#macguffin is a big baby

[marcmarcmomarc]

Once Upon a Lamp - list of characters

In honor of Once Upon a Studio turning one year old

EXT. THE STEVE JOBS BUILDING - EARLY EVENING

The Adventures of André and Wally B.

André

Wally B.

Luxo Jr.

Luxo Jr.

Luxo Sr.

Red’s Dream

Lumpy

Red

Tin Toy

Tinny

Gumbo

Flip ‘n Beth

Ace

Clocky

Spot

Zoo Train

Chrome Dome

Rallye Guy

Fire Hydrant

Helicopter Sheep

Toypot

Frodo

Bouncy

Eben’s Car

Les

RenderMan

Knick Knack

Knick

Sunny Miami

Sunny Florida

Sunny Egypt

Sunny Jamaica

Sunny Palm Springs

Sunny Israel

Surf Death Valley

Sunny Atlantis

Toy Story (Toys)

Woody

Buzz Lightyear

Jessie

Mr. Potato Head

Slinky Dog

Rex

Hamm

Bo Peep

Mrs. Potato Head

Bullseye

Mr. Pricklepants

Dolly

Trixie

Buttercup

Chuckles

Stinky Pete

Barbie

Ken

Lots-o-Huggin’ Bear

Big Baby

Twitch

Stretch

Chunk

Sparks

Chatter Telephone

Bookworm

Peas-in-a-Pod

Forky

Giggle McDimples

Ducky

Bunny

Duke Caboom

Gabby Gabby

The Dummies

Billy, Goat, and Gruff

Toy Story (Human side)

Andy Davis

Mrs. Davis

Molly Davis

Sid Phillips

Hannah Phillips

Bonnie Anderson

Bonnie’s Mom

Bonnie’s Dad

Buster

Scud

Geri’s Game

Geri

A Bug’s Life

Flik

Hopper

Princess Atta

Princess Dot

The Queen

Molt

Slim

Heimlich

Francis

Manny

Gypsy

Rosie

Tuck

Roll

P.T. Flea

Dim

Mr. Soil

Dr. Flora

Thorny

Cornelius

Thumper

Aphie

For the Birds

Bluebird Flock

Gawky Bird

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

Commander Nebula

Mira Nova

XR

Booster

Warp Darkmatter

Gravitina

N0S-4-A2

XL

Monsters, Inc.

James P. Sullivan

Mike Wazowski

Boo

Celia Mae

Randall Boggs

Henry J. Waternoose

Johnny Worthington

Scott “Squishy” Squibbles

Don Carlton

Terri and Terry Perry

Art

Tylor Tuskman

Val Little

Fritz

Katherine “Cutter” Sterns

Duncan P. Anderson

Roz

Yeti

Jeff Fungus

Banana Bread

Roger Rogers

Suzy “Sunny” Sunshine

Finding Nemo

Marlin

Dory

Nemo

Hank

Boundin’

Jackalope

Lamb

The Incredibles

Bob Parr

Helen Parr

Violet Parr

Dashiell Parr

Jack-Jack Parr

Lucius Best

Edna Mode (E)

Buddy Pine

Winston Deavor

Evelyn Deavor

Mirage

Rick Dicker

Voyd

One Man Band

Bass

Treble

Tippy

THX

Tex

Cars

Lightning McQueen

Tow Mater

Cruz Ramirez

Lifted

Stu

Mr. B

Ratatouille

Remy

Alfredo Linguini

Chef Skinner

Colette Tatou

Django

Emile

Anton Ego

Presto

Presto DiGiotagione

Alec Azam

WALL-E

WALL-E

EVE

Captain B. McCrea

John

Mary

M-O

The Defective Robots

Hal the Cockroach

Partly Cloudy

Gus

Peck

Up

Carl Fredricksen

Russell

Dug

Charles Muntz

Alpha

Beta

Gamma

Kevin

Kevin’s Babies

Day & Night

Day

Night

La Luna

Bambino

Papà

Nonno

Brave

Merida

Elinor

Fergus

Hamish

Hupert

Harris

Fergus’ Dogs

Angus

The Witch

Maudie

Lord MacGuffin

Lord Macintosh

Lord Dingwall

Young MacGuffin

Young Macintosh

Wee Dingwall

The Witch’s Crow

Conan the Clan Dingwall Hunk

The Blue Umbrella

Blue

Red

Lava

Uka

Lele

Inside Out (Mindscape)

Joy

Sadness

Anger

Fear

Disgust

Anxiety

Envy

Ennui

Embarrassment

Nostalgia

Inside Out (Humans)

Riley Andersen

Jill Andersen

Bill Andersen

Grace Hsieh

Bree Young

Valentina Ortiz

Dani

Ally

Sofia

Nour

Coach Roberts

Sanjay’s Super Team

Sanjay

Sanjay’s Father

Hanuman

Durga

Vishnu

The Good Dinosaur

Arlo

Spot

Henry

Ida

Buck

Libby

Nash

Ramsey

Butch

Thunderclap

Downpour

Coldfront

Frostbite

Windgust

Bubbha

Lurleane

Pervis

Earl

Forrest Woodbush

Fury

Destructor

Dream Crusher

Debbie

Piper

Piper

Lou

Lou

J.J.

Coco (Land of the Living)

Miguel Rivera

Dante

Abuelita Elena Rivera

Enrique Rivera (Papá)

Luisa Rivera (Mamá)

Tío Berto Rivera

Tía Carmen Rivera

Tía Gloria Rivera

Abuelito Franco Rivera

Abel Rivera

Rosa Rivera

Socorro Rivera

Benny Rivera

Manny Rivera

Coco (Land of the Dead)

Papá Héctor Rivera

Ernesto de la Cruz

Mamá Imelda Rivera

Pepita

Mamá Coco Rivera

Papá Julio Rivera

Tía Rosita Rivera

Tía Victoria Rivera

Tío Óscar Rivera

Tío Felipe Rivera

Bao

Mom

Son

Dad

Cindy

Purl

Purl

Lacy

Office Bros.

Office Ladies

Kitbull

Kitbull

Dog

Smash and Grab

Smash

Grab

Float

Father

Son

Wind

Ellis

Ellis’ Grandma

Onward

Ian Lightfoot

Barley Lightfoot

Laurel Lightfoot

Corey

Colt Bronco

Blazey

Soul (Living World)

Joe Gardener

Libba Gardener

Dez

Curley

Dorothea Williams

Connie

Soul (The Great Before)

22

Moonwind

Terry

Counselor Jerry A

Counselor Jerry B

Loop

Renee

Marcus

Out

Greg

Jim

Manuel

Greg’s Parents

Gigi

Luca

Luca Paguro

Alberto Scorfano

Giulia Marcovaldo

Ercole Visconti

Massimo Marcovaldo

Daniela Paguro

Lorenzo Paguro

Grandma Libera Paguro

Ciccio

Guido

Machiavelli

Nona

Nona

Renee

Twenty-Something

Gia

Nicole

Turning Red

Meilin Lee

Miriam Mendelsohn

Abby Park

Priya Mangal

Tyler Nguyen-Baker

Ming Lee

Jin Lee

Grandma Wu Lee

Auntie Chen

Lily

Helen

Auntie Ping

Mr. Gao

4*Town

Lightyear

Izzy Hawthorne

Sox

Mo Morrison

Darby Steel

Commander Burnside

Alisha Hawthorne

Kiko Hawthorne

Elemental

Ember Lumen

Wade Ripple

Bernie Lumen

Cinder Lumen

Gale Cumulus

Fern Grouchwood

Clod

Brook Ripple

Harold Ripple

Alan Ripple

Lake Ripple

Eddy Ripple

Marco Ripple

Polo Ripple

Ghibli

Flarrietta

Flarry

Self

Self

Win or Lose

Coach Dan

Vanessa

Rochelle

Elio

Elio Solis

Elio’s Aunt

Ambassador Questa

Ambassador Grigon

Hoppers

Mabel

King George

———————————————————————————-

Notes

Everybody is all smiles for the group picture, from heroes to villains and everything in-between. Even characters who were otherwise sticks in the mud like Hank genuinely smile for the picture. Villains such as Muntz, de la Cruz, Lotso, Thunderclap and his gang, Syndrome, Evelyn, Randall, Waternoose, Hopper, Skinner, and Ercole, as much of evil psychopaths they were, are seen tenderly and respectfully singing along. Even Sid, who was a massive bully to Hannah, is seen giving her a kind brotherly embrace. Also, most movies’ main cast seem to be cramped together. Even the villains stand near their respective heroes, everyone in a healthy relationship with their families and loved ones are tenderly holding each other close, and many of the larger characters offer their bodies for the smaller ones.

Forky, Heimlich, Dory, Jack-Jack, Mater, WALL-E, and one of the triplets wave at the camera.

Dim and Wee Dingwall give the camera dopey smiles.

The egg-shaped bluebirds and the gawky bird stand perched above the entrance. The bluebirds are happy to have the gawky bird with them, a far cry from how they treated him in their short.

Sulley carries Boo tenderly in his arms. Helen does the same to Jack-Jack, as do Presto with Alec, Carl and Russell with Kevin’s babies, Elinor and Fergus with their triplet sons, Embarrassment with Envy, Massimo with Machiavelli, and Izzy with Sox.

Terri attempts to dance before his other half stops him.

Hank carries Marlin, Dory, and Nemo in a coffee pot.

Voyd and Abby giddily bounce in place, clearly the most excited for the photo.

Linguini carries Remy while Colette holds Django and Emile.

WALL-E and EVE hold the umbrellas from The Blue Umbrella.

HAN-S still can’t stay still, shaking aggressively as the photo is taken.

Kevin and her babies take the time to mimic Carl once again.

Maudie and the Clan Dingwall hunk share a loving look.

Young Macintosh flexes his pecs while giving the camera a cocky smile, the same type of smile given by characters like Terry, Darby, and Clod.

The Witch has her Crow standing perched on her shoulder.

Being stationary volcanoes, Uka and Lele are unable to leave their photo. Thankfully, they have Thunderclap and his gang to hold it so they can be in the group picture.

Nostalgia sticks her head out from behind Embarrassment, clearly hiding from the other emotions.

Riley, Grace, and Bree all carry Knick together while Riley’s parents carry the Miami and Florida knick knacks, Val and the Fire Hawks carry the Egypt, Jamaica, Palm Springs, Israel, and Death Valley knick knacks, and Coach Roberts carries Sunny Atlantis in her fish bowl.

Cindy, Son’s fiancée, winks at the camera as the photo is taken.

Machiavelli gives the camera his standard bored look.

Mei has her red hair, panda ears, and panda tail, continuing to embrace her panda.

Aaron Z gives the camera a thumbs up while Tae Young makes a heart with his hands.

Izzy gives Sox a neck scratch.

Alisha and Kiko’s inclusion also counts due to their backlash following the movie’s release.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 有翡/Legend of Fei.

Legend of Fei is a 2020 adaptation of priest's webnovel Bandits that tells the story of a competent yet sheltered young swordswoman, the terrible gremlin boy who decides they're married now, and their various friends as they venture into the jianghu to acquire the legendary MacGuffin that will do ... uh, something, probably.

This show is a delight. It is pure goofy, tender-hearted sincerity. It has so many precious baby angels with adorably pinchable cheeks performing so many fetch quests in so many styrofoam dungeons. It is funny on purpose and funny on accident. It is 51 episodes of rollicking, slapdash, green-screened adventure.

I am trying real hard here not to bite on @agendratum's wonderful rec post for the series, which includes the words "discount word of honor with teens," a phrase that lives rent-free in my head. Go look at their work for a more detailed character guide. What I have here are a mere five reasons above and beyond said post that you should watch this darling little show.

1. All the production values of a sixth-grade class play

This show flopped pretty hard, and I can understand why. It was a highly anticipated drama with two big-name headliners. Fans expected a lot from it! And what they got is something that looks and feels like a mid-budget syndicated UPN show from 1993, complete with how all the high-schoolers are played by actors in their thirties.

This show is comically janky and earnest. Stunt people fall down before they're hit. Breakaway furniture abounds. Actors bounce gently off "stone" walls. Damn near everything was filmed on sound stages with greenscreens. (Filming ran from September 2019-January 2020, stopped for pandemic reasons, and finished March-April 2020. While this certainly is not the only cause of the show's jankiness, it definitely contributed.)

This it not a show with no money; this is a show with an appropriate amount of money spent poorly.

The flow and pacing of the story are as smooth as a car crash. So many times, a scene with Characters A and B will be happening, the show will cut (sharply) away to a different storyline, and by the time it jumps back, Character A is in a completely different location and Character B has departed. When did that happen? Why did that happen? Where are we now? No time to ask questions! Establishing shots are for weenies! This director knows filmmakers who maintain narrative continuity, and they're all cowards.

Speaking of the narrative: I've seen Saturday morning cartoons from the '80s with more depth. I would be hard-pressed to explain what exactly is happening that's driving the plot. There's big business with a deposed emperor and a forever war happening on some distant front and disgruntled veterans of the army that's fighting it ... but, like, it doesn't matter? All those machinations are barely relevant to the plot at hand, which can be summed up thus: Bad Guys want Thing, Good Guys go on adventures to stop them from getting Thing.

And I am listing all this messiness as a selling point -- as the show's primary selling point, in fact -- because I think it's all charming as heck. This show is plain, unpretentious fun. It's a downright romp! It's got a very teenager's-eye-view of the inscrutable situation driving the whole plot, which does a good job of drawing attention to how maaaaybe this whole situation is bullshit and the grownups should stop killing themselves and other people because of it.

Here's a good metric: If the Ye Olde Haixing parts of Guardian warmed your heart, you are in exactly the right frame of mind for this.

There's no way to tell how much of this campy, underfunded aesthetic was intentional, and how much was the result of both poor budgeting and way too many cooks in the production and screenwriting kitchens. I'm not going to say this was a labor of love, because it was at best a labor of like. Everybody onscreen is giving it their all, but no one's giving the same all as anyone else. Go into it expecting that and nothing more, and you'll have a great time.

2. Punching the Bechdel Test into next week

Are you someone who loves c-dramas, except for the part where you're like, gee, I sure wish there were some girls in this? Oh, my friend, there are so many girls in this.

I actually kept being stunned while watching it by just how many girls are in it. Old girls! Young girls! Evil girls! Nice girls! Rich girls! Poor girls! Strong girls! Weak girls! Just a whole lot of girls!

Truly, it's not just how many female characters there are, but the sheer variety of them. The main octet includes an awkward tomboy who can kick your ass, a spunky brat who's not above crocodile tears to get what she wants, and a soft femme who's a brave little toaster despite having zero martial arts skills. The show absolutely loves them all and thinks they've all got important things to contribute, no matter how hard they can or can't punch.

And that's before we get into how many female side characters there are, both heroes and villains. I've seen that some people hate on these side characters. Those people are wrong.

Maybe the best part is how much they interact. There are many scenes with multiple female characters in them, sometimes with male characters too, and sometimes just the girls. Because this is a jianghu story with martial artists, several of the female characters have unique skills that they pass on to other, younger female characters. Women are often the honored masters of things who have competent all-ladies support staff. And there's no sense that they wash out after a certain age -- even the grannies can still school you as needs be.

...Of course, the sad thing is, I'm touting all this ladyfolk representation when maybe 20% of the total listed cast is female (doing quick math from the MyDramaList cast page). Pound for pound, the Untamed's listed cast has a (slightly) greater female:male ratio, and nobody would call that a girl-forward show. It just makes a difference when what female characters you have, you push toward the front of the narrative and give them reasons to have relationships with one another, instead of making them occasional props in the background while real (read: male) people get to be people.

The entire reason the Bechdel-Wallace Test exists is not to praise or condemn any individual piece of media, but to comment on larger trends in the depiction of women in fiction. It's not a problem when one thing doesn't pass the test; it's a problem when nothing passes the test, or when the things that do pass skate by on single moments and technicalities. The more things that fail its three criteria, the more that indicates the prevalence of an attitude that regards women only as accessories to men's stories.

Legend of Fei is aware that not only do women have inner lives, but they relate to one another in very specific, culturally informed ways. The female characters in this are not just male characters with incidental she/her pronouns. Zhou Fei not only gets to be the protagonist who goes on the whole hero's journey of growth and change, but along the way she also gets to have some complicated interactions with her own gender and how much expected modes of femininity do and don't suit her. But it's also not because she's Not Like The Other Girls! It doesn't make her better or worse to be that way. It just makes her more like her mom -- and if there's one thing I know that makes a teenage girl break out into a cold sweat, it's the idea that she's anything like her mom.

This little drama is hardly some revolutionary piece of thought-provoking feminist insight, or anything like that. It's just that if you're feeling the lack of ladies in your c-dramas and wish to see girls on film (as it were), Legend of Fei may be what you're looking for!

3. Chaotic bisexual (asexual?) extravaganza!

priest's work is queer as fuck, and while this story itself does not rise to the level of being textually gay, there's still a great big rainbow flag flying over the whole business. You can rest assured that when two dudes or two ladies are giving one another meaningful looks, it is not an accident. We all know who's writing this.

Do you like relationship charts? Because I've got a doozy for you:

How many of these are me making jokes? Way fewer than you think.

There are of course some actual canon couples in there, and the amount of real estate they take up in the narrative means your affection for them will make or break your affection for the show. Fortunately, all the teen pairings are super-cute!

Zhou Fei embodies the bisexual stereotype of liking all the ladies and maybe one dude. Xie Yun falls so hard and fast for this beautiful butch-by-local-standards that his head spins. Together, they are the romantic backbone of the story, and they are just a treat.

I've seen people say these two have no chemistry, and I think that's bullshit, but okay, let's assume that's your read on it. You can still understand why they like one another, beyond your standard, he's a boy, she's a girl, what more do you want? Zhou Fei likes Xie Yun because he's funny, emotionally available, and socially unacceptable. Xie Yun likes Zhou Fei because she's fierce on the outside and warm on the inside. Sure, they're in love, but what's more important is that they're good partners and great friends.

(I think it helps that even though the characters are supposed to be around the same age, Zhao Yiling is literally a decade older than Yibito is, and he clearly thinks even off-camera that she's dreamy.)

Also, it's great when he helps her sheathe her sword. This is a couple that's going to take about three whole minutes to figure out pegging.

Li Sheng and Wu Chuchu are the normie couple. He is big strong boy-man! She is small helpless lady-girl! ...Except no, this is yet another case of a wife guy who thinks his girlfriend's strengths are awesome; it's just that in this case, her strengths are her brains.

The fact that her attack and defense scores are nearly zero does not keep Chuchu from being the most competent person in any given room. She starts out as the girl who's important because she's got an important dad and an important key item, but she winds up being basically Jianghu GameFAQs. She never stops being soft and pink and feminine and tender, and she never learns to fight worth a damn, and none of that keeps her from being a vital (if unfortunately kidnappable) part of the team!

Meanwhile, Li Sheng is never really a male chauvinist, because he's grown up under his aunt, who kicks so much ass. But he is a bit of a cocky teen-boy turdface who needs to get knocked down a few pegs. It's great, then, that the show pairs him with the kind of helpless femme that he's supposed to want, then has him decide the fact that she's miles smarter than he is is the best.

And then there's these dipshits.

Normally in c-dramas, I'm used to triangles that are a strong canonical line between the main guy and his girlfriend, a strong but unacknowledged line between the main guy and his best friend, and maybe a faint dotty wisp between the girlfriend and best friend. Not so here! Ying Hecong, Li Yang, and Yang Jin (L-R above) are a damn near equilateral triangle. I mean, okay, technically they're set up as a more conventional love triangle, where both boys like the same girl, and she does sort-of choose one of them in the end. But in that arrangement, you'd expect the boys to become rivals -- and they never are. In fact, they become special allies who trust and take care of one another more than they do anyone else.

They're a great weird trio. Ying Hecong is a poorly socialized weirdo whose special interests are poisons and befriending snakes. Yang Jin is the chief of Doctor Village, a position that he got not by being a doctor, but by being a dumb jock who didn't realize fast enough why nobody else wanted the job. And Li Yang is the spoiled little sister of Li Shen and cousin of Zhou Fei, prone to getting what she wants by pitching a damn fit about it, who has decided that both of these boys are hers now and she can do whatever she wants with them.

(Li Yan is actually the most Actually A Teen of all the characters, and is the one who makes me wish so much that more of the cast had been played by actual age-appropriate actors. Some character traits are adorably tolerable when someone's twelve and verge on really fucking annoying by the time that same person is twenty-five.)

If you are into OT3s where two partners have to join in solidarity with one another so they can survive their third, you've found your pot of gold. Each one of them is enough of a catastrophe that they need two whole love interests to manage them. Between the three of them, they almost make one well-functioning human being.

Now: A thing to note about all these relationships, and one thing that may be surprising to you about something adapted from a priest novel, is that this show is negative horny. All of the romance is extremely chaste. At no point does any grownup worry that leaving these teens alone with one another will lead to some hanky-panky. Nobody ever volunteers to chaperone, or seems to need one. The adults aren't particularly horny about one another either! This is the kind of universe where people blush while tenderly embracing, then go to pick their baby up from the local cabbage patch.

Even my jokes about Zhou Fei's fuckable grandpa are just jokes, because nobody actually wants to fuck him. They all want to duel him, or to fuss over his health, or to follow him around and bask in his nobility. He has two kids, but we never meet their mom(s?). He deflects the obvious interest of multiple beautiful women with ease. He is the perfect man, both fuckable and unfuckable at once.

This may be what's having people read the main pair as having no chemistry. They have a lot of chemistry! It's just not a particularly sexual chemistry. It's extremely tender and playful, and there's plenty of physical intimacy. But it's not horny.

And that's not on the two actors. I've seen both of them look at someone else like they wanted to eat that boy alive. That was a choice this show made, to play all the romance about as spicy as when the puppets on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood hold hands. The only hints of horniness are in the fighting/injured bits, because sex is a big no-no, but nice polite violence is always okay! (Hey, uh, culture? We need to have a talk about this.)

4. The Grownups

As you may have gathered, most of this show is about the younguns. But a great deal of the supporting weight is carried by characters who are supposed to be of their parents' generation (even if most of their actors are only a decade or so older than the "teens").

I cannot fully in this post detail my great affection for every adult character; I wouldn't have room for anything else. So here's my top-three shortlist of the most memorable old folks.

If you like your ladies badass and crazy, Duan Jiuniang is here for you. Her grip on reality is ... well, it's complicated, but it doesn't stop her from being able to roast you from the inside out with her special skill. She's a terrible teacher and an even worse step-grandma who's made a lot of life choices that weren't what she wanted, but were what she needed to do to survive. I have no idea where she got those hideous leggings, but I kind of want a pair. She doesn't stick around past her one arc, so enjoy her while you've got her.

Speaking of crazy, the Phoenix, Mu Xiaoqiao, is a beautiful, tragic, genderqueer, completely insane middle-aged drama queen with a pipa to play and an ax to grind. I would watch an entire hundred-episode drama just about his campy antics. Hands-down my favorite character in the show. I'm not even going to say anything more. This bitch must be experienced. Love you, baby.

This fucking DILF. Holy shit. Shen Tianshu has a chocolatey voice and the world's most inconvenient prosthetic hand. At first his facial hair seems excessive, but then you see him without it in flashbacks and you're like, no! put it back! put it back! Frankly, I'm glad for the tufty brows, because this man does so much eyebrow acting, and you wouldn't want to miss a sinister moment of it.

And he's not the only one! Every single villain is running with full Bad Guy From A Power Rangers Episode vibes. No piece of scenery remains unchewed. They're what make this whole thing feel like you're watching a stage play. Every arched brow, every expansive hand gesture, every maniacal laugh, all of it plays to the nonexistent back row. (In fact, one of them -- Eyepatch Guy -- was so over the top that we had to look up his whole deal. Shockers, he's got an opera background.) If you have affection for the points I discussed in selling point #1, you will have love extra for the adult antagonists.

If you've ever watched a show made for a young audience starring young actors, you know exactly the grownup vibe I'm talking about. No, real adults don't act like this. But these are not real adults -- they are adults seen through the lens of a YA narrative, where everyone has big emotions and ultimately pretty simple motivations. Violence is acceptable but sex is not, and sexualized violence is especially not. You can threaten the kids but you (mostly) can't kill them. Parents should be removed from the main storyline, by death if necessary (offscreen preferred). By the end of the story, all adults must defer to the wisdom and battle strategies of the kids or be ready to be taken down by them. The lessons of age and experience are ultimately only useful once handed to the next generation.

Which is fine! ...provided it's the vibe you're expecting. I'd put this as another item in the list of probable reasons that this show did not go over as well as it should have.

5. We use every part of the Wang Yibo

Okay, so if you're like me, your introduction to this beautiful man was the Untamed, where 95% of his job is to keep every one of his facial muscles from doing anything -- and, if you're like me, you then watched some Untamed behind-the-scenes stuff and went, holy shit, this boy can make expressions?

This boy can make so many expressions.

I'm not going to argue that Wang Yibo was necessarily miscast as Lan Wangji, because that's not a fight I'm interested in having with internet strangers. I do, however, think it's undeniable that the Untamed misused him by all but ignoring his two primary skills: his giant goofy smile, and his being a dancer.

Legend of Fei makes use of both of these to great effect. Xie Yun is a gremlin who can't fight but can dodge. The show loves to leave the camera on him and let him spin and duck his way out of battles with his own mischievous grace. Wang Yibo does a remarkable amount of his own flipping and fighting, with and without wires. In a world of stunt doubles and smash cuts, it's a delight to watch.

My favorite thing about Xie Yun is that he likes that girl so much. He looks at her like she's the best thing in the world. He is her biggest hype man. He's all wife guy. Every time she's stronger and butcher and meaner than he is, he's pulling out his pompoms and cheering her on. He is in no way emasculated by the fact that she kicks so much more ass than he does. He is actually her wife, and he knows it. Kick their asses, baby, he'll be your flower.

Wang Yibo sells that devotion with each look in her direction. He brings every piece of his inherent chaotic good energy to the role. He's a comedic scamp right up to the point where he rips your heart out. If you are at all a Yibito fan, you owe it to yourself to get this show in front of your eyeballs so you can see what trouble that precious baby boy has gotten himself into this time.

Bonus: Do you like Word of Honor? Because this is how you get Word of Honor.

So I'm betting a lot of you did what I did, which was that you watched Word of Honor, and you loved it, so you went to read the book, and you were like, the fuck? Because Faraway Wanderers is also great, but uh, after a certain point, they're two very different stories.

While I cannot prove this, I would place a large amount of money on the screenwriter for Word of Honor's having been very aware of this production while doing the adaptation. See, in case you haven't read it, Faraway Wanderers itself barely spends a page of time with anything outside of what the main dads-and-kids quintet is doing, which makes for a fun danmei webnovel, but doesn't translate so well to live-action. I am almost certain that in the same way that they used frog DNA in Jurassic Park to fill in the gaps in the dinosaurs' code, this screenwriter (who is a priest fan) used Bandits/Legend of Fei to build out Faraway Wanderers' moments into a whole drama.

The timeline goes like this:

June 2010: priest publishes Qi Ye

October 2010: priest publishes Faraway Wanderers

November 2015: priest publishes Bandits

September 2019: Legend of Fei starts filming

June 2020: Word of Honor starts filming

December 2020: Legend of Fei airs

February 2021: Word of Honor airs

So yeah, it's not like the Word of Honor screenwriter could have watched Legend of Fei prior to penning the Word of Honor script. But there's too many similarities to be coincidence. To be clear, I'm not accusing the Word of Honor screenwriter of ripping off Legend of Fei. Watching it is more like seeing bits of Word of Honor's first draft. The Color of Ocean and Heaven and its five tokens become the World's Armory and the Glazed Armor. Wu Chuchu becomes Gao Xiaolian. Mu Xiaoqiao becomes the drama version of Xie Wang. All the nonsense with Yu Wenzhi and the Demons becomes all the nonsense with Zhao Jing and the Scorpions. Someone with more time than I have could probably make a thorough accounting of the number of times scenes with Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu visually parallel moments Xie Yun and Zhou Fei have, and how often those scenes were in bits not related to the original Faraway Wanderers plot.

And I think this is great. It's why, even though a lot of Word of Honor was not in priest's original text, Word of Honor is still very priest-flavored. Frog DNA, you know?

All of which is to say: If you love Word of Honor, you owe it to yourself to watch Legend of Fei. It's much sillier and straighter, and it's way less sexually charged, but it's got a very similar vibe, and it's fascinating to see what the two have in common. Think of them as two distant cousins, where you're like, sure, I can definitely see how you're related, but ... huh.

Ready to embark on your journey?

So many options! It's on iQiyi (VIP), Viki, and YouTube.

We watched it on iQiyi, and the subtitles were ... well, they made some interesting choices. You could always tell what they meant, but the actual phrasing was often wonky. Occasionally, where you'd expect a "Dammit!" or "Crap!" these subtitles would have someone exclaim, "Screwed!" And we never stopped laughing about the poor villain whose name those subs rendered as "Pathetic Clam." I cannot tell you if the other subtitles are any more polished, but I can promise that the awkward translations just added to the charm.

Do I have a soft spot for well-meaning television that does not have the means to achieve its goals but tries anyway? You better believe it.

Just a pile of precious cutie pies.

[theplatypusblue]

Ok uh making a little post about how the realm crystal is cool and epic 👍

So like basically the FSM is trapped in the first realm right? And there's this endless conflict between the oni and dragon and they each want him to join their respective side yeah? And he obviously doesn't wanna do that, but also he can't just... not pick a side. They won't let him get away that easily. So basically he's gotta get outta here, but he can't really do that either. Dragon's are the only beings that are able to travel freely between realms, and he probably can't ask for their help without "being on their side" first. He's only half-dragon, so he can't do it himself either.

So how's he gonna get out of this? Realm Crystal baby.

He uses the realm crystal to escape, which is like, kind of a big deal, right? Like I said, dragons are really the only beings who are able to do that kind of thing, but now, anyone could do it with the power of the realm crystal (theoretically). That's like, a lot of power for one person to have. But it's also a big deal because now he's free. He doesn't have to worry about any big war, he doesn't have to think about hurting anyone he might care about. He has this brand-new, relatively-peaceful world at his disposal. And it's all thanks to the realm crystal. He must have been so happy once he got out.

So basically what I'm saying is: The First Spinjitzu Master took the realm crystal with him to his grave not just because it was an important artifact for the entire 16 realms, but also because it was important to him personally, as the thing that allowed him to make a life for himself outside of his parents' stupid war.

(Stupid little side note: i looked it up on the wiki because I realized I didn't actually know for sure, and apparently the fsm created the realm crystal himself, which is like. cool. I like the idea of it being one of his first big "creations," and then him using it to escape his shitty life situation. it's a mostly inconsequential detail. But I also think my initial assumption of him essentially stumbling upon this Super Convenient MacGuffin when he's at his breaking point, using it to escape, and then Clinging Onto It Literally Until The Day He Dies is also kind of neat. and drives me nuts a little bit.)

[kitofawriter]

LMK season 5 Episodes 3-4 spoilers below the cut!

SWK is very grumpy about the headache he will presumably be having this whole season. Tang, your loud rambling is not helping (JK ILY)

“I didn’t think they were real!!” Tang, you should’ve learned by now, assume any super powerful thing is real until proven otherwise.

Sketch plan section!!

Monkey king brand band aid

Hype man M-M-M-Mei!

I love MK’s little Nüwa drawing!

“It’s burning!” Tang, you guys survived the Samadi fire incident, I think you’ll live

Toasted peach!

Also SWK making sure Tang gets to do the lore dumb is adorable. And Tang is so happy he gets to do it!!

Lots of painted style, love it!

“There’s always a temple” “m-mmhmm, yep”

“Sounds like Tangy’s on board!” Sandy, I love you so much, you deserve so many good things. Hold on while I grab some silver star stickers from Shifu Subodhi just for you.

As someone who just got home from a hiking trip in the mountains, I feel you MK, stairs are the worst. I wouldn’t climb all that either.

Alpine Sandy!!

Tang can’t climb either those weak ankles though!!

Pigsy questioning is MK knows ‘trial by fire’ is a metaphor is hilarious considering he raised that boy, he’s probably the one that taught him most of the metaphors he knows.

Li Jing sitting by his magic tracker muttering ‘hmm, yes, they will use magic and I will find them’ is absolutely what SWK is picturing.

Cloud doesn’t count as magic I guess.

Pigsy, you have to carry him! His weak ankles!

“It’s just my good fluffy boy! Loophole baby!” Alright, cloud as SWK’s pet fics are needed now.

Well if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions.

Pheonix!! Fenghuang to be exact!

MK mocking SWK about the “trial”

Creation flashbacks?? Also since MK was like made directly by Nüwa doesn’t that like, make him the equivalent of royalty? Hand sculpted monkey right here.

“Classic final boss aesthetic” he’s not wrong.

Is MK prophesied to fix the pillar or is this a past life kinda situation?

“I’m feeling confident!” Traps!

The return of smarty kid!!

SWK got free acupuncture

Lots of references this season!

Grumpy SWK

“They represent my many many dads!” They acknowledged it!!!

I love how SWK is the only one with any damage, thus indicating he keeps taking the blows for (the likely oblivious) MK

“First time was just a city, don’t get cocky”

“You know you just gave me a third path I have to choose from right?” “Bud! You know what I mean!!”

“I thought maybe we’d find a map that we’d never end up using” so be fair, you did use the Samadi fire map.

Oooh! Flashback!!

Oh I do not like the implications of this.

OH I DO NOT LIKE THE IMPLEMENTATIONS OF THIS!!!

This was a legend of Zelda dungeon. They even got a shiny stone at the end.

SWK is in denial, but also he’s right.

They made it just in time to turn around.

Did anyone have Tang’s weak ankles on their season five bingo card?

So Nüwa made MK to be there to fix the pillars of one ever got busted again, right? Like we’re gonna find that out and it’s gonna be a big moment of MK realizing he’s not Chaos but was created to stop it. Then it’s gonna be a “you can choose how to be, you don’t have to be what you were made” thing from SWK because MK goes super self sacrificing. Calling it now.

One of these days the end credits will change to MK.

Episode 4!! I’m probably gonna pause after this one to give me time to really soak in the season and watch some more tonight (I saw as if I’m not planning on rewatching this multiple times)

Decisions are not MK’s strong suit.

“Kid takes one how to write seminar and now he wound shut it with macguffins.”

Sandy sees MK getting overwhelmed and steps in!

“I love this new commanding Sandy” “didn’t know big blue had it in him” he’s been reading a self help book.

Sandy training! Mo standing guard!

Sandy training is therapy I hope

“Yeah that was a lie”

Have I mentioned Sandy is my favorite?

“Breadstick shoulders”

Sandy: MK you need therapy. Sit.

“I’ve got my trauma bottling process down pat!” That’s the problem MK

As someone who only recently started meditating, Sandy is actually explaining ways it’s helpful really well. So PSA that if you have anxiety, especially if it’s like mine and your mind continuously makes up scenarios that will never happen and you rarely feel yourself in the present because of it, try meditating! It can really help!

MK is also me.

Sandy MK bonding was not something I expected this season but it was something I wanted so badly!

MK that is not a demon that is just a snake (probably?)

Secrets tunnel!! Secret tunnel!!

Sandy’s little worried marker thing!!

Stone snake!!

Sandy looks so offended that the tortoise questioned MK’s worthiness.

“I am not ready for the test” “be here now” “but I don’t wanna!”

Sandy getting a hug until MK meditates

“Hey get off my Sandy!!”

Sandy being so supportive despite the circumstances!!!

Ooooh! MK vs Monkey MK in the mind!! Monkey MK taunting!!

“You like it” dang the voice acting for that line was nice!

MK going into monkey form to try and protect Sandy!!!!

“There’s parts of all of us we don’t like, but it’s always still us.” Sandy hitting with the deep quotes.

Still in monkey form!! With it controlled!!

Sandy angry for MK’s sake!!! “Was it enough? Was he WORTHY?!”

I’m pausing for a second because this episode is so far one of my favorites. It’s so good. I need a minute.

I want more backstory to Sandy.

“Pigsy always said you were this rage filled guy and…I just never believed it”

Mo is a good guard cat!

Mei destroyed the car this time!

I’m sorry Sandy, you deserve a lasting vehicle.

This episode is probably gonna sit next to Amnesia Rules as one of my favorites (I love Sandy too much guys)

[kmze]

Thoughts on 8x01-8x08 this is honestly the most I’ve just straight up enjoyed the show. I like the darker mythology of this season with the sirens, hell and Cade. It felt different but fresh and I thought it was easy to follow for the most part. The macguffins feel like a S1 homage. Scenes got to breathe again, Steroline had so many great domestic scenes and this is their peak relationship wise. If I cared about Bonenzo I’d say that’s good too. My only real gripe is Bonnie's storyline which feels like we took a step back after the progress of the last two seasons because why is she not fighting more to get her powers back? Plus Bamon is just non-existent this half but overall one of my favorite half seasons, it ranks just below S2 and S6 for me and you can read about why below!

8x01

This feels soooo much like a season one episode. I don't think the others do as much as this one though.

Why AGAIN did Bonnie lose her magic! Plot contrivance level 1000.

Everything Steroline in this episode is what was missing in S7! The teasing, the sexy time and hair stroking (I especially love where Stefan grips her hair after they kiss because he’s not ready to let go yet and kisses her forehead) but especially the phone call going over the plan! Feels like them in S4/5 which is FANTASTIC because it shows the friendship never died when the relationship started.

Mommy!Caroline is so great! I love the fairytale she told the girls and I love the scene where she finds them and is like "hi babies" THE CUTEST!

Okay so Virginia said whatever was in the vault wanted the twins and Damon says the voice in his head said it didn’t want Stefan yet. So yeah it seems the twins and Stefan were always a target at least.

I know KW co-wrote this ep but I just do not see how Elena is interpreted as Stefan’s hope. I know he goes out of turn but nothing he wrote was hopeful lol, plus he used Caroline’s words from earlier. Then there’s the fact that he looks miserable until Caroline asks if he wants her to move in with him.

Enzo leaving Bonnie clues about the siren was a great plot for them.

8x02

They should have just let Nat Kelley use her Aussie accent because she talks SO MUCH and I hear the struggle of her trying to hide her real accent. It would have made no difference!

How unbelievably boring is Damon's mind that he just keeps reliving this roadside scene over and over again. I don't even understand what the big deal is about this scene, wow so Damon met Elena first, who gives a shit?

Bonnie being a hater! I guess the sensation of watching Stefan and Caroline from the outside affects even those not in love with one of them.

Georgie was so good! Even if she has terrible taste in men she should have lived or at least lasted longer!

While I understand your frustrations Bonnie you got three years with Enzo and Caroline was stuck with fucking Alaric! The Baroline scene was sweet though, the Bonenzo scene is good too but the dialogue is so corny.

Really really REALLY unnecessary that we needed to bring Sarah Salvatore back just to murder her. Again killing off the WOC...

Okay see even more proof Caroline is Stefan’s hope because she says “you can’t give up hope” and he says I won’t and then FRIGGIN' PROPOSES TO HER! I mean do most people realize that’s not when he meant to propose? Like he bought the ring probably when she said agreed to live with him and he was going to propose with the room when he was finished. But in usual Stefan fashion every-time he plans to wait for the perfect moment with Caroline he fails because he loves her so much he doesn’t care about the pageantry he just wants her.

WHAT A MOMENT! I love both proposals for them but this one I just love how it’s so them! Stefan shows her the room because his love language with Caroline is acts of service. He’s showing her the meaning behind his words saying she’s his family, he’s tearing down a room in his home the only constant he’s had in his immortal life because he knows she will always be a part of it. And he thinks he’s so clever with the drawer ‘hey check it out, it’s antique’ but Caroline is Caroline and she wants the speech and he teases her about that like are you sure and he does the cheesy speech knowing she’s gonna laugh. But THEN she kisses him and he’s so consumed by how much he loves her and wants her and just gets SO INCREDIBLY SEXY grabbing her face and whispering against her lips between kisses that he wants her to marry him! I STILL GUSH OVER IT!

8x03

THE JUNE WEDDING! It’s still so hilarious that throwaway line in the pilot ended up coming true. Caroline is the greatest manifestater of all time!

GET HIS ASS CAROLINE! She really enjoyed stabbing him with that pole!

Man the one thing I’m jealous that Valerie got and not Caroline was Damon-less Stefan. She deserved Damon-less Stefan more than anyone!

The way Stefan smacks Damon like “why are you such a little bitch” because Enzo is fighting the mind control and Damon isn’t cracks me up!

She’s got a point Stefan! But like LOL Bonnie Stefan doesn’t even like Enzo as if he’d pick him over Damon regardless. The almost forehead touch and the way Caroline grabs Stefan and pulls him towards her, Paul and Candice did such a great job of showing the sweetness between Steroline this season. They're partners and it doesn't feel right when they aren't on the same side.

UGH FUCK THIS! I cannot believe this is how Tyler dies after everything!

8x04

The troll job with the “I love yous” all on the phone! Although they did that to Forwood too I noticed in my rewatch.

The dialogue has been very on point the last few episodes, I especially like how Stefan’s been written. This is probably my favorite Stefan because he’s being active in helping to save Damon but he’s not letting it overtake his life. I honestly don’t get why people think Paul was “mailing it in” this season, I think it’s because they all believe in the good brother mythos he performed in the earlier seasons. That guy doesn’t exist anymore!

Stefan's having way too much fun torturing Sybil with that tuning fork lol.

Two sirens and one being the friggin’ nanny was a great twist! And the flashback scenes parallel Defan’s scenes so well.

I like that they switched up from the torture dungeons to the secret lab rooms for interrogations. Feels fresh.

Georgie looking at Sybil through the glass has Elena and Katherine looking at each other vibes.

So funny how we’re all pretending anyone’s gonna care that Damon killed Tyler just to you know piss me off even more about it!

Stefan so scared for Caroline’s twins!

Matt finding Tyler’s body is heartbreaking. Damn that scene really hurt.

Seline is way better at the creepy whistle, Seline is the better siren in general I wish they’d killed Sybil earlier and just had Seline.

8x05

Seline’s evil look before closing the door lol. I love when actors ham it up in the best way possible.

Really like how Caroline subtlety told Stefan to STFU about Damon and mourn Tyler because she needed comfort and he instantly got that. Married.

Damon’s like “what’s so surprising about me being awful” and I AGREE!

That Baroline phone call was so sweet. I love how Caroline talked about what made her turn her humanity on about her Mom.

Bonnie pulling a Damon! Sometimes you have to go to extremes for the people you love!

WE ALMOST HAD IT! Stefan put Damon down at Caroline’s urging and it was such a good parallel to him saying "I'm lost" in 6x05 to "I'm sorry" now.

I’m sorry but I just don’t get anything from Bonnie and Enzo even with the powerful narrative the show tries to give them I *snore* I tried.

I like when the show parallels back to Stefan doing something weird, because like Stefan is very weird! He brought everyone back to the carnival for a memorial like he did in 4x02 with everyone saying a few words and then group activity time!

Tyler deserved so much better than this memorial and he really deserved for his death to mean more than it did. Matt was the only one who really seemed to care that he was dead, though I do give Caroline credit for Damon killing Tyler being the thing that made her give up on Damon. Then she pushed Stefan to do the same and he didn't really hesitate. I do LOL at Stefan not being able to say a nice thing about Tyler even in death, disliked his ass until the very end.

THIS SCENE IS SO PRETTY! It’s their prettiest scene and I am in love with the completely in awe lovestruck look Stefan is giving to Caroline while she talks to him. I know I say it all the time but I love Steroline because of scenes like this, their conversations feel deeper because they have so many moments they callback on to show their progression. And I love how Stefan just listens to her and really takes her words in, she inspires him so much.

God I’m stressed and I know what happens!

8x06

Pain. But I like how Stefan accepted it with no fight, just another day of Damon ruining his life.

Ric was ready to turn Enzo into a vegetable but Stefan couldn’t be absolved for killing him without humanity.

I cannot BELIEVE people want to give Damon credit for saving the twins when it’s made abundantly clear that he just wants to get out of hell. He just knows that in order to get Stefan to go along with the plan he needed to use the twins as leverage. Ruined his life AGAIN!

I didn’t realize how triggered this episode was gonna make me!

Ric’s talking a lot of shit for someone who does nothing to solve the problem!

I’m sorry but I think Stefan has more than enough blood on his hands for Cade Sybil. Paul Wesley just wanted to do a fight sequence it’s fine.

Stefan earned his hero hair this episode. The look between him and Caroline as she’s hugging Josie :( gets me every-time.

Candice was stellar in this episode, definitely one of her strongest episodes ever.

All he wanted was 24 hours with her. This is THE Stefan episode for me, this was his final heroic act and unfortunately he never really gets to come back from it. Paul really did such a fabulous job with this episode directing, acting, even song selection (he picked the song used in this scene) he went out with a bang.

Actually I really like the bickering sisters with the sirens and how they keep backstabbing each other, sounds familiar (that's the point)!

8x07

My heart. Stefan channelling his inner Buddy the Elf and putting up all the Christmas ornaments and the morning Steroline scene is such perfection. They deserved to have that peaceful domestic life together longer than they got. Stefan's diary entry pulls on the heartstrings too, I'm glad Caroline at least got to read that and I feel like it might give her some comfort knowing Stefan promised her his heart forever even before that moment in the finale.

You can tell right away that Caroline is ready FOR SCHEMING on her phone call with Bonnie and I am HERE FOR IT! She's so great this whole episode.

It made perfect sense that Cade would be so interested in Stefan without the retcon in the finale that it was all Katherine having him wrapped around her finger (which was RME).

CRYING! HE GOT ANOTHER ONE! Cade being like "I didn't care about your remorse but this crazy bitch did" because they always do! Crazy bitches and the Stefussy like moths to a flame. Bonnie and Enzo are nice this episode too I feel like they’re having real conversations instead of quasi-DE dialogues.

Peter's not really a bad character I just don't care. Matt has surprisingly not been annoying though I liked when Damon was like "you killed me" and he looked and him like AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!

This Christmas dinner is so stressful! Not like 'The Bear' stressful but it's up there!

I’m sorry but Stefan’s logic of “yeah I ate kids but never on Christmas” truly kills me! As if that makes it okay!?!

Cade explaining really well why I never got into SE especially in S1 because of how Stefan inserted himself into her life because he saw her as his redemption, the "good" Katherine.

"When I was the Ripper I was one of a kind, no one can do what I can do" (!!!) Ripper Stefan truly was one of the best villains, if this season had 22 episodes we could have had a longer arc of him.

CAROLINE FTW! She’s so damn smart no wonder Stefan loves her.

Mistletoe toe kiss and finally the I love yous face to face! Admit-tingly totally worth the wait this is one if their best scenes. The way he drags her down the stairs and kisses her so passionately under the mistletoe. I love that when he nods for her to look up he continues staring at her, Stefan wanted to give her some peace and romance before everything changes forever. Again Stefan wanted to be with Caroline before he essentially walked into damnation.

I love the evolution of the “off switch” with Stefan. It was so much more dramatic in S3 when he was forced by Klaus and now he just closes his eyes and lets the evil eyebrows do all the work. It’s because he’s accepted the Ripper part of him more. My favorite aspect in this scene is how he waits until he left MF to shut it off, because that’s his home aka Caroline.

8x08

“Clarity over cleverness” that’s a pretty accurate description of Damon Stefan IDK even if he never said it he’s sure followed it!

See this is the first time Stefan is actually TRYING to not fly off the handle as a ripper, he even said in 6x17 he doesn’t have an elaborate system to keep himself in check but now he’s trying one. Obviously doesn’t work but I thought it was interesting it was dripping blood from the vein since that’s what pushed Caroline over the edge in 6x17. This episode is FULL of callbacks to their humanity-off arc I love it! They’re very subtle but there’s a bunch.

Sybil hasn’t started annoying me yet but more importantly I am SO HAPPY Caroline is getting scenes solo with the “big bad” of the season because I don’t even remember the last time that happened! Maybe S4 and Silas?

Ripper Stefan picking out Dr. Elena to teach Damon a lesson is DIABOLICAL! The way he stabs Damon with a vervain needle (of course!) and yells “Omg is there a doctor here” DYING.

“Cade never said I couldn’t take a shortcut” “A win is a win”

Oh yeah this place (100 dead witches house)! Good callback

"And you lived up to your potential" HE'S SUCH A MANIAC!

Oh Violet is teen Misty on Yellowjackets!

Threatening to burn those kids alive was pretty stressful! Thank god Caroline had her assistants to do the dirty work for her.

Ripper Stefan making Damon throw the necklace out the window is like when NH!Caro made Stefan burn the letter. Biggest missed opportunity was not having Ripper Stefan ask Caroline to turn it off and join him instead of Damon because that was sitting on a plater after this episode with excellent callbacks to the no humanity arc.

Love the way Ripper Stefan going off the rails was filmed and Malarkey’s song is perfect. He looks so feral in that last shot! Great job again Ian and the writing in this episode was so good.

Lines that made me laugh:

Damon: I disagree with all your opinions (when I read the TVD Reddit)

Bonnie: How else was I going to our Caroline Forbes-Caroline Forbes (I loved this scene and Bonnie was right she had to pull out the big guns)

Stefan: Would it be going out on a limb to say that we stab her with it? (LOL Stefan was like I got a wedding to plan lets wrap this up)

Ripper Stefan: That figures (as he shakes his head in disappointment at that damn necklace again!)

[jones-friend]

So recently I took it upon myself to watch through all the Fantastic Beasts series. Why? Because after the subpar release of Secrets of Dumbledoor all plans to continue making Fantastic Beasts movies have been axed. The series pulled a Divergent and got cancelled before it finished its series. It is also far past the initial wave of hype of its release, and with all the movies being on HBOMax I did not pay money to see these outside the subscription fee I already pay.

And oh goodness, goodness this is not the viewing experience I expected.

So the first movie is the one that acts the most like a movie. There’s characters with motivations and their actions drive the plot forward. I’m fairly certain JKR did not research 1920′s New York but she never makes the history relevant. So you win some you lose some. The premise is Newt Scamander is a wizard conservationist and his beasts get loose in New York, and they have to gather them back up. Unlike the rest of the movies in this series there are scenes I did like here, for example one winged snake grows to fill its habitat and they have to trick it into going inside a teapot to shrink it back down. It’s delightful.

The actors also bring a lot to what would be some flat characters. Eddie Redmayne specifically plays a Newt Scamander on the autistic spectrum without the movie making a big deal out of it, which makes me think this was a choice by the actor and not the writer. The characters have a wonderful charisma and all the actors are having a great time, its very easy to see why there’s so much fanfiction on this series bc of how underutilized everything is.

There’s a number of missteps, and the movie in my brain is better than the real one bc there’s a number of one off lines they could give to help fix things. And part of the problem I have with JKR’s world is that spells are just kind of nonsense. Newt fixes an entire apartment complex by waving his wand. A lot of her racism is still VERY present here as well, and the UK wizards taking pot shots at the US wizards for being unable to marry muggles is. A choice.

The second movie is where the problems begin. As Dumbledoor gets involved he becomes the main character over Newt. The second and third movies do not have to do with magical creature conservation, the creatures become MacGuffins (the item everyone wants) rather than what the movie interacts with. When we do get a scene interacting with Fantastic Beasts its a surprise, a breath of fresh air. Her terrible wizard politics come back and now Wizard Hitler wants to stop world war II, so its up to our wizarding pals to put an end to his evil deeds. It isn’t good.

But the third movie was something special. Out of all these the first can be a fun movie on its own, the second is Not Great, but the third movie is so unique. I have never had a moviegoing experience where the entire movie fell out of my brain immediately after the credits rolled. The issue is none of the scenes have connective tissue and the movie doesn’t set up or pay off enough elements, so this movie is extremely hard to recall in the correct order of scenes. It was like the men in black neurolized me immediately after the movie was over. So I’ll do my best to recall the plot here:

Newt helps a magical creature called a Qilin give birth. He’s attacked by Evil Wizards and is knocked out, one of his creatures flying him back home. Apparently the Qilin is an important creature to the wizarding world bc it bows to pure of heart wizards and decides wizard president. So it was giving birth 100% alone in the wild unprotected as evil wizards descended on it. Wizard Hitler steals the baby Qilin to make it choose him as wizard president. He also kills it bc its blood lets him see the future inaccurately. Bc of this Dumbledoor assembles wizard avengers and tells them the only way we can combat this is to not have a plan. An hour and a half of not having a plan passes. Wizard Hitler has zombie’d the baby qilin and will use it to become wizard president, but the other high profile expert wizards can’t tell he reanimated it like a puppet. There is a series of action scenes in the same physical set and then the zombie qilin bows to Wizard Hitler, but the good guys bring the secret twin qilin to the ceremony and tell it your undead sister can’t hear you. Then the blood pact necklace that kept Dumbledoor and Wizard Hitler from fighting decides to break and there’s a short fight scene. Then the movie stops.

I’m not trying to exaggerate, make hyperbole, it’s really interesting how unconnected all of this mess is. I wouldn’t recommend watching through the Fantastic Beasts movies as bad movies. I would say the first has good moments and isn’t a wholly bad movie, but that third one. There’s something really special about the third one. Its the only one to have the decency to leave nothing behind after it concludes.

[colesterstrudel]

See the problem... a problem... my main problem is with Tokyo Drift. It's the 3rd movie, came out in 06 and features this guy:

That's Han. Han dies. So Tokyo Drift wasn't really connected to the other Fast and Furious movies. Except everyone really liked Han. So they basically went we'll put him in a scene that's set before he died in the next one cause he's neat. Then they brought him back again and gave him a girlfriend. He didn't have a gf in tokyo drift so we gotta resolve that before we send him to his doom. So we're in the 6th movie, the gf dies and he can send this poor sad boy on his way. Except, naturally, the character in tokyo drift doesn't act like a mourning the love of his life cause they didn't know at the time but fine I can roll with it.

Fast forward three movies and we're at F9. At some point between 7 and 9 fans were like we want Han back. And the director was probably like shit so do I cause the actor and director are like buds or something. So they had to come up with a way to zombify my boy. They decided he faked his dead and adopted an 11 year old macguffin. So he's a dad now. Yay!

EXCEPT! That means at some point before or during tokyo drift he obtained and was parenting an 11 year old girl.

The fuck???? We're really just gonna gloss over that???

I haven't explained tokyo drift yet. Basically tokyo drift is about an southern teenager who got sent to his father in tokyo to avoid going to juvie for street racing (yeah). He quickly finds the local racing scene and gets into it with a baby yakuza over a girl. The baby yakuza is like whatever Imma go race and southern idiot goes I'll race you but I don't have a car. So Han

lets the idiot drive his car. Idiot is expecting a drag race and not a drift race. He wrecks the car. Han's like cool I own you now. Southern Idiot is like teach me how to drift. Han's like this kid's got spunk.

So Han is doing business with but mostly scamming Baby Yakuza. And Idiot is getting closer with Baby Yakuza's gf. Eventually idiot moves out of his dad's place and into Han's garage (like a mechanic's garage it's huge and has bunks and stuff.)

Baby Yakuza's big bad Uncle Yakuza discovers the scamming that Han's been doing and blames Baby. So in a fit of rationality Baby Yakuza goes to Han's garage to kill him and Idiot for good measure (note the gf has broken up with BY at this point). A car chase ensues and Han "dies" in a crash. There's more movie after that be we don't really care.

SO! All that means while Han is running around with a bunch of teenagers (there are more teenagers living in his garage than I mentioned. Bow Wow is in this movie.) While he's scamming the Yakuza, while he's making out with models and "grieving" his dead girlfriend. During all of that or at least part of it, Han is going home to his 11 year old daughter who just lost her parents. And I'm just supposed to accept that without question.

And this is why I am suffering.

(I'm not gonna get into the timeline shennanigans cause this is long enough.)

WHAT????? That’s wild dkskdkskdkd I understand your suffering

[vvatchword]

Something that’s been bothering me for some time is the idea that you can make a piece of media and include bad themes and not even fucking know. This realization was kicked off by mulling over BioShock Infinite, which I have been doing a lot of lately. Most of BioShock Infinite was good, and I’ll be eternally grateful for the catharsis that I’m pretty sure only 1% of the world’s population could ever fucking have (exactly how many queer atheist exvangelicals from the American South long to come to terms with the individual and societal ills they caused?), but the bad parts were OHHH so bad. Like fundamentally broken bad. And although it’s been a hot minute since I’ve dug into Ken Levine interviews, I didn’t realize anyone could be as fucking tone deaf as the “violence from the oppressed is as bad as the oppressor’s” and “barely-explored black woman dies so white woman can have character growth”. I’m going to look into his background. I desperately want to know if he’s a trust fund baby or something because that’s some rich centrist white boy bullshit.

How, man. How do you put that media out in 2013. Like even back in 2013, when I was fresh out of Christianity, I’d rolled through enough Tumblr spats and Atlantic thinkpieces to get a feel for the unfortunate ways that isms pop out in media, and Daisy Fitzroy is Exhibit A. We’re talking about a theme that goes way back, too--slavery-era plus some: the black person who exists as a sort of tool or Macguffin or learning experience but has no identity beyond revolving around the white character. I will never forget Robinson Crusoe, when some guy runs up to Robin and is like, bro I want to be your slave plz :) and even I, a sheltered fundamentalist 11-year-old, was like: excuse me what

I think I fell into that common trap of thinking that because someone’s art could empathize with ME they could empathize with other causes I treasure as well. How could Levine, an urban Jewish man perhaps ten years my senior, somehow tack into evangelical nationalism in such a way that I felt like I had beaten my own face into a washbasin for ten hours? How the hell could he not with a black character? What does he think a black player is going to see? What do black players see all the fucking time? What do you think that feels like?

One of my greatest fears since childhood is that I’ll fuck up and hurt somebody. The problem is, of course, that I am a perfectionist and a people-pleaser, and the minute I sniff out a Thing That Might Be Bad, I’m like: HOW CAN I MAKE SURE I AM NOT DOING THE BAD THING SO I AM NOT EJECTED FORCIBLY FROM SOCIETY. Probably because a) I struggle desperately with social cues and b) there was such a big stretch of my life where I was hurting people and believed things that were just profoundly wrong--even though I actively, deeply didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be that person, but I was. I was actively making the world a worse place. I hurt people. I made people cry. I know this for a fucking fact. 

I finally got a bit of perspective as I was watching user txttletale (I refuse to @ that person rofl). See, every time I find someone on Tumblr who has a perspective utterly alien to my own in such a way that I feel like I’m being wrenched around by the shoulders, I watch them. txttletale is a Leninist from a third-world country in South America and oh holy god. I have found brand new ways to feel guilt.

I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to hurt people even though I don’t want to. I am going to believe things that aren’t right and they may be subtle or strange or even completely invisible unless introduced to specific contexts. There will be future comprehensions for which my current ones are unforgivable. It’s impossible not to have a perspective that has unforeseen consequences.

This is both a relief and a responsibility.

All you can do is your best. All you can do is try and treat people with respect and change your actions once you realize you’re fucking up. I can definitely do that.

[northiron]

This is a private rol.epl.ay blog for 𝑳𝒀𝑨𝑵𝑵𝑨 𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑹𝑲𝑨 𝑺𝑶𝑵𝑮 𝑶𝑭 𝑰𝑪𝑬 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑭𝑰𝑹𝑬. Divergent and extremely headcanon based. the blog itself is a sideblog to @gedwimora​ , as this is a hub-style multimuse. If you follow here the follow back will come from there.

Medium to sporadic activity. Revived by Train | EST | 30s | They/Them

❄︎ 𝑨 𝑺𝑻𝑼𝑫𝒀 𝑰𝑵. Bully Hunter, Girl In The Tower , Go Out with a Smile , Hot-Blooded , Knight in Shining Armor , Living MacGuffin , Passionate Sports Girl , Iron Lady , Rebellious Princess , Silk Hiding Steel , Small Role, Big Impact , Tomboy with a Girly Streak , Unkempt Beauty , No Guy Wants An Amazon , Action Mom , The Bride with a Past , Even the Girls Want Her , Final Girl , Blood Knight , Casual Kink , Deadpan Snarker , Didn't Think This Through , Bastard Begetter , Children Raise You.

𝑹𝑼𝑳𝑬𝑺  ❄︎ 𝑳𝑶𝑹𝑬 𝑳𝑰𝑩𝑹𝑨𝑹𝒀

iconless until further notice

𝑼𝑺𝑬𝑭𝑼𝑳 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑶 :

❄︎ Lyanna is about 34 in both the present A.SO.IAF and HO.TD timeline ❄︎ I don't specify what happened between her and Rha.eg.ar in part to give people playing him some say over his actions and because I myself have no fixed stance on what went down. It's a topic that is largely avoided and danced around when people talk to her, in part because of what people assume happened and how knowing too much about it could destabilize the realm.

❄︎ This is a R + L = J zone and a Lya.n.na is the Knight of the Laughing Tree truther zone.

❄︎ Ly.an.na doesn't marry Robert after the war. She uses the assumptions of what went down to kinda force everyone's hand, that and suddenly she's not so appealing now that she's a bastard whom she refuses to abandon and might be from assault and the prince's. In fact Lya.n.na never marries, though I tend to think she likely had more children but all of them are bastards. I tend to keep that loose because honestly I'd rather let other people insert their own muses/ocs there.

❄︎ Lyanna's cover story for Jon, since she refuses to pretend he's not hers is that he's Arthur Dayne's, though many still think he's likely Rhaegar's. When that came up and threats were made it was made clear the North would go to war over the baby and Lyanna's safety, smarter heads prevailed and the Arthur Dayne story was pushed to keep things from going off the rails.

❄︎ Lives in Winterfell with Ned's family and is very happy until you know, The Books Happen. Spends that time doing things like learning swordsmanship and all the more masculine things her father wouldn't let her learn.

❄︎ Can go south but more likely than not ends up staying in Winterfell even after Robb goes to war and fends off the Ironborn invasion.

HO.TD VERSE:

❄︎ Mainly show based since the book is a historical text full of conflicting evidence and inaccuracies as is expected from a history book. The show at least is a concrete set of events.

❄︎ She's a Stark cousin who just kinda out here living her life with her bastard son(/kids) up in the North.

❄︎ She went south for Baelon's birthday tournament and actually engaged in the joust as the knight of the laughing tree. She unhorsed several men being before being unhorsed and unmasked herself by Dae.mon. Jon was also conceived at this tourney. He father is whoever, I have an idea for how he could be a targ bastard still but it's not really important and not the default. If people want that I'm happy to do it.

❄︎ For the sake of rp is sent south to Harrenhall/Dragonstone with Jon to act as a Northern representative/advisor.

[blogtaculous]

I’ve seen all the mainline entries of Neon Genesis: Evangelion and I have some opinions.

In general I like cosmic horror and using Christian iconography for cosmic horror goes hard as fuck, so naturally I am inclined towards liking the whole of Evangelion, but I think it stumbles by doing the usual anime thing of having an extremely high number of Macguffins and Secret Objects and Concepts. The Rebirth movies had a chance to consolidate all of these things, considering the change in format from 90s serial, but it actually doubled down and got worse!

I’m totally fine with a piece of media not spending a lot of exposition time on some of the outlier fluff, but Evangelion spends tons of time of fluff that doesn’t even matter, not to mention all the things that needed more exposition time. Barriers, spears, moons, bla bla bla… there’s just so much.

There was a lot to like, including, but not limited to:

The found footage of the Second Impact was great. “It’s spreading its wings!” with that broken feed was just enough to be vaguely unsettling and really cool.

The pilots have great motion in the plugs and it translated really well to the action by the Evas themselves. Asuka especially moves great in her plug.

Tokyo-3 is neat. Love the receding buildings and the missile launchers disguised as hillsides. The whole geofront is good.

Love that all the Angel’s weapons find ways to form a crucifix.

In general, very good characters.

The Angel concepts were good, especially in the rebirth movies where the bad ideas could be safely discarded. Loved both depictions of the sniper battle with (checks wiki) Ramiel.

Solid ending (of the rebirth movies). I’m glad Shinji didn’t win through force of arms but through patience and understanding. I’m glad Gendo got actually introspective and recognized he was wrong.

Obviously, there’s also a lot to not like. Let’s start off with the obvious that Shinji sucks. He does. Goddamn does it suck watching over 20 episodes and 3.5 movies where the main character acts like a baby. I am fully aware that he’s suffering, and that he’s got some trauma, but geez how exhausting is it to watch the entire plot revolve around “will the main character literally just do the thing already” over and over and over again. He spends 40+ minutes of Thrice Upon a Time just being a baby. There’s no other way to put it. He’s finally allowed to mature at the end, but it’s frustrating how much of the plot requires Shinji to be immature as long as possible.

Other things I didn’t like:

I briefly thought the time skip would be a super solid choice, allowing the narrative to break away from the original show and forge a new path unburdened. Unfortunately, it instead became extremely silly. The narrative scale ramps up as the resources available dwindle to zero. Mountains of Evas, four spaceships, clones everywhere…

The names of the rebirth movies. 3.0+1.01? Get out of here.

Speaking of 3.0+1.01… I think it was planned to get some mileage out of the same imagery as End of Evangelion despite the narrative being so different, which I thought was bad. Obviously they wanted Big Rei back on the horizon and the ocean of crucifixes across the earth, but it just came off as “been there, done that.” Especially without the image of everyone turning to soup as their souls were taken it just seems too self-referential. It didn’t need to happen in the film, it just needed us to see it.

Even with the most charitable reading, some of the nudity and sexual stuff from the show is not great considering the characters are 14. I’m down with media recognizing the inherent trauma of growing up and grappling with the conflict between childhood and adulthood when it comes to sex and relationships, but many times it felt leering instead of respectful given the media and it’s intended audience.

In general there was a missed opportunity to tell a more tight and consistent story in the rebirth movies, and 1.11 really proves that. Unfortunately it looks like the project ballooned too much as time went on.

Anyway, I liked it all fine. Some really solid stuff and some stuff that wasn’t. Mari and Misato and Asuke steal the show, because of course they do. I liked the tone shift in the original show as it embraced the cosmic horror, and was glad the rebirth movies really leaned into it, but at the end of the day there’s just too much going on, and I often got the feeling that what was happening on screen wasn’t connected to anything concrete. There are questions posed and I don’t think the creators even have answers (the Far Cry 5 gambit, if you will).

Honestly, just a few more passes over the shows own cosmology and it would be much better. If nothing else, it’s just further proof that crucifix imagery goes hard as fuck.

[druidx]

Virgo and cassieopia

Hi Wari-ori-ori-or :D Thanks for the questions.

Virgo - Describe your favorite tropes

Found family (always at the top of any list)

Sunshine characters whose spines are made from iron, and who are always underestimated.

Conversely, the tough-guy with a heart of gold

Plot wise - the MC acquires something seemingly worthless which is later revealed to be a great or terrible macguffin

Cassiopeia - What’s your favorite scene so far?

I'll answer this for The Ruby Falls, though that may be a mistake, because I have a great many favorite scenes in that so far.

I think it's got to be a domestic scene, near the end of the book. While waiting for Martin to translate a document, Aderyn has taken herself off to do another job, which results in disrupting a rather insular rural community. She gets into a fight with the local rabble-rousers and returns to the Safehouse with a fantastic set of bruises and scrapes. The scene I'm most fond of is a series of interactions leading off from that fight, with various members of the bodyguard squad where they each take one look at the bruises, sigh, and start fussing over Aderyn. She walks in, and the each immediately stop what they're doing to show her some TLC.

Like, 100k words ago, they didn't know her from Jack, had no reason to care. And now she's their baby sister and is being looked after as such. I just think it's cute. I am a big fan of the small actions which show humanity between the big, action scenes.

Thanks for the question, and I'm so sorry it took this long to answer 😅️

🫖️🌿️

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 125 Rundown

Inuyasha: So I’mma be honest I kinda tuned a good deal of this episode out while watching it because this one’s really predictable. I remember watching this one the first time because this is the big one where Kagome finally admits she loves Inuyasha which everyone and their brother has known for like sixty episodes, like the movie that has them kiss comes way before this so this confession is basically meaningless at this point in the series but it’s still a milestone I guess. The Baby is still trying to fuck with Kagome’s emotions and forces her into enough introspection to force the confession, telling her it’s normal to be jealous and bitter because that’s the human heart which is ironic since HE’S a human heart. But Kagome finds the strength to purify their attempts to control her and come to terms with her feelings while also admitting despite some intrusive thoughts she doesn’t have any real ill will despite her natural jealousy which is kind of neat, lots of magical macguffins react to Kagome because she’s pure of heart or whatever but I think this is what they mean, that it’s not that she’s without flaw but she’s always compassionate and bears no hatred in her convictions, would’ve still be down for an Evil Kagome arc but it is what it is. Anyway Inuyasha busts through and the baby puts up a barrier to monologue long enough to tell Miroku that he’s technically Naraku’s heart but not the loving Kikyo part that was just all dead weight so he’s basically all the nihilism and cynicism without the horny on main thing that got Onigumo into trouble. But yeah, the day is saved cause Kagura’s not about to 1v4 the main group while holding a baby and Kanna’s not allowed to do anything until the end so yeah, Baby’s gotta take a nap cause groping Kagome’s tits tired him out but we’ve essentially gotten nowhere.

Yu Yu Hakusho: I actually had to look up the timeline for when this arc aired compared to when Diamond is Unbreakable was written because the vibes are just so similar and there IS some overlap so idk what that means but I’ve connected the dots, I’ve connected them. But yeah Yusuke and company have to scout the city for the barrier breaker squad and other various Stand Users, so Yusuke and Genkai take the two red shirt Stand Users to scout the town and Kurama, Kuwabara, Botan and Taboo Kid try to find the center of the hole which… of course isn’t above ground. I mean Yusuke firing Spirit Guns over and over until he makes a crater might get you there but shonen heroes never take the ‘bust through the wall’ Kool Aid Man approach because the villains have a lovely array of sequentially ranked mooks in a labyrinth waiting for you and it’d be a shame to waste it. Meanwhile Yusuke’s group finds a random Stand User that can read minds and Yusuke bullies him by just being too deadass strong to be fucked with even if you read his mind (there’s a little loophole shenanigans here with the mind reading but it’s fine, the effect is Yusuke’s basically a demigod at this point and a telepathic Stand User isn’t going to stop him). They use this guy to do a sweep of the city for anyone thinking about murder or opening a demon portal, luckily Sensui just happens to pass by and his brain is just ‘murdermurdermurdermurder’ on a constant loop so they peg him pretty quick but because Sensui is totally not Yoshikage Kira and seeing his face isn’t allowed, the dude gets taken out by a pencil eraser chucked from the next zip code with the speed of a bullet. The funny thing is the telepath tells them the code names of all of Sensui’s seven associates even though Sensui was way out of range when telling it to Sniper and said he was ‘rehersing a speech’ which is really fucking funny because it means Sensui is thinking about his evil monologues for his underlings like way ahead of time and was mentally preparing it and that’s why they now know the titles of each enemy Stand User. Also they’re in the hospital now for that episode everyone loves with the Doctor and the crazy animation next time and everyone’s just shocked Yusuke had the restraint to not chase after Sensui right away and they’re like ‘oh shit has Yusuke actually grown as a character?’ and Yusuke’s like ‘well kinda but also this guy’s aura is twisted and curvy so I really didn’t wanna fuck around with the dude right this second’.

Fate/Apocrypha: So we’re still in Jack’s coma dream and she’s tortured Atalante into submission with a child mob while Jeanne’s like ‘wait a minute I know this shithole, we’re in England’and there’s a lot of navelgazing and jumpy editing here but what I THINK is what they’re trying to get across is that Jack as a Servant is an amalgamation of lost children that died in poverty after being cast off by society and I don’t know HOW exactly that intersects with all the murders since Base Jack does seem to have technically existed and actually been the murderer but it may not have been idk. Anyway Jeanne finds the child mob and is like ‘okay time to go Anakin Skywalker on these kids’ and Atalante shows up and is like ‘holy shit bro aren’t you Catholic isn’t murdering children bad?’ and she’s like ‘Yes I’m Catholic but these are ghost kids so fuck off’ both Atalante and Sieg are kinda not happy with this answer but the kids are all ‘oh, we get to die? Sweet’ and as much as I’d have liked to see Jeanne rip a bloody flag through a horde of children to really seal the trauma they try to convey with this moment she just kinda… says a prayer and the kids die in a glowy light, like they don’t even make it visually clear that Jeanne killed them except for everyone shouting that she did. I mean I get the basic idea that Jeanne was healing the wounded souls that made up Jack and Atalante wanted to help them live rather than help them die but they treat this like Jeanne just waded through orphan guts and Sieg is traumatized and that is not what just happened, like this is supposed to be Sieg’s big ‘man the world kinda sucks’ moment and it’s basically a Konso from Bleach. Also just kinda wondering how Atalante’s philosophy works like when do you stop being a kid and she stops caring whether you live or die, like is it 18 or 16 like when does she say fuck off I don’t love you anymore and if she got her wish would all kids just stay kids forever or would all adults turn into kids? Idk her philosophy just doesn’t make much sense if you treat children as growing humans instead of static ageless characters.  

Speed Grapher: So we get a decent shot of Suitengu’s plan in action here as his goons enjoy the vast wealth the plan has made and they use Saiga’s photograph of Kagura as the Goddess for the branding of their new cosmetics line that’s been laced with Euphoria because nothing says cosmetics like a dead-eyed hypnotized fifteen year old in fetish gear silently judging you. While all this is going on turns out Saiga and Kagura have been living together for a bit, Saiga working as a fisherman to get passage to international waters so he and Kagura can drop off the map because yeah, Suitengu basically owns the government so fighting probably isn’t worth it, might as well go live on an island somewhere with the like two years Kagura has left to live. Though they’re scooped up by the coast guard and it turns out the armed foreigners are NOT Suitengu’s group despite a red herring of him finding out where they are but they’re actually with Saiga’s doctor friend who now has a sponsor in the form of a journalist turned politician that is using a small country’s embassy to host Saiga and Kagura to testify to take down Suitengu (and the Prime Minister backing him that will probably help this guy’s chance at getting office but that’s just a side note no worries) Saiga and this dude do some regular boxing for a bit and it’s pretty cool to just watch a brawl happen. Saiga’s understandably kinda hesitant to let Kagura just be thrown into a media circus especially with how her condition keeps getting worse There is a pretty funny scene where Kagura tries to pull the ‘hey I can’t sleep lemme come to your room’ and Saiga lets her in and fucking leaves, like she’s like ‘I can’t sleep if you don’t get in bed with me’ and he’s just like ‘then don’t sleep’ and dips out of that cliché real fast it’s hilarious, like it has ‘then perish’ energy. Turns out Kagura is somehow still exhausted, the tumor’s prolly not doing her any favors there and Saiga’s doctor budy says she’ll be fine but there’s this scummy dude that wants to get Kagura to a regular hospital and get a sample of her that exaggerates her condition and spills the beans that Saiga will go blind without treatment to kind of try to force their hand in the whole testifying thing. Like admittedly this dude is definitely an asshole and probably on Suitengu’s side but he’s barely lying, Saiga will go blind if not die from the Euphoria Factor and Kagura’s condition is terminal, I don’t think anyone’s told her how bad it is yet so scummy dude may have a point in telling her.

[ayankun]

I posted 888 times in 2022

267 posts created (30%)

621 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ayankun

@funnytwittertweets

@autistic-af

@lionfloss

@entomancy

I tagged 280 of my posts in 2022

#spotify - 45 posts

#aos - 29 posts

#youtube - 26 posts

#spoilers - 21 posts

#hsmtmts - 11 posts

#legends of tomorrow - 8 posts

#aya does a dream journal - 6 posts

#<3 - 4 posts

#cj the x - 4 posts

#superman & lois - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#the spirit of the rant was "lololololololol cw does crisis to put all their characters on ine earth to make it easier to justify crossovers

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

imagine it now they start a spark

Fandom: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (Disney) Type: um it's the same genre as the movies Characters: Zed/Addison, literally everyone else is here Warnings: this is Mouse-Certified Wholesome Content, but there is some what do they call it, mild peril in the third act Word Count: ~23k Tag: So I saw a prompt in the tags one time a million years ago and thought "I could do that," and then accidentally engineered a sequel to the second movie using hammed-up themes from the franchise that resonate with me and me only.

—–

imagine it now they start a spark

"Hi, I'm Addison!  Welcome to Seabrook, Town of Tomorrow!"

Addison Wells:  blue-eyed, sixteen years old, fearlessly optimistic, and a perfectly ordinary human being.  Unearthly silver-white hair notwithstanding.

With a grin bright enough to cast shadows at high noon, she gestures overhead at the crisp professionally printed banner that hangs across the entryway into her parents' pastel kitchen.  It reads "Seabrook Centennial" in crisp pastel block letters.

"It's a pretty good city motto, right?  Working towards a better future is a totally cool thing.  But for Seabrook Day this summer, we're actually taking a look back at the town's past to celebrate the hundred years since our ancestors first settled here.  And let me tell you, a lot has changed since then."

Addison pauses, her grin slipping a little bit.  She straightens her baby-blue jacket and shakes her head once.  Shoulders squared, she continues with a determined cheeriness.

"Seabrook Day's always been a big deal, and the main event is the Night Show!  That's where the Mighty Shrimps cheer squad goes all out with a special Seabrook Day routine, followed by the loudest, brightest fireworks display you've ever seen.  But this year we're going to go even bigger than ever.  That's because our community is bigger than it's ever been. This year, for the first time, we're going to celebrate a new and improved Seabrook.  Past, present, and future.  That means everyone's invited.  Right, Zed?"

She sweeps an arm out with a flourish, handing off the introductions to her co-announcer.

Zed Necrodopolis:  green-haired, six feet tall, comically animated, and a pretty typical zombie.  

He throws himself into a forward roll down the narrow front hall of his dad's brick row house, popping to his feet just inside the cozy, tattered dining room.

Read the rest on AO3!

6 notes - Posted July 5, 2022

#4

Big Red contemplating using the cologne to win over Ashlyn, while Ricky sings Bet On It, is truly chef's kiss.

Also fun foreshadowing for Ricky "missing the point" Bowen's S2 arc, too.

EDIT: OMG it's Miss Jenn's arc, tooooooo. Ricky and Miss Jenn lose themselves in the pursuit of what they want. Everyone else (citation needed) finds themselves.

8 notes - Posted March 3, 2022

#3

Ohhhh myyyyy gooood Martha Kent just shut down Jonathan Kent's mansplainy conjecture on the nonsense sci-fi plot MacGuffin with a peeved, "Jonathan, this isn't about trying to figure out what happened," and lordy if I haven't seen anything more important depicted on my TV screen.

Clark's in Smallville to get advice, and the need to get advice is just a narrative construct, a means to an end. The end is character-driven storytelling, where it's not what happens that's important, it's why what happens matters to whom it happens to.

Martha Kent, my hero.

8 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

#2

👏👏👏Legends of Tomorrow👏👏👏

LEGENDS

👏👏👏

OF

👏👏👏

TOMORROW

👏👏👏

10 notes - Posted January 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Speed Racer (2008) is a story about cycles of time, it's about the tragedy of the past informing the present and the hope that the present will inform the future; it's about being stuck doing laps on a track that will never change, unless maybe somehow you're brave enough to change yourself, and then seeing what happens differently this time because you did.

Anyway, shout out to Lana and Lilly Wachowski everybody!!!!

20 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[squidy-y2k]

Off the top of my head there’s 3 male characters with any sort of significance

1: Rinnosuke

this guy is the only one with actual lasting plot significance. You occasionally see him show up in fan works, mostly for his macguffin powers of being able to understand any tool. Or he’s part of Marisa’s extensive haram/polycule.

2: The Fortune Teller

This guy showed up once in the manga and his claim to fame is that Reimu killed him since he turned himself into a type of youkai that needs to eat humans to live. She doesn’t usually kill youkais(to the point where she’s let pretty much every world ending villain go after she beats them), in case you were wondering why this was a big deal. He’s mostly a joke character whenever he shows up in anything.

3: Unnamed Giant Catfish

Yeah baby

the madoka misogyny hydra post made me wonder how many m/m touhou project fics there were. good news: it's only 33 out of 3474 and those are mostly crossovers

bad news: one of them includes martin luthor king jr/malcolm x as a ship

Question 1: are there literally any men in touhou or are all 33 of those involving characters that aren’t originally touhous?

Question 2: ???????

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Avalance and their ‘non-verbal communication’ in Legends of Tomorrow 4x13- Egg MacGuffin

[abbynx]

Catch feels Pt. 1

Emilia Harcourt X Reader

Genre: Romance, fluff, a dash of angst later... Maybe a bit Rivals-to-lovers

Warning: Violence and cursing, because it's Peacemaker, baby.

You aren't particularly good with hand-eye coordination, catching things isn't really your forte. One mission had everyone desperate that they tossed you a vital macguffin and it didn't end well, who'd've thought? They expected you to catch the thing and you didn't, hence losing your place as one of the most crucial members of the spy agent department and landing yourself a gig under Clemson Murn's team as a repercussion.

Oh sure, whatever. That doesn't sound bad... You had to jinx it, didn't you?

It was a mess. Why the fuck is the headquarters in an old rental? Why the fuck would you be working with the fucking Peacemaker of all people? Why were you operating with a bunch of Argus agents? You were an elite agent, for god's sake— so that's how badly you fucked up? Great, they didn't even provide you the fancy shmancy tools, how the fuck are you supposed to fight off butterfly people without your handy utility belt?

"Hey L/N, move your stuff off. That's my spot."

You looked up at her, raising an indignant brow. It was the same look she replicated back at you. You made no moves that Harcourt wanted to see, as you put your hand on your hip defiantly.

"I don't see your name on it. If I had seen "amateur" carved on it, then I'd know it's yours."

John glanced at both of you, spectacled gaze darting back and fourth between you. You were fighting. Over a desk. Possessing so much pride, that you refuse to move out and pick another spot, and dare call Harcourt an amateur? John almost felt scared to look at Harcourt, who just have murder in her mind, but then she scoffs.

"Aren't you the one that fucked up Operation Question Mark?" The blonde singes through you so easily and smirks at her achievement. It might be split-second reaction, but it takes a single crack to break something.

Leota glances between the two of you, above you towers a certain tension... Based on John's reaction, it might result into something not pretty.

"Uhhh, I-I— um— Y/N you can have my desk if you want to," Leota stutters, gathering her things of her desk and practically shoving it in a box.

"No, I'll take it." Emilia says, her gaze remain on you, ever so challenging.

'Fine. Two can play at this game.' You return her eye contact, before resuming to you customizing your table.

From there, a rivalry formed.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Going to the meeting was too much of a waste of a time, despite you were not informed why the hell were you meeting at a local restaurant. Given that the venue is a social place, you were at the correct assumption that it was a stupid little team building shindig. The morning before was already stressful to you, meeting with the joke of an assassin Peacemaker, the bickering at the headquarters, why bother attending?

By this, you find yourself in a local bar with alcohol in hand.

You wouldn't last long in this team anyways, Elite Agents will need their spy back any time now and you were the best of the best in the team and they surely would not operate as efficiently without you. By the time they realise your presence had made their recent performances dreadful, they would be begging Amanda Waller to get you back on the team.

What do they do quickly and successfully? None, that's what. Without you, ninety nine percent of their powerhouse is gone. It was a one time thing that you failed, why the fuck was the consequence so damn much? And you weren't even given a warning! This was your first fucking offense and you don't remember your teammates being given shit for being such incompetent cunts.

Eliot the idiot? He abandoned the reconnaissance mission after getting a hard on from a passing chick, he was distracted and the mission flunked because he needed to get his dick sucked. Maya, the fucking big mouthed bitch cannot, for the life of her, shut the fuck up— the whore talked and spilled important mission bits, oblivious to a nearby opposing spy. And big boy Laurence— "leader", credit taker and blamer, the mythic bitch. Maybe you could have performed better if he wasn't always gloating on the earpiece. And the almighty himself blamed you for the fuck up, when he should know full-well of your flaw. Your other two teammates were there, why of all people did he chose you? As a leader he should fucking know. Fucking dumbasses, all of them could deep-throat a cactus and choke for all you care—

"Funny that you're here when you said you weren't feeling well." Your narrowed eyes flickered upwards towards the source. On your left, the blondie from your work was a seat away from you.

"I wasn't." You reply, swirling the contents of your drink before downing it all in one go. "And funny that you're here, coulda sworn there's like three other bars near the shitty restaurant you were in. Of all places you headed here. You stalking me or something?" Harcourt noticed how you drawl on your words, watching you swipe the cuff of your sleeves on the corner of your lips, as you look up at her with half-lidded eyes trying hard to glare at her.

"You wish." She scoffs in amusement, before taking a sip from her beer. "Kinda wished I did the same thing, woulda saved me from wasting my time. I can't fucking stand Smith."

"Then that makes the two of us, sister." You sighed, wanting to take another sip from your drink, when you realised you just gulped it all down awhile ago.

Emilia watches as you growl in frustration and a small smile lights her features ever so slightly. "Hey waiter, get them a refill. On me."

Your head whip at her direction so swiftly, eyes wide that you swore you sobered up for a moment. To your shock, your ears weren't playing tricks on you and the bartender headed to your direction and filled your glass again. You furrow your brows at her. "Why?"

"Why not?" She muses with a smirk, before taking a sip from her bottle with a contented smile.

"This morning I was a bitch to you and you were a bitch to me. What's with the change of heart?" It was suspicious to you and if your long years as a spy that had undergone intense trainings in all aspects of combat (except eye-hand coordination, apparently) had taught you something, is that in one's kindness underlies intent.

"You ask way too much questions, just enjoy your drink. Don't get used to it." She rolls her eyes at you, before returning to her beer.

Did she secretly bribe the bartender to lace your drink with poison? No, she couldn't have. Why would she? But why buy you a drink?

"Oh for fuck's sake, just drink it." She must've sensed your inner thoughts.

"Thanks, I guess." You reply begrudgingly, before downing your drink again. A haze filled your mind for moment, before it clears, when you heard a clutter of voices beside you. You looked to see a group of men grinning and murmuring at your and Harcourt's direction.

One of them approaches, and takes advantage of the seat setting you and Harcourt apart. "Hey Goldilocks... Can I ask you a question?" You felt the disgust on her behalf as his runs his finger on her arm.

"As long it's a question about curing a rotting fish breath, sure."

A laugh broke from your throat, going as far as doubling from your seat from her quick wit and razor sharp tongue. The guy fucked off aggressively, though not causing too much of a scene and not a flinch was pulled from the blondie.

"I like you, you're not as bad as I thought." You breathed out after a good laugh, limping your wrist at her direction.

Her stone cold face cracks a subtle smile at your direction, but couldn't help but to wonder how much drinks have you had before she arrived. Though the moment did not last when a certain Chris had to barge in.

"Hey! Crazy coincidence, right?" You roll your eyes at him, turning away, ordering yourself another drink.

"Oh yeah. It's uncanny." Harcourt replies flatly.

You were in too deep in your haze to comprehend your surroundings, it was getting way too hot on your seat and everything was spinning. God, why were you so stupid? Getting drunk in these situations? What would the Elites think of you? You already made yourself out as a fool in front of them, why were you doing it to your new teammates again?

You jump from a sudden commotion taking place behind you, Harcourt having a guy maneuvered in a painful looking position without making too much of an effort. Everything was blur to you, all you saw was Harcourt approaching her seat again as if nothing happened. Miss Harcourt and her strength and beauty and brains.

Next thing you knew, she was throwing bills on the counter before she hurls you off your seat. You can only follow her, dumbfounded as she drags you off.

"Where we goin'?" You slur, attempting to keep up with her ruthless pace.

"My place. Stop by a seven eleven and buy a pack of beers or something. You like beer?" She asks, annoyance still in her voice but was fading by the moment she left with you.

"Hell yes," you drawl, looping your elbow through hers. "Fuck those guys at the bar."

"Alright then." Harcourt smirks, inwardly thinking to herself, 'At least you're slightly bearable to drink with.'

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

The night was a blur to you, waking up dazed, you were confused as to why you weren't in your motel room. Sitting up, a sharp pain struck you and had you burying your head in your hands. For a moment panic had taken over you, thinking someone had placed a drug in your drink— Harcourt that little bitch and her free drink!

"Morning sleepyhead. You can get the fuck off my bed now." Speak of the she-devil.

"Why am I in your bed?" Oh god, did she—

"Dragged your drunk ass from the bar. God knows what'll happen if I leave you there with those douchebags." She hands you a glass of water. "How many drinks have you had anyways?"

"One," The blondie raises her brow at you as you paused to take a drink. "Bottle." She hums, impressed at how you held your alcohol. Apparently one bottle was still unable to knock you out until one pack of beer. "Jesus fucking Christ, this headache is killing me. You got painkillers or something?"

"Sure thing." You stare at her weirdly as you rummages through her things. When the fuck was she this kind to you? She returns and you retain your neutral expression, accepting the medicine from her before taking another swig from the glass of water. "You can get your candy ass off my sheets now. Murn's calling all of us for a meeting."

"At this early in the morning?" You groan, squinting at the light peaking through the windows.

"Try being woken up at four in the morning because your idiot coworker got caught up in some deep shit and had to cover your hungover ass for not picking up your phone."

"Which idiot? New girl or Pissmaker?"

"The latter. Apparently he fucked a butterfly."

You sighed, hearing the news made your head pound more painfully. "Well fuck." You stir yourself into a sitting position, wincing at the heavy weight on your frontal lobe and pulled the blankets off you. "I'mma shower real quick."

"Sure thing, L/N." Harcourt watches as your stumbling form made your way towards the door and leave.

'I guess you're not as bad as I thought.' She sighs, before preparing herself for another meeting.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

The reconnaissance mission around the Goff house would have been far too easy for you, but apparently it was crucial to keep your distance. Though, being from a far distance with a pair of binoculars is good too. Just all three of you saddled up to take this mission. It would have been better if it were just Harcourt, though. You weren't particularly paying attention to their conversation, opting to stay silent and concentrated on the family, but it admittedly vexxed you. How dare they talk? Can't they just stay focused for a little bit? Not to mention, the rustling sounds you've been hearing has been a constant pain in the ass.

"Hey Y/N."

You glance at her, eyes widening in panic and before you can process anything, you flail and attempt to catch a flask Harcourt had just thrown at you. You manage to catch it after a bit of a flimsy hand flailing, before glaring at her.

"You know you could have just handed it to me like a normal person." You twist the cap off, before realising it was alcohol inside it. She just shrugs, before heading off somewhere. "Is this vodka?"

"Yeah. Big boys need their vodkas to keep warm." Chris grins at you.

You flatly chuckle. "Ah huh." Drinking on duty? No thanks. You twist the cap back on before handing it back to Chris. You return to the binoculars and spy on the Goff family.

"So... L/N... What's your story?" Chris breaks the silence between you, almost hesitantly. You always knew he's been intimated by your presence, rightly so, but occasionally makes jabs at your direction. After spending some time with him, you were desensitized by his annoying nature, but you must admit, the annoyance was still there, lingering.

"My daddy is a genius who want nothing to do with me but I was hellbent on wanting to get his attention and approval, but instead I got Amanda Waller's attention at the age of sixteen and now I'm here." Your attention remain on the the Goff housez but decided to indulge Chris out of boredom.

"Aren't you an Elite Agent? One of the higher up douches? I mean you're not a douche— kind of— but I heard the guys were douches."

"Mhmmm. And I hope to work with those douches again."

"Why?" His question have strike something in you. He's right, they are a bunch of douches. Why did you want to work with them again, when you hated them?

"None of your business. Now will you please zip it?" You take your attention away from the binoculars for a moment to glare at Chris, before resuming. "And tell your friend to fuck off before I kill his whole fucking family."

"Jokes on you!" The aforementioned friend pops from the bushes with a rustle. "They're all gone hehe... Heh..." He pauses midway his laugh, when he comes upon a realisation. He fell in your trap so seamlessly and it was stupid. He smacks the bottom of his palm over his forehead. "Ahhh damn it."

"The fuck are you doing here, man?" Chris asks, more visibly shocked than you are.

"Oh I followed you in my Vigilantemobile." Vigilante replies with an as a matter of factly-tone.

You can only sigh, disregarding their conversation as you took a close look at the house. Still no sign of them being butterflies. Eventually, Harcourt had returned and joined in the chaos that is their banter. As much as you love her, she really needs to know the matter in hand.

Wait...

Oh no. Oh fucking no.

Love her? Pfft, no. What the fuck, that was a slip of a tongue you didn't love her, fuck that, you hate her. She's a sharp tongued bitch that doesn't watch her tone with you!

"Can everyone shut the fuck up and get back to the mission?" You interject from their banter, turning to glare at them before returning to the binoculars with an indignant sigh.

"Yeah, what they said." Harcourt agrees, before returning to her post beside you.

Beside you... Oh gosh, she's so near... Wait fuck no, that's not how it's supposed to go—

You faux concentration was bullshit and all you did was to stare at nothing as your head ran a hundred miles because of her. Ugh, why the fuck is she so damn beautiful, gorgeous, intelligent, sharp—

Denying was your saving grace and came to your salvation. There's nothing wrong about admiring and recognising your teammates best traits, it's normal. It goes to show how they manage to make the group stick even if it's highly amateur to your standard... Yeah, that's it.

You sighed, shaking your head before regaining your vision and getting back to the task at hand. You were probably the least concentrated person in the team despite your lack of response to your surroundings.

The family was confirmed as butterflies courtesy of you and all that needed to be done was Chris to pull the trigger. Glancing over him, you immediately notice the trembling of his finger against the trigger. Wanting to get over it, you almost stood from your spot to take over the assassination, when Vigilante took it.

In Elite, they really don't keep witnesses alive, let alone get near you, let alone do the fucking killing for you. But perhaps they do it different in this department. Or maybe the team was just desperate for another member, they're willing to take a rando from the street to do their bidding.

You attention turn to Chris flinching at the sound of the gunshots being fired, a tinge of pity almost surges within you but you reminded yourself being objective at the task at hand is the number one rule in this line of career. He's killed before, in what way does this differ from other murders he committed?

"And papa bear, ouuuuuuu—"

"KYAAAA,"

Caught off guard, you were unprepared when Judomaster attacked from the shadows and made himself known by pinning a target on you, taking you out before you can pull gun at him. He effortless took two birds with one stone as upon taking you out, he had your unconscious body hindering Vigilante by pushing you on him.

It was pathetic in hindsight, how you were the first one to be taken out, seeing as you claimed you were the powerhouse of every group. It was so fucking ironic a simple chop on the nape had you collapsing and be used as a human trajectory.

'Fuckin' damnit, I barely put up a fight! Stupid, fucking pathetic little bitch!'