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nitpick7 · 3 years ago

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Ayo anyone wanna see my essay on why removing Anybody Have A Map made the Dear Evan Hansen movie worse? It is slightly long

Disclaimer: I did like the movie (I cried three times), but I think they made some stupid decisions with it.

Dear Evan Hansen movie + musical spoilers under the cut, plus a fair amount of DEH neg/crit

Instead of Anybody Have A Map, they just have Evan's mom say "Hey are you writing those letters to yourself? Also you should ask the kids to sign your cast" before he goes to school and sings Waving Through A Window. They ignore every other part of the song and quickly insert the only thing from the song that's absolutely needed to understand the story so Evan can go be angsty at school. We don't even meet the Murphys until they meet Evan in the principal's office to tell him about Connor.

Disclaimer part 2 electric boogaloo: I complain about Evan a lot here. It's not because I think his experiences aren't valid and it's not because I'm trying to demonize people with mental illnesses or something. I know that his own struggles influenced his bad decisions. That doesn't mean they weren't bad decisions. He still did shitty things and he wasn't justified (listen to Words Fail), but I know it was influenced by his mental health.

On with the complaining!

First of all, the movie opens with Waving Through A Window? It feels like they're putting the most popular song first as a desperate grab for your attention to convince you the movie is good and like... they really didn't need to do that. Waving Through A Window is right after Anybody Have A Map, it's not like anyone's gonna walk out of the theatre after one (really good) song.

Anybody Have A Map establishes a few things: it shows us that both of these families are struggling so that we know immediately that the Murphys' perfect facade is fake, it shows us that Connor was a dick to his family (this is very important), and obviously it tells us why Evan was writing letters to himself. It also introduces us to the two main families at the same time so we know this story isn't just about Evan.

By starting the movie with an Evan solo song instead of the group song, they frame Evan as the one main character, the only person whose perspective we need to understand. But Evan is incredibly flawed, just like everyone else, and by making us think the story is only about him, it immediately makes us (the audience) more inclined to believe that Evan is always in the right and less inclined to consider everyone else's side of the story. Evan is an incredibly unreliable narrator, he's always going to frame his actions as correct, or at least excusable, even when he's actively hurting/lying to other people.

All of the Murphys get introduced through interacting with Evan instead of interacting with each other. This makes it seem like the Murphys only exist for Evan, but the entire point of the climax is that everything doesn't exist just for Evan! Evan is not part of their family, he can't just use everyone around him for his own benefit, and all of the Murphys have lives outside of him. When they're introduced through Evan, they're introduced as existing for Evan. Anybody Have A Map introduces them separately from Evan instead of attached to him.

Without Anybody Have A Map, we never actually see Connor being mean to Zoe, so she just looks like an asshole for not being sad about her dead brother. To make up for it, she's constantly having to tell the audience why she hated him, tripping over herself to talk about all the shitty things he did to her because we don't have Anybody Have A Map to show us their interactions. Zoe ends up complaining about her brother the entire time, so when it gets to Only Us and she says that she doesn't want everything to be about her brother, it seems out of character for her.

And with the removal of Anybody Have A Map, we don't ever see Connor interact with his own family in the movie. Anybody Have A Map is the only time we get to see Connor with his family. It shows us that Connor really was an asshole to his family, it justifies Zoe hating him, and it gives his mom more dimensions by showing her struggling to keep her family together even with everyone fighting against her. Without that, the writers ended up ignoring the most basic piece of writing advice - "show, don't tell" - to fill in the missing information from the song.

In the movie, all we get of Cynthia Murphy is... her being sad about Connor and refusing to admit that he ever did anything wrong. She's just boring and annoying in the movie, but in the musical, we get that bit at the beginning that shows her as an actual person with actual motivations! By cutting Anybody Have A Map, they made her into a more one-dimensional character.

So in a bit of a conclusion: Anybody Have A Map establishes the Murphys as main characters separate from Evan and shows us Connor's relationship with his family instead of telling us about it. It sets the scene for the story before just jumping into "Evan is sad and alone uwu anxious depressed soft boy" and makes everyone a better, more three-dimensional character. Getting rid of it meant that they had to do backflips to justify everyone's decisions during the movie instead of setting everything up at the beginning.

I do think the movie could've benefitted from Disappear but then again, it could've benefitted from the whole "Connor being the visual/vocal representation of Evan's justifications for why keeping up the lie is helping people" thing in general, but they got rid of that so Disappear wouldn't have worked. (I am salty that they got rid of that thing but whatever) The Anonymous Ones worked instead and it was a good song, so sure, why not I guess? /neutral

I could also complain about how they got rid of To Break In A Glove, Disappear, and Good For You, but none of those decisions actually impacted the story too much. To Break In A Glove and Good For You both got replaced with some tell-not-show cutscenes that gave us the same information in a less interesting way (and Larry got less character development without To Break In A Glove), and Disappear got replaced with an Alana song which was honestly pretty good so i'm fine with that one.

Now for some good changes that the movie made!

The Anonymous Ones was a good song, I actually really liked that. I'm disappointed that they got rid of Disappear, but they replaced it with another song that served the same purpose while also giving Alana more screen time and character depth! And it was a genuinely good song, I really enjoyed it and it made me like Alana more!

I really liked the ending of the movie. In the musical, there are literally no negative consequences for Evan, Zoe even forgives him at the end. She fucking forgives him for lying to her entire family about their dead son and and taking advantage of them because it "brought them closer together". And the internet never finds out what he did! He does all this terrible shit, lies to the entire fucking world, and gets away scot-free. And he never learns anything real about Connor. The movie changes all of that.

Connor's song was also a great addition! Every time we saw Connor in the musical, he was either being a dick or he was a fantasy version of himself made by Evan and/or Jared. Seeing that Connor can, in fact, be a nice person, that Cynthia's belief in him wasn't misplaced, was so satisfying. He really was just a meaner version of Evan a troubled kid lashing out at the world in self-defense. He wasn't an entirely bad person.

The Murphys still decide not to tell anyone what he did, but then Evan decides (on his own!) that he needs to own up to what he did. He records a video of himself admitting to what he did, shifts all the blame to himself, and then goes out of his way to fix his mistakes in any way he can. He says that his biggest regret is not getting to know Connor while he had the chance, so he goes online to find anything he can. He reads Connor's favorite books, tries to find anyone who might be able to tell him what Connor was like, and when he receives a video of Connor playing his song in rehab, he takes the time to send the video (through the mail, on a flash drive) to the Murphys, Jared, and Alana.

Evan doesn't contact Zoe at the end, she contacts him instead. She doesn't forgive him, and he doesn't ask for forgiveness. He knows what he did was wrong and he owns up to it and tries to fix it as much as possible, knowing full well that it could ruin his life. He does the right thing for the first time in the entire fucking movie (that's hardly even an exaggeration) and it's such a good ending. It makes more sense and is more satisfying than the musical.

The Dear Evan Hansen movie was not nearly as bad as the reviews say it was. It wasn't as good as the musical, it had its own problems, but it also made some good changes that I think made the story better. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it and most movies aren't perfect anyway. It really could've benefitted from Anybody Have A Map, though.

#the first draft of this took 50 minutes to write and it was on discord #then i spent a solid hour editing it while at work #please appreciate me /hj #pie.txt #dear evan hansen #dear evan hansen movie #dear evan hansen musical #dear evan hansen review #evan hansen #connor murphy #zoe murphy #cynthia murphy #larry mora #alana beck #i tagged a post for once now give me clout #/j /j

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and-then-there-were-n0ne · 4 years ago

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When I was in group treatment for anorexia, not everyone was thin. Those were just the high status patients, of whom I happened to be one. Naturally we patronised the shit out of the others. They’d say they didn’t feel they had the right to be there and we, the thin ones, would graciously reassure them that no, they were wrong, they were just as sick as us. There was never any need to acknowledge the hierarchy that granted us, patients not therapists, the right to say who had done enough to earn their treatment. By “allowing” women heavier than us to share our space, we got to feel virtuous and they got to feel, well, tolerated. In truth we were afraid of how similar we were. One year prior to entering treatment, during a bulimic phase, I hadn’t been thin either, but I never mentioned that. I liked to portray my past as a pure, uninterrupted decade of snow-white starvation. No need to let anyone know that I, too, had the potential to tumble down the ranks. The prospect horrified me, but it happened again all the same. A year after leaving treatment I was officially overweight, feeling, as Nancy Tucker describes in The Time In-Between, like “an anorexic in a fat suit”. Binge-eating in the aftermath of anorexia is not an uncommon thing to occur. People have a terrible tendency to call this “recovery”. It was a grim time, not least because those who’d known me at my thinnest were enthusing about how “well” I looked while those who hadn’t made it perfectly clear they saw me as just some fat bird. I was living in Germany at the time and mentioned to a colleague that I hadn’t always been fat, but had just been through a lot of stress (actually, I probably mentioned this to a lot of people. Being in a new country, surrounded by people who hadn’t known thin me – the real me, as I saw it – made me always want to introduce myself with a declaration that the person they saw before them wasn’t my actual self. I left my proper body at home). The colleague, in true “Germans have a compound noun for everything” style, responded with the term “Kummerspeck”. Literally translated as “worry bacon”, it refers to “the excess fat gained by emotional eating”. I didn’t find this helpful. It didn’t seem enough. It is hard to capture what it’s like to have an eating disorder when it doesn’t look like you have one. Also hard to know where the boundaries lie between “disordered thinking” and “shit most women think about food and weight all the time because that’s just how things are”. Obviously I fantasised about being thin again, misremembering a great deal of the unpleasantness, but nonetheless feeling – in a way I think is not altogether irrational – that if I was going to feel this crap every minute of every day, I ought at least to have an emaciated body to show for it (eventually I did lose weight again, through chain smoking. “You look great!” said the people who’d seen me as some fat bird. “Are you okay?” asked the people who’d thought I looked well). I think there are many women who occupy this zone, cast out of the ranks of the “properly ill” without feeling any better. Remembering the judgements, the hierarchies, the isolation of not having the physique to match the constant torment of thoughts about food and weight, I do see a value in reframing our understanding of eating disorders and what a person who is suffering might look like. And yet, the more I think about the tyranny of a label itself, the less I am sure how adjusting diagnostic criteria might achieve this. Current responses to plus-size model Tess Holliday’s post about suffering from anorexia – and the way in which atypical anorexia seems to have become, not a neutral diagnosis, but an opportunity to show how intersectional your understanding of anorexia is – remind me of our responses to the non-thin women in group therapy. Thin people get to show how tolerant, how inclusive they are. Only there is a difference between showily re-framing an illness for which the diagnostic criteria are in any case pretty arbitrary, and really getting to grips with why people feel the way they do in the bodies they have. I am not sure being told I “still counted” as eating disordered would have helped. It might have been a ticket to getting my pain recognised as valid, but it’s also a way of getting valid, rational responses to social phenomena recategorized as individual maladjustments. Far from having more people acquire the anorexia label – or one of the other new labels for eating disorders which, alas, do not conform neatly enough to the classics – I often wish we could move away from it altogether, treating each case of a person obsessing over food, fearing it, starving themselves, as strange, unique, something to be investigated on their terms. What happened to you?, not I declare you THIS. There’s something about the question “is a non-thin woman still anorexic?” which reminds me of other social justice-y questions whereby answering “no” – that is, restating that your criteria for what counts as “X” don’t include a particular quality – is considered cruel and implicitly right-wing. You’re meant to say yes, recite the catechism, “eating disorders don’t discriminate” (I’ll be honest, I think they do; while there are no fast boundaries, the age- and gender-based trends are pretty fucking obvious). I don’t think answering yes or no is revealing of inner virtue or its absence, just differences of opinion on what a useful diagnostic category might be. After all, “anorexic” should not be seen as a superior, gold-star diagnosis in the eating disorder world; that it has been, and that early eating disorder specialists were even quite scathing of “lesser” sufferers, is a problem in its own right (Hilde Bruch, for instance, was a right cow with regard to bulimics: “They make an exhibitionistic display of their lack of control or discipline, in contrast to the adherence to discipline of the true anorexics […] The modern bulimic is impressive by what looks like a deficit in the sense of responsibility […] Though relatively uninvolved, they wish to share in the prestige of anorexia nervosa.”). We have to move away from that. But today’s eating disorder activism, a political cheerleading which often seems to be leading therapeutic recommendations, doesn’t necessarily seem to me the answer. Eating disorder activism should be political, of course, but there’s something very shouty about it which often seems to me to elude confrontation with serious questions about why sufferers have developed particular thought patterns and coping strategies. Instead we get a set of statements to which everyone must agree lest they be viewed as both unenlightened and unkind. Anyone can be anorexic! It’s never the parents’ fault! Blaming the fashion industry is trivialising! Early diagnosis, and more diagnoses, now! A label for everyone! etc. etc. Engagement with thornier issues – is physically restraining women to force-feed them still okay? What do our current understandings of puberty (and its avoidance) tell girls about their growing bodies? Are we allowed to criticise the role of pornography head-on, or do we have to vaguely hand-wave about “the internet” and “social media” forever more? – is absent. I sometimes feel we are more invested in validating suffering than alleviating it, because alleviating it might piss off more powerful people. Or even just our best mates. Anyhow, I just went back and edited an earlier paragraph of this. I originally wrote “two years after leaving treatment I was officially overweight” rather than “a year”, on the basis that just a year sounded a bit crap and might have made you think I was never properly ill at all. Then I thought “why am I still doing that?” It was just a year, but here I am, still pushing for the status, still worrying about whether I “count” while also musing on the pointlessness of counting as opposed to caring. That is the problem. It shouldn’t matter at all.

#anorexia #eating disorders #glosswitch #psychiatry

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laceyeb · 3 years ago

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Because I’m determined to be excited about this season of DWTS (and I genuinely am!), I’m going to try to post much more about this season than I did last season and start sharing my opinions now! Starting with the cast thus far of course, with my excitement ranking out of 10 because I do what I want.

Jojo Siwa and Jenna - 1000/10

As soon as I heard about Jojo being with a female pro, I started manifesting Jenna with all my heart and I am sooooo excited!!!! I’m not saying that ANY female pro on this show is even remotely homophobic in any way shape or form because I do NOT believe any of them are. HOWEVER... If I had to pick one female pro who I feel like would be most “onboard,” it would be Jenna. (Or Sharna, but I’d prefer Jojo with Jenna just because Jenna is younger.) If this sentiment/how I expressed it comes off problematic, please let me know because that is absolutely not what I intended and I hope you understand what I’m trying to say. Anyways... I don’t know if I’m anxious, excited, terrified, curious, overjoyed, etc. etc. etc. Perhaps all at once. I can’t wait to see how this goes and how it is received. I’ve already had a small rant about the target demographic of this show, but I’m choosing to be optimistic. I would definitely prefer that they don’t spend the ENTIRE season talking about the ground-breakingness. First episode, yes. Very important, very groundbreaking, etc. Then I’d like this to just be normalized. I don’t want them to be treated any different than any other couple. I just want them to be like everyone else. I don’t expect them to change the entire world, but this is still very very important and I am very very excited. And anxious. (Also not my anxiety acting up when I sent my mom the rumored list so far and her response was “I’m disgusted.” She’s apparently “disgusted” by the fact that there are people on the cast she’s never heard of. As if we haven’t been doing this for 30 seasons now.)

Sunisa Lee and Sasha - 8/10

I did not pay any attention to gymnastics during the Olympics (aside from the general news I stumbled upon on the internets) because all my waking hours were focused on soccer, but she’ll obviously be great. I would not say that Sasha is my favorite pro, but they’ll likely be a great match. I need to find some interviews of her or something to get a sense of her personality. I’m excited though because I’m sure they’ll be fun to watch.

Kenya Moore and Brandon - 2.5/10

I’ve never heard of her, so I have no opinion. I do have a soft spot for Brandon though. Is she like well known? Popular? Likable? Dancingly inclined?

Amanda Kloots and Alan - 6.5/10

You know I love Alan with my whole heart, so that automatically gives them some points. I recognize her name and that’s about all I’ve got for her. In the little bit I see (I’m just using the Kristyn Burtt article for this), she seems very excited to be there. Dream come true and all that. I will always give anyone a chance if they come in with such a good attitude.

Olivia Jade and Val - 5/10

Right in the middle 5/10 for this because I just don’t know what to expect. Like are they going to edit her packages sympathetically or actually sympathetic AND convincing? Do I feel any excitement for her to be in the spotlight like this? Not really. But she might surprise me. Val can really do no wrong, though, at the risk of starting an uprising, I’ve kinda lost interest in him as a pro as of late. No real reason. Just feel like there’s other pros I care more about/am more invested in.

Matt James and Lindsay - 5.5/10

I’m very excited to have Lindsay back, so let’s start there! It feels like it’s been about 27 years since we’ve seen her, despite the fact that she posts about 4 hours of IG stories a day and I happily watch every second. I don’t know a whole lot about Matt aside from the fact that he’s a Bachelor guy. I don’t think I’m exactly thrilled about what little I’ve seen and I don’t know what he’s like personality-wise. But at least Lindsay is back and seems happy so far.

Iman Shumpert and Daniella - 2/10

I’ve never heard of this guy and could not care less about basketball, so I don’t even have a reason to get excited. I’ve got nothing against Daniella at all, we just don’t know her that well yet. Is he well-known/likable/have a likelihood of dancing skills?

Jimmie Allen and Emma - 9/10

I don’t know a great deal about him personality-wise either, but I’m already excited! I love Emma, I love a country singer on DWTS, I love getting to see someone on the show who I already know. Very excited all around! Can he dance? Who knows! But I look forward to finding out! He’s got a few great songs that I absolutely adore and I need to make a playlist! I think they are going to make a good pair and I’m glad he’s with a pro I really like (aka not Cheryl I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️).

Brian and Sharna - 11/10

Sharna. Sharna’s man. Sharna in love. Sharna happy. What else could I possibly ask for?! I wondered if they would partner them together or not. In a non-pandemic world, maybe not. What with married pros living apart from each other for the season, they would have to too if they weren’t partnered together. Not that they deserve any special treatment. But if they don’t HAVE to be apart, why have them be apart you know? It’s going to be really entertaining to watch Sharna post about her “partner” for the next two weeks when we all know it’s him. Believe it or not, I have not followed their relationship really super close and they also don’t post an excessive amount together (which I have no problem with because people are entitled to their privacy and what not), so I’m excited to get to see so much more of them together! If Sharna’s happy, I’m happy. Can he dance do we think?!

Christine Chiu and Pasha - 1/10

Uninterested. No idea who she is and like with Daniella, I just don’t know Pasha enough to get that excited. Again: Is she likable/popular/dance-inclined? Beats me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Mel C. And Gleb - 4/10

I like Gleb more than most do, but I’m not obsessed by any means. (I mean, he’s not Sharna.) Nothing against any Spice Girls, but I’m fairly neutral on the whole. She will likely be pretty good and probably fairly popular. I look forward to seeing how she does, but I’m pretty much take it or leave it with them. It’s entirely possible she could be the dark horse I fall in love with by like week 3 and then decide she’s my favorite of the season.

Melora Hardin and Artem - 10/10

I’m VERY excited. I’ve already posted about her a bit, but oh boy I’m excited! I’ve seen exactly ZERO episodes of The Office, but I know her and LOVE her from The Bold Type aka one of my most important Gay Awakenings™️. (There were several...) I love me some Artem and he will be a great match with her as well. She’s definitely going to be one of the older pros this season (though I think she’s in her 50s which is decidedly not OLD old), but I know she has Broadway experience. I would love a week 1 foxtrot to put her solidly in a 3 way tie for third place with 4 7s and then coming in week 2 with like a samba that she absolutely nails (8,7,7,8) to prove she really can do it all. (It’s possible I’ve been watching this show for too damn long.)

Mike Mizanin - 1.5/10

I will not call him “The Miz.” I do not know this man and I do not care. Put him with Cheryl and send them home week 1. Ok wait. I’ll be nice. I definitely know NOTHING about him, but maybe he’s a fun and pleasant person. We’ll see. And if he is, I might entertain the possibility of calling him “The Miz.” (Whenever they have anyone from like WWE, UFC, boxing, or anything like that, I just do not care because I don’t know anything about them. But Paige VanZant was my actual Gay Awakening™️, so I try to keep an open mind.)

#dwts30 #will update when the last ones are announced!

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thanksjro · 5 years ago

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Last Stand of the Wreckers, Issue #5: I Sure Hope You Didn’t Go and Get Attached to Any of These Characters…

We ended on a cliffhanger last issue, so let’s see what the lads are up to now.

Hm. That’s not great.

Overlord’s just ripped Guzzle in half for the fun of it. If you’re wondering why everyone’s outside now, it’s because he exploded the torture chamber so hard when he came in, it no longer exists. Kup doesn’t appreciate having one half of the Big Gulp duo torn in two, so he goes in for the attack. This doesn’t work out very well for him, as he has his head crushed between Guzzle’s upper and lower halves. This whole situation is a non-issue for Overlord, and barely distracts him from his goal of having Megatron show up to kick his ass. Impactor tries to have a big hero moment by shooting Overlord in the eye with his harpoon hand-attachment. Again, very little effect on Overlord; it doesn’t even seem to register on the same level as getting a little soap in your eye.

Back over with Ironfist and the Big Conundrum, Verity’s arguing that killing Impactor will kill the Wreckers- as a team, not in the literal sense. However, time’s running out, and Perceptor really doesn’t seem to be bothered by the idea of not having Impactor around.

She gets smaller every issue, I swear.

Verity makes her case to Ironfist, trying to play off of his fanboy status; the Wreckers are a symbol of hope, one that Ironfist himself created with his datalogs as Fisitron. Killing Impactor to make things easier for themselves destroys the illusion of a cohesive unit who can always be counted on when the chips are down. Too bad ol’ Ironfist knows Things™, and it’s actually Perceptor who’s swayed by her argument, which is interesting, given that he was about to vote Impactor into an early grave a minute ago.

Perceptor wasn’t always the cool, efficient sniper we see him to be in Last Stand of the Wreckers. He used to be a regular old science nerd, and a relatively talkative one at that. He wasn’t really built for a four million year war.

Then all that talking got him shot and he was left for dead.

He made some changes after that, both in body and personality.

Could his own experience with being forsaken by his peers for his flaws perhaps be influencing him here? Or am I, a reader and giant dork, just trying to justify a very quick backtracking on the narrative’s part, most likely due to page number limitations?

So they decide to fight. Then Pyro suggests they run. The “they” in this case doesn’t include himself. You remember how Optimus Prime’s big character quirk in every continuity is self-sacrifice? Yeah, we’re hitting on THAT portion of Pyro’s hero worship. It’s not exactly what he was hoping for in death, but it’s what’s got to be done at this point.

The others run off, and Pyro shoots the control to the door, bracing for one hell of a fight.

Holy shit, I forgot they had Fort Max with them! That scared the crap outta me.

There’s one last look at our hero before we go, and it…

Well, it sure is something.

Yikes. That’s a series wrap on Pyro!

Now it’s time for us to learn about what really happened on Pova. Turns out the files Ironfist had access to weren’t exactly virginal.

First things first, it was raining, and Impactor is kind of a dick. I mean, we already kind of knew that from what we’ve seen of the guy in the present day story, but this little scene really takes the cake. Springer had to basically beg him to stay with him; none of that “I’m not leaving you behind” nonsense. And the whole “shoot Springer through the midsection” idea? That was all Impactor. Springer doesn’t have a way to dampen the pain the way Impactor suggests, and doesn’t even get a moment to brace himself as he’s blasted more or less in half.

When Springer regains consciousness, he’s treated to the sight of Impactor and Prowl having a little chat. It turns out there’s a problem, and that problem’s name is bureaucracy. Pova is a protected planet, declared off-limits by the Neutrality Agreement, so any Cybertronian war business is pretty much null and void there. The fact that the Wreckers are there at all could have disastrous repercussions if the Decepticons catch wind of this and tell the Povians. They’ll have to let Squadron X go.

But it looks like Prowl forgot that Impactor’s a bad boy who doesn’t play by your daddy’s rules.

He walks into where they’re holding Squadron X, chained together into a circle on their knees, with their arms pinned behind their backs, locks the door behind himself, and executes every last one of them as Springer bangs on the door trying to get him to stop. This, obviously, puts a bit of a damper on everyone’s mood.

Even Whirl’s bummed out, and you just know that guy loves a good ‘Con-killing spree.

I guess the moral of the story here is Impactor kinda sucks.

Speaking of Impactor, Overlord’s currently stomping him to death as he holds Springer by the face. It’s honestly almost tender, the delicate placement of his fingers. It also reminds you that Overlord is literally twice the size of Springer, who, as a triple-changer, should already be on the tall side. Overlord is a big dude.

Springer’s still doing okay, because he knows that even if he doesn’t make it, the rest of his team will, and they’ll save the day and get all those Autobot prisoners off Garrus-9.

Ha. Haha. Oh, Springer, you naïve fool. You forgot that this was hell, didn’t you? Overlord already took care of the Autobot prisoners.

Someone really took their gun to that hanging guy on the left and said “fuck this dude in particular.”

Then the calvary arrives! With guns! And art tangents!

Surely things are looking up now!

Ironfist throws Springer a gun that’s about as big as he is- where did he get that?- and Springer proceeds to light Overlord the fuck up.

You don’t get the B-word pass at IDW unless you’ve already had your series truncated and the entire universe is about to get ended for a reboot. That’s just how it goes.

Of course, even the big boy gun isn’t enough to do much to Overlord outside of annoy him, and Springer gets his face ripped off for his troubles.

Now it’s just Ironfist and Verity left, and Overlord is very much looking forward to doing very bad things to both of them. Ironfist has a gambit though! That gun Springer had was actually firing deterrence chips into Overlord’s body, and now he’s just chock-full of the things. And since Ironfist has all of Aequitas in his head now- including the detonation codes- he can do this:

He blew Overlord’s lips clean off! The evil truly is defeated.

However, using this newfound power has costs- Ironfist is knocked clean out by a sudden pain in his head, eyes flaring and fizzing as he hits the ground, leaving Verity alone with Overlord’s flaming, animated endoskeleton.

Yeah no, he’s still not dead, and he’s still not fucking over Megatron, lamenting on how he just isn’t sure how he’ll fight him, now that he’s little more than robot bones. Verity has to be the one to break it to the guy that Megatron’s dead, and Overlord takes it about as well as he can.

I’m sorry Overlord, but at what friggin’ point were you promised ANYTHING from Megatron “Peace Through Tyranny” of Tarn? You were threatened, but that’s a little different than a vow to get revenge. Hell, that’s not even on the same level as as pinky-promise. What a baby.

Impactor ends the pity party by shooting Overlord with his alt-mode’s weaponry and then does a little something for Springer… by not ending Overlord. Nope, looks like the death of Springer finally let him see the error of his ways, and they’re going to bring Overlord in to stand trial, because while the guy deserves to die, Impactor doesn’t deserve to kill him. Maybe if more Transformers took this little idea to heart, they wouldn’t still be at war four million years and counting.

Impactor goes to radio for a ride, and Ironfist wakes up. It looks like everything’s going to be okay now.

Or not.

Yep, those weird brain-seeking bullets Ironfist had loaded into all the guns he brought on the trip were perfected after a disastrous prototype testing accident. THE accident, if you will. Prowl knew about this, and used it to his advantage, throwing Ironfist on the mission, with the intent that he’d be used to unlock Aequitas. Topspin, of course, caused the plan to change a bit, but it all worked out in the end.

Also, Springer isn’t dead. He’s pretty messed up, but he’s not dead. They’ve got Ratchet on it, it’ll be fine.

And thus we arrive at the debriefing, between Prowl and Ultra Magnus. Magnus is questioning just why Prowl had this mission sanctioned in the first place, if he was so very against the Aequitas trials while they were happening. The answer is simple: propaganda. If the Decepticons were to find out that the trials involved nothing but Autobot war crimes, and lots of ‘em, it would be the ultimate blow to the Autobot forces.

Ultra Magnus thinks that they should go public with the information, but Prowl disagrees. The only copy of Aequitas is left with Prowl, and while Ultra Magnus would like to trust that he wouldn’t destroy this info, the end result is left a mystery.

But you’ll have to read the sequel series to see just how that all turns out.

If Ironfist is dead, just who is writing up this narrative framing device for the issue? Why, it’s none other than Verity Carlo, using the power of the internet. I guess she has access to the Cybertronian internet now. Wonder who hooked her up with that. Probably not Ultra Magnus. Maybe Percy did her a solid as a thanks for surgically removing Overlord’s will to live.

Whether you want it to or not, I suppose.

This miniseries is a little dark, ain’t it?

Verity went to all the trouble to leave Earth and hide in the escape pods so she wouldn’t be abandoned, only to end up right where she started, with a heaping spoonful of PTSD to pair off with all the disappointment and lack of friends in her life. She watched a lot of people die on Garrus-9, and she’s in no way battle-hardened like one could argue the other surviving Wreckers are. All she has at this point is a blog she inherited from a nerd who accidentally committed a slow-burn suicide. I hope Perceptor will keep in touch with her, at least, seeing as he’s the only one who was also there and isn’t dead.

That’s the end of the miniseries proper, but not the entirety of the story. Up next, we’ll be looking at all the fun little extras Last Stand of the Wreckers came with.

#transformers #jro #last stand of the wreckers #issue 5 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing #wreckers trilogy

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skz-belle · 5 years ago

Text

Meeting the Team

Summary: A collection of stories detailing how Belle met each member of Stray Kids in chronological order

Genre: fluff, angst

Warnings: language, unedited, writing deteriorates as it goes on

Word Count: 5.8k

m.list

one: yang jeongin

The first day of being a trainee is horrifying, yet full of excitement. There was a moment where Belle was contemplating even entering the building, her fears of inadequacy were trying to weigh her down and drown her. She was standing in front of the building when someone bumped into her.

“Oh, sorry! I was on my phone- I didn’t see you there.” The boy that ran into her explained his predicament. He looked very young and Belle felt for him immediately.

“It’s okay. Don’t even worry about it.”

“I still feel bad though.” He looked at the ground with a small pout playing on his lips before whipping his head back up to look Belle in the eyes. “Are you a trainee?”

She was slightly startled by the sudden question and attitude change, yet she still answered. “Yep, today is my first day actually.” His smile grew even bigger after hearing her response.

“That’s great! Welcome to JYP Entertainment! I have been a trainee here for about 6 months, so I could maybe show you around?”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that. I’m sure you’re busy and I don’t want to cause trouble.”

“No! It wouldn’t cause any trouble! Plus I want to get to know you. You seem nice! What did you get in with?”

“Dance. How about you?”

“Singing. Maybe you could help me out with dancing? Oh! Or we could sing a duet together to begin our wonderful friendship!”

At this moment, all the worries Belle had melted away. She saw the pure child-like excitement in this boy’s eyes and she knew that this had the potential to be a strong friendship to help her down the harsh path they were both pursuing. They had just met, but they felt something strange with the other that felt like home. True friendship was blossoming.

“That sounds really nice. I’m Belle by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Belle. I am Jeongin.”

two- bang chan

Being a trainee at JYP meant unknowingly signing up to be part of a large gossip circle. Most every trainee knew each other, or at least of each other. It was a small pool to pull from, so every single bit of knowledge that could be obtained from the internet or primary sources was put to use; basically everyone knew a lot about Belle, and she knew a lot about them.

Belle had heard the name Chan before, everyone had. Arguably being the most well known trainee, and having been there for as long as he had made it almost impossible to not have heard about him. He was very talented and anyone could see that.

Despite hearing about him so often, Belle did not get the chance to meet Chan until one fateful night when she was struggling to prepare for her second monthly evaluation. Belle shivered at the mere thought of failing during one of those infamous days, so she was pulling an all-nighter to prepare. The dance she had picked was very technical, which left room for multiple errors. This had Belle frustrated and ready to sleep, despite knowing she had many hours of practice ahead of her.

She took a deep breath and played the song once more. After completing the dance for the nth time that night, she heard clapping from the doorway. She assumed it was Jeongin, the only friend she had made thus far and brushed it off. She knew she was about to get an earful for still practicing at this hour.

Instead of Jeongin’s voice, a deep smooth voice spoke up. “Wow, the rumors were not wrong. You’re incredible.” Belle whipped her head around to see the one and only Bang Chan standing in the doorway with a small smile playing on his lips.

“Um, thank you?” All Belle managed to get out were those few words. It was a shock to her system to meet someone so well known and to have him complement her. This earned a small chuckle from the man.

“Sorry, that did come off a little creepy, didn’t it?” Belle finally gave him a bit of a smile as he continued, “I was passing by and I heard the music, and I was kind of curious who was still here at two in the morning. Belle, right?”

“That’s me. Chan, right?”

“The one and only. I was just about to go take a break and get a snack if you want to come with.” Shock took over Belle’s mind. This is the man that trainees swooned over, and he was asking her to take a break with him?

“Sure, I need a break anyways.” She quickly gathered her things and made her way to Chan.

“So, mind telling me why you’re working on an already great dance piece at this ungodly hour?” Chan’s question pierced the momentary silence as they began the walk to the vending machines.

“I have evaluations tomorrow. I guess practicing makes me less nervous?”

“You are already amazing, I can promise you that staying up this late won’t help you.”

“I know it won’t, but I just can’t help it.” She looked over to him to see him looking straight forward down the long hallway. “Enough about me and my stupidity, why are you still up?”

“Would it make me a hypocrite if I said the same reason as you?” Chan let out a nervous giggle and Belle just rolled her eyes.

“That is the exact definition of a hypocrite.” She looked over at him again to see his ears flushed with the tiniest bit of color. “Y’know, you don’t need to stay late either. It’s kind of unfair how talented you are.”

“I never took you for the flattery type.” Chan jokes whilst bumping his shoulder with Belle’s.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true! Half the trainees want to date you, and the other half want to be you. You’re crazy talented, and you should know that.”

“Thank you. I think we should hang out more often, you aren’t as cold as people make you out to be. You’re fun to be around.”

“Why thank you. The rumor mill isn’t that kind to me, but thanks for taking a chance on me. By the way, if I see you spending any more late nights here I will make you get some sleep. Just keep that in mind.” And of course, she carried her promise through like a friend should do.

three: lee minho

There was always such a burden placed on those who entered the trainee life through the way of dance. There was a much bigger strain on them to improve other skills, such as rapping or singing. Belle always tried to work hard, however she tended to focus on dance, as that was a major passion of hers. Rap and other musical forms are also very influential passions, but her first love was dance.

She was focusing on the steps to the current dance she was trying to master and failed to focus on the rest of the room, per usual. Dancing had a strange way of hypnotizing Belle and making her focus solely on the moves and flow of the song. It was part of why it was her first love- the immersive qualities of it that produced euphoria when she completed a dance without errors. However, that was not happening for her. She couldn’t get a simple move down and it irked her. She huffed as she slumped down on the practice room floor and watched the video once more to try to get her bearings.

She focused on the small screen intently- her will to learn and improve was strong and evident in how her eyes followed the figure as it flowed across the screen pixel by pixel. She took a deep breath before attempting the step again, and failing once again. She was a talented dancer according to higher-ups in the company, so why couldn’t she get this right?

“You have to have a lot of skill to mess up a move that simple.” A voice cut through the air in the nearly empty practice room. A boy stood before her; he didn’t look to be that much older than Belle, which confused the poor dancer even more.

“I’m sorry, may I help you?” Belle’s voice was light and soft compared to his rather harsh tone.

“Yeah, you’re Belle, right? Your scheduled time for this room was up nearly fifteen minutes ago and I have been waiting for you to get the hint and leave.” His tone became even more harsh and he sent a rather menacing glare towards Belle.

“I- I’m sorry. I got caught up and lost track of time.” She remembered looking at the sheet earlier. This was Lee Minho, another trainee who just happened to be a dance prodigy. The name stood out to her earlier and she was planning on leaving a few minutes early to avoid meeting him, but that obviously didn’t work out the way Belle planned.

“Yeah well that’s obvious. I would have been more understanding if it was a more complicated move you were stuck on. Who in the world would have trouble with that move? A child?” His voice was now higher, almost as if intentionally mocking Belle who was now close to tears, though she would never let a random, rude stranger see her cry.

“The room is yours now. See you later Lee Minho.” She mumbled as she dashed to gather her things and leave. Minho’s anger from the wait had faded, and he felt a little guilty about being so harsh, but he pushed those thoughts aside to focus on the dance he needed to learn and perfect.

four: han jisung

Friendships tend to blossom due to unforeseen and unusual circumstances, at least in Belle’s case. She had also had a knack for getting into awkward situations inadvertently, which was a true chaotic neutral gift. It was a sunny summer day, and it was one that she had off, which made it all the more better. She knew there were better ways than this to spend such a precious day, but she had to go shopping for new clothes. It’s not that there was anything wrong with shopping, it just wasn’t necessarily something Belle enjoyed doing.

She was in the middle of the mall, which was surprisingly packed for such a perfect day. She was absorbed in the atmosphere; the soft glow of the store signs in contrast to the rather harsh fluorescent overhead lights was suddenly the most interesting aesthetic to the eclectic girl.

While being so wrapped up in the scenery, she bumped into someone headfirst with such force she fell to the ground.

“Oh my gosh,” the other party in the collision, a boy close to Belle’s age, whispered as he took in the events that just transpired. “I am so so sorry- I wasn’t paying much attention to where I was going.”

“It’s okay! No harm done- plus I was kinda lost in thought so it was partially my fault too. Sorry, by the way.” Belle was borderline rambling as she too took in what just happened; it was so sudden and it happened so quickly that her mind still had not quite wrapped around the entire tumble-incident. Plus, after looking at the boy she knew that he looked familiar, but she just didn’t know how.

“It happens. I’m just glad it was with you instead of some mean old lady.” He laughs softly as he tries to keep the conversation flowing smoothly. Belle laughed along, but gasped shortly after once she connected from where she knew his face.

“You’re a trainee at JYP too, aren’t you?” His face morphs into one of shock, then his face breaks out into one of the brightest smiles Belle had ever seen.

“I am! I knew that I knew you from somewhere!”

“Same here! It was bugging me ever since I saw you.” They both chucked at the experience the two had unknowingly shared. “I’m Belle, it’s nice to meet you!”

“I’m Jisung, it’s nice to meet you as well.”

“Since I kinda inconvenienced you, could I interest you in some food? I can pay and we can bond over the wondrous trainee life.”

“If you think I am going to let you pay for all of it, you have something else coming.”

“Alright, it’s on.” A competitive grin was shared between the two of them, and before Jisung had time to react, she was dragging him away, presumably to a restaurant.There was something about him and the chemistry that sparked Belle’s interest. She had a feeling that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

five: seo changbin

It had been a month or so since Belle had met Jisung, and it was safe to say that both her and Jeongin were never bored. Belle had discovered that the two knew each other, which led to group hangouts and shenanigans, which always ended with smiles and laughter fresh in their minds.

Belle was currently with Jisung in a studio, and was listening to some of the music he had produced. When Belle found out that he produced music, she was amazed. It wasn’t that she thought he couldn’t, but she just didn’t see that vibe from him. That quickly changed, as she demanded to hear some of his work, which resulted in her becoming his number one supporter and fan.

She also discovered that he worked with two other trainees and had formed a group of sorts. Jisung had not told her the name of the group, but did tell her the stage names of the other two trainees: CB97 and SPEARB. They intrigued Belle, as she wanted to consume all Jisung’s musical endeavors and was near rabid at the thought of what he and two other producers of his skill level could produce.

“Hey, sweet-cheeks, it is getting kinda late- shouldn’t you get to sleep?” Jisung looked over his shoulder at the girl who was still listening to the music playing in the background before she looked to her phone to see the time.

“What are you talking about Ji? It’s still pretty early.”

“I’m not sure if eleven at night qualifies as early, but I just want you to be well rested.” Belle’s eyebrows furrow as she takes in her friend’s strange behavior.

“You’re trying to kick me out, oh my god.” Jisung’s eyes widen in shock as he frantically scrambles to get rid of the accusations.

“No no no no, I just- it was- ugh,” he takes a breath to gather his thoughts, “It was supposed to be a secret, but the guys from the group are coming soon and I didn’t know if you wanted to stay for that, or if you would be comfortable, or if it would be too weird, or-”

“Ji, calm down, okay? I can leave if you want me to with no problem, but I wouldn’t mind staying as long as it is okay with you.”

“I mean, I wasn’t sure but-” Jisung was cut off by the door squeaking open to reveal Bang Chan. Belle had not spoken to Chan too often, of course she checked up on him as much as possible, but with the life of a trainee there was not much time to spare.

“Oh, is this a bad time? I am a bit early.” Chan looked to Belle and Jisung with a bit of confusion before Jisung started explaining.

“No, come on in. This is Belle- I invited her to stay for the session.”

“We met a while ago. You better be getting enough sleep mister.” Belle looked to the man in mock anger causing Chan to laugh.

“I have been. You better be getting enough sleep too.”

“She hasn’t. She stays up to annoy the living shit out of me.” Jisung interjects, and Belle gasps in faux dismay.

“Oh, you know you love me.” She laughs as she pokes his side through an opening on the chair he was still situated in.

“I would, or else I would have slapped you weeks ago.”

“You still haven’t told me the name of this whole group yet! I wouldn’t call that love.” Belle’s teasing was cut short when Chan laughed.

“You brought her to a brainstorming session and she doesn’t even know the name of our group?” Chan’s voice was teasing, which caused a faint wash of red to spear on the younger’s cheeks.

“Yes! He is so mean to me. What is y’all’s name by the way.” Belle looked to Chan with pure curiosity glistening in her brown eyes.

“3RACHA. I’m assuming he didn’t tell you who was in it either?” Belle shook her head and Chan laughed once again, causing the blush on Jisung’s face to darken ever so slightly. “CB97, SPEARB, and J.ONE are our stage names. I’m CB97, for obvious reasons, Jisung is J.ONE, and Changbin is SPEARB.”

“Changbin?”

“You haven’t met him yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

“You will soon- he should be here any minute. He’s cool though, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, he has to be cool to hang with us.” Jisung piped up, making Belle and Chan laugh.

“You cried when you saw a baby bird last week, I wouldn’t classify that as cool, my dude.” Chan laughed at the memory as he recalled the teary eyed boy looking into the sparrow’s nest on the sidewalk.

“And you screamed when you saw a spider yesterday.” Belle added with tears now forming in her eyes from the hilarious memory and new information combined.

“Yah! Stop ganging up on me! This is no fun!” Jisung whined as he hid his face behind his arms.

“What are you fussing about this time, Jisung?” A new voice called out as it entered the room. It belonged to a boy that Belle assumed to be Changbin. He stopped in his tracks once he saw the new face in the room, as he wasn’t expecting anyone other than the boys.

“Changbin! Finally! This is Belle, she is a good friend of mine and is going to stay and watch the coolest people she knows work on some music.” Jisung’s head perked up the moment he heard Changbin’s voice and he said the entirety of his quick introduction with a smile.

“Nice to meet you, Changbin.” Belle shot a smile to the boy, who was looking towards her with a similar smile as well.

“Nice to meet you too, Belle. Also I am sorry about Jisung in advance.”

“Hey! I am a joy!” Jisung adamantly defends his name.

Without missing a beat, Belle replied: “To get rid of.” making the other two boys cackle and Jisung look shocked.

“I’m so hurt.” Jisung put a hand over his heart and let out a fake sniffle or two.

“Awh Jisungie~” Changbin cooes

“Nevermind- go away.” Changbin’s resolve doesn’t budge and he continues to coo at the poor boy. Belle hadn’t even heard any of their music yet, but she was already having a wonderful time with the boys. She knew she would love the music, and probably be a repeat visitor for 3RACHA’s meetings, if they allowed it.

six: kim seungmin

Vocals were a weak point for Belle. She loved to sing and to create a story using only her voice, but she was always told she was lacking at it. She took every aspect of her training unbelievably seriously, but she knew she had to improve her vocal ability, meaning she squeezed every ounce of soul she had into her vocal lessons. She also, like with her dance lessons, tended to stay after to work on some key points solo. This was a good way for her to clear her mind and not focus on anything else except improvement.

One particular day, she was beaten down by her vocal instructor. The song that was selected for her was written in a rather high key. This was to challenge her and test her limits, as well as see how far she had come. Belle’s natural vocal register was rather low. There was nothing wrong with it, but there was pressure to conform to traditional idol standards of having a high register, as a female idol. The pressure was mainly from her vocal coach, but there was a desire within Belle to succeed and be able to do the standard in K-Pop.

She was in the room designated for vocal coaching after hours, and was staring blankly at the sheet of music before her. Nearly half the notes seemed out of reach no matter how she tried and strained her voice. She was frustrated, yes, but she knew she needed to succeed. She glanced at her phone to see a text from Jeongin, which only fueled her resolve to be the best.

Jeongin: You got this! I hope you get some sleep soon… call me if you need anything

She sent a quick thank you message back and resumed her practice.

After a few more attempts at the piece with the same results, she heard a light knock on the door. She cracked it open to see a boy standing there with a few small chip bags in his hands.

“Hi?” Belle timidly said to the stranger.

“Hey, I know this is sudden, but the vending machine gave me some extras by accident, and I heard you in here and wanted to know if you wanted some.” The boy was obviously nervous by asking, but Belle found it endearing, and very generous to be willing to give a stranger late-night snacks.

“I would love some! Thank you for offering. What do you have?” After being shown his limited selection, Belle makes her choice and thanks him once again.

“What are you doing here so late at night anyways?” The girl questions the boy, who has grown more comfortable in her presence.

“I’m working on a song, and I just couldn’t get it how I want. I just finished, thankfully, but I guess kinda lost track of time while I was singing.” The boy says, bringing his hand to the nape of his neck in unease just thinking about the sheer amount of time he spent rehearsing.

“I feel you on that. I have been trying to sing this damn song for hours, but I’m just not getting it.” Belle muttered in exasperation. The boy looked at the sheet music Belle was glaring at and let out a small noise of indignation.

“You have to sing that? You seem to have a lower register based on how you talk…” he trailed off in thought. “I could try to help if you want?”

“Oh no, I couldn’t ask you to do that. You already got me snacks and you were ready to go home.” Belle looked at the boy as if he had grown three heads for offering to help her.

“Nonsense, it is practically my duty to help you. Now, what is your name?”

“Belle. Your’s?”

“Seungmin. Now, let’s hear what you have so far.” Seungmin analyzes Belle’s posture, oral movements, vocal technique, and the sheet music as she sings. It is almost scary how he switched from a pleasant and easy-going teenager to a almost professional artist within the span of seconds- and he is only a trainee!

After Belle had finished, she looked to Seungmin who looked deep in thought. “Your technique is the only thing that needs work. I’m surprised your vocal coach didn’t tell you about this. You seem to be reaching and straining for the higher notes while still in your chest voice. Try putting a bit less pressure on your diaphram and focusing the epicenter of your voice further up and closer to your head rather than your chest.” Belle took in every word Seungmin said like it was the very oxygen she needed to breathe. “Now, take that and try it again. You’ve got this. I believe in you.”

She shot him a smile at his encouraging words, took in a deep breath, and began the song once again. The notes that moments ago seemed so out of reach were now attainable. The song flowed with such a grace that Belle herself wasn’t aware she could produce. Of course, it was not perfect, but it was so much better that Belle was teary-eyed by the end of it.

“Holy shit.” She breathed out once she had completed the song.

“Holy shit indeed.” Seungmin said with a cocky smile adorning his lips. “Again!”

seven: kim woojin

Trainee life is never easy. Everyone who knows about K-Pop knows this fact. Trainees are usually so busy and wrapped up in the monthly activities and weekly classes that they have little time to contemplate this during their actual training period. There are times when a trainee just stops the grueling activities they willingly partake in catch up with them, and they are forced to face the questions and concerns of reality. Of course this has happened to Belle, honestly more times than the girl is willing to admit. She usually finds comfort in those she is close to. However, one special day, she gets to be the calm and anchor for another.

A group dance practice had just ended. It consisted of about ten trainees and a dance coach that was instructing them on how to properly dance to GOT7’s song “Never Ever”. The class ended and Belle was gathering her belongings when she noticed a fellow trainee sitting next to his things idly. This was a red flag, as no trainee usually wasted time doing nothing; they always tried to cram their social and family lives in when they were not enduring the training. The second red flag was the crestfallen look that graced his face. He looked hurt, confused, and heart-broken.

Belle contemplated not going over to the boy, but her hesitation flew out the window when his eyes became more teary by the second. By this point, it was just the two in the practice room. Everyone else had gone about their day to do what had to be done; these two seemed stuck in a moment that never ended.

Belle walked over to the boy. She recognized him: Kim Woojin. Belle thought him to be an amazing vocalist and she believed him to be kind, though the two had never properly met. She knelt down before the boy, “Hey, are you okay?” He looked up, startled by the sudden voice, and the sight almost broke Belle’s heart. His eyes were teary- it was obvious he was doing his best to not break down completely.

“Yeah.” His voice was quiet and wavering. Belle frowned at his answer.

“Are you sure? I know we don’t know each other, but that could make me a good person to vent to. You don’t have to, but the offer stands if you need it.” A moment of silence passes the two and then he breaks.

“What if I’m not good enough?” His question hit home for Belle. Every trainee struggled with this, and it has caused many talented individuals to quit out of fear of rejection. “What if I am wasting this amazing period of my life for a dream that I can never attain?” Woojin lets a single tear trail down his cheek before hurriedly wiping it away. Another moment of comfortable silence passed and Woojin found solstace in another person being with him and not judging him during this vulnerable moment.

“I know we’re strangers, but your talent is indescribable. If anyone is good enough, it is you.” Belle’s kind and true words strike a chord with Woojin. He looked to the girl and gave her a smile full of appreciation and hope.

“Thank you.”

eight: hwang hyunjin

Another month arrived and another monthly evaluation was assigned. This month was special, as it was an opportunity to show a different side of the dance-focused trainees; there was a mandatory duet opportunity that would replace the normal evaluation. Partners were assigned based on skill level, and each pair was given a genre of dance.

When Belle was called in to meet her partner, she was immediately met with disappointment. Hwang Hyunjin was her partner. Belle knew he was talented, and everyone knew he was attractive, but there was a personal issue here. Hyunjin and Jisung were well known enemies. No one knows exactly how the feud began, but Belle was adamant about siding with and supporting her friend.

After gaining the needed information, the two left and only spoke to exchange details of where and when to meet in order to practice. The time to do so came far too quickly for Belle’s liking, and she found herself sitting a few feet from the man while browsing their phones to find a song that fit their dance theme. The theme was hip-hop, yet every song seemed to only appeal to one of the duo.

“Can we please just agree on a song?” Hyunjin pleaded with Belle after fifteen minutes of constant back-and-forth over song suggestions.

“Suggest something decent then.” Belle knew she was being sassy, maybe borderline bitchy, but based on how he had treated Jisung, this was what she deemed best. Hyunjin groaned in frustration, and went back to searching his phone.

After a few more song titles were thrown around, he finally had had enough. “Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t necessarily hate you, but you are rude to a close friend of mine.”

“That’s no reason to be this mean.”

“I believe it is the perfect reason to do so.”

“You’re so goddamn infuriating!”

“Ditto.” The rest of the day progressed similarly; nothing got accomplished with the two bickering.

The next day, they saw that in order to survive the trainee lifestyle, they had to work together. While not happy about it, they did what they had to do. They picked a song within five minutes and began choreographing soon thereafter.

As the days went on, they found that they were not dreading the other’s company. It was a strange shift that both recognized, yet did not speak of. It was refreshing to have another friend at the company for both Belle and Hyunjin. Belle realized that she didn’t have to partake in her friend’s anger towards the boy, which changed her entire attitude towards the boy. She saw him through her own lens, not through anyone else’s.

“Okay, so how about we do a freestyle part of the dance? We could each show off our more personal and technical dance moves.” Belle suggested one day at practice.

“I think it could work. The other person could be a bit in the back like a hype man, y’know?”

“That would be cool. Having Hwang Hyunjin as my hype man.”

“I already am, you idiot.” He gave Belle a playful shove and they continued on rehearsing.

The day to perform for the monthly evaluation panel came too soon for the duo’s liking. They were both confident in their choreography and each other, but the perfectionist side of them craved more time to practice.

They entered the room and nodded towards each other before taking their places to begin the dance. The music began and it seemed like the rest of the room faded away, leaving only the two of them. The teamwork they inadvertently built up showed and they moved as one entity. Their emotions poured from the dance almost as if they were expressing it through a heartfelt speech, not just through movement.

They ended the dance and bowed to the judges before exiting.

“How do you think we did?” Belle asked Hyunjin, her nerves were evident in her voice.

“I think we killed it. How about I take the best dance partner out for a celebratory meal after we get our scores.” Belle laughs at his boldness.

“That sounds like a plan, partner.” Belle’s mind was in awe over the fact that someone she once disliked could become a friend, and that the past could be pushed aside to succeed and gain companionship.

“Stop calling me partner. You sound like a cowgirl, idiot.”

nine: lee felix

Mornings at JYP always seemed intense. Dozens of interns and managers were bustling around prepping for an eventful day, artists were emerging and beginning their daily routines, producers and executives roamed the halls at random, and hand-fulls of trainees were scampering around trying to navigate the seemingly moving walls of the company. To put it lightly, it had great potential to be overwhelming.

Belle had become immune to the chaos of the hallways but always did her best to avoid busiest ones. It wasn’t a matter of if she could handle it, but rather an issue of could the hallways handle her. Yet one day, she had to go down the main passageway and face the hoards of people running and passing her. It was annoying and a nuisance to the girl.

She was almost to the end when she saw a boy pushed against the wall looking up and down the long hallway with a perplexed look on his face. This wasn’t an uncommon sight, but there was something about his kid that made her want to help. Maybe it was the innocence in his eyes, or the soft presece he exuded, but she made her way over to him.

“Hey, are you okay? You look a little overwhelmed.” She had a small smile on her face, as to not scare him off, but the poor boy still looked intimidated.

“I’m looking for practice room 204.” His voice was shaky, yet he was trying to play it off. His Korean was a bit broken, yet understandable.

“I can help. Is there another language you want to converse in?”

“English?”

“Ok! Hi, my name is Belle.”

“I’m Felix.” His accent when speaking English was a shock to Belle; she believed it to be Australian.

“Nice to meet you! And sorry that this hallway is such a bear. It gets better eventually, I promise.”On the walk to the practice room, the two continued talking. Belle discovered Felix was rather quiet, but when he spoke it was well-worth listening. Though she had only spoken to the boy for a few minutes, she was already quite fond of him. The rest of the hallways seemed to quiet down and almost disappear as they focused on the other in an attempt to block it out.

“There’s actually another trainee here that is from Australia. I could introduce you two if you would like.” Belle offered, and the boy’s face lit up.

“That would be great! And thank you so much for the help.”

“It’s no problem. I got to meet you, and that is all the thanks I need.”

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wolfpawn · 5 years ago

Text

I Hate You, I Love You, Chapter 128

Chapter Summary - Danielle is dealing with work, but still thinking about Tom and whatever his call was regarding, while Tom still thinks of how to talk to her, but when he gets a message, he has to think of its meaning.

Previous Chapter

Rating - Mature (some chapters contain smut)

Triggers - references to Tom Hiddleston’s work with the #MeToo Movement. That chapter will be tagged accordingly.

authors Note - I have been working on this for the last 3 years, it is currently 180+ chapters long. This will be updated daily, so long as I can get time to do so, obviously.

I WILL get there, it is my dream!

All image rights belong to their owners

tags: @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @jessibelle-nerdy-mum @nonsensicalobsessions @damalseer @hiddlesbitch1 @winterisakiller @fairlightswiftly @salempoe @wolfsmom1

Danielle stared at the scene in front of her silently as the fire crews deal with the burning rubble, she simply watched them all, studying how they dealt with the situation.

‘You seem distracted.’ She turned slightly as Branagh standing close to her.

‘I think it is more I am trying to keep myself preoccupied.’

‘That’s seldom good.’ he folded his arms and leant against a large container. ‘Is it to do with Tom?’

‘Somewhat.’

‘Dare I ask?’

‘Dare I say anything?’ She challenged. ‘I know Tom looks up to you so much and is so grateful to you and also keeps in contact with you as best he can. You are the reason he got on so well on Wallander.’

‘Tom is the reason he did well there, not me.’

‘Without your guidance, and without your suggestion that he should try for Marvel, he would not have gotten the opportunity to show his incredible talent to the world as he has.’ She countered with a smile.

Branagh could not argue the point too greatly. ‘So what has the very talented Tom done to warrant you trying to occupy your mind with dull after scene work?’ She gave him an analytical look. ‘You are very cautious.’

‘You have to be in this line of work.’

‘I was eager to take you for this job because you were not the same overly cautious as others, you had a daring streak to you, or so I thought.’

‘It takes considerable daring to choose to allow yourself be with someone such as Tom, in the media, surrounded by women of both wealth and talent, and do not get me started on the internet fans.’

‘That is more than a little true,’ Branagh conceded once more. ‘So is the issue one of these women?’

‘Well, he is on a press thingy with Maisie Williams at the moment, and seeing as she is about twenty years old, I think him being interested would send up a few more than the usual warnings, don’t you?’

‘The girl from Game of Thrones?’

‘Arya Stark, yes.’

‘Oh, I was thinking the red-haired one, no, I have you now.’

‘So, no, it is not that. I trust him there. I don’t always trust some women not to try something, but I trust him to decline.’ Branagh nodded slightly. ‘I think he is planning something behind my back and I don’t know what. I don’t think it is negative, but I think he thinks it could be construed as such by me and I have no idea what it is.’ When she looked at the director again, she erupted in laughter. ‘I take it you regret asking?’

‘I have no idea what you just said.’ He confessed.

‘I accidentally heard part of a conversation that I assume I was not supposed to hear and Tom mentioned that no, he didn’t ask me something because he was frightened what I would say, and now I am wracking my brains trying to figure out what this is because he is all addled by it, which is making me all addled by it, and I am fucking losing sleep at this stage and I bet, knowing him, it is something fucking mundane and all this is just us losing our heads for nothing.’ Branagh frowned. ‘Yeah, you regret asking.’ She chuckled before looking to the side at her paperwork, which was being kept safe from the elements in a file. ‘Fuck, this is miserable.’

‘Can you imagine how these people actually felt?’

‘I dare say Dublin was confused.’

‘Yeah, well, neutral means neutral, right?’

‘You think the Germans were right to do it?’ Branagh asked curiously.

‘Not particularly, but I understand their reasons. Belfast was us helping our own, but if we were helping a British occupied area, that’s not neutral, is it?’

‘You are a very intelligent woman. You look at all the angles, not just your own.’

‘Would you expect anything less from someone with Tom?’ There was a moment’s silence and a knowing look. ‘There is a lot of things she can be called, stupid is not one of them.’ She winked.

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. She is smart, there nothing wrong in acknowledging that. A different type of smart though. I read Yeats because I love his work, I doubt she ever even heard of him.’

‘Yeats, not Shakespeare?’

‘Nah, I’ll stick to Irish.’

‘But you know….?’

‘Yes, doesn’t everyone know his work? I think there are street children in Sri Lanka that know his name.’

‘Favourite play?’

‘Are you going to judge me on it?’ She asked with a raised brow.

‘Very much so.’

‘As You Like It.’ Branagh stared at her in interest. ‘Not what you were expecting?’

‘Not at all. An interesting choice.’

‘Some of his most famous quotes are from it, “All the world’s a stage” and “Too much of a good thing”. It is overlooked because it is a comedy and not a tragedy, but I love it.’ She smiled. She was about to say more when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket, as soon as she felt it buzz again, she excused herself and got to a sheltered spot. When she pulled it out, she saw Emma’s name on the screen. ‘Ems?’

‘Hey.’

‘Is everything alright?’ There was a definite something to Emma’s tone that worried her.

‘I was ringing to ask you.’ Danielle looked at the phone in confusion. ‘Tom seems odd.’

‘Tom is odd at the best of times, Ems, but yes, I think he is a little off of late. He seems like something is bothering him and I am trying to let him to talk to me whenever it suits but he has said nothing, so I didn’t want to talk about it and possibly make a mountain out of a molehill because I could be utterly wrong and be reading things arseways.’

‘Yeah. I don’t know.’ Emma conceded. ‘Maybe it’s just that he misses you.’

‘Perhaps.’ Danielle laughed. ‘How are you?’

‘Okay, I guess. I really need a catch-up.’

‘I am home at the end of the week, we will sort one then.’

‘Okay. I will see you then, I have news.’

‘Wait, what is the news?’

‘I’ll tell you then.’

‘Emma!’

‘I will talk to you then.’ She insisted, though Danielle could hear her smile. ‘Bye.’

‘Worst friend ever,’ She growled at the phone as Emma giggled and hung up. Only after she hung up did she sense another in the room, turning around, she gave a small smile. ‘Hello, ignore me and my madness.’

Redmayne laughed, stirring his tea. ‘You’re quite alright, I am sorry for having accidentally eavesdropped on your conversation.’

‘It’s nothing, just Tom’s sister worrying about him.’

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Not that I know, but I have been busy here not allowing you all be blown up, so I doubt he would tell me if there was, he would want me concentrating on this.’ She sighed. ‘In all fairness, I probably should not have anyone distract me in this utter clusterfuck of things that could go really badly.’

‘Was that fire supposed to be so intense?’

‘From what the effects guys were saying, I don’t think so, but they are not telling me if it is wrong, and I am not going to be popular when I ask later.’

‘You work really hard.’

‘Doesn’t most anyone here. I mean, look at that costume, someone sat sewing that for hours.’ She pointed to the uniform he was wearing under a jacket. ‘It’s not an easy job getting these gigs, so you have to be good.’ She stated, grabbing a bottle of water and heading back outside.

Tom watched the dogs run around the dog park happily, chasing one another and interacting with the other canines. He was still contemplating how to bring it up to Danielle without her feeling like it was pressuring her. He wanted nothing more than to get it off her chest. At first, before she left, he thought there was something bothering her, but it was clear from their conversations on the phone since their separation, that she knew something was bothering him and was waiting for him to talk about it. Sighing, he thought more about how to just ask her.

When he received a message, he thought to ignore it while out, but instead, he decided to see if it was the alterations Luke said his PA would send on regarding the Blue Peter episode he was going on. When he looked at his phone, he frowned and inhaled deeply, reading Redmayne’s words carefully, he knew the answer to the question asked.

Is there a reason you haven’t asked her yet?

#chapter 128 #I Hate You I Love You #tom hiddleston #Tom Hiddleston Fic #wolfpawn

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vincturi · 5 years ago

Text

I’m too pretty to die?

2200 words, rated T

Peter hadn’t thought vampires really existed. He only remembered a little of how his parents had died. He never thought the killer could be a real vampire, he’d just thought he must have been some sort of maniac convinced he was one. But after fetching up in Volterra for a show and seeing what he thought he’d seen last night – a tall, strangely beautiful red headed man seeming to disappear in a cloud of smoke? He began to wonder. A search of the internet provided lots of strange stories about the town and he knew he was right. Vampires were real and he was staying in a town full of them.

Perhaps one of them was responsible for what had happened to his parents. But even if not, surely killing some would be a good thing, would provide some kind of revenge.

He’d done a lot of research into vampires and ways of killing them when he’d been younger so he figured he knew how to distract and kill them. So that night he made his way to the large mansion on the edge of town which his research showed was the lair of the vampires.

For vampires they didn’t appear to be very good at guarding their home as Peter was able to find a way in through a side door and after some sneaking around he found himself in a large throne room. He was staring in awe at the three large thrones when a quiet voice behind him said, “Oh my, what do we have here? A hunter, come to kill us all.”

Peter spun round to see a strikingly handsome man with long dark hair, pale skin and vivid red eyes watching him with an amused expression. A vampire, there really was no mistaking it. They were real and one was right in front of him, time to put his research into practice. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a handful of the colourful beads he’d put in there earlier and threw them on the floor with a dramatic gesture before quickly pulling out a wooden stake and holding it in front of him.

It didn’t have quite the effect he was hoping for. The vampire merely stared at him clearly taken aback by this.

“Why have you done this?” asked the vampire, tilting his head slightly to the side.

“Vampires are distracted by the need to count.”

The look the vampires face did not suggest this was the case.

“It’s worked on the other vampires I’ve killed,” said Peter trying to sound confident, even though he hadn’t of course killed any vampires before.

This turned out to be a major mistake as the next moment Peter found himself pressed against the wall with the vampire right up against him.

“I am not other vampires, I am Aro Volturi. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t rip your throat out right now,” hissed Aro.

Peter gulped and watched Aro’s eyes follow the movement.

“I’m too pretty to die?” said Peter trying to smile. “And there’s this,” he slowly reached up and pulled his collar down to reveal crosses tattooed on his neck.

Aro drew back a little at this, looking impressed and slightly disgusted.

“Hmm, not quite as stupid as you look are you? Tell me why you came here and remember that I can rip your head clean off without worrying about those crosses,” he finished with a sneer.

“My name is Peter Vincent and a vampire killed my parents when I was a child,” said Peter quietly. “I didn’t believe it was real until…”

“Until you came here,” said Aro, finally understanding. “Do you remember what the vampire who did it looked like?”

Peter nodded and described him.

“Jerry Dandridge,” said Aro. “We’ve had run-ins with him before. I think now is the time to deal with him, permanently.” The look on his face was truly terrifying for a moment, then it faded into something more neutral. “There is something you need to know about us Peter. We run this town and have done for centuries. We don’t kill the inhabitants. Oh don’t get me wrong, I have killed many, many people, but not innocents and not simply to drink their blood, unlike Jerry Dandridge. You should head back home. Forget all of this, we will deal with that scum, depend in it,” finished Aro stepping back and releasing Peter.

“No,” said Peter, stepping forward. “If you’re going after him, I’m going too.”

“I don’t think so. You wouldn’t stand a chance against him.”

“I don’t care; I want to see him dead.”

“Oh very well,” Aro sighed. “But you will require some proper training before we do anything. Alec, Jane,” he called and Peter jumped as two younger looking vampires appeared from the darkness.

“Take him to the training room please and give him some proper instruction. Try not to damage him too much. I will join you later. First I have to find out where Jerry Dandridge is hiding. It’s finally time to deal with him.”

The twins, which they obviously were, nodded and looking at Peter with interest they led him away.

It was some time later and Peter felt he was making progress. He’d almost got the large knife they’d given him, against Jane’s throat when he heard Aro’s voice.

“You’re doing better than I expected.”

Peter’s head snapped round and with a yell he found himself flat on the floor, again.

“Still, you shouldn’t allow yourself to be distracted quite so easily. Although I understand I am very distracting.”

Peter snorted and stood up, trying to ignore the smirks sent in his direction.

“Well, why don’t I have a try?” asked Aro, approaching him.

He waved a hand at him, “try your new skills on me, vampire hunter.”

To give Peter his due, he did try, they circled each other for a while with Peter fainting toward Aro and dodging back as Aro moved towards him. But he was aware that Aro was merely playing with him, and soon he found himself flat on the floor, the hand holding the knife pinned to the ground with Aro right on top if him, not even out of breath.

“Not bad, considering,” said Aro looking down at him with a small smile.

“Are you kidding,” grumbled Peter, wishing Aro would get up; his feelings were confusing enough as it was without adding being pinned down by a handsome vampire to his problems.

Aro waved his words away, finally standing up and reaching down to help Peter up. “You stood no chance against me. But I think you’ll do fine with our back up. I’ve found Jerry Dandridge; we’ll be going after him tomorrow. Now I suggest you get some sleep and clean up,” he finished looking Peter over, eyes holding more than a hint of heat.

Peter gulped and allowed Aro to lead him out of the mansion and instruct him on when they would pick him up and what he should bring.

Peter spent the night having a hot shower and trying to sleep and not to think about handsome pale faces and intense red eyes with heat and desire in them.

As agreed, the following afternoon Aro, along with several other vampires arrived to pick Peter up.

“You are still determined to come with us?” asked Aro.

“Yes,” answered Peter. Trying to sound more confident than he really was.

Aro nodded and led Peter out to one of the large cars.

The drive took a few hours and Aro used the time to question Peter about his life and answer questions in return about how the town worked and his life.

It wasn’t what Peter had been expecting. He wasn’t saying Aro was a good person but nor was he the total evil he’d been imagining and worrying about. When Peter had realised he was attracted to a vampire he’d been confused and scared but he was more relaxed about it now. And, after all, he could die tonight. Worrying about a crush wasn’t the biggest worry he had at that moment.

Eventually they arrived at Jerry’s place, stopping some distance away so as not to warn him they were there and to ensure he was inside. When their spy confirmed he was Aro sent the other vampires to surround the place and told Peter they would go inside and deal with him at which point he and Aro would go in.

“Wait, no,” said Peter angrily. “That’s not what we agreed and I’m not putting others at risk for me.”

“It’s hardly just for you, he’s risking our whole community with his behaviour,” said Aro calmly. “And they are in less danger than you would be.”

“Let me go in first,” said Peter. “I can distract him, let him think I’m alone then he’ll be off his guard and we’ll be able to take him down more easily.”

Aro was clearly not happy about it but had to admit it wasn’t a bad plan.

Jerry could be very dangerous, and he would want to gloat when he saw Peter and that would give them time to get inside. He simply didn’t want anything to happen to Peter, he liked the man and it had been some time since he’d felt anything like this as he usually kept away from mortals knowing all too well the risk of falling for one. If Peter was killed or turned by Jerry, Aro was not sure how he’d react.

He couldn’t keep him back though and so informed the others of what was to happen and made Peter promise not to actually engage Jerry in a fight if he could help it.

Peter found his way in through a side door, thinking again about how bad vampires were on security and crept into the house.

He walked into what was obviously trying to be a throne room like the Volturie’s but much less impressive.

Jerry was sitting in a large chair on the slightly raised section of the floor at the opposite end of the room to Peter.

“Ah, you finally made it in did you,” he smirked at him. “Peter Vincent, and all grown up. You look like your mother, and are obviously just as stupid coming here. Still perhaps I can make you my pet as I wasn’t able to with her.”

Peter snarled, “don’t talk about her you son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you and you’re never going to hurt anyone again.”

“Oh are you,” said Jerry with amusement. “And how do you plan to do that? With that little knife,” he finished, gesturing at the knife Aro had given to Peter. He stood from his throne and walked closer to Peter.

“Well come on Mr. Vampire Hunter, here’s your chance.” He opened his arms and began to circle Peter.

Remembering his training Peter kept the knife low and turned with him, after a few faints he managed to cut Jerry’s arm, which caused the vampire to rush at him in anger.

“Oh, do leave him alone,” came Aro’s voice from across the room, causing Jerry to make the fatal mistake of hesitating and Peter took his chance to dive forward and knock him to the ground. Holding the knife against his throat he said, “This is for my parents.” And cut his throat as deep as he could.

He jumped away, watching in horror as the vampire thrashed and seemed almost to burn as the other vampires appeared.

Aro walked to him and stood silently as they watched Jerry finally stop moving.

“It was well done,” said Aro eventually. “Do you feel better now you’ve had your revenge?”

“No,” spat Peter. “What happens now?”

“Now you leave and we deal with this rubbish, we burn it and scatter the ashes.”

“No, I want to see him burn,” said Peter.

Aro sighed and nodded, he knew it wouldn’t make Peter feel any better but he could see there was no point in trying to make him leave and honestly? If their positions had been reversed he wouldn’t have left either.

“Very well, but you stay with me at all times. There is no telling what that scum might have in here.”

Peter did as Aro said, standing with him and watching as the vampires began to search through Jerry’s things, bringing out anything that seemed useful or dangerous to take back with them and breaking up anything wooden to make the pyre that would burn Jerry’s body.

By the time the dawn came the pyre was well alight and whole house was completely stripped. This time when Aro asked Peter to leave with him he did.

While Jerry’ death hadn’t proved as cathartic as he’d hoped it helped to know that Jerry wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.

Peter was mainly quiet on the way back and Aro didn’t encourage him to speak. Letting him work through his feelings.

As they approached town Aro said “if you want to leave town you have my word no one will come after you. But you impressed me today so if you would like to stay you would be welcome. I would enjoy your company and I’m sure the twins would enjoy continuing your training.”

“I won’t be turned,” said Peter, looking at him.

“I wouldn’t do it without your consent,” answered Aro. “But I won’t promise that I won’t try to convince you to let me.”

Peter smiled, “it’s a deal.”

#vincturi #vampire x vampire hunter au #peter vincent #aro volturi #quakerlass fics

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

Text

I mean, here’s the thing....

I’m more than capable of writing positive Batfam posts, meta deep dives that don’t dwell overlong on negativity, serious content, light hearted content, content about each and every one of the Batfam....anyone familiar with just a few different samples of my posts knows I do not lack for topics to happily ramble on about for absurd lengths. Hell, I’m pretty sure there’s a direct correlation where like, the less negative emotions I have about the content I’m writing, the LONGER it ends up being.

So its not like I particularly need or want to be the ‘loud angry scary adult cis white man yelling at kids’ to have something to say or talk about. Or that I particularly like that state of mind. I’m certainly not unaware of my privileges or that I can be off-putting or not someone everyone wants to be around on here. Its actually something I put a lot of thought into regularly, as personal accountability is such a big deal to me, and that certainly includes my own. There are times where I’ve looked back on something and thought yeah, I definitely could’ve dialed it down there.

But not gonna lie, given that personal accountability is kinda My Theme and I DO put a lot of time and effort into being self-aware and taking care not to cross certain lines, whether you believe me or not or agree with where I draw my lines or not....

Its more than a little obnoxious to regularly see my positive posts and my emotion-neutral meta posts and even my negative critical of canon posts take off and get hundreds of notes in just a couple of days....

But without fail, any time I so much as suggest that fandom’s perpetuating some of the very same toxic tendencies I criticize canon for, with the extension of that thought being hey fandom, unlike canon and how its written, we actually can do something about how we write these very same matters and slowly but surely normalize reader resistance to canon still perpetuating those ideas in the future, and maybe someday even they might buy a vowel and realize hey, our audience does not like what we’re selling here.

*Shrugs* Or maybe not. But even SOME changes to how specific problematic tropes and dynamics are being written in fandom currently could still only be an improvement, is all I’m saying.

Except, every time, without fail, no matter HOW I go about saying it, how polite, mild, civil, non-accusatory....its either crickets or immediate heels dug into the sand as often the very same people who commented on my neutral meta with variations of ‘this is pretty insightful’, like at the mere SUGGESTION its worth taking a more critical look at their own content to see what they might unknowingly be perpetuating and like....the very idea of asking fic writers to be more accountable for what toxic tendencies we perpetuate within our own creative works, even just among our own far more limited platforms....

Its like... HOLD UP! I AM BEING ATTACKED! WITHOUT CAUSE! WHY DO YOU HATE THE FANS? WHY AREN’T YOU SAYING ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT THE ACTUAL COMICS???

And its just like....uh....I did. I do. You were there. You were saying I was making some really good points. But without calling any individuals out or making specific insinuations or personal attacks....I am suddenly just the most unreasonable of the unreasonables, because I dared say “hey, we can’t do anything about what canon writes, but we can do something about the things we write, and actually transform some of the more problematic tendencies and dynamics from canon into things that benefit all the characters and all the fans.”

But nah. Without exception, those posts either get nada or they get vitriol, no matter my own linguistic volume....and meanwhile, posts I made just before them and just after them are now hitting the thousand notes mark. So I kinda can’t help but wonder, is the problem really that I magically lose all ability to grasp supremely basic concepts and start spewing irrelevant gibberish anytime I’m critical of fandom specifically? Or.....just spitballing here....is it at ALL possible that maybe I’m not as much of the problem there as you want to make me about to be?

Like, say what you will about how toxic my more negative, angry posts can be, but personally, I think artificial positivity is just as toxic....plastering a ‘I see nothing wrong here’ sign with a smiley face over a bunch of mold doesn’t actually accomplish anything but allow that mold to fester and grow even further, without notice, until it becomes too widespread to ignore anymore at which point its usually rooted so deep its impossible to get out.

So yeah. I get angry, the all caps come out, and the volume level of my posts on those subjects rises. Its something I’m aware of and something I’m okay with and stand by with certain posts and that I decide I’m not okay with and keep an eye against repeating with certain other posts. Its a process, it doesn’t have an endpoint or finish line, and I’m okay with all of that.

What I’m NOT okay with though, and never will be, is the heat I draw for that and the condemnations and criticisms of my behavior and how toxic and unpleasant I make fandom with those posts....as though the tendencies I’m pointing out in them, by virtue of already being present throughout fandom, don’t already make it toxic and unpleasant in a lot of ways, for a lot of people.

But for all the times I have someone respond to me or call me out specifically for one of my angry posts that very deliberately are made with no specific individuals in mind, just generic references to fandom wide tendencies as a whole....there’s a whole lot of ‘helpful advice’ for all the things I should do different or better to avoid making fandom a more toxic place.....and not a hint of awareness that there’s anything at all they could be doing differently to make fandom less toxic than it already is in various ways.

So just saying, I’m kiiiiiinda not super keen on being lectured for my shit by people who are committed to the belief that their own shit doesn’t stink....WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, I have a good half a dozen positive or neutral meta posts still making the rounds through fandom and consistently picking up notes that according to the tags, generally seem to be viewed as adding positively to fandom in their own respective fashions.

Which basically from my perspective, makes things look like this:

Me: regularly contributes positive content that’s received positively by lots of different parts of fandom, not just the Dick Grayson stan corner of it, with zero negativity attached to these posts....regularly contributes meta content that’s deemed insightful and adding fresh viewpoints by lots of different parts of fandom, not just the Dick Grayson stan corner of it, again, with zero negativity attached because it doesn’t rely on putting down any other characters to make whatever points I’m after.....

....but then contributes posts that are critical of certain specific characterizations and viewpoints within fandom itself, without actually having a twelve step powerpoint presentation attached detailing ALL FANS MUST DO THIS INSTEAD....and instead I usually just include a spectrum of possible alternative takes.....

But wait! Nooooow comes the pushback. Which usually sounds like various forms of this:

Stop trying to police us! La la la la can’t hear you over the sound of your moral superiority complex! You just want us to do exactly what you want us to do which is gaslighting and the very same abusive behavior you talk about which makes you abusive!

And also, a bunch of changing the subject or avoiding addressing various points I raise completely.

Maybe you see my issue? I don’t need tips on how to be a positive fandom presence, I actually don’t have any trouble creating positive content or meta, a large amount of which is deemed insightful and humorous and otherwise well received....but the second I make a criticism of fandom and suggest there’s things fans could be doing differently to address the toxicity existing around various characters in various respects, instead of just keeping everything about DC’s flaws which none of us including me have any kind of platform to even reach DC with......

Suddenly I have ZERO idea what I’m talking about, I clearly don’t get the point of fandom, period, I’m obsessed with my own moral righteousness, and am like, so out of the ballpark misguided its not even funny, and I need all of this explained to me like a five year old, because everyone obviously should get that ‘we’re just fans, why are you blaming us for things we write specifically instead of DC who are getting paid as if that’s even the point?’

So yup. I get ticked off, I make more posts venting about being ticked off, rinse and repeat and my volume goes up.

And that’s it by the way.

You’ll notice, that’s kinda the worst that ever happens, because I literally have never done anything but....type posts with lots of capitalized letters. I don’t target specific individuals, I don’t harass people, I don’t @ specific fics or fic writers or urge people to flood their comments or ask boxes with callouts. I’ve never called anyone in this fandom names or made personal attacks other than the posts various people have felt targeted by because my description of specific tropes or tendencies I have a problem with apparently made them think I was talking about them I guess? Hmm. Weird.

So what’s the point of this post? Idk. Nothing really. Not trying to accomplish anything, just putting my thoughts out there as a way to work through them because like....that’s literally what I have this blog for, lmao. And FYI, I super don’t appreciate the tactic of condemning me for my quote unquote rage issues and framing all this as me yelling at kids on the internet....kids, specifically, and oh right, just screaming at people rather than addressing my own abusive behavior.

Since abuse is a hugely personal and important topic to me, let me just say accusing me of abusing generic fandom in general (since again, I haven’t actually made any of this personal about any individual with my fandom criticisms)....like, I’m quite willing to consider and address flaws in my own behavior when raised, but I’m not a fan of being called abusive in a context that demonstrates a complete lack of awareness as to what abuse actually is.

You don’t like me yelling on my blog? Fine, you don’t have to like it, or me. But abuse is the exploitation of a power differential, taking advantage of power one person has over the other, or that the other person just doesn’t have period. The fact that I am an adult cis white man does not make me aggressively capitalizing stuff in my own posts the same as “the same triggering position of the cisgender man who screams and makes kids feel scared and wince and hide from your posts.”

Like, lol, nice. Classy. I mean who cares right, that yeah, even acknowledging that we can legitimately sense tones and moods through even written text.....a person ranting on their internet blog is not remotely interchangeable with the physical presence of an adult cis white man loudly screaming in your face and with the potential for immediate consequences and harm. Does that mean the tone of my posts is above criticism? No. It means exactly what I said. The one is not the same as the other.

Secondly, the repeated insistence on me yelling at kids...and this person I’m quoting isn’t the only one who’s done this, FYI, and its crap. Am I unaware that there are a lot of minors in fandom? No, I absolutely am not. Its why I make a point to check the blog of someone I’m replying to heatedly before I respond, to make sure they’re not a minor, and if they are, I don’t engage. So that I can categorically state, with complete certainty, I have never yelled at a kid in this fandom. Do my generic yells about ‘fandom’ not include kids then? Yeah, you could say kids are included there, though again I’d have to question why my criticisms of specific handlings of specific subjects somehow equates to me yelling at specific individuals, whom apparently are all kids and only kids. Like, framing my posts as being all about me screaming at kids specifically is a deliberate choice with a clear aim of making me look as bad as possible. This isn’t subtle.

Third, as an abuse survivor I’m keenly aware that doesn’t exempt me from being abusive myself, but it does mean I find it really fucking gross to be labeled abusive because my posts make kids feel scared and wince and want to hide from my posts. As someone who as a kid absolutely had to hide from their abuser in fear, I really, dearly would love to know what exactly it is about the capitalized sentences written by a man who couldn’t even pick a stranger’s URL out of a lineup, that’s so scary that kids, specifically, want to run and hide from the big bad posts. No, seriously. Go on. Please tell me what exactly it is about my screaming rage issues as conveyed by my posts, which pose any kind of threat or even the potential of threat for someone who I’ve never interacted with and only feels personally attacked by my posts by virtue of associating themselves with the behaviors or tendencies I’ve centered in those posts as the things I’m specifically angry about.

I also apparently am abusive because that’s what you call it when I gaslight or attempt to gaslight a fandom....which is apparently what you call it when my fandom policing tries to get everyone to do exactly what I want them to do. Which again is pretty interesting to me given that I’ve literally never told even generic ‘fandom’ at large to do anything in specific other than....’hey this thing I think is shitty and thus am criticizing shouldn’t be a thing, stop doing it.” Oh wait, I’m sorry, I also ask people to consider their creative impact and not insist on pretending everything we write exists in a vacuum and has no potential to carry harm, and just keep this in mind when making our creative choices. Still not sure how that’s demanding everyone do things exactly the way I want them, since the only clear and actionable request or demand in all of that is...omg....HE ASKED THAT WE THINK ABOUT THE STUFF WE WRITE, HOW COULD HE???

Like, literally, that’s the furthest any of my angry, rage-borne DEMANDS have gone: I’ve asked people apply more personal accountability to their own creative works and not take their potential impact for granted just because they’re a fic writer rather than a published one....and oh yeah, not engage in perpetuating certain tropes or dynamics I consider toxic.

Now, anyone is certainly welcome to disagree with my take on any or all of those tropes, tendencies or dynamics being toxic....but to do so, like, you need to actually DISAGREE AND MAYBE EVEN TELL ME WHY. But the overall refusal to engage with any of my posts criticizing certain fandom tendencies regarding the characters, other than to make it about my overall toxicity and RAGE.....like, that means that I keep making posts that include specific examples for what I’m describing and why I think they’re toxic, and nobody’s actually made any kind of case for me being wrong in any of those posts? So.....its not actually gaslighting to try and convince people these things I bring up are toxic....when I’m actually including reasons and examples of the things I’m talking about in order to convince people, and I’m not actually ignoring, evading or misconstruing counter-arguments....because nobody’s actually making counter arguments in the first place!! That’s not fucking gaslighting, that’s called EXPRESSING MY VIEWPOINT ON A MATTER.

And for the record, like I said earlier, abuse is the perversion or exploitation of a power differential. Try all you want, but you can’t claim I have power over myriad specific individuals I don’t even know EXIST without them interacting with me directly....power that I’m then exploiting just by yelling at stuff on my blog. Yes I’m aware of my overall privileges as a cis and white man. But none of those change a damn thing about the fact that I’m not actually yelling at anyone in specific and people reading my posts have to decide for THEMSELVES whether the thing I’m pissed about is a thing they do before they can even CLAIM to feel at all ‘targeted’ by my RAGE (with me still not being able to tell from that who any particular individual this might apply to is, and also, THATS NOT EVEN THE POINT OF ANY OF MY POSTS)....NOR do any of my privileges negate the fact that every single one of you exists in varying physical distances from me, unknown to me, and I have ZERO power to compel you to even read my posts in the first place, or to keep you from exiting your browser or app or even just going ahead and blocking me to be sure you’re ‘safe’ from the big bad abusive boogeyman and his posts of Gaslighting and Rage.

Me venting on my own damn blog, even knowing that other people can see what I post and share it if they want, is NOT the same thing as screaming in your face and making you want to wince and hide, no matter WHO you are. It just literally isn’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a problem with my posts or my tone, it just means what it says. Its not the same thing, they’re not interchangeable or even comparable, because NONE OF YOU ARE A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE. There are NO possible consequences to ignoring, disagreeing with or just scrolling past my posts, firstly because THERE’S ZERO WAY FOR ME TO EVEN KNOW THAT, IF I EVEN CARED. Nobody, kid or adult, can ever HIDE from my posts, because that would first require MY POSTS EVER BE ABLE TO FIND THEM. Whatever the hell THAT even means.

You’re not my prisoners. You don’t have to be here. You’re not even ACTUALLY HERE. Nobody owes me an audience, and honestly, the lack of one wouldn’t change all that much because I babble on all the time about shit none of my followers actually care about, because I post for ME first and foremost, and people from there are welcome to do whatever they want to do with my content, or do nothing with it at all. I literally don’t care, other than thinking its shitty that so many people find my content worthwhile except and until I get critical of fandom behaviors at which point they only engage with it to make it all about ME and MY toxicity instead of anything I actually posted about. Which I then...gasp...vent about. How dare I be angry in the space I cultivated for myself online and other people chose to look in on by their own choice because rather than being threatened or bullied into doing so, they found at least something I’d said interesting enough to be worth listening to hear what else I might say.

I HAVE ZERO POWER OVER ANY OF YOU. At most my posts hold some weight for the people who think I generally have interesting or insightful things to say, but that’s literally it, and that’s the result of me having said things they find interesting and insightful overall. I can’t MAKE anyone do anything, if I’d ever even tried to make anyone do anything other than actually LISTEN to what I ACTUALLY am saying on certain subjects and CONSIDER IT. So if we’re going to throw words like gaslighting around so carelessly, we might want to hold that one up next to the phrase ‘fandom policing’ I so often get accused of....as though I’m any kind of actual authority with actual power to actually enforce any actual agenda I even actually have.

Which brings me to the last thing I want to touch on, which is my supposed moral righteousness, that oozes all over everything I post and drowns out any good points I have to make, which again, apparently is just in terms of fandom criticisms, since every other point I’ve ever made in fandom seems to come through just fine.

Like.....tbh, I don’t really know what to do with the many times I’ve heard people say I’m self-righteous and obsessed with my own moral righteousness. Considering like...I’m not shy about acknowledging my flaws, I know perfectly well I can be loud and angry and aggressive in my posts and have talked plenty before about not being super proud of that, I’ve never claimed to be a saint and I don’t think my actions and choices are the gold standard everyone should adhere to. In fact, the only time I make a point to state what *I* do or did or what *I* think or believe....is when its directly relevant to something critical I’m saying.

And you think that’s because I want everyone to be aware of how moral and righteous I am? Fucking please, if I were as self-absorbed as you people make me out to be when giving me shit, I just wanna know when you think I’d have time to squeeze out 10K of random Batfam meta every other day, instead of being busy finding new things to say about myself.

Literally the only reason I make a point to bring up my own behavior or choices when criticizing others is because PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY IS THE CORE THEME OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING I SAY IN THIS REGARD.

And you know what personal accountability requires? A willingness to acknowledge and address your own behavior. Which is why its kinda hilarious the consensus seems to be I’m too up my own ass to even be aware of my own behavior or actions, given that the literal actual reason I bring up examples of what I did or think when making posts about personal accountability....is to stress that REGARDLESS of what those things were, I think its important to not just be talking out of my ass. But rather to emphasize I hold myself to the same expectations I’m asking other people to consider, I’m putting it out there and on the record, here’s what I did relevant to this matter I’m talking about and why I made that choice....see, I’m not asking anything of anyone else that I don’t expect to be held to myself. ITS NOT ABOUT TRYING TO IMPRESS PEOPLE WITH MY MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS, ITS LITERALLY JUST ME TRYING TO ESTABLISH I’M NOT LOOKING TO BE A HYPOCRITE IN THIS REGARD, SPECIFICALLY.

Like, is maybe that unnecessary and counter-productive? Could be, its something for me to think about some more, but gotta tell you, its a little hard figuring out what will and won’t work when I’m STILL waiting on the first time someone actually engages me on an actual criticism I’m actually voicing about fandom.

*Shrugs* Whatever. Like I said, I don’t even know if this post has a point beyond just getting this all out of my head, so whatever. Make of it what you will. People will likely still just keep viewing me however they already do, for better or worse. Oh well. C’est la vie. Its not the end of the world anymore than any other post I make is, no matter how much RAGE I imbue it with. As I’ve always said, that’s literally the only reason for any of the posts I make ever...I’m just getting them out of my head and down on paper, so to speak, in whatever mood I’m feeling while thinking about that topic. Yeah, I phrase things for a generic fandom audience most of the time, other than when I’m talking to someone directly, but never have I made a post with an entitled and expectant belief that people will take every word I say literally and regard it as a directive for what they should do and how they should live their lives. Since, y’know, I don’t actually think I should be the ruler of everyone’s choices.

Over and over I keep repeating, I just want people to put more THOUGHT into their choices, and keep in mind various contexts that yeah, I think are relevant to certain topics, sue me. Because the vast majority of creative choices I take issue with, I actually fundamentally believe are just the result of a lack of thinking critically or with a broader awareness of various implications or repercussions. Shocking though this may seem, I’m actually a big believer that humans are inherently good or at least have the capacity to be.

The thing that amps up my frustration and ticks me off so often is how much time and effort I end up wasting trying to get people to address the actual things I’m asking them to consider, instead of dancing around it and evading it in every way possible, not even like, as an attempt to counter it, just willfully refusing to let it be about the topic I ACTUALLY raised.

And yeah, just FYI, to whom it may concern, since this is so often relevant it seems.....gotta say, I find it particularly odious that WITHOUT FAIL, the very same people who carelessly throw out ‘don’t like don’t read’ as the catch-all solution to every issue anyone ever might have with something in fandom, as though its that simple.....

Time after time demonstrate a COMPLETE refusal or inability to take their own damn advice, since NONE of this would ever even come up if the loudest advocates of that system actually APPLIED it themselves.

And simply....didn’t read my posts.

I fail to see why I’m expected to do what they don’t consider worth doing themselves, to spare themselves the aggravation (or fear) from reading my posts. Let alone interacting with them.

But whatevs. When do I ever know what I’m talking about anyway, lol, on account of all this RAGE I’ve got mucking with my head and objectivity.

Oh well, gotta go. KALEN SMASH!

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maesterkenobi · 5 years ago

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how I run my blog

Tagged by: as usual I’ve stolen it from @mynameisanakin Tagging: no one, i am too lazy and i follow like 14 people so. just do it if you want to.

SPEED: is not my forte. I try my best, but there are several factors that work against me in this aspect: 1) I’m a chronic procrastinator 2) I’m scatterbrained 3) I have more than one blog 4) I almost never write replies that are less than two paragraphs and I want it to make sense and be good and be enjoyable for my partner, so it takes time. I almost never reply the same day (MAYBE on discord, because there my replies are way shorter and it’s mostly to my best friend), and you’re lucky if I reply within a week. I really try to be faster on this blog because I made a promise to myself (and I was doing okay until the whole virus thing happened and I ran into a bunch of personal problems) AND I am keeping a low profile on this blog so it doesn’t get overwhelming. Long story short, if you are looking for a super active daily replies partner, I am not it for you. If you’re okay with waiting for a while but getting more developed stories and longer replies in turn, then we should talk :)

REPLIES: Are on the longer side on this blog. I don’t really have the patience for one liners because they tend to go nowhere and then feel like bread crumbs of randomness all over my blog. They’re okay sometimes, but more often than not they feel like crack. Writing replies is really exhausting for me sometimes, but I try to force myself because I WANT to do it, I’m just having issues concentrating on one thing at a time so it takes me forever.

STARTERS: I don’t write welcoming starters because 8 out of 10 times they get ignored or are so random that they lead nowhere. If someone writes me a welcoming starter, it depends on the content but usually I’ll try to make it work for me and reply. I don’t often like starter calls because most people write absolutely pointless starters. For example they’ll write a paragraph of explaining what their muse did all day (unrelated to my muse), then walk into some random place they’ve never been to (e.g. a shady bar) and suddenly get surprised by my muse being there, and/or, my personal favorite, say something like “what the hell do you want from me”? Which I struggle with for several reasons. One, if you create a setting but don’t bother explaining why we’re there, you put the entire weight of explaining that (aka creating the actual setting) on ME, but you add an additional complication by making it something that I didn’t come up with, so now I have to introduce a world YOU invented with 0 idea of why you chose that particular location in the first place. Second, you put my muse in a situation that makes no sense for them and again force me to explain that, without even giving me a good reason to. And third, I play very different muses, but most of them are going to lose interest in the conversation immediately if the first thing you say to them is rude af. So, yeah, I actually really struggle with most random starters. Please just plot with me and then I will love you forever for writing me a plotted starter that I know will not create 400 questions in my head that I then have to bother you with, which makes me feel like a nuisance. (Or at least keep the setting neutral? Or try to come up with something that seems reasonable for my muse? I always try to do that and when I am unsure, I message the person who liked my starter calls.) Speaking of which, I rarely post starter calls, because.. well, like I just kind of explained, it’s comes with responsibility and work. And I’m lazy.

INBOX: is open for memes at all times, and questions of any kind. I often don’t get notified, so I sometimes see certain messages months later - when that happens, I usually don’t reply anymore if they’re anon because I’ll assume that person forgot or isn’t even around anymore. Sorry about that! It’s an issue I’ve had on several blogs and I don’t know how to fix it. Anon hate is deleted without comment, unless I feel there’s a point in replying to it publicly, or if it’s entertaining. I don’t roleplay via inbox and therefore any “ic” questions or interactions posted in there will be treated as a one-time meme, if I can reply to them at all. Asks of sexual nature from complete strangers will usually be ignored because Obi-Wan isn’t the muse for that at all. As I’ve stated in my rules I only roleplay with mutuals and therefore won’t roleplay with someone I don’t follow, even if they ignore that rule and start rping with me via inbox. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I have these rules for a reason and I ask that people read and respect them.

SELECTIVITY: I am selective with whom I follow because I have limited time and energy for this blog (and all my blogs) and therefore find it irresponsible and pointless to accept 600 followers and threads when I know I can’t possibly reply to even 10% of them. Before I follow someone (back) I look at their blogs; in particular at their writing (to see if I like their style and their portrayal), their rules (to see what they like/dislike and if our general understanding of the RPC, roleplay, and in a way social interactions in general go well together), and sometimes their OOC posts to get a feeling of how the other person is. (Obviously I also sometimes don’t follow back when I don’t know the muse or fandom at all.) Blog rules and ooc posts can say A LOT about a person, and there are plenty of people in the RPC (in any fandom) that quickly rose to tumblr fame with shiny graphics and fancy formatting and dozens of well-developed verses and headcanons, but they straight up suck as people outside of writing. My rules state very clearly that I discourage hateful comments, mob mentality and callout culture, and unfortunately many “popular” blogs use exactly these tools to execute their power (which comes from being admired for all the wrong reasons). So, I know many people think being selective means you only pick partners with fancy graphics and poetic writing, but for me it actually means I want decent human beings as partners. I don’t give a shit if you format your posts (as long as you cut them) or if you have a blog with a fancy theme, or just a rules google doc, or if you use icons or not. If I like your writing and you seem like a nice and reasonable person, I’m good to go. If you talk to me about dogs I’m even better to go.

WISHLIST: I always try to have one because I find it very helpful when looking for plot ideas with new partners. I will look at yours if you like a plotting call or something too, but I know not everyone has a wishlist~

HONEST NOTE: I’m not a teenager anymore and I’ve been rping for over 14 years. I work with lots of strangers, I study for a job with lots of strangers. I think about philosophical concepts a lot, about morality and human behavior and I’ve come to the conclusion that kindness, empathy and compassion are some of the core values every single person should focus on to make the world a better place. I have no patience and no interest in engaging in the absolute toxic and harmful hate movement that’s taken over this website (and other social media platforms) in whatsoever way. Occasionally I’ll make a salty comment about it, but only because I’ve had it up to here. I am here to enjoy fandom the way I used to, and the way it used to be meant to be enjoyed - not to completely ignore real issues like world politics, economical and environmental crises, in order to entertain witch hunts on people who happen to enjoy a fictional ship that isn’t 300% approved by puritan statutes of the 1600s. I am responsible for the content I seek out online, and so are you. Does it suck when I see something I dislike? Sure. Is it the fault of the person who posted it? No. Especially not when I read their rules first, like I’m supposed to, and they clearly state that the thing I dislike will appear on their blog. And even if they didn’t, it was my choice to go on their blog and look at their content. If you can’t handle taking responsibility for the content you seek out online, then you are probably not old enough to use the internet unsupervised. I am free to write, read, and post on my personal blog whatever I want, as long as I am not breaking the law. Liking a fictional ship that involves an age gap? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship that involves siblings? Not illegal. Liking a fictional ship in which one party was abusive to the other at some point? Not illegal. Liking a fictional character who killed your fave? Not illegal. It’s fictional. Get over it. And if you really think that seeing fictional characters or ships online that YOU consider “problematic” is hurting people in real life, then you should join those politicians who burn books that are “corrupting the people’s morals and minds”, who ban video games because they “make gamers violent”, and censor songs from the radio because they “present biased views on people of public importance”. Please reflect on your behavior. Destroying someone’s life because they liked something you don’t, telling them to commit suic/ide, ruining their chance of making friends who maybe share their love for a ship or character.. that’s bullying. Some of the cases I’ve seen on here were so severe, they qualify as serious cyberbullying and should be reported to the police. I don’t give a fuck if you hate Rey/lo or Damon Salva/tore, or the Joker. You don’t go and send someone messages telling them to kill themselves because they RP it. Because that is the real crime. And finally, if you feel the need to “educate” someone you consider “problematic” for whatever reason and you actually approach them - make sure you’re actually there to educate and discuss, not to throw an opinion at them and get aggressive when they don’t immediately magically agree. Because chances are they won’t. If you choose to open a dialogue, make sure it IS a fucking dialogue and not a condescending monologue. Learn how to shape an argument, find evidence to back up your claims - because not only will you become better at talking to people in any kind of situation, you’ll also maybe realize that your opinion wasn’t as well-founded as you thought.

#.tag game #.munday #.ooc

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ettadunham · 5 years ago

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A Buffy rewatch 7x13 The Killer in Me

aka i just want willow to be happy

We did it, guys! We made it to the last season! Also, hello if you’re new, and stumbled upon this without context. As usual, these impromptu text posts are the product of my fevered mind as I rant about the episode I just watched for an hour (okay, sometimes perhaps two). Anything goes!

And I have a lot of complicated feelings about today’s episode.

Killer in Me follows in the footsteps of Potential, taking a break from the Big Bad to focus more on some of our characters. It just does it with a somewhat more questionable execution.

And by questionable, I mean that I’m not actually sure how I feel about all of it. There’s a lot that I like here, and with the ending scene especially, I found that, overall, it worked.

You got me, show. I want Willow to be happy.

I earlier criticized Kennedy for being an under-developed love interest for Willow in the show’s last season (as opposed to Willow/Anya that was… right there, you guys, it was right there!!), but I can’t even pretend to be mad anymore. Ultimately, that’s not the point. Kennedy’s not the point. Willow not feeling constantly miserable for the rest of her life is.

And while the doomed relationships thing is basically a theme here, I think at this point the writers also became somewhat aware of the implications of having their one (canon) queer main character end the show on that note? I mean, it was 2003, we were still getting used to not connecting to the internet through dial-up, so there wasn’t as much uproar as you’d might expect today upon Tara’s death. But it still had an impact. This sort of meta acknowledgement would also coincide with having Rona earlier in the season comment upon how black women die first in movies – a trope that the show’s been obviously guilty of as well.

Not to mention that Kennedy was written with an effort to have her be more steeped in queer culture – something that the writers never really explored with Willow, and use Kennedy here to comment upon. But we’re also just talking about Willow’s experience and relationship to her sexuality in general, which is so nice???

Maybe if we’ve done this more and earlier, we wouldn’t have The Discourse in the first place…

I like the simplicity of it all too of what Willow says. She fell in love with Tara. That was it.

What makes the show strong, even when it might not be familiar with certain experiences, is that it knows its characters. That’s what they build upon with their themes too, and it’s what makes these stories work, regardless of anything else. So I like to think of this scene as a follow up on that, that also briefly ties into a greater context.

The part where Willow talks about her mom’s reaction to her coming out is also interesting, and something we’ve never discussed on the show before.

WILLOW: “My mom was all proud like I was making some political statement. Then the statement mojo wore off and I was just gay. She hardly ever even met Tara.”

This isn’t all that surprising if one remembers Gingerbread though – Willow’s mom couldn’t even recall Buffy’s name. In season 3. So, of course she wouldn’t bother to get to know her daughter’s girlfriend of three years either.

Willow says that she didn’t mind though, saying that her and Tara were “private”. Which in a way is a callback to season 4, when Willow kept Tara and her relationship with her hidden from the Scoobies for months, saying that she wanted something that was only hers.

(“I am, you know.” “What?” “Yours.”)

But Willow eventually introduced Tara to her friends, and the latter became an integral part of their group. And yet when it came to her mom, she felt more comfortable with keeping these things separate.

…Or maybe it’s just that she felt distant from her mom in general, who never even tried to understand or connect with her.

In any case, Willow and Kennedy’s date ends up being surprisingly sweet. Especially when you consider that Kennedy essentially tricked Willow into the whole thing…

Anyway.

Let’s talk about Willow turning into Warren.

I think I already mentioned that there’s this possible interpretation of the Trio as a darker reflection of Willow in season 6, without getting too much into it.

I guess we’ll have to get into it now.

Let’s go back to the early seasons and Restless. What does Willow feel like her defining characteristic is at that time? What’s her greatest fear in college? How does she see herself even as late as season 6?

WILLOW: “Let me tell you something about Willow. She's a loser. And she always has been. People picked on Willow in junior high school, high school, up until college. With her stupid mousy ways. And now? Willow's a junkie.”

Willow started out the show as a lonely nerd, who was motivated by wanting to be special and loved. Her and Warren were never the same, because Warren never had the self-awareness to temper his entitlement, but you can track some of the same patterns through both of them, coming from a similar place of insecurity. Like their need for control and power, and the lengths they’d go to maintain that.

And I think Willow had the self-awareness to recognize that. After all, that kind of ability of self-examination is one of the things that distances her from Warren in the first place. No wonder then that her subconscious chose this form of punishment for her upon Amy’s hex then.

The part that initially felt more clunky to me about this, was the misogynistic language. That was what signaled to us the fact that Willow wasn’t just simply appearing in Warren’s form, but was becoming him. And it felt decidedly extreme and non-Willow-y, and messed with the nuance of it all.

…Until I remembered the kind of language Willow would use in the earlier seasons to describe characters like Cordelia or Faith. It stuck out to me then as well, and in a sense, this detail now can be interpreted as a commentary on that, and Willow’s internalized misogyny.

But the crux of it all, the emotional gut-punch, ends up being about a whole different kind of connection that Willow feels to Warren.

Killing Tara.

WILLOW: “No, she was never gone. She was with me. We should have been forever, and I let her be dead. She's really dead. And I killed her.”

Let 👏 Willow 👏 be 👏 happy 👏

See? There’s a lot of juicy stuff here to talk about and I love that. Not to mention that we finally embrace Amy as an Ethan Rayne-type of chaotic neutral villain foil to Willow, and it’s so good! So very good!

AMY: “This is not about hate. It's about power. Willow always had all the power, long before she even knew what to do with it. Just came so easy for her. The rest of us, we had to work twice as hard to be half as good. But no one cares about how hard you work. They just care about cute, sweet Willow. They don't know how weak she is. She gave in to evil, stuff worse than I can even imagine. She almost destroyed the world! And yet everyone keeps on loving her? So what's wrong with having a little fun, huh? Taking her down a peg or two?”

It’s delicious. Even more delicious than the brownies Amy and Willow would bond over during Junior High.

On a less fun note, a lot of characters’ reaction to the idea that Willow would now be a boy is a bit… troubling. I’m not talking about the Scoobies here, who are mostly freaked out by the fact that it’s Warren, but things like the Wicca group’s reaction for instance. Like, they aren’t even reacting to the story of how Willow was hexed yet, they’re just being weird about the idea itself that someone they knew as a girl is now a boy. As if that was out of the realm of possibilities.

Meanwhile in one of our other side-stories, Spike’s chip is malfunctioning, so he and Buffy are trying to contact the Initiative to ask for their help (Sarah Michelle Gellar also lost her voice at some point it seems), and the rest of the gang think that Giles might be dead and the First, so they go on a road trip to investigate.

Overall, there’s plenty of flaws to be found with this episode. The themes of Willow turning into Warren don’t actually get fully explored, and scenes like Willow buying the gun are just super weird for it. Ideas like the fairytale kiss are just clunky. And yet, The Killer in Me also got to me, and provided me with tons of stuff to dissect.

So, much like with the Willow/Kennedy relationship, I can’t be too mad about it.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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lvminae · 5 years ago

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SwSh Opinions

Actually fuck it I'll make an in depth post on swsh since I'm sick and it is 2:30 am and I can't sleep.

Keep in mind that these are my opinions and I’m not out here to argue with anyone, I just want to share what I think. And there is a lot. Since I wrote this in the middle of the night and edited the next day, I probably forgot some things, but it is long enough as is.

I don’t think I actually went into anything spoiler like.

Things I like

- Characters: I adore the variety in the characters and a lot of them are loveable. Some stick out as ones I don't particularly like, and some are silly, but that variety is good and it isn't so common that it becomes irritating.

And I have reasons to care about characters I initially disliked (like Bede; his development is JUST enough for me to not hate him). Some I still don't care about, and some characters deserve more development, but it isn't bad to the point where I am not happy with it (and I will address this more later).

- Pokemon (Variety): I'll talk about pokemon later on the neutral list, but I do really appreciate just how varied and even wild the pokemon are. Design wise, anyways - I don't know jack about competitive stats and don't care.

- Wild Area: The wild area has the silly mechanic of sudden weather changes depending on the areas, and the pokemon who pop up can be repetitive when you are dex filling. But other than that, I LOVE it. It is huge, and immersive, and I much prefer running around there than on routes.

And the pokemon popping up and approaching? Amazing. Can be annoying sometimes when pokemon you don't care about chase you (looking at Tyrouge and Electrike seriously Leave Me Alone), and hunting water types that hop around is frustrating (but makes sense), but it's still a wonderful addition.

- Exp. Share: I know a lot of people are pissed off it can't be turned off, but as someone who cannot get into old games because of not having it/how long it takes to get it, I appreciate it.

Some people think it makes it too easy, but now that you can box pokemon at p much anytime, you can (mostly) avoid the effect by boxing pokemon. I say mostly cause not all situations work with it, but I don't think it is common enough to say it is bad.

- Improvements of life: To add to my point above, I enjoy things that makes the games easier. I'm not a hardcore gamer. I want to have fun and actually be able to reasonably beat a game. Difficult games aren't bad, but these are for all ages. And it is easier to make things difficult than it is to make them easier if they were made difficult, yknow?

Things like showing the effectiveness of moves is one of those things- which I am glad they kept from SuMo- because I have memory problems. Lots of fans do, or are young, or just can't remember Every Single Type Matchup. I prefer having that than having to google type advantages constantly so I don't get a 1 hit ko on either my pokemon or a pokemon I want to catch.

It isn't quite as hand holdy as SuMo was (love ya rotomdex, but pls give me a break), but it is accessible to a range of players. That is how it feels to me, anyways.

- Side quests: Having little quests that give incentive to explore the region and just give a little spice of life to the region. And they aren't super confusing to do.

- General aesthetic: I love how the region looks. It hits so many aesthetic points for me. It is a pretty game with pretty locations, and the graphics are far better than anything I would have expected for pokemon.

Seriously, I've seen people comparing it to BotW and.... That is not the style Pokemon i or ever has been going for. It's an unfair comparison. Also BotW graphics are :/ in my opinion. Beautiful locations, but I don't like how people look. Pokemon? It looks nice, all fit together well. Feels like POKEMON. Not like other games that people compare it to.

There are some graphics that need fixing, like the berry trees and the whole mess they are when you shake them. But it isn't nearly as bad as people pre release were saying. And the battle locations are fine too. Seriously pre release thoughts were a mess.

- Performance: It runs well. I haven't had issues. Frame rate is fine, very rare drops, graphics work fine. I've only had a crash once, and that's because I was chaining max raids and the vibration was too intense for my machine. I took a break, turned vibration off, and everything was fine.

Note: I know that there have been some issues with glitches and stuff, and those are an issue. I haven't experienced any myself so I can't complain. And I'm not any sort of expert.

- Regional variants: I love regional variants in general. It is just So Good. And there are more than just gen 1 variants in these games! Thank god! Obviously many are still gen 1 but they aren't Exclusively gen 1.

I'll talk about that pandering later.

- Gyms: I love how the gyms works. I love the entry trials. I love the feel of the gyms and the competition, and the cheering and the music!!! It is just a great time!

- Character customization: Not quite as extensive as I was anticipating, but still super expansive and I love it.

Things I am neutral on

- Post game: It isn't that bad, but it isn't super interesting either. And I hate the sword based dude. His hair looks like a dick. Yes this is a genuine complaint. Both his and his brother's designs are... silly, and kinda uncreative, and I don't like it.

But they do pose a challenge, and it gives an interesting look at lore and the concept of people believing their assumed ancestry gives them certain rights and just how far these people will go.

- Pokemon: I think we have a good amount of new pokemon, but overall I am... eh on the designs of some. In my experience, regions have either a good amount of good looking pokemon, or a good amount of bad looking/boring pokemon. Obviously this is purely subjective, but this region has me drawn down the middle. I have pokemon I adore and are new favorites, but also quite a few where I just.... Don't like them at all. I've never been this split on them, so while I appreciate their variety like I noted above, I don't necessarily like all of them (especially the fossils. Their story makes sense, yes, but I can't fucking stand them.)

- Dynamax/Gigantamax: I get it's ties into the story, and I love that tie. And it is the gimmick of this region, which I absolutely am ok with. But in use... yeah, having a large pokemon is fun! But I don't really... Care about it? And I only use it in gym battles where I know the leader is gonna Gigantamax (even though generally I didn't need to), or max raids.

I like it more than Z moves, but it does make me miss Mega Evolution. At least it gives people something fun to design. And some of the gifantamax designs are great (and some are.... Basically dynamax. Pikachu and Eevee especially.) The raid make for good leveling though so I do like that.

- Story: I like pokemon for the stories. I actually don't like the style of the games gameplay wise. Pokemon I can handle and enjoy because it is simple compared to other games in the genre, at least enough so where I can be pretty clueless but still have fun and drive to play/grind somewhat. Bur ultimately for me, I enjoy pokemon for the story and characters.

Story... is lacking in this game. I love what we get! It is super interesting! But it is so much on the back burner compared to other games in order to focus on the gyms that it feels... I dunno. I miss a larger, more involved story. The focus on specific characters like Hop do still give me something to focus on, at least.

But the story could have been improved overall had it not been shoved to the side so much. A different, less involved story could have worked better, or something that involved the league and gym leaders more since the gyms were the focus.

Or find a way to involve the player more! It really comes down to the goal of the game, which was the improvements for competitive play. As a non competitive player, this isn't anything I care about or want. But some do, and with that being the focus, I understand the story being a bit lackluster compared to previous games.

Doesn't mean I have to like it, though :P

- Dexit: I don't... care about dexit. Having to play only with the pokemon from the gen isn't bad, and you can still use some. Yeah, a lot of pokemon I like are missing, but that gave me incentive to use pokemon from this gen. I think people making a huge fit over it also made me just Not Care. I'll miss my old pokemon, but maybe I cam actually complete the dex for this gen.

Things I dislike

- The trading system/y link: The fact you have to have nintendo online for this is awful. It is alienating to all those players who can't afford the subscription. All you should need is an internet connection just like the other games. It's a cash grab and I hate it.

The trading system is also irritating to use in general. I know the gts was not the best, but being able to search was nice. And one on one trading was so much easier. Using these codes is problematic because people you don't know can use the same code and you might not know! It fucks up trades! It sucks. It just sucks.

- Gen 1 pandering: Leon's key pokemon is a Charizard. Charizard got a gigantamax pokemon. Most gigantamax not from Galar are gen 1. Most regional variants are gen 1. I Do Not Fucking Care About Gen 1. Meowth has both an alolan AND galarian form AND gigantamax! It's annoying! Give the other regions some light. Please. I am so, so fucking tired of pandering to gen 1. The pandering makes me hate the gen, not want to go back to it.

- Version exclusive gym leaders: This one doesn't irritate me like the other things, I just think it is dumb. Especially since they didn't change the towns to make sense for the exclusive leaders.

- Cost: I am not made of money and I really do believe it should have been the normal $40. But it is a main series game with a lot and switch games seem to generally run at that $60 mark - main ones anyways - so I'm not surprised. Just disappointed.

#anna.txt #pokemon #long post

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bookwormcheerleader · 7 years ago

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i was tagged by @trevorfindsthestrals (LOOK i finally got internet access on my laptop again!! Sorry it took so long) 1. Coffee or tea? tea, i had my first cup of coffee on like thursday last week 2. Black and white or color? black or soft, but not pastel, colours 3. Drawings or paintings? idk, whatever is more moving in that moment i guess 4. Dresses or skirts? dresses because i never know how to match with a skirt 5. Books or movies? how DARE you make me choose, i think books, but i wanna make movies (potentially havent really explored that yet) so it seems like the wrong answer 6. Pepsi or Coke? i dont drink fizzy drinks 7. Chinese or Italian? definitely italian on an everyday basis but i LOVE chinese too 8. Early bird or night owl? its almost midnight and i havent started my reading for tomorrow, that counts as an answer right? 9. Chocolate or vanilla? chocolate, unless its a milkshake 10. Introvert or extrovert? introvert, i don’t really like people 11. Hugs or kisses? ive never been kissed so hugs 12. Hunting or fishing? aesthetics of hunting but uh with fishing you can not put a hook on the line and just kinda sit there and chill without looking like the animal lover that your family judges you for being 13. Winter or summer? yes. idk im probably more of a summer person, but i also really like the implications of winter in that everything has to die in order to be reborn, plus i can’t really breathe in the heat, but i also have poor circulation in my extremities so the cold sucks ass 14. Spring or fall? spring, i like the crisp air of fall dont get me wrong, but the rebirth and the petrichor after a spring rain with a crisp breeze that doesnt chill you is just so relaxing 15. Rural or urban? i grew up in the woods so rural but i need to at least be kinda close to a hospital to avoid panicking 16. PC or Mac? pc 17. Tan or pale? is this preference, cuz i dont have one of those, but i am so white that i was the same color as my cheer uniform in high school 18. Cake or pie? cake, i dont like pie crust 19. Ice cream or yogurt? frozen yogurt tbh, it jsut tastes fresher and less heavy 20. Ketchup or mustard? my brother likes to mock me for how much i loved ketchup when i was like 7 as if it was yesterday 21. Sweet pickles or dill pickles? i dont like pickles 22. Comedy or mystery? can we do a hybrid where its like theyre fighting crime but have no ability to act serious, cuz im basically writing a comic book like that with @spectralflutterbeast 23. Boots or sandals? i live in a colder wetter climate so usually boots, but i love sandals 24. Silver or gold? i like white gold typically because its often a mix, it has the matching ability of silver with the warmth in color of gold 25. Pop or Rock? i grew up on steve miller and journey from my mom and simon & garfunkel from my dad 26. Dancing or singing? all i can think of is my shitty karoke the other night, so uh dancing, at least i don’t suck more at that when im drunk 27. Checkers or chess? checkers is easier and i could probably actually win, but chess is more likely to hold my attention 28. Board games or video games? we used to do family board game nights (im currently holding the winnign streak for clue because any games played without everyone dont count) (my extended family is also obsessed with card games, its how we bond, we talk shit and play cards) 29. Wine or beer? wine if i have to have one of these, i dont like fizzy stuff ever so no beer but wine dries out my mouth 30. Freckles or dimples? i have freckles, and i love it when people have dimples 31. Honey mustard or BBQ sauce? i guess bbq 32. Body weight exercises or lifting weights? idk what body weight exercises includes but i have always liked lifting weights, its something im fairly good at 33. Baseball or basketball? BASEBALL IS THE BEST I LOVE IT, i miss playing it so much but its been too long for me to feel comfortable joining an intramural team 34. Crossword puzzles or sudokus? sudoku...i think 35. Facial hair or clean shaven? preference right, um stubble.... im not big on full beards (probs cuz my dad has always had one, seriously pics from when he was 20 we are the exact same but he has a beard, he says he hasnt shaved his upper lip since he was 16) clean shaven is nice too tho 36. Crushed ice or cubed ice? i prefer no ice, but if i have to i like that ice you get in hospital cafeterias 37. Skiing or snowboarding? never been 38. Smile or game face? smirking, its the happy medium 39. Bracelet or necklace? i feel naked without any piece of my jewelry (watch on right wrist, a bracelet on my left, a necklace for me to fidget with, both sets of earrings) 40. Fruit or vegetables? fruit 41. Sausage or bacon? bacon 42. Scrambled or fried? scrambled unless its on toast 43. Dark chocolate or white chocolate? dark chocolate 44. Tattoos or piercings? i have two sets of piercings and i just got my first tattoo last month 45. Antique or brand new? antique unless its something i would feel like i couldnt be comfortable using, i always wind up with a very eclectic mix 46. Dress up or dress down? dress down, never really have a reason to dress up 47. Cowboys or aliens? cowboys, space gives me anxiiety 48. Cats or dogs? dogs 49. Pancakes or waffles? depends on who is making the pancakes 50. Bond or Bourne? uhhhh what 51. Sci-Fi or fantasy? fantasy 52. Numbers or letters? letters 53. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? lotr tbh 54. Fair or theme park? fair, i grew up in puyallup (look it up, i can even sing the old theme song) 55. Money or fame? money, i want to buy my parents and aunt nice things 56. Washing dishes or doing laundry? laundry (no icky wet food pieces!) {this is what @trevorfindsthestrals had i just could not have said it any better myself} 57. Snakes or sharks? ummm snakes? cuz theyre smaller and i can run from them if theyre dangerous 58. Orange juice or apple juice? orange 59. Sunrise or sunset? sunsets seem more satisfactory to me 60. Slacker or over-achiever?.....i dont’ know how to answer this question 61. Pen or pencil? pencil, unless im worried about it smudging, then i bought some erasable pens for that 62. Peanut butter or jelly? peanut butter is more filling but i make jam every year so theres that 63. Grammys or Oscars? oscars 64. Detailed or abstract? why cant we do both, like a painting that is overall abstract but the closer you get the more you see the things that make it what it is, ya know, like life 65. Multiple choice questions or essay questions? idk multiple choice questions are harder to get wrong for not having enough info about a particular topic, but im good at and enjoy bsing things 66. Adventurous or cautious? i wish i was more adventurous but insecurities 67. Saver or spender? yes 68. Glasses or contacts? i dont wear either 69. Laptop or desktop? laptop 70. Classic or modern? what medium 71. Personal chef or personal fitness trainer? i would like a personal trainer until i get back in the habit of it and then i would jsut need a gym buddy 72. Internet or cell phone? cell since you cna get internet on your phone 73. Call or text? social anxiety so texting 74. Curly hair or straight? mine is beach wavy 75. Shower in the morning or shower in the evening? ive been showering in the morning because i like what it does to my hair 76. Spicy or mild? spicy please 77. Marvel or DC? wonder woman was my first favorite character, like about the time that bugs life came out because i obviously had two and the other was Flick 78. Paying a mortgage or paying rent? rent, i like assurance but i dont like permanence 79. Sky dive or bungee jump? never been but uh im not that trusting so i probably am jsut gonna go with a no 80. Oreos or Chips Ahoy? chewy chips ahoy 81. Jello or pudding? jello 82. Truth or dare? im a chicken so truth 83. Roller coaster or Ferris wheel? roller coaster, ferris wheels are all of the fear with none of the fun 84. Leather or denim? I NEED BOTH I CANT CHOOSE 85. Stripes or solids? stripes and fat people lol no, solids for me 86. Bagels or muffins? bagels probably 87. Whole wheat or white? whole wheat 88. Beads or pearls? pearls, my mother was a jeweler for 13 years, i cant not 89. Hardwood or carpet? hard wood in a hall, tile or linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom and then carpet everywhere else 90. Bright colors or neutral tones? uhhhh for what, cuz it really depends 91. Be older than you are or younger than you are? i want to be like 34, not rn obviously, im enjoying being 20 and stupid, but i feel like 34 is a good age, of course thats abotu how old my bros were when i idolized them so that might be reflective of that 92. Raisins or nuts? raisins, partially because every time my dad sees nuts he says nuts for the nutty and it has become a conditioned response for me now 93. Picnic or nice restaurant? picnic 94. Black leather or brown leather? brown 95. Long hair or short hair? mines somewhere in the middle 96. “Ready, aim, fire” or “Ready, fire, aim”? wtf does the second even mean 97. Fiction or non-fiction? fiction 98. Smoking or non-smoking? i have asthma 99. Think before you talk or talk before you think? i wish i could think before i talk more than i actually do 100. Asking questions or answering questions? i like to listen to people imma tag: @kiavachiisanoob @warriorsatthedisco @colecast1 and anyone lookinng for an excuse to do one of these

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