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hekatekun · 4 years

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The metanarrative’s grand narrative: Osomatsu-san’s characterization throughout the franchise

The growing cynicism throughout the entire Osomatsu-san franchise shows itself in season 3 with more prominence than anything prior. I think that’s pretty common amongst any “long-running” gag comedy - replacing a plot with spiteful commentary that’s admittedly pretty hit or miss at times. However, it invariably creates a negative but pretty funny character growth, and I love the way the show (I’m including the movie too as “canon” material considering season 3 has referenced it way too many times for me to disregard) has set up this metanarrative across seasons. Long post ahead.

Obviously, Osomatsu-san is self-aware and has a casual relationship with itself. No linear plot (though S3 seems to be trying it out and I’ve enjoyed it - I love that they’re willing to experiment), rather a collection of unrelated skits; and so it points out its own metanarrative because of this “lack of consequences.” With comedy comes impermancy and Ososan AND -kun will always bounce back from that week’s insanity. From the Oxford Dictionary, a metanarrative is “a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality.” Basically: a story about stories.

On top of this, is what I’m calling the “grand narrative,” which is often used interchangeably with metanarrative, but here I’m making a distinction to make it less confusing. Of course, Ososan is a story about stories, but with that comes a story it’s not directly telling, which is where most of the (little) character development is taking place. This is what I’m going to call the grand narrative of a show whose premise is being a meta-aware comedy. I’ll admit I’m by no means an expert on these subjects, but storytelling methods are something I enjoy trying to analyze. As a media format, Ososan really utilizes the fact that it’s a tv show.

Right off the bat S1E1 makes it clear what to expect: Nothing. Not a damn thing. But, the show had already been cleared for this first season, so it has to be produced. This same episode’s preview is done by Osomatsu, which I’m just gonna quote instead screenshot because there’s too many.

“...we plan on properly starting the anime the next episode.” “...you ended up with an extra minute, so you need me to do something to fill it?! Actually, is this anime going to be okay with episode one being like this? I’m getting worried about how the rest of this is going to be...” “There, I used up a minute! [EPISODE ENDS]”

Episode one is not only batshit referential, but downright mocking the state of anime in 2015. Which, truthfully, I don’t have much to comment on in that regard, as I’m not an avid anime fan. However, it does this under the premise of being indecisive about what kind of anime they wanted the Osokun reboot to be.

They’ll do just about anything to stay popular and relevant considering that is, quite literally, all they have going for them as characters in the series and just being characters in general. They may be pieces of shit, but they’re likeable pieces of shit. The dynamics they’ve built upon to be entertaining is encouraged, and they’re basically just roleplaying different skits and fucking around.

All the AUs! All the skits! They’re just playing! They’re just fuckin’ around!! They couldn’t come up with any interesting plot nor could they “graduate” from being anime protagonists and join the real world, so they just fuck around and make a gag anime!

Even if we follow both as the audience, the show makes a difference between the what’s them in their “normal life” (crazy begets crazy, no?) and what’s their “show.” But, really, that’s just one way to look at it, as they don’t really follow any rules as a show. I could say the Joshimatsus are separate characters from the sextuplets, and it’d be a “correct” interpretation. It doesn’t really matter - I’m choosing to examine it all as being the six of them just running around and playing, because being entertaining and having fun is all they know as characters. Besides, having it blended together beyond recognition reinforces how it prioritizes entertaining us, the audience, above logic. Storytelling doesn’t need to make absolute spatial-temporal sense for it to be enjoyable to fans.

In any case, that mentality really seems to be what pushes their character development negative, as they look to reinforce habits and rituals despite them being really detrimental for them in the long run. They know they’re popular characters as is, and with really everyone from staff to fans encouraging this behavior further, so they see no point in fixing what isn’t really broken.

I found this 4 year old article from Manga.Tokyo discussing the Ososan phenomenon in Japan because while the craze died off pretty quickly in American anime circles (which deserves a whole other post), Japanese fans went fuckin’ nuts.

This portion caught my attention, as it makes sense that entitled and enabled asshole children would grow up to be entitled and enabled asshole adults. The article also goes on to compare them to idols (even beyond the F6 spoof) and that they are rooted in being comfort characters above all else.

It’s worth a read, especially because Japanese fan response is what drives majority of the content post-S1, and, inevitably, ties into their character development.

They know that they’re Characters, particularly Protagonists. You know what happens to protagonists? Everything works out. Just about every single story created has stuff working out for protagonists. In fact, we have a whole genre made that separates stories with bad tragic endings from our Normal Stories. Ososan is a comedy, not a tragedy, so surely there’s gonna be some payoff somewhere along the road, especially as the seasons and other content are still being pumped out. To a self-aware, entitled, enabled protagonist, assuming everything is just gonna work out for you isn’t that far off from your narrative truth.

However, Ososan is a gag anime, and a lot of gag content (like 4koma mangas) is dropped for other projects before any emotional cathartic ending is provided for characters and fans alike. So, three seasons and a movie later, nothing has happened. It’s a great idol cash cow with a Family Guy filter, and the characters (and writers) don’t even bother to hide it anymore. And I know I’m being hypocritical concerning my definition of “canon material” but I think this portion from one of the drama cds “Choroplex” basically summarizes my point:

CHOROMATSU: Wait, don’t make this into a gag! You don’t even care about becoming employed, right? KARAMATSU: There’s no way that could happen... CHOROMATSU: What kind of future are you imagining? Is it nothing but this? [HUGE PAUSE BEFORE THEY MOVE ONTO SOMETHING ELSE]

They’re parodies of themselves and are running out of ideas. Stagnation and decay is normal, if not unavoidable, at this point in time for them. They’re just 20 somethings who’ve hit a wall but they’re too scared and insecure to bring about permanent positive change. It’s easier for them to fall back into normal patterns and joke off the rest.

They have an antagonistic relationship with expectations. They can’t handle a single iota of expectations, or responsibilities. They’ve never needed to worry before, so why bother now? Once the biggest hits on the block, now they’re just guppies in the ocean, and there’s nothing they believe themselves to be able to accomplish to keep up with this big brave new world. This is epitomized in S3E15, where old man Osomatsu tells a bastardized version of the Tortoise and the Hare, blatantly projecting his feelings onto it. Again, too many screenshots so let me pull more quotes (bolding for my own reference):

“The place that the tortoise thought was the goal was not actually the goal. His journey down the road of life still continued on. The tortoise was quite tired, but he continued running anyway.” “No one actually knew who was in front anymore. There are too many people above you.” “After the tortoise found out how society worked, he thought, ‘So this is the difference in talent? No amount of hard work is going to fix this. All right. I’m done competing with others.’”

S3 has left more questionable endings than its counterparts. The last 2 skits I referenced don’t even a gag to them, and the marriage skit doesn’t play music for the entire second half of S3E5. There’s more involved too. I haven’t even brought up the rice ball twins becoming actual entertainers in their universe, or how they introduced this whole AI subplot only to reject it because All Six Of Them aren’t interested in expanding their little corner of the world. Here’s a transcript of the ending preview from S3E1:

“Hey, hey, Osomatsu here. I thought we were saved from being replaced, but I guess we get new characters next week. Man, we’re busy. New encounters, changing surroundings... We’re NEETs to begin with because all that is a pain. I guess a lot can happen after three seasons. [EPISODE ENDS]”

The sextuplets’ mindsets are extremely self-centered, which is also an environmental thing (the parents don’t even really care that they’re NEETs, for one) and an understanding of what they ought to be (epic successful protagonists). They also have a very black and white mentality, all or nothing. They’re extremely sheltered, and once they realized where they stood in society at large, they just gave up. To them the world is divided between winners and losers, and somehow, “inexplicably,” they found themselves to have fallen from grace. But they’re protagonists, that has to count for something! Everything’s gonna end up okay, right? Well... what this show has told them: No, not at all. They are consistently compared and warned of Iyami, and are perfectly aware of this fact, and have come to internalize it as a truth rather than a reversible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Too many screencaps, taken from the S3S5 marriage discussion:

JYUSHIMATSU: I wonder if we’re gonna get married someday, too. CHOROMATSU: Well, I mean... probably? I’m not exactly sure, but... TODOMATSU: What? You’re gonna get married, Choromatsu-niisan? CHOROMATSU: Huh? Well, yeah... someday.

Surprise! They have commitment issues! The same group that couldn’t commit to a fucking plot! Though their personality issues have several factors involved, I can’t overlook the theater motifs abound. Life’s a stage, and they’re performing entirely unscripted and it shows.

Do I think all of this is 100% intentional on the writers’ part? No, probably not. There’s also an extra layer here regarding contemporary Japanese commentary that I’m not familiar with, so I just ended up focusing on the characters. I can’t be in the writers’ heads, but whatever decisions are being made by executives regarding censorship and “compliance” are reflected in these character changes that result in being significantly more bitter and defeatist.

In the all or nothing, winner-take-all mentality, the only way to save face at this point, in their minds, is to own up to it - act like it’s what they wanted all along. And, hey, it’s funny to watch, right?

“Why is Osomatsu all my examples”, you might be asking. Well, he’s the damn blueprint for it all. The leader of the bunch, the first personality to grab your attention, has had all his issues projected and ricocheted in their echo chamber.

Ultimately, my point here is that you could think their “canon characterizations” (though canon means nothing in a show like this) as being intertwined with the nature of their self-aware existence. They’ve shown you all their tricks, the smoke and mirrors are getting boring, and they’re stalling long enough the story seems to be moving on without them - in spite of them. And when something genuinely threatens their way of life, they don’t know how to respond.

You can play it all straight, of course. Remove the meta jokes and all the same plot points can be hit, but, as a slapstick comedy, it’s able to easily add this additional layer in that I appreciate. I’ve said it in my last post and I’ll probably say it in more, but with comedy comes sincerity - the caveat of all the cartoon violence is that, on some level somewhere, this is how they really feel.

#osomatsu san #osomatsu #karamatsu #choromatsu #ichimatsu #jyushimatsu #todomatsu #osomatsu matsuno #karamatsu matsuno #choromatsu matsuno #ichimatsu matsuno #jyushimatsu matsuno #todomatsu matsuno #analysis #confession this was sparked by a convo i had w friends about s3e18 #this is a bit truncated but i couldnt bring myself to make this longer #maybe ill make a pt2 or whatever idk

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crow-in-a-teapot · 4 years

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tower of nero spoilers

i have just finished the tower of nero. and before i go searching for other people’s thoughts and art and more of the characters i love so much, i want to write down some of my own thoughts because i know as soon as i delve into that ‘ton spoilers’ hashtag there are going to be complaints and criticisms and so much that i don’t want to hear, or essays that’ll make me upset, or things that’ll change my perception on the book (because on this website people really love to hate the trials of apollo).

i want to start with: i loved it. it didn’t feel earth-shattering or huge and momentous like some of my favourite riordanverse books (house of hades, the blood of olympus, the last olympian and maybe some of the magnus chase books take those pedestals for me) but it was satisfying. and i think it was satisfying because it in no way felt like an ending. whether because eventually rick will write that will-and-nico-go-through-tartarus-and-save-bob novella, or because we (or at least i) will continue writing and imagining and creating for this world i don’t know. he didn’t wrap up the story in a perfect little bow like ‘nineteen years later’, he simply put it on pause. gave us a glimpse of where every character was at at the end.

the only thing that makes me so angry and upset is that i did manage to get some spoilers for moments that i know would have been so good to experience for the first time if i hadn’t been spoiled for them. the moment where rachel mentions penguins in a mansion near her house, nico getting mental health advice from mr d, the fact that will and nico were going to be in the book for so much of the story, but the big thing was literally spoiled for me two days ago, it was the reason i sat down to read it as fast as possible because i was terrified of getting more spoiled and not being able to experience the moments for myself, was that piper had a girlfriend. i know that reading that for the first time would have been so cool and surprising, and the fact that when it came up for a moment in the last couple pages all i felt was disappointment because it was spoiled for me and because it was now tinged with whatever that person was saying about her having a girlfriend.

but i still had some warm fuzzy moments, the two parts where apollo thinks he’s going to die but nico comes up behind him - so good. impeccable.

Leader Guy spat. ‘Now, I kill you.’

He raised his sword... and froze. His face turned pale. His skin began to shrivel. His beard fell out whisker by whisker like dead pine needles. Finally, his skin crumbled away, along with his clothes and flesh, until Leader Guy was nothing but a bleached-white skeleton, holding a sword in his bony hands.

Standing behind him, his hand on the skeleton’s shoulder, was Nico di Angelo.

and

Nero raised his hand, ready to give the kill command, when behind me a mighty BOOM! shook the chamber. Half our enemies were thrown off their feet. Cracks sprouted in the windowsand the marble columns. Ceiling tiles broke, raining dust like split bags of flour.

I turned to see the impenetrable blast doors lying twisted and broken, a strangely emaciated red bull standing in the breach. Behind it stood Nico di Angelo.

gods. poetic brilliance. i can’t believe i’m still a nico di angelo stannie in the year 2021. in five years i have not changed (ever since the tv show announcement last summer i have managed to morph into myself from 2017)

from here i’m not sure where to go next i kind of want to go through everything, except it’ll be more difficult than my tyrant’s tomb reaction because i wasn’t reading on a kindle and thus can’t just do funny little reactions to screenshots of quotes, so i’ll just skim through the book page by page and see what i can comment on (i’m not planning on doing analysis today, no thank you, just enjoying the end of my childhood and trying to squeeze as much out of it as possible)

i have an emotional attachment to mr. snake from the very first chapter, and am very upset that he’ll never get off on his baltimore stop and get to see his wife, lu had no reason to shoot and kill him like that.

that brings me to lu, i liked her, it was interesting to see how rick kind of brought in not only the overarching theme of abuse, but also people who let the abuse happen, i have more i could say on this i’m too lazy to right now, and i promised no analysis - or the fact that Lu had conspired to make the show non-lethal to spare Meg’s feelings rather than - oh, I don’t know - refusing to do Nero’s dirty work in the first place and getting Meg out of that house of horrors.

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to opppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything.

the parallels to meg and lester heading to percy’s apartment, and then to camp half blood to the hidden oracle was so cool to read, every callback to the hidden oracle just there to remind us readers exactly how far apollo has come and how he’s changed; the entire chapter with sally, paul and estelle just felt sickly sweet, it just didn’t seem real how wholesome and good that family is, like i get why apollo broke down and just sobbed in that shower.

also rick really saying acab again in toa, i thought he was done after that elf cop chapter in magnus chase (the magnus chase series is a masterpiece) but apparently not, with A ‘good cop’ is still a cop... still a part of the mind game.

the grey sisters, i forgot about them completely but this threw me back into was it the sea of monsters when annabeth summoned them? i’m not sure, it could have been the lightning thief either, they really remind me of the disney hercules movie. the whole ganymede paragraph was gold, i love gods being canonically confirmed lgbt in the riordanverse. i also love the whole eye-tossing part -

‘He will crush our eye,’ Anger cried, ‘if we don’t recite our verses!’

‘I will not!’

‘We will all die!’ Wasp said. ‘He is crazy!’

‘I AM NOT!’

‘Fine, you win!’ Tempest howled.

also, the explanation for why dionysus chooses to look the way he does was perfect, because it was something i often wondered about and wasn’t expecting to get an explanation for, and i imagine the whole mythological dionysus to look like.. well like a more feminine apollo i guess, beautiful in a gender non-comforming way.

Other Olympians could never comprehend why Dionysus chose this form when he could look like anything he wanted. In ancient times, he’d been famous for his youthful beauty that defied gender.

...

In retaliation, Dionysus had decided to look and act as ungodly as possible. He was like a child refusing to tuck in his shirt, comb his hair or brush his teeth, just to show his parents how little he cared.

every scene with nico at camp just BREAKS ME, i would throw in screenshots of every damn quote but unfortunately, as said above, cannot and would rather not type every one; we’ll start with, obviously apollo confirming to him that jason is dead.

He didn’t look angry exactly. He looked as if he’d been hit in the gut not just once but so many times over the course of so many years that he was beginning to lose perspective on what it meant to be in pain. He swayed on his feet. He blinked. Then he flinched, jerking his hands away from Meg’s as if he’d just remembered his own touch was poison.

ugh then will talking about how nico’s doing, confirming that he’s suffering with ptsd, mr d giving him advice, helping him sort though what voices in his head are real and which ones aren’t, then the paragraph that just recounts every horrific thing poor nico has been through, how will has to reassure him that he’s okay and ‘with friends’ when he wakes up after shadow travel

will’s kindness to apollo, buying him clothes, and apollo finding seymour the leopard’s head in his bed, put there by mr d aaaa AAAA A A A A A THE ORDINARY, EVERYDAY CAMP HALF BLOOD THINGS..

i could go on for years and years about how much i appreciate rachel having a big role in this book, and the visit to her apartment, everything, her art, the fact that she got what she wanted, she’s going to PARIS to study ART, she isn’t forced to be someone she’s not by her dad, and gets to be a big part of a demigod mission and not stand on the sidelines for once.

i love that her landscapes are still visions, that she still paints the quests demigods go on - the burning maze, jason’s funeral pyre, caligula’s ships; and how nico ~appreciates art~

‘And, hey, di Angelo -’ she pushed him playfully away from the canvas he’d been ogling - ‘don’t brush against the art! I don’t care about the paintings, but if you get any colour on you, you’ll ruin that whole black-and-white aesthetic you’ve got going.’

i. love. rachel.

WILL GLOWS!! THE HEADCANONS FROM LIKE FIVE YEARS AGO THAT YOU’D SEE FLOATING AROUND ABOUT HIM MANIPULATING LIGHT!! CONFIRMED!! CANON!! AMAZING

I AM OBSESSED WITH THE TROGS, I LOVE THEM, THEY ARE GREAT, not gonna lie, i was expecting something more dramatic and spooky with how worried will was and how dionysus was going.. visiting the cavern-runners isn’t ♫ good for your mental health ♫ but the little hat frog gremlins were a good addition. i like them very much and their funky little soup shenanigans. quoting the ghost king himself: trogs good. nice hats. (IM SORRY I KEEP MENTIONING HIM BUT I JUST) also how apollo starts wishing for breadsticks a s ajoke and theY STRAIGHT UP HAVE BREADSTICKS? HUH? WHERE DID THEY GET THE BREADSTICKS FROM??

yeah, i’m also still very much upset by every mention of jason grace, it’s funny how ever since his death in the burning maze i have grown to love him more and more and that’s not fun for me, for that boy to become one of my main comfort character’s and have his death and sacrifice and nobility mentioned every few chapters. i’m pretty sure i cried when he appeared to talk in apollo’s dreams, and this time the tears weren’t from the effort of keeping my eyes open and working for hours straight reading this book (i remember staying up until 2am to finish the sequel to beautiful, broken things, it was very much worth it)

‘All right, Jason. We miss you, though.’

ALSO. THE FACT THAT THIS KID. THIS CHILD. HAD TO THINK ‘BUT IF A HERO ISN’T READY TO LOSE EVERYTHING FOR A GREATER CAUSE, IS THAT PERSON REALLY A HERO?’ A KID ISN’T SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT THAT AND BE READY TO SACRIFICE THEMSELVES FOR THE GREATER GOOD,, i,, ugh,, he’s supposed to be finishing school and designing temples not being the perfect hero and soldier,, spain without the s,,

as @couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name said: ‘thinking about how ghost! Jason didn’t seem to understand why Apollo was so upset about his death because he’s been raised to believe a hero’s sacrifice is noble and his life doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and also if he doesn’t understand why the person who watched him get horrifically killed is so torn up over his death he probably doesn’t even realize his other friends are grieving him..’

IM SO UPSET THE ARROW OF DODONA IS DEAD D: IT WAS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS ALL THE FUNNIEST MOMENTS WERE BECAUSE OF THAT ARROW AND IT'S DEATH WAS SO SAD WTH LIKE WE FIND OUT HOW USELESS THE ARROW FELT AND HOW THE GROVE OF DODONA ALL THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CRAP AND WOULD FAIL APOLLO AND THEN ONCE WE FEEL BAD FOR IT, IT DIES??

the entire python battle was pretty grim, there is a part of me that's like because this is the last book series i would have loved say the magnus chase and kane chronicles gang in a giant battle with everyone like the battle of manhattan but even more dramatic, but even so, i did appreciate that python battle and the whole almost-falling-into-the-depths-of-tartarus thing.

him talking to artemis was cool, but JESUS: 'I turned and strode out of my room, trying to recall how the god Apollo walked.' like that HURTS. it was such a huge culture shock for apollo to go throught this huge character arc and be so human and understand the pain of others, to be around gods again who are so.. apathetic. also, zeus. 'Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let's be honest: some fathers don't deserve that. Some aren't capable of it.'

OKAY OKAY SO THE END?? CHIRON TALKING TO A CAT (BAST) AND A SEVERED HEAD (MIMIR) ABOUT SHARED PROBLEMS WITHIN THE PANTHEONS!! WILL AND NICO RECEIVING A PROPHECY FROM RACHEL TO GO TO TARTARUS AND SAVE BOB!! THE HUNTERS OF ARTEMIS, INCLUDING THALIA AND REYNA BEING BEST FRIENDS (qpr.. qpr..) HUNTING THE TEUMESSIAN FOX!! PERCY, ANNABETH AND GROVER, THE ORIGINAL TRIO, GOING ON A CHAOTIC ROAD TRIP TOGETHER!! - SO MANY STAND-ALONE SET -UPS PFSJSJSJ

okay quick word on the reunions at the end: funny little elephant visitation program with livia and hannibal. love that for them. calypso and leo's relationship seems rocky and complicated, but that's to be expected, i think even if they do get properly back together again it might not last long, because it does pretty much feel like a teenage relationship where the two aren't very compatible, but we'll see. hazel and frank are so funny with their gold plated necklaces. lavinia - tap-dance icon. almost cried at the mention of jason's temple-extension plan again. percy not being sure about what he wants to do in college is accurate and i like that that's left to be up-for-interpretation (rick does THE MOST for the fanfic writers pfsjsj). i am OBSESSED with aeithales, like i hate deserts so the burning maze setting is not my favourite but GOD that HOUSE, the vibes are off-the-charts. i'd love a house made of living trees that's also a greenhouse filled with dryads. meg gets a unicorn. that is so great.

i kind of wish the book hadn't ended with 'Call on me. I will be there for you.' because every time I imagine the friends theme song and i don't think that's the vibe he was going for, BUT i do love him talking to meg, that was genuinely emotional - 'You'll come back?' she asked. 'Always,' I promised. 'The sun always comes back.' ; i really wish it had ended with that, but i guess apollo does tend to break fourth walls and talk to the readers, like a lot of the protagonists of riordanverse books.

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staylavendertea · 3 years

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music, ya know

this is a complete impulse of lying in bed middle of the night thoughts that i don’t even know if anyone’s gonna see that have been stemmed off the experiences of the past couple days, topic of 1:41 am mind boggle:

music and it’s aesthetic and importance in literal every sense cause it’s just that important to me

first experience of realizing this, i’ve always loved film scores and listening to music and the orchestral pieces from movies and shows, but it really seemed to hit me recently, like the fact that this week’s new LOKI episode, no spoilers, has the most badass score and a badass scene with such a perfect mix and musical atmosphere. i literally had one of my best friends over, who has a very small interest in comics, cinema, marvel in general, especially a show about a norse comic god that they know nothing about, and whilst they sat there for my own regard, watching the show like a normal human being would, i sat there clinching their hand, watching in awe as our music is louder than actors talking tv speakers spurted out the most spine tightening world building story and just wandered “jesus that was good” and whilst i will always think about the superior acting, cgi, the amount of different people that just went into those few scenes and like what was physical set and what was computer image and what the hell did i just watch that has my brain running olympic marathon circles right now?

the thought that said brain kept going back to was that fucking score. it was literally tearing apart of every corner of my head and why was it doing that?

second experience, another marvel one, but i digress. black widow (no spoilers i promise), thursday night, movie theater for the first time in i can’t even remember how long now and we set through so many previews just for fucking boss baby to start playing and the reaction of the theater to make me burst out laughing.

however whatever works in that little projection box, gets fixed and the movie is pushed to just a little before it starts, a nice small pepsi ad, the regal rollercoaster intro (if you go to regal movie theaters ya know what i’m talking about), and then i hear it - the marvel studios logo - something so musically engraved into my head that my ass that can’t sing for anything, can harmonize with the sound and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up around movie theater surround sound. but i can’t think of that now, i’m here to watch black widow, a movie on hiatus with the rest of the world for so long now, a character i didn’t know much about it or truly, didn’t have the most connection with in the first place. yet through that one movie, i seemed to build one of those.

ofc though scarlett johansson’s beautiful acting and world building, but it isn’t until the end of the movie that i even realize why. it was the fucking score again. when i think about it, the beginning of the movie felt like all of black widows scenes in the avengers movies for me, kinda just, there. not really emotionally tugging, not bad ofc either, but just, there. in the present, watching something cool in motion. but then it hits, what i can only describe as a theme that somehow tells the entire black widow movie in one singular composition. something so badass, story telling, but also just singularly black widow-esk. i can tell you that i walked out the movie theater rambling about the composition and looking up composers.

third experience, the most recent as it was literally like 20 minutes ago and sprung one train rail of a thought process that immediately tugged me into typing this brain vomit into a tumblr post. i have playlists. for everything. and when i say everything, i fucking mean everything. i’m a writer and a reader, i have playlists mostly for the young avengers, my most utter comfort characters, and their stories i’m writing. i also have playlists/genre/specific song for about every book i read.

when i read red white and royal blue when that came out, i noticed i listened to one of the drunks by panic at the disco the entirety of the ending of the book and the words and music fit together like puzzle pieces, not only did it make the reading experience better, but i was so fucking emerged in my over hyper-imagitive brain that when i finally actually finished the book, i still never left. rewind present day to the beginning of this past june, one last stop comes out, ofc i get it the day it comes out with my anticipation building like wildfire. i start reading that night and i put on my recents on my liked songs playlist (true to true spotify user) and i slowly over the next day as i read and finish the book, windle down to the genre, then the band, to the album, to the exact song that feels like the carbon copy of the words i’m reading. that song was only ones who know by the arctic monkeys. now go back to this past week, anyone who reads the carry on series knows, anyway the wind blows came out this past tuesday. i waited till wednesday to buy the ✨pretty special addition barnes and nobles copy✨ so that the dear friend that indulged me by watching loki that same day could buy it at the same time and make a cute book date or whateva. i started reading that night and something just felt ,,, off. i didn’t know what it was, but i was living off the pure joy that simon and co give me so i ignored the feeling. until i realized why it felt off this morning. i wasn’t listening to any fucking music, literally nothing, not even queen. motherfucking. queen.

i looked for the snowbaz playlist i made when i read carry on for the first time back in 2016/2017 when i was still a freshman in high school just to remember i deleted that literally forever ago. so i made a new one. like an hour and a half ago. very inspired on how i made the playlists for the young avengers and all their stories. letting the music talk.

the fact that all these rambling thoughts have led to this conclusion makes my head hurt, but for me at least in my own experiences. music talks. a two way conversation. a radio broadcast, turning the peg until you match the same frequency thats being put out and you can hear it and understand it. it’s like when you see comedians on stages or actors on panels, they talk, you have reactions, you talk back, and so forth the loop continues until the last voice, last note, rings out. music and songs and orchestral pieces and bands and composers and lyric writers are telling you the stories in reverse. they don’t know their doing it, obviously they meant something entirely different in their creations, but it’s like literature and any work of words and storytelling. interpretation. to me, the notes, pianos, violins, guitars, drums, singers, cellos, and anything that can make sound you can think of, is telling you something. whispering in your ear as you watch or read. facial features, emotions the characters dont say out loud, outfits, they way their standing or talking or moving or interacting with anything and everything.

when i just made that carry on playlist, i played it, decided to try read some good almost 2 am fan fic as you do, my hanging on by a thread sleep brain telling me words aren’t recognizable right now, and tighten myself into a blanket to see if i can sleep at all. the playlist still plays and my never shuts up head thinks it’s own daydreams, stresses out about anything it can, that is until the song plays. the one that just speaks the carry on trilogy language. the one that i found whilst i was reading wayward son and then would play whenever i re read carry on. the one that started this whole way too long ass post in the first place. cant be alone tonight by atlas. i heard just the first sound and i saw them, as if i were in the same room, like i never even put the book down in the first damn place because i’m actually terrified of finishing it. i could see simon in his oversized hoodies, baz in an outfit that was way too good just to be sitting inside, agatha looking as pleasantly pretty as ever, penelope poking fun at shepherd, and shepherd poking fun right back; bickering, laughing, saying the dialogues i try to remember so i can write them later, existing.

in a way music doesn’t just talk, but it lives. it lives and breaths. a three way conversation you could say. characters, stories, plot, and settings talk to the music, then the music delivers us listeners the message, so that we can send one back. this literally took me over an hour to write and i should point the important note that i do have synesthesia where colors and sounds and colors and words do the association so this entire thing might be me being entirely biased, but alas, i love sound so much and if there is anyone else that feels the same ways as i do as just a simple good film score and song makes anything ten times better, feel free to talk, i will totally be awkward, but i need some music freaks like myself around so feel free to hit me up, also if you love movies and cinema also feel free to hit me up as i need movie buddies and now it’s 3 am and i will be going to bed - peace out 🛸

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slashingdisneypasta · 4 years

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Hi! If you don't mind could you write me some headcanons about being bff with some female cp's? Like Jane, Nina, Clockwork, Nurse Ann...?

One of my best friends is called one of these names so it was odd to write XD Some headcanon’s were totally true about her as well, and some definitely were n o t. XD

Anyway I’m not sure how comprehensive this is since I just kinda spewed it all out so, uh… I hope you like them! 😅

~~~

Clockwork:

· Natalie stays at your house all the time and eats all your food. Girl has a FAST metabolism so you cannot tell, but she eats e v e r y t h i n g.

· She doesn’t even have a key to your home, you just come home from everyday activities and she’s slumped in your couch cushions watching TV and there’s a pool on your bathroom floor from her shower and- oh, she has also ordered pizza so get your wallet out.

· You just squint/glare at her before flopping on the couch beside her. She hands you the remote and gets comfier by you.

· Even when you have a romantic interest over, she is there at your house, comfortable on the couch playing games on your phone as you walk your ‘friend’ to your room.

· It’s not all frustrating though, she’s always there to protect you. There have been multiple burglaries that she has intercepted and ‘taken care of’. She’s honestly like a guard dog who also has an excellent sense of humour.

· And don’t think she just wants you around for your apartment and money. Nay nayyyyyy nay. She tells you all about the Creepypasta drama and what’s going on at the mansion, even though you aren’t apart of that life.

· And she calls when she’s away. Just calls up to talk to you.

· You two are the kind of friends that don’t need to talk to each other all the time. In fact, you agree that talking to people all the time is annoying and too much trouble, and you could totally go without each other for days (Weeks even) if either of you were busy! But… without either of you even realising, you always end up contacting each other in one way or another every day, anyway. Its easy with you two. No romantic relationship could compare.

· She was the groom and you were the bride in your make-believe weddings and mums and dads games as kids.

· On Toby: “Okay Nat, I like Toby but I hope you know, if he hurts you… well there is absolutely nothing I can do to wreak revenge on your behalf, as he is a duo hatchet wielding psychopath, except maybe give him a stink eye. … When he is looking away and therefore cannot see the stink eye.”

· More on the Toby subject: Clockwork once took you to Slender Mansion (Cuz you were targeted by a botched victim of hers because she cares about you and she wanted you close by to keep you safe until she could, like, finish killing the guy and all. Whatever though, no biggie. Pft, At least that’s how she made it out to be.) and she had to leave you for a moment so she handcuffed you and Toby together because he’s the only one she could trust to watch you.

· It was very awkward for the two of you, but definitely a bonding experience. You were both very happy to see Clocky come back though.

· HORROR. The world of horror is your favourite genre together. Supernatural horror, slashers, basement dwellers, vampires, werewolves, the blob, stalkers, murderers, psychological horror, black and white, colour, movies, tv shows, books- whatever. You two get so excited to experience new fictional horror.

Jane The Killer:

· If you’re into boys, let me tell you right away- Jane is very critical of their actions. She was at a very influential time in her life (Especially concerning boys and girls and romance) when she met Jeff and Liu. She met those boys, thought ‘Oh, they’re cute. Maybe budding crush?’, and then Jeff killed her family, burnt down her home and ruined her life and Liu became an asshole, and now the male species has been, sorta… tainted. She knows there are good ones (In fact, m a n y boys are lovely, of course.), but one’s that you’re in romantic cahoots with are always going to be under her very watchful eye anyway so she doesn’t really bother to hold back her fear (Which translates into dislike… or hate) with them. So if you have boy problems, be careful. Provided you like this/these guy/s, at least. If you don’t like them, then she’s the perfect person to go to!

· If you are a boy, then- of course, none of this applies to you. She loves you. Don’t worry. You’re her best friend!

· Girls are an entirely different situation though of course. Jane drinks that love women juice every single day.

· Jane is really good with altering clothes, so she’s the one you go to when you need help hemming something or taking something in. She likes to do it, too. Quality best friend time while not being lazy.

· Speaking of her hating to be lazy… This does not apply at night. Nighttime is a whole other ballgame. Its bedtime by 7 for her if you don’t lock her into plans a week in advance. If she is braless and in her P.J’s, you will not be able to peel her from her home. Except for snacks, but even if she goes to the grocery store, she’s not getting changed and she’s going to wear her bunny slippers.

· You two watch so many cartoons together. Gravity Falls, Star Vs The Forces of Evil, Over The Garden Hedge, Villainous, Looney Tunes, Ducktales, etc. Any and all that you can get your hands on.

· You two are prepared to get platonically married, for any reason. Like, you need to stay in the country? Married; You’re staying. You’re the only one who can testify against hr in the court of law? Married, so by law you don’t have to. One of you accidentally planted yourselves with a kid and (Cuz you’re ride or die for each other, obviously), you’re gonna parent the child together and cuz of religious beliefs one of your would feel better about raising them together with a wedding band? Married.

· Jane doesn’t drink, so when/if you get drunk she’s always there to keep you safe.

· Jane also gets friend-jealous, a lot. Like, that bitch just called you her best friend, Y/N. Is she your best friend? I thought I was. So who is it, Y/N? Me or her? HM? (She is prepared to turn up to wherever you and this person are hanging, all glamorous and cool as she is, and show off. Prove she’s a way better friend then this new person so they back off).

· When you were little, she was the bride and you were the groom in your wedding/marriage/mums and dads games.

Nina The Killer:

· You have known her for both your entire lives and there have been iffy, and dark times but through hell and high water you have stuck with her. You love her. She’s your girl, you are her person too. You will be with her, and protect her from anything.

· You are the only one in the world that loves her, really. You may not quite understand her weirdness, but you stick with her anyway because you love her.

· Just like- baseline of your friendship is being ride or die for each other.

· You were also really into Jeff, but at a more… healthy? Level? Like, you were still romantically interested in a real-life murderer, but you wouldn’t have done anything about it. You wouldn’t hurt anyone (Except to protect others) or victim blame, or contact the victims (Dear God) or whatever, but you would take peaks at fanfiction and gab with Nina about it. I mean, it’s not grand, but in comparison to Nina, hah… you were harmless.

· Now though, that you’ve met him and he is the reason your bets friend is so hurt and broken, you are not the fondest of him. I mean, you still have a place in your heart for the version of him you and Nina made up in your heads (The version that Nina still believes is real) but that isn’t the real him. Jeff Woods is an ass. You need to keep your friend safe from him.

· And uh… so nowadays… occasionally, you will find out where Jeff is (You keep an ear out) and, you know, just… lie your ass off to Nina. Yep. You tell her you heard that he’s in the opposite direction than he is so that she’ll unknowingly put more distance between him and her.

· Yes. It’s a lie, but… its for the greater good! It’s for Nina’s mental health and physical safety.

· Anyway, moving on to lighter things.

· In your make believe mums and dads/’grown up’ games that you would play together as kids, you were a single parent and she was the dog.

· She will lie for you in an instant. She’s also really good at it.

· You walked into a room once and saw she was drawing something, and it turned out to be your joint tombstone. She has not let this go- you will be buried in the same plot together, if it is the last thing she does. This is slightly concerning, but… also kind of cute. You can roll with it.

· “What if I get married or have kids?”

· “They will need to apply with me to join. There will be an interview process.”

· ‘What about pets?”

· “Oh, they can come in! No fee!”

· Do not underestimate her weight. If she doesn’t want you to leave, she will hold onto your leg and go deadweight, and you will s t r u g g l e.

· Nina talks to herself, but she acts like the person she’s talking to is another person, inside her mind. You both know its not, but you refer to the other girl as Agnes anyway. Super casual.

· Follows you when you go on dates (At least the first one with someone)to make sure all goes well and texts you rapid fire when she smells something fishy. Even the smallest thing.

· You two really love dystopian teen fiction. Divergent? Matched? Hunger Games? Maze Runner? Ugles? Alllllll. You consume them and then watch the movies/tv shows too.

Nurse Ann:

· Live-in medical services! This means you can get really cheap life insurance and not worry about it to much.

· And on the topic of insurance… Ann is super smart, and organised, and just really awesome at practical stuff like that. Insurance, bills, mortgages, any kind of forms and receipts. And she’s happy to sit down and help you go through it- and, as we all know, everything is better when it’s with a friend you feel comfortable with.

· You can tell Ann anything and she’ll just roll with it. No judgment. Either she takes it and lets you talk about it or she just acknowledges it and moves on.

· Like Jane, Ann has very little patience for boy problems. In fact, she has zero time for it. Boys? Girls? No thank you. So if you’re into boys, I have some bad news for you.

· Best friend maintenance. Occasionally, Ann will over work herself (with murder) and you will need to guide her to relaxation. Gently persuade her to sit down at the dinner table and just make idle chit chat with her every now and then as you make her a good, hearty meal (Or as good as you can do XD Anything between Beefy stew and a Cheese toastie will work fine, don’t worry. She’s not picky at all), and then watch some movies with her. No phones, no knitting, no drawing, no… whatever. No other activities except TV watching! She needs to rest. I’m always shocked at how relaxing just sitting and watching TV can be. There’s a big difference between doing that and multitasking.

· Ann will call you to pretend there’s an emergency if you want to get out of social engagement.

· A thing that two enjoy together is science fiction. Star Trek (Including the animation), The War of Worlds, the world of Star Wars, Dune, a Handmaids Tail, The 100, Eureka, etc. She loves the brainy stuff.

· Ann is the logical friend, who tries to give the most practical advice and make pros and con lists and everything. And then you go ahead and do the crazy thing, the thing she said definitely would not work and would probably make things worse, and she just face palms and says she’s never getting mixed up in your mess again. … Until the next time, when she totally does.

· “I love you Y/N, but I am not about to walk into a police office and bail you out of jail so do not do that.”

· You trap her into resting by painting her nails (Hands and feet) in her sleep right before her alarm is about to go off so she has to take the morning SLOW or the paint will mess up. She just wakes up, you hold up a sign in front of her face that says ‘NAILS’ and she stops immediately. “You bitch.”

· As kids, of course, the two of you would play make-believe family games and you were both mums (/ or you were the dad). She was the working mum and you were forced to stay home take care the baby (large container of vitamins with a face drawn on).

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mrs-nate-humphrey · 3 years

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What do you feel about amandamaryanna’s video on gossip girl and cosplaying poor? It reminds me of those tik tok videos that are about the most insane rich person behavior you’ve experienced. I feel like it’s subjective because the characters Dan Vanessa and Zoya are basing their poor ness around THEIR environment. So yes, there are MANY people who are actually poor but compared to their UES counterparts they would be considered “poor” due to the fact that they do not have the insane amount of disposable wealth that the other characters have and I do not really see that as them trying to cosplay as poor.

Also what are your thoughts on her argument on GG not really talking about class consciousness and POC issues. Even though the characters Ursula, Jane and Raina had short appearances on the show, as a Black person I think that is was great that they added the few POC characters on GG because their identity was not the main focus of their characters. Usually with Black or POC characters they have to go through some racial turmoil as part of the plot and in GG they got to be rich UES-ers simply because they are. Even though GG is very verryy flawed Penelope, Nelly, Kati, Isabelle and Zoe were shown how POC characters can be rich like the white characters in the show as well GG is obviously a fictional show that’s not based on anything so I don’t think that racial income statistics/racial implications need to be talked about 24/7.

so i started watching this video & just ended up reading the transcript instead. anyway. under a read more:

like, yes. i agree with her on one hand - i think gossip girl 2007 messed up by making dan's grievances be connected to financial status, because the humphreys certainly weren't "poor". like i think this point she says makes sense to an extent:

The comparison between outsiders and insiders and gossip girl is all about relativity. To the average viewer it seems absurd that a character like Dan is supposed to represent the outsider when he is so farther in than any of us could get.

But honestly, something i hate is how people who talk about this show act as if everyone who's watching is expected to know the prices of rent in new york city, etc. like i did NOT realise how expensive that loft is until someone else mentioned it to me and i would not have guessed! who is your "average viewer" - is it an American? someone who lives in New York? someone who lives in Brooklyn? you can't just define an average viewer in that way, i feel! like you are making a BIG Assumption there and it's not necessarily accurate. people who aren't american watch american tv! such is the world we are living in.

but keeping that aside, yeah: dan and jenny had stable and secure housing, the guarantee of meals, and were attending expensive private schools, so i think the show's messaging regarding class was a little strange. they definitely weren't in a financially unstable situation.

but also, you're right. like, dan and jenny weren't super duper broke, and at no point do they actually act like they are, tbh. dan is very 'oh my parents sacrificed so much to send me to st jude's' and jenny is very 'damn i wish i was richer' but there isn't really an instance where the humphreys seem to view themselves as being extremely poor, that i remember at least. in s1, jenny says something along the lines of, "we're humphreys; we're not exactly royalty." and like. she is not wrong! they're financially stable kids, but they're ordinary kids living in an environment where everyone else has the safety net of millionnaire parents to fall back on, and however much money rufus has, he isn't that.

so i think it's a grey area, like, YES, the humphreys have wealth related privilege (i don't know if this can be said for v, because honestly we don't know much about her living situation, but we do know that she works as a waitress for a bit in s1, and also that she's homeschooled, so she isn't shelling out big $$ for school fees.) but also dan and jenny are treated as 'less than' because they are considered nobodies.

and i feel like THAT is the angle the show should have taken. not "i am oppressed because i am not rich" but rather, "everyone at school alienates me and treats me different and it's making things so difficult for me." whenever people say that dan and jenny acted like they were more oppressed than they actually were i'm like. they were both, in different ways, made to feel small and insecure and hopeless, at school? like of COURSE they're gonna feel victimised. dan is treated like he doesn't exist, and jenny is treated so horribly that i don't even have an adjective. like. i think the writing of the show would've been much stronger if it had focused on THAT and not made it a class thing.

i haven't watched the reboot beyond ep02, so i'm not gonna comment on that.

so yeah, i don't think it was 'cosplaying poor' as much as it was 'showing wealth related stuff extremely inaccurately.' like an anon told me, portraying nyu as community college is super inaccurate, as well. and it makes no sense? like i don't know why they had to do this and why they couldn't just... shoot at a regular community college. gossip girl 2007 did not care for representing poor people at all, like, if you watch the show you can tell that it just luxuriates in this aesthetic of like: more food than anybody can eat at every meal. so many luxuries. unnecessarily expensive things everywhere. like the show was very much luxury porn. to me it felt like it wasn't cosplaying poor as much as it was offering people a chance to wank off to the rich. & maybe because of that, the humphreys weren't allowed to be poorer. gg 2007 wasn't supposed to represent all of NY, it was supposed to represent the uber rich elite. and then you have dan and jenny humphrey, and vanessa abrams. they weren't allowed to be rich, because we needed a class conflict. but they weren't allowed to be poor, either, because this show was all about rich people aesthetics. so we got something weird & in the middle instead.

people forget that chuck was canonically a billionnaire - like, that is a LOT of money. and he is dan & jenny's peer! sadly, i think solely because of THAT, a lot of the oppression the humphreys face... checks out. like chuck being shitty to both dan and jenny - he' has an unethical, absurd, uncomparable-to-whatever-the-humphreys-have amount of money. he can do whatever he wants & buy his way out of there. rufus humphrey's ten thousand dollars or whatever amount he mentions are like pocket change to that guy. if jenny is gonna be treated like a commodity by everyone around her, do her upper middle class roots and expensive loft really matter? well, not do they matter as much as like. can they protect her? (we've watched the show. we know the answer is no.)

re: the characters of colour... i think it's subjective. i ADORE raina, and honestly, if we'd had a NJBC that was nate, serena, blair & raina, the show would've actually been AMAZING. like raina was such a cool character to me - i liked that she was driven, passionate, intelligent, sensitive, caring, fun-loving, thoughtful.... she wasn't on the show for long, but her character felt really solid and fleshed out. i remember a review (idk who wrote this one) in which someone felt that raina's character was "lazy" because a lot of her traits and her backstory paralleled chuck, but i strongly disagree. on raina, those traits were interesting. on chuck, any backstory and larger motive felt like a carpet to cover the dust that was his predatory nature, and to me, felt forced and off. like. this dude assaulted people, i don't care about his daddy issues. but raina seemed SO amazing. her backstory actually fit her personality and gave her depth, and to me, didn't feel forced.

i liked ursula, too! she was a really minor character, but she had a whole arc, and i liked that a LOT. her friendship with serena was very cute! i sadly do not remember jane. i think she was... someone's assistant? but i don't remember who. but i agree with you about raina and ursula, their arcs were very interesting and did not end up being about racial trauma & all that, which, like you said, is refreshing when done right.

that said, i think blair's minions were, uh, an example of blair's racism, and i think it would've been cool if the show unpacked that. blair uses her minions as a status symbol - her 17th birthday at kati's place which is anime themed (?) leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels very tokenising of a culture that blair isn't a part of? it would be different if blair treated her minions with respect and dignity and like they were her equals and peers, but she doesn't. the word "minions" itself makes me flinch because it's such a "oh you're inferior" kind of word. it felt to me very much like - they never got to be characters in their own right. they solely existed to prop up blair. and i think that is racist. there was a sense of "Oh, I can't be racist! I have a Black friend and an Asian friend" from Blair - like that's what kati & is were to her. and i think that is a big problem, especially glossed over like that.

i also do think that racial stuff doesn't always need to be the focus! but i don't think it can ever be completely ignored, either. an example of something that is maybe unintentionally racist, but racist nonetheless, is how dan cuts vanessa out of his life entirely but forgives his white friends for treating him farrrr worse. it's an inherent double standard, because dan kind of went "oh yeah. my threshold for white people fucking me over is really high, but if my Black best friend who's so close we're practically family does something even slightly wrong i'm going to cut her out of my life 4ever." did the writers realise this? i don't know. maybe they just didn't think about it. but this is exactly the sort of double standards and racist bullshit that woc, especially Black women, have to face irl (though of course i don't need to tell you that at all), except here, the narrative doesn't even address that, hey, maybe dan's being a dick by reacting this way. and i think that's a problem, too.

#long post #meta #racism #anti blair waldorf #(for tags)#anti gossip girl #ok 2 rb i GUESS #and if any poc want to add something more or correct me please do #ditto the class stuff - i am not american #and really just working with context clues

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theastrophilearchitect · 3 years

Text

WandaVision series review part 3.

You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson now--save the damn draft before you switch tabs to find the tags you want to add. But I haven't. Clearly.

The last two weeks I've posted parts 1 and 2 of my WandaVision review, because, even though by the time this goes up, WandaVision will have ended nearly a month ago, it's still all I can think about. Part 1 contained my initial thoughts and episodes 1-3 breakdown; part 2 contained episodes 4-6 breakdown, and this part will contain my episodes 6-9 breakdown and my final thoughts.

Episode Seven: ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall’ This episode was released on February 19th, with a runtime of still 37 minutes, following a 2000s-style sitcom format heavily influenced by Modern Family.

Cue the recap, and we open to Wanda waking up in an empty bed. We then cut to an interview-style scene which I assume is based off Modern Family or another sitcom, like the interviews intermingled with reality TV, but there’s nothing to really pick apart; it’s just entertaining. The twins then run into Wanda’s bedroom and tell her their ‘game is freaking out’, and we see their controllers change over and over with that scarlet-TV texture. Billy comments that his head is noisy, an echo of the power shown in episode six, similar to Wanda’s own.

Interview-Wanda then says as punishment for expanding the borders, she plans on taking ‘a quarantine-style stay-cation’, which, written probably in 2019, did not age well. She goes downstairs to make milk, and it transforms between a carton and a bottle. These object shifts may be implying as Wanda expands the borders, she loses more and more control of even the things right beside her--the Hex is falling apart.

Cut to Hayward and SWORD setting up a new camp beside the new border of the Hex, but further back than before, likely to give them more time to move if it happens again.

Vision then wakes up in the circus the original SWORD camp was turned into, and, looking like his synthezoid self, is assumed to be a clown. He then sees Darcy, dressed as an escape artist, but she doesn’t remember him, clearly under Wanda’s control.

Wanda asks the twins if they’ve seen Vision, they ask if she wants them to look for him, and she replies, ‘If he doesn’t want to be here, there’s nothing I can do about it.’ It seems like she’s trying to defer her guilt at what she’s down to the townspeople. The twins then ask about Pietro--’Do not believe anything that man said. He is not your uncle.’ We saw Wanda blast him into a haystack towards the end of the last episode, but now he’s simply vanished. Wanda then laughs that she has none of the answers they expect her to, and makes some nihilistic comments. She uses her magic to open the door to a knock, and enter Agnes, who takes the kids next door to give Wanda some alone time. The furniture then begins to shift into pieces from the other decades, but Wanda fixes it.

Cut to Jimmy and Monica in a military vehicle they stole in the last episode, and Jimmy explains in Darcy’s hacking, she found a secret project called Cataract, to bring Vision back online--to fix the Vision. But it failed, until Wanda brought him back, which was why Hayward was so focused on Vision over Wanda in the Hex. They then meet some non-SWORD military people, who unveil a higher-grade vehicle, presumably for Monica to attempt to safely re-enter the Hex.

God, I love seeing Darcy in this show. She was the only good thing about the first two Thor movies. So Vision zaps Darcy, and she wakes up. They steal a circus vehicle--a transformed SWORD vehicle--and Vision asks her some questions about the Hex she doesn’t actually know the answers to.

The tension really builds in this episode, simply as it cuts between characters in much shorter intervals than in previous ones. We watch a montage of things in Wanda’s house shifting, then cut to an interview, where she explains that she doesn’t know what’s happening. Then, the person behind the camera asks, ‘Do you think maybe this is what you deserve?’ The voice doesn’t sound familiar, but knowing who the interviewer is, I can hear it. Wanda questions this because the interviewer isn’t supposed to talk, then cut to this episode’s advert.

This is for a drug called Nexus--’A unique anti-depressant that works to anchor you back to your reality. Or the reality of your choice.’ ‘Nexus. Because the world doesn’t revolve around you. Or does it?’ As someone who hasn’t actually read any comics, this information is very second-hand, but a Nexus Being in the comics is a powerful being with the power to alter reality and time--essentially in possession of the Infinity Stones’ powers without possessing the Stones themselves. This brings with it the implication that is what Wanda is--more than just a girl who got powers from the Mind Stone, but Nexus Beings aren’t elaborated on in the rest of the show.

Cut to Agnes and the twins; Billy says he likes it there, because Agnes’s mind is quiet, which is compared to Wanda. I want to explain the implications of this, but I’ve been trying to only spoil things as I get to them, so I’m going to keep my mouth shut, or rather... what’s the keyboard equivalent? God knows. Anyway, Agnes tells them not to worry about Wanda, because ‘she’s supermom’, which, you know, is a fun superhero thing.

Cut back to Monica, who prepares some kind of suit to re-enter the Hex. She gets in, and drives toward the barrier, but when the wheels meet it, they fail to pass, and begin to drive up the barrier, flipping Monica onto her back. The vehicle begins to rewrite itself and break apart; Monica manages to clamber out of a trapdoor in the roof. Jimmy prepares a medical thing, and the barrier spits out the vehicle. Monica turns back, drops her helmet, and plunges into the barrier, and presses through. Her body warps, we hear echoes of Captain Marvel, we hear Carol’s quote about Maria being given the toughest kid, and her body reforms, her eyes light up blue, and she passes all the way through, eyes still glowing, and we see a shots of her warped vision, almost as though she can see energy or EM radiation.

Darcy tries to explain why Wanda killed Vision to him, and though the road is empty, a traffic light is red. As it turns green, roadworkers approach, impeding them and preventing Vision from returning to central Westview.

Monica enters Wanda’s house, who threatens her, and lifts her telekinetically out onto the street, where she is watched by the neighbours. Wanda drops Monica to the ground, but she pulls a superhero landing, with blue lights for effect--her DNA has been rewritten by the Hex’s borders for the third time, and it’s clearly unlocked something. Wanda continues to threaten her, and Monica says to do it--’Don’t let [Hayward] make you the villain,’ to which Wanda replies, ‘Maybe I already am.’ Which is fair, but then villains never think they’re the bad guys.

Agnes watches them from a window. Monica tries to talk Wanda down, then Agnes comes outside, tells Monica to leave, and takes her inside. The people haven’t questioned Wanda’s magic, or Monica’s apparent new powers, which merely shows the extent of Wanda’s control. It’s also interesting that Monica didn’t fall under her control again when she re-entered the Hex.

Cut to Vision and Darcy, the roadworks clear away, but someone with a stop sign and a queue of crossing children continue to block their way. Vision phases through the van’s roof, and flies away.

Wanda notices the kids’ show on Agnes’s TV, and the half-eaten food on the coffee table, and realises the twins are missing. She asks, and Agnes tells her they’re probably in the basement, where Wanda then obviously goes. The basement walls are covered in branches, made of stone, and there is no reply when Wanda calls for the twins. She then enters an ancient chamber, walls engraved with runes, and a spellbook on the side.

Agnes comes downstairs, stroking Senor Scratchy, the rabbit Wanda and Vision used in their magic act way back in episode two, and says, ‘You didn’t think you were the only magical girl in town, did you?’ Agnes shuts the door with a twist of her hand and some purple sparks.

‘The name’s Agatha Harkness. Lovely to finally meet you, dear.’

Purple fogs Wanda’s eyes, and cue the best moment in the entire series: Agatha All Along. This musical number essentially shows that Agatha has been behind everything that’s gone wrong for Wanda, aside from SWORD, obviously, and is such a good song. Go listen to it. Now. Immediately. Go.

We see her screw up the magic show, send Pietro to the door, and we see her sitting behind the interview camera.

‘And I killed Sparky, too.’ Insert maniacal laughter, and cue the credits.

We sit through to the split between the animated credits and typical black and white scrolling ones, and this episode has an mid-credits scene. I checked for one the first few episodes, then gave up, and I can’t remember what it was that made me find this one, if it was just letting the credits play, or feeling the odd urge to check, or what.

We watch Monica try to find a way into Agatha’s house. She pulls open basement doors, then--’Snooper’s gonna snoop.’ Fake Pietro stands behind her, dressed in a beanie, hair no longer mostly white as per Quicksilver’s design.

This is my second-favourite episode overall, first being episode 8, and contains the biggest switch since episode 4. We meet the big bad, since Marvel is literally incapable of writing a story in which the climax isn’t between the hero and a villain with their exact same powers. (WandaVision takes this to the extreme, but that would be a spoiler.)

Episode Eight: ‘Previously On’ Released February 26th, Marvel blessed us with an episode 46 minutes long! At last! This was the second episode to completely break the sitcom format (first being episode 4, obviously), which leaves us in 2000s-themed Westview, but without a laugh track or any other sitcom elements.

We open with a recap, including Jimmy Woo’s explanation of Wanda and Pietro’s origins pre-Avengers from what I believe was episode 5. Or was it 4? Probably 4, because it was really soon after Hayward was introduced, in episode 4. Yes. Let’s go with that.

This episode opens in Salem, Massachusetts, 1693, and we watch Agatha dragged to and magically tied to a stake, to be killed for betraying her coven of witches, by practising dark magic, but she denies it. She then relents and admits it, begs for help to control it, but the witches blast some kind of blue magic at her, which Agatha turns violet, and absorbs, killing the witches wielding it. The witch she calls mother, who also seems to be the leader of the coven, blasts her with magic after the others are dead, and as she does so, a kind of crown of the same blue light glows around her head (something I would neither notice nor question if I had not yet watched the series the whole way through). Agatha absorbs her magic and kills her, too. She steals a necklace from her mother, flies away, and we cut back to present.

Wanda tries to penetrate Agatha’s mind, but she tells her her thoughts were never available--a repeat of Billy calling her mind ‘quiet’ in episode 7, but I’m not actually sure the point of this, aside from limiting information available to both Wanda and the audience. Wanda’s Sokovian accent also returns in this scene. She tries to use her magic, but Agnes puts her in magical binds and explains that the runes in the walls mean ‘only the witch who cast the runes can use her magic’. Agatha also explains how she possessed fake Pietro--Fietro--not so she could control his mind, but so she could see through his eyes and ears.

Agatha questions how Wanda cast so many spells to control so many people, so many objects and locations all at once, when she had no magical training, which confuses Wanda because she doesn’t use incantations the way Agatha does; her magic is more through willpower and intention.

Agatha then brings Wanda through a door, in an attempt to comprehend how she did it, and it leads them to an old, one-room living space in Sokovia--Wanda’s childhood, before her parents died. They prepare for a TV night, and their father invites young Wanda to pick, showing her a box containing various sitcoms--Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, I love Lucy, Who’s the Boss?, The Addams Family etc.--many of which acted as the basis for episodes of WandaVision, but she chooses The Dick Van Dyke Show. This love of sitcoms, the ideation in comparison to the Cold War outside, is where Wanda’s subconscious choice of making Westview into one--her version of a paradise for herself and Vision.

Then a bomb goes off outside, killing their parents and leaving Wanda and Pietro in rubble. A bomb lands before them, Stark Industries written on the side, but their television is behind it, and Dick Van Dyke still plays.

Cut back to present Wanda and Agatha; Wanda says the bomb was defective, but they were trapped for two days, and Agatha implies it not going off was Wanda’s doing, believing her to be a witch like herself.

They move onto a HYDRA testing chamber, where teenage volunteer-Wanda stands near the sceptre from The Avengers, the one Thanos gave to Loki, the one containing the Mind Stone. She moves toward it, and the sceptre’s blue orb breaks from the handle; floats towards her. She touches it, and it bursts, revealing the yellow Mind Stone inside, and letting out a kind of wind blast. In the light, Wanda sees a silhouette reminiscent of the original Scarlet Witch design.

They take Wanda to isolation, and we watch some scientist replay the tape from the testing chamber, but in the footage, the orb doesn’t move; she moves to the room’s centre, then it cuts to her lying on the ground.

Agatha concludes that the Mind Stone amplified a dormant power, and they move to a memory of the Avengers compound post-Avengers: Age of Ultron. Past-Wanda is grieving for Pietro, Vision enters her room, and she invites him to sit. They discuss the comedy on her TV, then he asks if she wants to talk about her grief, and she describes it as ‘this wave washing over [her], again and again. It knocks [her] down, and when [she tries] to stand up, it just comes for [her] again.’ Vision tries to reassure her, then says the thing that everyone’s been quoting but hit me hard: ‘But what is grief, if not love persevering?’

Agatha asks present-Wanda what happened when there was no-one there to pull her back from the dark, and when Wanda refuses, she presses. They shift into the SWORD compound, where past-Wanda approaches the desk demanding to be given Vision’s body post-Avengers: Endgame. This is the point from the CCTV Hayward showed Monica, Darcy, and Jimmy, claiming Wanda stole Vision’s body.

The receptionist calls somebody, and sends her down the hall, and I can’t help but notice that in her grief, in her hoodie and jeans, her hair is perfectly curled. She goes to Hayward’s office, who takes her into a windowed chamber, beneath which she can see mechanics/engineers doing something to Vision’s body, colour faded and parts broken up. The eyes in his severed head are white, and Wanda is upset, but Hayward questions why she wants to bury him, when she has the power to ‘bring [her] soulmate back online.’ But Wanda says she can’t do it, like when she refused to bring back Sparky, and Hayward tells her his materials are too valuable to just be buried, but offers her the chance to say goodbye. He tells her Vision isn’t hers, and she shatters the glass; lowers herself into the room.

Hayward calls off the guards who raise their guns at her. She lifts her power to his head, where the mind stone was: ‘I can’t feel you,’ reminiscent of the I just feel you, in Avengers: Infinity War, when the Stone bothered him in the night in Scotland. And she leaves, without the body, proving to the audience that Hayward is a liar.

Wanda drives to Westview, real Westview, where she watches the people go about their regular lives, but they seem sad. They all seem sad. She drives to a plot, the outline of a house marked by a concrete foundation, holding a piece of paper from an envelope in the car. She unfolds it to find a plan for the house: To grow old in. -V. Wanda breaks down in what is presumably the plot she turned into their house in the Hex, and her power explodes from her, in huge gusts we’ve never seen. The house forms itself, then it goes further, transforming the town and turning it to monochrome in preparation for WandaVision episode one.

Streams of power turn gold in the air, and form the silhouette of a body, which solidifies into Vision, black and white Vision, dressed in 50s clothes. Wanda remains in colour, in her regular clothes, then she turns to monochrome, to her 50s outfit, and Vision greets her. And despite the seriousness of this scene I can’t get over the damn bullet bra.

And the pair sit down to watch the television, then the surroundings shift, and we see present-Wanda in her 2000s living room, but in a set, with empty seats for a live audience before her. Agatha claps from them, then vanishes. We hear the twins yell, and Wanda comes outside to find Agatha magically garrotting them, dressed in full-witchy attire.

Agatha describes Wanda as ‘a being capable of spontaneous creation’, calls it chaos magic--’And that makes you the Scarlet Witch.’ I feel like I ought to say roll credits, only that’s not even the name of the show. Before WandaVision’s title was officially announced, I remember seeing speculation that it would simply be called Vision and the Scarlet Witch, like Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The credits roll, and, halfway through, we cut to Hayward and SWORD outside the Hex. Hayward goes into a tent, describes all their hard work at something, ‘but all we needed was a little energy directly from the source;’ and we’re shown the missile Wanda dragged out of the Hex in episode 5, glowing red. Someone flips a switch, and we watch lights turn on in a glass chamber, containing Vision, rendered in pure white, who wakes up. Another Vision, made from the original, and yet before this episode, due to the constant thing about twins, people were speculating there were two Wandas. Wrong character, right idea.

This is my favourite episode in the show: it’s magical, and it makes everything make so much more sense. We see that the Hex’s creation was an accident, but Wanda was ‘making it up as [she went] along,’ like the theme song in, I believe, episode 5. I just love origin stories.

Episode Nine: ‘The Series Finale’ This finale was released on March 5th, with a grand total of 49 minutes of runtime, and, epic as it was, I found it to be rather disappointing, following a fairly typical Marvel formula, compared to the originality of the rest of the series. Granted, parts of this episode in particular were shot in 2020, so they didn’t quite go as planned, but still. The CGI is excellent though.

We open to exactly where we left off; Wanda frees the twins and sends them inside, then sends a blast at Agatha, who absorbs it-- ‘I take power from the undeserving. It’s kinda my thing’--and Wanda’s hand begins to blacken. Agatha offers her Westview in return for her magic, which Wanda obviously doesn’t accept. White Vision lands behind her, and she goes to him, confused. He places his hands on her face, but presses, trying to crack her skull, and it becomes clear he is doing Hayward’s bidding.

In sweeps Wanda’s Westview-Vision (who we’ll call Red Vision) and blasts White Vision away. The two swoop off together for their own fight, Wanda flies after Agatha, and we see Monica locked in a messy living room with Fietro, where she has presumably been since the end of episode 7.

The Visions fight each other, in that classic Marvel way of pitting the hero against a villain with an identical skillset (I’m looking at you, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and basically every other movie. Seriously, Marvel needs to make more villains like Loki, instead of introducing them at the start of a film and having them somehow taken out of the equation by the end). It’s a cool sequence, as they phase through each other and plummet up and down. I love flying sequences.

At SWORD, Jimmy calls out Hayward, saying he won’t be able to cover this out, but Hayward says Wanda stopped her show, so there’s no evidence, and there’ll only be one Vision by the end, who people will assume Wanda resurrected. But Jimmy says he has called some friends from Quantico--whatever that is--to expose Hayward, who handcuffs him, but Jimmy is a magician, so he frees himself and actually calls somebody to apprehend Hayward.

Wanda arrives in the town square, to no sign of Agatha, and is then blasted to the ground by her from behind. Agatha summons a book we saw in her basement: ‘The Scarlet Witch is not born, she is formed. She has no coven, no need for incantation. [Her] power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme’--Doctor Strange--’It’s [her] destiny to destroy the world.’ But Wanda denies that she is a witch. Agatha casts a spell on Dottie from episode 2, apparently bringing her back to consciousness. She tells Wanda her name is Sarah, and begs her to let her bring her daughter out of her room. Wanda accuses Agatha, who replies, ‘She’s your meat puppet. I just cut her strings.’ I just love that line, for some reason.

Agatha casts another spell, and everyone in the square returns to their senses, approaches and surrounds Wanda.

Monica finds a document in the room with Fietro, that says his name is Ralph Bohner. This was incredibly unsatisfying to me--it’s interesting that Fietro is actually the Ralph Agnes constantly mentioned, but nothing else comes of this, and, as of the end of the series, Pietro and his changed face are simply an elaborate boner joke. I wish his face had some kind of relevance as of now, but it may become relevant in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, because that’s obviously where we’re really going to delve into the multiverse, and it features Wanda, so it would make sense.

Monica pins down Ralph and tears a string of beads from his neck, which glowed purple; the thing allowing Agatha to control him.

In the twins’ room, Billy has a vision (heh) of what is happening with Wanda, and they run outside.

The people around Wanda bombard her with their real stories, their real problems. ‘When you let us sleep, we have your nightmares.’ She yells that she’s kept these people safe, but they beg to be freed, and the noise builds, until Wanda screams, with a burst of power that toes ropes around their necks, suffocating them, but she stops it. Mrs Hart begs her, ‘If you won’t let us go, just let us die.’ Agatha taunts her that heroes don’t torture people, and she sends out a blast of power, that highlights the Hex’s border crimson, and it begins to break apart. She tells them all to leave now.

His white counterpart blasts Red vision to the ground, near Wanda but he begins to break apart. The twins arrive, and begin to break apart, tied to the Hex. It looks weirdly like a LEGO advert, but Wanda recloses to Hex to save them. You know, what? I’m still not sure why it’s hexagonal. I wouldn’t question it being round, or quadrilateral, but hexagonal seems too intentional.

Agatha blasts the family with magic, and Wanda shields them, but Agatha absorbs the power. SWORD vehicles roll into the square, hayward in one, having apparently managed to cross the border before Wanda closed it again. White Vision rolls into the scene and slams Red Vision through the walls of and into a library, and Red stops White attacking him by explaining that he is not the true Vision, because he’s just Wanda’s version.

Wanda flies up, again after Agatha, while the twins use their powers to take away SWORD’s guns, and Hayward comes out with a pistol, which he fires at them, but Monica, having freed herself from Ralph, blocks the bullets. They ripple through her body, and pass through, but fall to the ground as her eyes glow orange. As Hayward drives back, then revs up to apparently run them over, Darcy, in the circus van, slams his vehicle into the side of a building.

We cut to the Vision’s pondering the Ship of Theseus--a philosophical thought experiment. If the Ship of Theseus has one of its planks replaced, it remains the Ship of Theseus. But, if all the planks are replaced over time, is it still the same ship? And what if the old planks are reassembled into another ship; which is then the true ship? This is a metaphor for the two Vision’s--White being the reassembly of the old planks, and Red being the replaced.

Red Vision proposes that the true ship is the one touched by Theseus himself, with the wear and tear, suggesting White Vision is the true one, because he has the memories Red doesn’t; the one touched by Wanda. White Vision claims he does not have the memories, but Red tells him his data banks are not so easily wiped--they’re there, just withheld. White allows Red to do his zappy thing, and the memories of everything Vision went through pre-WandaVision comes back to him. White says he is the true Vision, and flies away through the roof.

Meanwhile, Wanda sneaks up behind Agnes and does the nightmare-mind thing she did to the Avengers at the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron, sending her mind to the stake at the opening of episode 8. The desiccated witches rise, but instead turn on Wanda, calling her a witch, again, and again. The witches wrest Wanda onto the stake instead, but a red crown, like the blue on Agatha’s mother in episode 8, materialises on her head, formed of the same light as her magic. It’s really jarring at this point that she’s still in a hoodie and sweatpants.

Wanda blasts away the other witches, and they emerge from the nightmare, back to Westview. She and Agatha rise, blast magic at one another, and Wanda’s hands blacken further as Agatha absorbs more and more. She sends a blast at one of Westview’s walls, and a spot ripples in the middle of each.

Wanda’s face seems to age, like the witches of Agatha’s coven, and Agatha absorbs streams of magic, until Wanda has none left. She gives her some depressing lecture, then tries to blast Wanda out of the sky, but it doesn’t work. Her hands begin to blacken, and Wanda’s face youthens, then the camera pans to reveal runes on Westview’s walls, like those in the basement, now disabling Agatha’s magic. Little confused how Wanda stayed flying when Agatha took her power, and how Agatha now stays flying.

The red crown reappears on Wanda’s head, her eyes glow, she reabsorbs her power from Agatha, and, as she does, she changes. Her hair comes down, and she becomes the silhouette she saw in the Mind Stone at HYDRA, finally getting a Scarlet Witch costume, and it is epic.

They return to the ground, and Wanda uses her powers to put Agatha under the control she had the other residents under, to turn her into the Nosy Neighbour once and for all. Wanda leaves Agatha alive, so she could return in future instalments,.

Wanda, Red Vision, and the twins return to their home, and the Hex’s border contracts, until it covers only their street. They put the boys to bed, and Vision begins, ‘Your mother and I...’, and, when I first watched this, I really thought he was going to say ‘...are getting a divorce,’ but he simply finishes, ‘...are very proud of you both.’

Wanda says that ‘a family is forever,’ clearly already in mourning for the children she’s about to lose. They finish up, the border continues contracting, and Wanda turns off the lamps in the living room, though Vision turns one on, to say goodbye. As the border progresses towards them, Vision asks what he is, and says some literal and romantic crap; they kiss, talk a little, and he breaks apart as the border reaches them, and the house returns to the empty plot it once was.

Wanda is left standing exactly how she was before she formed the Hex, same hair, same clothes, puts up her hood, and walks into town. where the people glare as she approaches Monica, who says, ‘They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them.’ They have a classic series-wrap-up conversation, then Wanda shifts into her Scarlet Witch outfit, and flies away.

Mid-credits scene; we see Jimmy just after the debrief, Hayward is put in handcuffs, and Monica is called into the theatre, where she meets someone wearing a police badge, who shifts into a skrull. The skrull says a friend of Monica’s mother’s would like to meet with her, presumably Talos, and when Monica asks where, she just points up.

And an end-credits scene opens in a pan shot, zooming to a cabin by a lake in the woods, where Wanda, dressed in sweats, sits on the porch with a mug. We follow her inside as the kettle whistles, but the camera continues into the bedroom, where her astral form sits, dressed as the Scarlet Witch, with the Darkhold, the book Agatha had. When we see Doctor Strange astral-project, his body falls unconscious, and this truly proves the Scarlet Witch is more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme, as aforementioned.

This series really solidified my love for Wanda and Vision--Wanda, who I liked before, but mostly because of her powers than her character, which lacked development, and Vision, who I kinda hated because of his moral-high-ground bullshit, but who I now love--brought back fan favourites Darcy Lewis and Jimmy Woo, and set up Monica’s future plotlines. In truth, I liked Agatha better before she went full-witch mode, but she was an enjoyable villain. Hayward, on the other hand, was someone easy to hate, but not to such a level it was fun to hate him.

Every episode kept me on my feet, and every week I screamed I couldn’t wait for another. Part of my love for this was because we’d had no MCU content since July 2019, with Spider-Man: Far From Home, but it was just such excellent storytelling. Though the climax was a little disappointing, it was still more entertaining than most action sequences, where things happen so quickly I just zone out, and the visuals were incredible. I loved the sitcoms, and the differentiation at the end. Episode 4 was the perfect time to finally give us some form of explanation.

Basically, watch this damn show. Though I’d be surprised if you got this far without watching it. Watch it, make everyone else watch it, and, writers, take notes. The best stories are the ones with excellent characters and an excellent plot, and WandaVision mastered it.

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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Are you still in quarantine/under stay at home order? (if you're taking this during Covid-19, that is) The state isn’t, but I am.

Has stuff been opening back up where you are? Yeah. Although, now dining in isn’t an option again in my area.

What have you missed most that you haven't been able to do due to Covid-19? I didn’t do much even before all this, but I did like going grocery shopping with my mom and going to the movies, which we did quite often. And now with it being summer I’m really sad I can’t go to the beach. Beach days were the only thing I liked about summer. I could still go shopping with my mom and go to the beach, but I just don’t feel safe or comfortable going out in public and being around people right now when the number of cases are still so high and continue to rise. It makes me extremely anxious and scared. It doesn’t help that my state is a hotspot.

What state do you live in? California.

Do you personally know anyone who has had Covid-19? Yes. She actually ended up recovering from that, testing negative later on, but she died recently from complications caused by it. She was on dialysis and after she got sick, even though she got better, it affected her kidneys and she had to stop dialysis. Once that happens, it’s not long after that you pass away. She was my grandma’s best friend, thus a very close family friend. :( She was the sweetest, caring, kindhearted person.

Have you had it? (or think you might have?) No, not so far. Although, whenever I feel crappy or cough for any reason my mind automatically goes there. It’s not unusual for me not to feel well and have days where I’m feeling extra crappy, but nowadays I have to play the game: is it my normally crappiness or something else? :/ I also have dry mouth and my throat tends to get dry in the summer anyway and ugh again it’s something normal for me but I have to wonder about that, too.

Do you know anyone who is a healthcare worker? No. Well, apart from my doctors obviously.

Have you still been working these past few months or not? I don’t have a job. I wasn’t working prior to this either.

If you weren't working, are you still in school? No, thankfully. I graduated UC 5 years ago, so I’ve been done way before this started. What is/was your major in college? I majored in psych.

Or if you're not in college yet, what do you want to study?

If your school closed due to Covid-19, do you miss it?

What are you most excited about when life goes (somewhat) back to normal? It’s hard for me to even see that point right now. I know people think I sound like a Negative Nancy, but I think I’m just being real. It’s goings to be a long time before we get to a point where we don’t have to have this virus looming over our heads everyday. It’s been kicking our ass. It’s never going to go away, it will likely be like the flu in that we have a covid season, but I pray we get to the point where we can get under control and managed. A point where there’s a vaccine and effective medication. But like I said, that’s going to take time. Masks may be the new way of life for many of us.

Did Covid-19 impact any major plans you had for this spring/summer? No beach trips or birthday vacay. :( That’s not important, I know, but I am still sad about it.

Do you collect anything? Key chains and giraffe stuffed animals and knicknacks.

What's the name of your favorite restaurant? (chain or local) Wingstop.

What is your favorite thing to order when you eat there? I get takeout, but anyway I love their boneless garlic parm and lemon pepper wings with their ranch.

Have you still been able to get food from there during Covid-19? Yes. I always got takeout anyway, so that hasn’t been any different for me.

Are you planning on eating there anytime soon when they reopen? I’ll say it a 3rd time haha I just get it to go and eat at home.

Have you discovered any good new music during quarantine? Yeah, but not because I’m in quarantine. That implies I’ve done so because I’ve been home and had more time to do so or only did so because I didn’t have anything to do. I’ve spent most of my time at home the past few years, not just this year.

What's a new song you've been loving lately? (not necessarily newly released, just something you've recently discovered) Lately I’ve been getting new music from TikToks. A couple recent ones are Dream Girl by Ir Sais and Summer Days by Martin Garrix ft. Macklemore and Patrick Stump.

Have you been able to keep in touch with friends during this time? I don’t have any friends, so that hasn’t been an issue.

What is your favorite Starbucks drink? White chocolate mocha, caramel macchiato, and their fall and winter seasonal drinks.

Do you prefer Starbucks or a local coffee shop? Just give me coffeeee.

What was your favorite TV show when you were a kid? do you still ever watch it? I had a lot of favorites. Some I still watch like Boy Meets World, Full House, Family Matters, Disney Channel shows like That’s So Raven, Lizzie McGuire, The Proud Family, Hannah Montana, etc (thanks to Disney+) and old Nick shows like Rugrats, Doug, and Hey Arnold. I recently found out Hulu has Step by Step, so I’ll be watching that again at some point.

Have you been watching a lot of movies during quarantine? >> No more than I would be usually, since my daily life didn’t change as dramatically as most people’s did. But yeah. <<< Yeah, I’ve gotten into a few new shows and binge watched a few old ones during this time, but again I wouldn’t contribute that to quarantine cause I would have been home majority of the time still anyway.

What is your favorite Disney movie? Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, and Toy Story are among the top

Do you have Disney plus? Yep. That’s how I watch those old Disney shows I mentioned before.

Are you a fan of Hamilton? I’ve never seen it.

Are you planning to watch Hamilton on Disney plus? I have thought about checking it out, so we’ll see.

Have you seen Hamilton live? (Broadway or elsewhere) Like I said, I’ve never seen it.

What is your favorite musical? Sweeney Todd.

Have you watched any musicals online recently? No. Or ever.

What was the last live performance you went to before quarantine? I saw Phantom of the Opera 3 years ago.

What was the best concert you've ever been to? All the concerts I went to were awesome. Man, it’s been over 10 years now since my last concert I really miss ‘em.

Do you volunteer anywhere? No. I’ve volunteered at a few places in the past, though.

What is your favorite movie on Netflix? >> ??? There are... so many movies on Netflix. <<<

Did you relocate due to Covid-19? No.

What is one positive thing about the past few months for you? Uhhh.

Do you prefer streaming music or buying it? I stream it.

Do you use Spotify? Yep.

What was the last book you read? I recently started The Girl and the Deadly End by AJ Rivers. It’s the final book in a 7 book series.

Have you been baking during quarantine? Nope.

What is your favorite thing to bake? It’s been a few years since I’ve done any baking. I used to love it during the holidays.

Do you enjoy doing crafts? I think they can be fun, but they’re not something I do very often at all. I lack the artistic ability, creativity, inspiration, motivation, and energy.

Have you ever done crafts for money? No.

Do you shop on Etsy? Yes. I love Etsy.

Have you ever sold anything on Etsy? Nope.

What song are you listening to right now? I’m not listening to music, I’m listening to an ASMR video.

What genre of music is your favorite? I like a variety of music.

Can you speak any foreign languages? Not fluently, but I know some Spanish.

What is/was your favorite class in school? I always enjoyed English and then later on in college I enjoyed most of my psych classes as well.

Who was your favorite teacher most recently? I’ve been done with school for 5 years now.

What is the lock screen and home screen on your phone? The lock screen is a photo of the ocean with a Bible verse on it and my home screen is a rose gold background.

Do you play Animal Crossing? Yeppp.

Do you have any pets? What kind? What is/are your pet(s) name(s)? I have a 3 year old German Shepherd/Lab mix named Princess Leia. <3

what is a song lyric you love? >> Right, I’m definitely not going to think of that off the top of my head right now. <<< Haha, right. Not to mention, I have a ton of favorite lyrics.

Have you done anything recently to support Black Lives Matter? I’ve signed petitions.

Are there any songs you feel transport you to a world that doesn't exist? Jason Mraz songs were kinda like that. Haha. It seemed like he lived in some whimsical fantasyland.

What songs do that for you? “but my breath fogged up glass, and so I drew a new face and I laughed” lol okay Jason Mraz. Haha that’s the only thing coming to mind right now. It’s almost 7AM okay I can’t think.

What is your favorite ethnicity/cuisine of food? Italian.

What are some popular things that you don't like/aren't interested in? Hmm. What’s even popular right now? I’m out of the loop.

When was the last time you got a haircut? Back in February.

What was the last movie (or musical) you watched? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off the other day.

What was the last movie you saw in the theatre? The Invisible Man.

How soon are you planning on going back to work? (If you've been off) I don’t have a job, remember?

What is an item you own that means a lot to you? I’ll always cherish my giraffe stuffed animals and knickknacks.

Do you have a favorite t-shirt? All of my graphic tees.

What other proshot musicals would you love to see streaming online? You sure love musicals. I like a few musicals, sure, but I’m not super into them like you seem to be. There aren’t any right now that I want to see that I can think of. Well, apart from maybe checking out Hamilton. What is something you're looking forward to? Summer being over.

How do you plan on celebrating Covid-19 being over, whenever that is? >> The problem with this idea is that... it’s not that simple? From what I understand, it’s not like one day we’re all gonna say “that’s it! we’ve officially eradicated this virus from the earth and we will never have to worry about it again!” I’m guessing it’s going to be a slow process of reopening with a lot of false starts and rollbacks (as new waves crest and protective measures have to be re-implemented). Even that first day that I go out to a restaurant is probably going to feel really weird and even a little “wrong”. I’m not sure how much celebrating is really going to be happening. <<< All of this. Like I said earlier, it’s not ever going completely go away or be over. We’ll hopefully get it under control at some point and find an effective vaccine and medications and not have the fear of it constantly looming over us, but we got a long way to go. And when that does happen, I’ll still be cautious. It’s sure going to feel weird when I do feel comfortable to go out again, though. It felt so weird just going outside for a bit recently one night cause it was the first time I had been out of the house at all since my doctor appointment back in May. That was really weird and scary for me. Prior to that I hadn’t gone anywhere since early March. Sooo yeah. I clearly won’t be rushing out anywhere anytime soon.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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backofthebookshelf · 5 years

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Book Recs for Magnus Archives Fans

I was just rambling in tags the other day about how my avatarsona was "the Archivist, but a public librarian: Oh, you like dirt?? Let me tell you all the dirt stories I have!!!!" so, uh, here I am I guess.

I'm gonna spare you all the M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood and House of Leaves and Blindsight; you know all that already. These are my horror backlist recs.

The Bone Key by Sarah Monette Y'all. Y'ALL. Kyle Murchison Booth was absolutely the Archivist before Gertrude. He was poached from the Parrington by the Usher Foundation and the Eye glommed onto him at once, because the Eye loves disaster queers who can't people right (and also Gertrude). This I believe to be true, and so will you.

Kyle Murchison Booth is an archivist at the Parrington Museum, which is somewhere in New England, sometime in the early twentieth century. He also has a lifelong entanglement with the supernatural which is almost entirely not his fault, and he would very much like it to stop, but he also feels responsible and he can't just let evil mirrors and cursed necklaces and possessed dressing gowns randomly eat people who have no idea what's happening. Even if it means he's going to suffer for it.

(This collection doesn't contain all of the Booth stories, so here I am going to link to "White Charles", which happens to be my very favorite Booth story.)

For you if your favorite part is: honestly everything about MAG, from the modern sensibilities about early twentieth-century-horror, truly eerie ghost stories, to suffering eldritch librarians (thanks to whoever tagged my most recent fic with that you're so valid), monsterfucking and soft gay pining. No happy endings here, sorry.

Bedfellow by Jeremy C. Shipp You may or may not have heard that Macmillan-Tor is launching a horror imprint, and I don't know how long it's been since a major publishing house has had a horror imprint, but I am EXCITE. This book is part of the trend that's the reason why: Tor.com has been publishing these kickass novellas for a couple years now, and their horror books are top notch.

One night a stranger knocks on a family's living room window and asks to be invited in. They ask him to stay the night. He's an old friend, after all, he needs a place to stay. You can't kick out your twin brother when he's just gotten divorced, no matter how much Gatorade he spills on your two-year-old hardwood floors.

For you if your favorite part is: the Stranger, this is all Stranger, it's terrifying and good.

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll A graphic novel, some of these were originally posted as webcomics (have you seen His Face All Red, and if not, why not???) and the only disadvantage to having them in book form is they can't blink at you. Probably. Very folktale-ish, with all the death and violence that implies, and also the slightly eerie feeling that you know this story already, and then it turns around and slaps you.

For you if your favorite part is: looking over your shoulder when the foley gets good; Once Upon a Time in Space (I know that's not technically part of the Magnus Archives but shush)

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle I am not usually a fan of artists who jump media. Just because you can write songs doesn't mean you can write novels. Apparently writing good songs doesn't mean you can't write good novels, though, because John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats (pretty sure that's his full name at this point) wrote Universal Harvester and I love him for it.

Jeremy works at a video rental place in Nevada, Iowa (it's pronounced Nah-vey-da, and yes it’s real, I've been there, and yes, it's probably haunted). It's the 1990s, and someone's been returning their VHS tapes with something on them that isn't just the movie. Footage that includes a barn that he recognizes, just outside of town.

Fair warning: this is not the kind of mystery that gets tied up in a nice bow at the end.

For you if your favorite part is: Jon losing it with paranoia in S2, The People's Church of the Divine Host, the Lonely

The Good House by Tananarive Due If this author's name is unfamiliar to you, RUN, do not walk, to your nearest internet bookseller and purchase every single one of her books immediately, you will not regret it. She also just came out with a documentary on black horror, Horror Noire, on the Shudder streaming service. They've got a free month if you aren't a horror movie person, it'd be worth your while. This book summary sounds like it's full of tropes. It is, but Due has the cred to write them well.

Angela Toussaint hopes to salvage her suffering marriage and her troubled relationship with her teenage son with a trip to her grandmother's house, a home so beloved the locals in small-town Washington state call it "The Good House," but tragedy strikes instead. Two years later she returns and finds that the tragedy isn't over, and it's not going to stop on its own.

For you if your favorite part is: the very practical statement-givers who know what's happening to them and Will Not Put Up With This Shit, the Desolation, the Hill Top Road statements

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins Is this horror disguised as fantasy? Found family disguised as horror? Grown-up Neil Gaiman? Less grimdark George R.R. Martin? Honestly I have no fucking idea, but it's amazing. Fair warning, unlike Magnus Archives, this deserves all kinds of trigger warnings, including but not necessarily limited to: sexual assault, torture, mental manipulation, dysfunctional families, incest(?)

Father is missing, and his twelve children (though extremely talented in their own ways, and not strictly speaking children any more) are at a loss without him. But also, without him, things are starting to seem different. He might be God? They might not be human? (They were probably human once.) He might not be God but maybe one of them might be next? If any of them survive.

For you if your favorite part is: slowly turning into a monster, the relationships between entities and avatars, monsters hot (not kidding about the trigger warnings)

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley I have to keep reminding myself that Magnus Archives isn't really folk horror, there are two separate (if related) strains of British horror here and folk horror is not the one we're on, but at the same time I really want a good creepy rural pagan cult to show up in the series, you know? Anyway.

When he was a child, our narrator used to go with his family on an Easter pilgrimage to shrine on a bleak stretch of Lancaster coastline locals called The Loney. His Catholic mother was searching for a cure for his older brother, and she was convinced if they kept going long enough she would be granted her wish. The locals, however, are not huge fans of her annual visits, and even less so when the boys become involved with the goings-on of a pair of glamorous tourists.

For you if your favorite part is: the Lukases, I didn't realize until I was writing this up that I'm picturing Moreland House in the exact place described by this book

Eutopia by David Nickle One thing I love about the historical statements in Magnus Archives is just how truly historical they are. There's almost nothing in "The Piper" that isn't historically accurate - yes, Wilfrid Owen spent several days in a trench underneath the shredded bodies of his fellow soldiers. Like. You can't make up horror worse than that. But then you add monsters and it gets good. And I'm a sucker for early-twentieth-century history, it's such a bonkers time.

It's 1911 and the new Eugenics Record Office is sending agents out to catalog the disabled, infirm, and otherwise undesirable members of society so they can figure out what to do about them. In the utopian town of Eliada, Idaho, Dr. Andrew Waggoner runs from the racism of American society and straight into the influence of Mister Juke, the most troubling patient in his new practice. (Trigger warnings for, obviously, a whole lot of ableism. Treated like the monstrousness it is, but there's a lot of it.)

For you if your favorite part is: learning history through horror, the Flesh

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay I hate male writers writing about teenage girls, so you are going to have to trust me when I say that I had to check, several times while reading this book, to make sure that Paul Tremblay is actually a dude. He's very good. This book was kind of his breakout, so if you follow horror you've read it already, but if you don't necessarily then please do not miss it. His newer ones, Disappearance at Devil's Rock (Stranger, Spiral) and The Cabin at the End of the World (Slaughter, Extinction), are also good but not as good as this, I think.

Fourteen-year-old Marjorie is having a rough time - outbursts, hallucinations, paranoia. Treatment is difficult (and expensive) and her family ambivalent; they turn to a local Catholic priest, who recommends an exorcism and, to help manage those medical bills, a production company who's interested in filming a reality TV show about the process. Fifteen years later, Marjorie's sister deconstructs the now-famous show and wrestles with her own memories of childhood. Trigger warnings for ableism on the part of many of the characters, but not the narrative.

For you if your favorite part is: the Spiral, metafictional analysis of horror tropes

#the magnus archives #book recs #there's a lot of other things i could tag this as #but i wrote it for this fandom #is this a transparent excuse to get more people to read booth stories??#it is #it really is

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vocalfriespod · 5 years

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Wikitongues Transcript

Megan Figueroa: Hi. Welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I’m Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa. I’m a wee bit sick.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. But at least you have a voice.

Megan Figueroa: Just in case anyone was wondering.

Carrie Gillon: People were.

Megan Figueroa: It’s the podcasting – it’s the life. Sometimes, you have to go on the air when you’re sick. [Laughs]

Carrie Gillon: We have an email from Jeffrey. “Dear Carrie and Megan, I recently finished listening to ‘Practice Makes Easier’ and I wanted to tell you how it helped me. I’m an attorney specializing in start-up companies in the San Francisco Bay area. “As you know, or at least can imagine, this area attracts immigrants from all over the world with high concentrations from China and India, among other places. Many of my clients are founded by and employ a large number of non-native English speakers. At on onsite presentation I gave today, I think I was one of maybe three native English speakers in the room.

“Thinking of the episode, I made a special effort to remember that many folks were not native English speakers. I usually like to think of my job as translating law speak into English, but now I’ve come to see that maybe there’s a second step of translation involved as well. I’m putting an extra effort into being as clear as I can and also very, very patient. In the words, try not to be an asshole.”

Megan Figueroa: Aww, Jeffrey! [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: “I just thought that you should know that your podcast is actually changing behavior. I enjoy it very much, although I sorta hope I wasn’t an asshole before I started listening either. Please keep up the good work. Jeff.”

Thank you so much!

Megan Figueroa: Wow! A little sneak peek behind the scenes again. Carrie was like, “I have an email” and I was wondering if it was tooting our own horn. And she kinda hinted that, yes – yes, it is. But I didn’t know it’d be tooting our horn so good.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah, no. This is really nice. It’s exactly what we wanna do in the world, right?

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. That’s fantastic. I doubt that people that listen – I like to think that people that listen to our podcast aren’t huge assholes – raging assholes – in the first place. I’m sure Jeff was not a huge asshole in the first place, but I really appreciate that email. Thank you.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Me too.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, I, too, learn from our podcast because, I mean, we have people that – we have guests on here for a reason because we don’t know everything. It’s definitely made me more thoughtful as well.

Carrie Gillon: Me too.

Megan Figueroa: I like hearing that. And thank you, Dr. Melissa. There was a little Twitter fiasco around a very racist tweet related to language that we missed that we didn’t get to talk about. Luckily, someone screen shot it because it was deleted.

Carrie Gillon: Well, rightfully so. This was definitely one of those tweets that you should be like, “Oops.”

Megan Figueroa: I think that that’s what happened. Because it’s – I actually don’t know how many people follow this Twitter. So, I’m looking at the screen shot and it’s @HSTeachProbs – “teacher problems,” “high school teacher problems” – and it says, “‘I ain’t trippin’ is probably one of the most annoying phrases a student can say. What are some other annoying phrases your kids say that get under your skin?”

Carrie Gillon: “#Stuffstudentssay" and I'm fixing this: "#teacherproblems.”

Megan Figueroa: Then, you shared with me someone’s lovely tweet. This is @KaiserMoore. “I feel like all the white teachers saying that African American Vernacular English is annoying should be removed from predominantly black schools. They’re clearly holding prejudice against the students they are supposed to be there to help.” Which – absolutely.

Carrie Gillon: The reason why I even saw this was because someone else quote-tweeted it and said something like “All teachers should be removed from all schools” – “Any teacher who has these ideas should be removed from all schools.” And I was like, “Yeah. You’re right.” I mean, yes, it’s more of a problem when you’re in a class with black children, but if you’re infecting children with these ideas regardless of their race, it’s very problematic.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. I mean, that’s gonna be coming through in whatever you do, then. Obviously, when you think that you hold different ways of speaking above each other and, as we’ve learned on the show, that means that you are holding people above each other. I mean, you’re creating a hierarchy here and you’re passing that on if you believe that – if you’re teaching kids from that point of view.

Carrie Gillon: If we wanna fight white supremacy, I mean, the biggest source of it is white people, right? We want the white kids not to pick up on these ideas. Granted, obviously there’s gonna be other places where they can. But at least in the school we should be helping them not pick up these ideas.

Megan Figueroa: It sucks though because that’s still the biggest population of teachers just from the way that things have shaken out is white women.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. There are a variety of reasons for that. Because it used to be, at least, more gender-balanced but then the pay was so bad men won’t do it anymore. And then, yeah, there’s obviously reasons why it’s mostly white women. Obviously, not all white women are gonna have these kinds of racist ideas but many, many do.

Megan Figueroa: Right. Let us hope that there’re some that hold this view that, when told, they’re like, “Oh, shit.”

Carrie Gillon: “That was a bad thing to think” – yes.

Megan Figueroa: Yes.

Carrie Gillon: Well, let’s hope that because they deleted the tweet, they realized how bad it actually was.

Megan Figueroa: And not just because they were like, “I don’t wanna deal” –

Carrie Gillon: “Deal with it.”

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. It’s sad for me because this is a reminder – I don’t think that this is uncommon. That’s the problem that this is –

Carrie Gillon: It’s incredibly common. I mean, we know this. I didn’t get this exact message from my classes but – from my teachers – but something kind of like it that there were “correct” ways of speaking and “correct” ways of writing. And, yeah, there was hidden anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity and anti-everything else in there. It was just more subtle.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Absolutely. No. It’s not an innocuous thing to say, “I ain’t trippin’ isn’t” – “I hate when my students say that.” This is no innocuous. This is part of a much bigger problem. I dunno. I dunno what the message is here. Just the message that we always have, I guess. Don’t be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: At least, at the very least, keep your bad ideas about language to yourself because it’s not helping you. It’s not helping the kids that you teach, and it’s not helping the communities around you. Stop.

Megan Figueroa: I know. Think about it a little bit – about where this is coming from our why you might think this.

Carrie Gillon: We all have things to unpack. All of us. All of us have grown up with bad ideas about language in particular and other things in general.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely.

Carrie Gillon: You’ve gotta work through it but don’t work through it on Twitter. [Laughter] All right. Yeah. This is episode really fun and uplifting.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. It almost sounds like we never have anything fun or uplifting to say. Like, “Let’s preface this by saying, ‘Hey! This is a fun, uplifting episode today.’”

Carrie Gillon: I guess they’re usually a least somewhat uplifting. It’s just that there’s something even more uplifting about this one because it’s the living languages episode, right? It’s about Wikitongues, which allows people to upload their own language video or audio – although they encourage video – so people can at least record what their language is actually like right now regardless of what it was like in the past, regardless of what it will be like in the future, just a snapshot. It’s just – I love it.

Megan Figueroa: I love it too. It’s a reminder that language is living. And it’s okay that it changes.

Carrie Gillon: Language will always change no matter what you try to do. Colonization had this huge impact on many different languages, and I don’t wanna ignore that, but it is what it is. Languages would’ve changed even if that hadn’t happened.

Megan Figueroa: Right. To have a little place on the internet to celebrate what your language sounds like now is lovely.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Okay. Today, we have Daniel Bögre Udell who’s the co-founder of Wikitongues, a non-profit organization that aims to document all of the world’s languages. Welcome, Daniel.

Megan Figueroa: Thanks for being here.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Thank you for having me.

Carrie Gillon: Of course!

Megan Figueroa: Excited to talk about this today. I’ve heard of Wikitongues, but I don’t know much about it. I don’t know anything, actually. I don’t know how old or young – you’re gonna tell us all about that, right?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s funny. I’ve been following Vocal Fries on Twitter for a while and so, Carrie, when I found out that you and I would be on that show together, I was excited because it was an opportunity to meet you too.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It was an interesting experience. It was really strange being on a TV show that will be shown soon, I think. It was all very professional. There’s a panel. And I was, like, way far away if you’re in Phoenix. And that was in London, I believe.

Daniel Bögre Udell: It was my first remote talking head experience actually.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Me too.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, wow. Was it a BBC thing?

Carrie Gillon: No. It was a Turkish news channel. I don’t remember what it was called. Do you remember, Daniel?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Off the top of my head, I do not. Well, the show itself was called “Round Table,” but I don’t remember what the network was.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Well, very cool. We’ll have to share that when it comes out.

Carrie Gillon: Definitely. So, tell a us a little bit about Wikitongues. How old is it? Why did you start it? Etc.?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Sure. Wikitongues started in 2014 as a non-profit initiative to crowd-source documentation in every language. We started with oral histories because that is a kind of linguistic documentation that is easy to do without a lot of training or advanced equipment. Pretty much anybody with a smartphone or with access to a smartphone can produce them.

We did that for two reasons, 1.) language revitalization is only possible when accessible documentation is available in the language in question and, from a question of representation and inclusion, we thought it would be an interesting online project to try and represent every language in the world, which is in effect representing every culture in the world.

As we grew, we started to get the question, “How do I save my language?” which is an incredibly loaded question and one to which there really isn’t a systemic answer despite all the work on language revitalization over the past few decades. Starting this year, we’re actually teaming up with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages to build a toolkit for people who wanna get started with language activism in their communities.

The idea is giving people a framework to do a health check on their language. So, if you are worried about the future of your language, you can actually assess what it needs because different languages need different things, right? If your language has already been documented and the community has that documentation, maybe what you actually need is a framework for community organizing to keep it relevant for young people. Or maybe your language actually is undocumented or under-documented and you actually need to start from the beginning with oral histories, dictionaries, whatever.

The idea is to give people the framework for doing this health check and then a roadmap to achieving what needs to be achieved. Because over the past 30 years, there has been a ground swell of language activism around the world and there are successful cases of languages being revitalized, or perhaps a better way to put it is there are successful cases of cultures keeping their languages alive – people asserting their cultural sovereignty.

There are universal lessons there, we think, that can be applied because there are cases of languages being revitalized with the help of a government. And there are cases of languages being revitalized in an entirely unfunded and grassroots way with no institutional support. Then, there are cases where people have attempted to keep their languages alive and not succeeded, right? Our hope is to be able to build a very wide and open front door to the process of language activism.

Megan Figueroa: You said, “crowd source,” and I think sometimes – I’m always skeptical when I hear that because it’s so sad in the US how we have to crowd source, like, people’s medical bills and all this stuff. But this is one of those things where I feel like crowd sourcing is the right thing to do, that way the community can be involved. You may hear from groups that we didn’t know that wanted some outside help or whatever – or these frameworks to work with.

I like the idea that the internet can be used for crowd sourcing in this way, especially when we get kind of jaded when we see all the ways where it’s kinda sad that we have to crowd source things.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. The internet is powerful technology, and all powerful technology has good and bad application. In this case, I think it’s good application. What we’re doing would not be possible without the internet. One really positive thing from the past few years is that increasingly more and more people have access to internet. It’s not always stable. It’s not always good. But, for the first time, they have it.

What’s interesting is every now and then we’ll get contacted by someone who just got internet in their town, and the internet’s not very good yet, but they wanna contribute soon. There was someone who reached out to use from the interior of Papua New Guinea. One of the first things that he wanted to do was see if there are other people around the world that are concerned about this, and he found that there were.

It’s a very, very exciting thing that makes me very optimistic. I really am pretty confident that the internet is going to be a really positive thing for marginalized peoples because it offers a way to organize around your language when your community has been culturally displaced.

Carrie Gillon: It’s been great to see, for example, on Twitter people using their language – just tweeting in their language and not using the dominant language, which has been really fun.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Absolutely. It really creates an opportunity for breathing space for your language because one of the most challenging things for language revitalization movements is, if your community has been culturally displaced, it becomes almost impossible to use your language in the ancestral homeland because it’s been displaced by a more dominant one.

With the internet, you can circumvent that and create Whatsapp groups and Facebook groups and other online forums where you can use the language on a daily basis without the pressure of a locally dominant one. That’s an increasingly common tactic among language activists. And it usually leads to good results.

Carrie Gillon: What has been one of your favorite results that you’ve been a part of?

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s a really good question. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of support for language activist movement, so I would feel very uncomfortable necessarily giving Wikitongues credit for an actual language revitalization initiative. We have definitely been a platform for people looking to amplify some of their work.

I don’t wanna say I have a favorite, but some of the ones from the past year that have been particularly meaningful to me is the Kihunde language in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It only has about 200,000 thousand speakers. Children are learning it but it’s very under-documented and it has no institutional support. Wikitongues has been a channel for a man named Hangi Bulebe, who is at the center of this effort to keep the language alive, teach it to children, standardize it, and all that.

He said that being able to share the language on a global platform like Wikitongues has helped accelerate work for him because he says when people in the community look at him skeptically, he says, “Well, look, people from other countries care about our language. Why can’t we?” That, he said, has resonated with people. I met him in person for the first time in Rwanda a couple months ago and this was one of the things he said, which was just fabulous.

Another movement that we have been a platform for amplifying is – and, really, that I just feel privileged to get to be close to – is the effort to revitalize the Tunica language of Louisiana, which went dormant in 1948. If you haven’t had any of the members of that community on your show, you should definitely invite them because they’re doing really, really cool work and they love sharing it with the rest of the world.

They’re one of the languages that prompted Ethnologue to add a “reawakening” category to the language vitality scale because they – the language went dormant in 1948. In the 1980s, a woman named Donna Pierite decided that she wanted to revitalize it, and that was partly because her husband is Choctaw. He was learning Choctaw. Choctaw is a language that is still being taught to children and still spoken natively.

She paused and said, “Wait. We don’t actually have our language anymore. But we had one.” So, she would go to Baton Rogue and New Orleans to photocopy old dictionaries and grammars and things that were kinda stored away in university archives, and she brought the language home that way and made it a family activity. She reclaimed Tunica, taught it to her children.

For a long time, they were the movement – their family was the movement to revitalize Tunica. In the 90s, they started sending out newsletters – physical newsletters because the internet mailing lists were still a fresh technology – and other families started to get involved in that way. Something happened in the late – like, 2010 or something around that year – where they got some support, academic support, from linguists in New Orleans and over that next few years they were able to convince the tribal government to actually allocate funding and resources for the program.

Now, I think upwards of 10% of the tribe is enrolled in language immersion. They have 32 new fluent speakers, hence the new “reawakening” category. This is very inspiring to me, personally. One of my more immediate ancestral languages is Yiddish, which means I also have a connection to the Hebrew language, which went dormant in the second century and was revitalized in the 1800s by Jewish activists at that time.

For a long time, that was the only instance of a dormant language being reclaimed by its people. The Tunica are another case of that. In so enthusiastically promoting their work online and around the world, I think it’s a source of inspiration for other people. So, those are two cases that I feel very grateful to have been close to.

Megan Figueroa: I know people are in their communities doing work, but sometimes the help or support they need is really just amplification, which is really great that Wikitongues can do something like that. Those are really good examples of it. Because maybe the framework that they need is just how can I get a bigger audience to hear our oral histories because this is something that we want to share, or we just want people to know what we’re doing.

So, it’s really great that that’s where Wikitongues is coming from. Because linguists have gone into communities and kind of been this savior-type people. They try to be the savior-type people or force things on people. I know, just, linguistics has this terrible history, so it’s really lovely to hear something where it’s like this is about the people and what they need – or what they want – and sometimes that’s just sharing.

Daniel Bögre Udell: There’s one language activist in Scotland – his name’s Àdhamh Ó Broin – and if either of you watch that Showtime show, Outlander, he’s the Gaelic dialect coach for that show. He’s very, very intent on keeping alive his dialect – or his variety of Scottish Gaelic – which is moribund. They’re classified as moribund. Scottish Gaelic, obviously, is not classified as moribund.

He is linguistically trained, right? He is actually a linguist. He just happens to be a dialect coach. He’s very able to do the documentation work. That is not a challenge for him. For him, he said his biggest desire is just to talk to other people who are doing this work because sometimes it can be lonely. There’s a huge community building and solidarity aspect to it.

I do wanna say that at least in my experience over the past several years, there’s been a huge shift in linguistics to be the discipline that supports people in this work, especially the new generation of linguistics who’re doing incredible work. The question is, how can we standardize some of these processes? Like, the Tunica did something correct, right? That can be replicated, not exactly the same way because every community has different needs, but there are universal lessons that everyone can have been there just aren’t enough field linguists in the world to help everybody who needs help.

It needs to be thought of in these systemics terms. I’m excited that we can be part of that conversation and hopefully, actually, behind some producing materials that can be useful to people.

Megan Figueroa: Well, I really like the idea that can be their own community’s field linguist, so that’s something that can facilitate that because you’re right that there aren’t enough PhD field linguists that can go everywhere or have particular skills for a particular community. The idea that you could be your own community’s field linguist is really great.

It’s funny because I’ve been thinking, I dunno, all these think pieces about the new decade and has the internet ruined us and what has the internet done in the last 10 years. It’s nice to hear these stories about how the internet can actually make the world smaller in a good way.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. I mean, I’m very optimistic. I think the internet obviously has its problems, but I worry that a lot of the critiques of the internet come from jaded people who live in places that have had the internet for a very long time and who just spend too much time on –

Megan Figueroa: Twitter?

Daniel Bögre Udell: – following people on – yeah. And I love Twitter, but you can unfollow people if they’re annoying. So much of this is – nobody who just got the internet last year is mad about it. Right? So, a little global context would be nice beyond “Partisan arguments on twitter are mean-spirited and therefore the internet sucks.” So much of the critique is that. It’s just so limited and is unfortunate.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of bad actors on the internet, but it’s true that in some ways you can make your experience better by blocking the ones that are for sure bad actors and focusing on the ones that are good, which is what I do try to do.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Right. There’ve been bad actors since before the internet.

Carrie Gillon: Of course. Just because the internet’s so powerful, it’s really to easy in a bad way, just like it’s really easy to use in a good way. Let’s focus on the good!

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s right. It’s like nuclear technology – double-edged sword.

Carrie Gillon: Absolutely. 100%. Why is this work so important?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Why is this work important? I think this work is important because language is the vehicle of expression for communities. When a language disappears, it means that a community has collapsed. I saw this BBC headline the other day that was – it was just a headline. I didn’t actually read the article. But the fact that this is the headline that got written as it did is so indicative of how the discourse around this stuff needs to improve.

It was like, “Yeah. Yiddish used to have ten million speakers in Europe and now those numbers have depleted.” [Groaning] Right? It’s like, “No. There was a genocide that murdered everybody.” What we’re talking about is Ashkenazi Jews in Europe were the victims of a massive genocide. That’s why Yiddish’s number of speaks have depleted.

And that’s how we talk about all these languages. Like, Lakota isn’t a “dying” language, Lakota is a language that is taking work to be kept alive because the community has been at the blunt end of genocide, land theft, ethnic cleansing, and other forms of systemic racism. Language revitalization is a way for communities who have been marginalized to assert themselves on the global stage. It’s about justice. It’s about reparation. That’s why I think it’s most important.

Then, there’s this more intangible question of knowledge. Because, in languages, there’s almost always unique vocabulary, which sometimes have biological applications, which is why there’re fields in biology that work with local language speakers to accelerate conservation. It contains prehistories. We know about the Bantu migration and the Bering Strait migration in part because of how languages change across vast geographies. It’s so important. It intersects with everything.

Megan Figueroa: I’m so glad that you brought up the point about Lakota’s not dying – or to say that a language is “dying” – I’ve heard a lot of people starting to say that they don’t like to hear this kind of language around a language, like saying it’s “dying.”

I think that’s such a good point because I’ve been thinking a lot about intergenerational trauma. Even say the Jewish people that did survive the holocaust and did speak Yiddish, there may be some trauma there that makes you not want to pass on a language. I see that in Spanish in the American Southwest. I’m learning more about this and how that’s happening in Ireland with the Irish language.

To remember that things have been done – horrible atrocities have been done – to people and what happens with language is kind of the consequence –

Carrie Gillon: -knock-on effect.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. I think that’s so important for people to sit and think about.

Carrie Gillon: The thought I had was – I didn’t realize until really recently because I am not Jewish but, I dunno, like a year or two ago someone posted something about, “Did you know that in 1939 there were more Jewish people on the planet than there are now?” and I just couldn’t even believe it. I mean, I believed it, obviously, but you know what I mean? It was just like, “Oh my god. That’s so true.” Obviously, that’s true as soon as you say that.

The tie-in with Yiddish is also very important and, yeah, we really need to talk about these things differently. I know some of the language has changed towards “sleeping” or “dormant,” but that still doesn’t get at the heart of it, which is what you’re talking about, Daniel, which is like, “This is the result of genocide usually.”

Daniel Bögre Udell: Or, if not genocide, at least forced assimilation. The Occitan people weren’t necessarily victims of physical genocide in France, but there was a concerted effort by the French government to erase Occitan identity, culture, and language, and forcibly make the French. How did they do that? The beat children in school who were speaking Occitan. They forbade the use of Occitan in the public sphere.

And, low and behold, within a generation, the people kinda had their culture squeezed out of them. That’s the nicest case. It’s funny that you bring up the intergenerational trauma because there is this other counter-discourse that I hear sometimes which is that, “Well, if the community doesn’t wanna teach their language to their kids anymore, that’s their choice.”

Going back to the Yiddish case because that’s my personal one, it’s like, there’s a reason that my dad wasn’t taught Yiddish. It’s because Ashkenazi Jews fled Europe and they either went to Israel, or they said we’re gonna speak Hebrew now and reclaim this ancient language, or we’re gonna go somewhere else and assimilate. And if we assimilate, they’ll be nice to us.

It’s sad. Language is about so much more – so much more. I was talking to another person you should get on the show. Her name’s Hali Dardar. I forget home to pronounce her last name. She’s from the Houma community in Louisiana. Their language, when it went dormant – potentially problematic description, but for lack of a better phrasing – it was undocumented.

Unlike Tunica, there were no complete dictionaries and grammars gathering dust in libraries. So, they’re in the middle of reconstructing Houma before they can consider reclaiming it. When I asked her what her end-goal was, it’s like, do you want this to be the mother tongue again of Houma people? And said, “Maybe. But I just want us all to feel Houma and not forget.”

That’s really what the core is. Revitalizing language is about community. It’s about history. It’s about your ancestors, your descendants, your place on earth.

Carrie Gillon: And the stories about who you are.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, I think about it because – I’ve talked about it before – how I feel like Spanish was forcibly removed from my generation. But Spanish is always gonna be there for me when I want to learn it. It won’t be, perhaps, not my family’s Spanish, but it’ll be there for me.

Whereas, these languages, are they gonna be there? That’s the question. We want them to be there. But, again, just this horrible ways that we have treated other human being where we’ve got to the point where we are where there are some languages that are, for lack of a better word, “dormant,” it’s not true for everyone that that language will be there for them, unfortunately.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Right. That’s why the documentation side of things is so important. We have one oral history of a language from Vanuatu called Lemerig. It has two known speakers. From what I understand, there isn’t really any active movement to revitalize the language and the culture.

If in 30 years there is, there emerges that desire, it’s important that the language be there for the community to bring it back. With the Tunica case, the last native speaker was the Chief – Sesostrie Youchigant, I think was his name. You can ask them when you bring either Donna or Jean-Luc or any of them on the show.

He worked with a linguist named Mary Haas to produce dictionaries and grammars because he knew that he had to leave the language behind for the next generation. It took 30 years. He passed away in 1948. It was the 80s when Donna Pierite started this movement again. So, thank goodness it was there. Thank goodness he did that. The documentation is so important and the first step, really.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It’s the first step that it’s necessary but not sufficient.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. I’m convinced that there’s actually been a huge shift in the history of cultural diversity over the past couple years and we’re just starting to realize what that is because I think this statistic that half the languages in the world are gonna disappear in 80 years keeps getting touted and that statistic is from the 90s. Even then, there were different estimations.

But let’s be charitable and say this estimation was correct. That was the 90s. There was no Tunica revitalization – well, I guess they had started, but it was still a couple families. There’re just a lot of cases of languages being in a better – and cultures, really, communities – being in a better position now than they were in the 90s.

I mean, there’re probably cases of others being worse. So, maybe the net is not any better. That’s part of what makes this so hard because it’s so vast a scale.

Carrie Gillon: It’s really hard to estimate how many languages really are under extreme threat or just a little bit of threat. It’s hard to really know for sure because we don’t – and no one person has that amount of information. We can’t possibly know.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. That’s why I think another thing that needs to happen for an infrastructure to sustain cultural diversity at scale is beyond there being these systems or these frameworks for people to do the work in their communities. There needs to be a better survey method that’s more frequent, more consistent.

Carrie Gillon: Because even census data isn’t that good. I mean, it’s really good but, like, it’s not very frequent and it’s not that deep.

Megan Figueroa: It’s different from each country, right?

Carrie Gillon: Exactly. Each country does it differently.

Daniel Bögre Udell: When you look at Ethnologue or Glottolog – they work with what they have. This is no knock on them. But sometimes you’ll see the last datum about this language is 1980. It’s like, “Cool. That’s where this language was 40 years ago.” A lot can happen in 40 years.

I was having a conversation with a Shanghainese person. That’s her heritage language. She doesn’t really speak it. She’s American, I think. But she was like, “How long until Shanghainese dies?” And I was like, “Well, damn. That’s a question.” I was like, “It’s not even classified as endangered.” Maybe it’s not. Maybe this is just her perception. Or maybe she’s getting news from relatives back home that the language is not spoken anywhere near like it was 10 years ago, and the census isn’t even caught up with that.

Of course, Beijing is not gonna be taking censuses about this stuff because they’re one of the few countries that is still actively working to assimilate minorities. This stuff is really messy. There needs to be a better survey method that would probably rely on some self-reporting, which is its own unreliable can of worms.

Carrie Gillon: But I think it’s the best that we would have in this instance. Because there might only be one speaker, and so who else is gonna report it but that one person?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. There would also have to be a way to report and track language revitalization that would be okay. There’s a new initiative on the ground – and then also keep track of all the different ones. Because the Tunica case is really interesting. It’s got incredible momentum over the past 10 years. But for the first 20 years, it was just a few really persistent people. There’s a lot of variables to track, I think.

Megan Figueroa: Well, and of course, most of these languages do not have institutional support. With institutional support would come, perhaps, some better numbers on things. But that’s not what’s happening. That’s not the reality.

Carrie Gillon: I’m curious about the Yiddish case. I know there was a revitalization effort. Is that still ongoing? And if so, are you involved in that at all?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Not yet. I’m decided that I’m gonna start with the – I’m learning Hebrew right now. And once I get conversational, I’ll move over to Yiddish. The reason I did that is just because all Jewish languages are Hebrew plus something else, right? So, I was like, “I’ll start with the oldest one.” There’s a certain ancestral quality to it that has drawn me to it. I will learn Yiddish when I get a little more proficient in Hebrew.

There is a lot of Yiddish activism right now because, for a long period, the only community that really kept it alive were the different orthodox communities in North America. There was a secular – what was really depleted, as the BBC said, was the secular Yiddish world, which was lively and had theater and literature and all this stuff.

There is a movement to bring that back. A lot of young, especially diaspora, Jews in North America are starting to rediscover that because it really is the one that we can go back a couple generations and find an ancestor speaking. In fact, another guest you should get on the show is a woman named Sandy Fox. She lives between Tel Aviv and New York. She’s part of that whole movement. She actually runs a feminist podcast in Yiddish.

Carrie Gillon: Cool! Definitely need to have her on.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Definitely!

Daniel Bögre Udell: She’s great. So, there’s a lot of that. That’s definitely happening. What’s interesting is because the orthodox communities, especially here in New York City, they kept the language alive, it was there for the rest of us – as you put it, Megan – because they had kept the language alive, it was there for the rest of us when we were ready to come back.

Megan Figueroa: As a kid – I’m very millennial-age, and the internet came around for me when I was like 8 or 9. The best part about it is – well, it wasn’t Google then, but whatever kind of search engine I had – I could ask questions like, “Is Yiddish still spoken?” Because I remember watching “Laverne and Shirley” and being like, “What did they say? Like, ‘schlemiel,’ ‘schlimazel’?”

[Excerpt “Laverne and Shirley”]

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

[End excerpt]

I was like, “What? What is that?” Being able to finally ask – because I was just this kid in Phoenix, Arizona. I knew Mexican culture and that’s about it. I didn’t know whether Yiddish was spoken or was it fake. This is where I was at 8, based on who was around me. I’m just so happy that kids these days – or anyone, I mean, I’m not saying you have to be a kid to know whether if Yiddish is spoken and where – to be able to go to the internet and be like, “Tell me.” Just how powerful knowledge is about language.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. It’s history, which is interesting and important. So, your ancestral language is Spanish?

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Well, my dad speaks Spanish and my – I have traced it back five generations to Sonora, Mexico, my family.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Incredible. Do you speak it now?

Megan Figueroa: A little bit. I’m more receptive, so I can understand it. I get really skittish about speaking it because I have this shame of people expecting me to have the knowledge that they expect of me because of my last name or because my dad spoke it. That’s where my baggage is at.

Carrie Gillon: There’s also a lot of shaming from other people like, “Oh, you don’t speak the real Spanish.” Makes it hard.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly.

Daniel Bögre Udell: That stuff is so toxic. We’ll get comments on our YouTube channel a lot in that vein like, “This person is not speaking the language well.” And it’s like, “Well, okay. Of course not because of the history of how this person got access to their language. Calm down.” Celebrate that they speak it. It’s all right if it has some loanwords from the dominant language. Our thing is always like, “Okay. Then you send a video.” Sometimes, people do and, sometimes, they go away.

Carrie Gillon: That’s a really good response.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Because that’s our thing, right? We’re not policing authenticity.

Carrie Gillon: No. Nor should you. How would you?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s funny how ubiquitous the desire to police authenticity is though because we get those comments from a wide range of communities on every continent. There’s always that person who says, “This person’s not speaking well.” I get the desire to keep the language alive in its most robust state because it probably has better vocabulary than the loanwords that this person is using – but celebrate that they still speak it.

Carrie Gillon: Well, there’s also dialect differences too that sometimes people either forget about or don’t wanna admit exist. So, you come from the wrong family? Oh, that means you’re not speaking correctly. I’ve definitely encountered that as well.

Megan Figueroa: That’s why I like to use the pronouns like “my Spanish,” “This is what my Spanish is,” or “That’s what your French is.” I think it gets around that because, again, I do have these insecurities but it’s like, “No, this one’s mine.” I try to remember that when people are cruel. But it’s true. The policing comes from inside the community, outside the community. It's everywhere.

So, people send videos to Wikitongues?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yes.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, that’s so cool. I mean, I’m sure there’s just audio recordings as well, but to see videos, what a great resource to have.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Video’s important because it puts a face to the language. It makes the evidence of language and culture a little more explicit. It’s also necessary if you’re looking at every language because at least 300 of the world’s languages are signed. You cannot have an audio recording for that language.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. That’s exactly the point I was getting to is, I’m so glad that they’re video because – yes. Myself, I probably made this mistake growing up too, a lot of Americans think that ASL is the signed language, but there’re so many signed languages.

Daniel Bögre Udell: In my travels I found this to be a global misconception.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, really? Okay.

Daniel Bögre Udell: I mean, not ASL exactly, but most people think that there is a sign language that all people who are deaf in the whole world speak somehow. And then when you say, “No, they all have different languages,” people have a hard time processing that until you say, “Well, there’s different spoken languages and it’s the same thing.” And they go, “Oh.”

Carrie Gillon: This is probably the most common misconception about language that I’ve encountered as well is that there’s one sign language. For once, it’s not just Americans.

Megan Figueroa: I always like to drag Americans under the bus – [Laughter]

Daniel Bögre Udell: What’s more American than that?

Megan Figueroa: It’s just a recreational activity. [Laughter] I do it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Well, I just think it’s great because, like I said – I’m obviously a linguist, a trained linguist, now – but the internet’s helped me so much to learn about language. I hope our podcast does that as well because I think there’re a lot of things that people might be too scared to ask.

I like to remind everyone that I am very naïve. I’m still – in my 30-plus years and after a PhD program – I’m still very naïve. And I think that we can’t be ashamed.

Carrie Gillon: We can’t possibly know everything.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. You can’t be ashamed. If you have to go and Google, “Where is Yiddish spoken?” after this, that’s okay.

Carrie Gillon: In fact, I encourage you to do because you will learn something for sure.

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s totally fine. People always get confused about – because they don’t understand that there’s multiple Jewish languages, and so they’ll confuse Yiddish and Hebrew a lot. And I’m like, “No. Very different.” One’s close to Arabic and one’s close to German. Then, there’s also Ladino and Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Farsi and Judeo-Malayalam, which is one that I just learned about recently and I’d never even known about existing.

It’s like, okay. Because I think that’s the other thing, I think, when people start, they get really intimidated because culture is so vast, and they don’t wanna be perceived as ignorant or they don’t wanna offend people – a lot of eggshell walking. And it’s like, “No. Just ask the questions. As long as you’re being respectful, it’s fine. No one should be expected to know everything.”

Carrie Gillon: It’s impossible.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. How are you supposed to know it until you learn it?

Carrie Gillon: And it’s impossible to know everything. It’s just impossible. Just learning a little bit every day, that’s good.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. Learn one new thing every day.

Carrie Gillon: I think that’s a good life lesson.

Megan Figueroa: I think it is too. It’s also a great plug for listening to Vocal Fries.

Daniel Bögre Udell: By the way, I love your name. Because I actually found you through Twitter because I’m not an avid podcast-listener. I remember when I saw that, I was like – follow.

Carrie Gillon: I’m pretty proud of that.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Are your listeners well prompted on the whole vocal fry?

Megan Figueroa: Yes. And we don’t get hate mail about our voices. I think that that is also a really good thing is like, “Okay. We’re coming right out, and our name is the Vocal Fries, and we’re about linguistic discrimination. Don’t shit on how either one of us talk.”

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s true. You have a built-in defense barrier, which is pretty cool.

Megan Figueroa: I hope it makes our customers – our customers? – our guests –

Carrie Gillon: What? [Laughs]

Megan Figueroa: – our guests feel comfortable too because we’re like, “You’re safe in this space.”

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. No shaming allowed.

Megan Figueroa: There is no language shaming here. That’s for sure.

Daniel Bögre Udell: No language shaming, baby.

Carrie Gillon: Exactly. How can people support Wikitongues?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Oh, there’s a lot. We’ve only worked with about 500 language communities. I’ve kind of been off the grid for the past few days taking long walks and recovering from New Years, so the number’s probably a little higher now – maybe it’s like 504 or something. But that’s only 14% of every known culture.

There is an endless amount of contribution still to be done to this seedbank of linguistic and cultural diversity. Please, send us videos of your language – whatever that language is and however you speak it. We love all dialects, sociolects, idiolects, accents. Then, of course, you can also donate to Wikitongues – wikitongues.org/donate. Or, if you’re a Patreon user, you can make a monthly pledge on Patreon. You can subscribe to us on YouTube, which also helps.

Wikitongues is a non-profit. All contributions are tax-deductible. They go primarily to supporting the documentation work or now, also research on language revitalization as we work with the Living Tongues Institute to build this toolkit.

Finally, we have grown almost entirely organically over the past five years. Word of mouth is also an insanely valuable contribution to building the community that we’ve built. So, talk about us to your friends, help make the name known more around the world.

Megan Figueroa: Again, I feel a little naïve because I didn’t – I mean, you’ve been around for about 5 years now, and I just never pursued you further, and I feel guilty now. But I’m glad to know you know. That helps, right?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Oh, yeah. Hey, I never messaged you guys. I never tried to slide into the Twitter DM because we’re on the same – [laughter].

Carrie Gillon: Which you definitely could have. We encourage people to let us know if they have something interesting to talk about.

Daniel Bögre Udell: DMs are open.

Megan Figueroa: You know what would be a fun way to contribute – now that I’ve just spent time with family that I actually like, I know not everyone likes their family because family – but you could do that with your elders is ask them to contribute, and you can do it yourself. You can help them. You can use your smartphone. It’s a way to preserve some of your family’s culture too.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Absolutely. That’s something that I should have clarified a moment ago. Send us your language, but you can also send us your friend’s language too. You can send us your neighbor’s language. You can help people to participate. There was one volunteer in our very early days named Plator Gashi from Kosovo. He travelled all up and down the Baltics and must have contributed oral histories in up to 30 or 40 different languages.

Megan Figueroa: Wow. That’s very cool.

Daniel Bögre Udell: He is a remarkable individual. But, yeah, it doesn’t have to be you speaking is what I’m saying.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. That’s what I was thinking because I know some people might be shy. You don’t have to do a video either, right, it could be audio only?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It could be audio. We won’t publish it on YouTube if it’s just audio, but we will archive it. We’re on the verge of rolling out an accessible archive on our website so you can actually browse every video we’ve ever done, which is a long time in the making. But when you’re a non-profit, resources are limited, and tech is resource intensive.

We also are on the verge of rolling out templates for other kinds of documentation like phrasebooks, wordlists. If you do want to send us videos in the meantime, these templates are not yet out, but if you wanna send us videos, just head over to Wikitongues.org and you will see “Submit a Video” in the toolbar. There’s a form to fill out and a Google form if that doesn’t work.

Megan Figueroa: Awesome. We’ll be happy to update our listeners whenever ya’ll make progress on the new templates or projects.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Thank you. There’s a lot this year. I am grateful to have kicked it off with the Vocal Fries. Thank you for – [excited exclamations]

Carrie Gillon: Thank you so much.

Megan Figueroa: Well, it was so lovely to meet you virtually.

Daniel Bögre Udell: You too.

Megan Figueroa: Do you know how to say, “Don’t be an asshole?”

Daniel Bögre Udell: No. Not yet.

Carrie Gillon: That would be high level.

Megan Figueroa: It’s fine. One day.

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s a great thing to learn how to say in a language. That should be a core phrasebook – we should add that to our phrasebook template.

Carrie Gillon: You should. Even if you make it slightly nicer and just say, “jerk,” I still think it’s an important thing for people to be able to say.

Megan Figueroa: Or “Be nice.” Something like that.

Carrie Gillon: “Be nice” is probably already in there, I’m guessing.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Daniel Bögre Udell: “Don’t be an asshole”’s more fun though, right?

Carrie Gillon: It is way more fun!

Megan Figueroa: That’s why we always tell our listeners to not be an asshole. They know we mean it with love.

Carrie Gillon: It also feels more boundary-enforcing, which is sometimes really important.

Megan Figueroa: I can see that, yeah. I never thought of it that way.

Daniel Bögre Udell: On that note –

Megan Figueroa: So, don’t be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: Don’t be an asshole. [Laughter]

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Okay. We would like to thank our newest patrons for this month. Russell Lee Goldman, Paige Andrews, Jeff Goldman, and Ellen Pearleberg – or “Pearlberg.” It’s probably “Pearlberg.” I went a little French there.

Megan Figueroa: I love seeing names that I recognize from Twitter!

Carrie Gillon: Me too.

Megan Figueroa: Yay! Thank you so much.

Carrie Gillon: Thank you. If anyone still listening would like to support us, we have $2.00, $3.00, and $5.00 levels. The $2.00 level, you get a thank you. The $3.00 level you get a sticker. Actually, you get multiple stickers. You get a sticker every few months. $5.00 level you get the stickers and our bonus episodes.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Our latest one is about child language, and I get real salty. So does Carrie.

Carrie Gillon: So do I but, yes, you do more so because it is your area.

Megan Figueroa: Yes.

Carrie Gillon: Thank you so much. We’ll –

Megan Figueroa: See you next time.

Carrie Gillon: See you in a couple weeks.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

[End music]

#transcript #language #linguistic discrimination #language documentation #wikitongues

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imjustforthefandoms · 5 years

Text

Sander Sides (Psych Ward AU)

"It's great to have a new member of the family here. Few people want to go into this line of work y'know?" Emile said happily and he shook Thomas's hand. "We are gonna have a lot of fun, I just know it!" "Well, helping people is my thing. Might as well make money doing what I know right?" Thomas replied with a half chuckle. "You've come to the right place then. You'll be helping people all day long." Emile said. Looking down at his clipboard, he let out an 'oh' sound before looking back up at Thomas with a bright smile. "Follow me, I'll show you to your assignments." He pushed opened the white doors that connected the lobby to the rest of the psychiatric ward. "Did they 'give you the sitch' on how the system here?" "A bit," Thomas said with a chuckle at the joke. "Nurses work with groups of people to build familiarity right?" Thomas said as he followed the doctor in front of him. "Right on. Trust is important for these kinds of things you know. We like to think of this place like one big Ohana. And you know what ohana means?" Emile asked, glancing back at Thomas. "Ohana means family. And family means no one gets left behind," Thomas replied. "Or forgotten," Emile added. He stopped in front of one of the many doors in the hallway. "Here's the suite. All of your assignments are here. You ready to meet your family?" He asked, hand on the doorknob. With a solid nod from Thomas, Emile twisted the knob, opening the door to what seemed like a living room of sorts. A couch on the right side, a TV set on the left wall with two windows on either side of it, a and a coffee table in the middle of the room. On the back wall were three doors and a staircase leading to another floor. "Think of it as a dorm. You'll talk to your patients here in the common room. I wouldn't go into their rooms. Even I haven’t jumped in that rabbit hole.” Emile was interrupted by one of the doors opening. The dark blue door opened to reveal a tall man in a black shirt and pants. He wore a blue and black striped necktie holding a book. He wore a pair of black Warber Parker glasses, glaring at Thomas and Emile.

“A new arrival? Our last therapist could barely manage us as it is. I expected better of you.” the man said before walking over to the couch and began reading. “Now, Logan we talked about positive observations. And this, “ Emile said, gesturing to Thomas. “ is your new therapist. His name is Thomas.” “His name won’t matter in the end, but fine,” the man said, closing his book. He stood up and approached Thomas. “Logan Williams. Your existence is inconsequential.” He extends his hand in greeting, Thomas gladly accepting the offer. “Glad to meet you,” Thomas replied. The glare never left Logan’s face as he returned to the couch and opened his book once again just as another one of the doors slammed open. “Picani! I swear you come later and later to our meetups, you know the others don’t work together if you're not here.” said the man walking out of the red door. He wore a white prince outfit with golden decorations on both the chest and shoulders. A bright red sash draped from his shoulder to his waist. He ran a hand through his short brown locks as he walked toward Emile. “Microsoft Nerd over here doesn’t listen to a word I say, Dad can’t focus on anything long enough to keep a conversation and don’t get me started on the others.” He sighed before flashing a bright smile. “But now you’re here so you can listen to me.” “Roman, you can’t force yourself into other people’s bubbles, you’ll pop them.” Emile replied, giving a wave of his finger as an extra ‘no’. “I want you to your new therapist, Thomas.” Roman gave a bright smile before turning to Thomas. “Amazing! Hopefully, you'll stay a little longer than our last one. I am Really Obviously Muscular And Nice. Or Roman Royals for short.” Roman said with a wink and a bow. Thomas gave a short laugh before returning the bow. As Roman stood back up, he turned to Emile. “So if he’s here, “he began, pointing to Thomas, “does that mean that you won’t be coming back? Because you are the only one who really pays any attention to me.” “Don’t worry, Ro. I’ll be back at the end of the day. You can just call me Perry the platypus” Emile replied with a bright grin. “Thank fairy Godmother for that,” Roman replied before turning back to Thomas. “Now then, I bet you want to learn all about me, don’t you? We will be spending a LOT of time together, so you’ll want to know everything. Well, I’ll start from the begin-” “No one wants to hear you talk about yourself for an hour straight.” Logan interrupted from the couch, eyes never leaving his book. Roman scoffed at the man on the couch. “You’re just jealous of my superiority, Book Germ.’ Roman replied as he glared at Logan, but received no response. Roman stomped over to him, arms crossed. “Don’t you know that ignoring royalty is punishable by death?” “Just because you wear that ridiculous outfit doesn’t mean that you're actually a prince,” Logan replied, eyes never leaving the book. Roman gave a loud exasperated sigh before turning back to Thomas and Emile. “You see this is why our last guy left us. Calculator Watch over here doesn’t know what kindness is.” “The quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. I know what it is, but it isn’t necessary at the moment,” The two continued to go back and forth, Logan’s eyes never leaving his book while Roman seemed to get more enraged by the second. As the two bickered on, the light blue door creaked open. Out walked a young man in a light blue shirt and grey cardigan wrapped around his shoulders, a pair of brown khakis on his legs. Bright eyes beamed through black-rimmed glasses at Thomas and Emile. A gasp escaped his mouth and was replaced by a smile. “Oh my goodness. It’s a new person!” He cheered, rushing over to Thomas until he was practically right under his nose. “Are you our new therapist? Our last one left in a week. Don’t know why though. Did you know him? He was nice. But he didn’t talk a lot. At least I don’t think-” “Pat. Don’t talk as fast as you type.” Emile said with a chuckle. Pat let out an ‘oh’ before covering his mouth but continued to rock on his heels. “Why don’t you introduce yourself to your new therapist Thomas?” And remember, slow and steady like a turtle.” Patton responded with excited nods before taking his hand off of his mouth. “My. Name. Is. Patton. Smith.” Patton said spacing out his words. “Thomas Sanders, it's a pleasure to meet y-.” Thomas couldn’t finish his sentence before he was gripped tightly in a hug from Patton, who was laughing joyously. “Oh, it feels great to hug someone new! Logan never hugs back and Roman’s hugs all feel the same. Do you like hugs? I love hugs. I wish I could hug everyone in the world!” Roman scoffed at this, turning his attention from Logan to Patton. “Pat. I thought you loved my hugs.” he pouted. Patton let out a gasp, letting go of Thomas in exchange for Roman. “No, I still love your hugs. Don’t be upset. I still love you buddy” he said while hugging Roman tightly. Emile let out a chuckle as the scene unfolded before putting a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Well, this is your main group of patients. I bet you’ll all get along just fine. You’ll be the Arthur to their round table!” He said proudly. “One, our table is square, not round. Two, you forgot about the ones upstairs. Virgil won’t be happy about this.” Logan said, peeking out from his book. Emile's smile shrunk at this. “Right. I'm gonna have to tell him.” He turned to Thomas, reluctance painting his expression. “You technically have other patients.You won’t see most of them often, but Virgil has begun to come down for our sessions. In fact,” Emile looked at his watch; 3:45. “He should be coming down around now. We’ve been working on his consistency.” At that, a creaking was heard from the stairwell. Down the stair came a young-looking man in black ripped jeans. He wore a black hooded jacket with various purple plaid patches on the sleeves and back on top of a purple t-shirt. Thomas couldn’t tell if he was wearing eyeliner or had bags under his eyes, the dark patches standing out again the man’s pale skin. His eyes were too focused on the stairs under his feet to notice Thomas at first. “Oh great, My Chemically Imbalanced romance is here.” Roman scowled. “I’m just here for the session, Princey. I’ll leave after we finish." said the man coming down the stairs. "What are we working on today, doc?" The man raised his head to look at Emile and froze when he saw Thomas next to him. His grip tightened on the handrail as he closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths before opening them again. His eyes fell on Thomas once again and he let out a low chuckle. “Doctor, this one’s not going away.” “Virgil, this is your new therapist, Thomas.” Emile, said, his voice noticeably softer than before. Virgil lowered his eyes to the floor before speaking again. “Y’know, Doc. I came here for help, and all I’ve gotten are people running from me.” His grip on the handrail grew tighter. “He’s going to leave us. And you’re never gonna let us out. We’re going to die here as mistakes, aren’t we doc? ” “Virgil, breathe,” Emile said, drawing closer to Virgil, who was visibly shaking at this point. “Those thoughts don’t hold water. Repeat after me, okay?” Emile put a hand on Virgil's arm. “We are here to help you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” The two went back and forth, Virgil’s quaking diminishing as they continued. With one last deep breath, the two separated, Virgil calmed and a smile of Emile’s face. Virgil looked past Emile towards Thomas, who offered a small wave. “He’s real, right?” Virgil asked quietly, receiving a nod from Emile. He took another breath before walking towards Thomas, stopping about a foot in front of him. “Virgil Para,” he said. Despite the lack of emotion on Virgil’s face, Thomas answered with a bright smile. “Thomas Sanders. I’m happy I get to work with you.” “That’ll change,” Virgil replied before turning and walking towards the staircase, promptly sitting on the two lowest steps. “Are we still doing a session today doc?” “That depends on Thomas.” Emile turned back to Thomas. “You wanna see me in action?” “It wouldn’t hurt to see an example,” Thomas replied. Emile gave a swift nod before turning back to look at the others. “Alright, everyone in their places!” Emile said with a clap of his hands. Patton moved in front of one of the windows, staring out at the sky before turning back to the rest of the group. Logan put down his book and scooted towards the middle of the couch. Roman decided to stand in front of the television, straightening out his suit and fixing his hair in the black screen. Emile pulled Thomas over to the middle of the room, right in front of the coffee table. “Ooooo. Doc, do the thing! Do the thing! I love the thing!” Patton said, practically bouncing on his heels. “I don’t know Pat. We’re already kinda late to start…” Emile said, tapping his pencil to his clipboard, a smile creeping on his lips. “If the others would like it, then I don’t see why not.” “Please, please, PLEASE, guys? It’s so fun when he does it.” Patton said, his eyes darting between the others in the group. A sigh escaped from Logan’s lips, a hand running through his hair. “If it will bring your whining to a halt, then just do it. The sooner we get started, the sooner it will be over,” he said. “Indeed.” Roman added with a dramatic flick of the wrist, then quickly added, “Besides you know I love to do the background harmony.” “It is one of the few constants I have.” Virgil chimed in. The smile on Emile’s face grew, putting his clipboard on the table behind him before stepping out of the front door. “Prepare for the moment you’ve been waiting for!!”

Big contributions to http.virgil on Instagram, as well as ebest1445 on Instagram for encouraging me to make this. If anyone wants to draw fanart for this, be my guest, just tag me.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides virgil #sander sides #sander side roman #sander sides au #logic sanders #patton sanders

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

Text

AU where in the first season of each of their respective shows, Scott McCall and Tyler Lockwood run into each other after they both skip town and go off on their own because literally every other werewolf they know is an asshole. And like, granted, Tyler’s an asshole too at that point, but in a ‘he’ll grow out of it’ kinda way, and I mean...enter Scott McCall. Hashtag Growth happens immediately for both. Tyler’s like “No dude, you gotta be more selfish. Look out for number one, you know?”

Scott squints. “I’m number one?” He says slowly, in classic ‘I’m the hot girl?’ tone and cadence, as though the idea has never occurred to him before.

“You’re totally number one, champ,” Tyler says affirmatively, because like...he has eyes, and also has known Scott for longer than five minutes now and thus its pretty obvious that this is in fact true. Also, Tyler is at this point still the kind of asshole who says things like “champ”, and like....not even in an ironic way.

Then the next day Tyler’s an asshole to someone who doesn’t deserve it and Scott looks at him sadly.

“I don’t know how to tell you this dude, but like, you gotta care about other people,” he says. Tyler frowns. Contemplates this.

“Okay,” he says and shrugs, and its pretty much that simple because I mean, he legit literally just needed someone to tell him that. Have you met his parents? They’re AWFUL. I mean they were. Haha, they died. I mean oh no. Much sadness.

They form their own pack and its awesome and eventually that gay werewolf dude from The Originals, Aiden, joins up with them - but only because he brings his vampire boyfriend Josh along with him. I don’t really care about Aiden, but Josh was cool, ergo, I guess Aiden can stay. What is it with white werewolf dudes named Aiden anyway? There are other names, guys. Branch out. Live a little.

They then go to Canada for awhile and run into the werewolves from Bitten.

“Yeah, this seems like a whole mess,” Tyler says, gesturing vaguely in a way meant to encompass every fucked up thing that is wrong with the werewolves in the world of Bitten.

“I just remembered I left the stove on. Sorry, we gotta go,” Scott says, backing away slowly. Their pack turns and leaves *vague hand gestures* All That behind.

They then go to New York and meet the Shadowhunters and Downworlders. Shenanigans ensue, and in the process, they wind up in like, Valentine’s dungeons where they stumble across and rescue Luke Garroway.

“Wait, aren’t you that werewolf cop?” Josh asks, confused. Luke frowns.

“What? Why the hell would I be a cop? Oh, you must mean that doppelganger Valentine hired to be me to keep any of my old Shadowhunters allies or Clary’s mom to look for me. Wait, he’s a cop? Man, FUCK that guy.”

“Fuck doppelgangers, dude,” Tyler agrees, nodding sagely. Scott cocks an eyebrow at him in query.

“They just really suck,” Tyler says, with feeling. Scott nods. Well okay then. Fuck doppelgangers.

Luke joins their pack and the novelty of knowing an adult werewolf who doesn’t completely suck isn’t wearing off any time soon. Who knew that was a thing? They begin to have hope that being a werewolf isn’t synonymous with turning into a douchebag on your twenty-first birthday. Especially Tyler. He like literally JUST un-douchefied himself.

They then go wherever the fuck that show The Gates was set. There’s a whole pack there, and they don’t seem completely awful, but then there’s this one werewolf kid named Brett. Scott goes still.

“Do you have a twin brother?” He asks Brett. Brett scowls.

“What the fuck kind of a question is that? No.”

“Oh, sorry,” Scott says. “It’s just you look a lot like this guy I knew back home, Jackson.”

“Well I’m not him and I don’t have a twin brother,” Brett says with unnecessary aggression that is doing nothing to assuage comparisons to Jackson. Like, chill. It was just a question.

“Oh no! He must be a doppelganger! Sorry, we have to go, we left the water running in the sink,” Tyler yells, standing up and sweeping Scott off his feet and over one shoulder while hollering over the other as he runs off into the night. The rest of their pack look at each other in confusion, shrug, and run after them. Because like, that probably means something, they figure. The Gates pack stares after them with varying expressions of wtf.

“Fucking weirdos,” Brett scoffs then. He goes back to being just The Worst Ever.

Then they wind up in Seattle, where they meet the roommates from Being Human. The American version obviously, I mean, not to be US centric but they’re not going to fucking London just to run into more werewolves, An American Werewolf in London honestly just wasn’t good enough to justify the endless jokes about American werewolves going to London, like, get over it already, let it go.

Werewolf Josh is decent enough. They consider inviting him to join their pack. Then his vampire roommate Aidan gets home, and he’s like, a whole serial killer and a half. So.

“Oh no, I left an unwrapped burrito from 7-11 in the microwave, its gonna go bad!” Vampire Josh shouts in horror, throwing Scott over one shoulder, Tyler over the other, sweeping his boyfriend up in his arms bridal style and then backing into Luke until the older man sighs, hates everything, makes plans to buy a gas-economical SUV because being a werewolf suburban soccer mom is still less undignified than being given piggy back rides by their token vampire when he runs out of arms and shoulders. Then Josh sprints all the way outside the Seattle city limits before stopping and dropping his passengers off as the rest of their pack gathers around them.

“What was wrong with this one?” Asks Tommy Dawkins, the werewolf from Big Wolf on Campus. He and Scott make up the pack’s “Wholesome Jocks In Recovery Post Asshole BFF-endectomy” club. Luke told all the teens that home-schooling was fine, but they still needed extracurriculars. This was not what he had in mind, but well. Baby steps.

“Terrible judge of character,” Scott explains. “Has philosophical debates with his vampire roommate about said vampire roommate’s triple digit body count.”

“Ahh.”

“Am I the only vampire who isn’t just ‘oh look at me, I can go homicidal at the drop of a hat and kill scores of people and then click my heels together and go whoops, all better now, man, THAT was a bad decade for me, huh?’ Am I? AM I?” Josh wails, hiccuping between sobs. Like all vampires, he is very pretty 90% of the time, but he’s a super ugly crier. It’s wonderfully humanizing. Gross, and like, dude gets snot everywhere, but there is an Official Pack Rule. Nobody tell Josh about the ugly crying. Plus, its just a cheap shot, you know? Its not his fault 99% of other vampires use their Pretty for evil.

“Josh,” Tyler says solemnly, putting his arms on both the vampire’s shoulders and looking him gravely in the eye. “I hate to have to tell you this, but I think that like. Yeah. You might just be...The One.”

“Wait no, I heard about this one vampire who’s supposed to not be awful? Down in LA I think,” says Mark, from Lost Girl. He’s not actually a werewolf, he’s a shapeshifter who turns into a black panther. They ran into his dad first, a werewolf named Dyson, but they all sensed he was Horrible within the first five seconds. Except before Luke could say he forgot to feed his goldfish, they gotta go, they bumped into Dyson’s non-awful bisexual panther teenage son and well like. They had to save him from the Horrible then. Like, technically they kidnapped him? Whatever, all their role models were terrible people.

Josh looks up, hopeful. He rubs at his face with his forearm but doesn’t really clean up the snot so much as get it everywhere. Several werewolves wince and look away politely. Mark is scrolling through something on his phone, seemingly oblivious.

“Did you seriously just leave that on a cliffhanger?” Luke scolds. Mark looks up belatedly.

“What? Oh, no. Its just supposedly he only has a soul sometimes, and when he has a soul he’s supposed to be like, a pretty decent guy, but when he doesn’t have a soul, he’s like....a maniacal ax murderer on murder-steroids. Its this whole thing apparently. I follow this demon on twitter who owns a bar down there. He posts weekly updates on whether or not the guy has his soul this week....calls it Soulwatch. I guess the last couple times the dude didn’t have his soul he almost ended the world or something? So anyway, lotta people like updates on that, since I guess he and that vampire are good buds or whatever.”

“He doesn’t have a soul sometimes?” Tyler scowls skeptically. “That sounds fake.”

“Do you have a soul?” A nameless werewolf extra from True Blood asks Josh.

Josh hiccups and gropes around at his chest, frowning.

“I think so? Nobody ever told me I might not, I don’t know. Like I mean, I feel like I have a soul, I’m pretty sure?”

“He clutches his stomach and goes ‘ow my heart’ when that Sarah McLachlan commercial with the sad puppies comes on TV,” his boyfriend says helpfully.

“That’s not where the heart is....” someone starts to say, but they’re quickly shushed. Scott, Tommy and Luke are all clutching their stomachs and nodding in understanding. Tyler rubs his temples.

“Josh, you have a soul. You literally burst into song every time you see a baby smile, and last month you guilt-tripped us all into volunteering with you at that pediatric hospital which means we heard nothing but you singing showtunes and Christmas carols for an entire week straight. In July. Mark, does your demon twitter follower say this vampire has his soul this week or not? Are we going to LA next? And someone please hit me for having to utter that sentence in the first place, it’ll make me feel better, please just do it.”

Sophia Donner, the only decent werewolf from the almost entirely werewolf-populated town of Wolf Lake, helpfully kicks him in the shin.

“What?” Mark looks up again, baffled. “Dude, he doesn’t follow ME on twitter, are you kidding? He has like, six hundred thousand twitter followers.”

“Really? Why so many?” Tommy asks.

“He has this thing where he can like, see your future or your aura or some shit like that when you sing. So karaoke night at his bar is always packed with lots of A-List celebs obsessed with the occult. Its like, impossible to get into cuz of that unless you know someone, but it means everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood follows him on twitter and is always trying to hit him up and get on the list, and so like, of course all their followers follow him too even if they don’t know why everyone follows him, they just figure obviously he must be someone important?”

“Ahh.”

“People,” Tyler barks. “Focus.”

He looks around for Scott, wondering why the hell he’s the only one trying to get a handle on this. He eventually finds Scott at the edge of their little gathering. Fucker’s holding up his cell phone and recording everything. He shoots Tyler a thumbs up and mouths “You’re doing amazing, sweetie” at him. Tyler would be pissed, but like, he was the one who made it his mission to get Scott to occasionally be more of a selfish asshole specifically so....nah. Fuck it. He was gonna be pissed anyway.

“Ummm,” Mark hedges some more, still scrolling through his phone. He frowns then, and shoots Josh an apologetic glance. “Sorry. Looks like he’s soulless again this week.”

Scott decides to intervene then, looking suddenly concerned. “Uh...does that mean he might maybe almost destroy the world again? Should we go to LA anyway and like...I dunno. Try and help?”

“Help who?” Tyler demands, throwing up his arms in exasperation at the whole day. This is what he gets for getting out of bed, like. Ever. Nothing good comes from getting out of bed. When will he learn?

“I don’t know. Don’t get testy with me,” Scott bites out testily. “The people. Who try and...stop him from destroying the world? Obviously world’s not destroyed so somebody must have stopped him the last couple times which means someone’s probably trying to stop him this time too.”

“Or he could just be really bad at it,” Tommy suggests.

“Nope, we’re good,” Mark interrupts, still on his phone. “It says they’ve got him magically locked up in some hotel so he can’t go anywhere while they wait for their witch friend to bring his soul back and put it in him. I guess after the last time they put like, a low-jack spell on it so if it went missing again it’d just go straight to her, since she’s the only one good at putting it back anyway.”

“Well then,” Tyler says after a moment or two to digest the concept of a low-jacked soul. “That was a super efficient tangent. Are we all good here now at least? Can we move on and like....go somewhere not within range of a serial killer vampire who’s probably miffed at us for being rude and committing some hospitality faux pas?”

Josh sniffs and rubs at his face again, this time with more success. “Yeah, sorry. I’m all good now.”

“Well I’m not,” Aiden yells out then, apparently taking the all-clear on his boyfriend’s issue as a go ahead to vent his own drama. “Am I the only Aiden who isn’t just a complete asshole??”

“I mean, you’re kinda an asshole sometimes too,” Sophia says, idly chewing a nail.

“Not helpful, Soph,” Scott scolds gently. She shrugs.

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

“Let’s start a pack, you said,” Tyler growls, glaring daggers at his co-alpha. Scott smirks back without remorse. “It’ll be good for us, you said. There’s probably lots of other teen wolves in the same boat as us, you said. Shouldn’t we help them, you said.”

“I did say all that,” Scott agrees. He saunters off, you know, like an asshole.

Two weeks later they’re not far from LA. The vampire has his soul this week and everyone wants to go celeb-watching at the demon dude’s karaoke night. Luke knows a guy who can get them in, apparently. They stop to help a hitchhiking teenage werewolf in trouble because like, Scott has a sixth sense for that shit.

“So what’s your name?” Tyler asks the kid.

“Derek Hale,” he says, and Tyler squints. Why does that name sound familiar. Next to him, Scott hisses like an angry cat. Oh. Right. That.

“You’re not Derek Hale,” Scott accuses, and the kid bristles right back at him. Tyler watches, bemused. Was this a Beacon Hills thing? Or did all of them look like that when having like....what was this, a territorial pissing match? Angsty backstory showdown? What was even happening here, exactly?

“I think I would know, dickface.”

“Look, I’ve met Derek Hale, and he’s like, twenty five, and an asshole,” Scott says. “You can’t be Derek Hale, because you’re like, fifteen, and adorable.”

“Fuck you, I’m seventeen, and fuck you more, I’m not adorable, I will fucking rip your throat out with my teeth, dickface.”

“See? I’m supposed to be quaking in my shoes right now but all I wanna do is pat you on the head and hug you and feed you, because that was adorable,” Scott says, pointing at him. “Ergo, you can’t be Derek Hale, because all I ever wanted to do to that dude was kick him in the nuts for being an asshole who’s all like breaking into my house to tell me we’re brothers now or whatever the fuck that was all about, and then breaking my arm and trashing my phone two seconds later.”

The kid goes quiet. Squints at him. “Wait. Is your name Scott McCall?”

Scott frowns deeper and folds his arms across his chest, shifting awkwardly. He has trouble maintaining his like, Righteous Ire even when he’s definitely in the right, and adorable kid being adorable and no longer even aggressive was making his temper go bye-bye. Ugh, rude. Scotty Rage was hot, and all too rare. Tyler officially hated this kid. Why does he never get to have nice things?

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

The kid fidgets, sullen. “Heard about you. I told you, I am Derek Hale. I just got like, magically de-aged by my pedo ex-girlfriend who’s now even more pedo and creepier and like...whatever, I don’t even know what the fuck that was all about but like yeah. Apparently older me was a huge douchebag and your name came up as proof of his douchebaggery and I booked it awhile ago because like, nobody could figure out how to turn me back and I figured if I gotta be seventeen again at least I’m gonna be seventeen somewhere where people don’t all think I’m a douchebag because of what older not!me Derek the Dickhead did. You know?”

“Not even a little bit,” Tyler says.

“Kinda,” Scott says. He gnaws his lip. “That sucks. Well. You hungry? We were about to go get some dinner. Wanna come with?”

Derek the Littler Dick stares at him before shooting Tyler an incredulous glance. “Is he for real?”

“Unfortunately,” Tyler deadpans. Scott frowns defensively.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Dude, you just hated me like ten whole seconds ago.”

“I didn’t know who you were ten seconds ago,” Scott shrugs, as though that explains everything. Problem is, in his head it probably did. Freak, Tyler thinks affectionately.

“Yeah but now you do know who I am and now you know I’m someone you hate? So....?”

“No, you used to be someone I hate,” Scott explains slowly, as if to a small child. “You said it yourself, you’re not really him. Besides, I decided I’m over it anyway.”

“You decided you’re....over it. Anyway.” LDD repeats, breaking it down slowly. As if to a small child. Oh, this is going to be amazing, isn’t it. The other half of Tyler’s future home entertainment gifts him with another incredulous look, like, are you sure this guy is for real? Tyler nods in confirmation.

“He’s just...like that. It’s so weird.”

“Fine,” Derek huffs at last, over aggressively because why stray from a theme, yeah? “But this better not be some fucked up elaborate revenge plan for older me being a dick or like...”

“You’ll rip my throat out with your teeth,” Scott says dryly. The kid sulks.

“Well of course it sounds lame when you say it like that.”

“You still have baby fat,” Scott tells him. Derek shifts into an enraged were-porcupine.

“I so the fuck do not!”

“You have like, chubby little baby werewolf chipmunk cheeks.”

“Asshole!”

“I know you are but what am I?”

“That’s so stupid! You’re so stupid! What are you, twelve?”

“No, that’s you. Look in a mirror, short stuff.”

“Oh god,” Tyler despairs, staring after the two of them walking off towards the rest of the pack. “They’re brothers now.”

#kalen writes crack fic sometimes #look i dont know what this is #i just know it was in my brain #so now its here

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jordoalejandro · 3 years

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The Fifth Annual List of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

This is another weird year for the list.

For one, a handful of shows are still on some kind of COVID related delay or hiatus.

Two, I dropped quite a few shows. Some I just bailed on because I had no patience to watch another season of them. Some shows I never got around to because I had an Apple TV+ free subscription that came with my iPhone and that ran out and I didn’t pay to renew it. (Here’s my quick review of Apple TV+: the quality of the shows is good but the quantity leaves a lot to be desired. You could probably pay for a month and binge through everything you have any interest in.)

Three, a lot of shows that I’m reviewing here have seasons that aren’t finished. They’re still going. Most are at least close to finishing. Some that have just started I’m going to wait on and review on next year’s list. But a handful of shows on this list are chugging along. I’m trying to factor that into my reviews but it's obviously a bit unfair to the shows. On the other hand, who cares?

So it’ll be a list with fewer entries, comprised of full seasons of shows and shows I watched most of. The list must happen, though. However it has to happen, it must happen.

Here’s the list of shows I’ve watched since the last Emmy Awards.

41. The Equalizer (Season 1 - 2021, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The Equalizer is a fascinating show. You know how with some shows people will say the show is fully realized from the pilot? It’s usually presented as a good thing -- a show that knew what it was from the start and executed that vision. The Equalizer is that but in a bad way. It’s a show that from the pilot has felt like it was already in its tired ninth season, trudging along, writers and actors and everyone just going through the motions because they’re trapped in their contracts. There’s nothing fresh about this. No life to it. Uninteresting plots. Weak dialogue. Characters -- both heroes and villains -- that you’ve seen a thousand times (the nerdy IT expert, the troublesome teenage child of the main character, the generic good looking older white guy boss figure, blah blah blah). A show that’s already in late-stage syndication mode.

40. The Flash (Season 7 - 2021, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 49) - Speaking of late-stage syndication mode, The Flash has been in a creative tailspin for several years now. A big part of the problem is they just have no ideas left in the tank for villains on this show. This leads to them either reusing old ones (which doesn’t have a ton of dramatic impact -- we’ve seen The Flash beat all these people before), or digging through comic canon for the ones they have left (they’ve been unused this long for a reason). The other problem is it turns out running fast as a solution to every issue gets old very quickly. The producers must have felt this, and having gotten tired of telling Barry he has to run faster than he’s ever run before, they’ve switched it up and are now telling him to love people harder than he’s ever loved them before. Beyond the structural problems, the show is just not working on a very basic level. The writing has gotten super corny. The acting seems off. They’ve introduced new characters that are not working. The Flash had my worst rated episode this year and the weird thing was, it wasn’t even a mess of an episode. Like, functionally, it worked. It went from point A to point B and all that fine. But the problem was the titular Flash took off in the first few minutes of the episode to have sex with his wife on an island (not a joke) and didn’t return until the last few minutes of the episode. In between, viewers received a very boring, very boilerplate episode of The Flash, starring one of the new side characters it’s incredibly hard to care about. And she interacted with some even more to-the-side side characters and had some relationship issues with them and on and on until they inevitably saved the day in the end and it was so dull and so pointless that it made me say out loud, “What is this? Why am I watching this? Who could possibly care about anything that is happening on screen right now?” I felt that a lot during this season of The Flash. That was the only time I felt compelled to articulate it, but I felt it a lot. And that’s not a great place to be with a show.

39. Riverdale (Season 5 - 2021, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 50) - Here’s a little insight as to how stupid Riverdale can be. Between episodes three and four of this season (episode three was what would’ve been the season finale of season 4, which was cut short by COVID so at least it's not wholly random, in fairness), Riverdale did a seven year time jump. This seven year time jump landed them in the year… 2021. They shifted everything that happened in the first four seasons of their show, including dozens upon dozens of current day pop culture references, about a decade into the past. And why did they do this? So they could change a few things and then basically keep telling the same exact stories they were telling the first four years of this show. Just stupid nonsense. Stupid nonsense all around. Which, to be fair, I actually used to look forward to from this show. I’ve argued here that it’s at its best when it’s being as stupid as possible, but this year the nonsense just doesn’t seem inspired. They’re recycling some plots. The actors seem checked out. Maybe all the years of nonsense have finally taken their toll on them.

38. Batwoman (Season 2 - 2021, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 43) - Batwoman lost its main actress in between seasons, which obviously put it at a difficult crossroads. In my opinion, the wise thing to do would have probably been to recast as best as possible and carry on. Instead, the show chose to go a different direction and cast a new person to play an entirely new character. There was maybe a way this could work, but you likely have to retool the entire show to get there. Instead, they changed nothing but the main character and inserted her into the middle of the old character’s world, forcing her to have the same supporting characters and deal with some of the same storylines the old character was dealing with. This led to a lot of story beats where new Batwoman had to interact with old Batwoman’s family. What was in season one drama between Batwoman and her sister, or her father, became drama between the new Batwoman and this crazy lady she just met, or this guy she barely knows. As you might be able to guess, this added an air of “who cares?” to the proceedings. Also, the whole season essentially became an origin story for new Batwoman, which was a problem because that’s basically what season one of the show was. It wasn't super engrossing. That said, let me put aside the issues raised there. Having to recast your main actress is obviously a tough situation. They didn’t handle it well, but it was tough. Here’s why this show is still all the way down here on the list: bad execution. Week in, week out: bad plots, bad dialogue, dumb subplots, forgettable villains. A lot of the same issues that are plaguing The Flash. The show is simply not executing. It’s like these superhero CW shows don’t know how to do writers’ rooms over Zoom.

37. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (Season 2 - 2021, Freeform) (Last year’s ranking: 47) - I said last year I didn’t know if I liked this show or not. I think the fact that I’ve put it near the bottom of my list for two years in a row has answered that for me. It’s a kind of fascinating show in how, I guess… aimless it is. Floating from one scene to the next, one plot to the next, one episode to the next, no real driving force. A comedy that’s not really funny. A drama that isn’t very strong. A few good moments in a season of ten half-hour episodes. Would I have watched a third season? Yeah, probably. Not in a hate-watch way, but also not in a like-watch way. I’m glad it got canceled because it means I’m free of it. Would I recommend to other people any of the shows I’ve seen from Josh Thomas? No. Definitely not. Will I watch whatever Josh Thomas writes next? Yeah, probably. Though I can’t say why.

36. Soulmates (Season 1 - 2020, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This was a short Black Mirror-esque anthology series that ran out of interesting stories to tell surprisingly quick. Like, third episode quick. This show’s problem is that, while Black Mirror has freedom to tell lots of different stories, Soulmates is restrained by its premise: a short time into the future a company creates a test that can match you to your soulmate with 100% accuracy. It’s not a bad premise, but you can sort of imagine how it would constrain the storytelling possibilities. The test matches you with someone surprising, the test matches you with the wrong person, etc. etc. The whole thing was only six episodes and it felt repetitive even within that small amount.

35. Debris (Season 1 - 2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Debris was created by J. H. Wyman, who did a lot of work on Fringe, one of my favorite sci-fi shows ever. Unfortunately, Debris was just a pale imitation of Fringe. The characters weren’t strong enough. The ideas weren’t intriguing enough. The episodes were often flat. They just didn’t have enough action or drama or horror or twists or whatever you might be hoping for from a show like this. They’d have a lot of walking around and looking at stuff and people talking about the stuff that was happening and then they’d kind of just peter out. A real disappointment.

34. The Walking Dead: World Beyond (Season 1 - 2020, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - You know how teenagers can often be the worst characters on a TV show? How they can exist just to act bratty and make really stupid decisions? Well, imagine a whole show of that. I’m half-joking. It’s not that bad. There’s some fun stuff and it works as a companion piece in this series of shows, but for the most part, it’s a lot of watching teenagers make really stupid decisions and almost getting themselves killed.

33. Stargirl (Season 2 - 2021, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 36) - Speaking of teenagers making really stupid decisions and almost getting themselves killed... Stargirl is a bit of a strange show. It’s kind of lighthearted, but also weirdly dark (more children die in this show than died in all the other shows I watched this year combined). It has some interesting characters and some absolutely ridiculous ones. Some fun episodes, but what also feels like quite a bit of filler. It’s not bad, it’s just also not great.

32. Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (Season 2 - 2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 20) - The first season of this show was about a handful of things, but the big emotional throughline was about Zoey dealing with the impending death of her father, who had been diagnosed with an incurable neurological disease. While the other plotlines in the show could be hit or miss, there was always emotional meat on that bone, so to speak. Well, minor spoiler alert I guess, but her father died at the end of the first season from the aforementioned incurable disease. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the second season of the show really laid bare how important that throughline was to the whole thing. Without it, the show felt rudderless. There were a lot of pieces of plots but nothing really anchoring them the way her father’s storyline did. Plus, there was a lot more love-triangle stuff, which wasn’t the most original, compelling plot the first season and grew even more tiresome in the second. The show sort of became like late-stage Glee for me, where I stopped caring about the plots and just listened for the songs. That more or less worked with Glee because almost all the people on that show were excellent singers. It works much less on this show because maybe (generously) half the performers are good singers.

31. MacGyver (Season 5 - 2020-2021, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: 26) - It was a pretty weak final season for MacGyver. They abandoned some interesting storylines from last season in a disappointing way. In fairness, it’s because last season got shortened by COVID and I guess for whatever reason they couldn’t find a way to pick back up where they left off. But still, they had a tough time regaining the momentum after they lost it. The cancellation was without warning from CBS, too, so there’s no real conclusion to anything. Just an average season finale that suddenly became a series finale. Tough way to go out.

30. Bob's Burgers (Season 11 - 2020-2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 38) - I was looking back at my episode ratings for this show from the last two years and realized they were pretty similar. Both last year and this year, there was only one episode per season that I thought was pretty good. There was also one episode each year I thought was awful. And then, basically, there were 21 episodes each season that were fine. Just fine. A few laughs. Nothing really engrossing. Worked well enough to keep me entertained and not much more.

29. The Walking Dead (Season 10B - 2021, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 29) - The eleventh season of the show is currently on-going. That’ll be on next year’s list. This is just for a grouping of six episodes that aired earlier this year. They were extremely forgettable with the exception of two episodes. I enjoyed “One More” quite a bit and I really liked the Negan origin story episode: “Here’s Negan”. Probably one of the best episodes they’d done in years.

28. The Blacklist (Season 8 - 2020-2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 39) - A slight improvement for this show from last year. A handful of average episodes, a few very good ones. A really fascinating choice made at the end of the season that makes me interested in seeing what next season will be like.

27. The Moodys (Season 2 - 2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 46) - I described this show last season as “likeable if not particularly funny” and said if it was to come back, the writing would have to get sharper. That remains pretty accurate. The writing was slightly better, though not enough to make this a truly good show.

26. Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Season 1 - 2021, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This show was way too overstuffed to really work well, which seems a poor choice made in the writing process. It has like a dozen different ideas it wants to touch on and doesn’t really execute any single one of them in a satisfying manner. The real shame of it is there was a good show in here if they just chose to keep things simple. The best episode by far featured Falcon and the Winter Soldier going on a mission with Baron Zemo. That was it. They went to a shady bar of villains and did some spy stuff. Blew some stuff up. Fought some bad guys. That’s the show! Sticking with a core of that and cutting the 20-something unnecessary side characters would’ve gone a long way.

25. Archer (Season 11 - 2020, FXX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The show returned to its spy satire roots and started clicking again. It’s not at the level of its earlier peak seasons, but it’s still reliable for some good laughs.

24. The Great North (Season 1 - 2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Solid animated comedy from two of the writers of Bob’s Burgers. It obviously borrows a lot from the style and tone of that show. I do find The Great North a little fresher. The writing is a little sharper, the stories are a little more interesting (but it also isn’t in its 11th season like Bob’s Burgers so it’s not a wholly fair comparison). It slots in nicely with the other FOX Sunday animation shows.

23. The Simpsons (Season 32 - 2020-2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 37) - I essentially write the same thing every year about The Simpsons. Some highs, some lows. I felt the quality of episodes this season, for whatever reason, was generally a little bit higher than last, thus it’s up here.

22. Duncanville (Season 2 - 2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 34) - It didn’t make the huge leap in quality I was hoping for, but it was consistently above average this season, with a couple of flashes of excellence.

21. Snowpiercer (Season 2 - 2021, TNT) (Last year’s ranking: 14) - Decent second season for this show. Started a bit slowly but picked up in the back half. Sean Bean was a good addition to the cast. If it dropped in quality from season one, it might be because I liked this show as my stupid summer show and season two aired during the winter. High possibility this affected my opinion of it.

20. Chad (Season 1 - 2021, TBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This isn’t a show for people who can’t handle cringe comedy. It lives there. And if the joke isn’t landing, which sometimes it doesn’t on this show, then you’re just trapped in a scene. But! But the jokes often do land, and when they do, they are very good. It’s also occasionally a touching show. The main character is a little dick, but the show also has a lot of sympathy for him -- he’s the son of immigrants trying so hard to fit in in middle school, to be what he perceives to be normal, in a battle with his own identity, in some of the most difficult years in a teen's life. You hate him but you also feel for him and want him to win. It’s a show with a little more depth than I thought it would have coming in.

19. What If…? (Season 1 - 2021, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - You know how it is with anthology shows: you win some, you lose some. The show is better at coming up with concepts than executing them, I think. Episodes feel a little rushed (generally because they’re trying to tell a movie’s worth -- or sometimes multiple movies’ worth -- of story in half an hour) and sometimes they feel like they just end because they've reached their time limit. Overall though, it’s a fun way to just try different things in the Marvel Universe.

18. Family Guy (Season 19 - 2020-2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 24) - I barely even write blurbs about Family Guy on these lists anymore. It’s very consistent. This is around where it ends up on every list.

17. Alex Rider (Season 1 - 2020, IMDbTV) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Fun fact: I watched this show as part of an online paid focus group thing. I’ll just tell you what I told the people who ran the focus group. It’s good. It’s sleek and well-made. It moves just a little too slow for a spy thriller but not to the point of being boring. The show does need a little more life though. Some more quips and liveliness. It’s pretty preposterous on a conceptual level. A teenager is recruited into MI6 to be a spy and save the world. Don’t play that too seriously. Everyone understands this is teenage James Bond, so be that. Lean into it.

16. Prodigal Son (Season 2 - 2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 28) - A fun second and final season for Prodigal Son. They only did 13 episodes for this season so they got to do a little more long term storytelling and fewer cases-of-the-week (this show handles those well anyway so not necessarily a bad thing). The bummer is that the show got canceled without much warning so they didn’t get to wrap things up, leaving on not quite a cliffhanger, but a fairly open-ended note.

15. Legends of Tomorrow (Season 6 - 2021, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 11) - The only show on the CW that seems to be in control of what it’s doing. Not as good a season as last season, but still quality work. Good characters, funny, imaginative.

14. Fargo (Season 4 - 2020, FX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - First time on a list for Fargo since the very first TV list I wrote in 2017. An impressive hiatus. I will say, I do think this was the weakest of the four seasons of Fargo. It took way too long to get the train rolling, though when it did, it got much better and delivered four really strong episodes at the end of the season. When it’s on, Fargo can fire on cylinders in storytelling and characters and dialogue that very few shows on TV can match up with. This season’s issue was that it took far too long to be on.

13. 9-1-1: Lone Star (Season 2 - 2021, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 35) - I've really come to enjoy this show. I think this show found a groove in season two, putting out pretty consistently above-average episodes. It still has a lot of over-the-top silliness, but the characters are strong and most of the plots work.

12. Superstore (Season 6 - 2020-2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 25) - Superstore was one of the few shows to incorporate COVID into their storylines in a natural way and manage to find humor in the situation, so bravo for both attempting that and succeeding at it. Behind the scenes, the show lost their main star, America Ferrera, at the start of the season, which should obviously have been a tough blow to take, but the rest of the ensemble stepped up and the show continued on without missing a beat in quality. Then, after filming nine episodes, they learned that this would be their final season, so the producers transitioned really well into endgame mode, crafting a strong backstretch of episodes to wrap everything up. I would guess with all the behind the scenes stuff and shooting this whole thing in the midst of a pandemic, this was the most difficult of the show’s six seasons to create. The fact that they were able to deliver such a satisfying finale through all of it is very impressive.

11. Fear The Walking Dead (Season 6 - 2020-2021, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I’d say this season was not as strong as last, but I still found it very good, and generally more enjoyable in recent years than the original flavor Walking Dead. A fascinating story choice at the end of the season, setting up an intriguing seventh season.

10. Animal Kingdom (Season 5 - 2021, TNT) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Not the strongest season Animal Kingdom has had, but the show is still one of my favorites. This season is sort of about the characters searching for their identity in a new world, which is interesting in its own right but perhaps not as much as pulling off daring heists? I get the sense this season is doing some prep work in anticipation of next season, the show’s last. I’m predicting a very good final season.

9. American Dad! (Season 18 - 2021, TBS) (Last year’s ranking: 23) - A return to form for the show. Much improved over last season for me.

8. Love, Victor (Season 2 - 2021, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: 5) - Just a minor step down in quality from the first season, I think mostly because the show lost a little focus. Season one was about Victor’s journey to self-acceptance and coming out, season two was more about dealing with the fallout from all that. There wasn’t a super-strong throughline. But still a very sweet show. Funny. Romantic. Very enjoyable.

7. Mr. Mayor (Season 1 - 2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This show is going to be good. I’m calling it. It already had a very strong first season with one of my favorite comedic episodes of any show this year in 1.6 “Respect in the Workplace”. Tina Fey and Robert Carlock behind the scenes, a very good cast in front of the camera, this show is set up to become one of my favorites.

6. Mythic Quest (Season 2 - 2021, Apple TV+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Mythic Quest is a fascinating show. For 90% of its episodes, it’s just a very good workplace comedy. And then, every now and then, it just uncorks a truly fantastic standalone episode. Season one did this with episode 1.5 “A Dark Quiet Death”. The show also released a quarantine episode called, appropriately, “Quarantine” that was probably my favorite COVID-related TV episode, one that should serve as a nice time capsule for this period at some point down the road. Season two was an improvement in quality overall from season one, and it also featured a tremendous two-part standalone story (episodes 2.6 “Backstory!” and 2.7 “Peter”). It’s a funny show with good characters and a surprising amount of heart.

5. The Other Two (Season 2 - 2021, HBO Max) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Great, great satire of the entertainment industry. Excellent characters. Fantastic writing. Often hilarious, but it also has some depth to it when it comes to matters surrounding the core family.

4. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Season 8 - 2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 7) - It’s only appropriate that this show ends up here in its final season. I once wrote about this show that I was never excited to see it pop up in my DVR, despite really enjoying it when I actually got around to watching the individual episodes. This final season was essentially a bunch of very special episodes. The show felt it was obligated to tackle all kinds of important real world topics instead of just being a goofy sitcom. It didn’t really work and it made me once again unenthused about starting up an episode. And yet, the show’s actually plotting within episodes and joke-writing ability is so incredibly strong that once I started the episode, I found myself really, really enjoying it as always. The series finale is a great example. Super obvious character arcs, things you saw telegraphed from basically the beginning of the season, and yet, the episode was still pitch perfect. Hilarious and moving and exactly how you'd hope for a show to wrap up. Stuck the landing brilliantly. This was a show that always succeeded in spite of itself. In spite of its premise and its core identity. It succeeded because it was always one of the sharpest written shows on television. Its final season was no different.

3. WandaVision (Season 1 - 2021, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I really enjoyed the early episodes of this show, where they went to great lengths to capture the setting and feel of various past eras of television. They did an incredible job with the sets and costumes, and beyond that, even the writing was very good at aping the styles of the eras being portrayed. But as much as I enjoyed the early episodes, I really loved when the show took a turn and slowly unfolded into a piece about one character’s loss and grief. A tremendous second gear. A fantastic show overall.

2. The Mandalorian (Season 2 - 2020, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: 2) - A tremendously fun show. Didn’t lose a step from season one.

1. Loki (Season 1 - 2021, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Loved this show. Not just from a storytelling perspective. On that alone, it’s an excellent show. Some fun mystery stuff, some mind-bending stuff, clever, funny writing, great characters, solid drama. Beyond that though, I was just loving everything I was seeing and hearing on screen. The sets -- everything from the TVA headquarters to alien planets -- look amazing. The costumes are great. The music is superb. The show just had everything firing on all cylinders. It was brilliantly done.

So there we have it. Like I mentioned, some of these shows are still going on and have a few episodes left in their seasons. I might come back and do some light editing on this list if any of those shows do something truly surprising in a good or bad way in those final episodes but the likelihood is they probably won’t do enough to wildly change my opinion of them.

Or, if you’re reading this in the future, maybe I’ve already done that and that adjusted list is the list you’re looking at!

Wow.

Mind. Blown.

- - - - -

Annual Lists of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

#reviews #Annual Lists of TV Shows I Saw The Past Year

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redriotultimate · 7 years

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Insecure

Summary: When it's announced that you won't be attending prom, your friends are determined get you there anyway.

Paring: Isaac Lahey x Fem reader

Warnings: FLUFF!

Notes: GIF is not mine.

You walked through the cafeteria towards your usual table where most of your friends already sat. You took a seat in between Stiles and Isaac in an attempt to stop their bickering and immediately started filling your face with food. “Y/N…” Lydia sung. You instantly froze and slowly looked up. You knew that tone of voice all too well. She sat in front of you smiling brightly with her phone held against her chest. “What?” you said with a mouthful of food. Lydia turned her phone so that screen faced you. It displayed a stunning red dress. It showed a fair amount of cleavage and had slit that exposed your leg all the way up to the thigh. Prom was coming up fast and the whole school was buzzing with excitement. “Lydia it’s gorgeous.”

“Then it’s yours.” You stabbed your food with your fork and gave a nervous laugh. You were flattered that Lydia wanted to buy you a dress, but you hadn’t actually planned on going to prom. “If you look at us and say that you aren’t going, I’m going to scream.” Kira said wide eyed. You chewed your lip anxiously. “Y/N you have to go.” Lydia whined “Even Malia is going and we all know how much she despises social gatherings.” Of course you wanted to go, hell you had been dreaming of prom for years. But now you weren’t so sure it was going to happen. “Why aren’t you going?” Scott asked. “I don’t have a date.” The fact that this was your reason for not going honestly embarrassed you.

Malia frowned at you. “Why the hell not?” Your face began to heat up. You were suddenly very self-conscious. “I guess no one wants me as their date.” Your words made Isaac choke on the water he was drinking. Of course people wanted you to be their date. Quite a lot actually. He had heard the lacrosse team talk about you on multiple occasions. However the way they spoke of you angered Isaac immensely. It was common for those who only spoke of your ass and legs to leave the locker room with a black eye.

Isaac’s feelings towards you were completely obvious. Well to everyone except yourself, you were completely oblivious to the fact that the werewolf liked you. While Isaac might have been able to put on a brave face when standing up for you, he couldn’t muster up the courage to ask you out.

“I’m sure someone is dying to ask you to prom Y/N,” Lydia said grabbing your hand, “right Isaac?” The blond yelped in pain as Lydia’s heel dug into his foot under the table. “Of course.” He said smiling at you. You shrugged, not believing your friends in the slightest. You pulled your bag over your shoulder and stood up. “I’ll be in the library if you need me.”

Lydia frowned as you walked out of the cafeteria. “Ok I’ll order the dress.” Kira and Malia nodded in agreement as Lydia furiously tapped away at her phone. “But she said she didn’t want to go.” Stiles said. Malia rolled her eyes “She obviously wants to go.” “What about her date?” “That’s where he comes in.” Lydia stated, gesturing to Isaac. This time he didn’t just choke on his water, he spat it everywhere. Numerous pairs of eyes turned in his direction as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “What?”

“You heard me.” “First of all, she probably dosen’t want me as her date. Secondly… Have you met me? I can barely say a sentence to her without looking like an idiot. How the hell am I supposed to ask her to prom?” “Stop being dramatic.” Malia spat. The three girls stood up and walked away, babbling about their plan to get you to prom. Scott, Stiles and Isaac looked at each other, sharing the same confused expression. “Women.” Stiles sighed.

Flopping onto the couch, you reached for the TV remote. In a few hours everyone would be arriving at the high school in flowing gowns and tailored suits. Everyone except you that was. Your plan for the night consisted of Ice cream, Netflix and pyjamas. After deciding on watching mean girls for the 100th time, you opened the tub of ben and jerry’s in your hand. Suddenly the front door flew open. “Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N! Put the ice cream away.” Malia said as she turned off the TV. Lydia and Kira walked through the door holding numerous bags. “What are you doing?”

“Think of us like your amazingly talented fairy godmothers. And we are making sure you don’t miss prom.” Lydia called as she made her way to your room. “But…” “No buts, we have put too much time into planning this, you are not getting out of it.” Kira said grabbing you by the shoulders and directing you towards your bedroom.

“Behold.” Kira uncovered your eyes and allowed you to look at yourself in the mirror. You were amazed. You were wearing the beautiful dress Lydia had shown you weeks ago, your makeup looked like it belonged on an Instagram model and your hair had been curled into seemingly effortless waves. “Oh my god!” You squealed bringing the three girls into a hug. You were overjoyed. “Hey. Don’t ruin my masterpiece.” Lydia said, smoothing your hair down.

You smiled and spun around admiring your appearance. For the first time in ages, you had no insecurities about your appearance whatsoever. “I feel like a princess.” You giggled. “Speaking of which, are you sure prince charming isn’t gonna screw this up?” Malia whispered. “He better not.” Lydia replied.

The limo was a few blocks away from your house. Isaac squirmed anxiously in his seat. “Guys? Th-this isn’t going to work.” He sighed running a hand through his hair. “I look ridiculous.” “Dude you look fine.” Scott said. “I’m sweating all the way through my suit, I didn’t even know that I could sweat this much.” Stiles’ face twisted in disgust. “Ok we don’t need to hear the specifics.” His phone buzzed in his pocket. “It’s from Malia.” Stiles said. “What does it say?” Scott asked, hoping that their plan hadn’t gone wrong. “She says to tell Isaac that if he ruins this she will kill him slowly and painfully.” “Oh great.” Isaac groaned.

“Isaac you’ll be fine. Now go and get your girl.” Scott said patting Isaac’s shoulder. The limo came to a halt in front of your house. “Woah ok we’re here already. How does my breath smell?” “Jesus Christ, just go!” And with that the three boys stepped out of the car.

You slowly made your way down the stairs, trying your best not to trip over your heels. “Are you sure?” You said beginning to doubt this whole plan. It was really sweet of your friends to dress you up all nice. But you really didn’t want to be sitting alone all night while Lydia, Kira and Malia danced. “You’re in your dress, the limo is here and so is your date. You. Are. Going.” Lydia smiled. “My date?” Kira opened the door and ushered you outside.

Scott, Stiles and Isaac stood on your drive way. Malia cleared her throat to gain their attention. As soon as their eyes landed on you, they were lost for words. Scott whistled as Kira stepped towards him, she was practically bursting with excitement. Lydia bought Stiles in for a kiss. While you and Isaac stared at each other in amazement. He thought you were a model in just a T-shirt and jeans. But right now you looked like a goddess. “Wow.” He managed to say after a few minutes. “You look beautiful.” You blushed furiously. The fact that Isaac Lahey was your date to prom made your stomach do flips. Especially since you had the world’s worst crush on him. He looked so good in a suit, it was borderline offensive. “Thanks. You look great by the way.” Now it was Isaac’s turn to blush. “Oh, I um, this is for you.” Isaac took your hand and gently tied a delicate white rose corsage to your wrist. “God you two are cute. Now get in the limo! We have a prom to attend!” Lydia squealed.

Needless to say prom was way better than watching Netflix. Mainly due to the fact that you were dancing with Isaac. That was until you remembered Lydia had set this whole thing up and Isaac probably still only thought of you as a friend. “Hey, uh if there was another girl you wanted to dance with, feel free to…” “What are you talking about?” “I mean I don’t want you to feel obligated just because Lydia said so.” Isaac frowned. The thought of you feeling like he was only doing this to please Lydia saddened him.

He tilted your head back so you could look in his eyes. “Y/N I’m dancing with you because you’re my date. I’m not here because Lydia asked me to. I’m here because you thought no one wanted you and that’s not ok. The amount of people that want to be in my position right now is insane. Do you have any idea how many guys I have sent to the nurse’s office because they could only see you as a hot girl?” You blushed and tried to look away, but Isaac turned you to face him again.

“Well if I’m not a hot girl what am?” You asked. “You’re definitely hot. But my point is you’re more than just a sexy ass.” You laughed at his compliment. “See. You have the most beautiful smile. Actually scratch that, you have the most beautiful everything. Smile, laugh, eyes, soul. Plus you’re incredibly smart and…” You cut Isaac off by pressing your lips to his. His eyes grew wide in shock, you were actually kissing him. You smiled against his lips as he kissed you back. “Finally!” Lydia shouted over the cheers from Scott, Kira and Malia. You laughed and hid your bashful face. Looking up at Isaac again he was a smiling mess. “What was that for?” “My ego couldn’t handle anymore.” You said. “Well I can’t handle the thought of you being insecure.” You rolled your eyes, he was too adorable. Pulling him by his tie you connected your lips again in a sweet kiss.

Thank god for your three amazingly talented and extremely persistent best friends.

A/N: I thought this one turned out pretty good. Let me know what you think!

#isaac lahey #teen wolf #isaac lahey imagine #isaac lahey imagines #isaac lahey one shot #Isaac Lahey blurb #Isaac Lahey x reader #Isaac Lahey x fem reader #Isaac Lahey fic #Isaac Lahey fanfiction #teen wolf imagine #teen wolf fic #teen wolf fanfiction #teen wolf imagines #teen wolf blurb #teen wolf one shot

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iamcarriesoom · 7 years

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Planes, Tanks and Automobiles

Fast & Furious 6 opens with Dom and Brian racing along some absurdly beautiful coast and looking very mad at each other. I SEE RIGHT THROUGH IT, YOU GUYS. YOU CAN’T HIDE THE BROMANCE. They’re actually racing to get to the birth of Brian’s baby. (Where were they coming from? Why wouldn’t Brian stay home with Mia when she’s so close to giving birth? He’s a criminal millionaire, it’s not like he had a day job to get to.)

This movie has opening credits like it’s a TV show- like a nine minute super-cut of the best clips from all the previous movies. I’m on board.

I still don’t understand the bond between Dom and Elsa Pataky (or just her character in general. What’s her deal?) It’s gonna be awkward when Letty inevitably comes back.

Hobbs is somewhere, talking to…some suspect. We’re supposed to think it’s Dom, but then he walks around to see him from the front and surprise! It’s not Dom. You couldn’t fool me, movie. As if Dom would run off so soon after the birth of his nephew. Don’t you think we know how important family is to him? He starts beating the shit out of this guy, and someone watching is like “Is this legal?” Hobbs’ partner (whose name I only knew after I looked it up on IMDb, so I’ll call her Angel Dust because that’s her character in Deadpool) is like “nope.” It’s bordering on a little too self aware, but I laughed.

Hobbs comes to see Dom for help, and Dom is like “nah you can’t make me,” but Hobbs gives him the new pictures of Letty. Extremely chill Elsa Pataky is like “babe you should go, it’s fine, I get that I’m your second choice and honestly, likewise.” I’m pumped already, I love a good “criminal with a heart of gold helping to catch the TRUE bad guys” story (Catch Me If You Can, White Collar, etc etc.)

Dom is like “Brian, you should stay, you literally just had a very cute baby moments ago with my sister.” Mia is like “No, you’re stronger together. You always were.” Except all the times they worked as a team and people died, but sure OK. Hobbs is like “I know you guys are a family.” No shit, Hobbs.

I am again surprised that Wonder Woman is in this movie, even though I like and am committed to her character now. I just feel like I should have known? She and Han get a call to meet up. Tyrese turns his private jet around to come join the team. Luda showers some pals with money from an ATM and heads off to meet everyone. They’re like the Avengers, and Hobbs is…Nick Fast&Fury? Is that a thing that works?

They’re trying to catch some extreme bad guy played by Gaston. In true Fast & Furious fashion, all character motivations are laid out very quickly and quietly with very little detail. He’s assembling the pieces to create some kind of device to black out communication “for a whole country” (any size country??) for a day, so he can sell it to somebody, probably. I don’t fully know what law enforcement agency Hobbs works for, but somehow he only has one partner and this band of thieves to work with to find the world’s foremost super-criminal. They all negotiate “wipe our records” deals, which seems silly at this point because you know they’re just going to dirty them right back up again.

They wire up Fake Vin Diesel and send him in to see Gaston so they can catch him. As if it’s gonna be that easy. While they’re watching that go down, Interpol gets robbed, but Gaston basically traps all the cops in the city underground (are they all dead now?? Is this the scene in the franchise with the most fatalities?) and we get the first car chase of the movie, because apparently the gang are now in charge of investigating security breaches at Interpol.

Gaston has this insane low-slung racecar with a little scooper on the front so any car that hits him goes flying. It’s a true evil genius contraption. Cars are flipping left and right. Do cars actually flip that easily? Also, I feel like flipping cars would result in more injuries. More of these people should be dead or at least concussed.

Dom takes off after Letty and after cornering her, they both get out of their cars for their grand reunion. Except Letty shoots him in the shoulder and takes off. Yikes!

Gaston pulls out files on all the good-bad guys, and they find a picture of Letty sitting on Dom’s lap. She just says “That’s the guy I shot.” Letty in this movie is like Peeta in the last Hunger Games. She apparently lost her memory in the car crash that everyone assumed killed her.

They need some cars for their plan, so Hobbs and Luda go on a cute lil man date to a fancy car auction. Hobbs is like “You aren’t thinking about stealing these cars, are you?” Dude this is what you get for hiring car thieves. Some snooty guy comes up to them with some racist nonsense so Luda buys all the cars and also makes him give them his clothes.

Wonder Woman and Angel Dust go try to flirt some info out of a mechanic but he pocket-dials Gaston so he can send some goons. Han and Tyrese can see the goons approaching, but don’t do anything to help, stop them, or warn Wonder Woman and Angel Dust. There are a bunch of fight scenes, which I find kind of boring (these movies aren’t called The FIST and the Furious) but no one dies and they steal some insane harpoon contraption from the mechanic.

They realize that Gaston is working with Braga, the bad guy from Fast & Fourious/Wonder Woman’s old boss, so Brian decides to sneak back into the country with the help of that guy whose face he smashed into a wall a few movies ago.

Paul Walker and his they-must-be-color-corrected insane blue eyes get moved near Braga and he almost gets knifed to death a bunch. Braga tells him that he’ll only get near Gaston if Gaston wants him to, which isn’t really all that helpful. Also we learn that he found out about Letty’s memory loss and passed her along to Gaston.

Meanwhile, Dom gives himself a random night off and heads to Rita Ora’s street race, where he races Letty through a lot of traffic. Is no one racing on closed streets anymore?? He looks at her car and says “You never could resist American muscle,” which, nice. Smooth. I like it.

They chat in an empty parking lot and he reminisces about all their good times and she’s like “sure if you say so, stranger.” Question: if she has no memory, why is her name still Letty?

Gaston shows up and they quip back and forth for a while instead of just shooting each other. Dom almost get snipered but since Hobbs was there they were equally gunned and both backed down. Frankly I think Hobbs should’ve just shot Gaston while he had the chance.

Hobbs figured out where Gaston’s hideout is, so he’s like “Let’s go nail that son of a bitch” and he and Angel Dust barge in. THAT’S YOUR PLAN? TWO PEOPLE TO CATCH THIS NOTORIOUSLY SLIPPERY, DANGEROUS INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL????

Hobbs calls Luda, which is unremarkable except for the fact that his phone says “Samoan Thor,” and I laaaaughed and laaaughed.

Because he’s some sort of magical one-man TARU, Luda deduces that they’re going to steal “the component” (this is what they call it, I don’t know what it is) from an army base in Spain.

They move the component in a convoy to some secret new location, but Gaston and his crew attack the convoy and hijack a freaking tank! (Side note, the convoy is being escorted by 2 giant Jeep-y things, but they’re very easily taken down by bullets. Why wouldn’t you have this super valuable component escorted by some sort of armored vehicle? It was previously housed on an army base!

This tank just starts rolling over all the other cars on the highway, but somehow when the gang races in with their speedy speed cars they’re all going about the same speed. How fast can this tank go?? (I googled it and it said “up to 45 miles per hour on roads,” and “Some tanks have even gone as fast as 60 to 70 miles per hour for short periods of time” so I call shenanigans on this.)

I appreciate that the family is trying to draw attention from all the civilian cars because it seems like that tank is going out of its way to run directly over random cars (which, again, I think could easily outrun the tank except for when it crossed over and started going against the flow of traffic.) A LOT of people died in this scene.

They lasso the tank’s gun and us a car as an anchor, and Gaston sends Letty out during this high-speed tank chase to fix it. Except at that second the tank lurches, Letty goes flying, so Dom launches himself across a highway overpass to grab her and smash through a car hood. I think I yelled “WHAT?” out loud.

Han and Wonder Woman make such a cute team, but I know something has to happen to her since she’s not in Tokyo Drift, and it makes me sad in advance.

They capture Gaston and his few remaining goons, Letty defects to the good side, and they all head back to the army base. It’s extremely clear from the ominous music that this movie is not over.

Brian talks to Letty and apologizes for her amnesia, which he blames himself for. She’s like “I’m sure you didn’t make me, we cool.” According to imdb THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THEIR CHARACTERS EVER SPEAK TO EACH OTHER IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE FRANCHISE.

Gaston says he kidnapped Mia and she’s dead unless he gets to waltz out of there with the chip he stole from the tank. Brian and Dom freak out and the reasonable army guy is like “That sucks but too effing bad, we’re not gonna let a super-criminal go just for this.” Hobbs, the coolest/worst government agent ever, is totally fine with letting Gaston walk but also the family doesn’t get their records cleaned anymore. Obviously they’re like “family first.”

Gaston leaves but first turns to Letty and is like “Hey babe you coming?” Angel Dust is like “Hell yeah you bet.” OH SHIT! I briefly suspected she was a double agent like an hour ago but I forgot about it because frankly she’s not that interesting. I guess I was right all along.

They immediately start another chase scene while Ludacris starts trying to block the cell signals so Gaston can’t put in a call to have Mia killed. Ludacris joined this series as a street race facilitator; I’m not really sure why he’s a hacker now? They’re all like “Where tf does Gaston even think he’s going?” but then a giant plane appears overhead and drops a ramp for them to drive up.

On the plane we’ve got Gaston, Angel Dust, and Enormous Tattooed Goon fighting Dom, Brian, Letty and at some point, Hobbs.

Mia is also there, but she’s a lover not a fighter. I find it comical that Gaston is supposed to be an even match for Dom.

The rest of the team is in cars chasing the plane, also fighting some goons. They harpoon the plane a few times but the lines are anchored to the cars so eventually the plane starts lifting the cars off the ground as it tries to take off. Finally, the moment I’ve been dreading arrived. Wonder Woman falls off a car (heroically and on purpose to shoot the goon who’s about to attack Han) and presumably dies. RIP Wonder Woman.

The plane is eventually disabled by all the harpoons and gunshots, and it bursts into flame/explodes. Letty and Hobbs had made it off the plane, and Dom had somehow ejected Gaston who is presumed dead. Everyone is worried Dom is dead but he emerges from the rubble shockingly unscathed. Mia looks at Han and asks “Where’s Giselle?” which is apparently Wonder Woman’s name. Hugs and tears all around.

Dom hands the stolen chip, which he’d recovered from the plane, back to Hobbs and says all he wants is to go home. The family has a nice chill barbecue at the house. Hobbs shows up and makes fun of Tyrese’s forehead, which is weird since most of them are bald and Tyrese doesn’t even have a big forehead.

Hobbs and Dom talk about something but to be honest I wasn’t paying attention because I was just looking at the weird perspective of these shots. Why do these shots look so weird? Why is The Rock’s head so big?

Elsa Pataky, who is back to being a cop again, comes in to say goodbye and Dom is like “You don’t have to go.” I honestly thought he was gonna pitch the idea of a threesome (which, frankly, I kind of think would make sense in this weird family dynamic. A polyamorous alpha trio?) She and Letty high five over having the same boyfriend. The end.

Epilogue: That scene from Tokyo Drift where Han dies. Except after the crash, Jason Statham throws Dom’s cross necklace on the ground and calls him on the phone as he walks away from the rubble.

I’d been really torn on whether to watch Tokyo Drift 3rd or 6th (aka release order vs chronologically.) I had friends arguing for both and I see the merit in both sides, but I watched in release order. The downside was that when Han died, I didn’t really know or care about him, and when I DID get to know him I knew he was doomed the whole time. However, if I’d watched Tokyo Drift 6th and seen that mid-credits scene, I’d already know he dies in the next movie (and on a smaller level, it spoils that insane shot where they drift around the corner and the crowd scatters like ants.) I’ve settled on, for first viewings, watching them in release order makes sense. For any subsequent viewings, chronological is probably better.

Previously:

Vol 5: 5ast 5ive

Vol 4: Fast & Fourious

Vol 3: What’s even the point of driftng?

Vol 2: 2 Furious 2 Quit

Vol 1: The Fast & the Curious

#the fast and the furious #fast and furious 6

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orchestratingkitty · 8 years

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So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. When I first heard Jensen say Destiel doesn’t exist, I was (like most of the Destiel fandom) pretty hurt. I’ve since seen people attack him, people critique him, people defend him, and people applaud him. So I’m gonna go one-by-one through the most common responses I’ve seen in the past couple days and debunk them.

“He’s cute and hot! How could anyone say he’s a homophobe?”

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Homophobes don’t look a certain way. You could see an ugly homophobe standing next to a hot as hell homophobe and they’d both be homophobes. The way Jensen Ackles looks doesn’t change the way he is on the inside. Good that we got the dumbest thing anyone’s ever said out of the way.

“He has gay friends/family members, so he isn’t homophobic.”

Uh huh. I once had a discussion with a white dude who loved saying the n word. He loved it. It was his favorite word. He claimed that he had a black friend who was cool with him doing it and thus he used it all the time. The dude had a black friend! Maybe more! Does that change the fact that he was racist? Hell no. There’s actual LGBT+ people out there who have internalized homophobia. If gay people can be homophobic, then why would we dismiss the homophobia of a man who just knows gay people?

“Lots of terrible things happen to him at cons. He’s mistreated.”

This is really true. He is groped and sexually harassed (from what I’ve read) at photo-ops and people ask him uncomfortable questions all the time. This is irrelevant, however. Everyone goes through hard things. Everyone. That doesn’t mean they have the right to say stupid, homophobic shit without consequences. The next time you want to argue on behalf of your favorite actor, do him the justice of making it a relevant and sensible argument.

“He was just stating his opinion.”

Yeah, in the rudest way possible. I’d have much preferred if he answered in the way Jared had when asked about Eileen. “Dean doesn’t room for romance right now” would have been a totally acceptable and neutral way of handling the question. You’re not promising anything and you’re not insulting anybody. The way he answered was beyond stating an opinion - it was rude and that is my main problem with it.

“He gets flustered at cons! He’s shy!”

He has done this before. He’s insulted Destiel before - sometimes to the point where he seemed to support Dean and Cas not having any sort of relationship. He’s never apologized. You know who else is shy? Me. And you guys aren’t gonna say “she gets flustered” before sending me hate for saying this about Jensen. No, you’re gonna attack me anyway. I’m barely an adult and he’s a middle-aged man but you’d be fine with ripping me a new one for critiquing his PR skills. That makes sense.

“Destiel is a fanservice ship.”

No, it isn’t. It’s the exact opposite. People ship Destiel because Cas and Dean have practically tangible chemistry and if one of them were a chick, they’d have banged a long time ago. Don’t fight me on this - it’s true. The biggest argument against it being fanservice is the fact that fans aren’t getting anything they want. They get queerbaiting instead. As I’ll discuss later, you cannot compare the average straight ship with a queer ship. They’re not the same. They don’t get canon/debunked for the same reasons. They’re not treated the same by the creators so we as fans can’t lose sight of their differences either. Hello? Homophobia exists? Jesus, you’d think this goes without saying.

“People shouldn’t ask ship related questions anyway.”

I’ve seen this one debunked already, but I feel like it needs to be said more to get into some people’s thick skulls. I guess I agree. The cast is not responsible for deciding where the story will go. They do not decide which ship becomes canon or not and even though they have views of where a character’s mindset is at times, they can’t be the final authority. I honestly couldn’t care less if Jensen is made uncomfortable by these questions, though. Mainly this is because he isn’t uncomfortable with people talking about straight ships or even about Dean fucking his car. Honestly? Getting “flustered” by a question about a queer ship is fucking pathetic. Jensen. You’re a grown ass man. Grow up. You’re not Dean. No one is accusing you of not being a straight man, okay? No need to be so defensive. Your masculinity isn’t being called into question, so you can put away your macho act and be a human being again, okay?

“Destiel doesn’t exist.”

Where? On the show? Maybe not. They are fictional characters, if that’s what you mean. No, it isn’t real. Neither is Dean Winchester. Neither is Castiel. None of it exists, in reality. But in regards to the fictional realm, what Jensen said was stupid because it simply wasn’t true. Destiel does exist. Thousands of fans interpret Cas and Dean’s relationship to be romantic and thus, to some extent, it exists. I wasn’t gonna say anything about queerbaiting, but the amount of unscripted touching between the two on the show should raise eyebrows now if it doesn’t exist. But if it really and truly doesn’t exist then where is all the defensiveness coming from? Why are people wasting their time making anti-blogs about it, if there’s no threat of it becoming canon? Why are people so passionate about hating it if it isn’t real? You guys do all the arguing for me, don’t you?

This isn’t a common argument, but you get this a lot: “Good job, Jensen, for telling those Destihellers off.”

Jensen Ackles, this is a warning. You’re getting yourself associated with the wrong sort. You do not want people to think you’re warming up to them, I promise. It is probably the shittiest PR move you could make, aligning yourself with homophobes. Don’t be proud of what you said. It was rude and cold and you were insulting a lot of the SPNfamily in the process. No one is saying you have to support Destiel, but this is disgusting.

Okay - here it goes (this has to be said):

It’s been five days since Trump was inaugurated into the presidency and he’s already promised to eliminate LGBT+ rights by placing FADA on his list of priorities. Jensen, you shouldn’t have said anything that could be construed as homophobic. Queer kids all over the country are terrified of how they’ll be treated in the future if FADA gets passed. Right now, you should be supporting these kids, helping them trust themselves, helping them feel assured. Instead, you’re bashing what a lot of people like me are clinging to. You can argue I’m just distracting from the argument, but this is relevant. Jensen is American. He knows what’s going on. Within days of Trump’s inauguration (was it two days after? I don’t remember.), he’s put salt on a wound.

It’s rare to find an LGBT+ character on TV who isn’t a goddamn stereotype. Bi and trans characters are especially hard to find. Bi characters are often ridiculously one-dimensional - a bi girl has a threesome, a bi guy is hiding that he’s actually gay. A lot of bi people like me love that Dean (who we interpret to be bisexual) is not a stereotype. He isn’t what straight people look at and think of as “gay” or “bi”. We cling to him because we’re living in a world where even people in the LGBT+ community can be biphobic. And Jensen just spat in our faces.

Speaking of, can all you non-bi or pan LGBT+ folk please stop using that when defending him? As in, please stop saying “as an LGBT+ person, y’all are overreacting”. If you’re not bi, this might not hurt you as much. I’ve seen gay people actually say “Destiel wouldn’t do anything for gay representation”. In actuality, we’re aiming for bi representation and seeing as you’re gay you have no right to say what would or wouldn’t help in terms of representation. I’m bi and I’m not overreacting. Other bi people out there who had their hearts broken aren’t overreacting. Though, as LGBT+, you should be concerned too. This is about a lot more than just a ship, guys. Thanks to homophobia, not all ships are created equal, and straight ships are not the same as queer ones.

I used to watch Gossip Girl when I was in middle school (embarrassing, I know). Every possible combination of straight ships had at some point become canon - even the more far-fetched ones. Every single one. I’ve since started disliking the show, but it is a useful comparison. No one complains when people bring up Dean/Amara (which was canonically nonconsensual) or Dean/Lisa at cons. They’re ships, too! I thought ships weren’t an appropriate topic at cons? Or is it okay because they’re straight? Is it okay because they actually have a shot? The fact that queer ships are clung onto so desperately due to the likelihood of them never coming true is tragic. We shouldn’t be afraid to say we ship something gay. We shouldn’t be afraid to bring it up in conversation. We should feel the same wobbly uncertainty that is inspired by straight ships. It should be a question of “will they won’t they” (and not in a queerbaiting way) instead of a feeling of “well, I know because it’s gay it’ll never happen but I still think it’s cute.” Most fan-favorite straight ships become canon in some way or another (across the board, in all TV shows) while queer ships are sneered at and thought of as taboo (the fact that Dean/Elena - a ridiculous straight crack ship - gets less hate and question marks than Destiel is a pretty good example of this. Honestly, you guys are fucking sad sometimes).

Why do we have to give up or surrender our ship just because it’s gay? That’s bullshit and I refuse.

I’m not saying Jensen is homophobic, I guess. Don’t attack me for it (or if you do, don’t use any of the arguments I’ve refuted. You’ll look like an idiot). He is obviously uneducated in regards to this. His comment was thoughtless and ignored context and timing. He said something rude that hurt people for all sorts of reasons. He has room to grow and if he does come forward and patch this up, I’ll be the first one to cry tears of joy. I’m against people sending him hate or death threats. Please don’t. Not only is that disgusting, but it sure as hell doesn’t convince him that we’re reasonable people who just want their ship acknowledged.

Also, if someone accuses you of being homophobic, instead of being defensive, maybe think of why they’d say so, and fix that.

Don’t be too quick to defend him. He’s an adult. He can do that himself. All you LGBT+ people out there shouldn’t be apologizing for him, either. Stand by those of us who are genuinely and rightfully hurt. What he said isn’t okay and nobody who’s hurt here is overreacting. If you think this isn’t a big deal, you’re not looking at the whole picture. There is a war being fought in regards to LGBT+ representation in media and someone claiming that gay-shippers are delusional is not helping.

I’m actually hoping that this will receive 0 notes and no one will see it. Like I’ve said, I’m super shy and I don’t really wanna tag this with anything someone will find but at the same time, it annoys me how this has gotten brushed over. I’m posting so late because it took a while for me to actually process my thoughts into something comprehensible.

#spn wank #spn #fuck man im actually scared #so much for protecting the flustered right?

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