#like i said i havent had the emotional energy to watch this show a lot but ive been feeling pretty good recently

[sunflowers-and-sweetviolets]

habib albi Mon chéri jaanu Caro Mo Stoirín or whatever

[castlebyersafterdark]

ok just so i just finished s3 of heartstopper which i know you dont watch but SPOILERS BELOW in case anyone does and ofc this relates to byler

so this season had heavy themes of losing your virginity. in the end the main gay male couple sleep together and its implied it was penetrative because they'd already been seen to do other things on screen, + had a conversation about said things on screen ("do you think it still counts as sex if its just touching?"), and then one of them buys condoms and lube, also on screen, and some of the positions we finally see them in are also implicit of anal sex. lots of visual and subtextual storytelling. the characters are 16, the age of consent in the uk.

and i havent seen any reviews yet but i have to say that after not feeling too connected to the season as a whole, compared to the previous ones, i was hit like a truck with emotion when the scene finally happened, mainly because it was about self-acceptance and body image as well as the underlayers of self discovery and identity, internalised homophobia etc. it was honestly so beautiful, i burst into tears. I feel like whatever happens with byler, it will be so emotional and moving for me, judging by how intensely i responded to Heartstopper with almost no prior emotional attachment.

it also cemented what i knew, which was that handled well, byler + sex seen on screen could be so moving and earned. the tone of HS is so much more wholesome than ST and ofc its audience is teens - its heartening to see a show aimed for teens address these important themes, but i must acknowledge that ST was made for adults who are going to be looking back on this era and their youth, and therefore will be expected to react to sexual content in a more accepting, mature and experienced way (i.e., not freaking out, even if it is gay sex).

but it also made me think of the ages of the actors and characters. i think HS actors are over 20 now, but the tone as i said is very light and somewhat idealistic - the sex scene was very much about love and acceptance, it was sweet, and even though characters called each other 'hot', I as an audience member did not find the scene titillating. storytelling is about provoking emotion in the audience that reflects the story, and if a scene is supposed to be received as sexy, and if that makes sense for the story, then fab. but unless i'm missing something because i'm not a teenager, HS was not supposed to be sexy.

and that makes me think that if the main audience of ST is people looking back to youth, then perhaps any byler sex scenes will not be designed to be titillating, either.

and it makes me think what the original trajectory of ST would have been if delays hadn't impeded filming. even though F + N can pass for teens in costume, something about their acting styles + the tone of the show makes me feel like they'd have a different energy than HS during sex scenes. i think this because even as young teen actors/characters, the scenes and tone of the show was very serious and mature. i genuinely wonder what a HS-style scene, that is very sweet and about only love and acceptance, with no titillation, between byler would play like. would it fit the tone of the show? will the focus perhaps be on the danger that byler are overcoming and the beauty of that, which contrasts the HS characters who are living in a very different world when it comes to queer acceptance?

in short, do you think that desire will be something the audience is allowed, or even invited, to feel vicariously through the visual storytelling with byler (as it often was in sex scenes in older films, which celebrated love AND desire), or will it play purely as innocent/loving as is more in vogue in storytelling today?

ofc this is all assuming there will be a sex scene culmination to their story. seeing as we are seeing so much church imagery trickle through, i can't help but think they'll really be leaning into the Us vs. Them themes, and they could really go very bold with this as relates to gay sex + traditional christian values. I mean, the symbolic connections of altars/worship/sex are manifold. if they do something as wild as byler having sex on an altar in an abandoned church/ achurch in the UD, it would be so incredibly clever that I don't think i'd care if it was titillating or not!

p.s. i tried to use titillating as much as poss for that one anon lmao

To use my favorite word on here - fascinating. It was very early on with this blog, that I started off approaching the topic of Heartstopper with a bit of a biased view based on assumptions and influence of different online circles and outside opinion. Now, while I'm still unsure that I'll ever personally watch it - everything I've learned and what some lovely people detailed about it, I understand it's impact and place in media and what it stands for so much better. I just wasn't exposed to it accurately.

That's so interesting with the themes of the latest season - really intriguing. I think it's really cool that conversations and storylines like that are being depicted with care on mainstream media aimed at teens and young adults as the intended audience? Because I think sex and coming of age have often been topics for TV, but there's a wide range of how it's been shown. So rare for queer storylines, too. Especially in this way. There are examples, but they are much more limited. So, that's kind of really awesome to hear.

Moving and earned. That's key! The show needs to tell its story as is and trust the audience it was intended for. I think as an adult (not that I'm super old, no, but I'm not a highschooler) I was judging HS too harshly because it wasn't relatable to me. But, I shouldn't have. It's tone can be relatable to a lot of types of people. Same with ST. The intentions are different depending on what's needed for the story. It's interesting because there have been different tones for the sex scenes/romance of the show.

I'm not sure if the Steve/Nancy scene was meant to be hot? I didn't think so, but it was perfect for the tone it was telling, what it meant for the characters. To me, it felt so typical of teenage coming of age and pressure and trying to be someone else and how desire and love can be confusing. I don't think their scene was meant to be titillating. Maybe someone else can weigh in - while in comparison, even if I'm gay and not personally attracted to the concept of straight sex - man, the Jopper kiss was hot! That was clearly the intention! They showcased a buildup over the course of 4 seasons to that. Moving and earned and hot. And it wasn't even sex - which is why some argue for/against them getting down and dirty in season 5 - would it serve the narrative or would it be fan service? Personally, I love a little fan-service and it would be a contender to show the adults having a love scene, but the show hasn't shied away from realistic teenage sex so when you think about it, we've got Jopper together and we'll now see what that means in this last season, but the more I think about it, sex in the show has always moved the plot along. Yet to be determined what plot would be moved along with Jopper - and at this point, the entire point might be because it's titillating.

Byler???? Plot and earned and moving and dare I say - hot? I feel like. They could be a candidate. Hot as a way to showcase desire. Drive home the impact of the relationship. It's a build-up and we have one season to get the payoff of the relationship and the depth of their feelings - where as a show like HS the show IS the relationships, so the more "wholesome" aspect is due to the fact that it's entirely a slice of life coming of age story. Stranger Things is coming of age but it's not slice of life. The pivotal moments need to be a bit more distilled and dramatic and hard hitting. That's why Nancy and Jonathan had their sudden night of passion. It made a point. Byler is our slow-burn, but I feel the burn will become a blaze. I think soft and subtle and sweet is a disservice to their point in the narrative.

I'm not sure they're honestly going to go at it on the alter on the church but ohhhhhhh you are serving a visionnnnnn, literal holy shit. That's hitting so many alarms bells for me in a very positive way, my mind is spinning now. That's so very horror-coming of age-titillating romance. Wowza.

And hey to the one anon who loves the word titillating - we love you!! You're an icon of this blog!!! 🫶🫶🫶

[zannadu]

This is just a continuation of my last post but with the Dekusquad.

Includes: Izuku Midoriya, Shoto Todoroki, Tenya Iida, Ochaco Uraraka, and Tsuyu Asui

Warnings: fluff, kissing, suggestive stuff, and Todoroki being Todoroki

MHA as Stoners

Continued

Izuku Midoriya

Izuku doesn't usually smoke by himself, he will only do it in a large group of people if they are all doing it.

He is a big cougher

Will take the smallest hits

Not because he doesn't want to

But because that's all he can handle

(God he's so precious)☺️

Eventually, he will get up there, though it takes a while

He is usually shy and VERY awkward around girls that he likes

Especially you

But when he is he turns into a whole new person

He is SUPER confident and will make moves on you till the night's end

He is super grabby

Don't worry he's still a respectful gentleman so if you tell him to knock it off he will (as he should)😌

Likes to brag about how you are all his

He is also super goofy

He will also be super affectionate 💕

———————————

“Izuku if you don't stop right now, ” your sentence was cut off by your outburst of laughter. Your hand tried to muffle the giggles and snorts resigning from your mouth. Izuku continued in his goofy manner of wiggling his eyebrows at you. His face moved from side to side until it was in front of yours. He stopped and just stared at you.

“What are you doing?” you asked, lifting your brow at him. He then raised his eyebrows once more, squinted his eyes, and pulled his lower lip under his teeth. You covered your mouth again in an effort not to laugh. He eyed you up and down and released his lip.

“Damn baby girl, did you sit in sugar, cuz you got a pretty sweet ass, ” he smirked at you waiting for your response. You began to laugh again and put your hand on his chest.

“You're too much Izuku.”

Shoto Todoroki

He really likes dab pens

He has one of his own (can you blame him?)

He doesn't share much as it is or show much emotion and is usually awkward in social encounters

And he still is even when high

He doesn't change much while smoking, except for maybe talking a bit more

He will have actual conversations with you

If you're alone with him he will talk to you about anything

He is a lot softer

Doesn't pick up on social cues until like ten minutes later

He is a lot slower though, in his smarts

Will say the most random shit like

“My dad is a piece if shit”💩

“We know Todoroki” 💁‍♀️

Or he will ask personal things that he shouldn't without realizing

———————————

Shoto hit his one and placed it down in his lap. It rested gently in his hand, as he let out the puff of smoke he stared down at it. A million thoughts crossed his mind in a second. Then out of the blue he remembered something he overheard Kaminari saying to Mineta earlier that he did not understand.

“Wath she hot?” mineta clenched his hands and practically shook while waiting for Kaminari’s answer.

“Dude she was a total MILF!” Kaminari said, almost a little too excited.

What the hell did that mean? And why do I care?

At the time Shoto shrugged his shoulders and forgot about it. But as of now, stoned to the bone, he was curious. And who better to ask than his closest friends.

“Hey guys, ” he looked up at his friends who were all now focusing their attention to him awaiting his question.

“What is a MILF?” he said oh so nonchalantly. The rest of the group all began to start laughing and clutching their stomachs in pain.

“I just heard Kaminari say it earlier and I wanted to know, ” he shrugged again and glanced around the now hysterically laughing teenagers.

“Uh, Todoroki it's not that appropriate to talk about, ” Midoryia scratched the back of his neck, his face entirely red from the situation.

“Oh,” he plainly replied.

Tenya Iida

We all know he isn't one for breaking rules, let alone the law

(though he literally almost committed murder👀)

He doesn't smoke very often but when he does he gets very paranoid😒

He always thinks that he and his friends will get caught

Honestly it's kind of a buzz kill

No one likes someone freaking out the whole time you are trying to chill

Be tries to cover any smells with WAY to much cologne

(it smells good though)

And is always chewing gum so you can't smell it on his breath

Eventually he will relax but only to an extent

He will make sure you're okay every five minutes and offer to get you anything

Like you're sick

But honestly he just cares and he can't help it

He likes to go for walks though🚶‍♂️

———————————

“You guys Mr. Aizawa will smell it!” Iida's hand flew through the air as he addressed the smell now filling the room. Iida frantically picked up the cologne sitting on the desk next to the best and began sporadically spraying it around the room and on everything.

“Iida, calm down it's going to be okay just come sit down, ” Tsu said from her corner, her finger pressed up against her lip, as usual. He turned to look at her.

“But I don't want to disgrace our school and have our homeroom teacher discover that we are smoking drugs in here, ” he sat down unwillingly as everyone choked on the cologne he sprayed and sighed.

“Fine, ” he looked over to you to see how you were doing. You smiled at the boy who was now flushed.

“Hey Tenya, would a walk outside calm you down?” you suggested grabbing his hand and interlaced your fingers with his. He looked down at your now intertwined hands and back up to you the flush beginning to grow deeper.

“I would love too, ” he grinned back.

Ochaco Uraraka

This girl can't afford her own 🌿 so she's gotta mooch off of her friends

Not that they mind

She's a giggly stoner

She really enjoys getting high, in fact she does whenever she can

She also loves to get stoned around you

Because she loves to see you smiling and can't help but laugh at everything you say

You could literally as the dumbest shit and she will laugh💀

She doesn't like other people cuddling you and will tell anyone off if they do

They should know that she likes you

She might make a move on you if she's feeling brave

———————————

“Stop y/n, you're killing me!” Ochaco wrapped her arms around her stomach as she continued to laugh until she almost threw up. Gosh, she's so queasy. All you did was make a joke about how deku always breaks his bones while he's using his quirk. This left her giggling uncontrollably and deku as red as ever.

“I can't help it, man, I'm just too funny, ” you shrugged and watched the girl laugh.

Eventually, when you got tired and wanted to go to bed Ochaco offered to walk you to your room, which you accepted. Once you reached your door you said good night and reached to open it.

“Wait, y/n, there is something I've been meaning to tell you, but I just havent had the courage to say it, ” she grabbed your hand and looked at the ground. She squeezed your fingers ever so slightly and returned her gaze to yours. Her face made her way to yours and she planted a ever so soft kiss on your lips and instantly pulled away.

“I like you, ” she said grabbing your other hand. You stood there in shock, and looked at her. Suddenly, you kissed an unexpecting Ochaco right back. You kicked open your door, lips still attached, and pulled her into your room sealing the exit behind her.

Tsuyu Asui

This girl is hard to read but I know if she likes to smoke, she would like bongs

She likes the bubbling sound it makes

She is very blunt as is and even more so when stoned

However if you can get her to laugh, she will not stop

She is also very funny, and will try her darn hardest to get you to start laughing uncontrollably

This girl is also apart of the alphabet mafia🏳️‍🌈

Try and change my mind😤

Will have the biggest crush on you but won't do anything about it

Will wait for you to tell her

Bottom energy

Definitely loves to shotgun with you

May lead to more things later

———————————

Tsu took a hit off of the long and passed it onto the next person. She turned to you, still holding the smoke in her lungs. You simply nodded at her and slowly leaned in towards her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she parted her mouth every so slightly. Your lips just barely touched hers, sending shock waves through your body and hers. But as much as Tsu wanted to kiss you she couldn't. She then released the smoke out of her mouth, sending it straight into yours. You inhale as much as you could and open your eyes to look at the girl in front of you. The smoke then was exhaled as you both held eye contact, lips still touching.

“Uhhh, ” The moment ended once the other teens began to speak.

You both looked around at the confused teenagers, who were apparently staring at you both the whole time you were doing what you were doing.

“Sorry guys I don't know what happened, ” Tsu tried laughing it off but you knew better, and you continue to stare at her.

She continued to talk to her friends story and change the subject. And in that moment you never wanted to kiss her more than right now.

Let me know if you want more!!❤️ thank you for reading!!

[solarcal]

new post time! @wolfstar-flatsky cause yeah it was getting rllyyyyy long and is about to get a whole bunch longer cause i figured some stuff out so gonna talk about that too 😌

also im currently making the post about my ocs and that story sooo 👀 hopefully i dont get sidetracked and finish that soon lol 😅

they do know the rebirth cycle, not like right away but they learn from a young age but lmaoo i didnt think of that, god that would be so funny, just “shit did i actually already do this or is this a feeling from my past life? hmmmmmm” but yeah they do know where they came from and where they’ll return to

mm yeah the spirits are like grandparents watching little kids run around like awww look how much energy they have, they’re having so much fun, so cute :3

im glad you like that idea so much!! i was really struggling to find a reason why the spirits had so many copies of the exact same clothes or how they were so accurate with haircuts or something and then i was like wait! its my world i dont have to follow logic! and bam magic :3 on the teaching part, its probably either the first time, they help guide your light into the right shape so you know how it feels and you can then recreate it or like they somehow gift you the knowledge, maybe by giving you a bit of their light so you carry that piece of them and that knowledge with you forever idk which do you like better? which works better?

haha yes they can actually talk, bc otherwise my story is gonna get real complicated real fast, emotes and calls dont rlly exist bc that’d be weird, not being allowed to wave cause u havent met someone and you can see other people without having to light them and you can talk to them freely without having to be friends because lol that wouldnt make sense, but this does mean if you want to dance, you have to actually learn it, you cant just watch a spirit do it and then perfectly copy it but! sky kids are extremely expressive :3 the move around a lot! gesturing with their hands and pointing and just very bouncy and flappy hands :333 cause i said so and they deserve it 😌

okay onto some new ish stuff that i thought of :p

so like economy and money is sky, uh theres isnt really one? like money doesnt exist and so usually sky kids will just give things away for free or trade things, like if youre a seamstress and you want a special wood carving you can offer an outfit or something in exchange, people are incredibly kind and if you give them something for free, they will remember it and be sure to pay it back later

also because of this, its next to impossible to be poor, you dont have to buy or pay for a house, if youre down on your luck, people will just help you out, giving you clothes and food, a place to stay for a while so you can look for your own house comfortably

speaking of houses, since sky kids are so nomadic almost? many families will have more than one house in different areas, they have their permanent house which is where they live most of the time and have most of their stuff in but sky kids will have extra, usually smaller houses, in other areas to vacation in or move to if they want a change of scenery for a while or if they travel a lot, they can stay in their extra house while passing through, like a large family could have a big house in village of dreams but then have a beach house in Binial for when they want to adopt a moth or one in Hirthlim to stay in while passing through or maybe they’ll get a house just cause it looks pretty while passing by 😊

also, houses are like, free lol, there are sky kids that just build them for fun and as long as its structurally sound, they can build it however they want! so theres many different types and colors and shapes of houses and lots of empty free ones, if you want a house, you simply need to hang a wreath of flowers on the door to show its claimed and that no one else can have it, every house has basic furniture which is needed because if you a wandering sky kid, you can stay in an empty unclaimed house for a day or two instead of sleeping outside, though some still do that (theres not rlly any hotels, well there is a couple in Valem and Empyrean but you mainly go there as a vacation, to relax and not have to cook your own food or make your own bed or anything)

anyway! got extremely off track there lol, starting rambling about the sky housing market :sweat:

uhh okay so like sky doesnt have an army, cause theres nothing to fight, but there are people who like spar for fun, like boxing or martial arts or like archery and fencing, plus most sky kids are trained in basic survival like climbing and fishing, just in case for when they are out exploring or wandering, most people are nice but there are a very very small amount of sky kids that others might need to defend themselves against (like that evil person hiding in Gaial 👀)

oooo fun time! its time for calendars and celebrations!! :DDD

okay okay so like god im not making a whole new calendar system so its the normal january to december, monday to sunday 24 hour day system, they have clocks to keep track but no one rlly bothers with them, they go off of the sun or moon in the sky and its always a vague time if they do use a clock, like two friends could agree to meet at like 3 pm and it wouldnt be uncommon for them to actually meet at 3:30-4 pm, scribes in the library are the ones keeping track of the years and major events and such

each realm has its own personal holidays but ima talk about the sky wide holidays first

each holiday lasts a month, so there are 12 major holidays, people dont celebrate every single day of the month obviously but it makes it easier to meet far away friends and family and making time for everyone, plus the mood and festivities can continue for longer :3 most of the holidays are based off of ones already in the game but theres two ive added and ive changed the others to fit better

-days of fortune is jan, specifically the first; theres fireworks and wishing everyone happiness and success and its incredibly popular time to change professions or try something new, moths come down more often in isle as well

-days of love is feb, specifically mid feb; this is when you just let people you know you love them, adoptions and confessions are very common in love, its a very soft emotional month

-days of prayer is march; this is when everyone thanks Megabird for all its done and wishes it well in it’s journey through the universe and usually they ask for advice or wishes during this month as its rude to do it any other month, this is also generally the month when moths learn more about Megabird and the religion

-days of bloom is april; celebrating the start of spring! the flowers are blooming and the air is sweet and everyone is energized for the coming months, moths born during this time are more playful than most

-days of nature is may; everyone takes a little time to appreciate the world they live in and how well it takes care of them and they take care of it, people visit their favorite locations and enjoy the scenery, photo taking and painting/sketching rises dramatically in this month as everyone wants a memory of where they’ve been

-days of rainbow is june; rainbows appear frequently around the world of sky! due to the fact that Megabird flies in front of the sun and the rainbows are a sliver of it’s brilliance reflected on the world

-days of sky is july; this was the month that either Resh was born or made king, depending who you ask, but generally people send gifts to him as thanks or be grateful for the services he provides such as the boat transportation system and the researchers

-days of summer is aug; the crops are growing and being harvested food is plentiful its a time for long days of hard rewarding work and storing the food away for feast, sky kids that arent farmers come to help them with either temporary labor or taking care of them after the long days in the fields

-days of lights is sept; Megabird draws closer to sky so everyone’s light grows brighter so for this month people start glow, the glow starts at the beginning of sept grows brighter and then mid month starts to dim so by the end of sept everyone is normal again, moths born in this month naturally glow a little year round and is the brightest sky kids during lights, makes them very easy to spot haha

-days of mischief is oct; time for funny pranks and tricks! everyone can dress up and be a little crazy! its a giggley time and people are relaxing after the harvest

-days of remembrance is nov; this is when people remember those who are gone, its days of the dead type thing, but its a sad kind of happy, cause they know their loved ones are safe and well and theyll see them again and it isnt forever, theyll return to sky one day; they cooked their favorite foods and visit their favorite places and tell stories and memories about them, its a very mellow time

-days of feast is dec; theyve celebrated their lost family now time to celebrate their current family! huge huge meals, people coming from all over to meet up, gifts are given and merry times are had!

i had this set up so you had remembrance with remembering your dead family and friends, then feast with appreciating your living family and friends and then fortune where you look forward to new family and friends to come, i like that bit a lot so i had to point it out to u :3

okay this is getting reallyyy long but i promise im gonna tell you about area specific holidays and explain food and how that works next time cause that’s gonna be a whole thing and its kinda important but god i talked a lot haha so ill leave that til next time :3

[wittykitty21]

Falling Together

//Shanexfarmer HarveyxFarmer Sebastianxfarmer??

TW !! Talk of self harm, suicide, drinking, abuse, death!!

Chapter Two; Warm and Cold Welcomes

As I walked into the Stardrop Saloon, Emily immediately ran over and hugged me. 

“You’re here!! You’re really back! I knew it was you the second I felt your energy hit the earth here.” She beamed. I hugged her back, I felt so accepted and warm here. She began introducing me to everyone, including a hot lean alternative guy with black swooped over hair, grey eyes and dressed all up in black along with a girl with purple hair and dressed in a black shirt with a frog printed on it. I assumed he was Robin’s son she had previously told me about. 

“Heyyyyy Guns n Roses, nice taste. I’m Sebastian and this is Abigail. Abigail smiled and  waved a little shyly  at me. Sebastian continued,“ Sure mom’s told you about me. What’s your name?” he looked flirtatious towards me, but before I could tell him, a flash of blonde hair ran over to me and i was immediately lifted at least two feet off the ground into a hug. 

“EVIEEEEE!!!!! I can’t believe its you!! We have so much catching up to do since we last made mud pies together. ” He smiled and put me back down. Me being slightly startled from his energetic golden retriever personality. Sebastian was laughing at the startled expression I had. 

“Awww Sam, missed me pushing you over and you crying when I beat you in video games? “ I smirked. 

“You know it! I’ve gotten pretty good over the years, you owe me unlimited rematches. And - Hey, I don’t think you’ll be able to push me over anymore, short stack. “ Sam was around 6′0 ft, and I had stayed at a measly 5′3 and a HALF since I was 13. I was happy Sam was the same overly optimistic ray of sunshine he had been since a kid. 

“Jeezzzz Sam give her some breathing room. Sorry about him, he’s always like this” Abigail chuckled. 

Sebastian slid back into the conversation, “So, Evie, is that your real name or is that your nickname?”

“Oh, yeah. I just go by Evie. My full name is Evangeline Eliza Jones-Destriu. I hate how long my name is.... and the fact my parents chose to hyphenate my last name.”  I smiled weakly. 

“Well a cute name to match a super cute girl with awesome fashion sense! “, exclaimed Abigail. “You have to show me where you get your clothes from.”

“As long as you show me where you got that frog shirt from, frogs are like one of my favorite animals.” I said excitedly.

After playing a little bit of pool with my new friend group, everyone else from the town started pouring in. I went up to Marnie, who was talking to Lewis. As I approached she immediately recognized me and hugged me. 

“Evangeline!!!! Oh my goodness. You’ve become quite the beautiful young woman. You look so much like your grandpa. I’m sure hes so proud of you for taking over the farm. I’ll be here to help you as much as you need getting started. When Shane gets here you should say hello to him.”

“Shane? “ I squinted a little, confused. 

“My nephew, you two were best friends whenever you spent the summers here.” she said a little worried. She noticed the bruise too, I tried to hide it behind my hair but I was starting to think it was inevitable. 

“I’m sorry Marnie, I have memory problems. I’ll talk to you more about it in private when we catch up, but if you point him out to me I’m sure I’ll remember his face. I’m just not good with names. “

Marnie seemed a little sad that I hinted at the fact life hadn’t been very easy for me. “He’ll be here in a bit, he’s almost always at the saloon after work. He’s usually over there near the fireplace and bar. If you want you can come over for dinner on Sunday, I’m sure you havent had a good home cooked meal in a while since living in the city.”

I smiled widely “I’d absolutely love that. I was just telling Lewis today about how much I missed your cooking.”

As I said that, a man in a tattered up hoodie, dark black-purple hair, who was quite broad shouldered and had a dad body walked inside the saloon. He looked void of emotion and tired. Emily wasn’t phased by this, she smiled and treated him like everyone else in the warm happy way she did. He looked almost angry at her for her being nice to him. That’s when Marnie said “Well there he is, that’s my Shane.” 

Maybe he just had a bad day, I thought. I thought about getting him something to eat to maybe cheer him up a bit. After all, I knew all about having bad days. So I walked over to Emily, and he peeked up at me, seeming annoyed. This built up anxiety in me, but my therapist said I needed to overcome my fear of upsetting people after all I’d been through. So I asked Emily, 

“Hey what’s Shane’s favorite food?”

“Oh, he loves pepper poppers. Um.... Evie, hes a little..... rough around the edges.” she smiled “but he has a good heart. He has a goddaughter named Jas, and he took her in.”

I nodded, and she handed me a plate of the spicy food. I walked over cautiously to him, he smelled like beer and whiskey. I slid the food beside him and he looked up at me kind of dazed, probably from the alcohol.

“Hey, I’m new in town, I don’t know if you remember me but I’m-”

“What the fuck do you want? I don’t fucking know you, so piss off and leave me alone.” He spat at me and didn’t even look me in the eyes. I stood back shocked, feeling tears well up. Emily went pale, Marnie, Sam and Sebastian saw the look of hurt on my face. I immediately turned around and went back to Emily. 

“Hey you okay? I’m sorry, he’s not normally that harsh. Here,” She said as she handed me a bottle of wine. “its on the house. I should’ve told you he’s uh, an angry person.”

I couldn’t speak, the feeling of panic and tears welled up in my throat and I knew it was visible on my face. I just looked at her and nodded. “I’ll be alright, thanks Emily. I just wasn’t expecting that. I’m gonna head home.” 

I took the wine and Marnie tried to stop me and talk to me, she saw the tears starting to come down and gave me a quick hug. As I turned to leave I felt like i was being watched, and I locked eyes with him. A sudden wash of recognition and regret hit his face. He saw he made me cry and i knew now he knew who I was. He put down his beer and looked like he was about to walk over. I almost ran out the door, and started sprinting towards the forest with the wine in hand. As soon as I knew I was out of earshot, I broke down. I looked for the pond my grandfather used to take me to when I was sad. 

---Back at the Saloon while Evie is in the woods, Shane POV--

Marnie walked over to Shane. “What has gotten into you? You grew up with that girl!!!! You made her cry after she wsa just trying to be nice to you.”

“I-I didn’t recognize who she was until she left. I’m going to find her and apologize, I’m sorry Marnie. I’m just--” he sighed. God. I always fuck up. He thought.

Marnie patted him on the shoulder “I know Shane. Just-- try to remember you’re not the only one who’s been through a lot. Okay?”

He nodded and left the Saloon to find and apologize to Evie. 

--Back to Evie in the woods, Shane POV--

I sat down at the edge of the pier and downed the entire bottle of wine. I hadn’t imagined something so small would make me relapse. The alcohol made me feel warm so i took off my long sleeve shirt and kept on my large band tee. The bandages and stitches itched with my mistakes. So I took them off. They probably needed a little air anyways. The vertical cuts that were held together with thread still looked pretty bad and they bled a little as I unraveled the wrapping, but they were at least mostly closed up with scabs. Around the wounds were bruises from Daniel, my ex -fiance. I could still see the finger marks were he had grabbed me on my arm. I cried somewhat loudly and just laid and looked up at the stars for a while. I started feeling dizzy, and tired. And the comforting numbness washed over me as everything faded into darkness. I thought I heard someone walking towards me but I didn’t care. They could kill me and I’d die happy right there. 

--Shane’s POV finding Evie--

I knew where she was going, the same place she went when she snuck out of her gradfathers when she missed her dad. I heard loud crying, like someone was in pain. It had to be her, I was already tipsy and quickened my pace towards the loud cries. Suddenly it stopped. Oh Yoba. Oh no. Why did it stop? 

I didn’t want to frighten her, so I tried to walk a little loudly. I saw a figure laid out on the pier, close to the edge of the side, she was about to roll off into the pond. “Evie? Hey.”

No response. Oh fuck. As i got closer I saw the empty wine bottle, and i felt a pang of guilt and worry. 

Wait. What the hell? I turned on my phones light and shined it on her, she passed out from drinking. But- what was...... 

I saw cuts on both her wrists that were obviously a previous suicide attempt, they were stitched together, but she also had dark bruises of all colors on her arms, and she had cried off her makeup, revealing a darkened eye as well.

I felt like I had just walked in on a crime scene. I never thought I’d meet someone more messed up than me, much less a childhood friend. What the hell happened to her? I tried shaking her awake and calling her name but she didn’t wake up. More panic and anxiety came over me. I picked her up gingerly in my arms to bring her to the clinic, she was so small and soft. She smelled like strawberries and vanilla. Shane studied her features. She had the same freckles, same button nose, same long eyelashes and dark hair as he remembered her having as she had when they were little. She was gorgeous too. How could anyone hurt such a beautiful fragile girl? What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I thinking this way? Get a grip Shane. 

I called Harvey, “Hello?” A groggy mans voice answered. 

“Hey uh Harvey, the new farmer girl, she’s actually a childhood friend of mine. I found her passed out drunk on a pier and she looks like she’s already been in bad shape. I can’t wake her up, I’m bringing her as we speak. She already has stitches and-- She’s just in a really bad way.” Shane’s voice quaked a bit at the end of his sentence.

“Okay, oh Yoba, thats not good. Hurry here as fast as you can okay? I’ll get things ready for her so I can immediately work on her. Is she breathing? “ The words Harvey said made me panic more. Fuck. I didn’t even check to see if she was fucking breathing. I looked down and she was breathing gently and normally.

“Yeah she is, I think she’s just really drunk. I’m not sure.” I said back.

I carried her in, set her down on the hospital bed. Holy fuck. I hadn’t noticed how bad she really was hurt. She hid all of it with clothes and her long hair. She looked like she had been beaten over and over again over the past month. Even her eye and jaw had small bruises that had healed. Who did this to her? Then I saw the cuts. They were worse in the florescent lighting. Those were definitely on purpose. 

Harvey looked pale at the sight of her. “Okay, here, see if she has any emergency contacts on her phone. I’m going to get fluids into her. Aside from that, looks like all of this was from previous incidents.” and he closed the curtain leaving shane in the little area next to the room. She didn’t have but a few contacts saved. One of them was Daniel, as I selected his contact I noticed the number had been blocked. The picture of him was a guy with blonde hair and blue eyes, the athletic type. Looked like a general douchebag. A text came in from a random number.

“What the fuck? You think you can just run away from me? Restraining order is just a piece of paper. I’ll find you. I know you’re probably shacked up with some scumbag, you whore. Not even your father wanted you, your mom died and its your fault. You’ll never find anyone better than me.” It read. That had to be him. The whiskey helped fill me with rage, I typed the number into my phone and left to the lobby to call it. 

It rang a couple of times before a condescending voice answered,

“Come crawling back already psycho? You should’ve done a better job at trying to off yourself bitc-”

I cut him off, “Don’t contact her ever again. Or I’ll fucking kill you.” I hung up. And blocked the number. Why was I doing this? She was practically a stranger to me now.

I shook my head and left her phone with Harvey. I needed to sleep. I’d have Marnie call Harvey tomorrow to check on her. I looked at her one last time before I left, I remembered we’d have sleep overs, and she still slept curled up on her side. 

I went home and told Marnie, she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Shane. I should’ve told you. Her father deserted her, he mother fell into drinking and killed herself. Evie found her when she was 18. Her grandfather died the same year. She has no one. I don’t know why she has bruises, but I suspect thats why she came here so far away from the city. Please be kind to her. ” She looked worried. 

“I-I...... yoba. I had no idea. She hadn’t-” I said then Marnie interuppted me.

“She didn’t come here probably because I wanted to run away from whoever hurt her that bad.”

I hardly slept that night, I got up for work in the morning and looked at the clinic on my way. 

I’m so sorry Evie. I need a fucking drink. 

[awkwxrdapple]

“I’m Ok” - Peter Parker (Soulmate AU) Imagine

Summary: When Peter falls through the reader’s window, hurt and wearing the Spiderman suit, the reader learns two things. One that Peter Parker is Spiderman, and the other that she has a soulmate. (The lore of this specific soulmate AU is explained in the imagine :))

Word Count: 2.2k 

Warnings: Mentions of blood (Peter is hurt) 

Peter had gone missing again.

How he managed to skip so much class, and still remain at the top, astounded you. Yes, you were at Midtown too, so were naturally clever and bright, but you found you still had to put the effort in with studying to make sure you had the grades you wanted.  

He should have been in Physics with you this period. But his seat behind you was empty. You tried to focus on the practical that was part of your final grade, but you kept wondering and worrying, where Peter was. Why was he skipping class? His enthusiasm for learning has always been obvious throughout the time you'd been friends with him. Ever since the first day of high school when you'd both gone for the same seat in Math class, and he conceded graciously and let you take it, moving for a seat further back in the classroom. It was a weird encounter, rather awkward but at the same time... cute? You and him had become friends, along with Ned. Peter and Ned were very close, as you would expect two male best friends to be, but you and Peter were also close in your own way too. You couldn't imagine high school without him. And now, yet again, you were staring at his vacant seat.

After that period had finished, you found Ned at his locker in the hallway. He had Spanish with Peter next, so maybe he knew something. Maybe he knew that Peter would be back. You greeted him normally and then hit him with the question at hand.

"Ned have you seen Peter today?"

"Yeah I did first thing this morning, but I havent since. Why?" He asked, swapping a textbook from his locker to his bag.

"He wasn't in Physics." You state. "He's missing a lot these days. I'm worried about him."

You didn't mind admitting that. And you knew that probably Ned was too, if he didn't already know what was going on. But Ned's frown at what you had just said led you to believe that he knew as little as you did.

"I am too." He says, confirming your thoughts. "Whenever I ask him about it though, he just says he needs time off sometime. And he doesn't seem upset by anything, so I hope everything is fine."

You hoped everything was fine too. But this time you don't say it, just ponder silently on what Ned's said. You agree that Peter doesn't seem upset at all. If anything, he seems to have more energy. He still looks tired from time to time, but he seems to have more bounce in his step. Like he's been exercising more or something. Maybe that's what it is, Peter's decided he doesn't want to sit in a classroom for hours on end even though he enjoys learning, and that he'd rather be out running or something.

"Anyway, I'll see you later Y/N." Ned says with a smile, and trots off behind you to Spanish. You turn to your locker after watching him leave, and pull you gym bag from it. You go straight to the changing rooms as you might already be late after talking to Ned. As you expected, you are, as the changing rooms are deserted as everyone seems to already be in the gym.

Throwing your bag down onto the bench in front of your other locker, you realise how much time you had spent today thinking about Peter. You thought you were just worried about where he was, so you tried to stop worrying. But telling yourself to stop worrying was like telling a giraffe to stop being incredibly tall.

You pull off the shirt you were wearing and folded it to put into your locker. You caught a brief glimpse of your reflection in the mirror in the door. Your hair was already tied up off your face, you preferred it that way, made it more practical. But on your chest, right over your heart, were two words etched into your skin.

Soul-marks appeared sometime during childhood. No-one had yet worked out why, or when exactly they would appear for each person. It seemed to be random in timing, and showed no distinct pattern. Yours had appeared a few days after your eight birthday. You had overheard your parents discussing it one evening when they thought you were in bed. Neither could work out why then, and as you had yours so young, you didn't really notice it for most of the time.

They are sentences, or words, that are spoken by your soulmate to you, at the moment you realise you're in love with them. You're meant to know instantly that they're the one, apparently you just know.

Yours was staring back at you now in the mirror of your locker.

I'm ok.

You had always thought that was an odd mark, not that you had seen many others. People generally tended to keep theirs private, like it was a sacred thing that should only be shared between them and their soulmate, which you has figured made sense. But you had heard of peoples being their names, or lucky for others, their soulmates names. Some were dull sentences, some were peculiar.

You finished changing by pulling the shirt over your head and down your chest to cover your mark, and headed into the gym.

The rest of the day went fairly quickly considering your mind was wandering elsewhere. You tried to focus on the rest of your lessons but nothing was going in like it normally does. You couldn't throw yourself properly into anything.

As soon as the final bell of the day went, you started home and sent Peter a few texts on your way. You asked if he was ok, and if did need anything, that you would want to help.

You received no reply. You had eaten dinner and had studied for hours and nothing had come back from him. You hoped he wasn't sick. But it was unlike Peter to be sick. You kept trying to think of reasons but you just ended up going round and round in circles.

The sun had set over the buildings by the time you stopped working. The sky had turned an inky blue , but not black, the sky never turned black properly in New York because of all the lights. You had been so engrossed that you hadn't shut your curtains. Closing your textbooks and stacking them neatly again, you walked over to do so. But as you reached up something, or someone, fell to cling onto your windowpane.

You let out a strangled yelp before seeing who was there. You fumbled quickly with the lock on the window to open it. Peter was hauling himself up to sit precariously on your window sill... in the Spiderman suit.

Even though it was fairly dark, you could see he was injured. He really didn't look good. He didn't have the mask on, Peter is Spiderman... and he was clutching it in his hand. He had dirt all over him.

"Peter?!" To say you were shocked was an understatement. And you heard it evident in your voice. You could hear how startled and concerned you were.

He rolled off your window sill and landed on the floor with a loud thud. You winced because you hoped you parents didn't hear and then come to investigate, and also did Peter just hurt himself more? He already seemed so battered. Him falling literally through your window won't do him any favours.

He lay on your floor his facial features contorted into a grimace, showing you how much pain he was in. He was clutching his left shoulder with his right hand. Now he was in the light of your room, you could see a faint trickle of blood was seeping from under his collar bone there too, as well as half his suit being torn away from his skin. The initial shock of Peter being Spiderman has dissipated. You had no time to worry about that now because of his current condition. You could talk to him about that later. Right now, he needed your help.

You leant down onto the floor next to him, and carefully moved his right hand to further down his body so you could have a better look at what you were dealing with. You started to a feel an unfamiliar burning sensation in your chest, which you quickly realised was emotional pain for Peter being so hurt. It physically hurt you to see him in so much pain. You couldn't bare to look at his face as it just reminded you of that. So you kept focused on your task.

His suit was pealing away from itself and him. Leaving open to the air a flesh wound seeping blood slowly, which was good all things considered as it didn't look too deep. The blood could have been coming out much faster. And it was seeming to stop as if it had already begun clotting quickly to seal the wound. The skin that wasn't covered in blood, was bruised purple, which you guessed was causing Peter most of the pain.

"I need to get to you shoulder." You said as gently and softly as you could. You wanted Peter to trust you and allow you to care for him. But seen as he had turned up at your window, you hoped he already did.

You went to carefully remove some of the torn suit to get a better look when Peter spoke.

"I'm ok." He said, voice cracked from the pain he was experiencing, but it was so soft, and vulnerable.

Before he had even finished speaking you felt it. A strong surge of energy flowing right through your body, and coming to rest in your chest, right where you heart was. You looked at Peter now, looking straight into his eyes as you simultaneously felt ecstatic, and calm at the same time.

You loved Peter Parker. Peter Parker is your soulmate.

"Y/N?" He asked, his voice now full of concern for you.

"I..." You couldn't get any words out. You didn't even know what you wanted to say. He was lying bleeding and hurt on your floor and you couldn't exactly turn around and say, "I've just worked out that I love you."

You hand instinctively goes to your chest, your fingers lightly touching the words above your heart. You didn't even realise you had done it until Peter looked down to where your hand had come to rest. His eyes widened as he clocked what you'd done. He wasn't stupid.  

"Y/N..." He said again but this time it wasn't a question. It was tender, with the concern still there.

You sat in silence. Both of you working out what to say to the other one. But you were both thinking the same. You both knew what had just happened. The pleasant buzz of energy still hadn't left you, making you feel high on it. It you weren't so overwhelmed you would have probably been grinning.

It was Peter who broke the silence.

"I have something to show you."

In one swift movement he lifted himself up on his better arm to sit facing you, and touched where you had been touching his suit. He very carefully tore more of the suit to show more of the skin on his chest, until four words were visible for you to see.

Sorry, you take it.

"Peter they're-"

"The first words you ever said to me, yes." He finishes for you, a light blush appearing on his cheeks. They're the words you said to Peter when you both went for the same seat in your first ever class together.

You're stunned into silence as it clicks into place in your head what this means. Peter loved you, since the very first time you met.

You sit back from him as your weight shifts so you're now properly sitting onto the floor. You hadn't realised that your had been sitting uncomfortably because of everything that was happening.

Peter loves you.

You love Peter.

This is what he's doing instead of being in class. He's Spiderman.

A soft, but forceful pair of lips on yours pulls you out of your thoughts. Peter kisses you like it's the last thing he will ever do on this Earth. And you kiss him back with just as much feeling.

Maybe you had always been in love with Peter. You had only just realised tonight though that you were. It took him falling through your window for you to realise that. It was just that final push of seeing him hurt and at his most vulnerable that made you see how you truly felt. Why you were so worried about him not being at school.

Peter has pulled you gently towards his lap, so you're half sitting on him and so your bodies are unbelievably close. You know you're getting dirty - but you don't care. Nothing else matters now. You've found a soulmate in your best friend, and you're currently kissing him. And it's an amazing kiss.

You stop kissing him for a second to rest your forehead on his and just to take in what's happening.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." He says breathlessly.

But you think you do. You now know everything. And everything is clicking into place.

Masterlist

[ledamemangociana]

RANKING HAISUTE (or the ones i’ve seen so far)

not that anyone has asked me, but i’ve literally been so hyperfixated on these shows for MONTHS and although i’ve gotten my bestie into them now, it’s not like i can bombard them with all these deep-ish dives into these things and how much and why i love them, so i thought HEY why not just put it out into the ether coz DAMN i really wanna talk about them.

under the cut for length (HELLA LENGTH) and spoilers.

let me preface this first by saying i havent seen ALL the shows yet. i havent ever watched the first run of Itadaki No Keshiki, and i havent seen any of the new Karasuno cast shows yet, as by the time i had gotten hooked on these shows, the time to watch Strongest Challengers and Battle At The Garbage Dump on DMM.com had passed, and with my limited budget (i havent been able to work properly since literally mid-July last year), it’ll be a while before i can afford their twin pack DVD when it comes out next month. ALTHOUGH i am hoping to be able to download Fly High on DMM.com before the availability runs out in the middle of March, if i’ll actually have enough money for that.

additionally, i rank these from my least favorite to most favorite, but that does not mean that i hate or dislike any of them. in fact, i have little to zero negative things to say about any of these shows. i just happen to love some more than the others, and i think you’ll be able to tell by how long i go on about each show. i’ll TRY to keep things concise but im telling you now, i’ve already tried this once until an accidental button press erased everything i had written, and this will not be short. at all.

i’ll start first with the things i love about Haisute in general:

quite obviously, the projections. before i finally saw Haisute this year, i had only ever seen BNHA, KNY and Kuroshitsuji musicals, and while they have awesome set pieces, i had never seen video projections utilized the way Haisute does, and i think it’s so wonderful and creative, and so technically sound on everyone’s part. like, it has to be so precise with cast performance and blocking and sound and lights...like. dudes. shout-out to the tech staff of Haisute, y’all are amazing.

the acting performances in general. i dont think there’s a bad actor at all in any of these. some stiff-ish performances (Noah Ishikura as Lev, but mostly in SoE, which was his first time acting ever, so understandable), maybe, but even those actors do great when they’re having a pivotal moment, scene or dialogue. it’s hard to pick faves but somehow i do have them, lol - Kenta Suga as Hinata (obviously), Kentaro as Daichi, Hiroki Ino as Suga, Kousuke Asuma as Oikawa, literally ALL THREE BOKUTOS, literally BOTH AKAASHIS, Ami Saito as Yachi, Tatsunari Kimura as Kageyama, and my top two faves, Shori Kondo and Takato Nagata as KuroKen. for obvious reasons (see: my numerous gifsets that i still have so much to add to alkdjf).

the music is WONDERFUL. the varieties across shows, teams and characters while still maintaining the main themes are just so good. it’s easier for them to be highlighted to since there isnt any singing, and so many moments are told through the music rather than the music accompanying the moment imo.

the choreography is gold af. im sad we lose HIDALI after Tokyo Battle, but im sure the rest of the shows still keep that amazing spark. but i juST. HIDALI’s choreography is iconic. i’ll talk abt it a bit more in some of the entries in the list.

OKAY, now on to the rankings.

7. View from the Top (2nd Run) so again, I DONT HATE ANY OF THESE SHOWS. the reason this is at the bottom of my list is mostly because of what it doesnt have through no fault of its own, rather than anything that it does. i personally love watching character growth and evolution, so for the most part, the first story in anything that has multiple follow-ups tend to be my least favorite part, and i come to enjoy them more as a “look how far we’ve come” thing. that being said, i do think this was such an awesome show to kick-off what has become an iconic 2.5D franchise. so much of it feels like the transition from potential to kinetic energy. a little show that could, and then did. i do think i enjoy this more with a nostalgic sort of fondness than i do with a “look how cool this thing is!” feeling, but again, that’s coz i enjoy watching things changing rather than at the start. what definitely stands out to me here is that i came to it this as only my fourth 2.5D franchise, and the ones i’d watched before this were so different in staging and execution, and that really had me hooked. also, this franchise honestly is one of the best casting in any show i’ve ever seen in my life, like wtf, i havent seen a badly cast actor at all, even for the side characters i dont really pay that much attention to otherwise. you cant help but be sucked into the bright light that is Kenta Suga, and Kousuke Asuma has to be the most Oikawa Oikawa to ever Oikawa anything Oikawa. Tatsunari, Ryotaro and Justin absolutely jumped right out of the manga and anime and onto the stage as Kags, Tsukki and Asahi. and GAWD do i love me some Kentaro and Hiroki as DaiSuga. i went in a big fan and simp of Hiroki Ino and Sugawara, so for the first couple of watches, i was heavily focused on Ino!Suga, but by the third rewatch, Ken-chan came around a corner and smacked me in the face with a 2x4 wrapped in barbed wire. when that man smiles, i just get murdered.

6. Start of the Giant i honestly had a hard time picking between this and InK for the bottom spot, not because i hate this (AGAIN, I DONT HATE ANY OF THESE SHOWS), but because of how this show feels to me. ultimately, i picked this one to win over InK because of how much character progression is shown between these two shows. stating the obvious, KAZUMA KAWAHARA. HOO BOY. and big, BIG shout-outs to Kouhei Shiota for portraying Tanaka’s emotional roller-coaster so excellently to stride alongside Ennoshita’s big journey and Kazuma’s powerhouse performance. i also wanna spotlight how much more comfortable Tatsuya Kageyama was in his second go-around as Kags, and how well Keita Tanaka and Naoki Tanaka came in as new(old)!Daichi and new!Suga. it took me a while to get to this show because i was so sad to lose Ken-chan and Hiroki after SoE, and i thought i just would not be able to love DaiSuga the same way. turns out that that’s a good thing, because they do play similar but different DaiSugas to Kentaro and Hiroki. it possibly also helped to know that KT wasn’t entirely new, and to have known of Naoki from BNHA (with Hiroki!), although i hadnt known it was him until i started the show up at last, lol. Kentaro got to play a captain who was warm and very much one of the boys, someone who was growing into the role of a captain of a team that had a very real chance of going farther than it had in a while, while KT got to play a Daichi who, fittingly, was more established as a pillar of the group (and im sure the storytelling of this show helped with that), more of that Dadchi that we know and love. Hiroki got to play a gentle but mischeivous Suga who was all about watching over and taking care of the team, watching and waiting for his turn while understanding that Kags was their best chance, while Naoki got to play a more active, more athletic Suga who was becoming more active the closer the team got to Nationals. their performances stood out not just coz they were new, but because of the theme of this story in particular, about captains and leading, so i thought it was quite a nice way to welcome them into the fold. i also of course enjoyed Johzenji and Wakunan, maybe Johzenji more than Wakunan. i saw someone say they’re a bit like Fukurodani and Nekoma lite, and i can totally see and agree with that. this show also feels a bit like Revival lite, in that it’s got a fun first half and then a more action-packed second match with an emotional gutpunch at the end. but ultimately, this is lower on my list because, through no major fault of its own, it felt like a filler show, considering what was coming after this. it felt a bit like “lets’ get on with this story so we can get on to the last hurrah that everyone is looking forward to.” of all the side teams to have been portrayed in the Engeki story, i feel like i remember johzenji and wakunan less. again, that’s not really anyone’s fault, it’s just where this show was positioned in the timeline and what it was ultimately representing. as a parting thought tho, i just wanna shout-out the new lighting scheme they did for this show, especially coming from SoE where there was a lot of darkness or back-lighting. this show is brighter lit in general than most of the shows that came before it, and idky exactly but i do appreciate that a lot.

5. Winners And Losers objectively, this is probably one of the top 3 shows in all of Haisute’s history. but it’s lower on my list because it is the most taxing to watch and rewatch, not because it’s too slow or anything like that, but because it really just is such a tiring story, and i think that’s deliberate on the part of the writers and directors. this was Karasuno’s first major loss, and it was against an opponent they thought they knew, so of course the lead-up had to be a big deal. it’s also a story that revolves quite a bit around kageyama reaching a turning point and learning a few lessons that would ultimately change him, so the story had to also execute that change happening not just in Kageyama but around him. add to that the fact that this was Tatsunari’s goodbye performance (as well as Shohei’s as Noya, but then he doesn’t really get a big emotional moment here) and it’s just heavy on the emotions all around. the comedic distraction of ShoriTaka as Tetsuko and Kenko was honestly quite welcome, lmao. quick little shout-out to Kousuke Asuma and Allen Kohatsu as IwaOi, since they got to really show off the different sides to both those characters in this, and they just are stellar in general. that bit at the end of one of their flashbacks where Iwa-chan tells Oikawa that he’s not the only one fighting, there’s six people in that team, and Oikawa breaks into laughter as Kousuke strips off the flashback jacket, and Iwa’s like “uuuhhh did i hit you too hard, or?” UGH, i love that bit, that almost creepy laugh from Kousuke and the way he comes out of it to say “suddenly im not so upset” is just SO good. im also so happy to see Hiroki get his due as Suga when he finally gets to step up to the plate - or net, as it were - and basically pinch-hit for Kags. he plays senpai!Suga so sweetly, like you really can’t help but love him coz he’s so caring. i also did not expect to be hit right in the feels with the switch back from him to Kageyama, but that bit where he says “it’s frustrating, but hinata’s expression when he’s hitting my sets is different from when it’s yours” really got me. and then when he had to leave the court, asahi and daichi send a fist bump his way, and he gives just this tiny fist bump wave that’s both tired and disappointed and sad, and it’s juST! it hurts me everytime. and before this gets long, im gonna just spotlight the last 10-15 minutes of the show, right after Karasuno loses. Kenta absolutely nails Hinata’s expression in the manga, that wide-eyed disbelief and shock. and then when Daichi tells him not to apologize because he didn’t miss, when Daichi just walks over and hugs him, good gawd. (sidebar, but i’m so glad i got to see that bit with both Ken-chan here and KT in Strongest Team.) and the way Hinata couldn’t move after thanking the audience, not even after Ukai called him back, so Daichi had to actually go get him? my heart was in PIECES. and then the fuggin dinner scene. LORD ABOVE. like, if you dont love Kenta Suga as Hinata, this is the scene that should convince you you’re wrong.

4. The Strongest Team this is right smack dab in the middle of the list because it’s probably the best staged show of all the seven that i’ve seen, but it also hurts me so much for all the obvious reasons. this is the one i’ve rewatched the least, and everytime i rewatch it, i cry as if it’s the first time im watching it. the whole show absolutely feels like a tribute to the Karasuno cast and all the growth they’ve had and contributed to Haisute over their three years with the show, and the entire thing feels so fond, if that makes any sense. everyone on the team gets a big emotional moment, and it’s so sweet to see them each paid tribute. aside from them, i gotta AGAIN shout-out kousuke as oikawa. i like aoba josai enough, i like oikawa enough as a character, but that moment when kousuke absolutely broke down in the locker room after losing to karasuno broke my heart, even more so knowing that he absolutely felt all that gratitude because he wasnt sure he’d be able to come back to the show coz of his hip injury. i think one little moment that doesnt get as talked about as it should is just after he and Iwaizumi have that short convo of always being each other’s partners even after they’ve moved on to different schools. they do their fist bump, and then Iwa walks away, but Kousuke/Oikawa is still absolutely in tears, and as Iwa walks off, he just kind of reaches out and lets out a pained “Iwa-chan!” that’s just barely audible, and that jUST. GETS ME EVERYTIME. hell, im feeling a little heartstring pull right now just thinking about it. i also wanna shout-out Shiratorizawa because Engeki made me actually care about them. like, okay - i dont hate Shiratorizawa, at all. but watching the anime, despite having an entire season be around them, i just never really latched onto them. i like Ushiwaka enough, and i just...dont like Tendou (sue me). but Engeki Haikyuu has a habit of spotlighting other teams and characters enough to make you actually think about them and care about them, and Shiratorizawa was the biggest example of that for me. their theme is awesome, it’s this big, deep, heavy thing that feels as big and broad as the players look. and i could feel their almost militaristic teamwork when the coach is on them, and it’s so good. speaking of Coach Washijo, shout-out to that flashback scene to his younger days. Kenta looked absolutely risible in the wig and giant eyebrows, but i think it was an important touch to have the person playing Hinata be the person playing younger Washijo, because their inner conflicts are basically the same, and Washijo comes to appreciate Hinata’s efforts because of it, so i thought that was a nice touch. (still dont like Tendou tho, sue me.) i gotta end this entry coz it’s getting long, so im just gonna quickly list my favorite scenes/moments:

Yamaguchi’s pinch serve, and bringing out the spear. Kairi Miura wields that spear like he’s been doing it all his life.

Tsukki’s big “GODDAMMIT I THINK I LOVE VOLLEYBALL NOW” moment. the expression on ryotaro’s face right at the end of that scene, where he’s basically saying “it’s just a club, AND YET!” uuuggggghhhh, please i love it. also, shout-out to when Hinata pointed at him and just said “...nice.” like...that always feels like only half Hinata and Tsukki, and more half-Kenta and his best friend Ryotaro, just like the “Tsukki! that one was worth a 100 points!” line that absolutely gets Ryotaro so that on the live cam he had to turn his head away before he meant to for the next bit.

that moment in the last-ish set of the match where everyone is just DESPERATE to win, so it becomes this frantic rally and volley where everyone just starts to grunt and yell louder and louder, and people are running back and forth and jumping and diving, and it’s just this cacophony of sound and blur of movement that just seems to stretch on and on, until finally Shiratorizawa just yells “SHUT UP! WE’RE STRONGER!” and knocks all of Karasuno down. WHEW. that bit is just. WHEW. i almost always forget to breathe at that point. and then the waterworks get turned on as Ukai tearfully tells them to get back up, because volleyball is a sport where you HAVE to look up. LORDDDDD.

the bit towards the end of the match, after tsukki returns from his injury, where they absolutely acted out Ushiwaka pushing Hinata and Tsukki to the floor and holding their heads down. when i first watched it, i gasped because that is straight out of the anime and manga, and then when the rest of Karasuno came in to pull Ushi off, i just turned into a giant sobbing mess.

the graduation curtain call, obviously, but in particular, the bit that will ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL, destroy me is when Kenta says “this show was so tiring and tough sometimes, but when i look back, all i can remember are the good times, the best times.” GODDAMMIT IM TEARING UP BADLY RN JUST THINKING ABOUT THAT BIT.

3. Summer Of Evolution this is where the lines between the rankings get a little bit blurred, because i love these top three equally for the most part, but i had to choose a number two (i absolutely know what my number one is), and when i really think about it, SoE just gets edged out by my number two, but barely. i think what i love the most about this show is that this, more than any of the other shows, really portrays these characters as high school kids. and that’s not just because part of the story is set in the school and it’s actually showing the school sometimes, but coz they’re going through and portraying teenage experiences and emotions. most of the other shows portray the team in matches, so we’re seeing them more as volleyball players than teenagers or students, but we get to finally see that here, and it’s really refreshing. other than that, im gonna try to just list some of my highlights and favorites again coz i dont wanna keep going too long:

im so glad to finally have girls on the show, and not just in a “YAY FEMINISM! GIRL POWER! WHOO!” kind of way. kiyoko has always felt like an inextricable part of the team for me, so it was bittersweet to have such a great Karasuno cast but without a Kiyoko, so i was REALLY happy to finally get her here! and for a first time actor ever, Shizune was so awesome! she absolutely has that gentle strength that Kiyoko has, and the way she’s been written in absolutely does feel like she’s always been there. i do wish she got more to do with the third year boys, but all in all, it’s SO good to have an actual Kiyoko who absolutely looks like she came out of the manga.

im also just so DAMN happy about Yachi and her portrayal here. i think ami saito is so dang perfect, and yachi is such a fun addition that fits right in with the chaotic fun of Karasuno. one thing that i REALLY love, though, is how she gets to just act. before Haisute, my only experience of female characters and actors on a 2.5D stage is with Uraraka (and two or three other female students) in BNHA and Elizabeth in Kuroshitsuji, and those characters are your typical cutesy girls, and their movements and body language are so typically girly, you know what i mean, those softer arms and smaller movements, looser fingers, these little “Kyaa~” things, those things. but Kiyoko, Yachi and Saeko arent like that, so that’s not how they’re portrayed here. Ami as Yachi is just as loud and expressive and active as the Karasuno boys, bar actually playing in a match. also, her chemistry with Kenta is SO GOOD. i dont really ship YachiHina, i think they’re cute friends, but BOY DID THESE TWO MAKE ME RETHINK THAT. ami’s Yachi with Kenta’s Hinata made me think “YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THESE TWO GO ON A CHAPERONED DATE.” they’re adorable. a particular fave of mine is when hinata climbs a tree to help a baby bird back into its nest and he asks Yachi if she wants to climb up too, and also after Yachi finishes making the Hinata poster, she jumps onto the back of Hinata’s bike and they ride off-stage together. PLEASE IT’S SO CUTE.

also: SAEKO NEE-SAN PLEASE STEP ON ME.

OH HI FUKURODANI. they are such good chaos boys, i love them. i dont have much to say about them here just yet, but WOW im so glad to have them onstage at last.  

NEKOMA IS BACK THANK GAWD I LOVE NEKOMA. of all the teams portrayed, i think nekoma is the one that feels the most connected together (AHA!). like, even when they have a new character and/or cast member, the new ones never really stand out as new, they feel like they’ve always been there. this play really showcases the teams at their most casual so we dont get to see as much of their excellent teamwork and connection as we do in past and future shows, but you really get a sense of their family dynamic and just GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, and honestly dont get me started on ShoriTaka, i will literally never stop

shout-out to Tatsuya Kageyama, he had big shoes to fill not just in terms of character but also as an actor, since this is his first show ever. much like with KT and Naoki as DaiSuga, it does feel like he plays a similar enough Kageyama without just mimicing Tacchu. this is also the right Kags arc to introduce a new Kageyama actor with as well, since there’s a big change after that loss to Aoba Josai and Oikawa, so i think the writing of the show also absolutely helped Kage-chan ease into his role, and helped the audience ease into this new Kageyama. overall, i think he did an awesome job, and we’re really fortunate to have had two awesome Kageyamas before gen 1/1.5 changed to gen 2.

i also just noticed/realized that the backstage video for SoE starts with the introduction of Kage-chan and Fucchi as new cast members, and ends with the farewell to Ken-chan and Hiroki as graduating members, and i know that’s just natural coz the first time the Karasuno cast met the two new members was at the photoshoot for visuals, but also what a nice little circle of life there.

COMING INTO THE HOMESTRETCH NOW, if you’ve made it this far, thank you SO MUCH, im sorry, i really just have a tendency to ramble, and like i said, i dont really have anyone or an opportunity to talk this deep about these shows to, so thanks so much for your time.

2. Karasuno, Revival! WHEW okay, so idk if this is Unpopular Opinion or controversial coz objectively it is the best show so far, and i’ve put it only at number 2. BUT LISTEN: before i saw Tokyo Battle, this was absolutely my number 1 favorite. the Dateko match is so good and so fun to watch, and honestly, that rap battle gives me so much life im almost immortal now. i LOVE that they also got to show ikejiri (THANK YOU KENTA SUGA) and ken-chan as daichi got his moments because of it, and it gave us “katou tou shinakya, katenai!” as an iconic quote and theme for the show, we got a fantastic moment for Asahi that was paid off from the previous show, also honestly “otchita kyougo, tobenai garasu” is just gonna be stuck in your head forever for a while. we also got Kousuke and Allen’s excellent IwaOi back, bringing with them their “Iwa-chan, are you my mom” dynamic (and gawd the cackle i let out when Iwa yeets a volleyball at Oikawa, or that turn and yell that makes Oikawa yelp as he exits off stage lkasdjf), which is always a plus. but! BUT!! best thING FOR ME???? NEKOMA, BABY!! like im sorry, im biased, but i fuggin LOVE nekoma, kuroo is my favorite character in the entire series, and Haisute really gave them a fantastic story and dynamic, because again, there’s so much you can do on stage that you sometimes cant do in anime or manga, so they were really able to highlight Nekoma’s famous teamwork, especially when centered around Kenma. more on that later, but like. it was just such a JOY to watch Karasuno, still kind of scattered puzzle pieces at this point trying to figure out how to best go together to create one big picture, go up against the smooth teamwork of Nekoma, and learn and grow from it. also they honestly have the best team theme music and team dance, fite me. also thank you Haisute for making KuroDai so painfully real lakdsfj

1. Tokyo Battle okay okaY OKAY OKAY OKAY. i think there are some people who actually like this the least coz it’s just too different from the rest of the shows that came before it - no Karasuno, less projections, different music style, aesthetically different stage, etc. B U T. aside from me just being biased because Nekoma are my favorite team, i actually think many of those differences are what makes this show my favorite one. first of all, the music is LIT AF. the themes for each team are so distinct, they really help play up the animal motifs that are played up the most in this show than in any of the others. secondly, THAT CHOREOGRAPHY THO. good gawd. HIDALI said “it’s our last Haisute, let’s go out with a bang” and they really fuggin did. Fukurodani absolutely is TOKYO PARTY TIME, they got to really play up their party birds schtick and i love it. Nohebi i cannot HELP but love because i love snakes, but also, with Nohebi’s cast, you can tell the choreographers were so happy to finally have an actual technical dancer. they had yuu fukuzawa doing the most and then some in playing up the snake theme, and it’s literally so hypnotic to watch his pops, locks and isolations. he’s also just such an AWESOME daisho, and it helps that nohebi are written to be cunning and sneaky. i also love that he and Kuroo seem to actually have a lot of untold history, and i kind of wish we could get a bit more elaboration on that, coz Yuu’s and Shori’s chemistry as frenemy team captains is SO GOOD. and then of course. NEKOMA, BABY!! so okay. kenma absolutely should be the lead of this show, and he is, BUT he’s also, to a certain extent, inextricable from Kuroo and the rest of the team, so that you dont always get that feeling of Kenma being in the spotlight the same way Hinata is (for understandable reasons since Nekoma arent even really the main characters of the story as a whole), and i think that’s important because, again, Nekoma is all about that teamwork and connection. like, Kenma is the lead because he thinks for Nekoma, and Nekoma acts accordingly, instead of how it is usually where the story is showing Hinata’s perspective alone. it also feels like that in terms of the actors. like, technically Takato is zachou, and he is, but also several times in the curtain call speeches, the cast members refer to or mention both Takato and Shori together. even Takato says that when he had spoken to Kenta about how nervous he was about taking up the zachou mantle from him, Kenta had said “if it’s you and shori, you’ll be fine.” they are a unit, and it really comes across in their portrayals of Kuroo and Kenma as well, and even if you love nothing else about this show, you literally cannot help but love that about them. i think the show does a great job revolving the Nekoma team dynamic around that too without making it the ONLY thing that keeps Nekoma together. the star of the show is absolutely the theme of “connection” (more than the other theme of promises), and if you’ve seen the show and you dont cry at the “Tsunage” section as Nekoma wins the match against Nohebi, then are you really watching the show lmao.

OKAY OKAY I’VE REALLY RAMBLED ON, and if you made it all the way here, THANK YOU AND IM SORRY. but also, there’s still a lot of things i wanna talk about that i didnt talk about here coz im mostly a scatterbrain and live half my life radiating BDE - Bokuto Dumbass Energy. so if you’re also ridiculously obsessed with these shows and wanna talk about it, my inbox is open. someone come hyperfixate with me while i make SO MANY MORE GIFSETS OHMYGOD ALL THE GIFSETS geezas crust when i get to Tokyo Battle i will be insufferable.

[urcharactersclasspect]

Psst. Can I get some more details about Nazz and Jonny being Bards of Heart? That's a really interesting take imo!

Boy do YOU have an ESSAY to read

As a disclaimer, Ed Edd n Eddy isnt really a very deep show- Theres just tidbits of something deeper sometimes you can gather about the cul de sac and the kids we focus on in the show. Ive watched through the show from episode 1 to Eddy's movie and the last episode. But its been a hot second since Ive been a kid myself and I havent really sat down to watch it in a long time tbh.

Another disclaimer is, even though they share a godtier does not mean they will have the same personality! Since Personality by itself pretty much is not as relevant to classpects as much as how the aspects seem to bend around the person in question as they grow and delevoped. That being said..This is gonna be a long ass read. Im so sorry. I have THOUGHTS on everything.

For Nazz, throughout the show we see her literally making almost every boy in the Cul De Sac crush on her, she has no confirmed feelings until the last movie, where she and kevin want to date. Unlike most heart players in canon and the ones I have met or seen good protrayals of, i dont think she has unrequited feelings and we clearly see as much, but it sure does give me the same energy as Dirk's frequant troubles to just finally spit out his feelings for Jake through extreme indirect means, and how Heart players are actually way better at controlling how or showing how they really feel waaaay more than people give them credit for- This isn't to imply heart players are Emotionless and never show emotion, but Heart players are firmly NOT all sweethearts who are innocent, do no wrongs and are definitely not always bubbly fangirls like Meulin- Hell, even Meulin isn't really probably being honest with her own feelings on things either.  On the contrary, they can be very intense with what they are passionate about whether it be romantic or just an interest of theirs. And usually, like Dirk, they are very self aware of that fact. So they sometimes try to hold back things about themselves they are all too aware of. Sometimes to a detriment, but not always. For Dirk, its his emotions in general he tries to keep to himself. For Meulin its likely her resentment of her team members and holding back her anger at Kurloz or maybe even her feelings for Kurloz still being there.

For the Bard part of her classpect, its the idea that Bards Mirror their opposite. The thing about Nazz is shes actually very responsible! Often giving an air of being very well put together for a kid to the rest of the cul de sacs kids and cool headed more times than not. Its part of the charm. Of her acting cool and casual- And just how she behaves regularly like nothing bothers her, but sometimes you can tell it does or just might (almost like a passive ghost of hpow Dirk acts). You learn over time shes actually very smart, too; she gets very good grades, is a model student who cheerleads, and even was seen as responsible enough by the parents of the cul-de-sac to babysit Eddy. Which definitely says something, I think. This is usually how we see Mind Players- Dirk being so cool headed but only the surface is  too. Since its the stereotype at this point that Mind players are the calm ones (which I have my own opinions on too but thats another essay for another time).

DESPITE this chill and responsible facade on the surface, Nazz has SEVERAL times shown some genuine Heart player impulsiveness or thinking with her heart on a sleeve. She allows Edd into her bathroom without even thinking about it, even when it wasn't cleaned up. You see how she acts on emotion like humouring Edd a lot through the show even by kissing him at one point and dancing with him even when it wasnt the popular thing to do, she humours Kevin but lectures him for his own impulsiveness on pure anger towards the Edds frequantly, passively destroying someone elses impulses and making him think before he acts a little more; In spite of this too, she also can get violent towards the Edds herself and irritable when things dont go her way, and we even learn Nazz for all her coolness and popularity, still has insecurities shes VERY emotional about- her hair being one. Much like Dirk does about this or that. Im sure theres further proof to get what Im saying across, but Im rambling as is. So thats where Ill end that tirade, I think it REALLY fits Nazz.  So theres my conclusion.

For Jonny 2x4. Its easier to tell you why I think it fits him, and Id say its for far more obvious reasons when you really get down to it. Hes probably an example of a Bard that simply hasn't learned how to gauge his aspect very well in every day life, leading to him becoming more of an annoyance to those around him much like how you see Cronus or Gamzee be treated. Someone who hasn't quite "gotten it" yet. I don't think this is nessasarily because Jonny is stupid though, at least maybe not as stupid as he makes himself out to be, since hes shown to definitely have some intellegience, more like its because hes Younger (theres no direct ages we know of?), but he does act a lot younger than Nazz so thats my best assumption, and hes also in a seperate enviroment from Nazz, who I personally see as a far healthier Bard for reasons I'll be getting into in a minute here. just know. Jonny has similiarities to Nazz with how the Heart aspect bends around him; Theres too many instances to count where hes just being impulsive but he tries to come across as braver or calmer than he really is. But if I admitted all of them for Jonny, we'd be here all day long and you'd be reading even MORE.

Lets just go with the obvious signs outside those then.

Jonny is a very lonely kid. This is similiar to Dirk too; Jonny is never seen with any genuine friends except his attempts to befriend the Edds, as stated before some kids in the cul-de-sac consider him to be an annoyance due to his own impulsiveness, and this because hes a very socially awkward kid because even in his own home theres rather dark implications of Child Nelgect or something happening. Even the Creator of the show states this interesting quote in an interveiw: "He'd be more or less thrown out the door at 9am and only let back in when it got dark or if it was time to eat. He had an imaginary friend. " Hes that lonely kid who was so lonely and felt so much so he had to resort to Imaginary friends, imposing an identity to an object that seemingly has a similiar personality to his own or a personality that meshes well enough for them to "get along" and to not get along sometimes- this is seen constantly with Jonny talking to Plank. Jonny sometimes disgrees with the morality of Plank, but hes also best friends with Plank and if I remember correctly, Jonny even says at point they are as close as brothers- PLank knows him more than he knows himself, as Jonny says. Sometimes Plank suggests even illegal things - things a little kid like Jonny (supposedly) wouldn't know about or do himself. Almost like Jonny knows weird things from listening to his parents and imposed them onto Plank, making Plank "real" so Jonny could stay in his own head and pretendHE doesn't know anything. If that makes sense.  Much in the same manner as Dirk having conversations of various focuses with HAL and objects he himself has inputted his will or rather - his Soul and Heart onto.

Thinking about this some more. I think an arguement could be made that Jonny isn't actually a Bard of Heart, but maybe a Bard of MIND. But IM not so sure.

If i think of anything more to add to this, I might revisit my thoughts on it later and reblog or edit it more.

[strawbrymilkshake]

i just watched the first six episodes of the mp100 netflix show for no good reason other than that i apparently hate myself, so to not put my pain to waste here’s a half-review half-rant thing

i guess ill start with the good and make my way to the shit i hated about this show, but as you can probably guess there’s hardly any good

tome was fun, i guess. she’s got that same chaotic™ energy and had some of the only lines i genuinely laughed at, but also she’s the only member of the telepathy club for some reason? and they merged her character with mezato’s, so i guess she’s got more to do. but judging by the sfx i doubt they had the budget for even one (1) more actor, so ig i can forgive them for that. overall probably the only adaptation that both wasn’t painful to watch and actually warranted the changes they made

teru (from the little i saw of him) was also pretty good. the fight had some....changes, but on his own i thought he was fine, pretty harmless adaptation overall. i stopped watching once i realised that they weren’t gonna go all in and give him the cactus hair so points deducted for that

and the last thing i liked about this show: ritsu! they got a young actor who was good and i didn’t have many issues with him. there was one interaction he had with tome that i liked when she introduced herself and he said ‘oh! tome’s my grandma’s name!’ and tome was like ‘...yeah you and mob are definitely brothers.’ the reason why he’s lower than tome and teru is because. for whatever fucking reason. he is in every. goddamn. scene. like even when it doesn’t make any sense. when mob joins the body improvement club? he’s there. when mob is taking down the lol cult? he’s there. the teru fight? he’s there. i lost count of how many times i was asking myself ‘why the fuck is ritsu here?’ he was inescapable. his presence in those scenes didn’t even add anything to the story. also he’s friends with tsubomi for some reason....i guess to give him more things that mob can be envious of?

speaking of tsubomi.....god. not to be like ‘they didn’t understand the source material!!1!!11!1!!!’ but like. please. it hurt. i get that they were probably trying to lean into the ‘guy gets the girl/high school romance’ type show more but uhh....way to horribly misunderstand the source material, guys. the problem with her is that she is in it so much that it almost entirely defeats the point of her character & what she’s supposed to mean to mob. they interact like every other scene! she’s a pretty close friend to ritsu, so that means they interact even more! she’s their next door neighbour ffs! i only watched the first six episodes and i think i still saw more of her than her entire screen time in the anime put together

and apart from her being so close to mob that it completely destroys the point of him idolising her, it also meant that the writers had to come up with a full personality for her and an actual dynamic for her and mob. and hoo boy they really went and decided that the two of them would have the most awkward, unappealing dynamic ever, huh. like there’s this running gag where she always messes up the words to common phrases, and mob has to correct her, and it’s painful every time. which, i guess (????) makes sense for what their relationship is in the manga & anime, where they’re not close anymore and mob doesn’t even know what she’s like/what he likes about her, but in this show, they were trying to push them together to lean into the romance tropes, so their uncomfortable dynamic doesn’t make sense anyway??

the stageplay got it fuckin RIGHT when they went and cast NO ONE for tsubomi. like. the legend jumped out. they got mob pining for a silhouette. chef’s kiss

holy shit this got long fast. ok the rest is under the cut

i guess im just going character by character now so: dimple. weird guy. the cgi was awful, but you knew that already. but he was just....so weird. and by that i mean he was awkwardly,, never there? when teru exorcises him it’s supposed have at least some impact, but in this show he had like three (3) scenes before it (rather than a couple episodes leading up to it) (and also they cut a shit ton out of the middle of the lol cult arc for...whatever reason) so when he gets exorcised here it’s like...oh no.....that guy...........did mob even speak to him more than once.....

speaking of the pacing of this show: it’s horrendous!! good lord i hate it!! the pacing is shit awful, and it feels like they’re just throwing in ‘’’’’’’’interesting’’’’’’’’ scenes that should take place later in the story bc they know that the audience isn’t going to want to stay around for the atrocious writing! case in point: we see the flashback of mob and reigen meeting in the second episode. the second fucking episode. the reason why it’s delayed so much in the anime (and even more in the manga) has a lot to do with the unfolding of reigen’s character depth and they just?? throw it in so early?? it feels like they’re just going ‘oh by the way, he’s good, or whatever. yeah, he’s totally complex and interesting. just trust us, okay, keep watching the show’ and the pacing of that completely throws off reigen’s character arc

i can’t really remember which episode(s) this was in but they also have this weird subplot with reigen going to the bar alone (yknow..like....s2 scenes...) and lowkey being friends with the bartender guy?? i gotta be honest i wasn’t paying much attention during these scenes but suffice it to say: god i hated reigen. like sure, he’s a sleazy character, but they just made him disgusting. netflix reigen does not drink his respect women juice, and that’s all i wanna say about that

also why is he like 40 years old

anyways back to the pacing, apart from throwing in scenes from wayyy later in the plot, this show also tried to have like four or five plot threads going at once. the place that this hurt the most was probably the teru fight, where the anime spends like two episodes entirely on it and nothing else, but in this show it keeps cutting to the start of the big clean up arc (probably just so they could keep showing ritsu) and reigen’s weird subplot 

and there’s other stuff like that, where they kept cutting to the awakening lab & the scars doing psychic stuff or whatever, i guess trying to entice the audience like ‘we swear there’s plot stuff!! it’s not just slice of life!! there’s evil™ people!!’ and i guess they were gonna pull the ol’ switcheroo™ where the audience thinks the awakening lab and the scars are working together but oh no!! only the scars are evil!! the awakening lab was actually on our side!! but i can’t be bothered to watch that far

also in the teru fight, they got most of the message across (don’t use your psychic powers against other people....mob and teru are the same...) but because they kept cutting away from it they lost the dramatic impact of all of it. the choreography and sfx weren’t as bad as they could have been i guess, but they definitely showed the budget. it also didn’t take place in a school (which...fine, whatever) but it led to something i actually did like: teru attacked mob with glass shards instead of knives, and although i do like the knife metaphor + imagery, you could also argue something about the destructive nature of his power use coming back to hurt him in the shards of glass, and also something about reflections or...something. i just thought it was neat, although i don’t know why they changed the setting from the school in the first place

also in the teru fight: it was raining and ???% stopped the rain katara-style mid air, and even though the cgi still wasn’t all that good, i thought that was a rad concept. but then he just made a tornado instead of ripping buildings apart and you get the idea not a lot of it was good

back to things i hate because i don’t have a good segue!! the writing!! bad!!

i see the writers of this show engaged in the age old storytelling practice of ‘tell, don’t show’

when reigen tells mob to be a good person: “ok, i won’t show off my powers or use them against other people. i’ll become a good person”

when mob loses control of his powers and hurts ritsu as a kid: “these powers are awful and cause nothing but trouble. i’m not going to be using them again”

god i wish i was exaggerating

and, going back to the lol cult, for whatever fucking reason they decided to have that latter line of dialogue to be the full explanation of mob’s complex. like i get that there’s a time for exposition and a time for subtly, but take some cues from the original author and maybe fucking explain the main plot device of the show and not the protagonist’s sad vague backstory rather than the other way around. want to confuse and alienate your audience? good fucking job!! you’ve done it!!

and just because this was my favourite episode in the anime and im fucking bitter!! they cut out so much of dimple’s monologue and just had mob get to 100% pretty much after all dimple says is ‘get a clue.’ like. he puts the mask on, it doesn’t work, ‘get a clue,’ 100%. yeah im totally gonna care when this character comes back to try and manipulate mob later.

also....mob...........

i havent talked about him that much here, have i?

okay specifically w the lol cult first, the whole thing where they put the mask on and he’s not smiling is completely devoid of any impact because!! he’s full on emoting throughout the rest of the show!! like he’ll look worried, embarrassed, he’ll cringe or smile or whatever, and the most it looks like is that he’s just slightly uninterested, but otherwise has a pretty good grip on his emotions. unlike the anime + stageplay where it’s clear that he’s (seemingly) completely unemotional. the reason why i bring up the stageplay is bc, while i know that setsuo ito is 10ish years older than the guy that plays mob in the netflix show, i kinda wish that they just....cast him anyway.....bc they clearly didn’t have any hangups on casting adults for all the other middle schoolers, and ito did such a good job in the stageplay. he’s the only guy who is mob to me lmao (kyle mccarley is on thin ice but he can stay)

i mean mob just straight up showing emotions through the show could have been down to the directing as well. also i’m pretty sure a majority of it is bc he’s constantly around tsubomi, so. stupid decisions lead to stupid outcomes!

and that’s basically it for my weird review/rant on this show. the writing’s bad, the pacing’s bad, they didn’t care at all about the source material, i’m not entirely sure if they cared about the audience either, there was maybe two (2) changes i liked, if that, and everyone should go watch the stageplay. there were probably way more points that i wanted to bring up but i think my brain is already repressing the memory of it for my own safety

if i ever try to watch the rest of this show, shoot me

[swampgallows]

i know people are criticizing the medium article but im gonna say that the weird detectable undercurrent of sexual energy throughout stebebn univernse is 90% of the reason i absolutely could not get into it. i thought i was probably being too hypervigilant or sensitive or whatever but im kind of relieved that someone else said something about it. i mean, i know i AM more sensitive to it because im so staunchly ambivalent-to-repulsed by sexual media, but part of the reason for that is also because i have been so virulently exposed to a deluge of it as a preteen/teenager and throughout my life that i am trained to see where it is slipped in. 

ive borne witness countless times to the exact methodology rule34 creators use to ride the line between fetish and fan art or to infuse sinister messages into childrens media. having been groomed as a child, i am the end product of what happens when people are allowed to unleash these experiments. i see the threads where they groupthink together how to circumvent censors while also, for lack of a better word, dogwhistling their exact intentions in their ‘work’. shit like “she looks 10 but she’s actually 10,000 years old!” is just the tip of the iceberg.

i dont mind cartoons or media that look into exploring difficult or mature themes, especially if they revolve around consent or awkwardness with the subject or ‘not being ready’ or anything like that, and it’s okay (and imperative in fact) that kids be aware of that but 1. the emphasis on the inevitability and pleasure of ‘going through with it’ is terrifying and 2. why do they have to literally be prepubescent and 3. if youre gonna be super mature cool progressive cartoon then be upfront about it and call it what it is, or be more direct, instead of hiding it behind these subtle-but-not allusions that altogether just become more confusing than helpful. and i know this is hard to get past the censors, but im not just referring to sex stuff

i’m not even involved in estebans universario and i still remember the fucking shitload of discourse surrounding lapis??? and jasper, and how people couldnt decide whether or not the relationship was abusive, couldnt decide whether or not the decisions made were correct, who was manipulating who, and shit like that. and to me if your fans, especially adult fans, have zero concrete takeaway from you “tackling” those subjects, then how the fuck are children supposed to interpret it in a helpful way? 

i know irl shit isnt always so cut and dry, but that’s exactly why you see ten bajillion posts on here of people setting very basic standards of things like “IF THEY HIT YOU, LEAVE.” it’s a non-negotiable parameter. as an adult things can get complicated, and relationships always are, but when you have these clearly defined red flags it’s how you avoid situations that deliberately construct themselves in a way to break down your boundaries and control you. whether through sex or emotional manipulation or other avenues of abuse, that’s why you need these messages, especially targeted to children, to be loud and CLEAR

now like i said i never finished the show, i barely got into it and i was not entertained for the near two seasons i watched so im not inviting discussion of shit i havent watched or “well actually this and that happened in the episode so--” im saying that i saw the reception of it and it was completely bonkers ass shit. the response wasnt about whether or not the discussion was appropriate for a kids show; it was that nobody had a clear perception of what the resolution was even supposed to be

i dunno man the huge fucking inundation of porn every which fucking way is a HUGE deterrent for me getting into the art or animation industry. like it has actively repelled me from making art or honing my craft or whatever the fuck because the blatant expectation for me to make porn is so suffocating. if you offer commissions and dont make nsfw and you are an adult, people look at you like you’re crazy. people tell you you’re making a mistake, that it’s a ‘bad business model’ to not accept porn commissions, and that you aren’t a REAL artist if you havent drawn some porn on the side. and i sincerely feel like that isn’t an issue in any other creative field; that youre not a REAL actor if you havent been in at least a couple of porn films; that youre not a REAL musician if you havent scored porn; that you arent a REAL sculptor if you havent made at least one dildo, or some shit like that. i understand that illustration is the most expedited delivery of porn, but i dont want to be part of a community where everybody is glib about paying their bills with porn of kids cartoons and are okay with it and then go on to CREATE kids cartoons where they can give wink wink nudge nudges to their fellow porn artists.

i think this is the exact same fucking thing as ‘fandom’ having issues with ‘purity culture’; that they dont realize (or dont want to admit) that theyre bedfellows with “real” pedophiles and are providing them the shelter and the fuel they need to operate. sure a storyboard artist making some nsfw ‘on the side’ isn’t the same as chris savino or john lasseter or john k’s real tangible sexual misconduct, but it does provide the basis by which everybody who has been wink-wink nudge-nudging enforces the dissolution of boundaries and escalates these people to the top. if you form a coalition of people who all make childrens cartoons while winking (actually we are masturbating to this), you will attract the people who are winking (actually i am doing this). 

having been abused for years by people cut from this cloth im sensitive to this obviously and my thoughts are scattered but ultimately like i dont really think it’s a non-progressive thing to shame people for making porn of kids cartoons. the internet is no longer a secret clubhouse where the hustler mags are hidden in one of the loose bricks. it’s extremely fucking public and i feel like the LEAST these people can do is have a separate alias for this bullshit and to draw distinct lines in the sand for the kind of talent they hire. the problem is, too, that a lot of artists make their living by doing porn or are just drawn toward porn in general. but essentially the clincher is like... sure, go ahead and draw porn but... child porn? a dude makes porn of your teenage cartoon characters and you hire him????

“What kind of culture should industry figures encourage around the kids’ cartoons they work on? And where is the line drawn when artists with backgrounds like ZONE’s — an animator who has worked on Jones-Quartey’s own series — cross over into mainstream children’s entertainment? 

[...]

The public flirtation of children’s media with artists like these doesn’t just risk exposing kids to porn — it normalizes the entire idea of hypersexuality being present in children’s spaces, often in its most extreme forms. [...] It’s a systemic problem that will only grow if it’s left unaddressed.“

it’s a corporate level, systemic problem. i hate the culture and the community that’s allowing this to happen, and i hate that there are slowly becoming fewer and fewer bastions of endearing, safe, quality environments for children to thrive and develop without a thousand subliminal tendrils permeating cute characters and fun stories

[jacfletch]

if this is just going to make you miserable please ignore this but if it won't ruin your mood I'm interested in everything you didn't like about last week?

i havent watched the ep since it aired so these are things that i remember being annoyed about but i dont have the energy to find specifics from the ep or fact check myself so if something is blatantly wrong just let me know lmao

before i even get into anything specific, the biggest “issue” for me was how weirdly it was written. there were only 2 storylines whereas there’s usually 3 and i get that they probably wanted to do more scenes abt jac & chloe’s respective storylines, but having 2 DEEPLY emotional and dark ones without anything to break them up was a mistake imo. either commit fully to showing jac in the ward by giving her her own episode (they couldve made the joseph ep 3 storylines and this 1 only jac’s if they were worried there were too many jac eps) or let us actually breathe between a mental breakdown & the aftermath of rape. they couldve thrown some donna and xav scenes in there or some extra dofty if they were desperate, but only 2 storylines, writing wise, messed up the pacing of the episode pretty badly. we were sad about one thing and then we were sad about another thing and there was just NO break and it the episode left me feeling really...bad and gross

in regards to jacs storyline, i dont like that they didnt explain ANYTHING. like in my last ask, someone explained to me some of the process of being sectioned and yet there was none of that in the episode???? hello??? if this sl is about the important of getting help then show us how she’s gonna do that??? what does sectioning entail bc all we saw was jac negotiating taking meds and sitting in rooms alone. and i dont mind that jac lashed out at fletch or even sacha because i expect that from her, but i dont like that she actually slapped sacha and i dont like how they wrote it that sacha was more “i feel bad that youre in here” instead of how he probably wouldve been by putting her first, and then we couldve had a scene with him and fletch or him and essie talking abt his guilt. whatever. i didnt like it. i didnt like how obvious they were with the “3 wise men” thing either but thats just being nitpicky. i didnt like how a lot of things went unexplained like that woman that we were supposed to think was a metaphor but it didnt hold much weight or how jac actually hurt her hand. or even how long jac had been there bc it seemed like it mightve been a day or 2 but elliot JUST had surgery and he’s already checked himself out and is walking around? it just doesnt make sense. and the acting was good like...im never gonna say rosie isn’t performing her most bc she clearly is and i think bob and paul and alex did really well also, but the dialogue was so.....it aint it. like it was flat and lifeless and felt like they were going through the motions of what should be said but it seemed to ME that once jacs actual breakdown was over, the writers didnt really know what they were doing or how to say what they wanted to say. the jac/elliot scene was nice but other than that i cant pinpoint one scene of her in the ward that was actually stand out and made the rest worth it.

and then there’s chloe’s storyline. oh boy. i have gripe after gripe with her storyline and its 95% about how for some reason its about cameron? chloe was abused and raped and is now pregnant with evans baby but there’s more time spent on how cam’s dealing with the guilt of not helping evan??? litcherally don’t care about how he feels cos hes a shit doctor so i dont think if cam had tried to help him then evan would still be alive. anyway. i dont like how nicky was all over chloe during the episode and i understood how she was trying to help but she wasnt and she felt very overbearing. i love nicky and one of the things i love about her is how much she cares and what a dumbass she is so this made sense for her but even i felt a little claustrophobic with her (and cam) being on top of chloe every second of the episode. and then evan’s sister coming didnt feel like a natural progression of the sl it just felt like they were adding more trauma onto chloe. im tired of them piling shit onto her like. once she has an abortion can we please just let her live for a little??? sorry just dlgkjdf holby hates her so much bc even when theyre piling all this onto her, theyre not even giving her time to process or react to any of it?? they always make it about other people. and the last thing i have to say is what the FUCK was that last scene with cam???? like genuinely. what in the goddamn hell????

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[dancinginmydressinthesun]

3 for the unusualish asks💞

Oh I will girl ( you should have NOT give me that number right after the bold type season finale)

I cannot rant about Taylor bc everythings good and I’m living for that so lets just go with my favourite show and how fucked up everything is, I am usually not someone who voices their opinion too much especially on here bc thats just not the type of person I am but anyway 

The Bold Type has been my favourite tv show and if you have never seen it I still recommend you do bc overall its still a damn good show dont get me wrong if it does not seem like that (there are several reasons to watch it and I want it to become more popular so pls do)

Well, I started watching it right at the beginning, June/July last year when the first episode aired and BOI it blew me away, like, i did not expect anything major BUT lemme just say it destroys every other show its just that good (I love the girls it focuses on individually and together, the boss is full perfection, the main ship (a bi girl of colour and a proud muslim lesbian) was breathtaking, the storylines were on point and emotional and it just idk maybe they set the bars too high)

So the second season started airing beginnign of june and you know, I WAS worried before that they could not keep up but I had SO MUCH faith (but it also seems like the writers were kind of replaced and man that shows) the first few episodes were fire alright which is even worse bc i had lost all my worries and knew I was gonna be fed the whole season but little did I know …

You know I really hate complaining too much about something about a tv show that is there to enjoy and make me happy so I’ll stop thinking about it after this post but I do get the frustration so much (but death threats and bashing the whole show is not helpful whoops I said it) 

Just a few short notes on things that anger me a little (I’m probably forgetting thigns but anyway):

1. Jane (she is one of the three main girls) I really like(d) Jane a lot and I feel like I can identify with her, we are very much alike in many ways and this especially showed in season 1. I dont “hate” her at all after this season, not even dislike her, but she they used her for almost all (?) the controversial topics as the one who makes rude and subtle offensive comments, which is not bad in itself bc she learned from it mostly all the time and apologizes but it was just too often and much for me. in the first season Jane seemed at least trying to be more understanding even when she could not really and she was relatable with her concerns and her feelings and this was not really the case for me this season. I felt like she did not own up enough for some mistakes and it did not give me this tbt feeling of happiness and goodness and wholesomeness I had after every damn episode last season????

2. Screen Time (Jacqueline/Alex/Adena) You could probably talk about everyone of them in detail now but I dont have the energy - let me just say Adena and Jacqueline are my favourite characters so maybe I am biased and I know that this whole post need to be edited probably after I rewatch the season bc I can easier give feedback when everything is fresh in my mind but you know, all we fans wanted was to have backstorys (and bc he didnt really get one either this probably applies to Oliver too) not even much, just maybe like the episode in season 1 when we got to learn more about Jacquelines family and her past in general (still crying), it was so well-written bc it was not just something thrown in there but integrated in the storyline, it had purpose, it was emotional, it gave insight into her character and I honestly saw her with different eyes after that (and loved her even more), now those 3 or 4 just are really pushed to the sides. You dont see Adena without Kat really or talking about her character without it being about her sexuality and Kat (oh hey a gay one complaining about that??  yes bc even tho I answer I am gay after someone asks me “how are you” theres more to a person and especially to someone as interesting as Adena. I love hearing non heteros talk about their love life and everything surrounding it but at least then let Adena talk about how her coming out was, what she finds interesting in other women, if she ever struggled with it (i know they tried to cover some things but naah idk i just expected more) or just talk about something else, let us see her going to the movies with friends, a childhood throwback when she was in art class, let her talk about what she likes about some types of art. AND HER WHOLE CULTURE? I am a white western woman and I never see muslim representation on tv and I feel like still havent? i forgot at some point?! there are so many non-white people watching it hoping to be represented and ofc you cannot please everyone but now it just feels like Adena is just a proud lesbian you know. And Alex? what who was that again?

3. the storylines - sooo first of all, I liked the storylines more than most people probably from what I have seen on the tag. I think some of them were hard to put in just one episode and try to talk about everything important and still have  show going on, which is why it did not work all the time  have less storylines but make them work would be better. I really did appreciate that they tried to have a lot of stuff covered and they tried to put different points in there but there were a lot of het relationship and other drama stuff to be shown so the storys were often pushed too hard to the sides. this I say having the gun episode in mind the most i felt really unsatisfied after it and I was really looking forward to it bc i think its important and brave for them to talk about it (anyway watch one day at a time, the episode on the same matter is pure gold) . idk its alright its not the same feeling its less spectacular but I’ll stop whining about that now.

4. KADENA - I’ll try to be objective here , i do get that you cannot have a happy relationship without anything going on for 10 episodes (ok you can I would love that but maybe its less wise when it comes to viewers idk?? i stan unpopular shows so who am I to know) BUT come on, not like this?? they started of as PERFECT alright and then it all went downhill, you know cheating and stuff idk, I am not happy with it, could be more original, could be less meh but whatever I was like “ ok I’lll roll with it maybe its gonna bring a new light in this, let them grow, let them learn” but man idk. it was all a mess and once they made up and everything was fine (after 3 epsiodes of pure stress for my weak heart) after 5 minutes there was something new? almost any interaction was either them arguing or making up. I liekd their conversations mostly I really did but I was tired of drama all the time, after this season I’ll just say it: If they want to continue it like that until the end of season 3 I’d rather have them not together anymore. its no fun, its stress for them and even more for me and it would not seem realistic when they make them endgame at the very last minute (which I assume they will bc they promote it like that) without using multiple episodes and time passing to really let them grow in the relationship, without that it would just feel like one day after the finale of season 3 they would have somethng else coming up to fuck them up again. I was really baffled with the finale bc I WAS NOT expecting that they really wouldnt resolve it at all let us suffer like this (I remember that Nikohl i think said that it would be like that but someone else also said recently that it really feels like a finale and that the fans would feel assured but excited for the next season but excuse me? tbt fans who are happy about that end are great. would love to meet one one day. but where they at?? suttard fans all 3 of you I am happy for you honestly. and for sutton. richard idc. i am bitter tho. 

I STILL HAVE SO MUCH HOPE FOR SEASON 3 (pls let the old writers come back, listen to the fans, there are not too many instead of trying to make it more appealing to the general public what about pleasing us again with friendship, gayness, depth and happiness?)

(& remember: I.love.this.show. i do. I would recommend it even when there would only be season 2. but it would not be my fave anymore. its like as if taylor would have the same albums with the same music, same career, same backstory BUT her not really caring about her fans. I would still love her as an artist so freaking much. but would I jump off building for her?? naah maybe if there were a balcony and a pool who knows 

Thanks for coming to my TED talk 

[childishzombiejellyfish]

i actually enjoyed infinity war a lot more than i thought i would

non-spoilery thoughts below

i think the russos did good with the time they had

like yes it was rushed  and you needed to suspend disbelief for that a lot in terms of “oh the characters are suddenly here i guess, that was fast”, but i dont feel like theres anything directorial to say about that, that was just a time where for once the studio could’ve cashed in more by making it 3 movies instead of 2 (although would i survive the fatigue if it were 3 years of constant infinity war hype? i barely summoned up the energy for this movie, but im glad i did)

i felt the  “big three” thor, steve, tony, were given the space they needed to exist and do their character things - steve a little less so perhaps, but thats cos we ALL FUCKING KNOW WHATS GONNA HAPPEN IN THE NEXT MOVIE!!! and i loved loved loved the gamora and nebula moments like 

yeahhhh. faves. babes. deserve all the accolades. 

even was okay with stephen strange, possibly because he was more of a plot device than a character, so i didnt need to feel anything for him, i just needed to let him exist for tony’s and peter’s emotional arc to happen (boy oh boy did it happen)

I was pleasantly surprised by wanda and vision, because they were kinda non-entities in the past, but give them an arc and space for the actors to... act... and it worked really well imo and i take back things i thought about olsen post-ultron and bleeding into civil war (because it’s tough being introduced as characters in my two least favourite marvel movies and that might have biased me)

i appreciated how many of the strongest characters on the board were women and how a lot of different styles were utilised - like the wanda/nat/okoye scene was beautiful to me and shuri got her moment and mantis and nebula and gamora were by far the smartest and strongest players on the space team (i hope to see much more of shuri and okoye in the next one because of.. things... that happened) - unfortunately no valkyrie, but im hoping to see the asgardians in the next movie, because come on. cant just say that she survived off-screen pre-movie and then not show it/give thor that tiny bit of hope/let me see her reaction to her people that she literally just got back to dying AGAIN in front of her

and like... chris hemsworth finally being allowed to break my heart in this film was everything i needed in life, oddly enough

i had one scene that i was incredibly annoyed about, because it could have been done much better imo

and i despise starlord as a character (which, ever since i rewatched guardians 1 started and then got waaaay worse with guardians 2 and boy... i just... urgh... i give him character cookies for actually respecting gamoras decision on knowhere), but yeah, he just.. i guess out of the guys who all have their own movies (disregarding ant man and dr strange here, i havent seen either of their movies, ant man isnt there until probably the next one and like i said strange was a plot device which is all i needed from him, because his character is literally tony 2.0) he seems the most boring, uninspired callback to the “everyman” “ghostbusters-but-casual-sexism-is-funny” kinda guy. i realised in guardians 2 that everything that makes him interesting is the stuff and the characters around him, literally every member of the guardians makes me feel more stuff than him

so yeah. doesnt necessarily detract from the overall movie, it’s just gamora can do better and i didnt want to see his face

thanos was surprisingly okay. it was a smart decision to play into his relationship with gamora because it gave us something tangible to hold on to (even tho he’s a dick) and because we love gamora and so her relationships matter to us and also smart to not make him invincible, because u had that feeling that they could win whilst watching the film

anyway yeah

enjoyed it

was depressing af

probably depends a lot on the last one how much i end up liking it, but for now a better start to the end than I expected

[estuarries]

baby’s first liveshow commentary

hello lads i have decided to attempt doing @nihilist-toothpaste​ inspired video commentary/write up/review thingies!!!! welcome to ramble-y fun time

phil’s liveshow on august 10, 2017

his smile in the first minute makes my heart so happy i love him so much

i love the eye-tongue-eye emoji stop being mean to it

he’s a bit late bc he just finished filming a new ap vid!!! it took him longer than he thought it would to finish filming bc he was rambling. this is a #relatable brain thing

“i just said goodbye and now i’m saying hello again!” wrt filing and then doing a liveshow makes me rly happy bc i wouldn’t have thought abt it that way. i love phil’s brain

new vid clues: paper bag(?) and bubble wrap. amazingphil asmr part ii??

dan’s not joining the liveshow bc he has a headache but phil’s gonna hop into dan’s next one

closed eyes and happy gesticulation whilst telling sleepy-morning “unexpected window cleaning man frightened me” story

phil’s fight/flight/freeze response is freeze

“imagine if i had decided to make breakfast naked! ...if i was that kind of person…” its okay m8 we know u like to make nakey bro brunches w danyul

are the emoji pants the only pair of graphic pj pants he has now ??? why are they being featured so prominently lately ???? phil IS an emoji is the only phnnie conspiracy i can support now

in the ap vid phil did SCIENCE and REACTED TO THINGS (chemistry . reaction . hehe :3)

he’s out of tv shows to watch ….he and dan have watched so many series together over the years ..... i am emotional

phil hasnt watched in a heartbeat EITHER !! BLASPHEMOUS BOYES!!!

re: rick and morty. i strongly agree and it makes me so nervous that rick burps all the time i cannot focus on whats happening in the show bc rick gives me so much anxiety

he misses the cherry blossom tree in thehowlter’s front yard and they are hopefully going to put it in when they have money

“you’re all like dan! not everything has to be symmetrical!” thank u for these affirmations that not everything has to be perfect thank u for being chill. a chill phil. 

“i dont mind a little bit of wonkiness!” “i’m at a bit of a wonk!” “is the entire house wonky?” the only real phil branding is ~WOnKy~

phils hands are so beautiful???? i love them?????? @ 8:50ish

him trying to figure out his best side and saying “one? or two?” as options like at the optometrist when ur getting ur eyes checked. 

someone in the chat: “both!” phil’s cheeky grin/”don’t flatter me!!!” response

someone in the chat: “side three!” i snort laughed along w phil this is truly Good Content. dark!phil RISE

phil doesn’t think he really has a bad side and his easy neutrality wrt his physical appearance is dreamy. i love him and i love that he’s comfy w himself like this

phil had an eye infection and this is the first day he’s been without glasses…… why does he glasses-bait us like this …..

it’s really hard for him to concentrate with dilated pupils so that’s why he was being a wee bit wonky in the last liveshow

his eye is no longer infected and is “white and ready to see!”. the tone of his voice, his accent, and the phrasingof that reminded me so much of my british grandma who i havent seen in a few years and now i want to call her i miss her

wicked was “as the kids say...Wicked.” I SNORTED AKLHFAEIHKF

also i cannot believe that he and dan used the same silly phrasewhen talking about their opinions of wicked. is it still #copyrightinfringement if its your bf blatantly enterprising ur intellectual property?

phil was feeling a bit meh going into wicked but now he’s converted and a fan

he loved defying gravity :(

phil: every audience is important! me: crying

phil loves coming-of-age/college/highschool aus … Me Too

phil remix: the top fans to the tune of mad world “all around me are familiar faces...lillyphanstuff, joteleena…”

he’s had “mad world” and also that fuckin. ditty song stuck in his head

“...is one thicc bih - NO!” is the best thing ive ever heard

im so sad that phil hasnt experienced the joys of ditty. apparently he doesn’t have it downloaded and doesn’t really know what it is

14:07 is my new ringtone (he sang the ditty tune in “doot doot doot”s)

“bandicussy” IM DEAD

phil thought it was a good family activity to see dunkirk but it made his parents very emotional bc his maternal grandad was in the war

making your entire family cry is apparently the phil way to entertain

neither he nor dan understood the timelines of dunkirk upon first watch

after filming his ap vid he sanitized using vanilla cupcake hand sanitizer

he watches zoe’s bath and bodyworks candle/lotion hauls??????? ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

apparently b&bw has some ~priiiicey~ candles. phil is the coupon clipping, consumer reports reading dad

he said that livestreaming games on dapg would be “dope”. i am reminded for the millionth time that he is a 30 year old white man. i am moderately uncomfortable.

jk it was someone in the chat who said it he was just reading the comment

“hi to the ‘phan’s moving boxes’ group chat”

facterino according to the nature man on tv: in england nature has decided that it’s autumn already. this is evidenced by blackberries coming out in august. because fall isstartingso early they’re expected to have a harsh winter but its fine bc he is excited for snow!

some climate change discourse

he’s not a big doctor who fan but his fav doctor is david tennant

he’s excited for the “lady doctor” and i’m uh. not a huge fan of that wording

23:02 pre-sneeze noises and hand motions are Delightful

apparently it’s southern england peeps who pronounce scone with a hard o (scOHne) and northerners pronounce it with a soft o (scAWn). phillu doesn’t know which pronunciation he uses

my mom grew up in cornwall (and moved to america when she was a teen. i’m american btw!) and pronounces it the northern way. we’ve had the scohne vs scawn debate!! lots of #britishfamilythings in this liveshow

philly homework motivation song @ 24:52

his first response to ppl being sad about school starting in a week is to calculate how many seconds are in a week so they can re-frame their time left in a way that feels more plentiful. i love this ???

i also really love how he tries to read premium messages from different people every time. idk that’s just really thoughtful and as a fan i really appreciate it

he knows that black makes him look good …. GOodBYe

today is world lion day!

phil is the one who puts the funny/random holidays on the dnp calendars. of course it was but im still so happily surprised  

doinganap’s sicth/sixth discourse

he’s reading people from the chat’s bdays and telling them what funny holidays are on their birthdays! i love how he finds different ways to get ppl in the chat involved every liveshow. i appreciate him so much !like yeah i know its a marketing thing but let me pretend its solely phil’s care for us

he wants to go back to japan

he can’t read or edit and listen to music at the same time! me neither

someone asked what a good pet would be and phil went on a lil tangent about how it’s important to have enough time to take care of the pet you choose!! dont get an exotic pet or a breed of non-exotict pet that requires a lot of time, money, or energy to care for it if you’re not at a point in your life where u can take care of it to the best of your ability! <3

hedgehogs are one of the most common animals in the uk??? what the heck?

he can’t remember whether or not he’s seen a hedgehog irl so he texts mum lester to ask <3 why is this the sweetest thing in the world . like seeing a hedgehog irl would be an experience that his family facilitated or even if he was moved out when it happened it would have been so exciting that he def would have told kath about it. so any way it happened she would know about it. my heart is Warm.

he’s not a huge summer candle burner but as soon as it’s september he’ll be on the pumpkin spice train

mum lester texted back and apparently his grandparents had a family of hedgehogs in their garage and his granddad built them a little hedgehog house to hibernate in :( wow!

phil might play shelter 2 … with dan. No Thank You. let us have some phil-only time plz 

shelter 2 is more of an autumnal game so he might do it later when he can cozy up with some cocoa and herd the badger babies

he feels a coffee buzz after five (5) chocolate-covered coffee beans. r u sure u even drink coffee phil????

rye bread is worse (in phil’s opinion) than regular bread and is ”claggy”. i busted out laughing and texted my mom IMMEDIATELY bca LOOOONG time ago we were at a family christmas party with my dad’s extended family and all of the Adults were playing scrabble. my mom ended up spelling claggy and everyone else was like THATS A MADE UP WORD WHAT THE FUCK!!!! and my mom was like ???? no its not? my dad’s family is from the eastern us and had never heard the word claggy before and i remember my dad giving my mom shit about it for YEARS afterward because she caused such an uproar. idk if it was a regional thing or if americans just don’t say claggy but REGARDLESS. my mom and i had a good laugh over this description of rye bread and we both love phil

he’s nervous abt what dalien is going to look like and become as he grows up. phil’s general reaction to dalien has been one of caution and nervousness and idk ?? someone more thoughtful analyze that please

his advice for making the most of the last bits of summer: do something you haven’t done before! immediately after bestowing upon us this Wise Advice he giggles and becomes self aware of his parental tone. Our Dad Is Becoming Self Aware

he doesnt swear around his parents?????? my mom says fuck all the time :0

2018 calendar and season two pastel plushies are in the works!

he’s singing another song to list the top fans. suggestions include toxic, the ditty tune, and the tetris theme. he goes with the ditty song and starts laughing in the middle of it so makes a seamless musical transition to toxic

if everything recorded properly with his new vid we should see it in the next few days!

he hopes that we have a lovely weekend and that whatever we end up doing brings us a bit of happiness :( i love him thank u phil

tiny little bonus song after he covers up the camera. schrodingers phil.

all in all i love phil’s liveshows and this has been the highlight of my day. thank u for reading!

[r-o-se]

Produce 101 Season 2 Ep 7 lit lit lit 92 point running commentary 

hey whats up squad fam id link where I watched it but it was like 4 different sources so I’m sorryyyyy message me and ask for them later

1.      They’re jumping right into it and its BTS Spring Day stage all are pastely beige pink and its cute af this is the youngest group on average and has the small Woojin, Kim Youngjin, Kenta, Seonho and Bae Jinyoung

2.      Younjin wants to be center/main vocal eventho hes originally a rapper and I understannd WHY he wants it but to have a rapper as main vocal is…… not clever

3.      Holy shit he actually gets to be the main vocal wow I’m shook as hell

4.      Seokhoon is making angry eyes at him tho and now Woojin is a shitton better at this checkup and gets to be the new center

5.      He has problems hitting the high note though poor baby

6.      Baejy gets praised by BoA and he gets cute and smiley as fuck its adorableeeeee

7.      SEONHO IS PLAYING PIANO IM PROUD OF MY LIL BABY BIRD

8.      Baby Woojin didn’t fully hit the note but he didn’t fully miss ti either so its okkkk

9.      Kenta got literally 0 personal screentime though mnet fucking hates him this boy is a GEM you could make so much clips out of him but nooooooooo

10.   Seonho made kissy faces at the camera and Guanlin cringed so hard it was beautiful

11.   Seonho got first aaaahahahha it’s the piano and the visuals but can we just remember the fact that the kid is only what 15? 16? He’s fuckin SMALL

12.   Now the next stage is N Sync-Pop aka the group with one dancer and a bunch of other professions since they got filled also………… WOODAM IS HERE IM SO FUCKING EMO POOR KID

13.   They also got Sangbin, Jung Jung, Insoo, Kiwon, Jaechan and Woodam obviously. Jung Jung is the only og dancer there

14.   I’m very sad about Woodam but I wanna see others too like please…… I miss Sangbin and Insoo… Show them too they literally choreographed the whole thing and GOT PRAISED FOR IT…. And their teamwork was called the best they had seen IM SO GLAD

15.   But their team is all very low numbers it makes me really really sad ugh

16.   Their clothes are so 90s I LOVE IT HOW CUTE

17.   They all dance so well especially for a group of people who aren’t actually dancers

18.   SANGBINI IS SO GOOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH FUCK

19.   Junghung unzipped his sweater and flipped around OBVIOUSLY

20.   Everyone are clapping in circles aaahahahahah round of applause LITERALLY

21.   Oh my gooooosh WOODAM HAS ASTHMA POOR BABY KID

22.   If Woodam won’t make it I’m going to riot

23.   SANGBIN IS LAST AGAIN LAST HERE AND LAST IN THE GROUP EVALUATION WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT JUSTICE FOR SANGBIN HES A RANK AND INDIVIDUAL TRAINEE AND AN EXCELLENT RAPPER FUCKING VOTE FOR HIM ASSES

24.   NOW ITS TIME FOR A-TOM, EUIWOONG AND MY PINK RAPPER FLUFF WOO JINYOUNGGGGGGGGG THEY ARE DOING

25.   Ajlahlskadf they asked Jinyoung ‘whos the best’ and hes like ahh everyone are good in their own way and they they asked again from Sanggyun and he’s like ‘I’m the best lol’

26.   Wait is this the stage where Ha Minho was…….. because lmao they really did a good job editing him out I’m dead ‘they can’t edit better evil editing isn’t a thing’ MY GUY THEY DELETED A GUY WHO WON A BATTLE!!  WITHOUT IT EVEN BEBING NOTICED IF WE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS THERE!! GODDAMN

27.   Jinyoung is the centerrrrrrrr love my babe but obvi I’m sad for Sanggyun

28.   Also yall Minho won this battle with an Mnet diss

29.   Sanggyun has problems coming up with lyrics poor babe I hope he’s alright OH NO BABY MESSED UP HIS WORDS TWICE

30.   KAKLKFNAWKNN MINHO IS BLURRED OUT ON STAGE WHY IS THIS SO FUNNY

31.    SANGGYUN AND EUIWOONG GOT PRAISEDDDDDDD AND OBVI WOOJY TOO IM SO PROUDDDDD

32.   THEIR STAGE IS SO GOOD THE ENERGY IS SO GOOD WHAT THE FUCK THEY ALL ON FIRE AS FUCK

33.   Cheetah is feeling herself big time

34.   Euiwoong looks so much better here than with the BIL team he looked like a fetus there but rn HES FUCKIN AMAZING

35.   Imagine ranking 4th out of 3 people wow that seems like something that would happen to me lmao poor Euiwoong

36.   A group with no first place how tragic

37.   ITS TIMEEEEEE OFR RHYTHM TA  ok but why choose the same song for two years in a row lol

38.   This team is Gwanghyun, Yoojin and Taewoo

39.   Yoojin hated being a leader back in Be Mine days and now he’s stuck again because Gwanghyun and are submissive fucks

40.   GWANGHYUN IS NERVOUS AND WENT TO ASK JINYOUNG FOR HELP THIS IS SO CUTE AND JINYOUNG BABE GAVE HIM ADVICE INSTEAD OF SENDGIN A RIVAL AWAY

41.   This groups teamwork is seriously amazing I love it so much their dynamic is so amazing

42.   Their energy is so good they sereiously seemed to just fuckin get such a high out of being on stage

43.   Poor Baby Yoojin is last, Taewoo is second and Gwanghyun got first poor baby is crying and the others are cheering him up this is so sweet

44.   BoA Amazing kiss is up next with Dongsu, JELLY HEESEOK WHO I HAVENT SEEN IN WEEKS LOVE YOU BABE DO WELL, Seunghyuk and Gunhee. Gunhee is the leader yet they have problems choosing the center

45.   THEIR VOCALS ARE ALL SO GOOD WHAT THE FUCK GUNHEE IS AMAZING

46.   Heeseok really wants to be center and is being kind of pushy but in the end Gunhee got the center part too

47.   THEIR HARMONIES ARE SO GOOD

48.   AND VOCALS SO STRONG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

49.   Gunhee looks………. So good…….. I cant take it…… with the choker and everything just fuck me upppp

50.   Jahldfhaan gunhee shook his ass on stage while appealing time

51.   Gunhee is bringing up Hyunwoo too goddamn im weakhearted don’t do this to me

52.   Heeseok got last place….. I’m emo as fuck…… fuckin stab me…… My Jellyfish son…. Seunghyuk is third, Dongsu second and Gunheeeeeeeeee is FIRST!!! Proud of my kid

53.   Now its I.O.I Downpour team, Hyunbin, Jisung, Minhyun, Jaehwan and Sungwoon aka ALL THE KIDS I LOVE!!!!

54.   They chose Jisung as leader my babe looks so good with purple hair GOD BLESS

55.   Sungwoon is so pretty godddamnit ‘I’ve heard it often I’m not good enough for main vocal’ I’ll beat up whoever said it

56.   HE IS GIVING UP MAIN VOCAL TO JAEHWAN!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! WHAT AN ANGEL!!!!!!! I’M SHOOK!!!!!

57.   Hyunbin got a lot of hate and I’m very salty over it I love my tall boy very much SAME GOES TO JISUNG!!!! THAT KID HASN’T DONE A SINGLE THING WRONG HE IS SO SWEET AND SO INSPIRING AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH MMO BETTER FUCKING DEBUT HIM WITH THE MMO SQUAD ONCE ITS DONE!!!!!!

58.   Hyunbin messed up a bit and Jisung comforted him poor lil baby I’m so sorry for my tall child and thank you so much Jisung for taking care of my baby kid

59.   Anyways they asked if they can change and having Jaehwan play guitar instead of having the teachers play piano

60.   Minhyun looks so fine in pastel pink fuck me up

61.   Cut to Baekho and Jonghyun lookin like ‘damn right’

62.    JAEHWANS VOICE DOES THINGS TO ME I DIDN’T EVEN SEE ITS HIM BUT WHEN HIS VOICE STARTED I GOT SHIVERS SAME WITH SUNGWOON I LOVE MY POWER VOCAL CHILDREN

63.   Oh my fucking god everyone in the crowd and the other trainees AND HYUNBIN are all bawling

64.   JAEHWANS VOCALS SAVED MY LIFE! FUCKING G O S H THIS IS SO EMOTIONAL I DON’T EVEN KNOW THE LYRICS BUT I FEEL LIKE CRYING

65.   Sakjfbakjsablkfjn Hyunbin and Jisung are holding hands

66.   Hyunbin is 5th and Jisung takes his hand and comforts him a lot and tells him it’s okay this is too precious and Jisung himself is 4th and Sungwoon third, Minhyun second and JAEHWAN FIRST HE DESERVED IT BEST FUCKING VOCALS IN THIS ENTIRE SHOW IF HE WONT MAKE IT I AM RIOTING!!!!!!

67.   Jinwoo ranked super low in vocals……. I’m so fucking sad when will people learn to appreaciate true talent…..

68.   Gunhees mouth can open so wide its amazing honestly also HE GOT OVERALL VOCAL FIRST PLACE IM SO PROUD!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!! BABE!!!!!!!!!! U DESERVED IT U WERE A GREAT CENTER AND LEADER

69.   Now its only the dance teams left starting with Gete Ugly. The subber seems to love him and tbh same bless Danik

70.   Ong is so fuckin funny I love him lmao

71.   It’s Daniels team and he’s like ‘I’m sorry I was a bad leader’ and Ong is like nah fam ALSO FUN FACT REVEALED BY ONG Jonghyun inspired him to be the leader this is so fuckin cuteeeeee

72.   Afnhlna what is going on why are they showing them in the result room before the stage I’m????

73.   This team has all of the alpha bitches like seriously Jihoon, Samuel, Ong, Daniel, Hyungseob are 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th and then poor baby Park Woojin is 24th.

74.   Awwwwwwwwww the populars are all thinking that Woojin could kill it this is so cute

75.   Danik is the MMO maknae apparently and volunteered and FUCK SUNGWOO JUST SAID JONGHYUN INSPIRED HIM TO BE THE LEADER MY SORRY SORRY AND ONGNIEL HEART CANT TAKE IT

76.   Samuel keeps being eaten up by Jihoon save my boy  those two want center and WOOJIN WANTS TOO!!!!!!! I LOVE WOOJIN!!!!!! PICK HIM!!!!!

77.   AAAAAAHAHAH FUCK SAMUEL JUST SAID THAT HES LIKE A SKINNY DEER NEXT TO JIHOONS TIGER THIS IS THE CUTEST

78.   Jihoon?? Recommended Sameuel now?? FUCK CUTE!!! Poor Woojin tho aw

79.   They are a bit lacking in the dance section though which makes me a bit sad and Danik egets a bit flamed from Kahi since he is the only one who has problems with the choreo

80.   Samuel, Danik and Woojin are all choreographing it but they all have very different styles so it’s a bit hard to learn

81.   Anyways Danik is so cute and he has NICE ASS FUCKIN THIGHS HOLY SHIT  LOOK AT HIM B-BOYING

82.   The whip sound effects are so funny idk why but THEY ARE

83.   Ong and Jihoon are poppingggggggg and its GREATT

84.   Dabbing fuckers I stg

85.   Samuels legs are so thin OH MY GOD DANIEL TWIRLING ON HIS HANDS HOLY SHIT

86.   WHO DID THAT HALF SPLIT WAS IT ONG??? THAT WAS FUCKIN COOL

87.   Hey yall I love Kang Daniel and Park Woojin and I’m not gonna waste my fingers typing out all of the members here BUT I LOVE THEM ALL FUCK

88.   Jihoon did goddamn aegyo on that goddamn stage and Samuel gave half of a heart miss me w that cuteness

89.   Everyone think Samuel won it but goddamn?? No?? He ranked last? How the fuck did that happen I’m literally…… what?? Why on earth? Anyways yall remember when Samuel called his mom and she called him a puppy

90.   DANIK GOT 5TH IM ANGRY!!! AND HE SAID ITS WHAT HE DESERVES!! NO!!!!!

91.   Hyungseob is 4th, Ong is 3rd and Woojin is SUPER NERVOUS AND NOW THEY CUT IT OFF!! FUCK YOU MNET!!

92.   If Taehyun isn’t getting the best dancer I’m going to scream right here right now

93.   Pop got really low votes I’m emo

94.   TAEHYUN WRECKED IT HE IS FIRST!! HE DESERVES IT FUCKIN HELLL HE DOESSSS

95.   Ok cut back to get ugly votes WOOJIN GOT FIRST HE REALLY DID IM SO PROUD HE REALLY DID IY MY FOX BABY HE DESERVED THAT FIRST CENTER PLACE FROM A RANKS AS WELL BUT NOW HES HERE AND BEAT UP!!!!! THE ENTIRE TOP TEN!!! FUCKIN GOD IM PROUD

96.   TAEHYUN STAYED THERE HE REALLY DID WOOOJIN IS 5TH BUT TAEHYUN MADE IT HE IS FIRST HE BEAT ALL OF THE AVENGERS F U C K

97.   Samuel and Daniel are ranking really low…… this is…. This is really sad wow holy shit….Poor children…. To drop from second to second to last??? Poor kid

98.   Anyways the golden trio is now Gunhee, Jonghyun and Taehyun I am satisfied and have no objections to that

Good night yall buy nuest albums theyyre good for your health also happy debut to ace and merry comebacks to map6, ikon, got7, knk, b.i.g,, 24k and anyone else that I forgot