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cdcore · 2 years ago

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GETTING INTO MUSIC VOL. 1 -- Rap

Hey, internet! Initially, I was planning on making this a video project --- something I will likely still do in the future --- but I wanted to get some content out in the meantime! I think many of us have been faced with the age-old "what type of music are you into?" question. So many times when I ask people about their music opinions I hear the same answer. every. single. time. "I like a little bit of everything, except rap and country!" This is always really frustrating for two reasons! First, now I have no idea what you're actually into and enjoy music-wise.

Second, I think anyone who is a fan of either of those genres immediately feels bad hearing someone dismiss an entire genre in front of them, especially when they each have large enough artists and subgenres that the person could probably find music they liked within either genre if they took the time to dig. I think a lot of us (myself included) tend to start off enjoying music pretty passively --- maybe we only listened to whatever our friends' played, or that one Michael Bublé CD mom had that she would endlessly play on repeat.

For a large portion of people, I think music exists more as background noise than anything, hence people not really having a solid answer when prompted with the "what music do you like?" question. That takes us to our topic today: actively discovering and enjoying new music! As an avid rap fan for the past few years, I wanted to start this series off with rap.

I'm hoping to deconstruct the genre as a whole, list the characteristics commonly seen in online discussions and Billboard Top 100 lists as ideal rap ability, and hopefully drop some helpful recommendations along the way! 1) WRITING If rap really is just a guy spitting poetry, I would argue this is the most important part of his music. I am heavily biased given my background as a former English major, but something that really draws me to rap personally is that deeper emphasis on writing compared to some other genres given lyrics are the primary focus. We're going to focus on two umbrellas for rap writing: the thematic content --- or message of the piece --- and the syntax, basically how words are rearranged in the sentences themselves. The absolutely beautiful thing about rap is it can be as profound and nuanced as you want it to be. By its nature, rap has routinely been a discussion point in social and political culture for basically as long as it has existed. Its roots in Black culture and the often anti-establishment way it grapples with poverty, crime and racial injustices cause ire often, especially among conservative outlets, which see the genre as supporting crime. For writers like Kendrick Lamar, Nas and many others, the goal is to paint vivid pictures of the intersection of race and poverty across cities within the United States, showing how those structures lead to the routine gang, drug and crime culture cities face.

They argue that American courts, law enforcement and government structure are built on institutions that profit from racial discrimination and unjust punishment, leading many into poverty and therefore crime to make ends meet. Lamar himself won a Pulitzer for his album "DAMN." while in it sampling FOX's own coverage of him and their beliefs that rap has culturally harmed African Americans more than "racism in recent years." Rappers routinely satirize this depiction of them as violent criminals to poke at how media and the nation seem unable to attack the real root of the intercity conflict: poverty. With all that being said, your enjoyment of rap doesn't have to be that deep either!

For every nuanced, thematically dense rap album out there is an equal amount of silly, weird esoteric songs that are just meant to be listened to for fun. Artist Tyler, the Creator has a song about waiting to pick someone up and being frustrated with how long they're taking (It's titled, "Come on, Let's go if curious).

Rapper Aesop Rock has a song about how cool his cat is ("Kirby") and what it's like to be a kid who doesn't want to eat his green beans ("Grace"). There are millions upon millions of dance-instruction songs, and a limitless supply of songs and freestyles just flexing how rich, successful and famous rappers are. It's part of what makes the genre so diverse and nuanced --- rappers can make plenty of layered introspection on culture and religion when they want, and still have dumb, fun songs flexing their vehicles too. If you're looking for some larger commentary, some classic albums are: To Pimp a Butterfly, Illmatic, 4.44, among others.

More recently, J.I.D.'s The Forever Story serves as an impressive look into his life, family loyalties and career changes. Some other recent albums with good messages are GHETTOLAND, All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ and GHETTO GODS. If you're wanting weirder albums that focus on less common topics in rap, Aesop Rock's more recent albums come to mind immediately. For more of your hype-inducing songs focused on flexing wealth and success, Her Loss is a pretty solid contender for this, Lil Wayne's The Carter III does this very well, and for a more indie pick I might go with Solar Flare by Kill Bill: the Rapper and Rav. Now, allow me to be your AP Language teacher again and talk about the technical aspect of writing: literary devices. Any Scholastic Book Fair kid knows that writing comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. One of the most fun parts of rap is how clever the wordplay can be at times. It's very common for double and triple entendre to exist, lines that simultaneously show off multiple meanings at once. Homophones, or phrases that sound similar are often used to employ these more complex meanings. Jay-Z was particularly famous for this with lines like: "I'm not a business man/I'm a business, man/let me handle my business, damn." When listening it can sound like he's just repeating business man twice with more emphasis on the second. In reality, he's conveying through that homophone that he is not a scrappy capitalist, but rather has made such wild success for himself financially that he as a brand and cultural identity creates wealth like that of a full business (allowing him the credibility to handle his own business as he asks for later in the line). Beyond clever double meanings in lines, rappers find insane ways to hold multiple simultaneous internal and external rhymes across multiple verses. Rappers like MF DOOM and Eminem come to mind for their complex, multi-syllabic rhyme schemes.

To see what I'm talking about, check out this video:

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On a raw vocabulary level, the aforementioned Aesop Rock is known for having one of the most complex, diverse vocabularies of any rapper. He and rapper Lupe Fiasco are known for their word choice and metaphor stacking, with earlier Aesop Rock works almost being cryptic with just how buried they are in complex figurative language. There's also a simple beauty in rappers delivering messages directly as is. Tupac was known for prioritizing his message over everything else, speaking directly to the listener --- this is something Jimmy more recently has done on that GHETTOLAND record I mentioned. If you’re looking for funny, sometimes dumb bars, my mind immediately goes to people like 21 Savage and Kanye --- if you still feel morally comfortable listening to him given all that he's done. For more of that traditional homophone-heavy, double-entendre work check out: Nicki Minaj, Lil' Wayne, Eminem and Jay-Z. Your lyrically conscious rappers are going to be Kendrick, J. Cole among others, and more esoteric wordplay comes from Lupe Fiasco, MF DOOM, Black Thought and Aesop Rock. 2) SOUND I am infinitely less qualified to talk about instrumentation, music theory and vocal delivery as someone with minimal background in playing and learning music. As a result, I'm going to make this section as brief as I can, though there is a few key points I think need to be hit. A big part of rappers is how they deliver their lyrics vocally --- this can be everything from the rhythm they're rapping (usually called flow), their actual pitch if there's singing involved etc. Issues of annunciation separate rappers from the derogative "mumble rap" category, and a lot of this I think comes down to personal preference more than anything. I think it is worth noting that rapper Eminem is known to be excellent in the actual technicals of delivering rap. He's able to control his breathing well which allows him to rap longer, he can rap incredibly fast and with multiple rhythms seamlessly. Artists like Smino and JID have stood out recently as well for just how often their vocals are varied in pitch, rhythm and more. For a final footnote, production is the instrumentation behind rap. Rap has a long history of sampling, or taking existing sounds or portions of music and reincorporating them into a new track. With some artists, this can be done to further drive their theme which can work very poignantly! As someone with little production and music theory knowledge, unfortunately, all I can do is recommend the classic greats of making interesting, catchy beats. The Alchemist, Kanye West, Madlib, Pharell and J-Dilla all stick out. So does Nujabes. There are a lot of really interesting experimental production artists in Injury Reserve, JPEGMAFIA, and Danny Brown if you just wanna hear new crazy sounds also!

That concludes my first look at the genre of rap, and I hope it inspires you to check out one of the many artists I mentioned here. What artists should I have included? Are there any aspects of rapping I missed? Feel free to reply with anything you think I should've expanded on. Thank you and have a wonderful day!

#rap #new music #music #pop music #Youtube

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dailyadventureprompts · 4 years ago

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I just read your Orcs reimagined and I loved it. An origin that I’ve been tossing around for Orcs in my own worlds is kind of stealing the mythological origin of the Klingons from Star Trek - they were created by gods a long time ago, but eventually they realized the gods were more trouble than they were worth and killed them.

I would love to see more Monsters Reimagined style pieces for Gnolls and Goblins and Drow and the ‘monstrous’ player races that are rooted in racism and colonialism

Monsters Reimagined: Gnolls

I wanted to follow up with gnolls specifically because they’re a case study in how d&d has tried to “fix” the issue of “monstrous humanoids” and the ethical concerns of “always chaotic evil” and ended up going the exact opposite direction of what they should have done, doubling down on the justifications for why they’re bad and why it’s alright to kill them rather than addressing

TLDR: Rather than the psychoic killing machines they’re presented as currently, Gnolls should be the game’s consummate survivalists. Better equipped to live a more naturalistic lifestyle thanks to their numerous animalistic traits, they thrive in the outlands and harsh wilderness. Because living as hunter/scavenger/gatherers has worked out for them so well, Gnolls never really integrated in with the other agrarian-focused cultures, preferring to keep to the safety of the wilds rather than the frequently contested farmlands, leading to a mutual unease and cultural barrier that both groups have to work to overcome. Gnolls have very few taboos about what is and is not “useful” and have been known to eat the bodies of fallen travelers when food is scarce, or dig up graves for the valuables stored inside. This has given Gnolls the reputation as cannibals and blasphemers, when really it’s only the hyenakin being practical.

What’s Wrong: As of 2nd edition, Gnolls were like just about any other monstrous humanoid dnd species, savage primitives who worshiped evil gods and participated in various acts of barbarism. Slavery and cannibalism were the things that typified the gnolls ( not that other monsters weren’t willing to engage in slavery and/or cannibalism) and they were decidedly cruel and lazy, capturing others because they thought work was demeaning ( which is a whole... crockpot of weird stereotypes that I’m not going to get into at the moment). This characterization continued up through 3rd edition and pathfinder, the latter of which substituted the gnoll’s cannibalism god for Lamashtu, “the mother of monsters”, who is said to have birthed most “savage humanoids” in her wretched womb ( again, don’t have time to get into that but YIKES).

Then 5th edition crept around, and the gnolls took on a new flavor. They were decidedly MORE evil, MORE savage, LESS sapient, than previous versions, driven to endless slaughter by the voice of their demon-god Yeenoghu, practically demons in flesh themselves. They were remorseless killing machines who desired only chaos, to the point where I often saw them referred to as “Jokerlike” by gamer-bros who lacked the media comprehension required to relate them to any greater motivation.

To explain why they went through this metamorphosis, I’m going to have to explain a little bit of gaming history, as well as d&d’s version of the trolley problem. Buckle in, this is going to get Pedantic...

First The history lesson: Because d&d had its roots in wargaming, enemy creatures in the monster manual were presented with a category called “Organization”, which told you how large the squad sizes of these creatures could/should be. Often these came with the chance to roll for additional troops, or have a leader who had advanced levels and special abilities. Problem was, for savage humanoids, these organization charts almost always included information about the demographics of a “monster” village, including how many non combatants and children there were in relation to how many fighters they had ( anywhere from 5-50%)

Here’s an excerpt from the 2e monster manual:

Habitat/Society: Gnolls are most often encountered underground or inside abandoned ruins. When above ground they operate primarily at night. Gnoll society is ruled by the strongest, using fear and intimidation. When found underground, they will have (30% chance) 1-3 trolls as guards and servants. Above ground they keep pets (65% of the time) such as 4-16 hyenas (80%) or 2-12 hyaenodons (20%) which can act as guards.

A gnoll lair will contain between 20 and 200 adult males. For every 20 gnolls, there will be a 3 Hit Die leader. If 100 or more are encountered there will also be a chieftain who has 4 Hit Dice, an Armor Class of 3, and who receives a +3 on his damage rolls due to his great strength. Further, each chieftain will be protected by 2-12 (2d6) elite warrior guards of 3 Hit Dice (AC 4, +2 damage).

In a lair, there will be females equal to half the number of males. Females are equal to males in combat, though not usually as well armed or armored. There will also be twice as many young as there are adults in the lair, but they do not fight. Gnolls always have at least 1 slave for every 10 adults in the lair, and may have many more.

Gnolls will work together with orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, and trolls. If encountered as a group, there must be a relative equality of strength. Otherwise the gnolls will kill and eat their partners (hunger comes before friendship or fear) or be killed and eaten by them. They dislike goblins, kobolds, giants, humans, demi-humans and any type of manual labor.

Remember, these are specifically the stats for a gnoll LAIR not a village. People build villages, Gnolls ( being not people by default) cram their living space into the dungeon the party is delving, or the living space is itself a target for extermination in order to save the land from the blight of gnollish exitance.

Skipping right over how the demographics don’t bear any resemblance to an actual hyena pack, lets look at the fact that there are TWICE AS MANY CHILDREN AS THERE ARE ADULTS, meaning that there are fuzzy families standing in the way between the murder-hobos and their treasure, and with each defender cut down, the party is creating scores of orphans. The book can cram in as many excuses as it wants about how these creatures are sadistic and terrible and bad for the environment, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re people, who according to the rules and greater lore of the game a) are capable of feeling pain and fear b) have souls, making them fully willed individuals and not simply animals . How then can their outright slaughter be a good thing?

Well... lets look at some of d&d’s inbuilt genocide apologia, and a classic session killing scenario that’s come to be known as the “baby monster dilemma”.

First lets acknowledge that d&d is fictional, existing separate to but directly inspired by our reality. Lets also acknowledge that fictional events do not hold the same moral weight as events in our world, and that an author writing about a murder does not in any way share the guilt of say... a hitman.

That said, a fictional work can still be said to express harmful ideas, even if the ideas only exist on a page. A movie is not racist because it has racism in it, it is racist because it reinforces the structures of racism, justifying the bigoted actions of others by helping to reinforce a worldview that directly harms others.

For most of its history, d&d has said that racism is GOOD, by creating an innumerable number of monstrous “others” to serve as opposition to the heroes, and justifying that opposition both by the moral framework of its universe and by the inherent foulness of those foes. In the same entry, Gnolls are described as “Evil”, “Preferring to eat sentient humanoids because they scream the most” and “ Hunting exhaustively to the point where the wilderness will take years to recover before they move on.”

If gnolls are inherently evil and sadistic, the only dead gnoll is a good gnoll, and adventurers (goodguys by default) should not suffer one to live.

This is how you end up in wild situations like the Baby Monster Dilemma, where characters like the paladin, who are compelled to do good and never allow an evil act ( in the earlier editions atleast) are forced to wrestle with the moral conundrum of what to do with all of those gnoll children they just orphaned.

Leaving the Gnoll pups alone means that they will either starve to death, or grow up to do more evil in the future,

Because like most monstrous humanoids, gnolls have inherently evil souls, and so adopting them and nurturing them to be good is doomed invariably to fail ( there are plenty of examples of this “call to evil” throughout d&d lore)

Therefore the best answer is to slaughter them all on the spot, which lays somewhere between an act of genocide and Cruella D’Ville level of puppy murder, depending on your conception of gnoll sapience.

This is why I say that d&d has genocide apologia baked into it. In the case of fighting a very common enemy the way the game wanted you to fight them, the mass murder of children is a morally sound decision that leaves the world a better place. The game creates a scenario where enacting genocide is good and makes “Kill the monsters, take their stuff” a primary progression mechanic.

I don’t want to play a game that constructs elaborate setups to justify why it thinks genocide is ok, much less one that uses the same arguments that were used to justify IRL genocides within the past century. Because D&D happens to be the world’s most popular roleplaying game, and because I like the underlying mechanics so much, the lore is going to have to change quite a lot before I’m comfortable using it, and by the way things look ... it seems like a lot of other people are in the same position.

Now with that in mind, lets look at how WOTC tried to fix this and where they went wrong:

In order to make purging gnolls from the world justified, the writers of 4th and 5th edition tried to double down on gnoll’s evil traits, saying that they don’t have emotions, and even making them constantly demon possessed, under a species wide curse that compels them to ruin and rend and destroy with no thought for others. By turning that monstrosity dial up all the way to 11 ( They’re so evil that not actively hunting them to extinction is a moral failing) the writers are trying to bulldoze past the baby monster conundrum by giving an objective answer, Problem is, the gnolls are still, technically, people, in possession of souls, families, and the ability to think and reason... the writers have just gone out of their way to create them in such a way that their evil invalidates all of that.

I wouldn’t have a problem with it if gnolls were literally beasts, or monsters spat out of the pits of hell, or manifesting spontaneously from nature, but the problem is that they REMAIN intelligent humanoids. The current Monster manual describes them as a plague that descend without warning on civilized lands to slaughter and pillage and wander elsewhere looking for new places to raise, making nothing of lasting value and instead taking whatever they might need from the corpses of their victims. I can’t help but compare that to villainized depictions of displaced communities or nomadic peoples, scorned by those of more settled societies that may or may not be expanding out into the nomad’s territory.

How we can make this better: Stripping the Gnolls down to their base concept as “ Hyena people” gives us quite a lot to work with while reimagining them. Hyenas are adaptable social creatures with a unique sexual hierarchy that you can spin out into a lot of interesting cultural dynamics out of ( go look up some hyena biology facts and tell me that’s not a goldmine for coming up with unique social patterns). Being strict carnivores means they miss out on the development that agriculture brings, but their wider palate when it comes to what’s acceptable as meat ( scavenged carrion, insects) allows them to survive in much harsher climates, though likely with smaller numbers. Groups would be transitory, following the migration routes of the animals that they hunted, splitting up and gathering together based on the availability of the food supply.

Though migratory, gnolls would likely be highly protective of these lands, as sustainable access to a highly limited foodsource would mean the difference between being able to stay with the route or being force to travel to unknown lands scavenging. Gnoll territory would likely clash with wolves, lions, and other large predators

Gnolls could also perform a unique form of insect-agriculture, cultivating colonies of termites, crickets, and leaf-cutter ants throughout their territory to act as backup food storage.

( Also this whole thing about gnolls keeping Hyenas as pets always bugged me. You don’t want pets that eat the same thing as you, gnolls would keep easily )

Gnoll culture would likely be eminently practical, with everyone expected to be able to cultivate different skills depending on the seasonal availability of food. This would lead to less specialization and stratification among the pack-members, as well as a network of mentor-apprentice relationships that would likely transcend individual packs. The best leatherworker would train leatherworkers from all allied packs, and this would foster a spirit of dependence and unity despite territorial separation. Gods of the hunt and weather would likely feature prominently, as well as dualistic gods of life and death, who the gnolls would thank for their random gifts of carrion.

Like most of the “always chaotic evil” ancestries, I don’t mind keeping the monstrous aspects of the gnolls somewhere in the toolbox, and the idea of the “always hungry, always bloodthirsty” raiders that not even other evils will align with is an interesting menace to face. In the default Gnoll lore, the gnolls were created from hyenas who fed upon the carrion left behind by the rampaging demon-prince Yeeenoghu. With a simple twist, we instead have “The hungry ones” a cult or demonically influenced faction of gnolls who are a dark perversion of gnollish nature much in the same way that vampires are a dark reflection of humanity. Made up of outcasts from stable gnollish society, these wretches revere a carrion demon as none of their people’s other spirits will watch over them, and aim o fill their bellies as many times as possible before the wilds finally claim them ( think Mad-Max warboys)

If you wanted to put a twist on it, have these hungry ones be the “first contact” point between your traditional fantasy cultures and the gnolls of the badlands, souring relations between both groups and feeding off the inevitable clash.

Art

#flyingangelmoon #D&D #D&D adventure #Homebrew Adventure #Adventure #DnD #prompt postage #dm advice #setting design.#plains #gnoll #monsters reimagined

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dabihaul666 · 3 years ago

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New 'round here. You say you love all villains..even AFO? Yknow cus he's like..bad. Stinky bad man. Bad.

Love Spinner though, thoughts on him?

ON AFO:

''stinky bad man'' its ok anon we can use our big adult words here. CORRECT. I do love ALL the villains.* I appreciate afo as a villain! his fight with all might in camino ward was GREAT, very exciting to watch. afo even was taking over shigaraki's body or whatever for a bit?? who was supposed to be his like perfect heir or whatever? I can't say I love this most recent manga update though... it kind of seems like hori is changing his motivations and they don't make a whole lot of sense. idk i havent read it yet tho just the summary lolololol. but without that part he's just a good old fashion big bad evil villain!

this new thing where like, villains are ''too bad'' to be liked or appreciated is so silly to me like. ok so u want lackluster villains that never go too far or do TOO bad of things? you always want them to have a deeply traumatic childhood sob story? would that make what they do okay? re like - people compairing shigaraki and dabi and todoroki shouto and overhaul's backgrounds.

how on earth would bnha world keep spinning without afo? ''you know he's bad, right'' is so.... lol weird to me. like yea thats why he's good.

ON SPINNER:

tbh i like spinner! i just don't think he has what it takes to be a villain! i was always rooting for ''redemption arcs'' or whatever you want to call them for spinner and twice.

spinner's still really different from the rest of the league. ive said it before but he wasn't down for going against police in the chapter 160 highway chases. the anime glossed over it but spinner was demanding answers from shigaraki when they were fighting machia! when the league took over that mansion belonging to the anti-heteromorph cult!! he believed in stain's ideals the longest out of the league!! i think he should totally guide a movement for heteromorphs i love that for him, but im just not convinced he would have to stay with the league/liberation front for that, and i think they (plf +afo) know it! the plf needs his fans to stay relevant after they lost like 100k of them members, afo likes to make everyone do his bidding, i think both of them are trying to stroke spinner's ego a little bit, make sure he knows they find him a valuable asset u kno what i mean?

so i like spinner i just never talk about him bc he's not..... really evil enough. he doesn't appeal to me personally. he's kind of coming into his own but he was WELL out of his depth when he first started tbh. like also with magne, i would classify her as more dedicated to the league than spinner because she was ready to throwdown life or death instantly against some random dude. tbh idk how old spinner is but he just seems young sometimes, which yknow maybe because he was a gamer neet due to heteromorph racism and stuff in his ? smaller town? iirc. he was way in over his head and that really kind of cemented for me when i grew to love some characters more than others if this makes sense.

BUT WELCOME to around here anon!!

if i come off as hostile or talking with too much hyperbole or extremism its bc i have been here for a very long time and put up with a fair(unfair?) amount of things lol. my main goal is to mind my own business making bizarre and niche aus for myself and maybe like a few other ppl and friends with my evil little meowmeows. if they haven't killed someone they probably dont interest me too much :p

#*footnote 1:#when i say i love all villains i do not really include stain or gentle/la brava #for reasons n that might not be a surprise with my spinner comments #i mean im not gonna say ''the more theyve killed the better'' but i do very much enjoy moonfish and i wish him a very ''off deathrow''#Asks #Anonymous

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walkwithheroes84 · 4 years ago

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Saved By the Bell (2020) Thoughts

When the original Saved by the Bell ended in 1992, I was still in elementary school and certainly hadn’t watched it’s first run. But over the years - via repeats - it has become something of a comfort show for me, that I turn to when I’m feeling down or just need something cheesy to chill out to. So, hen I heard about a reboot on the Peacock network, I was unsure.

Now, having finished the ten episode season in just two days, I’m really hoping people give this show a chance. It knows what it is and what it is the child of and it lovingly pokes fun at and embraces it. All while actually showing real issues that people are facing today.

Here are my real-time after thoughts on each episode. Warning for spoilers.

1.01: Pilot

Zack becoming Governor to get out of a parking ticket and then having no idea what to do is a very Saved by the Bell plot line. But, I love that he's not getting away with doing a bad job and the people of California actually seem to be upset with him. Also random, but - I wonder if Kelly is a doctor and why she hasn't kicked Zack to the curb if he's become such a skeevy person? I guess it is true love.

Jessie and Slater and still adorable, even as platonic friends. However, it's sad that she's kept her son so dependent on her and that it appears that Slater peeked in high school.

Lexi and Mac would be completely unlikeable if played by anyone other than Josie Totah and Mitchell Hoog. Right now, they are just unlikeable, but could grow as the series goes on.

Devante and Aisha are good and I look forward to their characters being explored more.

Daisy is fine, but I don't think she's a strong enough character to be the "lead". Many reviews have called her the "lead" and the "character viewers follow the most" and I'm not sure the character is strong enough for that. Haskiri Velazquez is capable in her role and is doing fine, but the character is a bit bland at the moment.

Principal Toddman: finally a principal that is trying to make a difference and isn't bumbling around and letting the students get away with anything.

The "running for school president" story felt straight out of the old series, with Lexi and Mac doing it for a parking space. But, I liked that in the end (it was 2 days show time and just 30-something minutes our time) they only let Daisy have the job because they didn't want to give up their spring break - not because they learned any sort of real lesson.

From previews I was a little worried that they might try and go with a Mac/Daisy pairing, and I really glad that it doesn't look that way. Yes, it feels like they might pair them down the road (if the show gets a season 2 and beyond), but for now Daisy seems more annoyed with him and Mac seems indifferent to her. It looks like the show might go with Jamie/Aisha, which could work.

1.02: Clubs and Cliques

The theater clique is basically so cliché that its amusing. I love that they were all desperate to get Devante involved and keep him in the group chat, but he was just so disinterested. Lexi's line that she would fall for him if he kept ignoring her? Ha.

Jamie's inability to basically function as a normal fifteen/sixteen year old is alarming. The fact that he couldn't tell he is bad at football and that he makes raw food? Like, Jessie, who did you raise? That said, the football team having a "Feelings Helmet" was just amusing to me. The Bayside students are just so over the top insane.

There is a large part of me that wonders what the heck happened in the raising of Mac. Kelly had six siblings. She was raised in a working class family. I can't see her raising her son to be this entitled brat who apparently calls her stupid. And, I honestly can't see Zack allowing his son to end up an idiot who just floats through life.

But, I guess that's the point of the series: the Bayside students are all clichés and over the top archetypes of rich kids. None of them are really all that likeable and I find myself rooting for Devante, Daisy, and Aisha while wanting Mac, Lexi, and Jamie to grow up.

1.03: The Bayside Triangle

Knowing that Jamie and Lexi have been friends since they were little kids and she now has a crush on him and doesn't know how to handle it? Very relatable and makes me like her a bit more. She's right - for a lot of reasons, it can be weird to have an old friend like you.

Aisha trying so hard to fit in with the Bayside students is a bit sad, actually. It feels like she's giving up a part of herself to be who they think she should be.

Mac and Jamie's fight felt like it was straight out of the original series.

It's sad to know that Zack and Slater are no longer friends. I wonder why.

Devante is totally my favorite at this point. He just wants a fresh start and it's sad that Aisha and Daisy suspected him of wrongdoing because of his past.

Again, the fact that the students do all this weird stuff and no one at the school seems to notice or care . . .I feel that is purely making fun of the original show, but I love it.

1.04: The Fabulous Birchwood Boys

Lexi and Devante need to become best friends and stay best friends forever. Let's keep it platonic and fabulous. Also, his friends from his neighbor? I need to see more of those boys.

Jamie and Mac Freshmen year? Dorky as all get out. Lexi's fear that no one would like her. So heartbreakingly real.

Daisy having access to money for one day and becoming an entitled monster...that also felt very real. And, I'm really glad that she didn't take the easy way out and said she was sorry to the other members.

Since Mac never even asked Post Malone and since he got the other kids back - I'm starting to think the kid has more depth and empathy than I originally gave him credit for. That or Daisy is rubbing off on him. If they did Daisy/Mac down the road, I think it could work.

I felt so sorry when Lexi realized that Jamie had asked Aisha. I think they are headed for a Lexi/Jamie/Aisha love triangle, and I have to say that while I see Lexi/Jamie (because of her crush), I don't see Jamie/Aisha just yet.

Finally, Slater obsessing over the gym floors? He really did become a stereotype of a gym coach.

1.05: Rent-A-Mom

Jessie still having anxiety about caffeine and knocking what she thought was caffeine pills away from Mac was great.

Speaking of which - poor Jessie and her marriage. :( How did she end up with such a wishy-washy husband?

Slater and Aisha bonding while trying to making the team tougher was great. I cannot believe Jamie gives heartfelt speeches before games. What the hell, man? They really are pushing Jamie as the "sensitive man-child".

Jamie also mentioned that he was starting to like Aisha, but I still don't really see it. Am I alone in this? A start of a friendship, sure. But, a romance within the next few episodes - that would move too fast. Then again, it is a "teen show" and romance on those tend to move quickly.

Lexi and Mac trying to help Daisy was kind-of sweet in a weird sort of way. I like the looks into the home lives of the gang. It gives us a better understand of who they are as people.

1.06: Teen-Line

DeVante clearly facing racism and even classism at Bayside was really well done. I love that Lexi was ready to help him, because he has become such a great friend to her. Those two have really bonded and I love it.

Mac becoming a payphone, but not realizing it kind of made me smile. But what was even better was the way the school completely went into chaos after the students lost their phones. It couldn't have been more than three hours and the school already looked like a deleted scene from a post-apocalyptic film. Oh, and Mac using the rope to get in and out of the room, while the rest of the group used the door. . .loved it.

Aisha and Jamie. . .I feel like she's with him because he's attractive and sweet. There doesn't seem to be any real depth to their relationship. Though to be fair, there isn't much depth to Jamie's character - he's a satellite love interest to Aisha and Lexi.

1.07: House Party

Lexi finally seeing that she is a good (or at least better) person? I like that she is growing. Out of all the characters, I think she has gotten the most character growth (out of the kids) this season.

So. . .Mac does all his schemes because he's scared of being abandoned by the people he cares about and feels neglected by his parents? It's cliché, but. . .okay.

I'm still not really feeling Aisha/Jamie, but I'm not hating it. The relationship lacks depth, so I'm not terribly invested. But, I'm sure if I went back and watched any of the TNBC shows (without my nostalgic glasses on) those romances won't have much depth either.

Daisy trying to go wild, but instead having to be locked in a closet and making out with a coat? Eh, I get that they were poking fun at the darker and "edgy" teen soaps, but, eh.

Slater really grew during the episode and realized that it's time to leave high school behind and start acting like a real adult, and I'm proud of him.

1.08: The Todd Capsule

Lark looked amazing. I'm so happy that she is doing so well these days.

So now we know where Screech is: on the Space Station with Kevin the Robot.

I was actually sad to learn that Kelly didn't follow her dream of becoming an actual doctor and is instead selling a fake wellness brand or some nonsense. Though, I will admit the Zack/Kelly scenes had me giggling a bit. They have become so shallow and weird, but I'm living for it. And when Zack said she was the only woman he's ever been with? That was a great jab, at least to me, at the way teen shows always do the "one true pairing" thing.

So glad Jessie now knows that Slater still has feelings for her. Can't believe her husband is having an emotional affair with one of his characters. This show can be so ridiculous.

The time capsule was a great addition to the episode, especially as they remembered all the plots that didn't make sense or were just weird: Jessie's caffeine addiction, putting on a ballet so Zack could graduate, saving a hotel in Hawaii.

How dare the gang (expect Lisa, who is a Queen) not remember Ron-Ron!

I hate - hate - that the PTA basically went behind everyone's back and is going to use the money to send the Douglas children back to their school. Yes, they can use the money to buy new things, but they will still have issues in that school. It's pure racism and classism.

Devante having a crush on Nadia (I think that's her name?) is super cute.

Loved Lexi and Daisy bonding and Lexi seeing that sometimes guilting people into things works just as well as being fake-nice. Though, you think she would have learned that by now.

So, Mac has always struck me as a character that is straight out of a 90s teen sitcom, and he still acts that way. But, I love that the show is trying to show some depth to him: he's acting out for attention from his dad. He has modeled his whole personality after his dad's high school personality in order to get attention. It's a storyline that has been done a million times (and will be done a million more times), but it fits his character.

1.09: All in the Hall

The Douglas principal saying that every few years people try and come in to "save" the school ,but than get bored and leave, because they've already gotten what they want - to feel good about themselves? Yeah, I felt that. It was so true to life, the way people rush into some new cause and than abandon it once they have gotten praise or its no longer trendy.

So happy to see Principal Toddman standing up Jade and sticking up for his students. He and Devante should have more scenes together. I like how they play off one another. I really just love Devante - he's probably my favorite.

Aisha finding a way to stay at the school via sports was very smart, but I can also see how Daisy would see it as selfish. Aisha does have a way of thinking about herself first and than others after. I think that has to do with her ultracompetitive nature - she wants to win, even if it mean leaving others behind.

Jamie got a bit more depth in this episode - finally. It was sweet that he wanted Aisha to stay, despite only having dated her for six weeks or so. He went about it completely wrong, but it was sweet. It's good that he sees that he's more emotionally intelligent than anything else.

The Aisha/Jamie stuff - eh. I never felt it to begin with, so it was no big. I'm glad that they sort of acknowledged that while he loves her, she just likes him and it was a relationship built more on physical attraction and sweet moments than anything else. I mean, they are fifteen.

Mac and Lexi feeling empathy and trying to help Daisy was nice. It's clear that they have both grown to care about Daisy (and Devante and to a lesser degree Aisha). I also enjoyed the small tease of Mac/Lexi with them both agreeing that they would totally hook up, because they are both so hot. Who doesn't love two shallow people admitting they are shallow? Though, I still think the writers are slowly - maybe - setting up something with Mac/Daisy. Maybe. Possibly.

I laughed out loud when Daisy ran into Jean (or is it Dave?) at city hall and he just kept denying that they had met before, but they clearly had.

Daisy's breakdown and her nearly doing drugs and the group hug - complete with Jamie discussing some random talent show we never saw (a jab at the original show airing episodes out of order?) - was just so classic teen sitcom. I loved that they pulled back from that by showing Mac reaching for the joint during the group hug.

1.10: Showdown

Overall the season was much better then I thought it would be and I'm really hoping that they are able to work in a season 2. I don't know if they could do several seasons, but I think they could probably do 2-3 more seasons of 8-10 episodes each. They still have a lot to focus on: relationships, class differences, the fall of the Morris family, Jessie's marriage breaking down and how that plays out with Jamie and even Slater, etc.

I really liked the two throw away lines of: Zack asking "Remember Tori?" and Kelly responding with a confused: "Huh?" and then Kelly quickly telling Mac that his father is not Jeff.

I wouldn't say Zack learned a valuable lesson, so much as he realized that he only wanted to stay Governor because he didn't want to be a loser. Which I guess is a lesson in a way, but he's still a bit of a slime ball.

I'm so glad that Slater told Jessie he was sorry for teasing her in high school because she protested and that he's happy today's teenagers are more willing to speak out about their beliefs. And, I'm even happier that Jessie stood up to her stupid and selfish husband.

Aisha and Daisy ganging up on Devante and than realizing that the clicks at school need a common enemy was great. What was better was Lexi, who has had the most character grown this season, willingly becoming the scapegoat.

Mac still needs to work on his daddy issues, but he's getting there. Hopefully he and his parents can really bond during quarantine.

Jamie telling Lexi that the only reason he wasn't sure if he wanted to date her was because she's been mean in the past was very sweet. Do I think the show is headed for Lexi/Jamie? Yes. Do I think it will last? No.

I still have a feeling that, at some point, they will do a Mac/Daisy pairing. Or at the very least have Mac develop a crush on Daisy, which will be interesting to see.

Other thoughts: I love that the show was able to poke fun at the clichés, corniness, and weirdness of all the late 80s-early 00s teen sitcoms/dramas that people my age grew up on; while at the same time exploring current day issues, without getting too preachy or pushy. They used pop culture well, without it feeling overly done. Someone else has mentioned in several threads that the show reminds them of the show Community, and I have to agree - it really does have an "early" Community vibe to it. I know a lot of shows are being cancelled or not renewed due to Covid, but I really do hope they give this one a second season. I really want to see where they go next.

Cast List:

Main Haskiri Velazquez as Daisy Jiménez Mitchell Hoog as Mac Morris Josie Totah as Lexi Haddad-DeFabrizio Alycia Pascual-Peña as Aisha Garcia Belmont Cameli as Jamie Spano Dexter Darden as Devante Young John Michael Higgins as Principal Ronald Toddman Elizabeth Berkley Lauren as Jessie Spano Mario Lopez as A.C. Slater

Recurring Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zack Morris Tiffani Thiessen as Kelly Morris Ed Alonzo as Max Cheyenne Jackson as René

Guest Lark Voorhies as Lisa Turtle

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nothorses · 4 years ago

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So I have a question/something I'd like your input on, since I feel like you'd have something interesting to say about this.

Anyways, some background: i'm in a child and youth care program in a rather left leaning, relatively progressive college, in a rather left leaning/progressive city.

It's actually been a very validating experience so far--I feel so much more accepted here then at my last school, which, while it was located relatively close to the city, had a rather more conservative student body and faculty. I had to fight for accomodation and acceptance, and I didn't end up going to my convocation since, when I had asked, they said they wouldn't call my prefered name when I'd get the certificate at the ceremony, or use the right name on it (they made it seem that their hands were completely tied, even though I know of other schools who've done this exact thing, incl the school I'm at now, without needing proof of a legal name change).

Anyways, at this school, i'm even having instructors I don't even know well going to bat for me and using their connections to get the help I needed when I was having trouble with my name being displayed wrong in the online classroom. Like, thank god for having CYC's as profs, right?

So, to my point: one of our classes is all about inclusion and anti oppressive practices. It's literally the name of the class. I actually enjoy the class a fair bit--despite classes being virtual, my class is sharing a lot and there's a lot of bonding and openness going on in the virtual lecture space. It's encouraged me to be open about my own troubles as a trans person, and people have been v supportive.

In a recent lecture, we start talking about the different terms of discrimination against various groups that face oppression (like, racism, albleism, etc). So she asks us: what is the term for discrimination against trans people? And I say Transphobia. Because that's the term I see most often, and the one I say myself. Apparently the Proper term now is cissexism (or cisgenderism?), and I got chided for saying transphobia.

I went and turned my mic on and basically said that I feel like transphobia is the term the general population is only Just started to take seriously, and the instructor argued that as we're in an academic circle, and as CYCs, it's our job to use the most progressive terms to move things forward, and that we shouldn't be conflating the discrimination trans people face with a phobia. Since, not only does it validate the fear of trans people, but it's not fair to those that have legitimate phobias.

I dropped it there, but I was brave and I asked to speak with the instructor after class.

During that talk, I pretty much said that it's hard being probably the only trans person in at least first year, and being visible and open as one, and having to be told the "right" term to use for my own experiences. She could relate, she said, as she's a black woman, and have faced probably similar experiences from white people correcting her on terms she uses for her own experiences. She did say though, as she's in the role of an instructor, it is her job to educate herself, think on what they're saying, and potentially make changes to her language.

But, she also said she can't speak for my experiences, and she won't make me change my language.

I was appreciative, and I talked about things I've personally faced, and how, even just 10 years ago, trans people were treated so frequently as a joke. Even on screen deaths were funny in media. I brought up that the trans panic defense was still considered a valid defense to use in court not long ago (and still probably is in some places), and someone won a case recently that way. Even just the term "transphobia" is only just recently been taken seriously, in my eyes, while before it was often brushed off as not a legitimate concern. Even when I was first coming out, I was told I was just confused, or trans people were just doing it for attention. I still face open glares sometimes, purposeful misgendering, fights with my sister about some of her transphobic views she refuses to question... And while it was hard to be that vulnerable, the conversation ended on a very good note.

I personally don't feel ready to change this language. But I don't really know if I was in the right to argue all of this. I'm only one trans person, I don't want to talk over those who've probably fought to switch the language away from "transphobia" as the valid term. But, i'm in an awkward position of being an unofficial spokesperson as the token trans guy in the class, talking to a lot of folks who've admitted I am the first trans person they've met. So, i dunno, i'm weird with conflict and I was wondering what you're thoughts were on all of this.

This is kind of a tricky one for a lot of reasons, tbh? And I have... a few thoughts. This is already super long, so under the cut it goes!

The first thing is that “transphobia” and “cissexism” aren’t actually interchangeable; they’re different concepts. “Transphobia” refers to bigotry against trans people or transness in general, while “cissexism” or “cisgenderism” is appealing to (or is) the wider system of oppression. (x)

That’s not to say those words are actually used that way in practice, because they’re not, and I certainly don’t use them that way every time either. Like you said, “transphobia” is the word people more often understand. When I’m writing for or talking to audiences that don’t already have a strong background in trans theory, I stick to “transphobia” for clarity’s sake.

But if you’re positioning yourself as an educational authority on the subject, and even going so far as to correct trans people on those terms- you should know that. If your question is “which term refers to discrimination against trans people?”, your answer is reliant upon how you choose to define “discrimination” in that context.

It’s also reasonable to assume people would answer with the first term if they don’t know both of them, and what she’s set up sounds like an unfair “gotcha!” meant to cow uninformed cis people.

And tbh, I take issue with that. There’s a great essay on this- The Cycle of Socialization by Bobbie Harro. The core of this cycle, which allows oppression to continue and encourages its perpetuation, includes confusion and insecurity: oppression is complex, and big, and people are afraid of taking a stand and doing it wrong. They are insecure in their knowledge and position, and afraid that if they try, they’ll get it wrong, and they’ll be punished. So they stay silent. What is that “gotcha!” moment doing except enforcing that fear and silence?

The other thing here are her reasons for using “cissexism” instead. She’s absolutely right that there is dialogue about what terms to use, and her listed reasons are informed and well-educated. I don’t know how I feel about the discussion myself, honestly, as I’ve seen it from the start and I’ve watched it play out for multiple years.

I don’t know if I agree that it’s ableist, part of that being that the “-phobic” thing was originally created as a “compassionate justification” for people’s bigotry against gay people (though there is the “-misic/misia” replacement for “-phobia” if you prefer). That’s still problematic for different reasons; like she said, it might validate bigotry as “fear”. “Cissexism” illustrates bigotry as enforcing a system rather than being honestly rooted in feelings, and that’s generally a good thing, imo.

But, y’know, “transphobia” is what people readily understand, and punishing people for using it is counterproductive. Using “transphobia” as a starting point for a discussion and an understanding is helpful, too; it connects these ideas back to what people already know. It meets them where they are. If you want to add “cissexism” to their vocabulary from there, please do! But that shouldn’t be rooted in shame.

I don’t know if any of this is helpful, but I thought I’d throw out what seemed to be the core of the issue to me, in case it resonated with you. If you still feel weird about the interaction, it might be worth it to address that with her again; she seems like she’s genuinely trying, and cares, and like she’s open to making changes. If nothing else, you might be able to sort out what’s still bugging you and address it as a feelings issue, rather than a language one, if that works better for you.

Good luck! And sorry for the super long answer, lol.

#long post #onejackalsguise #Ask

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handweavers · 4 years ago

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[ actually scratch that im going to rant about this bc ive read this book so many times and i have so many thoughts on it and nowhere to put them now that i don't primarily study history for a living and i accidentally wrote what is basically an informal essay about this. ]

my main gripe with guns germs and steel is that the author is an old white xtian man of the more classical anthropological stream of thinking and used outdated and inappropriate language when making his antiracist points, ex. "blacks" instead of "black people" which is difficult to swallow especially because he's doing that while trying to dismantle white supremacist ideology (like pick one, are you actively anti-racist or not? this came out in 2011 man you should know better. you can't talk about the horrors of the trans atlantic slave trade whilst simultaneously calling them that), and despite dismantling one major aspect of white supremacist pseudoscience he doesn't dismantle the entire 'root' so to speak. he refutes a major branch of it but not the inherent issues with this type of thinking, doesn't even acknowledge it fully, and that lessens the impact of his argument.

this book isn't a complete refutation of white racial pseudo-science, he doesn't really take apart other fundamental parts of that entire structure, he focuses solely on how geography impacts human societies and their development (which i don't necessarily fault him for, as geography is his primary expertise), but part of that idea needs inherently dismantling just at its base because the concept of "development" is highly racialized and contentious. he doesn't really acknowledge this, and seems to support this idea and even talks a bit about being friends with some mormon missionaries with whom he went to papua new guinea in the 60s and doesn't condemn that nor acknowledge how fucked up and weird that is, indicating that while he claims to be anti-racist there is a lot more work left that he has to do.

he subscribes to the idea that there are societies that are 'primitive' and those that are 'more advanced' - the theory of technological advancement as something both inevitable and inherent and a progressive climb upward, something traditionally taught to students of social sciences but is taught far less these days because it isn't correct and it's highly eurocentric. it isn't a matter of who is more 'advanced' or who has 'progressed' further (what is progression? what is advancement? who decides what this means? which societies are heralded as advanced, and assign a positive value to that, and primitive, and assign a negative value to that?) but rather that different societies have different values.

there is nothing evolutionarily 'lesser' about hunter gatherer or iron age or stone age societies. they don't represent a natural progression of human technological capacity, they represent changing values and needs. all societies value and conceptualize technology differently, and there is no positive or negative value to these concepts. ex. hunter gatherer nomadic peoples of the amazon are not "primitive" and "less advanced" they simply have different values than we do. the author suggests that anyone who CAN "progress" WILL choose to do so, and there would have to be reasons "preventing" them from doing so, despite acknowledging that different cultures have different values and have "gained" new tech and understood their intended use and CHOSE to simply discard it because it has no value for them within their society (ex. several indigenous peoples of papua new guinea) and never directly makes a statement on this ideology, just kind of eventually implies "i dunno the answer to this one i just know that they aren't inherently inferior to me" but there is a big difference between "INHERENTLY INFERIOR" and "INFERIOR" because you can believe that someone isn't Inherently lesser than you, from birth, tabula rasa "blank slate" style, but still believe that they are lesser than you as a result of things that they have chosen after that - as a result of their culture, and unfortunately while jared diamond declares that nonwhite people are not inherently inferior to white people, he does strongly indicate that he believes many of us are culturally inferior. he tries to make this into a valueless judgement, that there is nothing wrong with being "primitive" or "less advanced" it is just a fact, but there is no such thing as a valueless judgement when it comes to western anthropological thought, it is constructed from the base up to be about hierarchies and white supremacy.

there is no way to talk about "progress" "development" "civilization" without it being racially loaded, and he doesn't acknowledge this at all, which lessens the degree of his thesis' impact. you have to at least address these things in a book like this, you can't Not address these things, and you also need people of colour to go over your book pre-publishing so your elderly white ass doesn't release a book trying to refute racism while you simultaneously refer to people of colour with inappropriate language.

#long post #he is also a capitalist/pro-capitalism which also lessens his argument but thats another essay #i still recommend it despite its faults because there is a wealth of good info there and he accomplishes his main goal #but there are...so many issues with his beliefs underlying that and that are strongly implied #as someone who has spent a few years studying history and the social sciences and how racialization works #i can read between the lines and understand implications lol like its very clear to me that he holds these beliefs

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bagofbonesmp3 · 4 years ago

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shadow and bone s1 thoughtsies

gonna put this under the cut bc i don’t wanna annoy anyone <3 also bear in mind i only read the six of crows duology so any grisha trilogy opinions are biased <3

overall rating of the show: 7/10. it was really fun and i had :0 moments constantly

pros, aka things i liked:

- alina and mal. as far as im told they’re very annoying and without chemistry in the books so i applaud them for making them more interesting and nuanced and i rooted for them the whole time

- the aging up. tbh if they had tried to make this a ya series i would have started to beat some people up because alina and the darkling’s realtionship just gets really fucking awful if she’s a 17 year old kid so im glad they’re all in their 20s now. especially for the crows bc there is really no reason they had to be teens in the books even, they all act like theyre 24 already.

- most of the cast. they were really good. jessie mei lin and archie renaux were surprisingly fun. ben barnes as the darkling was such a good choice because he is literally older than the rest of the cast and that made him even creepier. i dont know much about the shadow and bone characters but bregha seemed great to me too.

- the story from the shadow and bone aspect. it was really well paced, i liked those flashbacks and the way alina started to get more and more submersed into the little palace world, how she started to forget who she was little by little.

- malina. the ONE LINERS THEY THREW AT EACH OTHER. WOW. love.

- the worldbuilding. the magic and the locations felt so alive and refreshing after swallowing got for like 5 years. effervescent.

- VERY good ending, i liked the high stakes, i was gripping my seat.

cons, aka things i didn’t quite like:

- the fucking. six of crows storyline. what was the reason!! what was the reason!! asides from them trying to ponder to the soc fans, there was really no motivation for them to be there. if you took all of their scenes away the show wouldn’t change?? we can have a miniseries spinoff guys we dont need the weird combo. i would have allowed the nina matthias storyline even but why drag the rest of them here?????

- kaz. this is not my boy! this is not my boy. the actor they chose.... i don’t vibe with him. who are you. also his characterization was all over the place this is not scheming face brekker this is some common white boy! also not relevant for his character technically but relevant for ME. why arent his eyes brown. i feel that was an important thing why arent his eyes brown like bitter coffee

- also this has been bothering me since the cast was announced but nina. what happened here.

- i have to mention the weird racism. like. again i haven’t read the grisha trilogy, were they this anti shu in the books? like, in the soc books there is the casual microagression and small shit but this was so??? and also i dont understand why zoya was being fantasy world racist against alina because as far as i know zoya is a brown woman? so like? its very strange and clunky and im thinking it would have been better if they scraped that whole subplot

- alina’s shu heritage. this is kinda connected with the point above. im glad they had an actress of color play alina, because im tired of white ya protagonists, but this whole “they bully me” subplot felt kinda lacking? like, i would have liked to see her react more about the anti shu sentiment, speak more about it, also her reaction with the instructor who was shu, or her speaking to other poc that were part of the second army like??? we could have explored that a lot more and given her depth? and also the fact that there are no other shu in this season was odd. one would think they’d be interested in the fact that the sun summoner is half shu

- the first two episodes were a little bit Too Much because they were trying to throw all of this info at you and things were happening at the same time. which wouldnt have happened if you didnt have all of that kidnapping plot to begin with!!

- just. the amount of characters they had left the secondary characters feeling too flat. they should have focused on the shadow and bone characters and nothing else!!!!

#:) i liked it overall i just have no idea why they wanted to merge the two series #yo.txt

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astroellipse · 4 years ago

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writing *ranting about ffxiv while I wait for a queue to pop

I was so sad man... I’m just trying to do the Hildebrand questline- it popped in the middle of writing that oh my god.

What I was going to say is that I thought this queue for the quest line’s third trial was going to be 15 minutes like the last two but saw it was instead “more than 30 minutes”, and given the last time I queued for a trial that said that it took two hours, I was a little concerned. To my surprise it popped initially just seven minutes in... until someone backed out. Then I started writing this. Then it popped, I waited half a minute, and someone withdrew again. And a third time immediately after. On the fourth time I actually got in. That was ridiculous. I’ll still continue writing though, since finishing the first Hildibrand saga is a good breaking point.

That was, to be expected, hilarious. A lot of it, anyhow. Some of it just sort of hurt. The funniest moment wasn’t even during the questline, it was during the first trial with Gilgamesh. Both me and the bard were inflicted with confusion and just started blasting each other. Him knocking arrows and all but stabbing them into my forehead, and me casting ruin directly into his eyes at point blank range. That and the getting turned into a frog and getting chased by chickens. Literally nothing can top that encounter for me.

I straight up did not care about the mystery/plot the majority of the time, but I guess I should expect by now that I’ll always enjoy the characters more than whatever mediocre plot they’re tangled in. Just. The Coliseum quests specifically mostly pissed me off. The pervy tentacle monster. The needless racism. The whole thing with painting a poor person wanting to find an easy way to not be poor as undeniably evil which the game KEEPS doing makes me so fucking mad, in combination with stewing about these other themes in JRPGs especially with being all “boo-hoo, won’t anyone thing about how hard it is being rich and noble, all the responsibility, how dare these dirty poors even think about getting revenge on the very people that keep them down.

Why aren’t they just happy with what they do have? They should just put in more work if they want to eat a warm meal, even though we’ve already established there’s no work to be had. Like jesus christ I’d swear some of the shit in this game and others was being written by some 17 year old medieval lordling with too much free time between tutoring sessions. What is these peoples’ obsessions with nobility? Like I get it makes for good fantasy content but have at least a little bit of self consciousness.

I feel like I always see these games acknowledge some kind of class structure and how it negatively effects those in its lowest rungs then shrug it off as “there’s nothing anyone can do about it” and paint the impoverished as villains for being upset with the people that do have the power to change it. Sort of a tangent but this specifically is why I despised and kind of relationship between Dorothea and Ferdinand in Three Houses. She calls him out and rightfully so in the first support, then he makes a batch of pastries completely from scratch one time and this apparently makes her think that all nobles aren’t so bad? Going from straight up not wanting nobles to exist to thinking hey, they’re people too :). I hate that. I hated that FE3H characters were mostly nobles or come from notable/rich families or whatever.

Similarly I hate that FFXIV has such a huge focus on the upper crust and just completely discards and lower-class person. Like, there was a mission where I had to check on some scared refugees and they attacked me in self defense and it made me kill them? And I reported back to the guy who asked me to check on them and he just went “Ah well, what can you do.” Like what the fuck is wrong with these writers sometimes???

I was about to say this was more of an issue with ARR but remembered how the people of the Brume were treated in HW, like a mob of bumbling idiots in desperate need of guidance. What drove me insane the most on that front was when the people were on the brink of revolt after that one girl basically martyred herself, and to remedy this Aymeric decided his order and the grand companies would have their little sparring mach, because nothing sparks patriotism more like sports. Even though this left the city with significantly less protection. And that it was held in an area where not a single citizen could see it. Also, the group the people were supposed to be rooting for was the order of knights and their lapdogs (Hilda’s group) which. just. none of it made sense. It was stupid. This kinda shit makes me afraid to eventually get to Stormblood and into the thick of the Ala Mhigo stuff which they have handled TERRIBLY so far like it boils my blood to think about it. This game is so racist it’s unreal.

but. god. I was talking about the Hildibrand questline. The bit on Costa del Sol was probably the closest I came to caring about the plot, plus it had some pretty good bits. Wasn’t a fan of the big “man in a dress” at the end, though it did make me think that men should be allowed to wear dresses in this game like it would’ve looked fine without the goofy hair and makeup :/ And I completely checked out on whatever that last bit of story was no I do not care that that one girl we’ve been traveling with was the thief all along I have never liked her. Also she played into that class issue I just ranted about. The reveal of her sister was also cheap and stupid. The elezen inspector professing his love for her was also weird? My first thought during that was “jesus christ man she was trying to commit mass mur-” and then I remembered that I/my WoL was crushing on Ysale before she got axed which comes in at #2 for funniest moment in this questline. Him doing that still came out of nowhere save one or two short scenes in separate quests to me.

But I’m exhausted of this now. I might go and start the next saga but I’ll probably go to sleep early... if anything has made me rethink playing past the free trial it’s the shit above but I’ll be honest I am pretty darn likely to cave. I can only hope the writers sorted at least some of their shit out between expansions.

#collecting my thoughts #mmorpg hell

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yurtletheturtlehenderson · 5 years ago

Text

S.T. REWRITE - S2:E4; Chapter Four, Will the Wise - [Pt. 4 - FINAL PART]

A Will Byers x Reader Series

An ailing Will opens up to Joyce -- with disturbing results. While Hopper digs for the truth, Eleven unearths a surprising discovery. A conflicted Y/n reconciles with Mike amidst the rising panic.

Warnings: Abusive behavior. Racism. Animal death

||3rd Person POV||

Will continued to draw, never faltering. And his movements never slowed.

Several sheets of paper, with similar purple and blue features.

The second he was done, he would swiftly swipe the drawing behind him and it would land on the floor like the others. Not unlike a printer would.

Joyce grabbed a handful and returned through to the living room, where Hop sat, looking at a handful of Will's drawings himself.

"This is more of the same," she said, joining him on the couch.

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just scribbles."

The pages they held before them, as well as the ones still being made in Will's room usually featured a black page with some variant of purple-blue sections. Ranging from corner to corner, corner to side, bottom to side, top to corner and so forth. Some of them were just pure purple and blue.

"Wait," Joyce had caught sight of the drawing Hopper was currently looking at. "Wait."

"What? What?"

"Wait. These black lines, see?"

She held up one of the several drawings she possessed up to Hopper.

Hopper was still confused.

"What?"

The drawing she held matched perfectly with the one in his hands.

"They connect. They connect!"

×××

Hopper had now pushed aside all the furniture in the living room, opening up space for the drawings.

They grabbed more piles and scattered the drawing all over the floor, matching piece after piece.

Finally, the duo stood, marveling at the large intricate design the pictures had made. They were sprawled out all over the room, so much so in fact that they twisted and curled and began creeping up the walls.

"Does this mean anything to you?" Hopper asked.

Joyce scoffed, gesturing to the work before them. "No."

"I mean, is it some kind of maze or a road?" She wondered.

They began wandering around the room, careful as to not step on the drawings.

"I-I mean, it's sort of forking and branching like... like lightning." She gestured to the many twists and turns below her feet.

"You think it's that storm?" He asked, referring to the drawing.

"No, the storm he drew was completely different. He used red." She said, certain about her son's artistic patterns. "And this is all blue and it has some sort of weird dirt color. I mean, maybe it's roots."

"'Cause remember," she continued, lost in thought. "he was saying it was spreading and--"

"killing." He finished. "he said they were killing."

Hopper felt his chest sink at the words. Familiarity tugging at his mind. He hoped he was wrong. But he was almost certain he wasn't.

"Vines." Joyce looked to Hopper just as he retreated to the front door, gathering his things. "He's drawing vines."

×××

The bell rang harshly, signaling the end of the school day. Just as he had hoped, Lucas found Max at her locker.

"Hey, Max. Have you seen Dustin? We're supposed to meet after class."

Max slammed her locker door and stomped away.

Lucas frowned and called after her. He chased her trailed after her, and it wasn't until they reached the steps outside the school that she answered.

"Hey, Max! Hey, where are you going? Come on! We've gotta go look for Dart."

"Yeah, good luck with that." She spits, not looking back.

Max made it to the parking lot when Lucas finally caught back up to her.

"What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" She scoffed. "What's wrong with you?"

She brushed a stray piece of hair from her eyes angrily as she walked.

"I don't understand!"

Max whirled around on her heels, looking at Lucas for the first time in the conversation.

"No! I don't understand!" She shouted, and Lucas jumped back slightly. "You guys act like you want me to be your friend but then you just treat me like garbage!"

"That's not true!" He said defensively.

She scoffed and nodded.

"Actually, you're right," she smiled, and Lucas briefly relaxed.

Her face quickly hardened once more.

"Y/n hasn't. She's the only one of you jerks that have actually been nice to me. The only one who's making an effort to get me in the party. But, ya know what? Tell her I said thanks but she doesn't have to try anymore. I don't want to be in your stupid party anyway."

Lucas tried to find words but Max stopped him before he cod say anything.

"All you guys do is lock yourselves in the AV room keeping secrets like we're in second grade or something. You know, I thought you actually wanted me in your party."

"I do. But it's..."

"But what?"

He sighed, at a loss for words.

"There... there are just things. Things we can't tell you, all right? For your own safety."

"My own safety?" She repeated, fuming.

"Yes!"

"Because I'm a girl?"

"What? No! Why would you think that? Y/n's in the party."

"Yeah, do you keep secrets from her too? Or El?" She asked, her voice lowered but was still hostile.

Lucas stiffened.

"How do you know about El?"

"Did you?" She pressed.

"That was different. Trust me. Okay? That was just... different."

"Okay. You know what? Forget it. Have a nice life."

Max spun around and stomped away, ignoring his cries if protest.

"You still stink by the way!"

Lucas's heart sank as he watched Max walk away. He frowned and hesitantly brought his sleeve to his nose.

He recoiled at the stench.

"Oh, shit!"

Max set down her skateboard and stepped on. Besides one little push, she let gravity do its work and she steadily rolled down across the parking lot towards her stepbrothers car.

Unbeknownst to her, he had watched the whole exchange.

When she approached the car she hopped off her skateboard and tucked it back under her arm. Billy pushed off from where he was leaning against the hood and he stormed around to the driver's side door.

"That kid you were talking to, who is he?"

"He's no one."

"No one?"

"This kid from class." She replied impatiently.

She got in the passenger side but Billy lingered, glaring at Lucas as he looked in their direction in curiosity.

Billy narrowed his eyes and got in the front seat, slamming the door behind him.

He placed a cigarette between his lips and he lit it. Staring ahead, he took a puff and held it out the window as he rested his arm.

"Why was he talking to you?" He asked lowly.

"It was just about a stupid class assignment." She muttered.

His jaw clenched and he fidgeted with the cigarette at the end of his fingertips.

"Then why are you so upset?"

"I'm not!"

"He causing you trouble?"

"Why do you care?" She snapped, looking at him.

"Because, Max, you're a piece of shit, but we're family now whether we like it or not meaning I'm stuck looking after you."

She rolled her eyes and threw her arms up in a shrug.

"What would I ever do without- Hey!"

Billy grabbed her wrist tightly in his hand, his knuckles turning white. She froze in fear and he leaned in, teeth gritted.

"This is serious shit, okay? I'm older than you. And something you learn, is that there are a certain type of people in this world that you stay away from, and that kid, Max..." he tightened his grip on her wrist and tugged on it. "That kid is one of them."

Max tried to pull her arm back but he gave it a shake, his eyes burning holes in hers.

"You stay away from him, you hear me?" He growled. "Stay. Away."

He roughly shoved her arm away and returned to his cigarette, and started the engine.

Max turned to the window in an attempt to hide her tears and quivering lip.

×××

The tires of the chief's car blew sent dirt and dust flying in his tracks. The car bounced as he crossed the end of the dirt road and onto the bumpy field on the pumpkin patch.

He drove to the center of the pumpkin patch wasteland and the car swerved to an urgent stop. Hopper got out of the car and grabbed the shovel he kept in the truck bed and closed the trunk.

He walked through the fields, shovel over his shoulder to the very center of the field. He stopped when he reached the strongest patch of rot and decay, the patch where the most flies occupied.

Where everything had been killed.

Shovel in hand, he threw it into the ground and began his excavation.

×××

El started at the files before her. Familiarity tugged at the back of her mind at the words 'missing experiment'

Curious she opened it.

El frowned as she read, understanding only bits and pieces.

Before her was a collection of papers stapled together that were typed, like it belonged in the folder. On top of that were scraps of paper, one of them was a photocopy of an old news article, a small section of it highlighted, and then several handwritten notes in red ink. It looked like Hopper's handwriting, El thought. There were scribbles of red ink on several pieces of paper, off to the side with several footnotes in different articles

The first thing she examined was a piece of paper from Hopper's notepad, the one, she recognized from the Don't Be Stupid Rules. It was a messy jumble of words like he was trying to get them down on paper before he forgot. They were scribbled quickly and were barely legible.

"Another volunteer pregnant. Either escaped with kid, or escaped and gave birth?? Woman killed, daughter lived (presumably) Somewhere in Hawkins???"

El frowned, reading further, intrigued.

"Hiding?" The word was scratched out with a single line, next to the words, "she wouldn't remember."

Below that was a small bullet point list of the kid's possible traits.

"13/14 y/o female

Orphan?

Adopted?

Living on the streets?"

El's mind snagged on the familiar word, 'adopted'. She remembered when she first heard it, Mike's voice echoed in her mind.

《●●●》

"...It's funny actually, [Y/N] is from Hawkins. Or at least that's where they found her."

"...Dustin was so young he doesn't remember any of it, but I think him and his mom were visiting family here and they just... found her, I think?"

《●●●》

El's' first initial reaction was to dismiss the thought, it couldn't be Y/n. But the doubt vanished almost as soon as it came. Memories of her week with Y/n came flooding back to her mind. Granted, she often dwelled on this week, but this time was different. She looked at moments in a whole new light, and it only made sense that it could be Y/n.

《●●●》

"Oh, he was such a great student. Oh, he's going to leave a hole in the community." A boy farther down the bleachers mocked, beginning to fake sob.

Y/n began shaking, El noticed, facing the boy who spoke, visibly furious. El's eyes fell to Y/n's hands. They were gripping the bench she sat on and El noticed the hot shade of pink her friend's hands were turning.

"[Y/N]!" She heard Lucas whisper, making Y/n look at him.

"What?!" She asked.

El watched curiously as Y/n's eyes fell to her own hands and seemed shocked at their hue. Y/n's mood seemed to change drastically El noted, and then she realized Y/n was looking back at her, slightly panicked and confused. El's eyes fell to Y/n's hands one last time, knowing something peculiar happened that couldn't be easily explained.

It almost reminded her of when she used her powers for the first time...

No. It couldn't be.

She shook her head ever so slightly and remembered the word Y/n had taught her. Looking at the boy that upset Y/n, she repeated it back to her.

"Mouth breather."

Much to El's excitement, Y/n chuckled slightly and smiled at El, seeming to feel slightly better.

"Yeah." Y/n nodded. "Yeah, mouth breather."

《●●●》

El thought about that moment a lot. Y/n had always shown that she cared about her, and was truly the first real friend she ever had, besides Mike of course. But she always felt close to Y/n in a different way. A way she couldn't really explain. And she felt truly happy and proud to be the one to make her friend feel better in that moment.

It was no big feat, but to El, it meant a lot.

The only thing that came to mind to explain how she saw Y/n, was another word she had learned from Mike.

Sister.

But she supposed that's why she often overlooked the odd moment with the bench and her red hands.

Then, of course, there was that moment at the school, minutes before she said her goodbye.

It was very hazy though, and she could only remember bits and pieces. After all, she was fighting consciousness when it happened.

El never really understood how she was rescued from Papa that night.

But she did remember being knocked back slightly. And how all the bad men had been standing around her, holding her friends hostage, and then the next thing she knew everyone was on the ground. And a sense of warmth in between. She had still been awfully cold from the bath, her clothes were still slightly damp, but in between consciousness she felt a small and brief burst of warmth. She remembered thinking it felt nice on the still damp and cold dress she wore.

El realized she never really stopped to think about how they escaped. Especially when she hadn't done anything, that she could recall of course, besides getting rid of the woman that killed the nice man who fed her. And the guards with her.

Then Papa showed up. And she called out to Mike. And then the warmth.

As El dwelled on the memory more, she remembered something she didn't before. Something that was said after the warmth.

"'Surprise'" El repeated her voice barely above a whisper.

Y/n. It must have been. Y/n must be the missing experiment, she realized.

It only made sense.

She remembered how tired Y/n had been after they escaped Papa. She must drain easily like she does.

And she must have done something when they got briefly separated when they were all fleeing from the vans. That would explain why Y/n passed out.

But had known? She must not have, El thought, because she was almost certain that Y/n would have told her.

El realized she had been rereading the same sentence over and over again this whole time, as she considered these things.

Shaking her head slightly, she focused all her attention on the words once more, trying to make sense of what they meant.

It was a single sentence at the bottom of the same notepaper, in quotation marks. It was a quote.

"This baby was supposed to have some sorta,"

The words she read next, made her shiver. She couldn't quite say why, but she knew it was important.

Familiar.

"untapped potential for the greater good"

Maybe it had been one of the many things Papa and said to her to get her to work harder.

How she could be just what he was missing.

No, no that wasn't it. How she was what he had to work with.

'She would be enough.'

'They didn't need the other one.'

'Eleven had her potential.'

El hadn't realized her eyes were watering until she noticed she could barely make out the words anymore. Her vision was blurring.

Was Y/n the one Papa had been whispering about all this time when he thought she couldn't hear?

She sighed heavily, setting down the file folder down in her lap.

El looked around the room, steadying her breathing. Her eyes fell on a pinkish-red folder than sat in the box.

She set the missing experiment files down next to her, and picked up the new folder.

El realized her knees were aching so she rose to her feet, taking a seat on the couch.

"Ives. Terry." She read aloud.

She recognized the name from the small mention in the other folder. Curious, she opened it.

Not unlike the other folder, it was an organized mess of articles and files. The first one she read was in big letters and it caught her eye first.

"INDIANA WOMAN SUES D.O.A. CLAIMS CHILD WAS STOLEN"

She looked to the picture below it, and her heart ached thumped. She had no memory of ever seeing this woman but for some reason she felt like she knew her.

She turned the pages over, and found another article.

"DAUGHTER JANE TAKEN WHEN SHE WAS A BABY, IVES CLAIMS."

"Jane," she whispered.

El noticed a small handful of things, too short to be pinned in like the others, and was paper clipped to the side.

"CHILD ABDUCTIONS AGAINST HAWKINS LAB THROWN OUT."

and

"TERRY IVES SUING - 'They Took My Daughter' By Benjamin Buck"

A specific passage from this article had been highlighted and underlined more than once, like Hopper had looked over it several times.

"Ms. Ives suit seeks unspecified damages against Dr. Brenner and his facility, alleging physical abuse, sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and multiple allegations of kidnapping both attempted and successful..."

Next to it was another note from Hopper.

A question of his had been crossed out, and statement was written beside it, as if he answered it.

"Attempted and successful? 'Attempted' must be missing experiment."

El was about to flip the page when she noticed a small corner peeking out from under those two articles. Placing one hand on the files, she grabbed the corner with the other to find a photo.

It was a photo outside Hawkins Lab, of Terry and next to her was,

"Papa," she whispered in slight fear.

Eli suspected who the woman was, but something in her needed to know for sure.

She could contact her.

No, the TV was still broken. But the radio wasn't, El realized.

With picture still firmly in her hand, El grabbed the radio from the bookshelf and her blindfold before returning to her spot near the files.

She knelt down on the floor where she left the missing experiment folder and turned on the radio, switching through all the channels until she finally heard the static she was hoping to find. El placed the radio on the floor next to her and secured the blindfold over her eyes. Holding the photo tight in her hands and bringing it up to her heart she searched.

She was back in the familiar void. She saw a woman in a rocking chair, facing away from her. El couldn't see her face but it looked like the woman from the photo.

She was muttering something El couldn't quite decipher until she walked closer.

"Three to the right. Four to the left."

El had reached the woman she believed to be her mother, her heart pounding. She walked around the chair to see the same woman, but older, aged by time and trauma.

Her eyes were closed, but she was still mumbling passionately as she rocked slightly back and forth in the chair.

"Rainbow. Three to the right. Four to the left."

El was standing in front of her now, watching her with worry and confusion.

"Rainbow. Three to the right. Four to the left. Four-fifty..."

Her eyes ripped open and she looked at El lovingly.

"Jane,"

It was her. All the doubts she bad washed away and she looked at her mother.

"Mama?"

She stepped forward, leaning down ever so slightly. She extended her hand out to her mother, her mother's finger twitching slightly as if she were trying to reach out to her daughter.

El placed her palm on her mother's hand, having given her nothing more than a loving squeeze when suddenly her mother disappeared under her very fingertips.

El breathing picked up and she looked around frantically, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Mama!"

She grasped feverishly thought the air, where her mother once was, watching the dying smoke of her image escape from her grasp.

"Mama?" She wailed.

She dropped to her knees in defeat, sobs wracking her body. Back in the living room of the cabin, El cried out still clutching the photograph.

"Mama! Mama!" El shrieked, pain enveloping her heart.

She ripped the blindfold off her eyes and she felt her upper lip grow wet from the blood mixing in with her snot, tears staining her cheeks.

"Mama..." she sobbed as if by some miracle her mother would hear her cries and come for her, comfort her.

She was told her mother was gone. Hopper had told her that. And there her mother was, alive, somewhere out there.

And just like that, she was gone again.

El collapsed in on herself, holding her own head in her hands as she wept.

||Reader's POV||

The trip to Will's felt like hours, but eventually, we rounded the corner and found ourselves on Will's lawn. Mike and I ditched out bikes and ran up the porch steps. Both of us were still panting from our ride over here, we went as fast as we could.

I knocked on the door quietly but urgently, and waited. That was until, Mike sighed growing impatient and pounded on the door a little harder.

"Hello?" He called.

"Will? Mrs. Byers?" I added.

I heard muffled footsteps and then the deadbolt unlocking.

Mrs. Byers peeked her head out, reluctant to show any more than her own frame.

"Hey,"

"Hey, Y/n, hi Mike" She eased.

"Mrs. Byers, we don't mean to intrude but is Will here? We were hoping to ask to him, see if he's okay."

She looked over her shoulder, growing antsy.

"You know what? Now is not really a good time,"

Mike beat me to it.

"Is he okay?"

She sighed, looking over her shoulder briefly once more, and stepped out onto the porch with us. She closed the door behind her.

"Yeah. You know, he's... he's just not feeling real well."

She kept walking, putting a gentle hand on either one of us, politely ushering us away.

"He's lying down, so I'll tell him you two stopped by, okay?"

She gave us a polite smile and retreated to the door.

I didn't bother to stop myself from what I said next.

"We know about the shadow monster."

She turned to look at me, worry and recognition flashed across her face.

"Will saw him, didn't he?"

||3rd Person POV||

"Mew-Mew! Where are you? Mew-Mew!"

Mrs. Henderson poured out her cat's dinner in the usual bowl, just as her son walked in the front door.

"Hey, Dusty!

"Hi, hey. Hey, mom." Dustin spoke quickly, his movements just as quick.

He was anxious to get to his room and check on Dart.

Mrs. Henderson frowned and straightened up.

"Everything okay, Dusty? Where's your sister?"

"Oh, uh, yeah she's hanging out with Mike and Will. Everything's fine" He said quickly.

He slipped past his mother and into his room. He closed the door and locked it behind him, making his way to the terrarium and shedding his hat and backpack on the bed.

"Dart, I've gotta talk to you, buddy. It's about my friend, Will. I think-"

He ripped off the pink sheet and his stomach dropped.

The glass was broken and slime was everywhere. It was a pale olive green and it dripped from the remaining shards of glass and all over the sand.

And exactly where Dustin had left him, was what looked like a thick, slimy sheen of green film.

Hesitantly, Dustin picked it up to examine it, and he cringed in disgust.

"What the hell?" He whispered, horrified.

Dart had shed his skin.

Dustin jumped in fright and whipped around when he heard a deeper but familiar screech come from the opposite end of his room. Behind his chair.

"Dart?" He said.

Dustin heard a horrible squelching noise, followed by grunting.

His heart pounded loudly in his chest and slowly he crept forward slowly.

His eyes fell to his rug and he noticed a trail of shredded pieces of skin. These pieces were much darker, almost black, and they looked less smooth.

Dustin still heard grunting and growling from behind his chair and he gulped as the trail of skin turned into streaks of blood. It was stained into his carpet and up his chair.

He heard a sickening crunch as he approached the corner, what he found behind the bloodied chair made him gasp in horror.

A dark green slimy creature on four legs hungrily and viciously attacking the lifeless and bloodied body of Mews.

Dart looked up from his meal and faced a horrified Dustin, his long slimy tail flicking back and forth. He roared, causing his head to open up, hundreds of bloodied teeth showing as any other Demogorgon would.

×××

Dusk had fallen over Hawkins, and Hopper panted heavily as he dug. He had been digging all day and it was growing harder to see. The horizon was now a soft lilac bleeding into a darker shade of blue.

His limbs ached but he never yielded, striking the shovel in the dirt for the thousandth time. He had dug a miniature crater that he now stood in, the dirt and untouched ground around him reaching the top of his hat.

Dirt flew over his shoulder and landed in the many mini hills of dirt that had formed around the edge of the crater.

Panting, he threw his shovel into the first once more, and just as he was about to give in to the doubt that he dug in the wrong place, he felt the shovel slow and heard an odd squelch.

His hopes rising, he swallowed his exhaustion as best as he could and dug faster. He held the shovel in the air, before heaving it into the ground with a forceful grunt.

He felt the shovel break the oddly thick wall and pulled the shovel back up with all his strength. He heard the substance rip and tear as it broke and it was soon followed by a sharp hiss as air escaped from the opening. A hiss reminding him of a hiss of compressed air leaving a can of beer.

A small hole formed as dirt filtered through the hole he had created.

He brought the shovel up once more and slammed into the ground. He heard it bubble as he prodded the ground. He cringed at the smell that wafted into his face and chunks of the ground came up with the shovel.

Hopper paused and looked on, mystified and concerned.

He didn't know what he would find below his feet and the thought scared him now. Nevertheless, he dug a hole big enough to fit through and he lowered himself into the ground.

He planted his feet on the ground and caught his breath. Flashlight in hand he looked at his surroundings. He was in a dark tunnel and familiar flakes of dead earth floating in the air.

"Oh, Jesus,"

It was the same purple-blue tunnels from Will's drawings.

Tunnels from the Upside Down.

+++

Tag List: @dickkwad @aimee-lucass @iblesstherainsdown-in-africa @miscellaneoustoasts @happyandlonely @missmulti @youpi-chan @peeperparkour @ba-responds @bibliophilesquared

DM me if you want to be added!

#stranger things #stranger things 2 #will the wise #will the wise pt. 4 #will the wise final part #will byers x reader #will byers #y/n henderson #el hopper #dustin henderson #mike wheeler #lucas sinclair #max mayfield #billy hargrove #joyce byers #jim hopper #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine

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caspian-skye · 4 years ago

Text

The Apoptosis Project Ch.8, Making a Statement

“Twenty-five years after Salem's defeat, twins Caspian and Lazula Skye are finally of age to attend their father's academy; just in time for the Creatures of Grimm to return. While fighting the revived horror alongside Frontline Biomedical's controversial Organic Androids, they begin to unravel a web of secrets ensnaring more than they could have ever known.”

"Okay, let's go ahead and get started for the day!" Professor Corvis-Braun began eagerly. Caspian looked to the lecture hall's stage, where Lilly's mother peeked over the podium. Whenever Caspian had seen the diminutive, feathery-haired woman in the past, she wore some stylish mixture of cardigan, blazer, skirt, sweater, vest, and tights. Her outfit never strayed away from moody hues of black, white, midnight blue, and silver. Apparently, her work attire was no exception.

"Welcome to your first day of Interspecies History!" the professor announced. A pair of dark eyes flicked to the full rows of long, rounded tables forming eight half-circles up to the back of the room. "I'm Professor Corvis-Braun, but you can call me Professor Corvis if it's easier. Or Professor Braun, I love my husband. This class has the reputation of being a bit dry, especially at a school that teaches Grimm Studies and Practical Weapons Training. But! It's important. Plus, every year I've had a handful of students that really take to this class, so that might end up being you!" She took a sip from her water before continuing. "This is a special year for me, because my own daughter happens to be in this room! I won't call her out, but-"

Lilly smiled and turned, waving to the rows behind her.

"Oh! Well then, that's her," Professor Corvis confirmed above a chorus of laughter and "aww"-s. "Anyway, though faunus are equal in law now, and a big city like this sees very little overt racism, we're living in quite an important time right now. Can anyone tell me why this class has become so relevant?"

After several seconds, she pointed to a hand toward the back of the room.

"The Red Claw?"

Professor Corvis-Braun pulled back a bit in surprise. "Yes! I mean, that wasn't the answer I was looking for, but that's an important issue we'll cover in depth starting next week. Any other answers? Good answer, by the way."

At the furthest section of the room, a few rows back, Noxis raised his hand. Professor Corvis called on him.

"I wouldn't count them as a species," Noxis began, leaning back in his chair. "But are you talking about Organds?"

By the end of his first lecture at Sentinel, Caspian's wrist burned from writing, and his stomach was empty. The beginning of class saw a quick, broad overview of course content, which eventually shifted into administrative and logistic details of the class. Professor Corvis finished with a minute to spare, just as the zipping and shuffling of all the backpacks in the room began to drown her out.

Caspian clutched his stomach. "Man, I'm hungry. After Grimm Studies, you guys wanna meet at The Roots?"

"I'm down. I'll ask Ichigo," Rowan agreed.

"I suppose I'll stop by for a bit," Lilly said. "I'm meeting a new friend later this afternoon, though."

Unease crept into Caspian's mind. A new friend...

"Want to come to The Roots after next class?" Caspian typed into his Holoband. He looked across the room.

Noxis flashed his Holoband's screen, looking at it for a few seconds. He shut it off, slung his bag over a shoulder, and made his way out the door.

As Cedar Hall, Sentinel's first-year dormitory building, was built into the side of the steep hill holding the academy above the bay, The Roots Cafe was below ground level on one side, but well above the street on the other. One wall was almost entirely windows, revealing the impressive view from shopping center to the North, to the flat tract of land across the street that held the SFC, sports fields and sparring courts to the South. Looming furthest away, against a backdrop of skyscrapers and sea, was Sentinel Stadium.

The Roots itself was quite cozy, Caspian thought. The side furthest from the windows was a winding maze of counters and kiosks. It got fairly busy at dinner, but the food seemed decent so far, a selection from all over Remnant. Toward the windows, comfortable booths and tables in many shades of brown found space among gently curving half-walls and wooden pillars. At each end of the cafeteria was a near-abstract mural of huntsmen and Grimm.

The day after initiation, Rowan found a round table nestled in a half-circle alcove facing the window. Every meal since, he had refused to sit anywhere else.

"The flesh of Frontline Biomedical Technology's Organic Androids is created from human stem cells. The 'organic components,' as they are called, are mounted onto a titanium alloy and carbon-fiber frame, making Organic Androids nearly indistinguishable from humans," Caspian read. "Though they look much like us, what would be their brain is actually called a 'Brain-Core System.' The 'core,' in the android's chest, handles power and low-level internal functioning. The 'brain,' in the android's head, allows for higher-level processing. However, it should be noted both brain and core are incapable of thought and emotion."

Caspian looked up to Lilly expectantly.

"I see..." she pondered. "I think you do a wonderful job of setting up the issue, and differentiating between Organd and human. However, I fail to see the main point of your paper. I believe it would be helpful if you transitioned into your main point from what you have now." She looked to him. "Do you have any ideas?"

Caspian pursed his lips. "Hmm... I guess, I'll talk about how people generally respect Frontline because of its medical advancements, but there's a lot of distrust toward Organds." He looked up from his screen. "People don't like things that look so human and... aren't."

"Why'd your mom have to go and assign a paper on the first day of class?" Rowan complained. "Always seemed like a nice lady, but that's just cruel."

Lilly's lips drew up in a muted smile of amusement. "It's only two to three pages, and is worth a very small portion of your grade," she reminded. "This is more a measure of your starting point than anything. Have you started?"

"It's due Monday, right?"

"Yes."

"Nope. I think I'll start Saturday. Maybe Sunday," Rowan responded. He tore into his sandwich.

"I think I'll distinguish between combat models and companion models too, because their internal coding and ability to fight is different enough to note," Caspian commented, leaning into his laptop. He struggled to type a few words with his left hand, his right still wrapped up in a sling. "Writing an essay is hard enough with two functional hands."

"What about third gen Organds?" Ichigo inquired.

"They're not out yet. I might mention them, but I don't think I know enough to say much about them..."

Rowan raised a finger, gulping down an ambitious bite of his lunch. "You hear that the third gen ones are gonna be able to eat? Isn't that weird?"

"They can't digest though, what happens to the food?" Ichigo questioned.

"Damn, good question," Rowan admitted. He flicked on his Holoband, typing up a search.

"We're eating," Lilly reminded. "Perhaps we should leave this question for later?"

"...So who's the new friend, Lilly?" Caspian asked, attempting to pass off his budding jealousy as innocent curiosity.

Lilly smiled gently. "Her name is Aspen. She's a second-year, we happened to run into each other when I was exploring the campus libraries."

Good. A girl.

Lilly looked down to her Holoband in surprise, and switched it on. "Oh, that's her right now!" she announced. She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, and shuffled across the half-circle booth until she was free of the table.

"I'll see you later!" Caspian bid with a grin.

Lilly waved, and was on her way.

"Y'know, one of these days it won't be a girl!" Rowan chided.

Caspian balled a napkin in his fist. "I know..."

"When are you gonna make your move? Sentinel's full of dudes. I'm just trying to help you along! You've got that 'childhood friend' thing going for you, but-"

"Can we please talk about anything else?"

Sentinel's dorms were a rough transition for Lazula. She had grown so used to her plush bed, giant bathtub in a bathroom with marble floor and golden faucets, and gourmet food whenever she liked. Now in the land of shared showers, standard-issue mattresses, and long lines in The Roots, at least getting up for her morning routine was easier.

Only a few days in, Lazula fell into her routine. Every morning, she would wake exactly at six. She would grab a healthy bite, and run the trail around Sentinel's campus. The loop was almost exactly two miles, so would take eleven or twelve minutes. Then to the Student Fitness Center right as it opened, when no one was around to gawk at her, or the weight she put on bar and machine alike. She would be back before nine to shower and take a second breakfast, making it just in time for her first class.

Classes had just concluded for the day, so the SFC was a bit more crowded than usual. Lazula walked up to the front desk, nodding to the attendant as she neared.

"Where can I find the Sparring Team?" she asked. "I heard there's a meeting here today."

"Oh, that would be..." the student at the front desk began. He keyed a search into the computer. "Room 202. Right up those stairs, first court on the left."

"Thanks." Raising her wrist up to the sensor, her Holoband pulsed once with vibration, and the hard-light door allowed her through. She went to the locker room first, donning her combat attire in its entirety before continuing onto room 202.

"As is the case every year, let's start by talking recruitment," a young man's voice declared from behind the door. Strong, but friendly. Lazula had heard the voice before. "Cole is already working on designing flyers, and I'd like to start handing them out in front of the library starting next week. I'll also ask the Headmaster if-"

The door shut loudly behind Lazula, drawing everyone's eyes to her. One hand rested on Impetus's hilt as Lazula locked eyes with the man, cocking her head back ever slightly.

"I challenge you to a duel."

He cracked a grin. The same impossibly white, straight-toothed smile that decorated Sentinel's promotional material, and advertisements for countless brands having nothing to do with huntsmen. His hair was styled just as neat as the pictures, a close shave on the sides and back of his head, with hair in front and top swept to the side in golden waves, one unruly lock drooping to his brow. She had never realized how thoroughly dark his eyes were.

"And here I was, wondering how long I should wait for you to settle in before challenging you," Midas welcomed. "I admire your initiative."

"I'm a twelve-time tournament champion at a new school with some of the strongest huntsmen in Vale," Lazula reminded. "It only makes sense I challenge the very strongest one here, and beat him."

Midas's smile continued. "Well, then. I accept your challenge."

Lazula drew Impetus from its sheath, positioning her feet and staring down her opponent.

"...After our warm-ups, of course!"

Lazula's shoulders sunk, and she sheathed her blade.

"Sure."

After a quick jog down to the water's edge and back, and a bit of dynamic stretching, Lazula and the rest of the Sparring Team returned to their room in the SFC. She had been sizing up Midas from the moment she agreed to warm up. She knew he fought with Resplendence, a halberd that unfolded into a bow, and channeled the electricity Midas produced with his semblance. He was well built but still looked nimble, and kept up with her on the run down to the water. He had a height advantage of over half a foot.

"By default, Sparring Team matches use a safety parameter of twenty percent. Is that alright?" Midas asked.

"Seems fair."

"Good." Midas pinched the screen he projected from his Holoband and flicked it upward. It hit a strange metallic structure suspended from the ceiling, and two screens flashed above the pair, displaying their names, pictures, and aura level.

Midas and Lazula took their places at opposing ends of the court. "It's too bad we're inside," Lazula said. "I'll have to hold back a bit if I don't want to break something."

Midas grinned. "I can hold back too! It's only fair."

Lazula shook her head. "That won't be necessary."

The excited buzz of the room quieted as a girl in robes of silvery blue stepped between them. "This is an impromptu sparring match between Team Captain Midas Baine, and challenger Lazula Skye," she announced. "The first combatant to decrease their enemy's aura level to twenty percent, or the combatant with highest aura level after five minutes, will be declared winner." She turned to Midas, then Lazula. "The match will begin after a ten second countdown."

As the clock began to count down, Lazula unsheathed Impetus, hearing the familiar, comforting sound of steel leaving its sheath. She pointed it at the ready, lowering her head.

As soon as she heard the tone, Lazula tore toward Midas. He stood his ground, halberd at the ready. Lazula smirked. "People should know by now that some attacks are just too strong to parry," she thought. She swung her blade across her body, but slashed through air.

Midas had spun around the side of her attack, and she felt a heavy strike down her back. Before she could turn, Midas spun his weapon and jabbed her spine, flinging her forward as she yelped with surprise and pain.

No one had hit her like that in a while, she recalled. Her first tournament? Or was it the second, over in Vacuo? It didn't matter now.

"No way! Look at her aura!" a voice called from the crowd.

"Ninety-five percent?! After a hit like that?"

She ducked under a slash parallel to the floor, pivoting into Midas and springing up with a vicious bash by Aegis. She slashed twice as he was knocked off balance, but her third swing was met by the shaft of his weapon. Cracking a grin, Midas channeled electricity down the length of his arm and into his weapon.

Lazula ripped Impetus away just as electricity began to course its way into Resplendence. She flung his weapon away and met him with an elbow to the chestplate before spinning and knocking him back with her shield. Midas slid backward, and used the distance between them to transform his weapon into a bow. He drew as Lazula ran forward, but at the last minute lowered his shot and let fly a bolt of lightning into Lazula's boots.

Electricity crackled across the ground as Lazula leapt over the attack, and crashed down on Midas with her blade. As his weapon rose to meet hers she channeled her semblance, taking his resistance into her own swing and amplifying it. Resplendence gave way, and Lazula slashed across his chest.

Midas's recovery was impressive. By the time Lazula swung back at him, he regained focus and parried her strike. A second and a third attack were met as well. Lazula took a split second to drop back and regain her focus before lunging at the golden-haired huntsman once more. "He's faster than me," Lazula realized. No matter how quickly she attacked, Midas's spinning of body and weapon alike caught her blade and tossed it back.

Finally, Impetus swung into Resplendence's axehead. Midas grinned, twisting his weapon until her blade was locked in his. Electricity crackled around him once more as Lazula attempted to rip her weapon free to no avail. She felt heat on her hands, then a seizing of her muscles, as if some searing entity inside of her arm controlled it from within. She let go of Impetus, and the Sparring Team scattered as the blade was flung their way. Midas turned and brought the head of Resplendence down on his unarmed foe.

Lazula blocked the attack with Aegis. Channeling as much of her semblance as she deemed safe, she wrenched her arm outward. Midas's armor crushed with the weight of her blow. He was flung back, providing Lazula an opening to retrieve Impetus.

She eyed the screen above her as she picked up her blade. She had been hit a few more times since, but her aura was still above ninety percent. Midas's hovered just over forty. The huntsman panted at the far side of the room, shoulders hunched. Letting out one last breath, he straightened and transformed Resplendence back into a bow.

Lazula raised Aegis to block a lightning bolt, then a second. She ran forward, keeping an eye out for more as she approached. She and Midas were locked in combat for several more seconds, before Midas ducked under one of her swings, and spun on the floor in an attempt to sweep her feet from under her.

Lazula buried Impetus's tip, vaulting over Midas's attack. She took its force into her blade and channeled it into her legs, blasting Midas with a potent kick to the gut. He rolled into the nearest wall, losing Resplendence. Lazula jumped after him, finishing their fight with a final strike.

The Sparring Team broke into hoots and cheers of excitement. With one foot on the ground, Lazula stepped on Midas's chestplate, bringing Impetus's tip dangerously close to his throat.

Her triumphant glare softened. She sheathed her weapon and extended a hand.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" she asked as Midas took her hand. "That last hit was a bit much for how much aura you had left."

Midas met her worry with an easy smile as he walked over to grab Resplendence. "No need to worry about me, I'm durable!"

Lazula huffed in amusement. "You're not bad. That was fun." She looked to the crowd that began to fill the sparring court, then back to Midas. "How do I join the team?"

Midas shook his head with another smile.

"After a fight like that, you're in."

#rwby #rwby oc #rwby oc fanfiction #rwby fanfiction

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beansthembo · 5 years ago

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I need to do a bit of a vent about the new Star Wars movie. Spoilers below.

I’m having some trouble processing what happened. If you’re reading this, you probably are interested in my opinion on it, and you probably also know that I was a big fan of The Last Jedi. By no means was it a perfect movie, but it took the chance of distancing itself from the rest of the series by springing off of what was established in TFA and building something new. A lot of people weren’t too pleased by this, and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms, but being completely transparent, I can’t listen to most critics of it because most of the people I know in real life who didn’t like it are racist or misogynistic.

TLJ tried to introduce people to the idea that, in reference to the new canon, just because it’s new and different, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Kylo’s/Ben’s line, “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to,” finds meaning in this, though a bit extreme. TLJ was going to learn from the past films and move on, for better or worse. TROS is determined to wallow in its past. As a lifetime fan of Star Wars, I can’t bring myself to hate it outright, like many vocal critics of TLJ, but I find myself severely disappointed by the decisions made in it.

I’ve honestly spent too much time composing those last paragraphs, as if I’m a legit critic or reviewer. I’m just kind of going to present my nitpicks and criticisms as they come to me.

So, first a few nitpicks:

-The opening crawl seems... poorly composed to me. The first line is “The dead speak!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but they don’t usually use exclamations in the opening crawls. I know I just spent the last couple of paragraphs defending new ideas, but the opening crawl always seemed as though they were meant to present information formally from a neutral perspective. Not a major criticism, but it did bother me a bit.

-What happened to Kyle’s TIE Silencer? I mean, it could’ve been destroyed in the previous movie, but I don’t really remember that happening. Either way, it seemed to me that they made the decision to make his ship more similar to the Interceptor, as, like, a ‘safer’ choice, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have just had the same ship.

-The Falcon has a round dish again? You know, now that I’m thinking of it, the dish may have been blasted off in TLJ. I just was surprised by that.

I may add to that list later. the actual problems I had were:

-Rey is sort of obsessed with ‘earning’ Luke’s (and Anakin’s) old lightsaber. Which has been repaired, by the way. She doesn’t actually ‘own’ it, even though she’s been using it for the past two movies, she’s just been borrowing it from Leia. I was really looking forward to seeing her make her own (or already have her own) lightsaber, which she does, but she waits until the end of the movie to show it off. And it’s rad as hell! Wtf? why couldn’t she have been using that the whole time! It’s one of my favorite lightsaber designs now and they show it for a whole two seconds!

-They finally give Snoke a backstory, and it’s... that he was Palpatine’s puppet the whole time. I’m gonna say, not the worst backstory they could have done, but they really tried to make him just not matter at all. I mean, yeah, the way he was done off with in TLJ was pretty unceremonious, but I always felt that meant that the real big bad was meant to be Kyle all along. Instead, the Skywalker saga becomes the Palpatine saga. I’m not opposed to the concept of Palpatine surviving and attempting to resurrect the Sith, but that’s something I’d expect from a novel, not the main story of the final movie in the franchise. And, honestly, regardless of whether or not Snoke was secretly Plagueis, I always thought he was supposed to be some other ye olde sith master, not just some sort of failed clone(?)

-Kyle rebuilds his fuUcking helmet. Why? What purpose does it serve? He doesn’t even wear it most of the time. The longest period he wears it is when the First Order officers comment on it. He’s just being dramatic. Which, I suppose, would be in character, but after the scene in which he shatters it in TLJ, it seems pointless.

-Another nitpick, but when they expand upon Rey and Kyle’s ability to connect through the force, it seems a little... disjointed. I do like that they took the time to expand upon that, even though I thought Rey closing the Falcon’s ramp on him at the end of TLJ was symbolic of her cutting him off, the way they presented it seemed, well, off. Like, it makes sense if you take it at face value, but if you start to think about it at all, it sort of... weird. I dunno how to describe it. Like, they interact with each other’s environments, but can’t see what they can interact with until they interact with it, and they can trade items, and... yeah.

-The big one... Rey’s a Palpatine. Her father was Sheev’s son. (When did that happen, huh? Who’d want to get with that wrinkly mess?) Why the everloving fuck couldn’t Rey just have been Rey? Why did she have to be related to someone existing in the franchise already? JJ’s going around saying that this was his plan the whole time, which is bull fucking shit, because otherwise they would have communicated this to Ryan, and I’m pretty sure TROS was originally going to have another director in the first place, and ALSO I’m pretty sure JJ did say at some point that Rey’s parents only mattered to her. While I’m on the topic of fan theories and origins, nobody in the movies was ever concerned about who Snoke really was. They knew who he was-the Bad Guy. Nobody ever cared who the Emperor really was in 1983, so why was Snoke’s death and non-explained origins such a big deal? I have more conflicted thoughts than I can even put down, so i’m gonna move on.

-Oh, before I forget, they just completely write off Rose. She’s present, but they minimize her screen time. I get that a lot of people didn’t like her, and there are some valid criticisms of her that aren’t completely rooted in racism and misogyny, but I never found any problem with her. I actually felt she was pretty relatable. She meets a hero, trips over her own words, and then learns why you should never meet your heroes. Disillusioned, she’s about to turn him in but they come up with another plan, and together they visit a world full of people she joined the Resistance to get away from. I’ve got that same feeling about those sorts of things-while I do enjoy a decent amount of privilege, I still, you know, fight against the system that gave it to me. And I can’t stand to see people abuse others just because they don’t have that privilege, so hearing her speech about wanting to punch a hole through that city did mean a lot at some level. Then, at the end, when she’s like, “this is how we win. Not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love,” I can even relate to that. It’s when, like, you explain to a kid how you hate something, and they jump on the bandwagon, and get real angsty, and then you’re like, “no no no that’s not what I wanted you to learn!” It’s hard to describe it with my rapidly deteriorating attention, but I never thought she was a bad character.

-DJ wasn’t in it! I mean, he wasn’t the most important character, but I still wanted to see him again.

-They have this fake out where they pretend Chewie was dead for a whole 20 seconds. I totally called it, too-the ship he was supposedly in blew up (or rather, Rey blew it up with force lightning accidentally), but since he didn’t die on screen in front of us, I knew it had to be a fake out. And it seems like the only reason for that was so they can find out that Hugs was the traitor, who is only betraying the First Order to see Kyle lose, which I mean fair, but then he’s unceremoniously killed off by the new big officer guy who we’ve never seen before but was supposedly one of the Emperor’s top men. I don’t think his name was even mentioned in the movie-or if it was, it had zero staying power. Also, they have this part where Threepio had his memory erased for a while before being backed up by Artoo. The lead up to it was very dramatic- Threepio’s generally been a comic relief character up to this point, and now he’s got to give his life for the cause (He had a translation of some Sith runes in his memory, but his programming prevented him from saying the translation aloud, and his memory needed to be wiped in order to access it), but as soon as his memory is wiped they do not give two shits that one of their best friends basically died right in front of them. Then Artoo brings him back and still no one cares.

-Poe and Finn do have a nice dynamic in the movie, but then we find one of Poe’s exes and he starts flirting with her and its like no Poe your husband’s right tHERE POE DON’T DO IT (and don’t dismiss this as shipper nonsense because John Boyega and Oscar Isaac both wanted FinnPoe to be a thing and acted through the movies like it was already don’t you say this is the first you’re hearing of this)

-The way that Rey defeats Palpatine is by crossing lightsabers in front of him to deflect his lightning?

-Reylo is canon NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (Insert the gif of Vader yelling no at the end of ROTS)

-Also why does it always have to be a planet destroying superweapon? I know legends did that a lot but there doesn’t always have to be one for there to be stakes.

I think there was other stuff, but my brain is too scattered at this point to make any more cohesive thoughts. I mean, there was a lot of stuff I did like about it- Lando’s back! And i think Wedge is too, but he was on screen for about a second and a half, so I couldn’t tell. It was confirmed that Leia had force training, and even had a lightsaber! And I do like that they’re taking some inspiration from Legends, but I’m pretty sure Dark Empire was not one of the most popular series’ from it. I also did like Ben seeing a vision of Han; It’s not entirely clear if it was a force ghost thing (I am of the belief that Han was at leas a little force sensitive) or if it was just Ben sort of coming to terms with his actions, but the scene was pretty well done in my opinion. Also, Rey taking the name Skywalker at the end. That was nice, like she chose her family.

Now I just remembered a couple of things-Finn was basically confirmed to be force sensitive, but the way they did it felt very ham-fisted. Like, they weren’t like “he felt a disturbance wink wink nudge nudge,” they were like “HERE IS SOME SUBTEXT THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY SUBTEXT SEE HERE” like they never outright say it but it would have been less insulting if they did. Also, they introduced a force healing thing, which has been a more of a thing in the games, but we’ve never seen it on screen before. But like, Rey dies at the end and Ben brings her back and then [REDACTED] and then he dies, even though, like, a lot of things. I don’t know I’ve been typing for way too long I need off.

Anyway, it felt good to vent, thanks for reading if you did. I give TROS 6.5/10.

#Star Wars #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #vent

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whatadaze · 5 years ago

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oh anne,

okay so i started this show after fifty years of seeing it float around here on tumblr and one of my closest friends grew up reading the books so i was familiar with the story. couple days ago i was looking for a new show to watch and was like “okie i’m going to start anne” and i’m so glad i did! i have to admit, the first episode was really long (but understandably) and i sort of let it play in the background while i unpacked. i found anne a bit annoying at first but after the second episode i was like, you know what? this little girl is INSPIRING.

so here’s my hot take (that no one asked for lol)

**possible spoilers ahead**

anne CLEARLY has issues with anxiety, ptsd, and even some bits of mania, but the thing is, she doesn’t let that hinder her. she had such a horrible upbringing but learned to console herself with books and her imagination. it sounds a bit childish but if you really take the time to look at it, it’s quite beautiful. she was able to create something so wonderful despite her less than wonderful circumstances. she never uses her past as an excuse for anything and just views it as something that happened to her and led her to where she is now.

and oh my goodness, the family dynamic between marilla, matthew, and anne! seriously one of the best television relationships i have ever seen. i love how cold and expressionless marilla is at first but she is one of the kindest, warmest characters i’ve ever seen. she doesn’t let anne get away with anything but does it reasonably and out of love. matthew is such a softie when it comes to anne, but he is just an overall softie towards everyone and i love that. anne just has that effect on everyone she meets because she is truly out of this world. which leads me to...GILBERT.

wow, what a cutie. i know it might seem weird to root for a couple that is so young, but just knowing that they do in fact end up together in the future makes this whole thing even more worthwhile. he is just so intrigued with her from the very beginning and i mean, i can understand why. anne is just so different from the other girls and really turns the town of avonlea upside down (in the best way!). and man, the way gilbert stares at her and challenges her and even the way he teases her is just so adorable. their relationship is so pure and they match each other so well! i’m so excited to see their relationship grows and watch them fall in ~lOvE~

now, the friendships on this show are amazing! if you know me at all, you know i’m a sucker for strong girl friendships. i’m sick of seeing girls pitting against one another, and i’m glad that for the most part, the girls on this show support and love one another! daina is the cutest and purest bean and i was hoping she wouldn’t be a stuck up rich girl when she was first introduced. (i’m glad i was wrong 2.5 seconds later!) she is EXACTLY what anne needs since she has never had a true friend and i’m so glad that she is there to support her and encourages her imagination and (sometimes) wild thoughts! ruby was a bit harder to warm up to but you know what? she is just a bit ignorant and i’m glad she has diana and anne to tell her what’s right + wrong. i think ruby has good intentions and she means well, and she is just such a cutie. i really couldn’t nOT like her, you know? and ugh, the rest of anne’s friends are super cute as well and i just love how anne brings her imagination and creative storytelling to the school + help stir up the rest of the kids’ imaginations as well.

another thing i’m gonna touch base on is the topic of family. ugh, i love how this show teaches its viewers that family can be chosen as much as it is assigned by blood. and that sometimes, the ties that we choose to MAKE are often the strongest. of course, the main example would be the cuthberts. they are the least traditional family to say the least, with marilla and matthew never have begin married and anne being an adopted orphan, but their family dynamic is one of (if not THE) strongest bonds on the show. and i love them so much and want to protect them forever and ever!!! another example seen is at the end of season 2 with cole. he is such a talented, amazing kid but you can clearly see how depressed and out of place he feels with his own family. he can’t be his truest self and that really hinders him from being his BEST self. i’m so glad that he decided to live with Aunt Josephine at the end and CHOSE his family. HE CHOSE WHAT WAS BEST FOR HIM. lkajdflkjas

and omg, i’m so glad aunt josephine played such a big role this season with all of the children. man, i aspire to be her. she is such a good influence on the children and i am really looking forward to learning more about her and her backstory!

now i’m going to take a second to just rant a bit about the “antagonists” of this story. first off, MR PHILLIPS. i know this show is set in the 1800s but i COULD not handle the whole mr phillips x prissy thing. i know it was deemed “acceptable” back then but something about it always seemed disingenuous and wrong. (we learn later exactly why....) but man, the way he just took out his own internalized homophobia and anger at cole was just...IT WAS SNAPE LEVEL (AND THAT IS NOT A COMPLIMENT WHATSOEVER). for an adult to lash out on a child is never acceptable and lkajsflkd it just angered me so much.

and bILLY OMG is every evil character just named billy? jesus, i could not stand that kid. he was truly a punkass for no real reason. (not that having a reason would’ve justified it) but i’m glad that cole still apologized to him and told him to think about why he destroys the things he does. and MAYBE that scene with the fox is hinting at a redemption arc of sorts in s3? i hope so...bc i’m sick of him pushing everyone around and calling everyone BUD. THEY ARE NOT YOUR BUD, BUD.

ok last thing

when you think about the fact that this show is a children’s show, it makes the whole show even MORE amazing and out of this world. they tackle subjects such as feminism, mental illness, homophobia, racism, sexuality, bullying, and encourages kindness, imagination, reading, learning, and friendship. you might be thinking, “ugh this show is just trying to push its own liberal agenda” um excuse you, it is NOT. they don’t force it down your throat and are able to incorporate these topics in a natural, fitting way. it doesn’t stray from the storyline and fits really well into each episode.

ALRIGHTY so that’s enough of extra shan for now

i’m so excited for season 3 and even though it’s airing in Canada first, i am willing to wait because this show deserves all the OFFICIAL views !!!

i’ll try to avoid spoilers till then...

(random sidenote: i really wanna gif this show but have no idea where i can download the episodes...help...ajlfksdjla)

ok toooooodles

#anne with an e #shan watches anne #shan is extra again #with these long ass posts

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