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mettywiththenotes · 3 years ago

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320 bits I wanna talk about

Iieda looks like he’s doing the *inhale* before the BOI IF YOU DON’T- meme. Something along the lines of “BOI IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ASS BACK TO UA-” kind of thing lol.

He holding something in definitely. Maybe charging up for an attack? Idk but he sure seems concentrated

Actually, Iieda seems kinda considering. Maybe he’s weighing up if he should join in the fight, as if he’s asking “Will I have to fight Midoriya, if it comes down to it? Or can the others handle this?” Something tells me he doesn’t want to have to weigh in on the fight. Maybe tear into Izuku verbally, but fight? No I don’t think he wants to do that

But also, I find it interesting that that black panel of text is under him and then it cuts to Bakugou yelling at Izuku. I mean, it could very well be Bakugou thinking that, but if that’s so, then why is Iieda the first person we see?

So, I think it’s Iieda thinking that. Tensions are rising, it seems. I’m expecting his turn to be full of a lot of emotion, or at least trying to get across to Izuku that he feels betrayed but mostly just wants Izuku to come back home.

I don’t really know what’ll happen with Iieda exactly, but I’m totally interested to see what happens

I know Bakugou has problems with his emotions and words and stuff, but I also think here he’s trying to anger Izuku in order to get him to fight back, maybe so he’s more angry than flexible in a fight, so the end result would be Izuku getting too angry to predict anything and eventually tripping up, and that’s when 1A could capture him.

The one thing to remember about Izuku is that allowing him to think is going to be the opponent’s downfall. We saw in the Kacchan VS Deku 2 fight that Bakugou knew this and so kept attacking as much as possible so Izuku wouldn’t have time to think. Which worked, because Izuku is great at analysis, so making his “Win” attitude [getting competitive therefore putting more energy into attacking than strategy] come out over his “Save” attitude [you’re my friend and I want to help you] is kind of a weakness of his. That’s kind of one of the reasons he lost that fight.

Then again, maybe Izuku has improved since then? I don’t really know but I think enough time has passed for him to have maybe improved more on that so idk we’ll see

I really love Bakugou’s expression in that bottom screencap lol

His wound!! All bandaged up!! I wonder if there’s a scar there or smthg :O

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I know Enji or Bakugou probably gave them details about the multiple quirks but I still find it wild that everyone just knows now

KOUDA! MY SWEETHEART! I’m glad he’s getting a part in this too, along with Sero. Two of them who didn’t really hang around Izuku but still want him to come back :’)

Sero and Black Whip! Finally! I mean it’s not much but it’s still better than nothing

Also, seems like Sero is trying to taunt Izuku to get him to attack him maybe [same as Bakugou feeding into Izuku’s competitive side] soooo idk Sero following Bakugou’s lead? Maybe :)

Look at how,,,, innocent Izuku looks,,,,, *head in hands* AND SERO TEACHING HIM!!

I knew this lil moment would come bite me in the ass at some point, I knew and yet I’m still tearing up goddamn

That “I thought she was going to tell me its a useless hobby” bit really drives home how Izuku’s friends are 1A, that he loves them and they were the only friends he’s ever had [except Bakugou but he was a bully at the time so I’m not really gonna count him for back then]. HOW many people before UA had gone around and told Izuku his taking notes hobby was useless? SHOW me the people!

I, mettywiththenotes, will NOT allow anybody to slander one of my own!

I know it’s like the only moment Izuku and Ojiro shared, with the sports festival thing, but it’s still really sweet that Ojiro sees that Izuku stood up for him

*head in hands*

Shouldn’t this kid be more worried that he’s likely going to get kidnapped?

“Yeah this super evil villain guy has decided he wants to kidnap me and take me away, but like nbd guys really, that’s why I left in the first place! So I wouldn’t be a burden!” Somebody get this kid a fucking therapist or some shit

This is kind of a chilling and pretty scene though. The rain falling above Izuku and him looking down with these piercing green eyes likely being the only light between them. Good stuff.

Satou! Aha I like how he’s pulling all the stops, such as “I WON’T LET YOU BORROW MY INGREDIENTS FOR ERI!”

Also let’s appreciate that Satou caught Ojiro and Jirou and managed to land on a freaking traffic light. The balance on this kid! Very well done

Kaminari putting Izuku in a headlock! How cute :)

Be cuter if they weren’t trying to subdue a martyr-complex cryptid from killing himself, but still

Does Shouji have some kind of support-item?? Or could he always do the stretchy thing?? Or I guess maybe he’s just stretching his arms out like branches [like he usually does] and using them as more like a capture weapon rather than his usual stuff. I don’t think we’ve ever seen him use his heteromorph body and quirk for anything other than the 5 senses, though I could be wrong

Also Shouji remembering what Izuku said at the training camp, I’m so glad! Shouji always seems like the kind to be so protective over his friends, so I’m glad he remembered that. Then again, Izuku did compare them to freaking ALL MIGHT, but if the nice analytical kid in your class who knows your limits and strengths says you could basically beat A GOD, then that’s definitely one for the memory scrapbook lmao

“It’s nice and dark here, Dark Shadow.” Who said that?? Kami or Izuku?? I just have this mental image of Izuku being shrouded in darkness and trying to keep his eyes open from falling asleep haha

Tokoyami remembering that from all the way back then!! It makes me think that not only have Bakugou and Izuku been watching each other, but that Izuku has always had everybody’s eyes on him! Which is true, he’s inspired everyone! It goes both ways; Izuku loving his friends, and them loving him back :’)

Kami telling him to take a bath lmao I love it. Finally somebody said it

*ugly sobbing noises*

This kind of segment, with a mask falling, a space in-between and a reveal, reminds me of Compress’ reveal :) In that, the person is hiding their identity and then when the mask comes off, they reveal who they truly are underneath

While Izuku is of course determined to go after AFO and is quite the fearsome powerhouse, I really think when he takes off that mask, he’s showing who he really is underneath - a scared little boy who just wants everyone to be happy

JESUS, SHOUTO REALLY IMPROVED HIS QUIRK HUH!! LOOK AT IT, IT’S EVEN HIGHER THAN THE SKYSCRAPERS!!

“The burden placed on you... it doesn’t allow for tears, right?” He sounds so sassy here.

Kind of like saying “Oh you look upset. But that’s weird, I thought Heroes weren’t supposed to cry.” Lol it really shows here how pissed Shouto is at Izuku

But then he relents from that snark and is like “Hey, come on, we’ll share this burden. I’m not letting you go it alone, remember that we’re all here.” :’)

I love when Shouto is sassy and passive aggressive but I also love it when he shows that soft side of him

Okay, this is something I really love.

Tsuyu didn’t join the Bakugou Rescue Squad because “they would be just like Villains breaking the rules”

But here she is, learning from that regret of hers and coming right back to make sure Izuku isn’t the one struggling. She wants to be a part of this rescue squad and pick up where she left off :)

Tsuyu has always struggled with her regrets. It was shown after Kamino when she cried, but for me, I only realised this fully during the Joint Arc when she had her regrets about not making better decisions and not being quick enough [I think that was it].

“I won’t cry in such a flurry” reminds me of “I want to live a life without regret” and so that’s what she’s saying here. This won’t be another regret of hers. She wants to do her best to save her friend

“When scared, you’re allowed to tremble when it’s tough, you’re allowed to shed tears. That’s how you become a Hero like in the comics.”

I feel like that quote piggybacks off of Shouto’s “Heroes cry too”, in that, this is now 1A comforting Izuku. This is them fully coming up to him and telling him that they can help, and that he’s allowed to feel sad about his situation. Shouto’s quote was the teaser, while this entire chapter [and the rest that come to follow] is the main course.

And this is exactly who Tsuyu is. Reassuring, comforting, someone dependable. It says a lot that she’s come from not going to help in Kamino, confessing her feelings and crying about it, then coming back in a similar situation and offering her help - that she’s not willing to just let an opportunity go to better herself. I think I remember reading a few posts on her crying after Kamino and saying it was “performative” or that she just “wanted attention” or smthg like that, but I think she’s really just quite an honest person, and here she is making a great show of how she won’t let something like her guilt slow her down from being the hero she wants to be.

[A part of me feels like this is also a little more evidence with the whole People Not Caring About Bakugou’s Feelings Of Helplessness but like. I digress. It kinda counts but at the same time, it’s not what is going on at the moment.]

Seeing everyone try to reassure Izuku was lovely, and I can’t wait for the rest. I’ve seen a lot of people waiting more for Bakugou’s portion of the battle [AND YEAH DUDE ME TOO] but I really feel like Bakugou’s won’t come until like 2 chapters later or something.

Cause, if this chapter is anything to go by, we’ll probably get through Mina, Mineta, Kirishima, Hagakure and Aoyama next chapter, and then we’ll move onto the “more important” conflicts which will be Iieda and Uraraka, and if their segments are chocked with tension drama and tears, then Bakugou will have a whole chapter to himself hopefully.

Which means we’ll probably have to wait 2 more chapters until we get that sweet, sweet Bakugou chapter :( I hope I’m wrong and it comes sooner than predicted but whatever

I know for some people, that’s all they want, but personally I love these little bits that reflect on the background characters. As someone who isn’t really obsessed with the background characters but also likes them enough to appreciate their development/the little moments they have, I gotta say I really liked this :)

#bnha #bnha 320 #bnha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #class 1a

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razanartuk · 3 years ago

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about me tag game thing

i was tagged by the wonderful @nothingunrealistic! thank you very much ily <3

under read more bc i was not capable of keeping my answers brief this time around

why did you choose your url?

this...was supposed to be a short explanation but it turned into quite a tale so strap in i guess because we are going on a ride. back in 2017 i was just getting into musical theatre rp and i was still feeling too shy to really talk to anyone ooc so i would just wait for people i wanted to interact with to post starter calls so i could just do things in character with them the easy way. So i did this with my friend cam, who posted a starter for me using a lyric from If I Could Tell Her. she linked the song so i could listen to it, so i did and i went ‘wait a minute, is that Ben Platt from Pitch Perfect?? (and other things too, but i only recognized his voice at the time bc of the acappella girl movies)’ and yes it certainly was.

i had zero idea what the plot of Dear Evan Hansen was about at that point, and for some reason based off Just That One Song and the poster art of who i assumed was Some Guy in a Polo Shirt i started to think it was about some jock guy who broke his arm and had an emo/goth friend who had either died or gone missing under mysterious circumstances. also i intuited that Evan had a crush on his friend’s sister but he couldn’t tell her that directly or his emo friend would kick his ass. so i was like mostly wrong, but a little bit right.

oh and i knew jared and alana were characters from the show bc cam said that they were i think?? but i had no idea what their role was. so after listening to if i could tell her, i listened to good for you and all i really got out of that was that evan the apparently not-jock guy had done...something... that really hurt jared and alana. and at that point i finally decided to go look up a plot synopsis and i found out i was waaay off base. but honestly this is why cast recordings should include scene dialogue in the songs bc otherwise you just get soundtracks like dear evan hansen where the songs have like. zero context. we really just go from waving through a window to for forever to sincerely me without like. any reason as to what is happening huh. It’s honestly not a surprise anymore that all those people on twitter had no idea the plot isn’t about gay teenagers.

anyways. cam was writing jared and she made a post at one point about wishing somebody would write alana and i was like ‘oh i could do that!’ (after i had actually Seen a bootleg and finally knew what the whole story was, of course) so i made a multimuse rp blog featuring alana beck, nabulungi hatimbi, chloe valentine and some other characters, and cam started sharing her headcanons with me that alana is trans, jared and alana were close friends when they were little kids but they sort of drifted apart as they got older and their priorities in life changed, jared was the first person alana came out to when she realized she’s trans, etc.

one night i started talking about wanting to pick a more theatre-relevant url for my blog and trans-[character name] urls were getting pretty popular, and at least 3 of the friends i made through rp had changed theirs to coordinating trans-[character name] and i think it was cam suggested i should make mine be trans-alana so i did. eventually i realized the unhyphenated version was available so i changed it to transalana with no hyphen and i have lived here ever since. sometimes i think about changing it but i feel like transalana has become a part of My Brand and i am not so great with coming up with cool names for things.

any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them

in theory, i have sideblogs... i don’t really use them, but of the ones i do have, there is:

emsbookblog - this was supposed to be where i would post excerpts of the book that i’m working on, but i think i did that maybe one time roughly 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about it/got nervous about my writing and was scared to share anything else. the rest of the stuff that is there is assorted writing tips. i don’t really know what to do with it now. i probably should post all my little thoughts about em and anita and caleb there instead of infodumping on my main from time to time, but if i do that then i have to promo a sideblog and direct people over to it which is always annoying to me when i could just do it on this blog which is much easier

dearnovelhansen - this is basically no longer used, but was a sideblog i made specifically to talk/complain about the novel adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen which was about 3 years ago?? maybe? i can’t be trusted to understand the passage of time. but to summarize: i thought it was an honor just to have the story be made more accessible since many of us couldn’t see the stage performance, but i hated a lot of the creative liberties that were taken. my main grumbles are that everyone who isn’t evan or connor is done so dirty in the novel. connor’s still kind of done dirty in the book, but not as much as like. heidi, alana, jared, and zoe are.

horseisle3 - this one was meant to be a place where i could just enthusiastically post screenshots from hi3, but instead it turned into a blog where i occasionally reblog other players’ hi3 content and bitch about how bad the game admins are bc hi3 is the tumblr famous (infamous?) homophobic horse game. the game where it was once okay to call your club store the gulag bc according to their head of hr, ‘it’s just a russian word for prison’ but you can’t say ‘im gay’ without somebody accusing you of corrupting young children who play the game. unfortunately there aren’t very many good interactive horse games out there, so this one is still about as good as it gets. it’s either that or star stable and i don’t care about star stable.

mlaenie - i’ve had this url saved for i don’t even know how long. way way way back in the day when i wanted to escape from the clutches of the onceler fandom i abandoned my first blog where i basically had an alter ego i guess?? and i decided to just be myself on the new blog. i don’t fully remember who came up with it, but one of my sister’s mutuals suggested that if you scrambled the letters in your name you could come up with aesthetic-looking urls. so lauren’s url became lrauen, and to match with her mine became mlaenie, which i abandoned on tumblr after about a year or so? but have continued to use as my main username on twitter, reddit, youtube, xbox, steam, and discord. i barely ever use any of these accounts aside from twitter, steam, and xbox, but yeah. so i’ve decided to try and turn this empty sideblog into a place for video game thoughts maybe. we’ll see how long it lasts this time around.

how long have you been on tumblr?

i made my first tumblr account in december of 2010, but i didn’t understand how to use it at all or how to customize my theme to look cool and unique so i quickly abandoned it. i made a new account in september of 2011 after some kids at school and my sister told me i should and i have been trapped here with varying degrees of activity/inactivity ever since. i have witnessed the rise and fall of the lorax/onceler fandom, hyperfocused on lord of the rings, star wars and back to the future all at the same time, and for the past 4 years i’ve mostly been a musical theatre blog with assorted other fandom stuff mixed in. i feel i have seen everything and nothing, but mostly i’m just tired and bored.

do you have a queue tag?

no bc i don’t use a queue. i’ve tried using it in the past but i irrationally feel pressured to sustain a coherent theme to queued posts and my brain simply does not vibe with that so i just don’t use it at all anymore. Instead i instantly reblog or post several unrelated thoughts in succession and then don’t post again at all for 3 days. the way god intended

why did you start your blog in the first place?

my very first blog was intended to be a place for me to post all of my petz 5 animals’ profile info, but i didn’t have any understanding of how coding worked at all and i don’t think i really wanted to learn, either. so it just sat there, unused. my second attempt at blogging was as a classic rock fandom person, so as you can probably imagine i was pretty pretentious about ‘modern pop’ vs the beatles, the rolling stones, the who, the monkees, and so on. and then i slowly devolved into a lorax fandom blog and everything went to shit so i made a new blog for lord of the rings/the hobbit which later evolved to include star wars and back to the future blogging. and then for the past 4 years i’ve been mainly a musical theatre blog with other random stuff i like thrown haphazardly into the pot. wonderful.

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

because my url is transalana and two of my most prominent lgbt headcanons are that alana beck is trans and a lesbian. i gotta be shouting out @kinqmike though bc she’s the one i adopted the trans alana beck headcanon from in the first place!

why did you choose your header?

in 2017 i was hyperfixating on Dear Evan Hansen (and Be More Chill, but there weren’t many gif-able videos then considering it ran for a month in New Jersey in 2015 and there was only one yet-to-resurface 35 minute bootleg) so i just grabbed a random gif off of google. i really should get to replacing it with a new header of my own though. i just don’t know what i should do for it.

what’s your post with the most notes?

i have lost track of how many notes it has (i think it’s somewhere around 200 now?) but when Will Roland and George Salazar performed Two Player Game on Good Morning America, i posted a screencap of their Jeremy and Michael along with that one quiz answer meme that says stuff like ‘i want to see it grow up healthy’. i didn’t tag it with any ship names or anything because i was anxious about having it show up in the tags, but somebody who reblogged it from me did tag it as boyf riends and i firmly believe it took off because of that. i don’t think i make posts that are relevant enough to amass thousands of notes, even by accident. which is probably a good thing bc if i did i would have to block so many of them.

how many followers do you have?

on this blog? 175 according to the counter. how many of those are still real people and how many are bots and abandoned accounts? i have no idea.

how many people do you follow?

i try to keep it somewhere around 200. i think i’m sitting at 180 right now but i kind of need to go through and clear out the really inactive blogs.

have you made a shitpost?

let’s think about this for a second. i’ve been on tumblr for nearly 10 years. you might even be able to say i’ve made more than one. they’re just not what you would call...popular shitposts.

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ post?

that stuff makes me so incredibly anxious that i have to fight the urge to want to yeet my laptop or mobile device through the closest window whenever i read it, so i try very hard to avoid any sort of ‘if you don’t reblog this, i’m judging you’ posts. i find them very manipulative and not particularly helpful

do you like tag games?

yeah babey!! i just frequently forget to do them, but please know that if you have ever tagged me in a tag game i felt incredibly touched by the gesture and the @mention even if i completely forgot to do the thing afterward

do you like ask games?

i do! but also rip to literally anyone who has ever sent me an ask meme bc it takes me so long to answer them. i’m still working on a micro fic prompt from a few weeks ago. also, horrified to realized that it has in fact been a few weeks and not 3 days anymore.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i don’t know that any are tumblr famous as a whole. but probably @neverheardnothing

do you have a crush on a mutual?

in any sort of romantic connotation? no. not that i’m aware of. there are mutuals that i have friend crushes on where i want to be friends with them but i get so anxious when it comes to meeting new people that usually nothing ever comes of it. i’m really not good at small talk or other casual conversation either which, as you may or may not be able to imagine, sucks. i just wanna skip over all of the awkward introductions and ‘hey how are you, how is life, what are you doing with yourself?’ stuff. not because i don’t care about it. i do, but i think most of my friends/the people i want to be my friends are also depressed and anxious so asking these basic questions about life tends to uh. make us all nervous. and i don’t do much with my life so i always have the most boring answers anyways.

i’m not tagging anyone officially bc the @ thing has just completely given up on me at this point, but if you want to do it, go for it. and then say i tagged you so i can read it c:

#mel.rtf #abt me #tag games

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obsessivedilettante · 5 years ago

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20 in 10: A Drama Retrospective

Since I’ve been all quiet on the drama front this year because of life reasons, I thought it would be fun to go back and pick out 20 of the most memorable dramas of the last decade. Maybe not necessarily the best dramas or even my favorites (although some are!), but two dramas each year that were somehow notable moments in my drama-watching timeline.

2009: Gateway Drugs

Boys over Flowers (KBS)

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good drama. It is not one I think I can ever really rewatch (although I will happily revisit the 2005 Japanese version, and I had a hellava fun time watching the latest Chinese version). But! It was the first kdrama I remember watching, and the first step on the slippery slope of eventually becoming a Drama Addict. I mostly remember it being crazy popular on places like mysoju (RIP), and so I checked it out due to curiosity, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or, should I say, almost paaaaradise!

You’re Beautiful (SBS)

This one I also watched because it became crazy-popular online, and curiosity got the better of me. I really didn’t know much about k-pop prior to dramas, so I had no idea until after this drama that k-pop was more about pretty people in crazy fashion, dancing in syncopation in bizarrely lit rooms, rather than playing instruments. Because it was thanks to this drama that I got my crash-course on k-pop as a phenomenon -- both the fandom side, and the crazy things that artists have to go through to claw their way into the public’s view (nevar 4get the glorious ramen dance). Since Angel was a group that played instruments, and Hongki and Yonghwa were also from groups that played instruments, I assumed that all kpop were groups that played instruments. Oh, sweet summer child...

But it did get me started on my k-pop journey, first falling in love with FT Island and CNBLUE, before falling into the rabbit hole of the other prominent groups of the day. (SNSD! The Wonder Girls! Super Junior! DBSK! SS501! Kara! 2PM! 2AM! Shinee! BEG! Epik High! U-KISS! All the debut groups, like 2NE1, MBLAQ, B2ST, 4Minute, f(x), T-ara, After School... basically 2009 was a magical year in k-pop.)

If I had just watched Boys Over Flowers, I don’t know that I would have become a Drama Addict. But You’re Beautiful pushed me closer to the edge, with the zany humor of the Hong Sisters (and the desire for a pig-bunny of my own!). It would really be Coffee Prince that would push me over the edge, but that aired in 2007 so it doesn’t count for this list. But I had to mention it anyway, because, well, it’s Coffee Prince and where my love for Handsome Oppa began.

2010: More Than Candy

The Woman Who Wants To Marry (MBC)

A lot of the dramas I watched at first had that typical “Candy” character, the poor-but-scrappy girl who would somehow be saved by the guy and become the Cinderella she never knew she wanted to be. So it was a delight when I encountered women who were not only older than high-school-age or early twenties, but in their thirties, with rich full lives! Plus, this was one of my earliest introductions to the concept of the “noona romance” (a concept that I’ve since heartily embraced, of course). I started it primarily because Kim Bum was my favorite of the Flower Boys, but I stuck with it because I fell in love with the women (and I still have a girl-crush on Bu-ki).

Harvest Villa (tvn)

This show is insane. But in the good way, the way that the writer intended, and not in the “are a bunch of monkeys typing this script?” train-wreck way. There was basically no buzz about this show, and I feel like I somehow accidentally stumbled over it, but it was love at first sight. I’ve never forgotten the late hours binging it, being so sucked into the story that I absolutely had to finish it as soon as I could, disappointed that there wasn’t more of it to enjoy when I finally finished, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, but satisfied.

I then later gobbled down this writer’s next drama, and her next drama, and the next, until everyone else finally realized thanks to Signal that Kim Eun-hee was as amazing a writer as I kept insisting to anyone who would listen (aka no one).

2011: To Binge or Not To Binge?

White Christmas (KBS)

I did not watch White Christmas in 2011. I actually watched it in 2013. I was always a steadfast binger, preferring to wait until the buzz about a show would sway me into spending my precious free-time watching something that would be worth my while (not that my drama choices were always good, but at least I tried to avoid the duds). I still prefer to binge, since waiting weeks for new episodes is vaguely frustrating when I want to know what happens next, right now! Plus, I’m very good at forgetting that I’m watching a show in the week-long wait for new episodes, and then just... never picking it back up again.

Despite watching White Christmas a couple years after it aired, it remains one of my favorites, and one I love to rewatch, even though I’ve already experienced whodunnit cliff-hangers and psychological rollercoasters. It became a tradition of sorts here on tumblr for a bunch of us to rewatch it over the holiday season -- alas, I haven’t joined in that tradition for the past couple of years, but I hope that somewhere in this blue hell hole that there are a loyal few keeping the tradition alive.

At least we have this drama to thank for bringing us all the model-actors that were new and clueless in White Christmas, but would later go on to be leading men in their own right. Of course, some of them haven’t exactly made the best drama choices (*cough*SungJoon*cough*), but then there are others (*cough*SooHyuk*cough*) that I’m impatiently waiting for to pick up a new drama so I can see those post-army abs.

Tree With Deep Roots (SBS)

This is the first drama that I recall live-watching. I vaguely remember regretting it at the time, since it was agony waiting for new episodes, but it was also fun to have a week to speculate and ponder the show. And what a beautiful show to ponder! This was also one of the few sageuks I actually watched, being generally intimidated by anything longer than 16-20 episodes, and my historical knowledge was a little shaky (before embracing my inner nerd and diving into mundane historical stuff just so I could better understand whatever drama I was watching at the time).

I don’t think I intended to continue live-watching shows, preferring the ease of binging at my own pace and schedule. But that was when I was still a casual, innocent addict, and not someone who would eventually make dramas a huge part of her life.

2012: The Joy of Overthinking

Gaksital (KBS)

Having had a taste of live-watching, I started to live-watch enough dramas to the point where I began to make notes about the premiere weeks. It was only a couple at a time, and binging was still my preferred way to watch, but now I was delighting in being part of the fandom, sharing in speculation each week, posting my thoughts on dramas and analyzing them to my heart’s content -- even though I knew no one except me would read my ridiculous essays.

But I started to feel more comfortable sharing my opinion with the world, interacting with fandom and not merely content to be a consumer, but gradually becoming a producer as well.

Reply 1997 (tvN)

This is it. This is when I went full-on Drama Addict. This is the tipping point from casual fan who quietly kept to herself, to becoming someone who stood on the mountain top yelling about ALL THE DRAMAS ALL THE TIME. I began to interact with other fans! To swap theories and share squee-worthy moments! I even watched episodes RAW just because of how desperate I was to know what happened, and even though the Busan accent stumped me more than once, it made me realize that my casual study of Korean was something to take seriously since I understood more than I gave myself credit for.

It was also the first time any post I made got more than a handful of notes, since I’d mostly hovered in the “less than 10 notes per post” category at the time. I was so proud of myself back then!

(This drama also notably marks the start of my Hoya obsession, which continues to this day.)

2013: Tumblr Friends (and Foes)

Flower Boy Next Door (tvN)

Having made myself comfortable on tumblr as a Drama Addict, I then discovered some other dedicated fans -- many of which I still follow to this day and who are now just a permanent part of my dash, no matter what their current interests may be -- in the FBND squad.

But I also discovered Kim Seul-gi as the Webtoon Editor (who I still love and adore and continue to use as my avatar), and her adorable romance with Dong-hoon remains one of my forever OTPs. As much as I enjoyed the drama romances, I’d never fallen so deeply for one to be so obsessed by it as I was Webtoon Editor and Dong-hoon. And tbh I still am. They’re just so adorable and pragmatic and she buys him a bag. Ugh. I love her so much, you guys.

Heirs (SBS)

Ah, yes. This hot mess.

I don’t know what possessed me to live-blog each episode. But I did. With snarky commentary and terrible screencaps. And suddenly I went from maybe 200 followers to over a 1000. That was a total shock! I met a lot of people because of that (and made some friends, as well as a few enemies who didn’t appreciate my opinion of certain characters), and ensconced myself as part of the drama-blogging crew.

It was from this that someone suggested I apply to be a minion at Dramabeans. Back then, I had a lot more free time than I do now, and I was watching a lot of dramas that Dramabeans didn’t cover, and wished they did so I could read more opinions about those shows. So I thought, “Eh, why not? It can’t hurt to submit something because the worst that would happen is I’d waste their time making them read my take on episode 10 of Let’s Eat.”

I fully expected them to turn me down. No one was more surprised than I was when I found myself agreeing to dive into the world of recapping.

2014: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Trot Lovers (KBS)

Recapping. It seems so easy when you’re reading the recaps. But actually creating them is a bitch. Hours out of my life were spent on this disaster of a trope-laden show with no plot. This was the third show I worked on for Dramabeans, and I hated it to the point where I seriously considered handing in my notice. (Immediately following up this show with the mediocre My Secret Hotel certainly didn’t help matters!)

However, it turns out that what I actually hated was being forced to watch a terrible rom-com and pretend to come up with insightful-or-at-least-neutral thoughts about it (since we were still new and couldn’t go full-on snark yet).

Misaeng (tvN)

This is what saved me. Being given the chance to immerse myself in such a unique, ponderous, thoughtful show restored my faith in dramas and the drama community. I loved spending hours on this show, soaking up all the little details, and then sharing that love with the world.

Misaeng made dramas magical again.

2015: Fight Me

Valid Love (tvN)

Realizing that I only seemed to enjoy rom-coms at arm-length, I discovered that my tastes often ran counter to the general drama-viewing public. Not all the drama-viewing public -- I’m not a “not like other fans” kind of fan -- but enough that I began to realize the whether a drama was popular or had good buzz was not necessarily the primary reason to watch it.

I began to have more faith in my own taste, based on past experiences with various writers and directors. Even if the premise (or first couple of episodes) seemed kind of weird and out-there, I at least wanted to give these artists the benefit of the doubt that I would enjoy their work, like I had previously.

So many people seemed to hate Valid Love, but I adored it. Still do (and still desperately wish Kim Do-woo would come out with a new drama -- it has been too long, writer-nim!). There were a lot of opinions about this show, even among people who seemed to enjoy it, but I vividly recall having to repeatedly insist that it wasn’t about the romance and argue that the knee-jerk infidelity-is-BAD opinions should make space for something more nuanced.

Ho-gu’s Love (tvN)

DramaFever was a pretty great site. It brought together so many drama fans and gave them a place where they could legally (and without fear of downloading random viruses) watch dramas to their heart’s content. Yes, there may have been some lingering resentment that they were the primary reason that so many amazing other sites were shut down (RIP mysoju and daebaeksubs), but dramas were more accessible than ever!

Eventually, DramaFever started to sub shows themselves and upload them weekly (instead of just using fansubs and uploading older dramas), and while they weren’t the best translations, they were at least better than machine translations from the Chinese subs. As I became more and more familiar with Korean, I found myself more likely to migrate to Viki since I liked the extra detailed translations. I could get the gist of a show without any help -- I wanted to instead delve into the nitty-gritty of the language.

But I never really hated DramaFever or felt they were particularly awful. Until they mistranslated something so terribly that it changed the entire meaning of a scene and ruined people’s perception of a drama, forcing me to continually defend the true translation.

That was the molehill I died on that day, and never again did I touch DramaFever. I feel bad that it eventually got unceremoniously shuttered. But I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for the “condom” incident.

2016: Free Solo

Dear My Friends (tvN)

For two years I’d been happily working on one episode a week, sharing a show with someone else, until I was asked if I’d like to tackle a show by myself. I wasn’t sure how I could handle it, but I had the time in my schedule so I said, “Sure, why not?”

I was originally going to recap Another Oh Hae-young, but there was a last-minute switcheroo, and I’m so incredibly glad because this is perhaps my favorite recapping experience of all time, even more so than Misaeng. There was something so special about the luxury of having an entire show to myself, especially one with such a fantastic cast of characters and thoughtful themes. I didn’t have to try and figure out if I agreed with another person’s take -- it could all be my opinion.

Is that arrogant? Perhaps. But it was also therapeutic, as it reminded me once again how incredible and amazing dramas could be, and the privilege I had to share such an exquisite and thought-provoking drama with the rest of the world.

The Good Wife (tvN)

Surprisingly, this was what I had really wanted to recap that year, and the true reason I got Dear My Friends, since it aired just prior in the same time-slot as The Good Wife. I was desperate to have this show, willing to do anything to get it because I needed to see Jeon Do-yeon back on the small screen, to see Yoo Ji-tae smolder, to know how Korea would adapt such an ambitious show.

And I wasn’t disappointed! This is, perhaps, my favorite adaption of another work of art that I’ve seen in dramaland. It remained true to Korean sensibilities, but it also properly felt like The Good Wife. The cast was phenomenal. The costumes were exquisite. I wished I could spend more time in that world.

But I was also thankful, because without The Good Wife, I would have never have had Dear My Friends.

2017: Serial-Killers Are Cool

Voice (OCN)

I can’t remember how I got assigned to this. Maybe it was a scheduling thing. I do know that I really, really wanted it, since it would be Handsome Oppa’s first drama appearance in three years.

But it started me down a road of recapping a lot of serious and serial-killer-centric shows. Except for the times when I’d beg for a break and tackle something lighter, I was generally assigned the darker mystery shows with meaty plots, since apparently I had a knack for condensing complicated shows into something that made sense. (Also literally darker, and I eventually learned to automatically brighten every screencap I posted. You’re welcome.)

Not only did I love working on something with Handsome Oppa, I also had fun recapping the start of what would eventually become OCN’s stock-in-trade -- creepy serial killers. At the time, Voice shattered OCN’s viewer ratings (which would then be shattered again and again as more people would tune in to OCN shows). But Voice really helped put OCN on the viewership map -- as well as catapult Handsome Oppa into the public eye and lead him to a path of getting to choose whatever script he wanted to work on.

(Okay, maybe I made that last bit up, but he did begin to garner a larger following and remind everyone that just because he was gone from dramaland for so long, he hadn’t lost his acting chops -- or charisma -- or cheekbones.)

Black (OCN)

Oh, this show. It was basically my whole life while it was airing (well, the non-day-job part of my life). Each episode was over an hour long and jam-packed full of details that were pertinent to the story, and I had to somehow condense that all into 3000 words or less (I was not always, ah, successful...). It felt like I was back in recapping bootcamp, but the dial had been turned up to 11.

I’m weirdly proud of what I produced (although you’ll never get me to reread my old work). It was one of the most challenging shows to work on, but in the good way, not the Trot Lovers way.

Until the ending, that is. Sigh. That ending will live in infamy. I still, to this day, will get a few comments on the finale from people who watched it on Netflix, went searching online for an explanation of the end, and then discovered that they were not alone in being confused by the utter wtf-ery of the last twenty minutes.

2018: Fighting For My Love

Misty (JTBC)

So, Dramabeans kind of disappeared for a few months. Well, the site was still live. There were a handful of recaps. But... it basically just... stopped.

Those of us on the other side know about as you do as to why that happened. Minions are kept in the dark just as much as anybody, it seems. All we knew is that we weren’t being assigned anything and we seriously wondered if the site was going under, since adsense has become worthless these days.

But Mary and I kept talking about how much we adored Misty and were sad that we couldn’t talk about it with the world (and convince them to watch it with us), so we pleaded and begged and got the go-ahead to do a kind of chatty “open thread” which has apparently been a spring-board format for other shows. We didn’t get paid for this, and we were totally fine with that. We just wanted to provide some kind of content (while swooning over Kim Nam-joo’s pantsuits!).

Let’s Eat 3 (tvN)

This was my first real assignment after the dead period, and I once again got to do full recaps (with pay!). I started watching, thinking I’d merely tolerate the show (since I loved the first season vastly more than the second season), but it turned out to be my favorite of the three. Plus it felt fortuitous that the series I had submitted my application would be a series I’d work on four years later.

Sometimes it’s nice to spend time with a character you met years ago, to see them grow, to see how they became what they became. Drama trends (and love interests) will come and go, but Goo Dae-young’s love of food (and love of explaining the proper way to eat food) will never change. It was a really comforting drama for me to spend my summer on, and I’ll remember it fondly, even if I’m forever sad that it had to suddenly wrap-up two episodes early.

2019: Ten Years Later

Item (MBC)

This was the Trot Lovers of 2019. It was a nonsensical disaster.

I also had the added chaos of my real-life job -- one very different from the one I had when I was working on Trot Lovers -- as it began to increase exponentially in responsibilities and in stress. I reached a breaking point where I began to hate opening my computer where I’d have to spend hours attempting to explain a show that I wanted nothing to do with. I was miserable and depressed and couldn’t do it anymore. I never before asked to be taken off a show because I hated it so much, but there’s a first for everything.

Her Private Life (tvN)

I actually haven’t finished this show -- I’ve yet to watch the last two episodes. But I’m including it because, well, I didn’t finish any other show in 2019 except for Item.

As some of you may know, this has been a difficult year. It started with the unexpected stress of my job, when we suddenly lost one of our directors who passed away, and another director was let go (in a complicated situation that is ongoing, but the important thing is that it was during our busiest time when we really couldn’t afford to lose anyone), and another director left for a different job and I was basically the one to pick up all the pieces she left behind. It was exhausting and we were all past the breaking point but somehow miraculously holding it together.

I was looking forward to finally getting a much-needed vacation in September, and then, well, you all know how that went: the first night, on our layover in New Zealand before what was supposed to be three weeks in Australia, my father was taken to the hospital, and then, two days later, he passed away. Life has gotten even more chaotic and stressful and bizarre since then.

So no, I haven’t finished this drama, but it was one of the most wonderful moments of the year for me, watching this fizzy rom-com with my favorite actor, where he got to be charming and handsome and charismatic and finally kiss the girl he loves and have her love him back (and not die or be dumped, as he had been in so many dramas that had gone before). Lion Oppa was everything my heart could desire, and living in his world helped me endure the insanity that I wish I’d known would seem so much more tolerable than what would eventually befall.

Her Private Life reminded me of when I first fell in love with dramas ten years ago, when I would giggle and be delighted by the charming nonsense on screen -- of beautiful people falling in love and fighting against the obstacles between them (some more ridiculous than others, perhaps, but there are always obstacles), and ending up happily ever after. Pure escapism, of the frothiest kind.

A Drama-filled Decade

So, after ten years of dramas, what is the takeaway? What have I learned?

I suppose I’ve learned to trust my instincts and put more faith in writers and directors than actors. That analyzing dramas is fun, and it’s even more fun sharing it with others, and sometimes even more fun if you get paid to do it -- but everyone eventually reaches a breaking point. That I’m too earnest and optimistic to embrace a life of snark. That I want every drama to be good but most of them aren’t, except sometimes they are. That I’m not even sure which genres are my favorite; I just know what I don’t like.

That dramas are best as escapism, and not as work.

I don’t know how many dramas I’ll watch in 2020. I haven’t paid any attention to what’s airing, and I’m okay with that. Perhaps I’m entering a new phase in my life, or perhaps I just don’t have the capacity to escape right now.

But I am pleased to have had dramas in my life, and to have eventually made them my hobby. I’ve met a lot of amazing people and made some genuine friends through a shared love of dramas (or, at times, a shared hatred). I’m honored that all of you are still here and following me, even during this period of fandom silence.

May 2020 treat us all better, and may Kim Do-woo finally write another script.

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minijenn · 4 years ago

Text

A Whole Mess of Unused Keys To The Kingdom Content

Because sometimes when I’m working on Keys, I get overzealous and write scenes that don’t contribute anything so I decide to cut them out or change them to make the flow better. So here’s a bunch of unfinished scenes from the first third of the fic (since we just passed the first third of it, I’m sure I’ll make a follow up to this once we get 2/3s done with it). Make of these what you will, I’ll try my best to explain why they were cut as we go along:

From Chapter 7; I largely cut this bit when I remembered Kairi would actually know who Aerith is because of KH1, but of course I didn’t remember that until AFTER I wrote this scene out, either way its a pleasant interaction between the two, I think, even if I cut it because it makes no sense in terms of what actually happened in past games (I also had to straight up screencap this one bc its on word and my use of word expired so it won’t let me straight up copy stuff anymore lol):

From Ch. 17; I originally wanted the Moana chapters to sort of carry all of the same songs as the movie did? And for the most part they do, what with Your Welcome and Know Who You Are and stuff like that but when I got to Tamatoa, I realized that the Shiny scene just wasn’t working as a musical number, hence I rewrote the whole thing and cut all this out:

“Because if you are… I will gladly do so. In song form!”

Sora and Moana only had the briefest chance to look to each other, absolutely confused before Tamatoa launched into said song, one that was filled with nothing but all the self-adulation the crab could possibly give. Which, of course, was quite a lot.

“Well, Tamatoa hasn’t always been this glam.

I was a drab little crab once.

Now I know I can be happy as a clam,

Because I’m beautiful, baby!”

To show off said beauty, Tamatoa began to spin around his cavern, allowing the mass of treasure he’d collected to glisten off its walls as he continued to latch onto his captive pair all the while.

“Did your granny say listen to your heart?

Be who you are on the inside?

I need three words to tear her argument apart:

Your granny LIED!

I’d rather be shiny!

Like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck,

Scrub the deck,

And make it look shiny!

I will sparkle like a wealthy woman’s neck--

Just a sec-”

Tamatoa’ already wide grin grew as he glance up at the pool of water hanging above his head, one that was filled with a swarming school of fish just waiting to be devoured.

“Dontcha know--

Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb,

They chase anything that glitters!

Beginners!

Oh, and here they come, come, come,

To the brightest thing that glitters!”

The giant crab opened his maw wide as the fish swam down toward him, attracted by his glistening glow as they fell directly into his waiting mouth.

“Mm, fish dinners!

I just love free food,

And you look like seafood…”

From Ch. 22; I’m surprised the longest chapter of Keys so far doesn’t have more cut content but I had started writing this bit before realizing that it would have been redundant. I wanted this information to be explained to Sora and the reader at the same time to give it more potency and emotional weight, hence why I cut this out (also cut it out to give more flow following the scene between Kairi and Axel near the beginning of the chapter that this would have immediately been after):

Despite this reassuring thought, the mood the pair was met with upon venturing back into the house was anything but based on the first thing they heard upon entering. “What do you mean there’s nothing more you can do for him?!” Donald asked, both him and Goofy looking to Aerith for answers.

For her part, Aerith still remained as calm as she had been before, though she did let out a small, sad sigh, stealing a glance back at Sora as he lay, still unconscious, on the makeshift cot behind her. “I’ve healed just about all of his wounds, but… to be honest, there weren’t even that many of them,” she began to explain. “The problem is that he was poisoned. Heavily poisoned at that.”

“So? Can’t ya just get rid of the poison using some sort of spell?” Yuffie asked.

Aerith shook her head. “I tried that, several different spells in fact, but… none of them worked. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Whatever kind of magic Maleficent created it from must have been very powerful and very devastating, but… she definitely knew what she was doing when she cast it on him. It’s like she gave him just enough to incapacitate him completely. Any more than what’s already flowing through his blood stream would have-” She stopped short as she happened to glance over Kairi’s way, a brief spark of dread flashing through her expression before she put a hasty end to her explanation. “Um… n-never mind.”

From Ch. 26; the longest cut scene so far, pretty much a song-less version of I’ve Got a Dream (which I happen to be listening to while posting this, oh the irony); It’s a cute, fun little scene but it ultimately adds nothing to either the Tangled side of things or the original Keys side of things. In fact it kind of ruined the entire chapter’s pacing as a whole (I didn’t cut this out until the chapter was done as a matter of fact). Anyway here it is, because I still like it but again, it brought the chapter crawling to a huge grinding halt and I didn’t want that:

“But more might show up,” Sora pointed out. “It’s hard to tell when they might-”

“Yep, exactly,” Flynn interjected hastily. “Which is why maybe we should get out of the woods for a bit. Just to wait ‘em out. Is anyone hungry? I know a great place for lunch.”

“Lunch?” Sora raised a curious eyebrow at this. “I thought you wanted to get to the kingdom as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t do that on an empty stomach,” Flynn urged the others to follow him. “Now come on. You’ll know the place when you smell it.”

***

The place Flynn led the group to was rather underwhelming compared to how he’d described it: a squat, rather misshapen building that certainly looked its age based on the withering wood it was built from. It was practically propped up against the overgrown tree it stood in the shadows of, casting the entire restaurant in a rather shady light.

“Aaaaand here we are!” Flynn grinned in satisfaction as he began making his way down the path that led to the diner. “The Snuggly Duckling. Don’t worry, very quaint place, perfect for you, blondie. Don’t want you scaring again and giving up on this whole endeavor now, do we?”

“Well… I do like ducklings,” Rapunzel shrugged with an oblivious smile.

“Yay!” Flynn returned her bright grin almost mockingly.

“So, what makes this place so ‘great’ anyway?” Sora asked, curiously.

“Oh, you’ll see…” Flynn said, an air of mystery even as he threw the restaurant's door open. “Garcon! Your finest table, please!”

Rapunzel couldn’t hold back a terrified gasp upon getting her first glimpse at the other patrons of the restaurant. If there were any men who fit the description of “ruffians and thugs” perfectly, then they were all right at home in this restaurant, or tavern, to be more precise. The dingy dining room was packed with all manner of big, burly men, a vast majority of whom were scarred, unwashed, or weapon-wielding as they all turned their intimidating glares toward the group that had just stepped through the door. Rapunzel didn’t hesitate to lift her frying pan up in self defense and likewise, the trio was somewhat on edge as well, only barely hesitating to summon their weapons since none of the thugs had really made a move to attack them. Even so, they didn’t really rule out the option that they might based on the threatening manner they all mutually carried.

“You smell that?” Flynn was still grinning as he began to guide Rapunzel onward into the tavern, despite the fact that she was clearly terrified by the frightening assemblage around her. “Take a deep breath through the nose. Really let that seep in. What are you guys getting? To me, it’s part man-smell, and the other part is really bad man-smell. I don’t know why, but overall it smells like the color brown. Your thoughts, sunshine?” he asked Rapunzel, who let out a horrified gasp as one of the thugs suddenly grabbed her hair.

“That’s a lot of hair…” the thug noted, even as Rapunzel hastily pulled it away from him so she could flee.

“She’s growing it out,” Flynn remarked. “Say, is that blood in your mustache? Blondie, look at all the blood in his mustache!”

“Hey, Flynn?” Sora interjected, his expression aptly suspicious in light of the circumstances. “What’s the big idea here?”

“Why, I have no idea what you mean, kid,” Flynn rebuffed, feigning innocence. “I just wanted to give blondie a taste of a real five star establishment here.”

“This is what you call five-star?” Donald asked dubiously.

“...More or less.”

“I dunno… Rapunzel looks awfully scared... “ Goofy frowned, glancing over at Rapunzel, who had essentially backed herself into a corner, her hair bundled up in her arms and her frying pan still held at the ready to attack.

“Well, hey, you know, if that’s the case, then maybe we should just take her home and call it a day,” Flynn shrugged apathetically. “She’d probably be better off anyway. If she can’t handle this place, then maybe she should just go back to her tower.”

Despite his smooth, convincing grin, the trio only offered him a shared, disapproving glance at this, none of them on board with his plan to coax Rapunzel back into the sheltered, stifled life she’d known before. Still, Flynn didn’t get much of a chance to sway them otherwise as one of the larger thugs suddenly spun him around roughly to face him.

“Is this you?” the thug asked, pointing to the wanted poster in his hand that sure enough, depicted Flynn Rider.

“Uh… n-no?” Flynn shrugged, hoping the man would somehow believe him.

“Oh, it’s him alright,” another thug, one with a hoof in the place of one of his hands, spoke up with a greedy grin. “You!” he pointed to another nearby ruffian. “Go get some guards. And as for you,” the thug used his hook to pull Flynn in by the collar of his shirt. “That reward is gonna buy me a new hook.”

“I could use the money,” another thug stepped in, grabbing Flynn roughly before another one did the same.

“What about me? I’m broke!”

“No, that reward is mine!”

“But I want it!”

From there, an all out brawl began to break out between the thugs, with each of them clamoring to apprehend Flynn so they could claim the hefty prize that came along with his capture. Rapunzel and the trio were aptly startled by this sudden, violent shift, and even though they were greatly outnumbered, they all rushed in to try to put a stop to it.

“R-ruffians! Please, stop!” Rapunzel cried anxiously.

“Yeah! Leave him alone!” Sora shouted, finally calling upon his Keyblade. Donald and Goofy gaped at this, both of them realizing that Sora was more than likely to get himself into an unnecessary scuffle in doing so, but that hardly seemed to matter to him as he joined Rapunzel in trying to pick through the burly crowd Flynn was struggling to escape.

The hook-handed thug was just about posed to land a heavy blow to Flynn’s jaw to cease that struggle when Rapunzel finally put a stark end to the aggressive outburst. All it took was using her hair as a whip to land a sharp, yet effective blow to said thug’s bald head, to get everyone to freeze in surprise at just how bold this unassuming girl seemed to be.

“Put him down!” Rapunzel ordered fiercely, catching an ire-filled glare from the thug in the process. She gasped, afraid as the thug began to approach her, pulling out the axe hanging from his back as he did. Fortunately for her though, Sora hurried in to her defense just in time.

“Back off!” he warned, brandishing his Keyblade against the much-larger thug’s weapon.

“Tch, what are you gonna do with a key that fancy, kid?” the thug sneered. “Unlock the world’s biggest door?”

“Oh, believe me, you don’t wanna see what I can really do with it,” Sora retorted, more than ready to use it to keep both Rapunzel and Flynn safe.

“Sora-” Donald and Goofy tried to mutually protest, though it didn’t really do much good as the thug inched his axe in closer.

“Try me,” he growled coldly.

“W-wait!” Rapunzel interrupted from her spot behind Sora, not wanting to see any additional fighting break out. “L-listen, “ she pleaded with the hook-handed thug. “I don’t know where I am, and I need him,” she pointed her frying pan at Flynn, who was still being held aloft by the rest of the thugs. “To take me to see the lanterns because I’ve been dreaming about seeing them my entire life! Find your humanity! Haven’t any of you ever had a dream?!”

The thug said nothing to this at first, his expression still just as stoic as dense silence filled the bar. That is, until that stoicism finally wavered into a softer, wistful expression. “I… had a dream once…” With this, he tossed his axe aside, and as it struck one of the bar’s already weapon-ridden walls, he headed over to the piano on stage and began to play a surprisingly jaunty, upbeat tune. “I’ve always yearned to be a concert pianist!”

At this, the other thugs in the pub began to ease up a bit as well as a few of them started voicing their own hopes and dreams. “I really want to make a love connection!” a rather large-nosed ruffian proclaimed with a romantic gleam in his eyes.

“I want to quit and be a florist!” another thug cried as he quickly began fashioning a surprisingly lovely floral arrangement.

“Interior design!” a ruffian remarked with a flippant flair as he expertly rearranged a small corner of the pub.

“Ulf here is into mine,” a thug pointed out his companion, who sure enough was playfully miming next to where Flynn was sullenly hanging as he watched this ridiculous display play out. Even so, Rapunzel was instantly charmed by it, and likewise, the trio eased up, confused yet curious to see where this bizarre and wholesome scene might be going.

“You have to try Attila’s cupcakes, they’re sublime!”

“I knit!”

“I sew!”

“I do little puppet shows!”

“And Vladimir collects ceramic unicorns!”

“What about you?” the hook handed man asked Flynn with a suspicious glare.

“I’m sorry, me?” Flynn scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“What’s your dream?” the big-nosed thug pulled him down off the hook he was hanging from.

“No, no, boys,” he rebuffed with a laugh. “I’m not into the whole sappy dream thing.” He quickly changed his tune however, as just about all of the thugs pointed their deadly weapons right at him threateningly. “Ah-ha… o-ok, well… I-I’d like to be filthy rich and live on my own private island faaaar away from anyone else. Does that work for you fellas, or what?”

The thugs let out a rowdy shout, catching Flynn off guard once more as they all threw him up into the air once more. At the same time, Rapunzel climbed up onto one of the tables, more than eager to voice her own life-long desire as well. “I’ve got a dream too!” she announced brightly, all of the thugs turning to her to hear it. “I want to see the floating lanterns! You know, today’s the first time I’ve ever left my tower, but I’m so glad I did after everything I’ve seen and all of the lovely people I’ve met like all of you!” The thugs all let out a solid cheer of support at this as Rapunzel grinned down at the trio standing on the ground next to her. “What about you guys?” she asked them curiously. “Do you have a dream too?”

“Oh, uh…” Sora hesitated, facing sudden scrutiny from both the thugs and from Donald, who was sending him the unspoken order to maintain the world order in his answer. “W-we… we want to find a special Key and use it and a bunch of others to help our friends!” he proclaimed, knowing that was a very simplified version of the whole story, but fortunately, it was enough to satisfy his companions and the pug thugs alike.

“So you see?” Rapunzel turned back to the thugs, still maintaining her warm grin. “We’re all not so different after all! We all have dreams we want to see come true someday!”

The thugs and ruffians all let out another round of cheers at this, their excitement palpable in the aftermath of everyone sharing those dreams. The levity wasn’t able to last too long, however, as the tavern door burst open to reveal the thug that had been sent off just a while ago. “I’ve found the guards!” he announced, sending a startled ripple through the entire pub.

Even so, Flynn wasted no time in grabbing Rapunzel and the trio alike at this, pulling them all out of sight as a handful of armored soldiers stormed in. “Where’s Rider?!” the captain demanded. “Where is he?! I know he’s in here somewhere. Find him! Turn the place upside down if you have to!”

The captain only barely missed spotting the group hiding under the bar, not really having anywhere else to go, especially as even more guards filed in. Flynn narrowly peaked over the edge of the bar to see that they weren’t the only ones either, as he just so happened to spot them toting in his now-arrested former partners in crime: the Stabbington Brothers. Former, in the sense that he’d been the one to abandon them with the prize they’d stolen together, not only to escape the guards but that first round of marauding Heartless alike.

Yet despite Flynn’s apt panic at such a daunting situation, the entire group was caught off guard by the hook handed thug. He said nothing as he joined them behind the bar, instead nodding for the group to silently follow him over to the far side of it. From there, with the flick of a single inconspicuous switch, a secret door opened up, revealing a passageway down into a cavern that led out of the pub completely. Just about the best means of escape they were going to get, all things considered.

“Go,” the thug whispered with a warm smile. “Live your dreams.”

“I will,” Flynn replied, immensely relieved.

“Your dream stinks,” the thug scowled. “I was talking to them,” he nodded to Rapunzel and the trio. Flynn simply carried an annoyed scowl as he began to crawl into the passageway.

“Thanks for everything,” Rapunzel said, the trio offering the same grateful sentiments as they also began to make their way into the cavern. They did so just in time as the hook-handed thug closed the door to the passage way up, concealing it from sight right before the guards began to search behind the bar, only to find not a single sign of Flynn Rider, or anyone else for that matter, to speak of.

From Ch. 27: aka the chapter I’m currently working on. Idk Tangled has a lot of scenes that went unused in KH3′s take on things and I figured this one would be necessary to explain why Rapunzel and Eugene got separated but I only ended up writing a paragraph or so of it last night before deciding I wanted to shift focus back over to the trio instead at that point. So here it is:

“Ah! There you are!” Eugene greeted the Stabbington Brothers with a show of faux camaraderie, knowing he was just about the last person they probably wanted to see in light of his earlier betrayal. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you guys since we got separated. The sideburns are coming in nice, huh?” The brothers simply eyed him harshly at this, silently telling him to get the point already. “A-anyhow, I just wanted to say that I shouldn’t have split. The crown is all yours.” He tossed the satchel their way, the crown spilling out of it as it landed. “I’ll miss you, but I think it’s for the… best...”

He trailed off as one of the brothers stood to approach him, hardly paying any mind to the crown as he did. “Holding out on us again, eh, Rider?”

#jen writes #keys to the kingdom #keys unused #unused writing

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cllynchauthor · 5 years ago

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On Aspie Supremacy and the Aspergian

CW: bullying, suicide, aspie supremacy

I feel the need to talk to you guys about what has been happening on autistic twitter lately surrounding the autistic website The Aspergian. I write for The Aspergian. Here are some of my articles:

https://theaspergian.com/2019/05/04/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/04/19/person-first/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/04/05/7-cool-aspects-of-autistic-culture/

While I am white, cishet, and speaking, I am in the minority at The Aspergian.

The majority of contributors are mostly either LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, or high support needs.

Here are some of their contributions:

https://theaspergian.com/2019/10/10/stopping-the-stigma-against-people-with-disabilities-interview-with-sbsk/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/09/09/10-signs-i-was-transgender-but-didnt-know-it/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/08/08/the-cage/

Despite this, the name The Aspergian makes many autistic people uncomfortable. Several ASAN members have spoken out condemning the name.

In these days of #AltAutism, the autistic dark web and other aspie supremacists have turned the word Aspergers into a borderline slur.

Aspergers and “Aspergian” are becoming dog whistles for function labels, white supremacy and incels.

The founder of The Aspergian knows that. That’s why she named it The Aspergian.

With every pro-RPM, pro-Neurodiversity, feminist, intersectional article The Aspergian publishes, it gets left wing values all over Aspergers. If you google Aspergian now, all you will find are social justice articles.

And the AltAutism folks HATE IT.

But so do a lot of autistic advocates, for whom “Aspergers” conjures up a lot of trauma.

The founder has trauma from it too, though.

https://twitter.com/theaspergiancom/status/1185068296636375040?s=21

Image Description: screencap of a tweet from @TheAspergianCom reading

When I first told my closest living friend about being autistic, it was the first person I'd told other than my husband. This was her response:

Below is a screencap of a text conversation. The friend is talking about her autistic son saying “at this point I’ll be fucking happy if he ever calls me mom and stops trying to attack me.” Then she says “I think your autism is fucking bullshit.”

Image description: screencaps of more tweets reading:

Though she knew I was going to be tested, she'd continued to use the word Asperger's. I'd been helping her through the process of understanding her son and autism. I loved her deeply. I still do. But she blocked me on social media and told everyone before I was ready to come out.

So instantly all my social media was flooded with all these speculative and veiled comments I could only see portions of, and I was humiliated. I was a new mother struggling and lost my support system. She thought it was sinister I used the same label as her son. Minimizing.

Autism was my diagnosis. She didn't know that I was made to believe I was possessed by demons in my youth or all the hell I'd endured and all the struggles I had like being the last person in my school who learned to read six years late. She knew an articulate adult.

Image description: the next person I told, things went even worse. She outed me in local Facebook groups where I was the admin and parent groups. I had postpartum anxiety and severe breastfeeding aversion but my child wouldn't eat food. So it was BF constantly or a feeding tube. And no meds for me.

So I thought maybe the problem was me saying autism instead of Asperger's. My husband was aspie and always identified that way. I'd been a teacher with largely autistic classes for years. Those with that diagnosis were often intellectually disabled.

Image description: My best friend and one of my oldest and closest friends, both autistic, had committed suicide, and the two living best friends I had blew up my whole social circle. I was afraid to seek help, afraid to go in public, and brutally reframing my whole life and reliving traumas.

I needed help. I joined about 20-30 autistic groups and made the mistake of saying that I was aspie. I didn't want to be insulting and have another incident like what happened the first time I told someone. It didn't go well. I had no idea of the stigma at the time.

And I had no idea why I was being called a supremacist, shiny, a Nazi, ableist, etc. I argued against those claims because I'm definitely not those things. I thought I'd entered a den of extremists. I got booted. Then another group I entered started with, "Oh, there's the Nazi."

In that tweet thread, Terra goes on to say that it occurred to her that her best friend who had recently committed suicide might have sought out the autistic community before he died. And she went to look and found that he had posted and been dogpiled in the same manner. The day before he died.

Terra Vance is desperately anti supremacy. But she is also desperately anti bullying. And she felt that if people couldn’t say “I’m autistic” without losing loved ones and “I’m aspie” without being called a supremacist, then autistic people were being put in a very tight corner.

Especially since Aspergers is still an extant diagnosis pretty much everywhere but North America so people are getting shunned from the autistic community because of their DIAGNOSIS.

That’s why she named it The Aspergian.

And you know what?

The aspie supremacists HATE IT.

They hate that their dog whistle is now a popular and booming hub of Neurodiversity, anti-ABA, and intersectionality.

They hate that The Aspergian is republishing deleted Wikipedia articles of autistic nonspeakers, which the autistic dark web worked hard to get removed.

They hate that we promote FC and RPM and other AAC. They hate that we keep claiming that autism and Aspergers are the same thing.

They don’t want to share space with nonspeakers and black women. They’re a bunch of altright white incels and The Aspergian is getting autism and neurodiversity over their shiny high functioning boots.

Worst of all, we’re reaching PARENTS.

Our most popular articles are not aimed at fellow autistic people. They are aimed at NTs, parents, laymen, trying to educate them about autism.

My article on ABA went viral and made so many ABA therapists angry. It was beautiful.

Imagine description:

“And by some strange magic, we took off suddenly, going from like 100 views per month to over 100k, then 200k, then more and more. We heard a lot of stories that were not being heard. There are parents who read our site to learn about their children posthumously after suicide.

One mother told me that if she had found our site earlier, she would have known that her son's "aspie" diagnosis meant that he was fully autistic. She is filled with regrets. We hear from lots of people who had no idea that they were supposed to have these autistic struggles.

We hear from people in lots of non-white majority countries where autism acceptance and awareness is years/decades behind what a difference our site has made because they had no idea. They weren't reading other blogs and now they are. Now they are understanding autism.”

Understanding autism from a neurodivergent, autism-acceptance, Autism-Speaks-Is-Bad, anti-ABA, pro-AAC website.

The ADW HATE that.

So what do they do?

They stir up shit about the name. The autistic dark web have a bunch of sock accounts which they use to deliberately stir up shit among the #ActuallyAutistic tag on twitter so they can screenshot stuff and repost it out of context to further discredit autistic people.

So they know the ND crowd resent Aspergers. So they deliberately stir up crap about The Aspergian’s name and everybody eats it up.

They also spread lies like that we are racist and don’t have any contributors of colour (they block the BIPOC contributors who argue against this lie).

Image Descriotion:

Tweet from Riah Person (a black autistic advocate) saying

“The .@theAspergianCom has writers

• with I/DD

• that are nonspeaking

• with research background

• that are deaf

• that are blind

• with physically limiting disabilities

• that are autistic BIPOC

• that are autistic LGBTQ+

• with no formal writing skills

The list goes on”

They claim that we plagiarize. But in fact each contributor owns their own content and is free to publish in other places and often they do.

But mostly they bitch about the name.

And I get it. I do. Aspergers brings up a lot of bad feelings and associations, especially since the anti-ND movement started pushing the “Asperger was a Nazi” stuff in order to discredit Steve Silberman’s book Neurotribes.

But we can’t make Asperger’s a slur. It’s still an existing diagnosis all around the world. Happily it IS being removed from the ICD 11 in 2022 but it’s going to take decades to change the assumptions around that word.

Terra wants “Aspergers” to become synonymous with autism. No difference. No barriers. No judgements. Not because she loves or even identifies with Aspergers. Her diagnosis is autistic and she calls herself autistic. But she doesn’t think autistic people should be bullied over a label. It smacks of exclusionism.

The founder of The Aspergian feels that no autistic person should be bullied to the point of death or near-death because of their diagnosis, or because they have been trained to say they have Aspergers so NTs won’t pull the whole “you don’t look autistic” crap.

The autistic community, of ALL communities, should be the most understanding of misunderstanding. We should be the most able to understand that people don’t always mean what it sounds like they mean.

“Aspergers” is not a slur. It is not a supremacist term. At worst it is an outdated functioning label. At best it is a synonym for autism.

And it won’t become a dog whistle. Because The Aspergian won’t allow it.

#actuallyautistic #autism #suicide #bullying #advocacy #aspie #aspergers

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rebelmeg · 5 years ago

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Author Tag Game

I was tagged by my lovely @tehroserose! Thanks, gumdrop!

Author Name: rebelmeg

Fandoms You Write For: MCU (with one Harry Potter outlier and a few fics from other fandoms that aren’t published)

Where You Post: AO3, and then I typically share to my Tumblr

Most Popular One-Shot: SI Internship Team, a Tony and his Science Sons fic, with a surprise appearance by Rhodey! This one definitely has the most kudos, followed pretty closely by Iron Savior, and Endgame fix-it that features an older Morgan, some time travel tweaking, and the ending Tony deserved.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: My Winter Solder/Bucky raising kid Tony fic, How To Save A Life (It Just Might Be Yours). The angst, the hurt/comfort, the soft fluff, the kid Tony and soft dad Bucky, it all worked in my favor.

Favorite Story You Wrote: Can’t pick a favorite child, I can’t do it. HOWEVER, here are the three that are on the bottom of the kudos list. The Harry Potter one that has Sirius finding the Potters the night they were murdered, The Loss I Have Sustained. A love letter from Bucky during the war to his unspecified significant other (no pronouns or specific details, sub in your favorite character), Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me). And the half-fic, half-moodboard Frankenstein creation that is my take on a flowershow AU, Flowershop Row.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: For some reason Misfit Toys had me going “What the heck did I just write?!” and I was second-guessing myself the whole way through. Personal and Working Relationships (my take on Pepperony’s canon meeting and how their relationship developed up through IM1) was one I had a hard time getting right, so I was nervous about that one.

How Do You Choose Your Titles: I like having titles that make it easy to remember which fic it is, and I didn’t discover that until recently, when I realized I had a few fics with similar titles, ex: How It Should Have Been (And Maybe How It Was) vs. How To Save A Life (It Just Might Be Yours). The first is an Aunt Peggy and nephew Tony fic, the latter is a Winter Soldier Bucky raising Tony fic. Or kind of obscure titles, like Broken Parts, On The Mend, which tells me nothing when I’m so fond of such damaged, broken babies (in this case it’s Tony and Bucky becoming friends and bonding over a replacement arm for Bucky). Or The History We Have, which is also not helpful or descriptive at all, and says nothing about it being a kid!fic where the Winter Soldier and HYDRA kidnap kid Tony. So if nothing immediately pops into my head that fits the theme, or I don’t have a title prepared already, I’ll scan the first couple pages of the fic and try to put something together from that.

Do You Outline: Kinda? As I get ideas and scenes come to me, I have them laid out chronologically in the doc, and I’ll fill in gaps when I know what I want to happen. But it’s not often organized. It’ll often look something like this (from a BBB fic about a coffee-loving Bucky):

*comes in wrapped up in a scarf, hat, jacket, gloves, whole nine yards, orders a huge hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and cinnamon* “How is it possible for a man that looks like a hobo half the time and an assassin the other half to look cute?”

Do I know who’s talking? No. What you see is all I have, and at some point, that will be extended into a scene, and then appropriately set in the fic so it gets transitioned into and out of in a way that makes sense.

All my stuff looks like this, until it gets lengthened out and made into actual fic.

Complete: I have 97 fics posted on AO3! Which I’m super excited about, I’m so close to a huge milestone! The most recent one was a post-Endgame fix-it Phil and Pepper friendship fic, The Tony Stark Halfway House For Those Currently Pretending To Be Dead

In-Progress: I have 49 fics in my fanfic folder that have their own Word doc, which usually means they’re at least a page long, or about 500 words. I also have a “bits and pieces” doc that’s just ideas or snippets of dialogue or even full scenes just waiting for something bigger to glom onto. That doc, minus the timeline at the end so I can keep it all straight, is 22K. So... yeah. Lots.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: As for coming soon, we’ve got several Bucky fics that I wanna get done for BBB. The aforementioned coffee-lover Bucky fic, which is basically a fluff and humor coffeeshop AU. One that is currently labelled “Tragic Bucky Fic” which is Bucky’s history as the Winter Soldier, and recovery after he escapes, that one is a “fill the gaps in canon” fic. I’ve also got IMBB coming up, and I have I think 4 different fics that are potential contenders for that one. I’m also doing two other bingos, Bruce Banner and Ladies of Marvel, and most of those are either not started or barely started.

Do You Accept Prompts: I typically don’t say I am, but I am always open to having suggestions thrown at me! Especially in comments on my fic, I have SO MANY SCREENCAPS saved that are amazing fic ideas that I want to pursue.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: If we’re talking ones that I have already started, I have to say... possibly one called The Ghost and The Machine, which has spy!Bucky and ghost!Tony, and it’s been hilarious! I’m excited to have that one done.

As for ones I have not yet started, either a couple Carol/Rhodey things I’ve been batting around (a meet-cute and a sad one), or a couple BuckyNat things, one of which is a take on Hades and Persephone.

Tagging: @bill-longbow, @newnewyorker93, @the-kitteh, @kimannhart, @summerpipedream, and literally anyone else who wants to play too! Consider yourself tagged, I will be delighted!

#author tag game #writing #this is why writers are crazy #fanfic writing #tag game

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trump1rocks-blog · 5 years ago

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Meddling Trump Supporter here...

Dear @thearcadialedger

Hi! Trump1Rocks here. I'm also a proud Trump supporting, Christian woman who happens to like a couple in the children targeted show Trollhunters and um... I'm so sorry that you had to face all this disgusting treatment because you had the nuts to speak up for a fellow fan, me. (Unless there's someone else who's throwing rocks at the bees nest by openly supporting Trump on this platform. )

Allow me to introduce myself; on here, I'm known here as Trump1Rocks, on other sites I'm Babykinnsenshi and to the people who know and love me, I'm Tiff. I had a Tumblr account about 5 years ago but since then shut it down and left after realizing how toxic this site truly is. Well recently I heard about and fell in love with the Barbara and Stickler couple from Trollhunters, I wanted to express my love for the pairing through fan art and what not, so I decided Tumblr was really the best place to post it. I thought, why not use that junk account I opened up a few months back? (I use it to more thoroughly search tags for fan art) Giving myself a name like Trump1Rocks was my tongue in cheek way of defying a site that pretty much treats him as the literal incarnation of Satan.

Now I really wasn't going to post political what-not, just share and like art without taking things too seriously. Harmless fun. Well my art was going pretty much unnoticed so, fed up I told myself no ones' noticing my art, HECK! They probably wouldn't notice if I hid the tag"God Bless Trump" In my post! Long story short, someone did notice and proceeded to throw the most hilarious Temper-tantrum I had the privilege of reading. That was honestly the only time I was going to use that tag but after discovering how much it triggered someone, I decided to keep doing it with my art. I have the freedom to like the story for what it is and I can support a president I love! It's a free world and It's not like I'm hurting anyone. I also find it hilarious though that they think I've 'Stolen' art from myself because I also post my art on Pinterest and credit myself there as Babykinnsenshi. the only other art I uploaded was from Pixiv, the reason why is because it's a Japanese website and I wanted to introduce American ToA fans to that cool artist by showcasing there work.

Amazingly, I've been left alone for the most part, they've done a pretty good job blocking me or maybe I'm just not affected when they tell me to eff off or got to hell. I'm genuinely smiling from ear to ear when I read stuff like that, because It just goes to show how ineffective their whiffy punches are, which is why I kept on supporting Trump! When you hold your ground, these people can do nothing! Their own intolerance has left them miserable, kicking and screaming over the fact that a "White supremacist" or should I say "Klansman" (Man, if that's not a joke I don't know what is.) Is in their fandom. I wanted them to do this, in hopes that it revealed to others the sheer level of their hypocrisy and hopefully cause someone to take a serious look at the dangers of radical left wing politics these extremists are caught up in; and say you know what, I'm not cool with this.

Now which brings me to why I'm posting this open letter to you @thearcadialedger. The other day, I reblogged screencaps of the recent adorable scene of Strickler and Barbara. Well the person who posted those screencaps was um, none to happy about to say the least. After a few choice words that was the last I heard from them but they made a big stink about it over on their tumblr which is what you ended up replying to (Thanks for removing their names) But you ended up getting harassed by them in return. You have my thanks for being so bold as to call them out for their pathetic behaviour.

And to you I say, we are stronger and tougher than they are, because at the end of the day when all's said and done, they're the ones who are not at peace. When people are this vitriolic there's a reason for it. You don't behave this way if you're not hurting; I have no anger towards them, in fact I've been praying for them! For every single person that's come at me, I've asked God to please bless and let them know how much they're loved. This was never about politics, it's about tolerance.

I don't care if you're Liberal, Conservative, Anti-Trump, Pro-Trump, Black, Purple, Gay, whatever! God Bless you Trollhunter fans and rock on!

#Trollhunters #trollhunters tales of arcadia #Tales of Arcadia #3Below #3below tales of arcadia

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sieben9 · 6 years ago

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“beauty” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

Well… That sure happened

Now that I am nothing more than the hollowed-out, broken shell of a person, let me share my feelings with you! But under the cut. (Fair warning: there is a lot of sadness in here. Proceed with caution and maybe a mug of hot chocolate. Also, don’t open this on mobile. I went a bit screencap-happy.)

I loved this episode? So much? I know, I was really subtle about it, and it’s possible to miss amidst all the crying but hoooly crap, this is easily among my Top 3, I think.

Alright, quick rundown of the “side plots”, because while That Thing™ is definitely at the forefront of my mind after watching, the other stuff going on was actually pretty good and important plot developments. Which, really is another point in the episode’s favour. Yes, the Halloween-plot worked well to space out the other stuff, and it provided some much-needed relief of tension, but it was clearly important in its own right, so…

Guh. Henry. You know I love you, but I will also find a way to smack you in the head with a rolled-up newspaper, because you are an idiot. …yes, I get that he feels like he just lost his family all over again, and that’s not something that inclines people to adventurous behaviour, but still. You were so close!

Instead, we get this:

Which, uh… I’m not saying Ivy shouldn’t have good things in life, because lord knows, that was a sad, sad story right there, but this also did not sound like you two will be good for each other. Neither of you really want a safe, “uncomplicated” romantic relationship, you want a family. Ivy, specifically, needs someone to who doesn’t just love her conditionally, and Henry… well, Henry mostly just needs to wake up from the curse, because what he wants will be all over the place until he does.

Still, Ivy’s moment of bravery when saying that she’ll deal with Belfrey and the others should enjoy their Halloween was pretty heart-warming. Did I mention that this lady worries me? I’m worried for her, and I am still worried about her.

In other news: I’m pretty sure I know where Hook’s daughter is, now.

the rook is a metaphor

I mean, I could still be wrong, but that seems like one hell of a red herring to put out. And it opens up so many questions! Did they meet again before the curse, or is this a horrible game of emotional keepaway? Does Rumple know who these two are to each other? What, exactly, is his relationship with Tilly/Alice? I mean, he was so ready to fight Tremaine over her, before and after he woke up, and he went into 107% Concerned Dad Mode when he thought she was hurting, so he clearly feels very protective of her, but when did that happen? How did that happen? Is she actually this “guardian” or is that Henry? Or is this just one big prophecy-screw, after all? Seriously, you’d think after that first disastrous experience, Rumple would have learned to never trust a prophecy. Ever. Why am I the only one here who remembers that??

Ahem. Anyways. Lots of potential there. I can’t wait to see how that one unfolds.

Other highlights included Weaver butting heads with Belfrey. It was glorious. I almost wish Rumple had woken up just a little bit later, because watching these two go up against each other was a pure delight.

Also, this:

presented without comment

…look, I’m only human.

I was also deeply amused by the conversation between Weaver and Rogers. Okay, maybe “amused” isn’t quite the word, because it’s clear that Roger’s cold case is how the curse incorporated his search for his daughter into his memories, so it could keep torturing him with the loss. Which, you know, doesn’t really qualify as amusing. But Weaver is the walking, talking personification of that meme “’I don’t care,’ I say, caringly, as I care way too much.”

Yes, it is immediately obvious that you do not care about anyone. At all. Not even a little.

pictured: a lying liar who lies

Really, the relationship between Weaver and Tilly might just have made it on the top of my list for this season, on the strength of this episode alone. The way this kind of terrible person cared so deeply for young woman, showed concern for her well-being, and directly jeopardised his own advantage and safety to help her just pushed aaaall of my buttons.

And Tilly’s mounting desperation to remind Weaver of who he really is, before she loses herself again was heart-breaking to watch. She knew she wasn’t getting out of this with her mind in once piece, but right until the end she didn’t stop fighting to help her friend.

…look, “help” looks different for different people, alright?

And with that…

Thanks, show! It’s not like I really needed my heart in the first place. Fantastic light, though.

So, I pretty much knew what was coming (in general terms at least), because… well, I had some warning and it didn’t take that much guessing in the first place. And I saw the “how” the moment that montage started because I, too, have seen Up.

I still cried like a hungry baby. My cat was very concerned.

please. your face. I cannot deal with this.

This was such a well-told story. They really gave it their all to show that yes, these two were happy, at the end. The montage, for one, which even for people who haven’t seen Up works as a good visual shorthand. The nostalgic clutter in the house. The fact that these two dorks still dance around the house when they feel like it. All the little gestures between them—the fond looks, the little tuck of a blanket, Rumple matching Belle’s steps perfectly as they walk out into the garden. I just… they were so happy together.

And I’m glad they told the story like this. Nothing bad happened to Belle. Her life wasn’t some inspiring tragedy or anything like that. She spent her life with her True Love. She raised her son and saw him grow up well. She got to fulfil her dream of travelling the world, and did so together with the people she loved most. And she died after a long and happy life, not in some grand, dramatic fashion, but simply because that is what mortals do. We die.

hi, is anyone else absolutely convinced that he carved that with his own two hands rather than use magic? because I am and I want to share my feelings! there’s quite a lot of them…

And just… you know, when that conversation with Gideon happens, and Rumple says ruefully that time might have stood still for this realm, but it didn’t for Belle… you just know he forgot about it. They were together, and they were happy, and he was so determined to spend the rest of his life with her that he didn’t realise what was happening right until she fell off that ladder. It’s clear they’d never talked about him using his magic to rejuvenate her before—that was the first time the topic ever came up, I think. And the last, of course.

(By the way, there’s totally a conversation about fridging to be had here, but I’d prefer that to be another post. I’m really deep in my feelings right now and I’d rather leave putting on the analytical hat for later in the day.)

Obviously, that entire death scene fucked me up. His face. Her face. The way they told each other their own story like it was a fairy tale (because it was!) Rumple’s half-sobbing “I am afraid”, because he sees the rest of his life without Belle looming before him and he doesn’t know how to do it. He never planned to, in the first place. And then she was gone, and he was crying, and I was crying, and the camera cut away, and you could still hear him sobbing in the background god why...

yes, I will be interspersing this with pictures of my OTP being happy and in love, why do you ask?

And while I’m a bit sad that I’ll never find out what Weaver really wanted, this very clearly sets the stage for Rumple’s motivations and goals this season. Because this episode, beautiful as it was (no pun intended), can’t be the last entry of the Rumbelle story. This was the end of act 2, and I insist on a third act. The stage is all set: Rumple needs to get rid of the dagger so he can be reunited with Belle, which, granted, a bit dark. Considering it means he’s going to die (and won’t that be a fun day…) At the same time… he said it himself: he’s seen the generations pass by and he doesn’t even want to be immortal anymore. He was planning to spend the rest of his life with Belle. Just because he wasn’t physically able to doesn’t invalidate the decision he made. He’ll just have to get there the long way around.

And can I just mention how damn impressed with Rumple’s character development I was? He threw away the dagger! Not in a moment of “do or die” crisis, not as part of an “either, or” ultimatum, no, he was just… done with all that. He didn’t want the Dark One anymore, and nobody had to push him into that realisation. So much for “my power means more to me than you”, huh, past!Rumple? (Also, is it just me or did it feel a little like he waited for Belle to be roughly his physical age to do that? Because it did to me, and I have a lot of emotions about that.)

though I might giggle for a while about how Belle went grey the way an Urban Fantasy protagonist would

Other highlights included, but are not limited to:

The neverending stream of loving looks, from soft fondness to full-on bedroom eyes...

Local Dork Caught Staring Lovingly At His Wife

Also, is there a version of that first scene where Gideon doesn’t show up? Asking for a friend.

The Skin Deep parallels!

did I open up Skin Deep to get that first screencap? of course I did.

Just… guh, my heart! And the poor cup got shattered.

Again.

Everything about that last confrontation between Alice (because at that point she could barely remember ever being Tilly) and Weaver messed me up, by the way. Her mounting desperation, because she didn’t have much time left. His frantic pleading, first because he was worried she’d hurt herself and then that she’d do something she wouldn’t be able to come back from.

And, of course, that last scene between Rumple (welcome back, buddy!) and Tremaine. I’d almost feel sorry for the woman, because she probably wasn’t counting on this happening. Though I would disagree with Rumple’s “there’s nothing you can do to hurt me”--you, my friend, just lied your ass off to help Tilly get out of trouble for shooting you. After waking up. Clearly there’s some people you still care about, and I can’t wait to see how that plays out, honestly.

And there’s so much more. I could just post stills of the entire montage here, really, because it was wonderful and I loved it, even as it cracked open my ribcage and held my still-beating heart up to my eyes so I could see the life go out of it.

…ahem. All right. Deep breath.

Like I said at the top, this episode actually had some important developments that seem like they will be catalysts to kicking the plot into gear. …and as soon as my emotional batteries have recharged, I’m sure I will be very excited about that. In the meantime… please send fluff?

Oh, on that note: I want to thank everyone who tagged me in stuff. You are amazing, and I am incredibly grateful! It’ll take a while to go through it all, but I do look at all the little @s in my notifications, and they fill me with joy. (In other news: prepare for some dashboard spam over the next... ::checks drafts:: three months or so.)

#ouat #once upon a time #ouat beauty #sieben watches ouat #rumbelle #sieben talks #yeah i put it in the tag this once #so sue me #i'm not even kidding with that last one btw #i've got enough posts in my drafts to last a good 2.5 months at my current queue rate

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cupofsorrows · 5 years ago

Text

Howard Lovecraft 5: Yes, This Is The Last One

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Alright chums, let’s do this, home stretch!

- Alright everybody, welcome back to Eldritch Wipeout!

- We’ve had a pretty uneventful day so far, but that might turn around with our next contestant! Standing three feet tall and hailing from Rhode Island, let’s give it up for Howard “Hard R” Lovecraft! *air horns*

- He’s gonna need to keep a level head for this, Tim.

- That’s for sure, Jack. Always keep your wits about you!

- That is, if you haven’t already lost your mind from revelations no man should bear!

- Looks like he’s already running into some trouble with the first trial- And they’re past it already!

- But let’s see how well they do in the second trial!

- We pulled out all the stops on this one...

...and by “all the stops”, I mean ‘ripped the hell off of Indiana Jones’!

Don’t forget Howard...in the Aklo alphabet, ‘Jehovah’ begins with an ‘I’!

- Pretty straightforward, Bob, just gotta find the right tiles to step on --

- Ooh! Do you think he realizes that the words “my father” in that inscription DON’T refer to his father?

- I’m sure he does, John. If the inscription had meant that, it would have said “your father”!

- Appears he does NOT understand this, Rick.

- You know kids these days, Bill, they just don’t got the grammar too good.

- Wait, looks like he’s got another idea...could it be?

- I think it is!

- Looks like he’s spelling out ‘Azathoth’ which IS the correct answer!

- Terrible animation as always, of course.

- No argument there, Dick.

- Just the worst.

- Anyway, it’s on to the third and final trial! This one’s gonna require a lot of creative thinking...

- Looks like he’s planning on reflecting the light from his glowy blue friend, definitely an unconventional solution!

- I’m not sure that’s how physics works, Fred...

- Well, it’s working, Don!

- Well, fuck me in the ass with a Honda, Paul, so it is!

- Just goes to show you can’t trust physics in a place like this.

- No you can’t, Ron.

- I think our boy Howard might just be home free - OH! LOOK at that! A mob of Deep Ones!

- Copy-pasted, by the looks of it!

- Earl, this might be a pickle they’re in now.

waaait a minute...Deep Ones don’t blink!

- Actually, Mark, it seems like they’re cool! They’re just letting him walk out of there.

- Come to think of it, Ted, I think those might just be some set technicians. They’ve been waiting to start disassembling the course, I think.

- Well then, that’s our cue! We have a winner, ladies gents and assorted entities! Thanks for tuning in!

whew, doing those voices was murder on my throat. Now back to the hostage situation:

Nothing much to say here, badguy seemingly wins, activates the ritual, yadda yadda.

oola ooh couchez avec moi, c’est soi?

You can’t really tell from the screencap, but at the crucial moment the book stops working because...

...yeah. I’m not sure ‘deus ex machina’ is the right term for a situation involving actual elder gods, but it sure is a convenient development that in no way hinged on the protagonist’s actions, isn’t it? (also wow. They...just did not bother to give that book any texture here, did they?) Anyhoo, the evil plan fails, miserably,

(I think this was Pepsi’s slogan back in the ‘90s.)

Abdul has finally Outlived His Usefulness™, although he manages a few more lines after being set on fire so I wonder whether that dorky outfit was actually flame retardant.

And there’s Dagon, just standing there awkwardly because this is his place and he actually has people coming over tomorrow so if you all would please hurry up?

The goodguys actually left before Nyarlahotep had even begun soliloquizing back there, and now they’re back safe and sound (except for Ma Lovecraft who is still dying).

Oh, look who it is! Yeah, they’re safe, no thanks to you. Hope you had a nice cup of tea while everyone else was almost dying.

He binds the three journals together into The Necronomicon, which is the only thing that can save Howard’s mother (apparently that requires a higher level of magic than awakening freaking Cthulhu).

Speaking of Mark Hamill, that new Dark Crystal show has been pretty good so far (he’s one of the skeksis in that). Anyways sorry I called you useless, Doc.

lol that bitch is FADED!

*ding* Turkey’s done!

Howard reads from the book to save her. BUT WILL HE BE IN TIME?

My God, she looks like she’s made of vinyl! SHE’S BACK TO NORMAL, EVERYBODY!

There it is, the ONE GOOD BIT in this whole sordid affair. And I’ve capped and posted it, so now you can safely not watch the movie without missing anything.

So Spot (...is he Cthulhu for real now? I don’t think so but...) Must Go Back To His Home Planet Now, His People Need Him. By the way, I am increasingly sure that this is supposed to be R’lyeh:

(sorry, Ruh-LAY)

So the baddies didn’t kill these guys. Ah, too bad, I guess.

Howard shares some meaningful last words with Armitage:

- And they return (via portal) to their home. Yes, their quiet, peaceful home, with its cozy beds and its tranquil garden and their little cat, Ni-

...why, who could THAT be?

I will say this about the animation: it stayed shitty right up to the end.

...

So...not Nick Fury, then.

Right now, I feel, the joke is very specifically on me.

Roll credits, including this bit here about how this was actually adapted from a graphic novel:

Notice that director/producer/voice of Spot/father or husband of half the cast Sean O’Reilly is there, but notice how many other people there are who seem to have had little or nothing to do with this movie. Wonder what that’s about?

If it’s one of those guys that did this credit art - orders of magnitude better than the animation for most of the actual film - it’s nothing short of a travesty that not only were they not involved with the main project but also that we get to see their stuff now just to taunt us with what might have been.

I mean, LOOK at all that! Damn!

“Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental”, says the movie with the child version of a famous horror author as the main character. SURE, WHY NOT.

WELP THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE - well, all she wrote, maybe, but I still have a bit more to add. So yeah, this was on the whole pretty dismal. Not quite as bad as it could have been, I’ll grant, but it missed most of its major cues. I DID like some things - Doug Bradley played a decent Nyarlahotep, the stuff with Azathoth was neat, and Winfield Lovecraft’s character was actually kind of engaging - even funny - at times. AT TIMES. And I will say that, perversely, Abdul Alhazred’s lackluster character design actually kind of stood out - I don’t think you’ll find very many other depictions of him where he’s Just Some Guy (who happens to be a powerful sorcerer). If nothing else, they pretty diligently avoided racializing him (not even a turban!) - yeah, it’s still true that the one evil human is also the only one with any nonwhite identifiers whatsoever (really just the name, in this case) but considering the source material if that’s the most problematic it gets then we got off SUPER easy.

Bad news is, basically everything else about this blows. The animation only hurts if you have eyes, but even the blind can hold O’Reilly accountable for the decision to cast all his kids. Then there’s the fact that the movie tries to bait us with big names, even though two of the top-billed stars (Plummer and Perlman) have probably less than a minute’s worth of lines between them (and ‘lines’ is a bit charitable in Perlman’s case [no disrespect to Ron, you’ll always be my Hellboy]). Seriously, did you even remember Dr. West until I brought him up just now? Wait, no, don’t actually try to recallAAUGH

AAAAAAAHH!

And now the Nyquil’s kickin’ in so I’m gonna have to bow out - but fortunately I’ve said pretty much everything I could think of to say anyway. Perhaps one day, when the stars are right, I might recap the other movies, including Howard’s Mother Eats A Whole Chicken. The future is full of mysteries!

...OK, bye.

#hp lovecraft #HLatUK #shit i actually got this one done before 2 am for once

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poorlonesomecowboah · 5 years ago

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Letting you know someone on here in the red dead redemption fandom is totes ripping off your Arthur Morgan meets 2019 fic and making $$ for it. Fic set up is the same with with kinda identical scenes and reffs stuff like you all ready wrote about. Same type of cat and names and object interactions ect as yours . Its all super similar but like a low rent reader insert version of what you all ready wrote better. So not cool!!!! 😡

So I’ve received a bunch of messages about this, I’ve just been trying toput them together to get the picture of what’s been going on, but for now I’monly going to post one response about this. Just to say, I appreciate you alllooking out for me, but I’d like to keep drama to a minimum going forward. I’ve actually been editing my first draft of Wish Upon all evening, and I onlylogged on tonight to post a new chapter, but now I’m just....Well, I'm not surewhat to say or do. I'm a bit gobsmacked and confused to be honest, and I’m trying to figure outwhat’s been going on. I don't really interact with the RDR community much on here, so I don't keep upwith what's happening in the fandom in general and I’ve not used Tumblr muchthese last few months either. That being said, I’m also am religious about not reading any fics at all whenI'm working on one of my own, so I appreciate all the heads-ups because I guessI miss a lot of stuff in my bubble haha! I started writing this fic in November last year. I’ve spent an absolutelystupid amount of time doing research for it and actually had over a hundredthousand words in first draft before I even started posting on AO3 in January,because I don’t like to publish work unless it’s almost finished in firstdraft. (Of course, I know anyone can claim that, so I’ve screencapped my draftdocument.) So having put in all that effort into this piece, and seeing this kind of dramakicking off around it is pretty hurtful. It’ll be a while before all of that content I have for this fic gets to beshared (due to editing time and real life being a wet turd) but the point I’m aimingfor here is that I'm sure there's potentially similarities one could draw fromin that draft too. So what does that mean for this situation and these accusations? You tell me?Or rather the person behind the callout blog maybe should, because they seem tobe calling the shots. I have thought on this and I don’t know what I can really say. I don't have amonopoly on the idea of Arthur being alive in the modern world, so of courseother people are likely to write about that concept. I also can’t claim dominion over a breed of cat or a name or objects, so Idon't understand the angle of that reach. I do see some similarities to my work in the comparisons that have been posted though,but I can't judge any futher than that, because I’m not going to go and readthe fic itself because I don’t think it’s going to help anything and I justdon’t read other people’s work specifically to protect myself from this kind ofthing.Similarities aside, no one can prove where an idea came from, so I guess thebenefit of the doubt has to be given in this instance. Bottom line is, I don’t care for Tumblr drama. I’ve seen enough of it beforeand I don’t want my efforts in writing to be reduced to fandom fighting. I’m going to do my best to address this properly with the author, but I doappreciate that people have good intentions in alerting others to these kindsof matters, and that folks are welcome to have their say, but please don’t bestirring up any more drama in my name. I just write for fun and escapism, in the hope other people will enjoy what Iproduce. I’m too old, with too little time and not enough energy to fight overmy hobby.Thanks.

#replies #why so anon?#wish upon #drama #Anonymous

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rgr-pop · 6 years ago

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[ rape advocacy politics / t*rf shit / dv / actually looking for advice for navigating this social thing or helping someone do better I guess ]

I’m sure I’ve subposted this person before but I am reasonably sure that I have never screenshotted her shadiness because at the time it happened, I felt it the contents of the shadiness were so bad that they would only hurt people if I reproduced them. here goes.

there’s this person in town I knew from college, ws classes. back then she didn’t do any like anti-rape activism with us, but after college she went to get a social work degree, and decided to do antirape social work professionally. she now has some kind of peer educator organizing/advocacy position in the sexual assault program (unsure if the core sexual assault program, but something like that) here.

now, I want to couch that as carefully as possible: I think she came into that position around the time of the title ix news or just before, but significantly before the you-know-what shit at the university. [editing for clarity: obviously not before the things happened, but before they were national news.] back then, even before all of that, a lot of people had issues with leadership in the core sexual assault program, they did some shady political stuff and were awful to some survivors who were pretty public about it. I’m not sure that most of those people are still working over there. this person came into the programs around the time of that transition, likely as some kind of hiring sweep to preempt the title ix stuff, it’s on us era, I dunno for sure. she wasn’t involved with all the high level controversy, but I recall that she was involved in an absolutely horrendous bystander intervention program. we all know that the lit on bystander intervention doesn’t look so great, and we also know that bystander intervention programs are usually just a way for universities to preempt title ix related funding cuts without getting sued by frat dads, right, but it was worse than just ineffective. the program, I shit you not, the slogan was: “be a bystander.” I don’t know that it was her idea or anything, but she was really proud of it. on facebook she was sharing her work asking people to “pledge to be a bystander.” I guess I should sort of feel bad for her for being that dumb after paying for that much college? but that’s not the point. the point is actually that we should not trust professional anti-rape advocates anyway, especially when they work for institutions like the one she works for. that’s just the context.

the real thing is that back then--I really can’t remember exactly, but I believe that it was around the time she was hired in--she was sharing and posting a bunch of extremely disturbing t*rf memes on facebook, including some from pages that were unapologetic anti-trans pages. I took some screencaps but I don’t know if I still have them. this must have been around 2015, because she was posting things about c**tlyn j*nner. one of them was a graphic photoshopped photograph of a woman who was all bruised up, supposed to be a dv victim, you might have seen this one, I don’t remember exactly. it said something like... j*nner will never know what it’s really like to experience gender based violence? or maybe it said like, trans women only care about superficial things, not real issues, like dv? you get it. after a handful of these someone actually kindly “called her in” about it, but they made the mistake of basically saying, “hey, these memes are from a page that advocates hatred toward trans women.” so she removed them and posted an apology, but what she actually apologized for was sharing from bad facebook pages, not for saying alarmly transmisogynistic, violent horrible things. (not to mention a dv advocate sharing disgusting exploitative images of dv victims like that.)

so anyway, I hate”follow” on facebook since then. trouble is that she hasn’t disappeared off the face of the earth, inconveniently. and now she knows a lot of my friends, including some people who are my friends and would be vulnerable to her beliefs, ie, like, regardless of any power she has, I would like for a fake bitch t*rf to not be fake friends with my trans friends, on principle, and for their emotional safety.

but I’m hearing what you are thinking: she maybe has educated herself, and has changed. so what I’d like is for a way for her to demonstrate that she has changed (to me! I mean to anybody else who is wondering, but to ME), maybe while also doing something constructive, ideally without making a spectacle. I’m not really sure if people who would be impacted by her past-maybe-current-evilness would even want to know, and maybe I should actually just talk to her one on one about it. calling in, lol!

this is coming up now because I saw her dumb ass on facebook--listen, she could absolutely apologize for those particular bad actions and show me that she is not an evil t*rf bitch, but she could never convince me that she’s a genius--promoting a new zine she made--and here’s where we return to “social workers are helplessly stupid, borderline a plague”--which is called “the do’s and don’ts of supporting survivors.” in 2018. I mean okay!

anyway: I can seethe about this forever while feeling hopeless, I can unfriend her which would only achieve peace of mind for ME plus lower the risk of me doing something impulsive that helps no one lol, orrrr what. I should tell her that I’ve been stressed about this for many years? I could ask her if she understands, imperfect white woman to imperfect white woman lol? I could ask her to maybe like do some kind of trans fundraising gesture to make sure anybody who may remember what she did in the past can understand that she now understands that the safety of trans women is important to her professional feminism lol? I really don’t wanna tell my friends about this and stress them out needlessly but I’m OFTEN pissed at this person and like, it does not seem like she’s going anywhere, so

eta: like to clarify, the stakes are not just my friends, the stakes are that she does hold a position of power in anti-rape advocacy locally and back then I wanted to get her ass fired but didn’t, and now I would only feel comfortable having her around getting paid to advocate for victims of sexual violence if she demonstrate that not only does she think trans women deserve care and advocacy and dignity, but that she is actively including that principle in her work, getting PAID to REPRESENT SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

#please don't reblog but you can give me any kind of input

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smilingperformer · 6 years ago

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SM087 - Plot, plot, plot ~

Silly title is silly. Anyway, Necrozma Arc has finally started in it’s glory, and the newest episode focuses on building up important lore points about the legend of Alola’s Creation and Alola’s three legendary Pokémon related to said lore. I’ll be focusing on the lore and plot in my thoughts post this time around, so I hope you’ll enjoy it! Without further ado, welcome to the start of the Necrozma Arc in Pocket Monsters Sun & Moon:

A Crisis in Alola! The Darkness That Eats Radiance!

Since the start of the episode is important to the plot, let me recap it the best I can: Necrozma is shown to be breaking free from some Crystal-like formation, and as it sees Lunala and Solgaleo, who we know as Nebby, it screams in a scary, possibly painful way, and charges at them. As this happens, Satoshi wakes up only to face a cursed sight of Kukui having his coat closed up and wearing a shirt! Kukui isn’t the only one affected: Burnet is also being extra sleepy and is skipping out on morning Ocean trip! And that’s not all: as we learn after the opening, it’s all of the adults in Alola! Even Rocket Gang! (We can scratch any false information of Rocket Gang being teenagers now right?)

Now that I’ve managed to somewhat explain one of the main conflicts of the episode, and the arc, let us move on to explaining the lore bits of the arc that will become important during the arc episodes later on. Since Kukui was supposed to explain about the following information, but was too sleepy and slacky to do it, Kaki is doing the explanation instead! (And I’ll slack of by showing it through screencaps. Maybe Necrozma affecting me as well. I am a young adult after all.)

The Manalo Festival

This is something I couldn’t understand without subtitles, but is definitely an important lore bit for the future of the arc. I find it clever that they sneaked in the years Pokeani has been airing into this lore. Very sneaky Pokeani team, very sneaky. We also learn that Manalo and Alola are from the ancient language, where Manalo means “You and I will live together”, while Alola means pretty much what we’ve learned the main treat of the region to be: “To Share”. The Legendary Pokemon in question of the festival is none other than The Radiant One (Kagayaki-sama).

And this is where the next lore point comes to play as well. This time explained by Lilie, who’s been hearing the story about Alola’s Creation from Lusamine herself, ever since she was a small kid. And apparently, Lusamine’s repeating a family tradition with it. It’s actually a continuation from the myth we learned from Acerola back in SM074!

The Myth of Alola’s Creation

Pretty neat bed-time story isn’t it! The emissaries of light are of course Lunala and Solgaleo, while the ends of the sky is a way of describing an Ultra Hole. When you start thinking about the very start of the episode, this story starts making a lot of sence, as it seems to be occuring right at that moment. This bit of lore has made me believe that the main goal of this Arc is for Lunala and Solgaleo to help Necrozma regain its lost light after awaking from it’s long slumber.

But as myths always are, the stories tend to get trimmed over time and important parts of it will become lost. I believe the bit that has been lost in the myth is how Necrozma without light is in constant pain (the scream it makes both at the beginning and the end of the episode makes me highly believe this is the case. It sounds painful), and will use any means to get its light back. That includes its ability to fuse with Lunala and Solgaleo, which is what makes it become Ultra Necrozma, The Radiant One. No one who knows the myth of The Radiant One in Alola seems to know about this bit thou, which highly makes me believe the people of Alola will be shocked after they learn the truth.

Whatever the case, Bebenom is shown to be very curious about The Radiant One in this episode, as it’s been in previous cases. And it seems to sense that the arrival of Necrozma is incoming, and whatever is happening in Alola as of now (with Mysterious Clouds hanging over Alola Region and all) is related to it. Maybe the situation has it’s wary because of how similar it feels to when its homeworld was sucked out of light?

The Z-moves lacking power

For some reason, I saw people claiming this wasn’t important at all, but let me tell you, this bit is extremely important bit to the plot! As we know from the games, and as it is confirmed by Burnet later on in the episode as well, Z-moves power originates from the Ultra Aura that is surrounding Alola, and this Ultra Aura originates from the Ultra Wormhole. And, we also learn later on (more about it later in this post), the whole reason Adults seem to be affected this way is because of a tiny Ultra Wormhole that is sucking Alola’s Ultra Aura, diminishing the amount of it bit by bit. So the reason Z-moves are acting less powerful is because of the same cause as Adults being tired and acting weird. I’m telling you, do not shrug this plot point off as nothing! It will play a part later on! It’s the story-telling 101. Show a plot point, explain it later, solve it later. This will most likely play a huge role with Ultranecrozium Z as well. Hoo boy am I scared of seeing that.

During this scene Bebenom also gets inspired to draw Ultra Necrozma’s symbol. But more about that later!

The tiny Ultra Wormhole sucking up Alola’s Ultra Aura

Pretty much what I explained briefly before. But this time explained by Burnet and Wicke! Let me fastforward the episode for more information!

Thou before that, let it be known that Rocket Gang has noticed the opening of the tiny Ultra Wormhole as well, and are heading to Alola, lead by none other than Matori! And as we know, they’re coming to get The Radiant One. Anyway, fastforward to when the Ultra Guardians and Aether Foundation team gather at the Altar of the Sunne:

(Looks like a full day passed since the episode started, meaning the Solar Eclipse is happening in just one day!)

To anyone believing the Adults only being affected by this won’t be explained, please listen to this dialogue! Because they are acknowledging it, I’m very certain we’ll learn the full reason for this later down the road of the arc. Again, story-telling 101: introduce plot point, explore it, find the explanation.

That hole being the tiny one they found out about earlier in the episode (they also explained it to the Ultra Guardians here). When the new member of the Ultra Guardians team, Gladio, asks about an UB possibly coming out of it, Lusamine tells that if the hole grows larger, there’s def a chance for it. To which Burnet continues.

After small comic relief of Wicke being harsh on Sauboh (unintentionally, because of being tired), Sauboh continues from this:

See? The Clouds itself aren’t the cause of the crisis. They are only one of the outcomes of the crisis happening. So, today’s mission is for the Z-users of Ultra Guardians to power up this machine, so that the clouds can be taken out of the way to help locate the tiny Wormhole before anything else happens.

Here’s the bit that explains the Z-Power lore!

So, the Ultra Guardians fire of their Z-moves, and the clouds are taken out of the way.

The Ancient Painting regarding Alola’s Creation Myth

I actually talked about this a week ago after the preview, so I don’t want to go into detail anymore, but what I want to correct is that Solgaleo actually does have it’s face, but it’s drawn in an ancient akward way. Also, as I was being corrected on, there are Trumbeak in this painting.

Bebenom is shown very, very interested in the painting, and definitely knows about the symbol. And this is very well acknowledged by Rotom and Satoshi!

We once again see that curious, lore-loving Lusamine here. Even when she’s tired, she wants to unlock the mysteries of the ancient myth behind Necrozma. And I’m telling you, I’m certain desciphering this painting is part of the arc. Maybe, possibly during the next episode or two, Lusamine will be trying to uncover the mystery of this painting, while the Ultra Guardians will be trying to Protect Lunala. Speaking off which, we have now reached the end of the episode, where the amazing stuff starts!

The Arrival of Necrozma

After Burnet calls the squad to come back up because of the tiny Ultra Wormhole getting bigger, we finally see Lunala in its full glory, arriving from the hole! But what’s more…

(Did I forget to explain why Gladio is here? He’s here because Silvuddy is scared of the presence Necrozma is giving off through the tiny wormhole, and I bet it’ll increase with the arrival of the being! Speaking of which)

Necrozma arrives right behind Lunala, tearing through the Ultra Wormhole, and making that same scream it did at the beginning of the episode.

Everyone’s reactions say a ton about the situation. This is after Necrozma screamed. Lusamine’s reaction somehow feels more curious than worry or scare. I’m sure she’ll realise this is not the time to be curious during next episode. She has learned the lesson back in Aether Arc after all.

And I have to say this right now: this scene right here has by far my favourite track in the whole series of Pokeani now! The Guitar, the atmosphere, the sound, everything about is so god damn glorious and I want the OST of this series so bad now. Sony, you’re the guys licensing the music, pleaaaaase release the OST!

The End of the episode! Honestly, this is a great start for what seems to be growing into an amazing Arc, and I can’t wait to see the next episode! The music in this episode was excellent, the plot reveals and lore explanations were a delight and the return of Gladio and arrival of both Lunala and Necrozma has be extemely hyped! Necrozma Arc, bring it on!

If I forgot to talk about a certain plot point, please point it out. I wrote this as I rewatched the episode, so I should not have missed out on anything, but, I’m a human, and humans make mistakes. (And I was kinda unfocused during this process. God damn.)

Also, Ishizuka was back to narrating this episode, and honestly the death of him is still affecting the way I hear his dialogue in this episode. ;-;

The PokeProblem segment has Mao’s Papa returning from having spend this… whole time (?) at Yareyutan’s bar, to which Yareyutan just… sighs. Oh dear. A good mood lighter after the plot-heavy episode. Not too comical, and not too serious. I like it.

Next week, Matori shows how good of a secretary she is to Sakaki, and the Rocket Gang’s special Unit arrives to Alola to capture Necrozma, who fights with Lunala, as it seems to eventually manage to fuse with it. Looks to be a action-heavy episode, with Bebenom somehow looking scared D: Everyone, protect the poison baby!

SM088 - Lunala VS UB: BLACK! A Battle at Full Moon!!

And as Gozu says at the end of the preview: Watch it, or you’ll suffer That!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all in the next post!

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solacekames · 7 years ago

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Capitalizing on Cringe Culture

I recently had a post about the alt right get a lot of notes, TERFs reblogged it, so I added some stuff about how TERF thinking strongly resembles the alt right, which ended up in me getting TERF-swarmed. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience, but it helped me articulate some thoughts about the uses and abuses of cringe culture here on Tumblr and online in general.

Both TERFs and the alt right use cringe culture in very similar ways. They actively seek out “cringe-worthy” images and text by their chosen targets, snip them out of context, then reframe them within a different community of meaning. A physical analogy would be cutting out articles from a newspaper, or perhaps even just a paragraph from an article, and pasting it into a scrapbook page entitled “WORDS OF THE ENEMY”. A huge chunk of their online activity consists of this diligent searching, collection, reframing and collation. The alt right call it “red pilling”, TERFs call it “peak trans.” It’s a tactic that works to 1) radicalize new people into the group 2) keep radicalized people radicalized by altering their frame of thinking to recontextualize new information about “the enemy” in the same rigid way.

It’s super easy to snip-and-reframe stuff on today’s internet, and I’m not saying TERFs and the alt right are the only ones who do it. Just a few days ago there was a post on my dash screencapping some libertarian from “Ancapistan” arguing that the female orgasm was a myth promoted by cultural marxists, citing as evidence his own inability to observe one in his female partners. I laughed my ass off and slammed the reblog button. It’s unrealistic to demand such a high standard of being nice on the internet that we never laugh at people we disagree with. Cringe culture isn’t going anywhere, but we can at least be more conscious about it.

Another tendency both TERFs and the alt right share is a fundamental dishonesty. When they can’t get enough material on their cringe expeditions among the enemy, they’re happy to make it up. Dishonesty as a community isn’t just about individual dishonest people, it’s about people knowing that something is dishonest is going on but looking away, not caring, or actively excusing it because “even if this one example is fake they say things just like it anyway.” The alt right has an army of anti-SJW sympathizers who create troll blogs pretending to be SJWs. They troll themselves all the time, but since they’re so fundamentally dishonest it doesn’t bother them. Before a few days ago, I didn’t know that TERFs did the exact same thing, but they do! And they won’t call out the people who do it.

A heavy reliance on cringe culture doesn’t always mean cult-like thinking, but it’s one of the stepping stones. And even if your chosen political identity isn’t cult-like, cringe culture can distract people from creating positive change in the world. If you get online and spend 10% of your free time laughing at your enemy and insulting your enemy, you feel better, your friends feel better, you get on with your day. If you spend 99% of your time doing that, on and on, for weeks and days and even years, you’re not working on yourself and you’re not working to create positive lasting change in your community.

So maybe next time before you dive into a cringe culture binge, think critically about the stuff that’s being snipped and reframed first.

Is this something produced by an incredibly young person whose brain isn’t fully formed? Or does it seem like they’re drunk, high on drugs, or typing from the tenth dimension? Maybe it’s better to just ignore it.

Is this text/image really representative of the enemy group in question, or is it an extremist minority viewpoint that the group in question doesn’t support or disavows? If so, that’s important for context.

Does the text/image use hyperbole and humor and parody? If so, it’s harmfulness should be judged on a slightly different standard. For example, fascists love jokes about throwing leftists out of helicopters. It’s hyperbole but it’s also incredibly harmful because it has been done and they seriously want to do it in future. Meanwhile, jokes about “kill all men” aren’t harmful on that scale (I think they’re kind of stupid and not funny, but they’re not harmful) because no group of women in the history of the world has killed all their men. It’s just not something that happens, it has no chance of happening in the present because women have zero institutional power to do that, and it’s not going to happen in the future.

Is the text/image purely fake? In other words, is it made up to make the target group in question look bad? This is shockingly frequent, and it’s more frequent when it comes to hate groups like alt righters and TERFs.

#terfs tw #cringe culture #alt right #trolling #ok to reblog #A+

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