#like imagine if people from the lost city of atlantis just showed up one day and then ran for president

[prideprejudce]

Also I always assumed the Alicent/Targaryans dynamics were supposed to be a metaphor for westeros and the targaryan take over- like the targs are not supposed to be in westeros with the dragons, they took over by force and held power via the dragons, but none of them are native to westeros and Dont Fit as rulers of the nation.

Alicent is the metaphor for westeros, and Aegon and Rhaenyra are two different targaryans who rely on targ exceptionalism, but arent getting what they want from her. Aegon will never be loved by Alicent like he wants, like a real son that she wanted, just like the targs will never be completely loved by westeros like true children of the country, bc they took it by force-just like Aegon was forced onto Alicent.

Rhaenyra on the other hand, can't marry Alicent, and cant get any closer to her bc they live by completely different rules, just like the targs will never be able to fully integrate their customs into the culture of westeros. Rhaenyra will always think of herself as a Targaryan closer to a God, and Alicent and westeros will always resent her for it.

I always assumed that was on purpose that the whole dance with Alicent/Aegon/Rhaenyra was a bit of a metaphor for the targs not able to really settle into comfortable harmony with westeros, always kept apart by something.

this is actually a great interpretation of the dynamics of the targaryens and the world around them

personally, I think the targaryens are a clan that were supposed to have died in old Valyria, like they were literally selected by nature to not survive the Doom and to be left into history and not at all apart of the rise in the new world of westeros. but since they have survived, they are now like relics of the past that have no belonging in the new world and are the black sheep of it (or platinum blonde sheep lol). ive even read some theories that say the targaryens are now forever cursed for going against nature and not accepting their original destiny to become extinct

I also always refer to the targaryen family as the snake eating its own tail, because that's essentially who they are. they remain in power and escape extinction through continuing to birth new targaryen members and dragons for generations, but they are also destroying their own family line by continuously inbreeding to keep the bloodline pure. this has, of course, led to targaryen members with severe personality issues and rumors of instability and insanity in the line. This also can show when some of their babies are born with "dragon like features" before dying. they are their own saviors as well as their own destroyers, with this being especially shown in fire and blood and hotd

overall i just picture them as old relics of the past being plucked out of their time and going against what nature had planned for them, and now suffer the consequences of being the odd ones out in westeros who are also rumored to be rotting from the inside out

that doesn't make me love them any less, they are my favorite family in ice and fire and the mysticism that surrounds them is the most compelling dynamic of the entire series

[heavenbarnes]

Is your mother worried? Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?

Eddie Munson x Female Reader | 18+

Warnings: mentions of people/parents “disapproving” of your relationship with eddie but no actual parental figures are established, the objectification of one edward munson, use of objectifying words like “slut” but in a joking way (and towards Eddie), alcohol, swearing, dirty talk, mentions of eating ass, implied perv!Eddie (it’s mentioned he likes you sweaty), handjob, naked!reader clothed!Eddie, mentions of exhibitionism, unprotected sex (mine is fiction, yours isn’t pls use protection), creampie, cuddly!Eddie after-sex

Word Count: 3.9k

DO NOT repost my work on tumblr or any other site

this fic isn’t canon (imagine “the piggyback” never happened) and that’s okay cause idk if i can trust those d*ffer bros w their own show anymore, i’ll take it from here lads x

The summer of ‘87 hit Hawkins hard.

Sticky air and beating sun with no relent, a blanket of humidity settled over the town and didn’t seem to want to quit. Nothing you could do about it, days like these where being outside was even worse than being in.

A heat that made you wanna’ throw a tantrum and stamp your feet.

You weighed up your options for a sunny Saturday afternoon in your mind. You could lay spaced out in the centre of your bed, inkling of a breeze brushing through your curtains. Sweat beading at the small of your back, feeling sorry for yourself.

Or, there was him.

He who sat just 10 minutes down the road, probably not up to much. He who had called you last night nearly begging you to sneak out your window to see him.

“C’mon, if you don’t I’ll come get you.”

“Eddie Munson, don’t you dare.”

“Ooh say my name, baby you know it drives me craaaaazy.”

You knew he wouldn’t, he wasn’t that silly. But there was a part of you that liked the idea of it. You liked the fact that he wanted to see you, that he wanted you. You liked having to use a hushed voice on the phone in the kitchen, knowing the trouble he could land you in.

It wasn’t the heat playing tricks on your mind, there was a bad boy in the neighbourhood and you had it bad for him.

Had it so bad that you were kicking up dust on the road winding through the trailer park under the beating sun. Sun-screen sticking to your clothes as the hot air whipped past your face and made the sight of his trailer look like the lost city of Atlantis.

“And why aren’t you dying in front of the A/C like the rest of us?”

You saw a red-cheeked Max Mayfield pouring cool water out for a scrappy little dog as you rounded the corner. Her quirked eyebrow and tiny smile all but answered her own question but you bought into it. She was lucky you liked her.

“Gonna’ scam off theirs instead, I’m sensing cold beers as well.” You called out, lazily gesturing towards Chateau Munson.

Max nodded thoughtfully, standing back up and drying her palms on her thighs. “Well, Wayne just left so more beers and cool air for you two.”

Her brows wiggled as she began to walk backwards to her own trailer. You scrunched up your nose rather childishly in her direction but continued on nonetheless.

Max Mayfield might’ve been one of the only people in this town allowed to tease you about your trailer park rendezvous, given she was one of the only people who knew about you spending your time here.

Between her and Wayne Munson (who was always incredibly welcoming), the only others that had a clue of you and Eddie were the sheets on his bed and the sweet night air.

Not a secret out of necessity, rather out of the excitement it brewed in the both of of you. The burning hot delight of something that exists only for the both of you, the kind of heat you could live with.

The wooden steps squeaked under your sneakers as you knocked on the trailer door, the heat of the metal bit your knuckles for the miniscule moment they made contact. Thankfully, it was only a short time before the door swung open and the swirling air wrapped around you.

“You must’ve heard my prayers, honeybunch.”

The irony of Eddie Munson talking about answered prayers when he was stood before you looking like something the prophets would’ve written about.

The summer heat may have been wicked but it gifted you the sight of Eddie in shorts. His Levi’s 501s having been cut off at the mid-thigh by you at the start of summer, a stroke of genius on your part as the end of his tattoo peeks out of the denim.

He’d cut the sleeves off his “Dio” shirt but you’d cropped it for him, hitting him right at the base of his ribcage so you could see the trail of hair leading to his jeans whenever he raised his arms.

You were a genius, objectifying the man with a pair of fabric scissors and a raging heat in the pit of your belly. But Eddie let you do it, he liked the way you stared.

His own touch of thick socks out the top of heavy combat boots were nice, nice in the make-your-mouth-dry-why-the-fuck-is-this-turning-me-on kind of way. Really nice.

But the most overwhelming part of his frankly slutty little ensemble was messily bundled up at the crown of his head. Curls balled haphazardly into a bun secured with a scrunchie you’d lost at his place some months ago. Two random tendrils hung around his face, wavering gently in the almost-breeze.

The stagnant heat didn’t have you lightheaded but he did, this would nearly kill you.

“Holy hell, you look pretty.”

Eddie laughed, openly and from the chest as he stepped aside and let you into the safety of an airconditioned room. “I think that’s my line?”

You looked at your mismatched outfit, a combination of the most breathable items you could find before you looked back to him. “I think you have me beat.”

His cheeks caught a pink glow that he shook off, loose curls around the bun shaking gently as he moved to the fridge. “You’re just calling me pretty to get in my pants, I think.”

Naked fingers wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle he passed you, far too hot for the chunky rings that usually adorned his hands. You pressed the cold bottle to the back of your neck, feeling the condensation run down your back.

“Nuh uh, looking like that I’m making you leave it all on.” Opening the bottle on the corner of the counter, you spoke before you took your first sip. “Look so good I’ll suck you through the opening of your boxers.”

You casually swallowed your first sip and Eddie nearly choked on his. Eyes going impossibly wider as he wiped a drop of spilt beer from his chin.

“What has gotten into you? Where’s my sweet girl who shuts her eyes when I spread her cu-”

“Eddie!”

“Oh no, there she is.”

He sat beside where you’d made yourself comfortable on the couch, thighs spread wide till his knee was knocking against yours. “I think it’s the heat, makes me forget myself or whatever.”

“Then I’m turning off the fucking A/C, lets get this naughty baby out to play.”

Rolling your eyes, you nudged him with you shoulder as you slumped into the couch. The cool air drifting over you was slowly bringing you back to the land of the living. “Nope, too late sweet girl is back.”

Eddie laughed along with you, elbow resting along the back of the couch as he brought his fingers to lightly scratch the top of your head. Your eyes lay shut, enjoying the way your other senses were being heightened at the moment. 

“Hmm, that’s a shame,” Deep voice rumbled in his chest. “Kind of like it when you talk to me like that.”

Your shoulders bounced as you huffed a laugh out your nose. “Slut.”

“Mmm,” You could hear the laughter in his voice as he hummed. “Getting me hard without even trying.”

Rolling your head towards him, you opened one eye to see his hand leave your head to grip his crotch through his jeans. “Just say you like it when I treat you like a whore and move on.”

Without even a moment for hesitation, Eddie’s fingers went back to gripping the back of your head. He leaned in till his lips were by your ear and he whispered it like a secret. “I like it when you treat me like a whore.”

You had to shut your eyes again, your lips tightening into a line as you let the words settle within you. Yeah, he’s taught you a lesson about running your mouth. You could talk big but the minute he shot right back, you didn’t know what to do with yourself.

“Seems sweet girl is back, good thing I like her just as much.”

As if he hadn’t just winded you with a simple sentence, Eddie turned back to take a sip of beer and resumed the quiet ministrations of his blunt fingernails against your scalp. 

Your hand shook only slightly as you brought your bottle to your lips, gently resting on the rim as you took a sip. Every time you found a surge of confidence to tease Eddie, try match him at his own game, he reminds you why the game was his in the first place.

Eddie Munson wasn’t the type to shy away from anything. A man who doesn’t get embarrassed, an “I’ll try anything once” kind of guy. That was the charm about him, the notion of showing somebody all the freaky little parts of yourself and just knowing they’re going to love you anyways.

“Surprised you’re here, after you were so keen on keeping me away last night.” He was teasing, you could tell by his tone of voice and even the pressure of his fingers.

“Not tryna’ keep you away.” You mumbled into the beer bottle, trying and failing to hide behind the thick glass.

“No? So you whisper to everyone on the line?”

Your eyes finally opened and they rolled as they did, turning to see that Eddie had that look on his face. The one that cemented with you that he was in fact teasing and was in fact loving every second of it.

“You know what’s up, Eddie.”

He hummed in agreement, dropping his hand from your head so his arm could lay around your shoulders and pull you into his chest. The boy was like a furnace, hot even without the help of the middle of summer. But you didn’t mind this, couldn’t mind it when his lips pressed to the top of you head.

“Don’t you worry, the parents of Hawkins have been scared of me since the minute I arrived.” He lent forward to place his beer bottle on the floor beside the couch. “Make the dads violent and the moms blush, I do.”

You giggled, knowing he wasn’t entirely incorrect. There were plenty of men in this town that didn’t like the influence Eddie had on their daughters (or their wives for that matter), that all he had to do was smile in their general direction and they start behaving like Elvis was opening at the International. 

“I nearly let you come round last night.” Your voice was a deliberate squeak.

Eddie heard you, ears now well in tune to all the subtle noises you might make for him. He turned his face so his cheek was pressed to your head, an inquisitive noise raising from his chest.

“Yeah? And why didn’t you? Put me out my misery or somethin’?”

“I uh-” Burying your face in his chest just a bit, you let the words rush through you. “Wasn’t trusting myself to keep quiet.”

If you hadn’t been holding him so tight, Eddie thought he might’ve fallen apart. A smile that was frankly below-the-belt resting over the lower half of his face. His hand slid down your arm till it reached your thigh.

“Mmm and I can’t ever stop my girl from making those pretty little sounds, can I?”

His hand nudged your leg a little more, shifting you even closer to him till you were nearly in his lap. The A/C had taken the bite out of the heat for now, but draping yourself over him still left that sticky feeling along you both.

You were close enough that he could get his lips along the shell of your ear to whisper for you.

“I bet if I got my tongue in the right spot, I could have you waking up the whole neighbourhood.”

He darted that god-forsaken tongue out like the serpent that started everything, firm muscle running along the length of your neck and making you squeal. Your natural reaction had you drawing your ear down against your shoulder, trying to keep him back but failing miserably. What Eddie wanted, Eddie got.

“Eddie don’t, I’m all sweaty-”

“And you think I fucking care?” He manhandled you, pulling you the rest of the way into his lap until you were perched up on his thighs. “I’d put my mouth on every inch of you if you let me.”

Your eyes nearly rolled back in your head, knowing that he meant good on his word. You give him so much as an inch and he’d take a fucking mile with his tongue pressed between the plush of your ass cheeks.

Anyways, warning him of your sweaty disposition was a weak argument. Eddie was a menace when it came to you, there wasn’t a part of you he wasn’t enamoured with- including your scent. Even when you weren’t at your best.

Your mind wound back to Eddie following you into your home when you were sure you both were the only ones there, your clothing sticking to you from the walk there. He ambled behind you as you made a beeline for the bathroom, peeling the dirty clothes from your body and dropping them in the hamper.

As you waited for the shower to heat, you caught a glimpse in the mirror of the sights over your shoulder. Eddie shamelessly plucking the shorts you’d just had on and holding them straight to his face, inhaling your musky scent.

“You’re fucking bad, Eddie Munson.” Your voice broke as you whimpered for him, hips rolling into his.

“Yeah, but you like it,” He leaned in, lips nipping down your neck as his hands maneuvered your hips. “So you’re worse.”

He didn’t just make you crazy, he didn’t just make you filthy, he made you feel pathetic. The way you’d pull at his clothing, how your thighs got slick at the sight of his hair up, how you’d give just about anything to have him inside of you right now.

You were honestly and pathetically down horrible for this man, and worst of all? He knew it.

“Hmm there’s those pretty sounds, nearly crying for me yeah?”

He looked up at you, hands bunching your shirt up around your chest. You took incentive, immediately shoving the fabric up your arms and over your shoulder. Eddie could pray to the sun gods at this moment, giving him a heat that left you braless.

“There’s my girls.” Corny as he was, the minute his hands enveloped your breasts you were back to whining his name.

He was right, verge of tears beckoning you closer. Overwhelming tears, this is so fucking good tears, tears that threaten your waterline every time he trails a featherlight touch over you. His fingers close around your nipples, whilst his palms press into the flesh of your chest.

Desperate movements of your hips roll into his, hands skittering down his chest as you tug at his belt. Your lower lip pouts, pitiful little whimpers trailing out of your mouth as his hands cover as much ground as they could manage.

Eddie’s eyes were quick to hone in on your movements, corner of his mouth turning up in a smirk. “You want it so bad, take it out for me.”

Forgoing his belt, you stayed good on your words from earlier. Fly down and fingers burrowing into the soft cotton of his boxers, you were met with the soft feeling of his skin. Soft skin but fucking hard.

Eddie hissed, hips jolting up towards your touch as you took his cock out. Your hand ran over the head, swiping through the precum and drawing it down over the length of him. Immediately, you twisted your wrist once around him and got exactly what you were looking for.

A moan, borderline songlike fell from his parted lips as his head tipped back against the couch. “That’s it, angel, oh- that’s it.”

His fingers started with the waist of your bottoms, dipping into the band and pushing them down as you kept up the steady motions of your hand rolling over the head of his cock and making his hips lift to meet you.

As your bottoms got around your thighs, Eddie nudged you to stand so he could get them the rest of the way off. “Take these off, baby. Come put that pussy on me.”

That got you moving, kicking the clothing off your ankle and somewhere across the living room, you were quick to settle back onto Eddie’s thighs. The denim of his shorts were rough against your thighs, but you braced one hand on a bare knee behind you as you leant into a kiss.

You felt the hairs of his leg under your palm, a little scratchy but slightly soft as you gripped at his leg. Eddie’s own palms came up your sides, gripping your waist as he pulled you forward till your cunt was pressed against the hard length of him.

Sat stark naked as the day you were born whilst Eddie hadn’t shed one item, it should’ve been a little bit shameful but you couldn’t find it in you to mind. He had a way of drawing everything up to the surface, no matter how valiantly had tried to bury it. You liked it, you liked when he stripped you bare and stared at all the intimate parts of you.

When he licked his lips and groaned under his breath and said something like, “fuck, and all for me yeah?”

You rolled your hips once, twice, the hard line of his cock pressed straight between your folds. Dripping head brushing against your swollen clit, catching against you and making you mutter a string of curses mixed with a wail of his name.

Hand gently resting against the other side of his cock, you rocked harder against it. Grinding against the thick vein that ran along the underside, your took your eyes off the heavens and took in the sight beneath you.

Eddie lay blissed out, one hand was holding your hip and rubbing sweet circles into the flesh. His other arm lay stretched along the back of the couch, head resting against it as he watched you work yourself against him.

“You like using me to get off, huh?” He quirked an eyebrow as his eyes ran up the entire length of you. “It’s okay, sweet thing, you take whatever you need.”

You huffed a heady moan out of pursed lips, lifting up onto your knees so you could nudge the head towards your opening. Your other hand came to the meeting of your thighs, fingers dragging the wetness around the mess between your legs.

Dragging some of your own slick down Eddie’s cock, you lined him up against yourself. Eyes fixed on his, you sunk down on him slowly as your mouth fell open with a cry of his name, “Eddie, please-oh god.”

“I know, baby,” Both his hands came to grip hard at your waist, pulling you forward. “Tell me allllll about it.”

Between Eddie’s guiding motions and the own roll of your hips, you picked up pace in bouncing on his thighs. Your hand shot back to it’s spot on his knee, using it to steady yourself as he began to lift his hips and fuck up into you.

Mouth hanging open and sounds falling out, every filthy little sound filtered into the air. Your eyes flickered towards the open windows with billowing curtains, knowing there was an incredibly good chance the Munson’s neighbour’s now knew exactly what the youngest was capable of, thanks to your inability to keep quiet.

The inkling of worry in your chest blossomed into something dark and a little dirty, the devil who lived on your shoulder and kind-of-sort-of wanted Eddie to show you off. For now, you’d settle for the way he looked at you like you were the only thing worth his time.

Glassy eyes, totally fucked out expression across his face. Sweat sheen over his forehead as he lifted you and placed you straight down onto his dick, mouth running a mile a minute about how good you look perched in his lap.

“My good girl, bouncing on my cock like you were made for me.”

Part of you was beginning to think maybe you were. There was no way he felt this good inside you, made you feel this good inside when he so much as spoke to you, without there being some divine intervention.

Men like Eddie Munson weren’t coincidences. They were rewards for good behaviour in another life, or something.

Yeah something, your mind swelled with a multitude of emotions all at once. Part of you was still comprehending Eddie’s coo of “good girl”, the other part couldn’t get over how he was rutting his hips under you, the last part was fully focused on the impending orgasm getting closer each moment.

The hand that wasn’t holding you upright came down to rub at your clit, immediately making you flex your hot cunt tight around him, the action not at all going unnoticed by Eddie. “Jesus fucking Christ, that’s it.”

Filthy wet sounds of your fingers messily dragging over your clit, Eddie’s cock being sucked into the tight hold of your pussy, his full balls slapping against you with every thrust. The sounds alone should’ve made you fell an ounce of shame but it was overtaken by the hot rush that was catching up to you.

Falling forward, your face tucked into the crook of his neck and hands coming to ball the material of his shirt into your fists. Eddie wrapped both arms around your waist, holding tight as he could whilst he picked up the pace even further, not that you thought that was even possible.

“Eddieeeee, oh- fuck- I’m”

“I know, can feel your cunt like a vice grip,” There was a hint of teasing under his tongue. “Give it to me, angel.”

Not one to deny him anything, you released the tension and let go of the floodgates. Your lips split open and cries fell into the skin of Eddie’s neck, teeth closing around the muscle of his shoulder in a feeble attempt to quiet yourself some.

Eddie didn’t mind a bit, chuckle in his voice as he spurred you on. “Yeahhh- sink your teeth in, baby. Take a bite of my heart next.”

Your body fell limp, letting him pick you up and slide you along the length of his cock like a toy. His hips slowed minutely before they started to hammer, hard thrusts slowing down until he was dragging you right down and holding you tight.

The guttural groan that sounded from his chest as he filled you up was nearly enough to have you coming again, gentle little “fuuuuuck baby, that’s my good girl” as his lips pressed to the side of your head.

You could barely move, knowing that if you did there would be a helluva mess on Eddie’s shorts beneath you (not that he’d ever mind). Your whole body felt soft, draped over him as he cooed quietly in your ear, hand rubbing over your bare back.

Sweat covered the both of you, A/C working overtime to try and bring the room back down. Eddie slid a hand up to cup the back of your head, quick kiss to the side of your cheek. “You still with me, honeybunch?”

“Mhmm,” You sighed, burrowing further into his hold. “Feels good.”

Eddie huffed a quiet laugh, his chest rising against yours as you felt him nod gently against you.

“Yeah it does,” He secured your warm body against his in a cuddle. “Yeah it fuckin’ does.”

[wheelsup]

the taming of the shrew | two

if i be waspish, best beware my sting

after some setbacks, penelope is willing to do anything to get you back on board. but has spencer already ruined things?

A/N: hello! im so sorry that this posting schedule is super inconsistent. the more i thought about this chapter, the less i liked the more technical aspects of it. but! i hope you enjoy to plot aspect of it nonetheless <3 thanks for reading!

category: fluff, slow burn series, spencer reid x fem!reader

wc: 4.4k

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Since that phone call with Penelope, she’d been over nearly every night for a week with plates of treats and onslaughts of apologies. Each time she came knocking, you told her there was no amount of persuasion that could change your mind. And yet the following night, she’d be there, a new type of pastry in hand and a new set of reasons why Spencer was worth the trouble.

First, she brought blueberry muffins and reasoned that deep below that prickly exterior, he really was everything she promised –– sweet and caring. But that must be deep, deep down. Like, The Lost City of Atlantis, deep down, because you didn’t expect it to surface any time soon. 

Then, she brought fudge brownies and explained that his behavior wasn’t personal –– he was getting snippy with everyone lately. And while you maintained that anybody would have a hard time getting along with Spencer, you were absolutely positive that it was now impossible for you. 

Quite frankly, it wasn’t just Spencer who was unwilling to play nice. You hated him. More than you’ve ever hated a stranger. 

You wished him a lifetime riddled with minor inconveniences that would drive him to the edge of insanity. You wanted him to miss all his trains by just a quarter of a minute; close enough so that he could see it leave the platform, knowing he almost made it on. You wanted him to constantly feel like he was about to sneeze. You wanted his socks to be perpetually wet, and if he should happen to put on a dry pair? You hoped he stepped in a puddle.

That was all you could think about as you laid out on your couch, munching on one of Penelope’s lemon bars while she paced around your apartment. She kept going on and on advertising Spencer to you. As annoying as it was, she was also saving you a ton on groceries that week. 

For the most part, you filtered her out. Not a single word that came out of her mouth was believable anymore, especially not when she was talking about Spencer. Despite what Penelope thought of him, you saw in him what she refused to accept. 

As her speech came to a close, she looked at you like she expected a response to dignify her prattling. 

“Give it a rest, Penelope. He’s a lost cause,” you laughed dryly. “He doesn’t need –– nor does he want –– anyone in his life.” At the very least, he definitely didn’t want you. 

“Yes, that’s the problem!” If you’d been listening to her, you would’ve heard her saying the same thing. “He doesn’t want to date!” 

Your head just about exploded when she said that. 

There had been countless, fruitless conversations about this, and all along she saw the gaping hole in her supposedly airtight plan?

“If he doesn’t want to DATE, then WHAT was the point of this?!” Your fingers pressed the bridge of your nose; you suddenly felt a headache coming on. Funny how it always happened around the time of day that Penelope came to visit.

Penelope stopped pacing. She stalked over to your couch, picked your legs up by your ankle, and moved them to make space for herself. You begrudgingly sat upright as she took her place beside you. 

“Because he’s not himself anymore. He’s not open like he used to be. Not to the people who care about him the most, and certainly not to the world.”  

Penelope toyed with the hem of her dress, distracting herself from her quivering lip before pressing on, “Spencer Reid has always wanted love. And it’s not right that he no longer believes he can have it.” 

You hadn’t seen Penelope look so desperate until now. It was concerning. Because what could make her look so hopeless? What could make Spencer so hopeless? 

“Penelope, I don’t know what’s wrong with your little friend, but… there’s a lot more bubbling inside him than you’re letting on.” 

She chewed up the insides of her cheeks, wincing to herself at your incredibly accurate claim. 

“You are hiding something, aren’t you?” You narrowed your eyes on her. You were no detective, or whatever exactly her team did, but she was just awful at concealing her thoughts.

“It’s not my story to tell,” she murmured. 

She could already feel herself about to give it away and doubled down her mental defenses against it. Focusing extra hard on keeping Spencer’s privacy intact. If only you knew her track record with secrets, you’d be proud of her for staying quiet this long.

“What isn’t your story?” 

“That his girlfriend died last year.” 

She spilled it before she even realized what she was saying. You’d just asked so nonchalantly that she forgot she was talking aloud. Penelope turned purple, terrified now that the whole truth was out there. 

You couldn’t even take satisfaction in the fact that your trick worked. You were just as mortified as Penelope, and if you weren’t already sitting down, you knew you’d need to. You assumed there was something deeper going on with him, you didn’t think it was a dead girlfriend. That was some Nicholas Sparks shit. 

“He pretends like he’s fine but I know he’s not. And if he found a way to move on, maybe he’d start feeling as okay as he claims to be,” she sniffled before snot could run from her nose, tears lining the rims of her eyes. “I know I should’ve given you the full picture, but I didn’t think you’d go for it if you knew…” 

You were too floored to process it all right away. This added a whole new layer of complicated to an already uneasy arrangement.

“Well, I know you’re right about one thing. I would’ve said no.” 

She gave you a set of pleading eyes, praying you’d see where she was coming from. 

“I know,” she whispered defeatedly. “But maybe... now that you know, you can understand why he acts out the way he does.”

“Penelope, I can’t just… make someone move on, or –– or get them to believe in love! Especially when it’s fake.”

How on Earth did she expect you to pull that off? Did that guy from A Walk to Remember move on when Mandy Moore died? You hadn’t seen the ending of the movie, but you assumed not. 

“I’m sorry, this is just… a lot bigger than the favor I thought it was ––”

“What if I could return it?” she cut in. The gears in her head started to turn, figuring ways to patch up the holes she made. 

“There’s nothing I need from you.” 

That couldn’t be true. Penelope looked around the room and it didn’t take her long to think of it.

“I can help you sell your art,” she tempted, gesturing to the scattered canvases. “You make all your income from this, right?” 

You didn’t want to give any fuel to her fire, but you nodded. “What if… what if you didn’t have to settle for local buyers? What if I told you that you could make way more money selling them to the whole world?”

You chortled at her idea. 

You were a local artist, through and through. Your art got put in local galleries and sold to local buyers. Nothing more, and that was fine with you. You realized it a long time ago that it was just a pipe dream to think you’d be more. 

“I’m serious! You could get a separate painting studio, and stop living in one? Huh?” She wrapped her hand around your shoulder, waving the other in the air, urging you to picture it with her. “Imagine this: a kitchen that’s separate from your living room. A bed, inside it’s own four walls, and more than twelve feet from where you cook your meals.”

Pushing aside her so blatantly insulting your apartment, if that were a possibility, you’d want nothing more. But it already sounded foolish and you hadn’t even heard how she planned to pull it off. 

“Penelope, I’m fine where I am. I make the money I need, and that’s... it’s fine.”

She gave you a pointed look. “You know, I can hack all search engine results to make sure you are what comes up first anytime someone enters the word ‘painting’, right?

An airy chuckle left your lips. Of course she could. You patted her thigh twice and stood up, prompting her to follow you to your door –– hopefully, so she can show herself to the other side of it. “Still no, Pen.” 

“Just take some time to think about it!” Her voice carried through the wood as you shut it on her.

*

There was this one bench in Kenilworth Park – the one that overlooks the crystal clear pond – that you’d always been able to rely on to fix any problem.

There was hidden magic in the bushes that sprawled out from the edges of the water, surrounded by spiky green blades of overgrown grass. A simplicity you loved in baby ducklings paddling into the tiny body of water, swimming close together so they don’t get lost in, what seems to them, a whole ocean. And clarity provided by the freshest air in the world, under the shade of the big oak trees on a late summer afternoon.

But at the present, none of that came close to being enough.

The artist’s block started off as a minor inconvenience, but without your permission, had stretched into weeks of steadily declining motivation. Each new idea felt even worse than the last, and you were acutely aware that there would come a point where you’d officially hit maximum capacity for how awful they could get.

Still, that didn’t seem to light a fire under you. You happily coexisted with the blank pages of your sketchbook. Staring down at them, laying open on your lap in their stark-white glory, you felt like you were playing a waiting game. If you stared long and hard enough, maybe they’d flinch. 

Unfortunately, you never got to find out who won, because your phone rang inside your pocket. As if the caller had interrupted an incredible genius at work (which couldn’t be farther from the truth), you hastily raised the phone to your ear, slamming your sketchbook shut.

“Hello?” Your voice wasn’t as kind as it could be for someone with nothing better to be doing. Two seconds later, you learned who was calling and came to regret it.

“Hi, This is Rebecca from District Arts, calling with a message from Andre ––”

“Oh, hi!” you tried to walk back your previous tone, straightening up in your seat and pitching your voice higher, “Yeah, I’ve been waiting to hear from him!” 

While Rebecca intimidated you, Andre happened to be your closest friend at the gallery. He worked closely with the artists to curate their collection and help them make sales.��

“Does he want to sort out what to set the opening bid prices at for my new pieces?” A handful of days ago, you sent him pictures of your new work and were waiting to hear his thoughts. You’d always been able to trust his opinion, and a vote of confidence from him might be just the thing to inspire you.

“Uhm…” There was a criminally long pause on the other side of the line, ended by Rebecca’s weary inhale. “Unfortunately, we’re calling to inform you that your pieces will not be included in the next rotation.”

For a minute, you weren’t sure what to make of what she said. You’d never heard those words before.

“What – what do you mean?” you laughed nervously. She probably misspoke. Perks of friendship aside, Andre always included you in sets. 

“Ugh, let me just get him…” her voice faded away as she put the phone down. 

That wasn’t exactly the reassuring statement you were looking for. In the time it took for the call to switch hands, your confusion finally melted in. And then quickly boiled into anger.

The District Arts gallery changed their entire collection every two months. The pieces shown accepted rolling bids throughout the full eight weeks, finally selling at the end of term to their highest offer. After that, the pieces got taken down, sent to happy new owners, and the entire gallery reset with entirely new works. 

So if you missed one rotation, that meant waiting two months to get back in.

“Andre, how am I just cut from the gallery!” you barked before he could get a word in. If he didn’t like your work, he could’ve just said so. 

“No one said that ––”

“Okay, let me rephrase.” You pinched the bridge of your nose, something you found yourself doing quite frequently lately, and took a deep breath in and out. It was seemingly just for show because it did absolutely nothing to calm you down. “Why wouldn’t you put me in the next set? I’m in all of them!”

“I know you are!” He sounded just as upset. “It’s just that… we give you the biggest space we have, because you always manage to fill it up. But this time… I’m not so sure you can.”

“That’s ridiculous,” you scoffed. “What makes you say that?” You asked that, but you knew.

“You’ve only finished three pieces… I’m worried how you’ll deliver seven more before we set up.”

“But… it’s four weeks away, I could do ––”

“And it took you four weeks to make what you have... I’m sorry. We couldn’t take that gamble.” 

He took your silence as an opportunity to turn off the work talk and speak, just friend to friend. 

“You know that I trust you and I’d hold that spot if I could. But, I also know what you’re going through right now, and… I don’t know, maybe letting yourself rest would be a good thing?” 

Your heart paused. By, “knowing what you’re going through”, you assumed he didn’t mean the little artist’s block.

“If you’re implying that I can’t do my job because of what happened with Cyrus –”

“I’m not, I’m not....” he backtracked as quickly as he could. “But take another look at the paintings you showed me and tell me if they feel like you.”

Even if he was right, you wanted to fight him. You wanted to cry. You wanted to beg that you didn’t need that big space; you were willing to downsize and just turn in the three that you had. Even if they got shoved into the corner where hardly anybody bothered to look. You just couldn’t afford to go two months without the income. 

But even with tears beading up, you realized that the gallery couldn’t afford it either. They needed to bring in money and you couldn’t do that for them this time. So they were right to go to someone who can.

“Right,” you sniffled, recollecting yourself so he can’t hear the shakiness in your voice. “I understand. It’s a big risk, like you said… It’s for the better.”

Andre tried to thank you for being understanding and spewed some sort of encouragement. The words flew over your head. You managed to toss in a few ‘mhmm’s and ‘sure’s at the right places to coast you along until the call finally ended. 

As soon as it went dead, you dropped your phone to the side and brought your hands to your face, rubbing them furiously over your cheeks. Your fingertips pressed hard into your eyelids, trying to forcibly reabsorb the tears threatening to spill. 

It almost worked, until you tried to breathe. 

A full sob escaped in that one gulp of air and you succumbed to it. But the loud crunching noise of some pedestrian walking over the falling leaves destroyed your sense of privacy, and you quickly wiped away all signs of your breakdown. The crunching stopped just short of your bench and on instinct you flicked your eyes up to see who the intruder was.

You did a double take. It was him. That fucking asshole.

He was standing there, looking dumber than you could even remember, with his hands in his coat pockets and a curious look on his face as he watched you cry. Tucking your sketchbook under your arm in haste, you made it a point to stand up with as much aggression as possible, rolling your eyes at him.

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” you barked. “No need to yell at me this time.”

You bristled past him, barely refraining yourself from checking his shoulder as payback. You wanted to believe you were better than him, but it did sound incredibly tempting. He stood there for a moment before turning on his heel and following you.

“Wait,” he groaned.

You didn’t listen, neither stopping nor slowing down.

“I said wait,” he huffed as he caught up to you, popping up at your side and jogging along as you kept going.

“Yeah, because I need to listen to a guy who yells at strangers in bookstores.” 

Now that you’d brought up the elephant in the room, your feet started moving even faster, working double time to get you away from him.

Damn the fact that he had those long legs. He didn’t even break a sweat trying to keep up. He was inescapable.

“Well, if you waited like I asked, you would’ve gotten an apology for the ––”

“Gee, thanks!” you yelled, stopping for only a second to turn to him and give him a mocking bow of your head, hands clasped together like you were praising at his altar. “I was waiting with bated breath for that! Thank you, kind sir, for now my life can go on.”

“Look, I’m actually sorry,” he snapped. Then in realizing the irony, softened his voice, “I’m sorry for being rude. I was having a bad day… not that that’s an excuse.”

You stared at him blankly, just watching his mouth moving quickly and waiting until it finally stopped. 

“Did you need something?” 

“Did you… did you not hear what I just said?!” 

“No, sorry,” you smiled, voice sweet like sugar. “My ears filter bullshit. Wanna try again?”

He scoffed, looking away like he couldn’t believe you before stepping even closer. “What’s your problem?”

“Me!? The fuck –– what the fuck is your problem?” You turned and stormed off again, seething at his audacity. Spencer just couldn’t relent his annoying tendencies and followed yet again.

“My problem is that I’m trying to be nice, and you’re not letting me!”

You got a good, hard laugh out of that. “Okay, first of all, having to apologize for yelling at me and pushing me isn’t exactly the best starting point for the journey of becoming a nice person.”

“Like I said, I was having a bad day.” 

Under your breath, you muttered, “Well, I hope this one’s even worse.”

“Why are you such a ––” He stopped himself from finishing that thought. Even in his worst mood, he wouldn’t cross that line. 

But he didn’t need to finish it, you knew exactly where he wanted to take it. The soles of your shoes scraped against the loose gravel as you came to a grinding halt, ears ringing.

“A what?” You turned to face him, a sarcastic smile on your face growing wider as he started to shrink more and more. You got up close in his face, daring him to say what he really wanted to. So he could reinforce your belief in exactly the type of person he was. “A what?” 

Spencer pursed his lips and shook his head, refusing to say it no matter how much you challenged him. If he wasn’t going to have the balls to say it, you decided to take it upon yourself.

“Tell you what, you keep thinking about it and get back to me the next time you’re in a cunty mood.” 

The word he was thinking of was probably not as bad, but you had a habit of escalating things. Even if you took this one too far, you didn’t care. 

Before you tried to take off again, Spencer’s hand flew to your elbow. He tugged you back, forcing you to turn around and face him. He didn’t know his own strength; without any resistance, you came stumbling into his chest, at risk of falling over if it weren’t for his tight grip on your arm.

It took you a beat to push him away with both your hands on his chest, vocalizing your disgust for being so close to him. 

“Can you stop trying to disagree with me for a second? I’m trying to tell you that you’re right, I was being a… well, you know…” He avoided the word. Apparently ‘cunt’ was where he drew the line. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it.” 

Your nostrils were still flared and blood hot as ever, but he made you pause. He looked sincere, if not a little tinged with guilt as well. You were suspicious of it.

“You saw me crying and felt bad, didn’t you?”

He laughed darkly. “Well, I saw you, yes. Did I feel bad? No.” 

“Oh, my God,” you growled, berating yourself for getting close to believing he might be capable of decency. 

“I’m joking! I’m joking.” He squeezed your elbow twice in earnest. “I did feel bad, but that’s not why I wanted to say it.”

“Okay.” You weren’t ready to give him a real smile, so you flattened your lips into a thin line and nodded once slowly, and left it at that. 

You still weren’t a fan, but the apology did dampen some of the resentment. Maybe he wasn’t the worst person alive. You’d settle for saying top ten most annoying, instead.

Minutes later, you came to the startling realization that he was still on the path, just two paces behind you. You flinched when you saw him out of the corner of your eye, not expecting him to still be here. 

“Uhm. Where are you… why are you still following me?” 

“I’m not. My car’s that way,” he gestured to the parking lot at the end of the long walkway. “I forgot my loaf for the ducks.” He didn’t mean to offer that information up, it just slipped out. He could practically see your smug expression coming before it even got there.

“You’re not supposed to feed bread to the ducks. It’s bad for them.”

“I don’t.” He didn’t care to explain this to you, but he couldn’t have you thinking he was any less competent than he really was. “It’s a special bread made from water and seeds that were ground into flour. It’s duck-safe.” 

“They make duck-safe bread?” Now that was something you’d never heard before. 

“No… I make duck-safe bread,” he said softly under his breath. 

You didn’t know how else you were supposed to react to that besides laughing wildly. 

“You make it?” He nodded like you were the crazy one here. As if he wasn’t the one spending his spare time grinding up seeds and baking loaves of bread for ducks, donning a frilly pink apron and oven mitts as he did so. At least that’s how you imagined it. “Why not just feed them the seeds?”

“Because, loose seeds will sink in the water and can potentially clog waterbeds and cause foreign bacteria growth in the pond.” 

“So you… hand-make the seeds into a little loaf of bread so it doesn't do that?”

He confirmed. You pondered silently for a moment, then absolutely had to ask, “You ever eaten the duck bread before?”

Spencer was caught off guard by that question. His cheeks deepened to a rosy color.

“Yeah, well, it was the house so…” he laughed nervously and stared at his sneakers. “It’s actually not too bad.”

You weren’t entirely surprised by that. You remembered what his grocery basket looked like, and given those same options, you probably would’ve tried the duck bread too. Still, you cracked the smallest of grins at knowing he makes bread for ducks. The one, sole redeeming fact you’ve learned about Spencer. 

You reached your car first, and Spencer stopped in front of it with you. 

“I’m actually sorry, you know,” he whispered once more, hand resting at the top of your car door as you opened it. He wasn’t talking about the incident at the bookstore.

“Yeah…” For a while you were so busy being angry at Spencer that you forgot about your own problems. 

He noticed your nose was still red around the edges, eyes still a little bleary. “Are you okay, by the way?” His voice was too soft, too genuine.

You shook your head no.

“Is there anything I can do?” You shook your head again. And then you had an awful thought.

You knew he was just offering to help just to say it, because that’s how people react when you say you’re not okay even if they don’t care. But there actually was something he could do for you… Something that Penelope could do.

“Uh, no but…” you fixed your hair and tucked it behind your ear, seamlessly switching to a flirtier voice. “If you still feel bad about the other day, you’re welcome to make it up to me.”

Spencer cocked his head to the side, unsure of how he could do that. 

“Hang out with me sometime.”

“H-hang out?” You could tell that it flustered him, even if he tried to play it off. He swallowed thickly, nose twitching and brows scrunched together.

“Relax, I really do just mean hang out.” You were lying through your teeth. He didn’t need to know that. 

As if he didn’t want to think about it for a second longer and just get out of this conversation as quickly as possible, he agreed without thinking it through. He didn’t even ask why an almost complete stranger would want to hang out with him. 

You stuck your hand out, expecting him to hand over his cell so you could put your contact into it. He rocked on the balls of his feet, watching as you input your contact and sent yourself a text on his phone.

“Hi, this is…” you read out your message as you typed, pausing at just the right place. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Oh-uh, I’m Spencer.” 

A devilish grin took over your face, hidden from his view while you were looking down at the screen. He was going to be easy to fool.

-

-

agh! im still not in love with how this chapter is turning out, but it came to a point where i just had to stop fiddling with it and just post it. any feedback or comments about this story is very much appreciated 💕

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[ordinaryschmuck]

Walt Disney Animated Pictures Studios from Worst to Best-Part Five: The GREATEST Films

Salutations, random people of the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck! I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons!

Now we’re getting into it with this Walt Disney Animated Pictures Studios ranking! This time, we’re talking about the movies that are simply the greatest. The films that I’ll always be in the mood for, what with them being fun, creative, and, at times, simply beautiful. Not the best just yet, but these next few movies are far from being the worst. And we’re going through them by starting with a movie that I’m sure some of you are surprised that it’s ranked this high.

#20. Hercules-If you’re hoping for a grand, epic retelling of Greece’s greatest mythological hero…you’re not going to get it.

But if you’re looking for a cartoonish comedy with a decent amount of heart and some insanely catchy music, you’ll get that in spades.

There’s not much to say about Hercules other than that. It’s a fun movie, but it’s one that’s definitely not for everyone. I certainly had a blast, but I can understand why someone else wouldn’t. The stars just don’t line up for them.

#19. Tarzan-I feel like I can talk forever about what I like in Tarzan, and, really, there’s quite a bit.

Tarzan’s journey to discovering who he is and where he belongs is easy to sympathize with and is engaging to see him come to his own inclusion.

Jane is a decent love interest, who is bubbly and excited to learn about everything, while also getting a chuckle or two out of me when necessary.

Kala is up there as one of the best Disney moms, doing her darndest to support Tarzan, letting him know that he always has a place in the family, and especially a place in her heart.

Clayton is a decent villain, whose motivations are simple but his personality is what wins me over as this impatient meathead that clashes well with Tarzan. Also, he’s a contender for having one of the darkest moments in Disney’s history.

Speaking of dark, there’s some effective and tense peril in this film, with three exciting set pieces that gets the blood pumping as Tarzan tries to survive a predator, whether it’s a leopard or a Clayton.

I could go on forever, but I also don’t want this list to go on for too long. Besides, while there’s a lot to love with Tarzan, there are issues that hold it back.

Tantor’s blind hatred for Tarzan is pretty messed up. He bullies Tarzan from infancy to adulthood, never giving him a chance for no reason. If there was a scene that showed that he hated humans, I might understand, but as is, it’s harsh as hell.

Terk and Tantor are not as funny as I remember them. Honestly, I’m pretty sure they were funnier in the TV show. But here? Eeeeeeeeh, they have moments…or A moment.

Tarzan’s close proximity to Jane can get…creepy. Very creepy.

Not to mention that Jane’s conclusion in the end is pretty rushed, as it’s hard to believe that she’ll make it after the short time she’s spent with Tarzan.

And then there’s the Phil Collins songs. Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, you gotta admit that it would have hit harder to have the characters sing, not Phil Collins. Imagine if Tala sang “You’ll Be in My Heart” or if Tarzan sang “Strangers Like Me.” Wouldn’t that be more powerful, even if it was by a smidge?

Again, I could go on and on. And maybe I will one day. But to keep things brief, I’ll say that while Tarzan is far from perfect, the things that work well work enough where I’ll be willing to sit through what’s imperfect just to get to the good stuff. And, as I’ve said, there’s quite a bit of that.

#18. Atlantis: The Lost Empire-Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A heavily underrated Disney film that tries to be more mature and adult compared to the others. Sounds familiar, right? Well, this time, I can certainly say that it is one of the more effective attempts. The story is fairly simple as it’s an expedition that heads out to find the lost city of Atlantis, but the simplicity helps add to the main theme of preservation and how taking from lost civilizations for the “pursuit of knowledge” isn’t as noble as people think. Sure, there’s still a princess that needs saving and that kind of shows Disney’s true colors, but is that really worth complaining about? I mean, look at everything else this movie does right compared to that.

It has some incredible animation aided with a comic book-like art style that leads to some incredible shots and expressions. The character designs are also top-notch, saying everything you need to know about them just by the way that they look…though one might be a little offensive to a particular group. I’m not sure.

I AM sure, though, that the comedy that comes from these characters are pretty funny, with Vinny in particular getting the most laughs with his dry wit and line delivery. And as for character development, Milo’s is pretty solid, going from meek nerd to brave hero in a convincing manner. At least, to me he does.

If there’s anything worth complaining about, it’s the pacing, as the movie feels like it’s on fast-forward at times. Things go by so fast that there’s hardly time to breathe once we get to the main voyage.

“Also this movie is directed by Joss Weadon.”

Oh, right…he’s a piece of s**t and we hate him now…Yikes.

Still, if you’re willing to look past that (and maybe some racism?), you’re in for a fun time. Not a flawless adventure, but still pretty entertaining.

#17. Big Hero 6-I feel like the best way to look at this is to not see it as a Disney movie. Instead, it’s more like a mid-tear Marvel movie. It has an end credit scene, a Stan Lee cameo, and a solid mix of comedy and action, and all the makings that cause Marvel to be an easy box-office smash…Unless you’re Morbius.

Though, the fact that this one is animated gives Big Hero 6 more of an edge. I always feel like animation is the best way to bring superheroes to life because, when animated, the larger than life powers can be explored to their fullest potential and the action can be much more grandiose. Whereas live action is limited to what an actual human can do and has to rely on CGI…which is just animation with a cooler name. So I do think that Big Hero 6’s animation helps it be better than even the most mediocre of Marvel movies just for the spectacle it’s medium is allowed to be. That and the characters, primarily Hiro and Baymax. The other characters are more about being supportive towards Hiro rather than having actual arcs, but their personalities are entertaining enough to offer a good time. But Hiro is the true star of the show, going through the motions to learn that there’s a right way to process grief than doing…what he tries to do. And Baymax steals the show, being equal parts funny and wholesome, crafting an endearing relationship with Hiro that genuinely tugged at the heartstrings at certain points.

Unfortunately, like most Marvel movies, the worst thing about it was the villain. I won’t give much away, but trust me when I say that everything wrong with this villain is summed up in “That was his mistake.” He at least looks cool, but…that’s about it. The villain doesn’t hurt the movie too much, but I feel like the reason why I’m saying that is because I’m a fan of both superheroes and animation, meaning that this film checks off all the best boxes for me. So, if my bias is showing, then I guess that’s my mistake. Still, I’d be willing to argue that Big Hero 6 is always going to be a fun time for me.

#16. The Emperor’s New Groove-If there’s one word that describes this movie perfectly, it’s, “iconic.” The jokes, the characters, and even the facial expressions all line up for a movie that NO ONE will be able to forget. I mean, this is the movie that gifted us with Kronk. KRONK! The funniest and most quotable character in all of fiction! Not just in Disney, but in fiction.

The Emperor’s New Groove might not be as grand as other Disney films, or even as epic as its original concept, but that’s a bit of an unfair judgment. Yes, there are some movies better than it, but The Emperor’s New Groove is still pretty great in a vacuum. Kuzco’s arc into becoming a better person is handled well, his friendship with Apa is endearing as it is believable, and Izma makes for a fun, if not insane, antagonist that adds to the whole package that is an entertaining film. It might not be the objective best, but it is pretty fun. And who am I to knock down a movie for being fun?

#15. Zootopia-Once upon a time, I would consider this movie to be in the top best Disney films, and for good reason. It has stellar animation that makes the characters seem 2D with a 3D coat of paint, some great comedy, and two characters with an entertaining dynamic and adorable relationship. And, on top of all that, Zootopia also tries to have a solid message about prejudice. Some say it’s a bit preachy, but to that I say, “LOOK AT THE WORLD WE LIVE IN!” A six-year-old African American boy got arrested for picking flowers off a man’s lawn while waiting at the bus stop! No s**t it’s preachy! We need this stuff hammered into our skulls if s**t like this happens!

(And that story is true, by the way. Look it up.)

As for something I do agree on, the predator and prey analogy can be a bit iffy. Predators, despite what the movie preaches, are biologically designed to eat and kill prey. That’s just nature. So to have predators be the representation of every minority ever while preys are the ones that take advantage of them can be..rough, to say the very least. I will say that I do appreciate that even the main character has prejudices of her own, and even tries to work through them, meaning that not everyone is absolved from this issue. So, while iffy, it does come from good intentions. I won’t say Zootopia is the perfect movie to talk about race and prejudice, but it’s at least enough to transition kids into the discussion. It could have been done better, but it also could have been done way worse.

(Remember that shock collar idea from the original plot? Yikes…)

#14. Pinocchio-Pinocchio has two jobs: Scare the crap out of kids and break the hearts of adults. If you missed your chance to be afraid of donkeys and whales as a kid, then you'll at least learn great sadness when you see characters like Pinocchio and Geppetto being in distress as you get older. Pleasure Island remains one of the darkest places Disney has ever created, with Monstro the whale being pretty threatening-looking. As for stuff like Pinocchio crying when in a bad situation or Geppetto being so worried about what happened to his son, it tears you up inside, I'll say that much. But aside from the solid emotional beats, Pinocchio also has a decent story. Pinocchio learning to be a real boy is handled well enough, making his reward feel earned after the hardships he went through and the bad choices he improved himself on. Maybe the movie tortured him a little too much, but, again, this movie has two jobs: breaking hearts and scaring kids.

(Don't smoke or drink, kids. Otherwise, you'll turn into a donkey and get sent into salt mines.)

#13. Cinderella-Cinderella is the movie I picture when I think of Disney. It's a charming retelling of a classic fairytale, fit with wonderful animation, beautiful singing, some pretty genuinely funny comedy, a sweet happy ending, and, hey, a decent princess. Cinderella is still a woman who needs mice of all things to save her, but her personality is still one of the best. She's kind and compassionate to everyone around her but still smart enough to know she's in a bad situation and witty enough to call some people out on it. It's mostly the cat, but it's better than nothing. Cinderella may not be a Moana or a Rapunzel, but at least she didn't eat an apple from a stranger like a naive child. The one thing that actually bugs me is the Prince, who's more of a plot device than an actual character. He's pretty forgettable and nothing like that himbo I've heard so much about in that straight-to-video movie that's apparently good (I'll take your word for it). Still, this is a classic movie, and I'd be dreaming if I put it any lower.

#12. The Little Mermaid-Like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid is a movie that comes to my mind when I think of Disney. Primarily, it's when I think of the point when Disney reached the Disney Renaissance. Every movie before it had a notable charm with the occasional fluctuations in quality, but none compared to The Little Mermaid. The animation's much grander, more fluid, and more expressive than past Disney films, all being a spectacle to see. What's also a spectacle is the music. Every song is catchy as all forms of hell while also giving me goosebumps at times. When Ariel started singing "Part of Your World," I remembered what's so enchanting about these movies. And we haven't even gotten to the characters yet, with each one being entertaining in their own way, especially Ursula. She's yet another villain that's both funny and scary, but where past Disney baddies attempted to get on her level, Ursula's the one who perfected the role. The only real problem would be this movie's prince and princess. Ariel at least has a fun personality of being obsessed with the human world, but Eric is...uninteresting. Bland. Devoid of any unique character traits other than wanting to marry a sixteen-year-old. By the way, Ariel's sixteen. Just...think some of you should know that. And I wouldn't have issues with how boring Eric was if he also wasn't the main goal for Ariel. She's willing to go through a lot of danger for this boring man who she knows nothing about. Which isn't something kids should look up to. Still, I love this movie for everything else it does right. It's fun, spectacular, and, at times, even beautiful. Everything I look for in a Disney movie.

#11. Beauty and the Beast-"BeLlE eXpErIeNcEd StOcKhOlM sYnDrOmE! HuRr-HuRr-HuRr-HuRr!"

There, I've made the same stupid joke everyone else made. Let's move on.

Beauty and the Beast is the first animated movie ever to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars, and...Yeah, it's pretty damn good. The characters are fun and charming, the songs are both visual and auditory spectacles, and the movie does something no Disney film did before it. It gives personality to both the Prince and Princess. While past princesses did have a personality, their princes were as dull as a plank of wood. Here, it's different. Belle is an intelligent lady who knows when to be brash if the situation calls for it, and Beast is a savage beast who slowly and convincingly learns how to settle down his...beastness. The one thing that doesn't really work is the development of their romance. If there's anything the movie could benefit from, it would be a longer runtime dedicated to showing more of Belle and the Beast spending time together to make it more believable that they fell in love. But, at the same time, this movie is clearly going for that "fairytale brought to life" feeling, which the romance, as is, still works well for. I guess it all depends on whether or not you want Beauty and the Beast to be more of a movie or more of a fairytale. And while I would personally choose a movie more than a fairytale, I can't really complain here. This was a beautiful film that deserved its nomination. But it wasn’t the best. None of these movies are. A lot of them are worthy enough to be contenders, just couldn’t make it to the top ten. And you’ll see why as we finally talk about the BESTDisney movies…Tomorrow.

[steve0discusses]

S4 Ep38: Awkward Hugs Episode

Remember how excited I was about the good storyboarder? Well this episode has the opposite of that. It looks a lot like they hit some sort of crunch and this entire episode got shipped to Singapore so that some other animation studio could deal with their problems. It’s got some jank.

And like listen, animation is hard, there’s a billion moving plates, there’s a lot of office politics and deadlines, this season in particular is very long and complicated, and I don’t know exactly what happened this episode, but it just...wow it’s a lot funny poorly animated moments and I was here for it.

So first off, Dartz died! I didn’t even cap it because it happened so quickly. He was standing there, a portal opened up, and then the Great Leviathan kind of munched him up in 3 frames of animation, and then dissolved away back into the portal. It was card shenanigans anyway, and I don’t go over card games here--just trust me he played cards, he lost, he died.

Once Dartz died, this happened, in the one place Roland thought he was safe.

Roland has spent a good amount of this time debating whether or not to go inside and now he’s got a situation. Is it safer in Soul Hut than...whatever this is?

I wouldn’t know either.

So he just decides to uh...look directly at it while everyone else deals with orb hell.

The three knights of Atlantis decide to revive the respective owners of their cards.

So Pegasus just has to sit back, relax, and find some other unsuspecting orb person to share his fanfiction deep cuts with.

PS, that was not an exaggeration on the lazy PowerPoint spiral-in transition--this episode was a marvel of “Oh crap we ran out of time!” last-ditch effort animation and I approve.

(read more under the cut)

And if you thought they were done being orbs now that we’re on a physical mortal plane--nah.

This is the closest Pharoah and Yugi have ever gotten to a physical hug. Just throwing it out there that this is the only time they’ve touched in any way as two separate entities. Also--I like that this is the same way Yugi holds his necklace when he’s talking to Pharaoh. Cute little parallel there.

And as I mentioned, there were a lot of people just hugging it out as if it’s the last episode of the season. First off, one of the most huggy people on this show, which I’m still surprised is the Kaibas.

(he did legitimately pretend to be asleep by the way, because as he was spiraling out of hell he was like “whaoooahahhh”)

So I guess if Mokuba, Tristan, and Tea woke up without being orbs first, then that really does mean they never died 2 episodes ago.

Fine. This is fine. I’ll append my headcanon.

...so Dartz really was just so tired of them that he decided to make them take a nap, huh? That Mokuba was so annoying he was just like “I’m turning them off ok? Not like OFF off, not killing them or anything, that would be rude--I just don’t like small one.”

Meanwhile Tea has a Yugi appreciation moment where she’s reunited with her very confusing relationship. Which is how she likes it best. Undefined in nearly every sort of way. A relationship made entirely out of subtext.

(and honestly, relationships made entirely out of subtext is like 75% of the teen dating experience, which I may have mentioned before, but I do not remember if I have because 2020 has wiped my memory of just so many things.)

I vocally, out-loud, went “Ahhhh!” at the screen because I FORGOT how big his eyes are. They are so wild usually, but with the animation B-team at the helm, I was just not ready for the eyes to return. Yugi’s eyes are just...an abomination in every way and I forget when I see them consistently. I get used to them, I get over it...But when I go an entire season without these hell eyes staring directly at me every five seconds, then it’s like I’ve seen them for the first time.

I’m glad he’s back but man his eyes.

Those eyes.

Anyway, on for some more awkward hugs. First off, Yugi’s visceral reaction to his pretty-much-a-wife-at-this-point giving him a...hug?

(she’s kneeling, by the way. Bro mentioned that it looks like she picked him up and held him entirely by the neck--that would have been great, and I would never doubt Tea’s strength, but she had the decency not to do that.)

And then to Yugi’s just overall confusion to whatever Joey Wheeler defines as a hug.

I am 5 feet 0 inches tall, much like Yugi, and can confirm that yes, some people do hug me like this.

This type of hug should be illegal, it’s very disorienting.

Then, Yugi got to do what he does best.

The FIRST THING he does from coming back from death is immediately hold back information. Mm. Yugi at his finest.

At the point that you’d assume that someone in this room would indicate that maybe this hell vortex is like...a situation...Roland comes in the room screaming for Kaiba to come outside and tell him what the hell to do with his life.

So they go outside and the city of Atlantis is popping out of the sea and flying directly into the air--which...sure, it doesn’t really go in the air usually...but I’ll take it.

And in case you’re like...wait, I thought Atlantis was in California, not in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, don’t worry, it’ll get even more confusing later on.

Also, this happened.

Most of the human race freakin died so like...not sure what we should be concerned about here. Gotta get that one last guy in Florida to board up his house, I guess.

I like that Tea is contractually obligated to beg Yugi to stay behind so she doesn’t have to live without him when...it’s like...Tea, your relationship is already a big ass question mark, and Yugi actually dying did not even mean you were living without him. He’s been around this whole season as Pharaoh, my dude. You have the only boyfriend who will not only never officially date you but will also officially never go away.

So like...earlier in the season it was mentioned that Florida had the pieces of Atlantis shoved in a museum so like...is Atlantis off of Florida now? Because the Battle of Atlantis was in the Bay Area, and Dartz lives in San Francisco, and they went on a helicopter and flew out to the sea so...

We GOTTA be in the Pacific, right?

Anyway, it could be that they’re worried it’ll hit the East Coast of Japan--which, yes--it would. That would also be way more pertinent to our cast of people who live in Japan, it’s just that if you’re doing a show in English that takes place in the USA and you say the “East Coast” it only means New York.

I don’t think the translation team got the memo, it was a very weird line.

Tea wishes Yugi luck instead of Pharaoh for once, and Yugi was like “I don’t know why you want to talk to me instead of the version of me with the fine ass.” and his confusion was kind of cute, but they didn’t actually go into any more deets than this.

Valon and Mai were almost making out with each other’s dead body like ten episodes ago, so maybe the team felt like they had enough practice to maybe almost approach something happening with their flagship couple? Almost.

But also...Yugi just has no idea that a few days ago Tea was trying to get Pharaoh to talk to her on a Caltrain by talking about wearing little swimsuits on a Florida beach date, and then Pharaoh got so upset he went to the tiny area between trains and started sobbing while punching a wall. Yugi doesn’t know this. I don’t think anyone will ever tell him.

And like...will anyone tell Yugi that Pharaoh woke up in Tea’s bed? Like no one, right? Like no one even knows that happened? The irony of how cautious Yugi is with this relationship after Pharaoh was just slicing and dicing for this entire season is great. It’s also probably unintentional, but I can still laugh at it.

Anyway, inside soul hut, Yugi got a little lost, and then his puzzle started glowing and brought him to the Macguffins from last season. Would have been really inconvenient if these got doused in the sea, honestly, and I don’t think the Ishtars would have appreciated it.

Also, this puzzle sensor would have been really, really useful in S2.

Meanwhile, I think Seto and Joey just stared at this glowy gate of hell thing being all “Do you know what this is, Kaiba? I was dead” and Kaiba being all “Hell if I know, I was also dead, I don’t know what this thing is.” And Joey being like “Well Yugi doesn’t know what it is, he was also dead.” and Kaiba being like “The only one of us alive was the dead guy who lives in Yugi’s imagination?”

And then Joey being like “Also, where the hell are we?”

So, frustrated that this obvious trap was simply too confounding, Dartz decides to explain to our dumb as hell cast what a “door” is.

Where we can then admire the sights of Atlantis! Which is mostly brick buildings and giant gates with snakes on them.

Also it would just be COVERED in dead fish but we’re gonna skip that and save it for what would be an extremely ill-fated Netflix live-action series that they will probably eventually make of Season 4. Netflix can’t help itself, you know it can’t. This is a spicy series. It would be terrible in gritty live action. Make it happen, Netflix.

I feel like the artist was trying desperately to fix Joey’s bangs and I feel that on an emotional level. We all want to fix Joey’s bangs. Why did they stop at Joey?

They find Dartz in some weird Gazebo which...OK. It was a whole lot of weird concept art that I didn’t cap because it’s like...nothing is terrifying about a Gazebo...

I straight up don’t understand Atlantis culture.

So, Dartz decided that he could just...use himself to raise the Great Leviathan. He had only one more soul he needed, and he was just as powerful as Yami--so lets just do it, lets just raise the snake!

MAN I just realized what a euphemism this season is.

Good job, Dartz.

Course this is how he spun his story to us, but he seemed pretty surprised when the Great Leviathan gobbled him up in the first 10 minutes of the episode.

But this is the story Dartz is sticking to. He, himself, will raise the Leviathan, himself, and he is very happy with his decision that he made all by himself. I mean, Dartz has been alive for 10,000 years, and maybe he got bored of immortality.

Dartz could have done this from day 1.

What’s up, Sephiroth? Nice little uh final fantasy thing we’re doing with this lizard’s face. I really can’t unsee these uneven man boobs (like what is that angle?) but it’s fine. Dartz doesn’t need hands or...legs...he’s a dragon now, like he can just bite stuff and fly around and stuff. Can’t be that bad.

But for reals, what is the dragon’s angle here?

what is it gonna DO?

Like after everyone’s dead. Is it just gonna...float around? Fly around outer space? Enjoy the sunrise?

Like what do dragons...DO?

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll never get the answer on why the Leviathan wanted to leave the core of the Earth so stinkin bad, but maybe--just maybe--this season might actually end next episode? Maybe?

Will I actually finish this season in 2020! I might! Y’all I MIGHT!

And for anyone reading these for the first time, here’s a link to read these in chrono order

[lovemesomesurveys]

Disney Animated Theme Asks

Snow White & the Seven Dwarves: Which one of the seven dwarves are your favorite? Dopey and Sleepy. Pinocchio: How often do you lie? Why do you do it? I downplay things more often, but sometimes I lie. It’s generally about how I’m feeling. Dumbo: Have you ever been to the circus before? When I was a kid. I’d never go now. Bambi: Are deer your favorite forest animal? If not, which is? Sure. Cinderella: Have you ever broken your curfew when you were younger? What happened? I never had a curfew, my parents never had to set one. I was a homebody as a teenager, too. I didn’t have much of a social life. I had friends, but we just hung out at school. 

Alice in Wonderland: What would you do if you fell down a rabbit hole? I mean, I do in the sense of I get caught up videos or reading stuff online all the time. I go from one thing to another. If I literally fell down a rabbit hole, well, I can’t imagine it’d feel too great. I don’t what I would or could do. Peter Pan: Are you all grown up? In which ways do you still remain child-like? Technically, yes. I’m almost 31 years old. But I don’t exactly feel grown up. I have a lot of growing up to do still. And besides the fact I have bills to pay, I don’t really feel very adult like. But then I always say how I’m so old and feel old in some ways. I don’t know, it’s complicated. 

Lady & the Tramp: Have you ever shared a piece of spaghetti with someone before? No. Sleeping Beauty: What’s the longest period of time you’ve ever slept for before? Hmm. When I’m really sick I pretty much sleep all day. I mean, I get up at times to try and eat and drink, take my medicine, and use the restroom, but most of the day is spent just sleeping. There were also times when I wasn’t sick that I slept for like 12 hours or so. Then there’s the times after I’ve had surgery where I sleep full days away. 101 Dalmatians: Do you like Dalmatians? Which breed of dogs do you prefer, if any? Dalmatians are beautiful dogs. My favorite breeds are Labs and German Shepherds. Those are the dogs I’ve had and I just love them. The Sword in the Stone: Have you ever tried your hand at jousting before? Nope. The Jungle Book: Have you ever wanted to visit a jungle before? No. The Aristocats: What is your favorite type of cat breed? Black cats are cool. Robin Hood: Who is your trusty sidekick? My doggo. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Who is your favorite character from Winnie-the-Pooh? That silly, willy, nilly ol’ bear. The Rescuers: Have you ever been rescued before? From what? Well, when my accident happened I certainly was. The Fox and the Hound: Do you prefer foxes or hounds? Why? Hounds. I just love doggos. The Black Cauldron: Have you ever wanted to become a knight? No. The Great Mouse Detective: Have you ever wanted to become a detective before? I loved books like Nancy Drew as a kid and I love reading murder mysteries now and trying to figure out what’s going on, as well as with mystery shows and movies. I wouldn’t want to actually be a detective, though. Oliver & Company: Have you ever seen a lost kitten before? What did you do? I’ve seen many stray cats.

The Little Mermaid: Do you enjoy swimming? No. Beauty and the Beast: Have you ever fallen for someone unattractive before? The guys I’ve liked were all attractive to me. Aladdin: If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be? An end to this virus and pandemic, good health (mentally and physically), and money. The Nightmare Before Christmas: Do you prefer Halloween or Christmas more? I love Christmastime, but I really get into ~spooky~ season as well. The Lion King: Have you ever been tricked before? Yes. A Goofy Movie: What’s the most outlandish thing that you’ve ever promised a crush before? I don’t think I’ve promised a crush anything outlandish. I don’t know if I’ve promised one anything. Pocahontas: Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was in the army? No. Toy Story: What did your parents do with your toys once you got to be too old for them? Do you still have any toys from your childhood? We gave a lot away, but I still have my Barbies and some other things. The Hunchback of Notre Dame: How have you established your own independence? I don’t really feel like I have... Hercules: Has there ever been a scenario in which you were a hero to someone? I’m no hero. Mulan: Have you ever fought in a war or know someone that has? I’ve known some people, yes. A Bug’s Life: What’s your favorite bug/insect, and why? Ew, NONE. Tarzan: What is something you’ve discovered about yourself? Nothing good... Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Where would you like to go exploring? I want to travel all over. Monsters Inc: Have you ever scared children before? What did you do? Aww, no, I wouldn’t do that. Lilo & Stitch: Have you ever had an unusual pet before? What was it? Nope. Treasure Planet: If you could create a planet, what would you name it, and what would life be like there? Uhh. I have no idea. Finding Nemo: Have you ever visited Australia before? Would you want to? Why or why not? No, but I’d love to. Sounds and looks like a cool place to visit. Brother Bear: Have you ever gone hunting before? For what? No.

Teacher’s Pet: Have you ever wanted to be something you’re not? A functioning, happy, successful adult. Home on the Range: Have you ever been to a farm or lived on a farm before? I’ve been to one, yes. The Incredibles: What would you like your superpower to be? Teleportation. Valiant: Have you ever been delivered a message via a homing pigeon? Uh, no. Chicken Little: Have you ever had your reputation ruined? By whom? I’ve ruined my own the past few years because of the shitty person I’ve been. The Wild: Have you ever been to Africa before? Would you like to go? I’d love to see Giraffe Manor. Cars: Have you ever watched races before? My dad loves Nascar, but I never could get into it. I just find it very boring. Meet the Robinsons: What would you do/where would you go if you had a time machine? I’d love to go back to my childhood. Ratatouille: Have you ever wanted to be a chef before? What would be your signature dish? Ha, no. I’m no cook. Although, I think I make a pretty good bowl of ramen. haha. Wall-E: If you were able to build a robot, what would you want it to be able to do for you? Get me coffee and food. Bolt: Have you ever gone cross-country? To where?   I’ve flown to Georgia from California, which are opposite sides of the country.  Up: What is one place that you’ve always wanted to go to that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet? A lot of places in the US and other countries. The Princess & the Frog: How many frogs did you need to kiss in order to find your current prince/princess? I haven’t found him, yet. Tangled: Have you ever spent your entire life somewhere, feeling as though you were unable to escape? Yes. I feel that way in life, in my mind, and in this city. My family and I have wanted to move for several years, but we haven’t been able to. Mars Needs Moms: What would you do if you ever came face-to-face with a Martian? Uh, I’d be terrified to say the least. Arjun: The Warrior Prince: Do you have any experience with archery? Are you any good at it? Nope. Brave: Would you consider yourself to be a brave person? Why or why not? No. I’m weak and scared. Frankenweenie: Have you ever had to deal with the loss of a pet? Yes, a couple times. Wreck-It Ralph: What is your favorite video game? Have you beat it? I love Mario Bro games, many of which I’ve beat. I’ve also been enjoying Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I don’t think it’s the type of game you beat. Planes: Have you ever been in an airplane before? Where did you go? Yeah, a few times. To Georgia and back and to LA and back. Frozen: Do you prefer the ice and snow to other weather elements? Yes, and rain. I love cold weather. I despise summer. Big Hero 6: Do you have anyone in your life who is your hero? Who is someone that you look up to? My mom. Inside Out: Which emotion do you experience most frequently? Sadness, moodiness, irritability. The Good Dinosaur: What is your favorite type of dinosaur? I don’t have one. Zootopia: What is your favorite zoo animal? Giraffes. Moana: Do you ever feel as though you’ve been cursed? I don’t believe in curses. Coco: What instrument would you like to learn how to play? I wish I kept up with piano and took it more seriously back when I played. It’s been over 10 years since the last time I played. :( Onward: If you could bring one person back to life and spend the day with them, who would it be? If nothing weird happened and they’d be the same person they were before in terms of personality and such and she wasn’t sick or in pain like she was, then I’d love to spend a day with my grandma again. It’s been almost 15 years since she’s passed, SO much has happened. She and I were very close, I’d love to be able to talk with her again about things. I’d love to hear her stories again and her jokes. She had the best sense of humor. I’d love to just hear her voice and her laugh again. [a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

[smokeybrand]

Venomous Visibility

As a creator, I always find the subject of representation kind of dubious. With the f*cked up Last of Us II leaks, the continuous misandrist poison leaking into the Star Wars canon from that Kennedy-led Lucasfilm, and the incredibly amazing portrayal of Jill Valentine in the Remake, this sh*t has been on my mind lately. Like, how do you write strong, female, protagonist without falling into that Mary Sue trap? How do you code black without being offensive? How do you write gay without resorting to stereotypes? I don't know how to distinguish a trans or deaf or autistic or native person through text without outright stating these things. Where's the nuance in portraying someone queer without it coming across as pandering? I don’t know if it’s because of my limited experience as a straight black dude who kind of thinks the current trend of eighty-eight genders and personal identifications is kind of ridiculous but i find the attempts studios make to cater to these groups to be adequate as f*ck. Like, Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley kind of defined feminine bad-ass and they both did it way back in the 80s. Why is there this irreverent need to portray this misandrist energy in modern cinema? Birds of Prey was a fun time but it was way heavy-handed on that “Girl boss” energy and it didn’t have to e. Harley Quinn is already a boss and the Birds kick ass in their own right. Why does that have to be the focus of your narrative instead of actual character development and plot? Especially when you have that Ellen Ripley template? It’s weird to say but it feels like certain groups want those aspects to define the entirety of a character instead of it just being a part of them. I think that mindset is both toxic and does a disservice to the given narrative, unless the narrative, itself, is defined by those aspects.

I'm of the mind that, if you wrote dope characters, that should he enough. Take, for examples, Disney’s newest attempt to represent a queer character in Onward. I’ve never seen the movie, i have severe daddy issues so this hilariously outside of my wheelhouse, but i hear that one of the characters makes a passing reference to their same sex spouse. How is that not good enough? Isn’t that how it is in real life? I don’t see gays running around, shouting about their homo love from the balconies and rooftops. Unless it’s Pride. To add that little tidbit in the middle of a Pixar film, aimed at the notoriously conservative middle America, and not have them trying to burn down city hall is kind of amazing and, in my opinion, very tastefully done. At least it’s better executed than the way Beauty and the Beast did with the LeFou reveal. Like, holy sh*t. Talk about blue-balls. This fervent obsession with representation for representation sake or to push an agenda is absolutely repugnant. You think the character of Rey Skywalker would be enough of a lesson on that poisonous nonsense for everyone, not just Disney. Be it female lead, bisexual heroine, gay protagonist, whatever; If you're character is strong enough to be more than whatever social label cats want to code them with, then the representation is inconsequential. Don’t force something that doesn’t need to be forced.

I’ve seen representation executed beautifully. Euphoria is one of the best shows i’ve seen on television and it deals with a ton of sh*t that most SJWs want to fight about. Zendaya is excellent in this show and so is her trans partner, Hunter Schafer. The way that show is written, you can tell that there is an understanding about that culture, a personal connection to their world. That level of representation is outstanding and i commend the creators for giving us such a rich vision for those characters. That said, the strength of Euphoria is in the characters. Rue makes that show. It’s about her journey and everything after that, is a part of who she is as a character, not the defining aspect of it. That subtlety is how you represent an uniquely ignored demographic. That’s how you handle representation in media for adults. For kids, i think this is a little much. Not many nine-year-olds out there are recovering drug addicts.

I think the best piece of media i’ve ever seen in terms of representation actually came out of Disney years ago and gets criminally slept on to this day. Atlantis: The Lost Empire i easily the most diverse, accessible, and palatable piece of “woke” media, Disney has ever made, and it was never created to be so. Atlantis is a story with a female co-lead of color, who has her own agency, doesn’t really fall into the trap of being “damseled” and ends up being a Queen by the rend of this story. The male co-lead is an anxious, neurotic, nerd with a distinct lack of brawn, who beguiles the antagonists with his intellect. The supporting cast is a mixture of people of color, both of which are dope as sh*t, and various nationalities. I’ve spoken at length about my love for Kidagakash Nedakh, she’d be my favorite Disney Princess if she wasn’t a motherf*cking Queen, but i’d be lying if i didn’t admit Audrey had a near equal place in my heart for her sheer dopenesss. Doc is cool, too. Seriously, how is there no Atlantis world in Kingdom Hearts yet? F*cking Disney, man... For the record, my actual favorite Princess is Rapunzel with Jasmine coming in a close second.

Personally, when I create a character, I describe the way I imagine how they physically appear and let the reader assign whatever else afterwords. If I say a character is female with caramel color skin and lavender hair, it's up to the reader to define the minute details in their mind's eye. Is the Lavender a natural hair color? Is she black? Maybe Hispanic? Could she be native or Indian or something completely different? A lot of people have caramel color skin. Hell, she might just have a tan, I don't know because the way I see the character, is different than whoever reads it. I think that's one of the joys unique to literature, that ability to essentially "customize" a narrative to taste, which only amplifies my inability to reconcile this trend of "representation." A lot of people in the fandom attribute Ahsoka Tano as an LGBTQ character and i think that’s fine. It’s never implicitly stated but i don’t think it really has to be. Ahsoka is a bad ass and she displays all of that effortlessly. If you ant to ascribe a queer connotation to her, fine, but that’s not the part of the character that matters to the overall narrative. It shouldn’t be the one aspect which is harped upon officially. I actually really, really, love Ahsoka so i have a dog in this fight. Not so much about the gay coding, that’s a thing that doesn’t really matter to me, more the fact that she needs deserves more shine in the franchise. Thank you Mando II. Also, Dr. Aphra. I hope they actually give her a show. She’s f*cking awesome and, i think, a legit LGBTQ character. I could be wrong about that though.

If a character can be whatever you want them to be, why does it have to be implicitly stated? How is all of this forced representation and social agenda pushing not disingenuous at that point? How is it not more a hindrance than a strength? Why is it acceptable to have your token marginalized appearance, if it’s forced and detracts from the overall story trying to be told? Is it really okay to just accept such pedestrian pandering for the sake of pandering? Like, i’m not gay. How am i supposed to write a gay character without being an ass about it? The only way i know how is to be direct with it. Direct but subtle about everything. “Strong Female Character” should not be the one aspect of your character driving their development. You don’t need to create a Mary Sue in order to have a compelling female lead. Tifa Lockhart and Norah Price prove that. Your protagonist doesn’t need to be “the big gay” in order to be a bad ass. Ian Ghallagher and Willow Rosenberg prove that. Also, they’re both gingers so, you know, double the suffrage points i guess? You don’t have to write a potato who can do physics in their head, to represent an autistic person. Sherlock Holmes and  Amelie Poulain prove that. I would definitely do what Disney did with Onward in order to represent a character of that type of minority because, to me, as a minority, i don’t believe any singular aspect determine the whole of a character. Race, gender, orientation, religion, and other social identifiers; All of those are just qualifiers to the core of the character you’re creating. They are parts, never a whole. These things are just additions to embellish and enrich, not the definition of who they are, as much as everyone wants it to be. I mean, at the end of the day, how lame is your character if all they are is gay or stronk female? How much of a boner is our story going to be with a protagonist as deep as a puddle because you feel some kind of way about visibility?

[queenofthemindynasty]

Even If You Say ‘No’ - pt 1

Pairing: Hoseok x Fem!Reader

Summary: {Y/n}, a brilliant, young producer at BigHit Entertainment, tends to be overly self-critical of her work and scarcely gives herself credit when it’s due. Hoseok, A.K.A. J-Hope of BTS, puts so much effort into keeping up the spirits of the other members, he hardly has time to worry about his own well being. What will happen when the two cross paths?

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Idol Universe

Word Count: 2599

It was late August, and the leaves were just starting to change colour. Love Yourself 承 Her would be coming out in a little less than a month. {Y/n} turned up the master volume on her desktop as she listened to the same eight-measure section again for the nth time in the last hour. She could have sworn she was going deaf. She seemed to be turning up the volume more and more as she sat in her studio, waiting for the song to suddenly sound the way it should have. A strangled sigh left her throat. The track she was working on was still missing something important. Something she couldn’t seem to grasp. She’d already asked the other producers what they thought. Each one of them had said it sounded good, though. Just ‘good’. Now she had to submit it in twenty minutes. And going on her rate of progress over the last several hours, it wasn’t going to change by then. She expelled another sigh, clicking “Export as .wav” and emailing it to her boss. Her forehead made a dull thud as it made contact with the edge of the desk. She didn’t even try to stop her hand from pulling her phone out of her back pocket and opening Twitter. Her mind wandered as her thumb scrolled through posts on autopilot.

It always ended up like this. The song she would be submitting for an album was always just too raw or was missing some important detail that she didn’t seem to be capable of creating. It wouldn’t have mattered if everyone in the world validated her work. It still wouldn’t have made the music sound any less like the work of an amateur, which it was. Even though everyone told her that her songs were ‘good’, it wasn’t enough. They needed to be perfect. Otherwise they’d bring down the quality of the whole album. She was producing for the most famous rising male music group of the world. She had the eyes, and more importantly the ears, of hundreds of millions of listeners trained on her. Even the smallest effect in her music made an unimaginable difference. She could have been held responsible if the band lost fans after this next release, especially since three songs in the album were mainly her work.

{Y/n} had started working for BigHit without any foresight of the expectations people would’ve eventually had for her. Now it had been just a few months since she’d started working for them, and her life had started over completely. She’d moved to Seoul from quite a distance away just a year or so after graduating from high school, and up until then, she’d lived with her less-than-happy family in the house that she’d grown up in. All she’d wanted had been to run away and make music for a living. She’d been so excited at the prospect of getting her own unique artist’s name, and having her own studio, and giving it a name, and so on. (She’d picked the name Sea Beats for herself because she’d grown up in a city near the ocean, and the water’s welcoming, non-judgemental nature had always provided a sort of safe haven for her, apart from everything and everyone.) Being the naïve young adult she’d been and still was, however, she hadn’t thought through any of the struggles that all of it—running away from her household where she’d always existed as a mere mistake, cutting herself off from the people whose lives she’d only made worse, and blindly going off into the unknown to pursue the dream she’d kept secret all her life—would bring along.

She shook her head. How could she let herself think so selfishly? She was just sitting here, pitying herself. She wasn’t giving any credit to the real artists who had a million times more pressure to succeed than she did. They were dealing with all the difficulties she was, but amplified, and topped off with another mountain of hardships that she’d never have to experience. They were the ones who had to have personal guards with them whenever they went out in public so they didn’t get attacked by some crazed, out-of-their-mind fan. They were the ones who received disgusting comments like, “He never should have become an idol if he can’t handle being on stage,” and, “He’s so ugly. Why is he even a part of the group?” It was impossible to even imagine how hard they struggled in their daily lives to just be. Whereas she was fortunate enough to have the option to hide away in her cozy, little studio, never having to show her face to the world.

She yawned, and noticed she’d been yawning for a while; it felt like her jaw was going to pop off on her next one. Looking at the clock on her phone, it read “12:42 p.m.” A sudden weight of exhaustion hit her, and her eyelids were sinking beyond prevention. It had been weeks since she’d gotten a good eight hours. As was the norm, she couldn’t be sure if she’d be able to drive home in this state, so she’d just have to sleep in the studio. At times like this, Atlantis was her best friend. It was always ready to accommodate her if the need arose. There was a stow-away bed in the couch, and there was an outlet right next to that for her to charge her phone overnight. She could always brush her teeth and wash her face in the bathroom down the hall. The only things it didn’t provide were pyjamas, but she could make do without them for the night. Anyway, she usually wore comfy clothes to work that were comfortable enough to sleep in, and she always had a spare set of clothes to change into the next day. She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

A day had passed, and {Y/n}’s track had gotten accepted by PD Bang. It was so illogical how this always happened. She was the youngest one of the producers of BigHit, and most of them had been producing for much, much longer than she had. She’d gotten hired just a couple of months before the You Never Walk Alone album had been released. She was anything but exceptional at what she did. But her boss seemed to see things differently, saying she had a unique style and that it gave some variety to the albums. She wasn’t going to argue with him despite how much she wanted to tell him that her so-called ‘minimalist style’ wasn’t intentionally so. She was just glad that it earned her enough to make a living.

She’d woken up—once again in her studio after staying up late mixing vocals—to loud thumps coming from the floor above her. Still half-asleep, she turned on the screen of her phone, and the clock told her it was hours too early to be waking up. Turning her phone screen off, she went back to sleep.

At least, she made a worthy attempt.

Her eyes shot open just a few short moments later at an ear-shredding screech. It had a striking resemblance to rubber soles on a hard floor. Surely not. Surely the boys weren’t up at—she turned her phone on again—quarter till seven for dance practice. And yet, the stomping and screeching didn’t let up. She sandwiched her head between the mattress and the too-thin pillow, groaning as it failed to block out the awful noise from upstairs. She commended the boys for their undeniable dedication to their work, but they at least could have had the consideration to keep their practicing to a lower volume.

Seeing going back to sleep was a lost cause, she got up, getting ready for the day. Once she was dressed and ready for another day of head-pounding stress, she was headed for the staff lounge on the fourth floor, just above the one where her studio and the other producers’ were. There was coffee up there, and it was calling her name. The lounge was past the main dance studio too, so if she wanted to, she could poke her head in and see what the idols were up to. Maybe it wasn’t even any of them. It could well have been one or two of the staff’s choreographers or backup dancers. She’d have to go see for herself. But it would have to be after she got her daily dose of stimulance.

Once she had her drink in hand, she visited the practice room. She managed to open the door with an almost inaudible click. The place reeked of sweat. When she peeked her head through, she turned around and found two of the members practicing: Jungkook and J-Hope. The two were so focused on rehearsing, it was hard to tell if they’d even noticed her come in. The new choreography for the new title track looked harder than anything they’d done until now. It was tiring just watching it. They were jumping, shuffling their feet, shooting their hands up in the air. One move stuck out to her in which Jungkook tapped his forearm with two fingers on the last beat of a chorus.

Out of the two, she couldn’t take her eyes off the elder. The way he moved his body with flawless control and precision was beyond comprehension. It was funny. {Y/n} had never particularly been a raving fan of male dancers. She didn’t mind them, just didn’t drool over them. She simply wasn’t as affected by toned muscles rippling with the artist’s movement as all her classmates in high school who used to gush over such things had been. But Hoseok was the exception to that. He was the only person she’d ever seen who moved the way he did. He was ridiculously talented, and not just in dance. It was like the universe had taken oceans of every skill in performing arts and music one could think of and poured them all into one being. He was so dedicated and so talented, he could probably learn to do anything he wanted. He could produce an album entirely on his own if he worked hard enough. There was no doubt that he would. His dedication and hardworking attitude were proven when he’d learned how to rap like a god in just a few years with no prior experience. {Y/n} wanted so badly for him to know how admired and appreciated he was. That was the reason she needed to keep trying hard to become a better artist so that he and the rest of the members kept getting the support they deserved.

“‘Morning, Sea Ssi.”

She’d been pulled out of her thoughts by the voice of the maknae addressing her. “‘Morning.” She chortled under her breath at the endearing title he’d given her.

“Sorry we were too busy to say hello when you walked in. What are you doing down here this early?” the brunette asked.

“Oh, just getting some coffee after I got woken up by some loud noises coming from the floor above my studio. I came to see what was making all the racket.” His face turned sheepish, his hand dropping from his waist and his eyes going wide. J-Hope just grinned and chuckled at his sudden change in demeanor, and {Y/n} couldn’t help but do the same. “I could ask the same of you two.”

“Sorry,” started the main dancer, laughing nervously. “We were just practicing some new choreo that the director gave us.” She nodded. “Sorry for waking you up. If we’d known you were spending the night in your studio, we would have tried to be a little quieter.”

“No, it’s okay,” she answered quickly. He was too polite and too sweet for her to even think of rejecting an apology from him. “Where are the other members?”

“Who knows? Most of them are probably still at the dorm. Just like you, I got woken up by J.K. who was up before the sun attempting to practice in his room by himself.” Hoseok chuckled, his lips forming a heart shape. “When I came to ask him why he was up so early, he told me, ‘Well, I couldn’t sleep ‘cause I felt like practicing.’” He shook his head. “Seriously, this kid… Anyway, he said he was just about to head over here since it was too cramped in his room and asked me if I wanted to come with. Since I was already up anyway, I thought, ‘Why not?’ So,” he threw his arm up, “here we are.”

“Hey, I noticed you couldn’t stop looking at Hyung while we were practicing,” jeered Jungkook. “Are you a fan of his?” He was poking fun at her even when she was a year older than him. How shamefully obvious could one get?

She risked a glance at Hoseok, whose eyes trained on her said he was expecting an answer. “I…uh…” She stared down at the stained mug in her hands. It was one thing to be a fan, but a fan in her position, where one had the chance to see them all in person almost every day, was a different matter. She didn’t deserve this.

“Stop it, Kook, you’re making her get all flustered,” scolded the angel, only making {Y/n} implode in on herself even more, shoulders tense and attention averted.

“Look, so are you!” Jungkook shot back. She saw him gesturing at her as he emphasised his point.

“No, I’m not!” He almost sounded offended. “Right?”

She sighed. “Honestly, it’s no big deal. No need to point fingers, at me or each other,” she muttered, her gaze now directed toward the wall off to the side.

“Let’s just forget that happened, okay?” Jungkook fretted. “I’m gonna go get some water. Be right back!”

She watched the heavy door close long after his lively footsteps had begun to fade.

“So!”

She whipped around to face J-Hope.

“How’s your producing going?”

She sighed. “Not that well, to be honest. I’ve gotten pretty behind.”

He pouted. “That sucks.”

“No matter what I do, it always feels like there’s something missing. It’s always like this. And every time, I feel bad turning in something so mediocre. I hate feeling like I’m disappointing everyone.” She abruptly realised she’d been rambling and shut her mouth, staring down at her feet.

“Here’s some advice.” She looked up at him. “Just remember why you became a producer. You didn’t do it to please anyone else, did you? You did it for yourself.” He smiled at her with nonchalance, catching her off guard. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, okay? You got this.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder. His eyes were so warm, like the moon—shining on her in even the darkest of times.

An awkward silence filled the practice room, and she suddenly noticed how close he was standing next to her. What else was she supposed to say? She’d just come to see what was going on down here. Even though she worked in the same building as the members, she still didn’t talk to them all that often. Why should she?

“Umm…thanks, I guess. I should, uhh…probably get back to work.” She knew she was chickening out. She couldn’t help it. “Keep up the good work!” she praised with an unnatural smile.

“Yeah, you, too. See you around!”

Thankfully he hadn’t seemed to detect the heat on her cheeks as she made her exit.

[thebigreylotheory]

Belated TROS trailer reaction and thoughts

Painting.

Been doing lots of painting.  Rewatching TFA, TLJ, and Solo and painting.

Ok, wow, originally intended to have this up by May the 4th….but like I mentioned some posts ago, bantha poodoo happens. (Caps is the same :( )

It’s finally, finally time for my TROS trailer reaction, thoughts, and a few theories! (I don’t know about you, but I’m still not over how good it is. Say what you will, Star Wars has the best trailers.)

Breathing is very important to the sequel trilogy. (I would say that Rey that is totally going to be ahead of the game for Lamaze class if we get a sequel-sequel trilogy/book/comic baby some galaxy far far away day.)

I’ve wondered if the movie will take the time to explain how the Skywalker lightsaber has been repaired? My feeling is, sorta like ROTJ, it’ll just be there like Luke’s green lightsaber. So, you’ll either have to make up your own head canon OR we’ll eventually get books and comics for the time gap between TLJ and TROS that will explain exactly what Rey did. Since she’s a scavenger, and mechanically inclined around junk, my feeling right now is, it’s possible she might have gone on a journey for a new kyber crystal and she’s repurposed the hilt. Which I think could be symbolically interesting….almost saying she’s “her own person (crystal)” on the inside now, but externally carrying on the outward mantle of her teacher/master Luke.

Which leads me to: by now, you’ve probably heard the theory that the last name “Skywalker” might transform to a term for the henceforth new Jedi. Personally, I am a fan of this theory. I think it would be useful for keeping the Star Wars eras straight when referencing any potential future Star Wars films/books/comics. For example, instead of saying “post-Skywalker trilogies,” one could say this-or-that takes place during the Jedi era or the new Skywalker era, etc (as well as, hopefully, the Knights of the Old Republic era someday soon).

AND, if Rey dubs herself (and perhaps any future students she has) a Skywalker….then, well, oddly enough, it would fulfill the whole Rey is a Skywalker discussion in the most interesting way possible. (While also keeping the plot open for her to choose whomever *coughcough* Ben Solo *coughcough* she would like to romantically be with someday.) It could potentially mean anyone could be a Skywalker. I’m a Skywalker. You’re a Skywalker. We’re Skywalker. Sign me up.

Luke is everybody’s spiritual father. (And I guess Vader is everybody’s grandfather??)

And, on a kinda odd note, being a Caravan-of-Courage-baby and a long-time SW fan, thinking of the name Skywalker, does anyone else think it sounds like a talent? Or is my brain just connecting Moonwalking with Skywalking? I guess, technically, Rey isn’t Skywalking here, right? It’s more like Skyjumping? Skyflipping? Maybe she’s really a Skyflipper. Part dolphin.

But I slightly digress, back to the trailer.

When this scene hit, I initially thought, from a distance, the TIE was a TIE bomber. Haha, silly me. 

I have fond memories of the TIE bomber toys Revan/Devan had as a kid.

Yay, Lawrence of Arabia will be returning to theaters Sept. 1st and 4th, presented by TCM! I did a middle school history report over Lawrence. Mostly because I wanted to learn about desert warfare so I could write better Star Wars fan fiction. It’s all about Star Wars, people. It always has been.

Now, that’s what I call TIE racing!

Sweet butter tacos, by now I have paused these scenes over and over trying to decide if this is Kylo Ren and/or if the scenes match or they’ve been sliced much like the TLJ trailer. 

HAHA. You trailer editor people are so good. You did it just enough to make me crazy until December. THANKS.

But, I guess it’s safe to say, in this sequel trilogy, when the camera zooms to black gloves, it’s probably Kylo.

Gee, these two just can’t flirt normally. It’s like they thought, “Oh what can we do on our date that hasn’t been done before?” “Oh, I know, let’s play chicken with the TIE Fighter!”

No, in all seriousness, as it’s been said before many times now, this would be a really strange way to try to take Rey out…

Wouldn’t Kylo be a man and just face her? He hasn’t been afraid to face people before.

And, I don’t know…some people I know are hoping that they are working together somehow, which I hope they are, don’t get me wrong,…but at the moment, I just can’t think of why Rey would need to jump on a TIE Fighter/Kylo’s TIE. (Mind out of the gutter!) I mean, if they are working together, practicing even, for some Force trick/feat that needs doing to destroy or infiltrate something, it looks like she could have climbed on the TIE before it took off?

I mean the Interwebs might tell you that she needs to practice her jumping so she can have the high ground later, but I still don’t know.

It could be a dream/vision. Simple enough.

It could be that ForceTime is acting really weird?

Did we really understand or have all the rules of ForceTime in TLJ? Could it be if ForceTime connects and Rey and Kylo hold-on to another they can pull each other to a different location? So for instance, if Rey jumps on the TIE she could be transported to where Kylo is?

That would mean there was a reason Luke told them to stop. Did he know either Kylo would be pulled to Ahch-To in the flesh or Rey would end up at the First Order (before she totally left in the Falcon for the First Order)?

Dunno. That could be getting too “beam-me-up-Scotty” or too “magical” for SW. We’ll see. I’m open to most things so long as they’re done well.

Alternatively, because Caps and I have also been reading SW comics for a few years now, I think it’s also possible that Kylo could be possessed here. 

As in, someone:

Like monkey-hands here, or whomever monkey-hands works for (Palps, Hux, The Resistance, KOR), took Kylo’s helmet and added Sith-y stuff to it.

I want to lean towards the idea of an enemy/frenemy of Kylo’s changing his helmet. I thought it was a little unusual that Kylo would go back to wearing the helmet after smashing it. I mean, character-wise, I figured it would remind him of Snoke’s taunts. It seemed like a step backward. Like going back to a security blanket after you’ve gotten over needing it. Dunno, are they going to capture him and force him to wear it? Making him Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to get him out of the way?

BUT, there again, I guess, I could stretch my imagination and believe that Kylo, might, might, go back to wearing his helmet on his own, if he thought there was some power or knowledge to be gained. And, either, earnestly, he did it to himself or it was a TRAP!

And possibly, in this scene, possessed Kylo is about to crash wherever Rey is, but she saves him by cutting open the hatch, etc? 

(She’s learned to lift rocks, but could she stop a TIE via the Force and climb in and save someone? Maybe, but it, arguably, wouldn’t look as cool or dramatic). And if that were the case, Kylo would be in some serious debt to Rey for saving his life. Girl already spared him once. Twice, if you count she didn’t run him through on Starkiller Base.

Anyways, back to reviewing the trailer chronologically.

Somehow this reminds me of the Lost City of Atlantis. Was there a city on Bespin below Cloud City? According to Wookiepedia Bespin is a cloudy place. Sooo, could be Lando’s entrance in the movie, possibly.

Did I read somewhere that Kylo is tackling a Knight of Ren here? (Double checked and yes.) That’s interesting. I could come up lots of out-of-the-hat-theories as to why. KOR turns against him. Kylo turns against KOR. KOR Civil War? KOR Battle Royale where the survivor of the Hunger Games gets to be Master?

But what’s really interesting, is the fact that Kylo doesn’t slice the guy in two pieces with the lightsaber.

And that, to me, also spawns some theories. Is the tackle just a cinematic scene to show Kylo’s strength? Maybe Disney doesn’t want to go “Darth Maul-ing” people in two pieces? Kylo, for some reason, isn’t killing people on this particular day or any more at all? Or Kylo’s in a super rush and is more focused on getting a certain location in a hurry and whatever, guy was in the way? It made me concerned, mmm, can’t Kylo use the Force in this scene? He isn’t Force Pushing or Freezing the guy?

This week on “This Old Helmet,” Norm and guys add detailing to a once dilapidated helmet. Yup, it was a real fixer-upper. If Mr. Monkey doesn’t work for some VIP, he’s a really strange janitor.

Ok, Finn and Poe are going to, canon, start a boy band in TROS, right? This is a scene from their KPOP-ish music video, right? “‘Cause I want it that way…” If they don’t dance, so help me Star Wars...I’ll make them in a fanvid.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I like D/O yet. The jury is still out for me. Mostly because I thought some of the other concept designs were much cuter. Although, I can’t wait to see the Droid Builders tackle this one. I’m still stuck on a mouse droid.

Aww, yeah, welcome back Lando! Mr. Smoothie! (I wish he’d been apart of TFA and TLJ, but better late than never.) I know, I know the ship should be Chewie’s now, but I secretly hope that Lando is able to donate money to restore the Falcon, like an old classic car. *coughcough* Reylo Wedding Gift *coughcough*

Hmm, moisture farm or temple? Guess we’ll see. I’m loving that the troops possibly have jetpacks and/or sand-speeders?

Dunno, after the whole Rambo C3P0 poster, I’m wondering if someone’s after C3P0 here? BB and R2 have had their “find-that-droid” day, maybe it’s C3P0’s turn?

Aww, the medal. Sweet medal. 

I can give you some out-of-the-hat ideas about this, too. Maybe this is Han’s. Maybe it’s in Leia’s collection of memories and she takes it out for nostalgia, to feel close to Han in spirit, or for the anniversary of his death. Maybe she’s decided to give it to someone else? Or, worst-case scenario, the Resistance needs gold and this is all they got left?

Or, this is Luke’s? And ditto on everything. Maybe Luke left it behind before he left for Ahch-To? Maybe he gave it back to Leia? Or maybe Leia and company find more of Luke’s belongings elsewhere? Maybe Luke was using it as a bookmark in one of the Jedi Texts?

Goodness. When the trailer hit Celebration, this scene filled my heart with the greatest bittersweet joy. 

I’m really glad that the extra/reworked footage of Carrie as Leia looks good. That it will uphold her legacy. It’s been on my mind ever since her passing.

In fact, I was so caught up in being happy that the footage looks great, at first, I didn’t stop to think why Leia and Rey are hugging?

And, at first, I was so vicariously being Rey while watching the trailer, hugging Leia with my own emotional fan tear, that I didn’t consider why is Rey crying?

Well, theory-wise it could be a number of things. Rey and Leia have really bonded, and maybe Rey’s about to go on a dangerous mission? Or the Resistance has had a major setback?

But, I think one of the biggest, most emotional, thing both Rey and Leia have in common is:

Yup. Benny Boy.

And, this thought/feeling opens up a whole new can.

Um, have they heard something about Kylo/Ben that’s upsetting? And, if so, would this scene take place early or late in the film? I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors that Kylo/Ben might not be making it out of this one entirely. Dunno, to me, it almost feels like Rey’s upset that she’s failed at something. I guess, especially, because it’s extra/reworked footage of the reaction to Han’s death.

Again, with the band! It’s like a 90s Alternation Rock cover!

My question is: What is in Rey’s hand? Is it a bag? What’s in the bag? Is she carrying the Jedi text or some other special item? Is it a device? What sort of device?

Have they all been camping? ‘Cause Finn and Poe have bags, too. Do they got thermal detonators in there?

I’m assuming, since they look more angry/focused than shocked, that their on some sort of mission to find this broken piece of Death Star II? That their purpose is to go inside? Or destroy the rest of it? Either way, if I learned anything from Wind Waker, it doesn’t look like a good day for sailing towards it.

Now, in the split second when Luke says “no one’s ever really gone” again…I wanted to believe we were going to get a Force Ghost reveal. Or that possibly, the-Force-killed-Luke was just social media red herring.

I never dreamed that laugh….

Chilled me to the bone.

The biggest “oh Sh*$” moment of my movie trailer watching life.

 Ooo the possibilities. More thoughts on Emperor Palps’ return later.

Until then my Reylos and Star Wars friends, May The Force Be With You!

[bubble-tea-bunny]

shadow and soul

[arthur curry x reader]

author’s note: was working on some other fic, wasn’t really feeling it, so then i wrote this. i’ve been wanting to write for arthur again for aaaages and i am so happy i finally have lol

word count: 2,312

More than once he has seen you standing on the shore, gazing out at everything and nothing. It’s usually in the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep. And you stay there undisturbed, toes curling in the cold sand, hair blown back by the breeze. Sometimes it’s braided and the stray strands billow gently. The braids are never done neatly, immaculately, but are, in contrast, of a lazy nature, big and loose and relaxed. He likes the way it looks on you.

He watches you from a distance, in the water, peeking his head up only enough so that he can set his eyes on you. He wonders what you think about, every night you’re out here. Maybe it’s the same thing, or maybe it’s many, and this is the only time you can put the thoughts together without feeling like your brain will melt. He understands the way it feels. He does that too, finds a quiet place to calm down and be able to hear himself think. To be a king is no small matter. Sometimes he wishes the mantle had fallen upon the shoulders of another. But it’s during the moments very much like the ones he finds you in, that he understands it is his responsibility to bear, his duty to undertake the monumental task given to him. He’s playing the cards he’s been dealt. There’s no use dwelling in the what-ifs.

The moon is full tonight, and the light bounces off the water and your face. You’re sitting on one of the large rocks. It doesn’t look all that comfortable to Arthur, for it’s jagged and sharp in some places. It would be entirely too easy to slice skin if one were to place their hands in the wrong spot. But the way you’d settled upon it shows practice. You place your hands in seemingly all the right places as you climb up, and get into a position he guesses might be more comfortable than he assumes. You certainly don’t look bothered.

Even from a distance he can tell you’re tired. More so than usual anyway. You tend to look fatigued when you’re out here to begin with, and he doesn’t blame you, considering the time. But he knows that the exhaustion in your eyes is from stress. About what, he can’t even begin to presume. There’s a plethora of reasons. He has no idea who you are and the sorts of issues you might have to deal with.

Though he hopes to know you, in some way, but he holds back anytime he considers moving closer to shore and revealing himself. Part of it is because he doesn’t want to frighten you. He has no idea how you’d react. The other part is that Atlantis remains far removed from those on land, for its safety. It’s the lost city to everyone else, and it will remain that way because should knowledge spread of its existence, there’s no question it would be invaded. Atlantis has thrived because it remains contained, and as king, it is his obligation to ensure it stays that way. Still, the more days that go by, he’s truly contemplating if letting just one person know of it would have any negative consequences. Because every time you’re out here, and he’s watching from afar, he feels like he’s growing closer to you despite not even knowing your name.

It’s more of an accident than anything, how he had come to finally approach you. He hadn’t anticipated how sharp your hearing would be, hadn’t ever considered it to be something to be wary of until one evening, he shifts around in the water just a tiny bit, and the lack of a breeze makes everything quiet, so when you hear the way the water moves to accommodate him, you know something is out there. He freezes the moment you realize this, wondering if you would let it go. But your curiosity gets the best of you, and so you speak up: Is someone there?

When the words have left your mouth, you seem to shrink a little, seemingly embarrassed. It looks as if you’ve just spoken to thin air. And he contemplates letting it be just that, letting you believe you merely imagined something. Several more seconds of silence pass, and you look like you’re about to resign to it and resume getting lost in your thoughts, but in that short window, there’s a part of Arthur that tells him to move, to go to you. Because he’d always been hoping to and it would be dumb to squander a perfectly good opportunity. He’s his own advisor this time around, and evidently, the right decision is to show himself. So he does, swimming a little closer.  

Your head perks up when you hear the water shifting again, and your eyes scan the length of it in search of the disturbance. You spot Arthur rather quickly with the help of the moonlight, and your head tilts as the two of you simply watch each other. You wonder who he is, how he’s gotten there, because you hadn’t seen anyone go into the water in the time you’ve been out here, and it’s been a while. Had he come from the sea? Slowly you uncross your legs and slide off the rock, feeling the sand slide against the soles of your feet as you walk over. You come to the edge where dry and wet sand meet, toes resting on that line.

Arthur can see it in your gaze, the invitation to approach, to come say hello. You don’t seem scared. He comes up to depths shallow enough for him to set his feet down, and he walks the rest of the way, feeling the way the water tries to fight against him as he breaks through it. It sloshes around his legs and drips from the ends of his hair in lonely drops. He comes to a stop when he’s completely out of the water. Neither of you says anything right away. He’s not even sure where to begin if he were the one to speak first. Because what he did just now, is doing, is exactly what he’s not supposed to do. But it just felt so hard to stay away forever, and even he didn’t have the willpower for that.

It’s almost otherworldly, your capacity to do such things to such people as him. From the second he’d first set his sights on you, he wanted to know you. And even if it had gone against his better judgment, deep down, he was willing to deal with any consequences that might follow. He’s not sure he’s even inclined to call it “better” judgement, because maybe coming to the shore to meet you was the better decision. Maybe it means something. Maybe it means everything. When you smile softly at him, the warmth of that curve seeming to brush up against him, like the ghost of a hug, he thinks that yes, maybe it does.

You’re the princess of the kingdom next to the ocean, and he tells himself it’s no wonder you seem so tired when you’re out here. There’s a lot on your shoulders as well, as you protect your own kingdom and prepare to one day assume the title of queen. The word feels as heavy as your chest seems to get when you think ahead to the future. He never expected for something like this to level the field between you two. He hadn’t ever speculated whether you might be nobility as well. But he tries to ease your mind as much as he can, telling you that when the time comes, you’ll be ready. What he doesn’t say is that it never gets easier. He doesn’t have to say it though. You can see it in his eyes, and you understand, and you let the subject go as you lapse into a comfortable silence.

He’s ruler of the seas but you’re parts of the water he’s never ventured to before, the depths even he has not traversed. And he slides his hands along your curves, along the soft skin, exploring, learning. His thumb runs over your bottom lip and he can feel the heat of your breath on his fingers. Some people wonder, in a fashion mostly whimsical, if perhaps those trenches too far down to explore safely should lead to some alternate universe, some other galaxy, as if the secret to propelling through light years’ worth of space wasn’t to go up but to go down, to the portals waiting for them, as they have been since the dawn of time. Arthur swears he can see the twinkling of infinite universes in your eyes, and he’s thinking those speculations just might be right.

No one knows about this, about you two. And you’d both prefer it to remain that way. You can’t tell your father, because Atlantis isn’t supposed to be real. It’s not supposed to be anything more than a city from a storybook. And Arthur can’t tell anyone in his court, even his most trusted friends, because he’s not supposed to be making contact with outsiders, especially not contact of this nature. Love made things complicated. But he continues to love you anyway, in the secret places between the shadow and the soul. You’re always there to meet him.

“Will you ever show me Atlantis?” you inquire quietly one night. The moon is nothing but a crescent hanging in the center of the sky. It reminds him of your smile.

“One day.” Arthur nods and glances down at you. “You can swim with all the fish, and you can find a home in the water.” A home in the water with me.

You grin, and there’s a faraway look in your eyes, as if you’re imagining what that would be like. You’re wondering how far in the future that might be, and wishing it were now. But patience is something you’ve been working on, a virtue emphasized by your father as you learn more and more about how to rule. So you figure you can wait a little longer.

“A little longer” passes startlingly quickly. Because there’s an evening you come to Arthur in tears, and it’s with a trembling voice that you tell him you’ve been betrothed to a prince of a nearby region. The marriage is a means to secure an alliance. Nothing more. Nobility and love don’t usually go hand-in-hand, that much is to be expected when there are political implications to be taken advantage of, and maybe at one point you wouldn’t have much cared, maybe you would’ve come to love this prince in time, in your own way, but now you know you can’t possibly do that. Not when the two of you are conversing politely in the courtyard on a sunny afternoon and your mind is already thinking of the night to come, of the one who will be waiting for you on the shore.

I want to run away. It’s a shaky whisper, and Arthur’s heart squeezes as he holds you close. He promises you will. As he comforts you, running his fingers through your hair to soothe you, he’s thinking how to bring this up the court back in Atlantis. He can’t catch them unawares, but he also knows deliberations about allowing you in would be tedious and lengthy, and that’s time he doesn’t have.

You sit up so you can look up at him when you’ve calmed down enough. There are dried tears staining your cheeks and your eyes are puffy. Your voice is quiet and strained from the crying as you begin to speak, as you admit to him that you’d dreamed of a figure in the water long before he’d approached you that very first night. You dreamed about it and wondered as you came to the beach to think if maybe it was a sign, a telling of what the future had in store for you. You drew this faceless figure in the margins of all your books. Because you were always in the margins of my mind. There’s no skirting around it—he’s the one who’d come to you in your dreams before he’d come to you on the shores of this beach on that night that seems so far in the past now.

You lean into him again and his arms wrap around you as he thinks about the things you’ve just said. You murmur that your heart hurts from how much you love him, that you’re glad it does, because it’s the surest way to get you to understand. You know nothing more confidently than what you feel for him. Everything carries me to you.

It’s those five words that compel Arthur to make his decision on the spot. He looks you in the eyes and says you won’t be stuck here; he swears that to you. You’re not meant for this place. He’ll deal with the court after you’re in Atlantis with him, and he’ll ensure your place within the state and among its people.

And so the night before the ceremony, you run away. He offers you his hand, and you take it, and he guides you into the depths from which he’d first emerged to come say hello. They’ll send ships, sure, to find you and fight for you and get you back. But they will be ships with no destination or target. After all, as far as anyone else beyond you is concerned, Atlantis is nothing but make-believe. Maybe you are too, to some extent. Maybe you’ve escaped from the pages of this tale and have been spending your whole life trying to find your way back. And Arthur is right there, guiding you, until you’re where you’ve always been meant to be.

[storykravting]

200 Years From Now

In the 19th century, a few people realized that we (humans) can change the climate of our planet.

During the 20th century, some more people looked into the idea that we (humans) can change the climate of our planet. They confirmed its validity with research but didn't think it was really important, so they didn't do anything.

For most of the 21st century, people all over the world argued about whether we (humans) can change the climate of our planet. Some people still didn't think it was important, even though all kinds of research studies were confirming what people in the 20th century had said. By this point though, the effects of a changing climate were already starting to take place, and most of those people realized that the people in the 20th century were right.

The 22nd century is the result of people finally accepting and adapting to the fact that we (humans) can change the climate of our planet. Unfortunately, it took so long to come to this decision that a lot of cities were already underwater. Literally underwater—Atlantis isn't the only lost city anymore.

Plenty of things are different now in 2100, but the simplest to confer might be these two: The world got brighter and warmer, and sea level has risen quite a bit.

Miami, New Orleans, and San Francisco had to evacuate since underwater breathing isn't completely feasible yet. So did Alexandria, Mumbai, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, parts of Singapore, and Australia's outer ring of coast. The Pacific Islands disappeared. And you can just imagine what happened in Venice with the canals.

A few ecosystems stopped working too—take the coastal wetlands for example. Most of the greenery in the Alps and Appalachians, and every other mountain range in the world, withered. Even under the water, all non-"supercorals" in the Great Barrier Reef were completely bleached by the beginning of the 22nd century.

For better or worse, disaster was the wake-up call needed to finally galvanize the human race into action.

While the natural world and select areas of civilization suffered the consequences of industrialization, a few places had been smart enough to innovate ahead of time. Neighborhoods in Rotterdam were floating and solar-powered, and as a result aesthetically pleasing as well as technological marvels. Scotland had already put wind turbines in the ocean. Over decades, places that had once been on the coastline slowly became habitable again.

Green technology disseminated across the globe in one of humanity's greatest works of collaboration.  Solar cities popped up everywhere; urban planners had a heyday. Renewable energy became the number one priority, so they made photovoltaic everything—solar panels on top of roofs, in place of roofs, embedded in the sidewalks, inside the paint on buildings somehow. They stuck gardens and windmills everywhere too. And since green is the new black, gardening is government-subsidized.

Architects were just as busy too. Buildings are taller and nicer than they were a century ago. Photography and social media helped popularize a particular style revolving around clean lighting, open space, and an urban aesthetic. Interior design and city layout headed in the direction of bright and spacious and beautiful.

While those people installed huge sundials in plazas and guided vines down the sides of glass skyscrapers, other institutions also developed with the era. These days, it takes less time to get a general education. The new priority is on apprenticeships and applying knowledge in a changing world. Public schooling abandoned its jack-of-all-trades curriculum and established a new one: Programs for Environmentally Beneficial Innovations. PEBI for short.

Despite the naming convention, not every PEBI is centered on improving the future. Some of them, like floriography and sculpting, are just to make the present a nicer, prettier place.

So learning is more popular than it was before, maybe thanks to all the freedom the new system gives its users to stretch their wings. Almost everyone is immersed in their respective field. They’re proud of what they learn, and a lot of people embrace their PEBIs as part of their identity. Architecture, agriculture, art, their professions help define their place and contributions to the world.

And so of course, among the youth, talk about academics and work is just about as commonplace as entertainment. Long-distance communication facilitates a perpetual exchange; teens always seem to be in touch with each other, whether they're texting or talking, meeting in person or simulating it with 360° spherical cameras. Sending voicemail these days is as easy as tapping a wrist piece and speaking.

Possibly the most poignant change between today and the today of 200 years ago is sociocultural: in our relationships. What happened was, in a way of speaking, a shift toward the material. The popular thing these days, especially with so many young couples, is to commemorate special occasions with an equally special gift, something that will be remembered fondly by both the giver and the receiver.

The prevalence of social media in a time focused on the invention and communication of ideas is not to be understated. People are more creative these days; they have to be in order to keep pace with the world around them. As the bar for creativity in real-world innovation rose, the level of creativity that people put into their personal lives increased alongside it.

One artistic engineer made a heart-shaped, pocket-sized charm out of clockwork. One floriographer put together a stunningly beautiful bouquet specifically for a lucky person in their life. And of course, with social media, it only takes one nice picture and a blurb for everyone to hear about it.

Redesigns and novelty gift ideas started trending all over the internet, and they were all incredible. Clockwork charms modeled after hearts and stars and animals, unique bouquets with every type of flower imaginable, pretty accessories and the like. Even letters, which were outdated 200 years ago, are stylish thanks to the work of a few skilled calligraphers.

With so much knowledge and technology crackling at our fingertips, it’s easy to understand why everyone wants to pour themselves into something tangible they can give away as a present that will speak for itself. In fact, it’s almost expected that everyone come up with at least something to do that will stand out.

Obviously, there’s a lot of controversy over the emphasis so many people seem to place on just one facet of the human experience. It’s a persisting tradition for the older generation to express disapproval at whatever the youth are up to: in this case, a fixation on giving gifts and planning elaborate confessions.

But perhaps it's wrong to say modern relationships are artificial or excessively material. Maybe the key thing is not so much the gifts themselves, or even the feelings they're intended to evoke, but the willingness to put so much thought into a single gesture.

Sure, a pretty token can’t convey a person’s true feelings, just as a picture on social media can’t truly show what someone’s life is like. But it’s a truth that the people who give and receive those kinds of gifts are happy. It’s a truth that most of them are in great relationships and can overcome the difficulties that challenge them. The people behind the trends are undeniably talented, but they’re also just kind, thoughtful, caring people—people who show their love in ways that are only coincidentally “instagrammable.”

While the weight given to gifts may have been upped in the past century, while confessions and proposals may have gotten a dozen times more intricate, while we may be able to talk as if in person from a mile away, we still use words to let people know how we truly feel. After all, a gift can’t be given without a tag. A dance can’t happen without an invitation. We still surprise each other with what we like and don’t like. We still make time to meet up in person and grab coffee. We still struggle to tell the people we love that we love them, because our feelings are complicated, and we would never be able to summarize them with a simple present or a smile.

So in a way, the gifts and presents and performances are less the gift than the gift wrap. Giving things and celebrating, all that stuff is appetizers, there to accentuate the words we use to make our feelings clear.

A lot of us may want to be showmen and showwomen, to express our love in amazing ways that won’t ever be forgotten, but we haven’t yet lost what it means to connect with someone—to reveal ourselves, heart to bare heart. Past the shower of gifts and attention, when the only onlookers are the people involved, there remain those irreplaceable moments of self-disclosure. It’s then that we clear our throats, look our loved ones in the eye, part our lips, and give voice to the reasons that make us try so hard to impress.

“Thank you for everything.”

“You've changed my life.”

And of course—

“I love you.”

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream: Aquaman

Aquaman is an absolutely fantastic film. There’s really no getting around that simple fact; this film is a delight, a grand, epic, cheesy 80s adventure film throwback to rival even the best and brightest of that genre. Imagine, if you will, if Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Return of the King had a baby, and you have a general idea of the kind of film Aquaman is. The best part is that who on Earth could have ever seen this coming?

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Aquaman has long been the butt of jokes to casual audiences due to his perceived uselessness that was showcased in the old Superfriends cartoon, a cartoon that’s not exactly the best if you’re looking for accurate portrayals of all the characters involved. Even after decades of other cartoons giving him more to do, Aquaman never entirely was able to shake off that image, even when Jason Momoa was cast. It certainly didn’t help he got his debut in the much-reviled Justice League, where he was given a bit of a harsher attitude and a hideous costume. Then came the poster for this film with its stock image shark, and things looked pretty bleak. How could Aquaman hope to be a good film with all of this stacked against it?

The true brilliance lies in the decision by its director, James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring), to toss out just about everything Justice League established about Aquaman in regards to his personality and backstory, instead opting for a lighter, more fun take on the character. Normally such serious retconning would be atrocious and awkward… but it really makes this film work so much better. Aquaman is no longer a bitter character, he has no resentment towards his mother (instead having it directed at Atlantis for what they DID to his mother), he’s a fresh take on the character and it really is a difference of night and day. I liked Aquaman in Justice League, and I liked that movie; I loved Aquaman here, and I loved this film just as much.

So what exactly is Aquaman doing in his solo film? Arthur Curry (AKA Aquaman), after wanting nothing to do with Atlantis due to executing his mother, is forced to go to the sunken city by Mera (Amber Heard), who along with Arthur’s mentor Vulko(Willem Dafoe) think Arthur is the only man who is right for the throne of Atlantis. This is mainly due to Arthur’s half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) is a bit of a surface-hating warmonger who wishes to end the tyranny of humans and their pollution of the sea by the most violent means possible by attaining the title of Ocean Master by uniting the remaining kingdoms of the sea into an unstoppable army. There’s an ancient artifact Mera and Vulko believe could aid Arthur, a legendary trident lost to the ages that holds incredible powers and will certainly ensure a half-breed like Arthur is accepted as the one true king who can unite Atlantis and the surface. And so the film becomes a journey for Arthur to discover this lost artifact before Orm amasses his army, along the way finding out what it truly means to be king and also maybe stealing the heart of his half-brother’s betrothed.

The film’s greatest strengths do not lie in its story – I think most will admit this is a pretty generic and even cliché story, albeit one that is enjoyable (cliché does not equal bad, something more people need to realize) – but in its other elements, most notably the visuals. This movie is absolutely gorgeous. The shots of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis but Wakanda and Pandora to shame, and really do look like something out of a comic book. And speaking of comics, Aquaman’s enemies translated very well to live action, with Orm and especially Black Manta looking absolutely fabulous in live action. Black Manata is especially notable, since it would have been so easy to make his iconic suit look stupid or silly, but not only does it look perfect and accurate, Black Manta does not lose an ounce of cool factor in the process.

The performances across the board are almost universally fantastic. It should be noted, however, that Momoa and Wilson are both really carrying the brunt of the film on their shoulders, and doing it nearly effortlessly. Momoa is just an absolute blast to watch, his take on Aquaman is just so much fun, so charming, it’s practically impossible to hate him (though he does deliver a couple of lame jokes here and there). Wilson, on the other hand, portrays a villain who is at once sympathetic and understandable but also ruthless and underhanded. Orm feels like the DC answer to Black Panther’s Killmonger, an emotionally complex and personal villain that you can’t help but root for a little bit even though you also can’t wait to get see them taken down. Willem Dafoe is, as always, fantastic in his role as the wise mentor figure he seems to do a lot (John Wick and Finding Nemo both come to mind, and the latter is amusing as this is the second time he’s played an aquatic mentor figure), and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II brings a sense of vengeful ferocity and symapthy to Black Manta. The weak link in all of this is Amber Heard, who is just at best a painfully average actor and at worst is just mediocre. She doesn’t hold back the film and she has her moments, but she really does stick out as the weak link when surrounded by all sorts of other fantastic performances, the biggest of which (literally) is Julie Andrews… as the biggest kaiju imaginable. I’m not joking.

There are so many nice little touches here and there too, such as the incorporation of Momoa’s own cultural heritage into the character which becomes evident in a lot of places, the absolutely heartfelt and touching relationship between Arthur’s parents, the drumming octopus that shows up being a cameo from Topo, an octopus sidekick that’s pure Silver Age silliness… this movie is absolutely not short on time.

Now, it’s not without a few flaws, but they don’t majorly impact the movie. The film can feel a bit long, but whenever it seems like it’s getting a bit slow something exciting happens to engage you. Of course, that doesn’t excuse some parts that, while cool, could have been trimmed out such as the Black Manta sequence. But even this flaw is one I barely consider, because in such a big, epic movie, it needed a cool personal showdown between a vengeful minor antagonist and Arthur. Really, a lot of this film’s ‘flaws’ are like this; they’re there, but if you like this movie it’s seriously easy to justify them.

Now what can’t be justified is the rushed nature of Arthur and Mera’s relationship. Again, it is easy to justify – this film is a big genre throwback to 80s adventure films, with one example Wan has mentioned being Romancing the Stone, and movies like this tend to have the hero get the girl at the end – but the rushed nature combined with Heard’s weak performance make it a bit odd. It honestly made more sense for them to end the movie as good friends, which would have been more reasonable, and then save their inevitable romance for a future film. All this being said, considering Mera was Orm’s betrothed, this causes the hilarious realization as you watch the big kiss and see Arthur nearly grope Mera’s backside that he has successfully cuckolded his own half-brother. There’s really no way to be too hard on this film, every time I try I end up praising it in the same breath as I critique it.

This is a truly fun, exciting movie that really pushes superhero movies to new heights visually, and makes me excited to see what DC does next. This is truly a step in the right direction, and shows that Wonder Woman was not a fluke, and was in fact a sign DC was onto something when they gave great creators room to shine with charismatic actors. Frankly, I’d say this film is even better than Wonder Woman, on the basis of this film having a much stronger villain and a better and more consistent style, while maintaining the elements that made Wonder Woman good (a charming and charismatic lead that truly gets their character, strong supporting cast, excellent action). Yes this film is cheesy, yes it’s not going to appeal to everyone, yes it’s not perfect… but I can’t help but recommend this, because we need more movies this exciting and fun. I just loved every single minute of this.

Even Pitbull’s song.

[healthpeak02-blog]

Deborah Eisenberg’s Short Stories Are Sharp Enough to Cut Deep

It isn’t long before an elegiac note sounds in Deborah Eisenberg’s latest book of short fiction, Your Duck Is My Duck. In the first story, the narrator begins:

Way back—oh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I’d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth’s core to its surface—I was going to a lot of parties.

That retrospection, tinged with rueful wisdom and more than a little melancholy, is central to the collection, Eisenberg’s first in twelve years and her fifth since Transactions in a Foreign Currency heralded her arrival in 1986.

Eisenberg’s early stories often focused on a certain kind of lost girl—bright but slightly overwhelmed, a little too pliable to the people around her—trying to find a place for herself in a rudely inhospitable world. When Eisenberg was working her comic mode, the travails of these women rose to the level of modern-day screwball comedy: thinking of 1987’s “A Cautionary Tale,” a classic account of Manhattan bootstrapping, I still laugh at how the heroine indignantly admits to herself, at the low point of an impossible waitressing gig, that “This was not how she had imagined her adulthood.”

Thirty-some years later, Eisenberg’s protagonists are likely to be women of a certain age, members, however tenuously, of the creative class, and still city dwellers acutely attuned to the mores of a world that’s passing them by. (“No one met people in person any longer—you couldn’t hear what they were saying” is the most concise summary of New York restaurant culture I may ever need to read.) Most saliently, these modern selves find themselves unexpectedly alone (breakups are a recurring motif) and only too aware of the shadows lengthening all around them.

In one new story, “Cross Off and Move On,” a narrator reckoning with the death of her last surviving relative thinks, “Yes, off they go, my old allies, sailing right through the radiant shield at the edge of the universe, blending into darkness.” In “Recalculating,” a former dancer mourning a long-ago lover feels “brittleness fretting her bones, youth streaming from her in galaxies of sparkly molecules.”

These women have even more to contend with than aging and loss. Because they’re Deborah Eisenberg characters, they are also coping with what it feels like to be alive, as educated, alert citizens of a Western society, in the early years of the twenty-first century, when old-fashioned everyday anxieties have given way to something like dread. As in her previous collection, Twilight of the Superheroes (2006), Eisenberg is able to dramatize how the diabolical crawl that appeared on the bottom of TV news screens in the days after 9/11 found a counterpart inside people’s heads—and just what a toll our new normal of permanent crisis is taking on them. In the title story, a painter says to the doctor who’s prescribing her sleeping pills:

“It’s beginning to look like a photo finish—me first, or the world. It’s not so hard to figure out why I’m not sleeping. What I can’t figure out is why everybody else is sleeping.”

(This is from a story, by the way, that was originally published in 2013.)

The painter in “Your Duck Is My Duck” later meets an avant-garde puppeteer whose magnum opus, The Hand That Feeds You, is such a blunt allegory of life under terminal capitalism that it leaves the audience at its premiere, a select handful of one-percenters, momentarily speechless. The scene is bleakly funny in a way that feels just right for our present moment. But the story’s coda fulfills the puppet show’s preemptive title and then some, acknowledging how the two artists’ reliance on those one-percenters for patronage implicates them in the same system—a subtle reshuffling of our assumptions that’s characteristic of Eisenberg’s method throughout these stories.

In real life, the charge “first-world problems” became a reductive cliché almost overnight, so it’s especially gratifying in this book to see the idea explored humanely and from so many angles. Beings of conscience, Eisenberg’s characters are haunted by a suspicion that their relatively well-off lives might somehow be linked to all the hypocrisies, inequities, and worse that are the stuff of daily headlines—the stuff of our malaise, in other words. (As a character in her story “Twilight of the Superheroes” asked himself back in 2004, “Then again, how far away does something have to be before you have the right to not really know about it?”)

The theme gets its most expansive treatment in the novella “Merge,” which traces the shifting fortunes of Keith, a slippery scion of privilege headed for rock bottom after his domineering father, CEO of a rapacious multinational, kicks him out of their home. Eisenberg has long specialized in a comedy of aggrievement, and at first Keith’s indignation, his perplexity at having to fathom how ordinary people go about their lives, yield some of the funniest scenes in this book. When Celeste, an NGO worker who is also a potential romantic interest, tells him she’s about to embark on fieldwork in Slovakia, he thinks: “Slovakia? That was what she meant by Europe?”

Celeste’s trip to Europe—and points beyond, in several senses—is the hinge on which the story turns; it leads to a widening of scope that puts Keith’s struggles in a stark new light. The fascination with multiple perspectives that distinguishes Eisenberg’s later stories comes into full effect in “Merge,” whose changing points of view ask us to consider, among other things, dramatically different definitions of what it might mean to be homeless, and why some people become victims while others, heedless or even undeserving, get to flourish.

That said, even after repeat readings I’m not sure how all of the story’s thematic elements, which grow to include mental illness and theories of language, cohere into a persuasive whole. At the same time, it’s evident that a late Eisenberg story isn’t interested in surrendering its meanings too easily. A case in point here is “The Third Tower,” the outlier in the collection: set in a world both like and unlike our own, it features a young woman receiving treatment for a psychological condition that scans a lot like unfettered creativity. Something other than naturalism, the story testifies to Eisenberg’s formal restlessness, the way she regularly tests the four walls and ceiling of short-story form.

No account of Your Duck Is My Duck is complete without a mention of how gracefully this writer, tagged earlier in her career as a quintessential urban sophisticate, renders the natural world. “Recalculating” includes a beautiful description of a hurricane descending on a Midwestern prairie, and “Your Duck Is My Duck” has this snapshot of a wildfire witnessed from a great height:

Accident had selected me to observe, in whatever way I could, the demonic, vengeful, helpless, ardent fires as they consumed the trees that had replaced the crops—to observe the moment when, at the heart of the conflagration, the trees that sustained it became phantoms, the fire’s memory.

It’s typical that these lyrical outbursts are prompted by natural disasters—appropriately for a collection that regularly glances over its shoulder at environmental collapse along with every other kind of decline.

How much needs to be said about a writer who has very little left to prove? Across four decades Deborah Eisenberg has steadily enlarged her vision while refining her art. Her writing adds to our collective store of wit, empathy, and intelligence. If you haven’t read her yet, by all means start with Your Duck Is My Duck, and then waste no time in getting your hands on her Collected Stories, the chunky 2010 trade paperback that gathers the rest of her singular body of work.

FICTION Your Duck Is My Duck By Deborah Eisenberg Ecco Published September 25, 2018

Deborah Eisenberg is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of four previous collections of stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997), and Twilight of the Superheroes (2006). Her first two story collections were republished in one volume as The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (1997). All four volumes were reprinted in 2010 in The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010). She is a professor of writing at Columbia University.

Source: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/10/25/your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenbergs-review/

[abarbaricyalp]

tin epithymía tis kardiás

(Day three: Bonfire // Read part one and two))

They passed the days like that, lazy and soft in the sun. Ronan had begun to panic about the time passing, but Adam was quick to assure him that days were faster in Atlantis. It wasn’t so much that Atlantis based time around the sun and Earth’s rotations. The ocean was its own world and the fickle light sources that Ronan could never find were fueled by the sun, but were not the sun. Even with shorter nights, Ronan felt more rested than he had in over a decade.

Adam always had some place to show Ronan, leading him around, marked hand in marked hand. He tried to show Ronan places outside, always very aware of the way Ronan’s mood lifted when he was surrounded by grass and trees and light. All of Ronan’s sharp edges were illuminated when he tilted his face to the warmth, or curled his fingers in long strands of grass, but in those moments, Adam always forgot how sharp he was anyway.

Seven Atlantean days passed before Adam took Ronan to his most cherished public space. It took almost too long to climb all the stairs to the ornately carved stone building. Friezes in the recognizable black and gold decorated the top two feet of all the three floors. Frescos dripped down the walls like after thoughts and half statues seemed to pull themselves from the columns holding each roof up.

Ronan stared with wide eyes. He’d seen hundreds of libraries, some of the best in the world, and some of the oldest, but he’d never seen anything like this. Adam grinned widely up at him.

“We do not have many volumes not in Atlantean. Only a few thousand across Greek, Latin, Egyptian and other African languages, and Thracian. I think you will find some of our Latin inspiring though.”

“How did books survive the flooding?” Ronan asked, letting Adam lead him into the open space inside. The large, circular room opened into six different rooms that stretched so far back, the spaces went dark before Ronan saw the back shelves.

“Some gods were merciful to us. Things were saved sparingly. Our library before the flood would have broken your mind. Humans just cannot fathom such expanse.” Adam only sounded a little bit smug about it. The longer he spent with Ronan and Gansey, occasionally, the more he came to realize humans were not quite so different from Atlanteans. Stunted and odd, but not worlds away as he once imagined.

Adam rubbed his hand over Ronan’s lower arm and let him drink in the sights. Adam had noticed around Gansey that Ronan was bitter and short, cutting his joy off from his voice and face. But, alone, Adam got to see him light up with the promise of adventure and knowledge. Adam had asked Ronan why this was once, and after the light scoffing and eye rolling, Ronan had said Gansey just never asked the right questions, or seeked the right answers for Ronan’s taste.

“You,” he’d said, rough fingers brushing over the scarred markings on Adam’s face, near his temple, “are always leading me just where I want to be.” Then he’d smiled and brushed his thumb over Adam’s nose until Adam giggled and had to fight down the urge to sneeze.

So, yes, Adam let Ronan look and breathe in the beauty that he longed for. But, eventually, he had to pull Ronan away. “This is our foreign room. Not many use it. I’m one of a handful in Atlantis that can speak a language other than Atlantean.”

“What about Blue?” Ronan asked with a small smirk. As the days wore on and Adam and Ronan grew closer, it was obvious Gansey and Blue were also forging a vaguely steady repertoire with each other. Ronan’s jealousy bloomed even when he couldn’t recognize it. Sometimes it was a little tiresome to indulge in his need to prove himself better, but they were both in a good mood and Adam could detect just a little bit of genuine curiosity in Ronan’s tone.

“She cannot speak another language, but her family communes with the dead and the gods.”

“Bullshit,” Ronan said, admiration plain in his tone. Ronan always believed in the magic of Atlantis. There had never been a thing he’d seen, a place they’d gone, or a story Adam told him that Ronan didn’t instantly believe and devour with a religiosity that would put the priests to shame.

There was something magic about Ronan himself. Blue had told him as much when they’d eaten an evening meal with her family.

“Domitus,” she’d said, pulling him aside into a room he knew only briefly during an attempted relationship that had gone nowhere quickly. “The man you’ve brought...there is something otherworldly about him. Not just Earth. Something beyond Earth.”

Adam had frowned at her, rubbing at one of the sigil markings on his arm. “Humans don’t have the magic of Atlantis. And no other civilization had had magic,” he’d pointed out.

“I felt it, Domitus. The air cackles around him with energy. He’s more beyond Earth than some of the elders here.”

“What kind of energy?” Adam had asked. He knew Ronan was a multi-faceted puzzle, something he’d only seen a few pieces of, but he didn’t want to lose him to magic, like he’d lost so much else to it.

“There is a spirit attached to him. Something trying to speak to him. Old and strong. But there’s something else. Something in him. He brought something else with him.”

Adam had shook his head. “You just want him to leave. You want to take him from me. Is it not bad enough that your soldiers follow us wherever we go?”

“He is the true desire of your heart, Domitus, I know that. We can see that. But your heart is not the only one in this city.” Blue had looked at him with outright pity and Adam had left the room before she could say anything else.

There was something special about Ronan. Watching him run his long fingers over dusty spines in languages that Adam couldn’t begin to decipher proved that. But there wasn’t an evil energy about him. Nothing that would endanger the world Adam loved. Ronan loved it too. Adam knew his heart yearned for the one he’d come from, but Ronan didn’t treat Atlantis like something to be studied scientifically, like his companion did.

Adam knew Ronan’s judgement was clouded. He radiated the need to be loved like he radiated energy to Blue. The scream that had ripped from his chest in the cave all those days ago still haunted Adam. He could see all of the fight and feral-ness of Ronan’s human side when his companion suggested they find a way to ‘radio’ back to a ship they had come from. He’d seen anger like when Ronan had first raised his hand to Adam in the cave when Gansey said they should return to the surface, to Earth. It was a specific kind of anger. Not the base anger that cloaked the soldiers who followed them at a distance and pretended not to. It was was an anger bred of fear and hurt.

Adam had known hurt for much of his life. Physical pain at the hands of his father and mother. Emotional pain by his own mind as he struggled to do all he accomplished. And the empty ache in his chest that had overtaken him every time he looked at his wrist.

“You used these books when you were learning Latin?” Ronan asked suddenly. Adam watched the dust stirred up by his breath swirl in front of his face for a moment.

“Yes. There are few others in the whole empire who speak Latin. When I was trying to learn what was on my wrist, I had to come here. I read every book until I saw characters and words I recognized.”

Ronan made a sound and carried a stack of books over to a long table in the middle of the room. Adam sat cross legged on the table to watch him flick through pages.

“No wonder your grammar is so bad. These barely even added spaces between most of the words.”

Adam didn’t know what that meant, but he watched Ronan’s fingers brush over the letterings. Ink flaked off under his skin occasionally, but it didn’t really stop him for long.

“Do many people still speak Latin?” Adam asked. Gansey’s Latin was not the best, but Adam’s Greek was hardly passable and that was a major language.

Ronan snorted and shook his head. “Probably about as many people on Earth speak it well, as people here do.”

“Then why do you?” Adam asked. Ronan just held his wrist out, the Latin almost glowing against his skin. Adam let out a small laugh. “We learned the language for the same reason then. And had we not, neither of us would have Latin on our skins and we wouldn’t have needed to learn it in the first place.”

Ronan looked up with a smile on his face that made him look years younger. A beard had sprouted over the lower half of his face that added years to him anyway. Gansey had had no such problems, so Adam wasn’t sure what to make of it. If it was a magic thing or a Ronan thing or a human thing.

“What languages are dominant now?” Adam asked instead. If he asked about the beard, he would want to reach out to touch it, feel the odd coarseness of human hair that Atlantean hair lacked.

“English. It’s what Gansey and I speak when we’re alone,” Ronan explained. “Um, Chinese. It’s a type of… China is beyond Thrace was. To the very east. Spanish is popular. Spain is a country to the west of Greece and Thrace and Egypt. It’s on the other side of the Mediterranean ocean. But Spanish is not quite only from Spain. It has a lot of forms.”

“Greek did too. Sparta and Athens spoke different dialects and the northern plains were so removed that they almost invented a new language, like we did here.”

Ronan looked up suddenly and Adam thrilled to see a curious but studious gleam in his eye. “Do the words Linear A and B mean anything to you.”

Adam shook his head, but didn’t let himself feel bad. Ronan always had a reason that whatever he asked about wouldn’t make since to Adam.

“I figured it wouldn’t. It’s what modern researchers named it.” Ronan switched books and continued reading.

“What is Linear A and B?” Adam asked so he would look up again.

“It’s these two tablets that were found in an excavation of sites in Greece. It’s some of the oldest writing we have. We can decipher B, but not  A. Which makes people wonder if they’re different languages or dialects, or even if language was common at that point, or just personal.”

Adam nodded. “Atlantean was dialectal for a long time. Even after they went under the water. Thracian peoples and African peoples and Greek peoples all had their language dominant their culture. We find volumes still that no one can read anymore because it is too Thracian, et cetera.”

Ronan looked like he was about to say something else when a guard burst into the room. “Domitus.” He gave a slight bow to Adam, more of a nod and gesture. “Human.” This he almost spat. “Your presence is requested in the palace immediately.”

Ronan and Adam exchanged looks, but before they could move to each other, the soldier was pulling Ronan away, marching him out of the room. Adam struggled to keep up, despite knowing the way better than the soldier.

Gansey and Blue were both in the palace when they arrived. Blue looked furious and Gansey was fidgety in a way Adam hadn’t been able to catalogue yet. He realized with a start that Gansey’s hands were bound in front of him. Adam quickly moved to Ronan’s side, grabbing his wrist to keep anyone from hurting him. Blue had traded the flowing robes she’d been wearing the past few days for full battle gear again.

“What is going on?” he asked in Atlantean. He had to. He’d translate for Ronan when he had an answer.

“The desire of your heart lead more here. They fear an invasion,” Blue answered, keeping an icy look on Gansey.

The soldier who’d brought Ronan and Adam in made a noise behind them. “We shouldn’t be telling him anything. He probably conspired with them. He probably brought them here in the first place.”

Blue cut a look at the soldier. “Speak when spoken to,” she barked out. Still, she cut to the lingo that the soldiers used and Adam didn’t understand. He leaned towards Ronan’s ear instead.

“They think there’s another human.”

He could feel Ronan tense under his hand and from the way Gansey jolted, they were staring each other down. Finally, he asked something in English that stopped Blue and the soldier’s conversation. Adam wished he knew what any of them were saying.

“Domitus, do your sigils tell you of any danger?” Blue asked. Adam looked at her sharply. “You are a priest, deny it as you will. Are the gods telling you something?”

Adam shook his head slowly eventually. “Just the energy of the festival this evening,” he said slowly.

Gansey perked up and in terrible Atlantean, he repeated, “Festival?” He said something to Ronan in English that Adam assumed was a translation.

“Henry would bring a party,” Ronan growled in Latin. Just for Adam. Adam squeezed his wrist again.

“It’s a celebration of light. The gods do not have to bless us with light this far down but they do. We thank them every year by creating the largest fire we can in one of the fields. We sacrifice animals and plants and they send us new kinds and renew our light sources,” Adam explained back.

“What are they doing to Henry?” Ronan asked.

“Did you lead him here?” Adam asked instead of answering.

A muscle worked in Ronan’s jaw and his eyes were fixed in a glare on Gansey. “We both did. There were trackers in the suits we wore. He followed our path right…”

“To the medical unit. The heart of the palace,” Adam finished for him. It made his blood run cold, to think of the danger that Ronan had brought to the city. Humans knew how to get here. Until the next shift in the rocks, Atlantis wasn’t safe. And it was Ronan’s fault.

But Blue was right. Half the pain of his childhood was being a mouthpiece of the gods. The fire the sigils would burn into his skin when they wanted him to know something, the aching they left behind, and the cold that Adam couldn’t describe when they were completely silent tormented him more days than not. But he’d spoken true. The sigils were only humming in excitement for the festival. He could almost, almost, hear the singing of the lesser gods, who were closer to Adam’s Atlantean divinity.

“It’s safe, Blue. Let them see each other,” Adam assured again. His back was to the door, but the way Gansey visibly relaxed was a sure sign that Henry was in his line of sight and okay. Ronan looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

He rattled off something in English, biting and mean, but a little fond. Henry replied with as strong a tone as he could manage despite the wobble in his voice. Gansey said something and was suddenly across the room, a soldier striding after him. Despite his bound wrists, Gansey leaned into Henry and Henry’s arms came up to hold him tightly. It was so raw that Adam looked away. He studied his thumb as it brushed over Ronan’s mark, Adam’s own words in his messy scrawl.

Suddenly, in Latin, Henry was asking, “Is this him? The soul mate?” When Adam turned, Henry was studying him, a kind of mirth on his face that Adam wondered could be removed. He must have been terrified, but he was working up to a full grin the longer he stared at Adam’s hand on Ronan’s wrist.

“That’s him,” Gansey agreed with his own gentle smile. “They’re terrible to spend time with together.”

Adam could feel Ronan’s scowl without looking up at him.

“Keep the humans together. Find the trackers. Destroy them,” Blue ordered, cutting off the conversation.

Adam faltered. “Wait. No. Don’t take him. Let me… You said so yourself. He’s magic. Look at him. He’s light. Let me take him to the festival. Don’t say you don’t want the other one with you.”

Blue turned that hard gaze on him, but Adam had been scrutinized by her enough times to stand his ground. “Please,” he added softly. “He is the desire of my heart. I cannot leave him now that I know where my missing heart beats are.”

Blue sneered and then waved a hand. “You are already under surveillance. I’ll double the soldiers tailing you. And you will make yourself seen at least four times an hour. Do not run, Domitus. He is not worth it.”

Adam thought Ronan was worth a lot of things. But he remained silent.

*  *  *

Ronan was actually very helpful once Adam let him know what bargain he’d struck. Lithe though he was, he was strong too. Not as strong as an Atlantean, but he could carry wood across the fields and chop more when men wanted a break. Through it all, he kept an eye on Adam always. Adam swore he felt the sigils warm when Ronan was looking at him.

By the time it was dark, the fire was lit and large, stretching so far into the sky that Adam couldn’t see where the flame flickered out, only where darkness bled in on the sides.

“Do you have fire on Earth still?” Adam asked. They were sitting together, alone for the first time since Henry arrived. In the grass, their fingers tangled together and they kept leaning into each other for no real reason.

“We still have fire, yeah,” Ronan laughed, looking at Adam with a grin. In the firelight, he looked young again, softer than he should with the flickering shadows playing tricks over his face.

“Fires like this?” Adam asked.

Ronan nodded and straightened up again. His muscles tensed and relaxed just as quickly. Some kind of reflex tamped down. “We call them bonfires. Usually we’re not sacrificing food, we’re eating it.”

“Is that all you do at bonfires?” Adam asked.

Ronan laughed again and shook his head. “We dance like that,” he said, gesturing to the wild and carefree and happy Atlanteans by the base of the fire.

“Sacrificial celebration?” Adam asked.

“No. It’s just a way to be close and happy with someone,” Ronan explained.

“How does it help you be close?” Adam asked.

Ronan leveled a cool look on him and Adam felt his heart kick up into his chest. “Let me show you,” he said, standing up and offering a hand down to Adam. He hauled him up and then pulled him close. “Okay, you’ll put your arms around my neck like this,” he said, moving Adam’s arms. In the fire, the sigils glowed and they were warm in his skin.

“And I’ll hold you around the waist like this. Now we just move to the music,” Ronan said, shifting his weight back and forth.

“But we dance to the words. You don’t know the words of these lyrics,” Adam pointed out.

“Well, on Earth we actually dance to the rhythm. Or, you’re supposed to. Most dance music doesn’t even have words.”

Adam must have looked appalled because Ronan laughed, head thrown back. “Don’t look like I just killed your cat. A lot of still does. But you’re supposed to feel the music, move to it.”

He kept his hips and torso shifting until Adam was moving with him. And, yes, he completely understood why this would make people feel close to each other. Ronan let his forehead rest against Adam’s and they swayed back and forth in the grass by themselves. Adam thought this celebration was suddenly not about the gods and light, but about Ronan and love.

[mondofunnybooks]

'THANOS'S GRANDAUGHTER: GO SUCK EGGS GRANDPA!' DEPT.

'The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch - a frozen moment where everyone sees exactly what is on the end of every fork.'

-William Burroughs, from the foreword notes for the novel 'Naked Lunch'.

THE GATEKEEPERS!

As may not possibly surprise you lot, we've run afoul of some of the more humourless elements of fandom in our time. This is probably down to the fact that we don't take superhero comics very seriously but are utterly enamoured of some of the more sillier elements of history. True story. We were once told off by a man in Green Lantern fangroup (We were bored.) because we thought that the origin of Kyle Rayner is so nakedly Freudian and 'Will this do?' to be hilarious.

To recap:

On a planet called Oa exists a race of short, bald humanoids with large heads called The Guardians. The Guardians believe in enforcing Order in the universe and go about this by way of selecting the most suitable candidate (called a Green Lantern.) of each sector of the universe to be given a power ring that does whatever the wearer can imagine. This ring had no effect on anything yellow due to a necessary flaw in the design to stop the wearer from having absolute power. Also, it has to be recharged every 24 hours.

Our sector of the universe is 2814, and of the 7200 Lanterns patrolling the universe at any given time, ours was a chap called Hal Jordan. Very strong-willed, very daring. Hal got the ring off an alien called Abin Sur who was on his way to give either him or a ginger bloke with a Moe haircut called Guy. Hal happened to be closer than Guy, so got the ring.

Hal Jordan went onto be a successful Green Lantern for several years but things went terribly wrong when a big yellow space tyrant called Mongul, teaming with a cyborg pretending to be Superman destroyed Hal's home of Coast City, murdering tens of thousands of people and left Hal shattered, feeling he'd failed in his duty as Earth's protector.

The loss of everything Hal cared about sent him insane, and he attempted to resurrect his destroyed home using the power ring, but he could only achieve a replica of what he'd lost and the ring wasn't designed to create that much matter for a presumably infinite period of time. His perceived second failure cemented his full breakdown, and he went on a murderous rampage in order to gather as many Green Lantern rings as possible on the way to returning to Oa is seize the original Green Lantern ring. Things go quite wrong as Hal murders the entire Lantern Corp and all but one of the Guardians: Ganthet.

Ganthet, a wee blue fella cosplaying as Orko off the He-Man cartoons pegs it back to Earth. Once there, he floats to L.A., sees a drunk bloke taking a piss against a wall and gives him the final power ring before sodding off, exclaiming 'The Ring will sort you, mate. No worries.'

A BLUE SPACE MIDGET IN A RED DRESS GIVES A DRUNK LAD ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPONS IN THE UNIVERSE AND THEN FUCKS OFF IS THE ORIGIN OF KYLE RAYNER, GREEN LANTERN OF EARTH.*

This would be weird as a 1960's comic but at least the DC Editors of the '60s had no idea any of this stuff would be reprinted and pored (Hi, Donald.) over by future generations. Supergirl is having a relationship with a fella who turns into her horse but she doesn't know about it? Fine. There's a space creature from the fifth dimension who has a real thing for winding up Superman every ninety days and can only be stopped by tricking him into saying his name backwards? Gotcha. Batman owns a dog who fights crime but wears a mask on patrol so no one will link Ace The Bat-Hound with Bruce Wayne. Of COURSE. Beppo The Super-Monkey? PRINT IT! Who will care in five years? Who will even remember, right?

Green Lantern 50 (2nd series, 1994) was published post Watchmen, post Dark Knight Returns, post Brat Pack and all of the other silly 'Corporate Superheroes Can Be For Adults' malarkey. We were now aware of subtext, metaphor, aspirational text and either this is a daft attempt at being a mature comic (which given it features a nervous breakdown, genocide, the total psychological breakdown of one of the icons of the DCU and the first example of 'Fridging' quite soon after, it ought to be.) or it's a very bad attempt at pitching a superhero comic at the kids.

The real answer was of course that DC were trying to get attention back they'd lost to the Marvel Superstar period and subsequent formation of Image. Superman grew a mullet, Batman needed a wheelchair and was replaced with a religious nutter wearing Vatican levels of gold, Wonder Woman was replaced with a giant legged redhead, The Flash broke his leg. It was all kicking off.

But we always found the whole Kyle thing hilarious, and when making our usual jokes about it ('Good thing Ganthet didn't run into Richard Pryor!', etc.) we were scolded. It turns out the story had been rewritten a bit as part of something called Green Lantern: Rebirth so it made a bit more sense. Lord knows some of our best friends are comic fans, but when they start quoting the continuity of a DC comic with capitals like they WERE reciting THE Bible and Geoff Johns DID make it GOOD, we get a bit scared.

All that was a recap of 5 comics. (Green Lantern 47-50 and Superman 80) and was almost impossible to recap straight. When we tried to give a factual, chronological accounting of these comics, we weren't capable of throwing in a few puns. And circa 1989-1993, nor were the staff of Marvel Year In Review.

When people try to contemplate the early 90's and Marvel, they think of Spider-Man 1, X-Force 1, X-Men 1. If you narrow the field down to Marvel Magazines, probably the movie adaptations, poster specials and most likely the BEAUTIFUL Marvel Illustrated Swimsuit Editions. Few will remember the spectacular Marvel Year In Review annuals. That's a shame, because with one notable exception* it was the last time they displayed an ability to take the mick out of themselves beside the better issues of John Byrne's run on She-Hulk or the comedy title 'What The--?!' (also canceled, sadly in 1993.).

Marvel Year In Review, in theory, was probably originally designed to be exactly that: A chronological overview of every comic published by Marvel over the previous 12 months. That sounds simple enough but can you imagine being the poor saps who not only have to read all those comics but attempt to sum them up as a factual synopsis. The work and time we just put into four issues of Green Lantern was murder and at least interesting things happened in those books. 'Hey, Dwight here's all of Acts Of Vengeance to work out, and see if you can explain what a Captain Universe is and why Spidey might become possessed by his powers, there's a pie in it for you. Barry, you got Atlantis Attacks.' Interns were probably diving out of the window at the sight of editor Bobbie Chase approaching them with a stack of Alpha Flight.

So rather than put out another dry, just the facts ma'am comic to sit along Marvel Age, The Offical Handbook Of The Marvel Universe or Marvel Preview, they changed gears. Marvel opted for a magazine format with covers emulating the likes of Time and later National Lampoon and sadly unnoticed New York-centric mag Spy. The early issues provided something of a review of the year but in journalistic form for some of the bigger events juxtaposed with pieces on 'Best and Worst Dressed' and ads for products like Damage Control, who would sort out your house if it'd been trashed in a fight between The Hulk and The Wrecker, a tourist ad for Latveria, posters for the new Simon Williams film or a flyer for the next Dazzler disco compilation. Long before Alex Ross painted every last rock on Ben Grimm's back, Marvel TYIR gave you an insight into what it would be like to be a resident of the Marvel Universe reading a 616 style issue of National Lampoon.

MYIR also ran interviews with various superheroes, (Including Rick Jones recounting the time he met Elvis, by far the best thing to come out of Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade.) a review of Nightcat's debut album, an appetite suppressant for Galactus, the 'Who Died This Year, Who Came Back From The Dead and Who Managed To Stay Dead' update, an expose of Genosha's tourist, a create your own 90's superhero name and origin generator (which turned out to be surprisingly accurate.) an account of two disenfranchised rival employees's visit to the Marvel Offices and ooh, loads more.

This is speculation on our part, but the knife gets a lot sharper around the 1992-1993 editions. The full chronology is written with a weary black humour of someone's who just seen too much and is getting bitter. The full-on assault on the 1993 annuals, certain top-tier artists 'showing their influences too clearly' and inadvertently predicting the future of more brutal and uncaring superhero comics in the article 'Bring On The Bad Guys' from MYIR 1993.

There's a huge shift in attitude and editorial policy in the next 12 months. Several publishers have gone bust, Tom Defalco is gone as Editor In Chief and replaced with 5 people in charge of various parts of the publishing line, turning Marvel into a series of little fiefdoms with varying degrees of co-operation between each other. We've just met Peter Parker's robot parents. Aunt May is about to die. Reed Richards is dead. Jim Wilson is dead. Legion resolves to kill Magneto. Dr Strange has an idea for something called 'The Secret Defenders'. Everything is about to get very serious and therefore far more ripe for parody.

And with no word, no goodbye from the editors, nothing in the fan press nor explanation, Marvel Year In Review 1994 was solicited thusly:

'Marvel Year In Review 1994 - Just the facts, ma'am. Gone is the tongue-in-cheek humor of the past; the Marvel Year in Review offers a factual recap of the major Marvel Universe events of 1994. It's short on lengthy text and long on splashy art and fact-filled sidebars. Included are all the happenings from the pages of X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider, plus art by Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, Tom Lyle and many others! $2:95. $4.00 CAN'

And it was. Normal comic size. No chatty opener from the editor with puns and gags. No angry letters from readers just wanting to know what happened in X-Force and wanting to be rid of the MODAM jokes. No ads. Not even, truth be told, much in the way of recaps so much as trade dress-less cover repros with dialogue quotes and a paragraph or two to cover the essential plot elements, finished with the most perfunctory 'Er, will this do?' appeal to the readers on the last page. Turns out that no, it wouldn't do at all, as there was no Marvel Year In Review 1995 or any other edition either.

Marvel has put out a few self-parody books since, such as Marvel RIOT!, House Of Hem, Marvel WHAT Now?, Who Won't Wear The Shield, Wha HUH? and obviously Deadpool crosses the lines frequently, but there's not been something that clever nor ambitious since. Perhaps the line between reader, writer and editor aren't as clear as they used to be or simply today's audience wouldn't be as immediately familiar with the formats being parodied and as the recent attempts to parody Marvel fanfiction have shown, sometimes an idea just belongs to its time. As a magazine that featured fun work by the likes of Todd McFarlane, Dan Slott, Sam Kieth, Peter David,  Kevin Maguire and a different angle on a world that takes itself a little bit seriously at times, Marvel Year In Review was a fun little ride while it lasted.

(Note to self. Never, ever look up Marvel fanfiction again. Ever.)

*This may be different now but was certainly the case in 1994. Origins, histories and such might have changed due to 52, Convergence and Rebirth. We were told that Flashpoint was the end of the DC Universe as we knew it, and we took that as a good place to stop reading. Except Section Eight and Batman/Elmer Fudd obviously.

Dedicated to the memory of Steve Ditko.(1927-2018)

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 14 Pt1: Rex and Weevils Ultimate Betrayal No One Gave a Damn About

Just finished watching the Superbowl, which I never ever do, and it was VERY confusing and I thought I remembered this sport but I did not. I don’t know what’s happening. I do not understand how Kansas City got that field goal on San Fransisco when their feet never touched the goal line. So, I’m just gonna...change gears completely and wrap up this long post about a VERY complicated anime that came out before some of y’all were born, instead. Today I just really wanted to feel lost.

Last episode, Yugi (the main character of the show, the one this show is named after) hella died, and Rex and Weevil decided to leave the party very, very quickly.

You’d think that the one event (Yugi’s dead) would have to do with the other event (getting the hellllll away), considering how rude and judgy Yami is, but they actually left for cards. They accidentally did a very wise decision in order to do something incredibly stupid and cancel out any wisdom they showed in pedaling as fast as they could possibly pedal away from the reincarnated ghost who just very suddenly achieved full control of a human body.

They accidentally pedaled away from every Mummy movie super villain and somehow ended up with a much more worse villain.

Like I say that this whole season is about Yugi’s crazy commute, but Rex and Weevil’s commute has just been so much more. They are just clinging to whatever vehicle is near them in order to find these legendary cards sitting somewhere in American Soil. They are so ambivalent to all the very real world terrible problems around them because they’re PRETTY SURE they’re gonna get rich. It’s like the Gold Rush but with helicopters.

Also the 49ers never rode tandem bikes, but you know they would’ve if they could’ve.

And for some, weird reason, Rafeal decides not to pick them up under his arms and toss them directly onto an unsuspecting Joey Wheeler like he just did with Yugi. Rafael and Alister decided...nah...I’ll keep these strange small manchildren.

It seems really off brand for Rafael and Alister but maybe they just got too tired to deal with it right now.

Speaking of tired--this horse.

I mean I’ll do the math eventually--not this post but maybe the next one I just did a lot of math trying to remember why the hell it’s 6 points for a goal in football--but this horse that we estimated would take over 20 days to ride to Death Valley just rode all the way back in the same day. Congratulations horse, the strongest force in all of Yugioh, (second to Yugi’s neck, holding that 70 lb necklace at all hours of the day.)

The girls seem to think that everything is OK initially, mostly because Yugi doesn’t really lose games that often, since the list of ways to beat Yugi in a card game up until now didn’t include “trick Yami into murdering the hell out of Yugi Muto.” Crazy that that actually worked, but Yami isn’t that bright.

PS please admire how chubby this horse appears in this scene.

OK I’m glad we all acknowledged the elephant in the room that was a horse last shot.

Also...maybe he didn’t hug her back because she just shoved a very sharp pyramid necklace straight into his small intestines?

(more under the cut)

I’ll spare you Transatlantacism this time.

Tea is concerned but more surprised than straight up angry. An anger which is more honed by Rebecca because Yami just killed her only friend (other than this horse) and possibly her only future husband that would ever put up with her (other than this horse.)

Like it seems kind of rude in the show out of context that everyone took a moment to lay a big dump on Yami Muto, but can you imagine if you straight up killed your twin (by accident but only by like 75% accident, lets be real) and this was your only punishment?

Like getting punched out is just how Yami treats himself every single day, so I don’t think Joey made too much of a difference in the situation. But you know, it’s Yugioh, so getting punched does is somehow the correct answer.

It was very lucky for Yami that Tea was too busy trying to console Rebecca to punch Yami before Joey got to him first because hot damn that would have sent him straight back to Death Valley.

And then I think this next exchange between Duke and Tristan was somewhat lost in translation. Please admire the censorship here. Safe for kids now.

I say this like a joke but have you seen Equinox? I live in the Bay, so trust me. Equinox is absolutely reviving the Great Leviathan. No doubt in my mind.

Anyway, Rafael and Alister hear Rex and Weevil’s plea to join the evil task force and they’re like...

...yeah, I guess you can apply, why not? No need to interview your or anything before we harass Darts with you.

Like Rafael and Alister were completely bonkers children that were driven to insanity by very extreme circumstances, and then there’s Rex and Weevil. They’re just...kind of middling at cards and that’s it.

But sure, yeah, I’m sure they’ll fit right into the completely maniacal card corporate atmosphere here at DartsCorp. I’m sure Rex and Weevil will jump out of a plane on a motorcycle and then do stunts all the way towards Atlantis Island.

Sure.

(course, now that I think of it, they did introduce themselves to Alister and Rafael by accidentally doing a stunt over a canyon onto a helicopter so...maybe they accidentally think Rex and Weevil are cool?)

Which, in hindsight, makes Mai make a hell of a lot more sense because y’all, they should be SO distracted right now, and shouldn’t let anyone in here who isn’t insane or insanely good at cards. But instead they’re like...I guess you have a duel disk, you’ll work. It’s not like there’s a line of people at the door.

Anyway, because the show has to acknowledge that there might be new viewers, they do their best to try and explain this very lengthy Yugi mechanic as if we’ve never heard it before and honestly, it just sounded like everyone was very frustrated.

Like for reals what is he wearing?

Why are there so few normal ass suits in Yugioh? Why is KAIBA the only person who knows what colors belong on a fitted suit? (And he just wears white, which isn’t a color and is always very safe but youknow it still boggles my mind that the power suit people are so into very friendly soft pastels from Gozaburo, to Pegasus, to Noah, to Darts.)

I would wear this suit to Easter Sunday. Darts just wears it every day.

And so then we get a little insight into what it takes to become an Orichalcos card champion.

While before, Darts just kinda poked Mai in the forehead and she was instantly imbued with Aqua Green Evilness, he decided to do a weird test on Rex and Weevil. Just to make sure they realllllly wanted to be here.

As if they didn’t stow away in a 18 hour flight stuffed into a handbag, hold in their piss for said 18 hours, then get shipped by accident to the Tenderloin, where they were mugged twice, and then get shoved into the trunk of Duke’s car, and then took a broken tandem bike to the hottest desert in America, where they then rode said bike off of a cliff in order to hang onto a flying helicopter.

Like I think this test was unnecessary, I think they want to be here.

But youknow, I think Darts just wanted to torture em for kicks.

And then Rex and Weevil have to grab two of these Oricalchos stones that were farting special effects and were very, very opposed to being owned by Rex and Weevil. But they managed to do it.

And uh congrats--their betrayal has begun!

And I don’t think anyone else on this show even recognized that they freakin left. Like they just kinda disappeared in Death Valley and then Duke was like “eh. They’ll find their way home.”

Kind of incredible that Joey and friends left these two stranded in Death Valley, That alone should have killed Rex and Weevil and like...Wow. Wow is Joey and co such a freakin asshole.

So don’t leave people stranded in Death Valley, they will join a card cult and freakin kill you. If the insane heat doesn’t kill them first.

And then because...I don’t know...I don’t know why, after sending his best and brightest fighters, Darts decided to downgrade and do this:

(based on a true story where a friend of mine worked as an intern in the city, and because they couldn’t pay him a living wage, he lived in a closet at said startup for nearly 2 years. Start-up culture is pretty real, folks, it’s PRETTY REAL. But, on the bright side, at least they had a shower in-house.)

So, I’m gonna go remove my contacts and try to forget how much queso I ate at that Superbowl party.

It was a lot of queso.

and if you just got here, this is a handy link to read these from the start.

PS anyone else pull the Yugioh fest in PAD? Because I have played this game...a lot over the course of 5 years and saved up over 300 free stones for several months in anticipation for this collab and then I pulled Kuriboh about 15 times. Most of you have no idea what that means, but for some of you out there, your heart just broke for me 15 times. (I did get 2 Yugis so I’m fine, but damn it) Then, bro saved up his stones and pulled Seto Kaiba, Marik, and Bakura all in a row. Freakin gotcha games, man. Freakin gotcha games.