there's any schedule delays due to typical life stuff, i'll let you guys know!

frequently asked questions:

will the script cover every plotline?: yep! with 60 pages per episode, there's a bit of time dedicated to every character, as much as i can feasibly manage. of course, this means that the script will be less byler-focused than the fic series has been (but still more than the original show, lol). but not to worry—the fic companion will add extra scenes and plenty of byler content. this also means that some of the plots will only be accessible through the script, as the fic is entirely from byler pov. but it's still up to you whether you would like to read or not!

will there be any character deaths?: i'm going to answer this right now: there will be no character deaths. i want the script to be realistic, but it's also my version, and i always try to give my characters happy endings :) this doesn't mean that there won't be some close calls, though. we'll have to see. :)

will there be a playlist?: yes! i've spent some time testing out playlists for the first two episodes, and they're both fully completed. they'll be linked along with the script, along with a timing guide for anyone (like me) who likes being insane about the details. playlists are always tricky because everyone reads at different speeds, so i've written out which scenes go with each song, and you can skip along as needed. if you prefer not to listen with music, of course you don't have to—though i will say that most songs are just soundtrack instrumentals to set the mood :) it might be a little finicky, so i'm sorry in advance! i'll always try to perfect them as much as possible before posting.

will you do another rewrite after s5 releases?: currently, i'm planning on it. of course, we have no idea how much longer it's going to take, or what exactly will happen in canon (or in life), but if i'm in a place to write fic, then yes! i'll do a typical rewrite and add it to the end of my series, so you guys can have your choice of endings :)

how do we leave comments?: if you want to leave a comment on the script, i'm happy to receive them in asks, messages, or post comments! you can also leave them on the fic chapters if you'd like. edit 9/1: you should be able to leave comments in the google doc! be mindful of what account you are using, as these comments will be public. for a more comprehensive comment policy, click here.

do i have to read the rest of the rewrite series first?: reading the rest of the rewrite isn't necessary, but it is a good idea. i know it's a lot to read, so don't feel pressured, just know that some things might not make as much sense without the prior context! my rewrite series is pretty canon-compliant, but a lot of relationship dynamics are developed in a very specific way, and we pick up right where we left off at the end of a new place to be from. so, essentially: no, but you'll probably want to.

do i have to read the script?: definitely not. if you prefer to just read the fic, you absolutely can! it'll make sense on its own, you might just miss out on some of the extra plotlines and context.

that's about all i can think of for now—if you have any questions that weren't answered in this post, please send me an ask and i'll edit this post to include your question! i've been working on this project for a few months now, and i'm really excited to share it with you guys :) thank you all for giving it a shot! see you next sunday <3

[bestworstcase]

Hello! You've mentioned being a NanoWrimo veteran, and I was wondering if you had any advice for planning out your writing for the month? I was going to do an outline beforehand to prepare, but I'm not sure if that's authentic to the NanoWrimo spirit.

i am i’ve been doing nano most years with wildly variable success since i was fourteen. my best advice is:

start writing now.

not your actual nanowrimo project necessarily and not the 1.6k and change daily you’d need to ‘win’ but start writing every day right now. if i’m going into november from a dry spell i like to start with a daily goal of minimum 100-200 words for a week and then at the end of the week, set a new goal of a few hundred more than daily average. rinse repeat until you’re in the habit of writing a decent chunk every day. THE POINT OF THIS is to avoid hitting the “”two week wall“” which is a thing that happens because writing 1.6k+ words in a day is pretty easy but writing 1.6k+ words per day every day for a month is really hard if you don’t, you know. train for it.

you will get the most value out of nanowrimo if you think about it as a writing marathon. it’s difficult because it takes a level of endurance and discipline that you probably do not have unless you’re already a prolific daily writer.

outlining is in the spirit of nanowrimo and has always been part of the culture; some people outline extensively (‘planners’) some don’t (‘pantsers,’ as in writing by the seat of your pants), many fall somewhere in the middle. the only hard rule if you want the, like, pure nanowrimo experience as it was originally conceived is: don’t start writing the actual story until 12:01 AM on november first. you can have anything from zero plan to minutely detailed scene-by-scene notes for the entire novel locked and loaded, but on day one you open a blank document and start writing.

another thing i’d really recommend is trying to write over that 1.6k daily baseline. an extra 340 words per day for five days will net you a free day and those are nice to have in case you hit a day where you can’t write for whatever reason. it’s a lot less stressful to bank up extra words ahead of time than to miss a day or two and have to catch up.

if you don’t already have a process for turning off your inner editor, start trying to figure one out now. the temptation to delete and rewrite a paragraph dozens of times will bite you if you indulge it. try things like hiding your text so you can’t read it (set font and page to the same color, or use wingdings), try sprinting apps like write or die, stuff like that. you are trying to complete a rough draft. it’s okay for it to be rough.

lastly, use the time between now and november to figure out warm ups that work for you. these are quick, simple writing exercises separate from your wip that you do before every writing session. here are some that i like:

set a timer for five minutes and write continuously, stream of conscious, without stopping until the time’s up.

set a timer for five minutes and write a loose synopsis or ramble about the scene you plan to write: what happens, who’s in it, what subplots is it advancing, what pieces of foreshadowing or set up do you need to work in, what’s the emotional tone, etc.

pick an object in the room. spend five minutes describing it in exhaustive but simple detail. think “this cup is a tall red cylinder. it’s made of glass. there’s about a half-inch of clear glass at the bottom. the red is bright and saturated, firetruck red. it’s sitting on my desk with sunlight falling through it, casting a red shadow. there’s water in it with three ice cubes. the cup is about six inches tall.” <- you want a stream-of-conscious list of observations, basically.

use a random [name/setting/plot] generator and write 2-4 paragraphs of something stupid based on the output. just the silliest or most overwrought or edgiest grimdark or saccharine bullshit you can spew out.

take the last five hundred or so words of your last writing session. read them over. open a blank document and transcribe them word-for-word (or nearly, if you can change a word here and there without breaking stride). the idea is not to edit, but to write out a decent chunk of words quickly, without thinking much about what those words are. (i like to do another warmup and then this one and then just keep going when i hit the end of the chunk i’m transcribing.)

the idea is to preempt writer’s block by giving yourself 10-15 minutes of no thoughts head empty rapid-fire word vomit to get your brain on track and ready to go. warming up before your writing sessions will dramatically reduce the frequency of sudden creative paralysis when you sit down to write.

[aita-blorbos]

[OCs based on an AU of an established fictional setting] AITA for taking a dive? First things first: I'm a defense attorney. Not just any defense attorney, but a *super* defense attorney. And I'm not just saying that! There was this whole big event in my universe about ten years ago where the world almost ended, but then it stopped at the last second, and around 2% of the human race was randomly given one of a few specific sets of powers- there are mind-readers, there are shapeshifters, there are guys running around who can set stuff on fire, et cetera. Most of their powers were latent for a year or two, but I was one of the lucky ones who manifested theirs right away. When you talk to me in person, I'm supernaturally convincing! (And there are some weird side effects with scorpions or whatever, but this isn't about that.) Neat power for a lawyer to have, huh? In fact, I'm one of the best in the state- so I'm not telling you which one I'm from, because then it'd be obvious who I am.

So I guess that's how I managed to get hired by this one guy. Super big guy, all sweaty, had a really thick Dixie accent, always whistling this weird song I couldn't place whenever there was a long silence. He said he'd killed his wife, and he wanted me to get him a reduced sentence. I said, uh, buddy, rule one is that you never *admit in front of your lawyer* that you killed your wife. But I figured I'd help him out anyway- my own ex-wife sure made me think about murder a few times, and I'm sure some of you can agree, am I right, fellas? Besides, he came in with this *big* briefcase of cash and said it was all mine if I got his sentence reduced. My Camaro was falling apart at the time, so who was I to refuse a little repair money? So then the trial rolled around, and the judge (who's one of those psychics mentioned earlier, and her powers kinda cancel out mine a little bit, so I couldn't pull *too* many stunts in the courtroom) called in the prosecution, and I got ready for another easy case. But then something happened when the other guy called the first witness. It was my client's daughter. He didn't even tell me he *had* a daughter. She couldn't have been older than nine, and she was a nervous wreck, telling everyone that daddy killed mommy right in front of her and she watched the whole thing. I was too stunned to try to turn on the charm, and my client just stood there, nodding. I was already thrown off my rhythm when the prosecution got permission from the judge to show the jury a collection of crime scene photos. The less I say about how my client killed that poor woman, the better. I was too stunned to speak, let alone work my magic. I thought that the bar beat all the morality out of my body. But, in that moment, even if just for a minute, I thought I got it back. And I decided to do absolutely *nothing*. I just sat back down in my seat, not even providing a word of commentary. I didn't want to say a single thing in the defense of that scumbag that could possibly make the jury see him as any less than what he was, money be damned. I just let the prosecution keep talking. For the first time since my powers awakened, I lost the case. I felt like death warmed up on me. And, yet, in this twisted way, I felt *proud of myself* for it all. But my client- no, I'm not even gonna say he was my client anymore- the *whistler*- they led him off in chains, and I could feel his eyes burning holes in my skull as he left. And I could hear him. It's been five years since that happened, and I've had that impossibly familiar song stuck in my head ever since. This is the first time I've told someone outside of my personal circle of close friends what went down when I lost that case, and, even with them, I didn't tell them my silence was on purpose- I told them that one of the jurors was part of the bunch who got disease powers, and they accidentally gave me laryngitis. (Sorry if one of those jurors is reading this, by the way.) On one hand, I feel like I committed a perversion of the legal system by not doing anything. On the other hand, the little-kid morality side of me is trying to convince me that the whistler deserved what he got, damn what law school taught me. So I came here, on the anniversary of the incident, to ask you this: am I the asshole? No matter your judgment, it's all fine by me, I can take- (buzzing noise; vague yacht rock playing through phone speaker) (click) Sienna? (out-of-earshot conversation) (click) That was a friend of mine, she had news. It was about the prison. The prison I sent *him* to. The whistler. It's on fire. All of it. It's not a natural fire. They can't find him anywhere.

[fourseasonsfigs]

Building Block Figs - Catching Light

Continuing on from the last Building Block Figs - Basking in the Sun and Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake, Part 1 and Part 2, we have this wonderful set.

These figs make me laugh - I love them so much! I don't know why, I just find them ridiculously charming.

This building block set is 1,544 pieces, measures 8.4 x 17.6 x 15.6 cm, and is rated 10 hours. I did indeed take all 10 hours to build this, if not a little bit more.

Here is the sales pic of what the finished product is supposed to look like:

Cute, isn't it? As usual, sellers do a much better job of setting the scene than I do. I will say, though, that I did make two little tweaks to the set to make it a bit more canon compliant. Can you spot them?

It'll be easier to tell as we get better pictures, so I'll get into it!

First, here's the box of doom bricks. Like the others, this came in a generic sales box, with a super handy little unsnapping tool, and a sticker with a black and white image of the set and QR code instructions.

Once again, you'll notice my line up of extra bricks from the previous sets hanging out in quasi-neat little rows. Originally I figured I'll leave them all out in case I ran short of any, but in reality, this set maker gives me extras of each color every time. Which is handy, as you will see for later posts, when I make some adjustments to the fig sets to make them a bit more canon compliant.

As you can see, there's a LOT of extra bricks left over. To be honest, there shouldn't be so many white bricks - those are from another set that I made a major change to. I'll post about that one tomorrow.

Here's the different order of assembly - I went ahead and started with the base and tree, as they suggest.

As you can see, this is a very beautiful terrain here. I did not remember this area being so green and flowery from the show - in fact, I remember it being kind of sandy and desolate, but my memory is pretty lousy, there might be a scattered flower or so. Let's check.

HUH. There is not a flower in sight, is there. Hmmm. Well, this is kind of gonna bother me. Maybe I should have looked up the inspiration before putting together the entire 10 hour plus set, huh! Well, the little flowers are easy enough to lever off.

Hmm, anyway, moving on (for now).

So a couple things here. First, as you can see, there are only two green colors. I mean, one normal color really - the light green here is actually a neon green. It's brighter than it looks here. It looks great here, don't get me wrong, but now all I can see is the very sandy terrain of that screenshot.

Second, I tried something a little different here. It actually takes a long time to sort all the individual bricks, so in an attempt to shave off some time, I decided to experiment with this set. As you can see, I dumped the entire bag out to the right and am just picking out individual pieces as I go.

You'll note it's now evening. This tree took a LONG time to build. I actually timed myself up to this point, and to get to this mostly-done state took 2 hours and 58 minutes. I was pushing hard, too, because I really, really wanted to get the whole tree done that evening before I went to bed. But there was no way. I was too tired and was hitting the point where it was less fun and more work. So, despite really not wanting to, I summoned my inner adult and called it a day here.

Fast forward through time to the next day, and I'm all bright eyed and ready to bust this tree out. And it's done! I like this tree a whole lot...I think they did a beautiful job modeling it. Imagine if they had the full Lego suite of colors and special pieces! It would be really something. I kind of like it this way though (although I would take more colors, I can't lie). It really has an old-school style charm.

You can see the grey rock there where Lao Wen will be propped up against. And of course, the cheerful greenery and pink and yellow flowers.

Feeling VERY accomplished, I put the tree aside, and moved on to A-Xu.

Yep, looks pretty good. I was a little surprised they picked the medium blue color instead of the dark blue color, considering how bright the dark blue color actually is. But this looks fine too.

I am going to proudly say that I did, in fact, knock this fig out in record time. I've put together two and a half A-Xu figs by now (the half is going to be explained tomorrow, I promise!), so this third one went like a breeze.

As you can see in the back, I couldn't help myself, I was starting to make a few little piles of the colors I was working on. The big messy pile of bricks was kind of a pain, and I had to keep resisting the urge to sort them out.

And here he is! All done. He has a very solemn no-expression on his little brick face, which is appropriate. Can you see how there's a little bit of a neck (nothing too saucy or anything), the thin white layer of his under-robe, and then the lighter blue layer? I love it. Very charming. We also have his black belt with a bit of the tails.

It was yet another evening by this time, but since I did manage to finish him before I went to bed, I did indeed sleep the sleep of the righteous.

I woke up even brighter eyed and with pep in my step, ready to rock this last fig out. 10 hour assembly time? I don't think so!

I had now made three Wen Kexing brick figures, so the fourth one was gonna be just as quick as A-Xu was, no doubt. I pulled up the instructions on my phone, and got ready to go. 95 steps for our battle-weary Valley Master, huh? Huh. That's kind of a lot. But considering A-Xu was 85, not too bad. The tree was 119, by the way.

As I looked at the picture, however, I noticed that they had Lao Wen's (virtually) omnipresent hair wispies here. Given that this red wedding costume is the one outfit where his hair is pulled back all the way, it kind of bugged me. Which is funny because I've never liked how he doesn't have the wispies with this hair style on the show. It's my least favorite look on him, which is too bad, because I did like how they at least mixed his hairstyles up some. In my defense, I feel like I'm right (so right!) about how much better he looks with the wispies with this hair style, because you could see it at the concert. And he looked spectacular.

Anyway. Warring between my extreme desire for him to have the wispies and the simple fact of it not being canon, I started to build.

I got the first big chunk done very quickly indeed. Many of these figs are done where you do a big piece, and then set it aside while you work separately on the next piece. This is where I was.

And that's where I stayed, for a long time. I built this piece three times. I had to completely disassemble the entire thing the first time I built it, because I was off on my brick count, and the second time I had to disassemble it down to the first third.

Part of the problem was the way the directions were. As you can see, they still have the first "set it aside" part showing up on the directions directly under the new piece. Unfortunately, all that red blended into each other when I rotated the image around, and it was very easy to accidentally think I needed more or less pieces than I actually did.

I went ahead and built it with the wispies, as directed...and then just couldn't do it. I disassembled half the head and re-built it again without them. I also think that this fig, just like Lao Wen, does not look as good without them, but canon is canon.

Unfortunately, it was so late and I was so tired by the time I finished him (and yet also pretty jubilant), that I forgot to take a pic of the finished fig! Yes, I literally finished this set late last night, despite my best intentions of finishing it up and then triumphantly posting about it on the same day. It did, in fact, take longer than the 10 hours build time.

It took a long time, in general. My finger tips have actually toughened up a bit, so they don't feel sore from snapping the bricks in place, but my neck isn't all that pleased with me from hunching over these various sets for so long. So, I've been taking a few more breaks to stretch and do other things.

But, I woke up early today, and very happily took this set's beauty pics in the clear light of the morning. I love it!

I love how this set all fits together. We have the tree growing over the edge of the base, and Lao Wen there leaning up against the rock. A-Xu is standing with his elegant posture, and their little brick hands are reaching out to each other. Cute cute cute!

Wow, this light is great. I clearly should get up early to take fig pics more often.

The tree looks great, I think (and not just because I spent hours building it!).

This is a good view of the rocks behind Lao Wen here, and his big ponytail (I do like this part of his hairstyle).

The green doesn't look so bad on the ground, I think. I'll pull off the yellow and pink flowers, and maybe make a brown patch on the corner closest to A-Xu. That'll keep it colorful but make it a bit more like the show.

A-Xu's hair looks great, as usual. You can also see how I removed the wispies on Lao Wen's hair. I'll get a close up later so you can see it better.

Shoot, not my best pic - can't really see any of the detail on A-Xu's glorious night-black hair.

There we go, now you can. Oops, I see I knocked a tiny piece out of kilter on the bottom of his hair, I'll have to fix that. But! Here you can see both changes I made from the instructions - the lack of wispies of course, and then I made Lao Wen's guan gold instead of white. This took a while too, because I didn't have enough yellow pieces. The only yellow I had from any of the sets was literally from the yellow flowers here and the few extra they gave me of it. I actually pulled a few yellow flowers off the base there and replaced them with green or pink, just because I needed them for his guan. I then also carefully checked to see what internal yellow bricks were covered up by the black of his hair, and replaced them with black so I could save the yellow ones for the parts that did show. I'm very happy with how it turned out! It looks just like the white one, except, you know, yellow.

I don't know why they didn't originally design it with yellow, given that it is gold on the show, and they had already included yellow bricks with this kit. Maybe they felt the white stood out more or something. Anyway, it was bothering me it was white, so I'm glad I was able to figure out a way to make it work.

Alright, we're back around! And a bit of a different angle here, so you can see the poses a little bit more clearly.

Alright, a true top-down pic here. May I just say one more time how much I like this tree! The detail in A-Xu's guan is really nice too.

The bottoms-up pics are always tough here with the bases. Not a flattering picture, sorry A-Xu!

A close up of our noble shixiong with his little hand outstretched...

...and our weary shidi. What a great set, I love it! I'm so delighted by it, I can't even tell you.

Alright! come back tomorrow, for the much hinted at next set. And the last one, for a while - I have to wait for the remaining sets to be sent to me.

(Come back tomorrow, she says, as she still has some assembly on the last fig to do! I'll wake up bright and early tomorrow, and hopefully finish up).

Material: Plastic bricks

Fig Count: 506

Scene Count: 35

Rating: They're actually both reaching for their light

[link to the Master Post Index]

[dasboligrafo]

7 Takes on The Double Life of Veronique

You know the thing where you like the same thing as a terrible person?

I guess even Lear-esque cringey edgelords like great movies and Keith McNally is not wrong about Sexy Beast and definitely definitely not wrong about the Double Life of Veronique, a movie I've now seen 3x, 2 of which ended in helpless tears (the only way I know if something is art).

This movie was a selection by McNally at a Roxy Cinema mini-festival in October 2023. As I told the crew who I invited (tricked?) to see the movie: now it's your turn to think about it for 15 years!

I love the moment after the movie when people are asking helplessly -- but what does the movie mean?!? And I really, really love the moment when people get angry at the end of the movie. These are real emotions! What's the last time a movie made you think anything other than "god, that was 45 minutes too long?" (The Double Life of Veronique is under 100 minutes! yessss)

[I didn't hear it cause I was, like, weeping, but my friend said at the end a guy behind us was angrily griping that the movie was too slow? Huh? Stuff is literally happening every moment of the movie? There is not a single wasted scene, line or frame? What even are these senses whose proofs we can so liberally ignore?]

Since it might be another 15 years until I see it again and I don't have the benefit of just having written a college thesis that was mostly about Lacan via Zizek, I thought I would type out a few thought exercises/interpretative frameworks that I think apply to this movie:

The contingent nature of the universe/the senselessness of existense -- probably the easiest to justify, especially in the context of Kieslowski's complete ouevre, in consideration of his personal history, based on the interviews he's given, etc...

What to do about emotional apocrypha — what do you do with and about feelings that seem to come from nowhere? Feelings are "real" and we know now (i.e. the science is now there to tell us, eg Lisa Feldman Barrets's fascinating work) they're not in any way subservient in value or usefulness to "reason"; like if anything the opposite, emotions are the "why" and reason is the very patched together and incomplete "how" behind what we are and what we do. Worth thinking about why it is Kieslowski's most compelling films have female protagonists given the historical association to the binary genders for emotion vs reason.

The duality and dichotomy of post-war East/West Europe -- I think this one is sorta obvious but not less resonant? There's a good article out there about how the film predicted a lot of the consequences of the EU. Elsewhere I've read that Polish critics pilloried Kieslowski for a traitor to his kind over this theme, which reminded me of the story about how Bach's works were sometimes not well received by the church patrons who got to hear a lot of it first because they thought it was too dour -- imagine you have the greatest musician who will ever live as your church musician and your biggest peeve is his music isn't fun enough for Sunday. In any event this is a major theme in Three Colors, and I'm sure there's no accident that this movie and the Trilogy are connected by the same fake composer (key work = "Song for the Unification of Europe"...)

Return to theory in film (Zizek) -- he wrote a whole book about it. I'm not sure I agree Kieslowski's films make the case for the return to Theory (ie I think you can interpret his movies without it.) But the fact that you can so unbelievably seamlessly integrate his films to a Lacanian framework gives me that feeling of the inevitability of Lacan.

Art Cinema's enduring interest in interrogating the limits of its medium -- which of course is also present in art literature for its own medium, and frequently not only present but foregrounded in theatre. The Puppetmaster is a clear analogue to the filmmaker (and of God, lmao...they can't help themselves), but also all the unbelievably uncomfortable sex scenes in this movie are a masterclass on the male gaze and how you constitute and undermine it...etc.

Space-time Travel (Zizek) -- right away, I'm going to say I don't think this one is all that interesting, but it's what Criterion chose to accompany the 15th year re-release of the movie. So...ok 🤷🏽‍♀️ I'd say that listening to physics podcasts has convinced me of the value of a literary education (those hermeneutical skills come in so handy), so I see the relevance of thinking of these two together, but I also feel like the fake math is the part of Lacan I always found a little too silly to stand.

The agony of art as vocation -- I'm sorta lazily splitting this out from #5 just because when I originally wrote this post I had 7 points and now I can only remember 6 of them, and I like the resonance of 7....There's a Badiou-esque invocation of the four types of truth procedures at work in this movie that could easily fill the pages of another unread senior thesis: science -- the zizek time travel thing, the way the movie is, actually, concerned with the explanation of what is happening and why, rather than just accepting as a premise that there can be doubles in the world; politics -- the scene where Weronika meets Veronique is at a political rally, the east/west thing mentioned above, etc; art and love, obviously.... But the key to the "plot" of Veronique's life is "Does she keep singing, even if it kills her?"

Random closing thoughts:

I'm still thinking about and cannot resolve the mystery of the subplot about Veronique testifying in her friend's divorce(?) trial. What does it mean?

One thing that always bothered me about Kieslowski is a feeling i have that his movies are slightly (high key???) exploitative of his actresses, which seems like shabby repayment for their taking considerable artistic risks. Maybe I'm just getting this feeling from applying Lacan and Zizek to his movies though (that's two dudes who definitely don't understand about women...). I'd like to think I'm wrong about this, his masterworks are all with women and "about" women. I don't think he doesn't get this, though, see again the Puppetmaster (surely one of the creepiest dudes to ever grace an art film and that's saying a lot).

[kneecap-homicide]

The absolute state of YouTube ads

As someone who has been using an adblocker for at least a decade, and is currently having to pause it on YouTube, here are some things I've noticed which I haven't seen anyone else bring up (yet).

You can no longer tell when ads play in a video

I'm pretty damn sure there used to be a small yellow segment in the video progress bar, so you could at least know in which parts of the video there would be ads. Now, they just start out of nowhere, and if it's a longer video and the creator has shoved all their ads in the last 10 minutes, you're hit with a barrage of ad after ad.

Ads will just play whenever

In a similar vein to the previous point, unless the creator has carefully integrated the ads with their video (e.g. "before we get into that, I'm just going to play some midrolls" or "I'll be back after this short commercial break"), the ads will play in the middle of whatever the video is about, completely ruining the immersion. I don't believe many YouTubers integrate their ads in this way.

I've heard some people say that sitting through 1-2 short ads isn't as intrusive as sitting through 5-10 minutes of them on TV (such as in this video by SomeOrdinaryGamers). And I honestly cannot agree. As some have said, YouTube ads don't have the same moral standards as TV ads, and this is true, although I myself haven't yet seen any ads of dubious morality since pausing adblock.

But my main gripe with this take is that again, TV ads have set commercial breaks which the vast majority of YouTube videos do not, and the time between these breaks is ~20 minutes depending on the country (see Wikipedia). This means the ads won't start in the middle of a sentence or dramatic scene in a nature documentary.

You can:

Predict when the ads will start based on how long it's been since the last commercial break

Predict when the ads will start based on predicting when the scene in your program is going to end

And, of course, you can change channels during a commercial break, and watch something else in the meantime, or just get up and do something else since the commercial break lasts long enough to do that.

The ads in YouTube are too short to warrant changing tabs, so instead you just mute the ad, and sit there staring mindlessly at the screen until the ad finishes, or until you can click the skip button.

YouTube ads are high maintenance

As I've just mentioned in the previous point, you can't get up while the ads play, or switch tabs. You have to mute the ad, and just wait. Wait until the skip ad button appears, or until the two unskippable ads play out. In total, it probably only takes about 30 seconds, so why would you try to do anything else?

And if it happens to be a morally questionable ad, you might also want to report it.

All YouTube ads are videos

What happened to the little popup ads that you would just click the 'x' on and you're done? Have I just been unlucky and not seen any, or are they actually gone? This is a genuine question btw.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss popups. Relatively speaking, they're way less intrusive than video ads, because you can keep watching the video already in progress. And if they do still exist, then at a much reduced rate than the videos, at least in my experience, given that I haven't yet seen one.

Adblockers should not be against YouTube's terms of service

This is definitely my weakest point, and I'm positive others have already brought this up. But what I do on my Personal Computer (emphasis on Personal) should not have any bearing on my relationship with the websites I visit, and if it does, it will make me question my usage of that website.

If the conditions surrounding your adverts are causing a large portion of your userbase to turn to adblockers, maybe instead of biting the hand that feeds you, you could improve the conditions and make adverts less intrusive, and keep better tabs on what kinds of ads you're approving. The change in revenue wouldn't be instant, but more people would eventually stop using adblockers on YouTube. If you recall what happened on Tumblr, userbases are actually happy to support sites they feel deserve being supported.

Overall, YouTube is pretty great, and while there are certain competitors out there, none of them do exactly what YouTube does. But forcing ads might make people turn to alternatives anyway.

Getting back to television, there isn't a law against changing channels or just turning your TV off for 5 minutes and making some toast. If you never watch a single ad on TV, your TV licence won't be revoked. TV commercials have a good system that hasn't really changed much over the years. Maybe commercial breaks have gotten longer, but that's it.

YouTube really needs to improve the QoL surrounding ads, because people will just continue using adblockers which update to circumvent YouTube's anti-adblock system.

TL;DR

YouTube ads are somehow more annoying than TV ads because they don't have set commercial breaks unless the YouTuber integrates them accordingly, and it sucks.