#one the one hand I have made some banger gifsets

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may have just added 89 of my own gifsets to my queue whoops

[sollucets]

beloveds @khaotunq, @pranink & @alexshenry tagged me to do:

every month of 2023! list your favorite/most popular gifset for each month.

i started making gifs in march this year, so january/february are off the table for this. it's funny that it hasn't even been a full year yet. it seems both somehow a lot longer and also like i remain some kind of photoshop baby at the same time. the images in this post will remain undescribed until i have some energy in my failing body, unfortunately

in any case:

march: midnight museum invades all 2 of my braincells. i download photoshop. the end is nigh

most popular: msp/eclipse pool parallel set

favorite: the bams i made for sof

(notes: it's hard to look back at these lmao. what is coloring and why don't i know her. why is everything so dark. who told me to use noise dithering and why did i ever think that was a good idea. anyway)

april: the eighth sense is airing! i meet many mutuals and friends. i figure out about the curves tool (thank god)

most popular: taehyung getting dunked on

(very deserved dunk; very bad set. the coloring of this scene was extremely questionable and i did nothing to fix it it looks so dull and gray. augh)

favorite: feet lining up / jihyun & jaewon on the beach

i really like this coloring actually. it's bright enough to actually see them, their skin doesn't look as weird, and i like the soft pink i made the beach. a win for baby photoshop user rowan

may: the purple is in full swing now

most popular: purple yok

first set to cross 1k! the purple is still very good but in hindsight there are things i now know i couldve done to help his skin. in any case. a banger. beloved

favorite: pink our skyy 2 hands set

[through tears] you're my space. also my first try at typography

june: i lose the will to gif some in the back half of this month, but i also learn to do a Lot of new things, like gradient maps & more complicated typography and transitions and such

most popular: puzzle piece hugs!

deserved! hard to gif and fun to look at

favorite: i think it might be the heartliming i made for vi now! but i still like khathadome from eden too.

july: i try giffing a few different shows. the only friends trailer comes out on the last day and i enter some kind of terrifying fugue state

most popular: sand and ray fighting / crying in the ofts trailer

do you guys remember the trailer 1080p? life was so good

favorite: nobody appreciates my ride enough

august: only friends airs, eclipse anniversary is concurrent, i lose my mind. i also learn to use the method of brightening that i still use & several other fundamental gif tricks

most popular: sandray car makeout

good for them! i start using significant grain on my ofts gifs from here on out and can never decide how i feel about that

favorite: orange/blue eclipse episode seven set

september: the madness continues

most popular: sand cooking for ray / special

ive giffed this scene three times and this is my least favorite coloring but what can you do. this is my third post to cross 1k

favorite: new rules set! i had mixed feelings when i posted it but it's really grown on me.

october: the madness is so much worse. only friends ends and i am left near-catatonic immediately, apparently. also, i learn to blend and use overlays and some other cool things. i join userdramas :'>

most popular: raysand afterglow. as it should be. cheek kissie

favorite: space girl!! show me the stars!!!

loved making this. purple and sparkly and gay. still super proud. that said other runner-up favorites in october are ray's o-face & the boyfriend shirt & akkaye's thumb thing collection

november: i am left cavernously empty after ofts ends and i fill the void with namtan

most popular: last twilight episode one porjai

she <3

favorite: gaipa userdramas set

again, i learned to use musescore for this set just so i could have those pretty notes. :')

december: i am punched in the face by seasonal depression. all is not well. i made just one gifset this month, but at least it was good? :')

and here we are today !! it was very fun to look over everything; thanks so much for playing and have a happy new year everyone

[remythologise]

On one hand, I do feel bad for Sera Gamble because a lot of the awfulness and incoherence in season 6 was out of her control, on the other hand though I can't feel all that bad because in addition to being a bronly (which is actually the least worse thing about her), she's also written some of the more racist (everything about Gordon Walker and killing off Henriksen for no reason) and homophobic (Godstiel, bury your gays) episodes/arcs (also I guess the side effect of her being a bronly was probably what led to racist garbage like Rufus being killed for no reason and Raphael being so underdeveloped)

I do think we sometimes veer too far into “it must have been hard for a female showrunner” apologism because MAYBE IT WAS. let us get that out of the way; I’m sure it was hard for her coming off the back of kripke and I’m sure singer took more power immediately (seen in his rehiring of racist-and-bad buckleming). and people say ‘oh but she’s a good writer’. and yes, she did write some banger episodes back in the day! HOWEVER. she also has committed crimes as you have so beautifully explained above. & I mean we can never know the true inside brain of these writers and showrunners and how much was them and how much was external factors. but with regards to the writing... JUST because I was thinking about it wrt the last gifset, even if she was a good writer on some episodes... look at how badly cas was written during her tenure. literally castiel becomes evil, and then is killed off, and then when he’s FORCED to come back to the show because of declining ratings and fan outcry, he’s crazy, and then he’s very heterosexual with meg because GOD FORBID we think he’s gay for dean. as a Cas GirlTM her disrespect of cas was what made me QUIT THE SHOW for YEARS. I was too far burned by s7 to care much about s8, and then you know, I ignored SPN until early 2020. MEANWHILE, EVEN IF you ignore supernatural entirely and say it’s singer’s fault, SHE WENT ON TO THE MAGICIANS TO COMMIT FURTHER HATE CRIMES AGAINST THE GAYS THERE. I don’t know enough about that show to know if there’s issues of racism there as well but I wouldn’t be super surprised. And yeah, as you said she killed characters off for no reason (rufus, bobby, cas) because of her bronly tragedy agenda which is truly what sank an entire season of the show. bad!

[popliar]

K-Con Australia, 20170922-23

The first Australian K-Con was held over the last two nights in Sydney, and @proteinscollide​ and I were there. I'm very behind on everything else as a result! I need to watch Knowing Bros! ANYWAY, short version: IT WAS SUPER FUN. Lots of rambling under the cut as usual.

22 September: SF9, Pentagon, Victon, Girl's Day, Exo

23 September: SF9 (again!), Up10tion, Cosmic Girls/WJSN, Wanna One, Monsta X

Overall this was an extremely well produced show and a really fun show - I had such a good time! Okay, the "convention" part not so much (I'll talk about this a bit at the end of the post) but at both evening shows, the concert ran like a slick machine, stage following stage with no pause, good sound and no technical hitches. Visually the show looked great, with massive screens giving good views of every performer as well as fantastically atmospheric backdrops.

It didn't sell out on either night, and again I'll talk about possible reasons for that more later, but as a vehicle for hallyu and for promoting Korean culture this is potentially such a powerful instrument. One of the most striking K-Con images for me is the footage of K-Con Paris from 2016 - the pan from the section of the crowd for the French dignitaries and delegates, all politely seated and clapping, to the massive auditorium of French youth going absolutely wild for these pop groups from the other side of the world. This show didn't have that element of official endorsement, it was much more a straight-up pop show, but hey you never know, that might come…

Soft power has its limits, for sure, but within those boundaries Korea is working so very hard at being the very best it can be. I admire the gumption, and more importantly to Korea I am happily consuming the product! Give me more product! I'm here for this!

As far as line-up goes, this K-Con wasn't the best. Exo are absolute stars of course and there were other notable groups like Monsta X and Girl's Day; on balance however this was a really rookie-heavy sausage-fest. The prevalence of rookies is probably partly bad timing - the show coincided with the DMC Music Festival (which was eventually cancelled anyway due to labour disputes, argh, we could've had it all!).

But the boy-heavy line-up? Frustrating. Apparently WJSN and Girl's Day are the first girl groups to perform here since 4 Minute some three-four years ago. WHY? Perhaps there's a perception that since Western fans are mostly girls then they'll only turn out for boybands - I know in Korea the audience for girlgroups is skewed towards boys. However, here in the West, pop as a whole is coded so heavily female that I'm sure wouldn't be a problem. I've been to many Western female pop star concerts and trust me, the girls SHOWED UP. Hell, at this very same arena, Little Mix are performing later this year. Besides, this argument falls flat if you look at other K-Con line-ups which, although boy-heavy, still manage more than a measly 2 girl groups. Gosh I'd have been so happy with the addition of any ONE of Red Velvet, Mamamoo, Blackpink, Pristin, Gfriend, Twice, etc…

...that was a long intro. Let's talk the show.

Chanyeol (EXO)

Night 1

The first night of K-Con began with a pre-show of kpop dance cover groups (they were all good but some were REALLY GOOD) and Kevin from U-KISS as MC (did u know he looks like Lee Pace around the eyes?), doing his cheesy best to hype up the crowd and also promote the con's primary sponsor.

Then the show got started with a VCR, featuring Monsta X's Minhyuk in a sort of spaceship-themed narrative? I don't know what I saw but apparently K-Con's first Oceanic showing needed heroes or defenders or something, i.e. kpop groups? Whatever cool. I do know it involved Minhyuk looking at a picture of a kangaroo so we're all good.

Also apparently Sydney is the city of "arts and culture" and also "romance"? I'm flattered on behalf of my home, and I can assure you we have plenty of all three, but really?? Those are not, like, the first words I associate with Sydney. But ok, you do you K-Con!

Exo's Suho and Sehun then came on as the night's special MCs to deliver a brief introduction and be cute together and make the crowd scream. Naturally, there were Exo jerseys and banners and lightsticks all over the place; earlier in the day I got handed a cute banner to celebrate Chen's birthday, which I then promptly used to test proteinscollide's knowledge of Exo band names. (She improved greatly through the evening!)

First group up were rookie boyband SF9 - I've enjoyed their songs and MVs without knowing much about them. This rapidfire 3 song performance made me more of a fan! They just hit all their beats really well, both in terms of performance and in their brief introduction ment, advantaged by one member who was a fluent English speaker. Their line distribution is kind of weird - there's maybe three members who dominate the vocals and the dancing, especially Taeyang who I kept thinking of as "that one guy who looks like Shinee's Jonghyun" - but not enough to detract overall. I have no favourite but maybe my favourite is the rapper with currently red hair who reminds me of SVT Jeonghan and Pentagon's E'Dawn.

Something like K-Con is the perfect platform for a rookie group to get this kind of exposure. My own first exposure to kpop (aka the reason for my eternal downfall) was winning free tickets to a Boyfriend & JJCC show - I knew nothing about them, knew next to nothing about kpop, and JJCC were a hot mess sorry - but seeing the groups in person and live was enough to make me want to know so much more. I feel like this SF9 set functioned in much the same way. It was SO much more impactful than just an MV or a youtube clip or a gifset. This is how fans are made! (That said… I'll get to it, but SF9 got two bites at the cherry. Why?)

Next up were Pentagon and their brief set was great. Their songs are such bangers - I SAID BANGERS, DON'T AT ME - and they were really polished and powerful. Kino's opening dance solo was super charismatic, and E'Dawn (aka the only one I can consistently recognise) was working that jawline of his so well, lol. He does the bad boy thing very well! I admire it! For their ment, they played the "Pinata" game as seen at other K-Cons this year, i.e. a random game was selected. (Would the game be 'Propose'? It was not propose, but one member did get down on one knee to E'Dawn anyway, good job good fanservice.) In this case it was a random dance play, and it was very amusing and silly.

Probably my favourite thing about Pengaton is how far and fast proteinscollide has fallen for them. Can you believe at this time last year she didn't even know all the MX member names? Now the student has exceeded the master! Post your Pentagon post bro!

Sehun and Suho came back to introduce a special stage: Exo's Chanyeol in duet with WJSN's Seola, for his OST track Stay with Me. This was a nice, pretty interlude and a bit of a breather after the fast pacing of the first two sets.

Seola (WJSN)

Third rookie group Victon bopped cutely to a very Australian-themed video backdrop and they were very entertaining, without necessarily making me want to seek them out further. I think that's more to do with their concept being more cute than Pentagon and SF9's, so less appealing to me on those grounds. But they have their charms and most importantly one had a mullet! I'm HERE for the mullets, don't even think I'm joking.

Next up were Girl's Day. They're down to 4 members now but their experience and their casual confidence made them so enjoyable to watch. They played their hits including Something, Expectation and Ring My Bell with such a sense of fun and sexiness, dominating the stage and playing to the crowd with the relaxed ease of vets who have nothing to prove. There was a hunger to the rookies that gave them more edge but sometimes you just wanna watch really talented ppl relaxedly doing their very talented thing.

With everyone acutely aware there was only one act left to take the stage, a couple of SF9s came out to MC a special stage. They did the usual "how are you guys enjoying the show" and "we love Australia" and all that jazz, and then made the fatal mistake of asking an open-ended question:

SF9 MCs: so who is Australia's favourite boy group? Crowd: BTS!!! MCs: Yes, Exo!!! #awkward

I lol'd! I am sorry! Bless you Exo but c'mon!

This was followed by a brief VCR of Australian fans naming their favourite boybands, and then a really fun special stage of boyband covers:  Pentagon covered GOT7's Hard Carry;  SF9 covered Exo's Monster; and Victon did BTS's Fire.

At last it was time for EXO - MUCH CHEERING FROM CROWD!  Exo-Ls were out in force. There were also tons of lightsticks in the crowd and everyone was hyyyyped.

Now some context for my reaction: I can name all the Exo's and I like some of their songs, but I don't quite click with their aesthetic/dynamic in the way that I do with BTS, etc. They were also at something of a disadvantage, with D.O absent from the line-up (I had to count them twice to make sure sob) and Lay MIA from this entire comeback (though I guess that's no longer surprising).

So let that be the background for me saying that I was totally entertained and impressed by their set. Starting with Power and ending with Ko Ko Bop, they came out and gave a great show. They are after all professionally charming and who was I to resist?

For me again it's that idea of a live show being so much more powerful than a video, even for something as preplanned and artificially constructed as pop. A concert is such a powerful reminder that it's more than the performer, and it's more than the audience too - it's about the relationship between the two, that alchemy of atmosphere and act that you only get in that specific environment.

Yes, Kai was deadly with his fucking winks and seductive looks (how dare you sir), but the way the audience reacted to his performance is what made the show go off. Xiumin aka Cat Pirate was also a scene stealer for me, and it was very darling when Chanyeol threw confetti at his head at the end awwww.

(I just wish, like, SM were less SM-y. I got a message from proteinscollide after the show - "Girl walking thru car park: shout out to SM who never give reasons for why members aren't there and if they're ok". Um, yep. I had to check on twitter to find out that D.O was off filming a movie.)

Ending stage was as usual with everyone coming out as tons of confetti rained down. I think a SF9 hugged a Victon? AWWW FRIENDS. A good night.

Night 2

We started again with dance cover groups - colour me EXTREMELY impressed by IME Dance Studio - and Kevin from U-KISS giving away a prize to whoever in the crowd did their best impression of their favourite thing to do in a hotel room. This led to a really hilarious scenario as the cameras zoomed in on 2 girls "dancing" together. "Yes, they're dancing!" Kevin said, "of course they're dancing!" Everyone just cracked the fuck up, Kevin included. They got the prize, bless them, which was - ofc - a free hotel stay!

The show started with the same VCR as the day before and then I was EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED by Monsta X's Jooheon and Shownu taking the stage together to drop an absolutely fire performance. Jooheon's duality is amazing - cuddly scaredy-cat off stage, fucking monster on stage - he was SO GOOD. Shownu's dance break was great as expected and I cried tears in my heart bc I love them.

SF9 returned for the second evening - again, they were slick and impressive, and they namedropped kangaroos and meat pies in their intro ment, good work on ticking off those keywords lol. But I really don't know why they got sets on both days? Did FNC decide they really wanted to build that fanbase and made the necessary commercial arrangement with the promotors? Like I said, stages like this can be real turning points in making a fan. So that's fascinating. If anyone knows, lemme know?

Daehwi (Wanna One)

Three Wanna Ones then took the stage to briefly MC. It was definitely Kang Daniel and uh, two other Wanna Ones! *hastily googles* It was Daehwi, who was the most fluent in English and was super cute & cheesy, and Minhyun, who was also cute but I don't remember much? Sorry team. The only Broduce bro I can 100% identify is Daniel, and sometimes Jaewhan. But! I think I'll remember Daehwi from now on - he was pretty memorable and did the most heavy lifting in the ments. Anyway they delivered some potted intros and then on to the next one.

WJSN then performed a special stage, covering two Kylie Minogue songs as two subunits - Locomotion (which I note came out in 1988, older than every single K-Con performer except for Sojin of Girl's Day) and I Can't Get You Out Of My Head (2001 - there are rookies debuting born in 2001! And younger! God i'm so old). Firstly much love for preparing a special stage with local appeal that didn't feel pandering and really spoke to the long history of amazing women in pop, and secondly THEY WERE SO GOOD. Fun, bright, poppy - I love them.

They were followed by Up10tion who did a high energy set and I remember why I liked them! They're good! I don't quite click with all their songs, especially their more recent ones which I feel are a bit hit and miss, but just like every other group in this K-Con they delivered their set with professionalism and skill and charm.

There was then a brief interlude with MX's Kihyun and I.M, MY TWO LOVES, MCing an audience dance game. We got to see Kihyun doing the Twice TT dance and my world was made. Gosh I love them.

WJSN

WJSN then came back for their set and I just really like them so much. They have that sleekness that I've come to associate with Starship because of them and MX, with both groups always having good choreo and catchy hooks. I like their concept a lot too - they're cute sassy cheerleaders, yes, but I also feel like there's this very cool edge to them, they could easily cut you! I love that! As they acknowledged in their ment, 2 members couldn't make it due to filming schedules (I think it was Cheng Xiao, the dancey/gymnastic one? And Mei Qi, possibly? I'm sorry, I don't remember) but they were still very good and I enjoyed their set a lot. And their main rapper - god, I'm sorry, I don't know if it was Bona or another member - she was SO GOOD? She had so much stage presence. Gosh. I need to find out her name.

Next up were Wanna One. Now, ofc, Produce 101 never officially aired in Australia. We had to watch it on the internet like a bunch of animals. And yet out of all the groups on both days, their fans were definitely the most intense and the most scream-y - yes, more intense than the Exo-Ls and the Monbebes!

I only ever saw snippets of P101 and as I said I can only ID Daniel with certainty, but I was, hmm, not surprised I guess that they turned out to be endearing? CAN U IMAGINE, a group of young men voted for according to their charms turns out to be extremely charming?! The shock!  (From a purely commercial standpoint, what a brilliant exercise this has turned out to be. I think the limited timeframe for Wanna One to make bank lends an edge of urgency to their fandom and means their machine is also geared to maximum efficiency. Make! Bank! Now!) And because they're young and new, there was a certain edge of rawness and spontaneity to them which is naturally part of their appeal too. I still don't quite know what I feel about Kang Daniel - like I know he's very fond of cats and therefore a good person, and he has this easy, cocky stage charisma which makes his appeal seem very straightforward. But I think I found him most endearing when he missed a step at the end of his dance solo and there was just the cutest expression on his face, like "my bad."

For their Pinata game, they did photo time with hyung line posing "cutely" and maknae line posing "sexily" followed by some kind of free for all - A HOT MESS, lol.

Daehwi also went off script - or at least, he said he went off script, but can you ever really know? We need to go deeper! - and wished happy birthday to Kuanlin, getting the whole audience to sing along too, awww. As I said: what a group of charming young men; the self-awareness that they were constructed to charm ultimately means nothing.

FINALLY MONSTA X. They're, like, my second favourite group after BTS so I think I would've been just fine if they'd shown up and waved at us and sang like a song or two. But they didn't! They were really, really good. As headliners they had a signficant chunk of time and I think I was smiling from start to end, non stop.

They've turned into such good performers - with something similar to that same easy confidence that Girl's Day and Exo had - and I felt like they really did the most, on the second night, with connecting to the audience. Their performances were all on point, and everyone of them looked and sounded great but Jooheon especially killed me with swag and Wonho's collar & cleavage can fuck right off, ISTG. It just made me so happy to see them doing these songs and choreo I love so much - Shine Forever and Beautiful and Fighter - and they ended with Hero, my very first MX song, which was amazing. (I am a little sad they skipped All In but ok I can live with it.)

For their ment, they played the proposal game, with three members doing their very best fanservice lol. A very happy woman in the standing area got to be audience surrogate as I.M laid on cheesy lines (something about angels and heaven, IDK, why is he like this and why do I love him so much), Kihyun sang a ballad to her (next to me proteinscollide died a death), and Wonho came down to the barrier to to give her a heart, selfie & cheek kiss. It was so! Cheesy! And Wonderful! #the selfawareness does nothing

Everyone then came out for the goodbye, though MX were the only ones who felt relaxed enough it seems to actually get silly with the confetti and do some more spontaneous bows & waves to the crowd. By comparison to every other group on the 2nd night, they must be the old hands at K-Con by now - they've done SO many. Gosh I hope they come back to Australia for a full show. I love them so much.

Fuck, I'm now at 3300 words so let's wrap this up quick:

Unlike other K-Cons which seem to have a proper programming and convention stream, the "convention" part of this was really a disappointment. Minimal programming, minimal stalls (less than 10 vendors), all in one room. It was free entry which is fine I guess except that people were queuing up forever to get inside due to the limited capacity and it was H O T (over 30 C each day) out there. In the end I queued for an hour, and spent about 15 minutes inside. It was really not worth it. Luckily proteinscollide & I had options and just went away for a few hours to pass the time before the show, but I imagine there were a lot of kids left hanging around Olympic Park all day with nothing to do.

The shows didn't sell out. What does this mean? Possible thoughts:

-It was really expensive and the audience skews young. Like, the premium tickets were REALLY REALLY expensive and good tix were expensive. I could afford decent tix, but if I were in my teens? No way. I'd have had to ask my parents for it.

-Sydney has had a run of shows including an Australian-exclusive BTS show. If you're interstate and you already spent $$$ going to BTS, or for that matter $$$ to go G-Dragon in your own state, how much money do you have left over for concerts in this year? There is a limited capacity for this audience to keep spending. Promoters should be careful not to spread us too thin. Put more shows on in Melbourne! (Though I don't know - are there more Koreans and east Asians in Sydney? I suspect there are. The audience, again, skews heavily to those of us who are Asian-Australian.)

-Exo, MX, and Wanna One are very popular but don't have the same mainstream reach in Australia as BTS. BTS also had the advantage again of being earlier in the year, only the 2nd major kpop tour in the year I believe. Since then there's been other kpop and khip-hop shows for people to spend their money on. I really thought Exo would give BTS a run tho, given how well their latest album performed on Australian iTunes charts.

...that was not a quick wrap-up.

TO CONCLUDE: I HAD A GOOD TIME, THANK U FOR READING.

[tomsevenstrings]

Leaked 7x06

Because HBO can’t seem to get a break lately, and fortunately enough for me, episode 6 got leaked. Apparently it was ‘accidentally’ aired from HBO SPAIN. And though I can’t speak for the legitimacy of that, but if it is true then I know somewhere that some poor fucker is getting soooo done for it. Glad I’m not them.

Anyway, I need to vent my thoughts. It’s no surprise that the episode was absolutely amazing. The best episode of the series so far, I feel, which is funny because not two episodes ago I thought 7x04 would have been my favourite. But this just blew me away. 

The battle wasn’t like the Loot Train or the Battle of the Bastards, no two minute tracking shots and war blazing all around. This was far more personal, it wasn’t about winning, it was about surviving. The closeness of all the shots really made you feel the claustrophobia of a hundred thousand wights swarming you. There were epic moments, no doubt. Each time Beric set his sword aflame my foot nearly went through my screen, especially when he and Thoros did it simultaneously to fight a FUCKING WIGHT BEAR.  Major Revenant flashbacks, yo. 

Also, we learnt that the wights function on some sort of hive mind basis. When Jon DEMOLISHES a white walker (like seriously, Jon’s streak of fucking them up seems endless) a bunch of the wights instantly fall. This obviously suggests that killing the Night King will kill all the rest of them. To be honest, I can’t think of another way they can actually destroy them. Especially now, when we see that the dragons aren’t invincible against them. 

Speaking of, Daenerys my friends. I really can’t abide any more complaints about her character being selfish after this episode. Her most trusted adviser literally begs her to not go beyond the Wall, but she does anyway because it’s right (Gendry manages to get back to Eastwatch and send a raven. Tell you what, he’s got a great cardiovascular system that Gendry has.) She saves all the others, whilst Jon holds the wights off. Some of his best fighting imo. But the look on Dany’s face as she watchers Viserion die, bloody hell. It was unreal. 

Jon tells them to go when sees the Night King getting another javelin ready. Yes, it’s more a javelin than a chuffing spear, the boy thinks he’s in the Olympics or something. But as he’s running back to Drogon, wights swarm Jon and he falls beneath the ice. You can see Daenerys having to pull herself away from looking at him, the struggle between Jon/Viserion/and actually fleeing. 

She gets away, and Jon gets back up. He already knows he’s a dead man. If the wights didn’t kill him, hypothermia would. But through a crowd Benjen comes swingin’. I cannot wait to the see the gifsets. He saves Jon, sacrificing himself.

Now, to go to my main focus, which is pure Jonerys. Daenerys stands on the Wall, overlooking the land beyond and waiting. “It’s time to go,” Jorah tells her, but she asks for another moment. The thought of Viserion has not left her mind, you can see, and she stares at the edge of a forest hoping that Jon will return. Just as she turns, we hear the horn. One blast for ranger’s returning. 

They get him on a boat, and more importantly Daenerys finally sees his scars. It was no figure of speech. When he wakes up, she’s sitting over him. Lets not pretend she wasn’t sat there the whole time. He says he’s sorry, she tells him not to be. He says he’ll bend the knee, she asks if he’s sure, does she deserve it? This is not the Queen, this is Dany, telling him that she’ll never have no children other than her dragons. That she has lost a son. He even calls her Dany, which is nice to see. They hold their hands, and you can see it passing through their eyes that there’s only one way this ends. But Daenerys pulls away and tells him to rest. I think, it’s sorta the last breath you take before you leap. She knows what’s happening between them, but just not yet. Plus, its a good banger (pardon the pun) for the season to go out on, so dnd withhold it. 

That’s it. Can’t tell you what’s happening in Winterfell with Sansa and Arya because even I, who defends the show even as a book reader, cannot stand or fathom what they’re trying to achieve with them two. It’s just so... pointless? it’s very clear that they’re going to end up killing Littlefinger by the end of the season, so it just seems like they’re trying to put in filler scenes that get them there.

But anyway, there we go. If HBO is somehow reading this, please have mercy. And concering spoilers, I’ll go out on this quote by my favourite “Where Whores Go” facebook page. “The leaked episode: Its effect on the Sunday airing of 7.4 was likely negligible. If you were going to illegally stream the show on Sunday night, you probably went ahead and watched the leaked episode early. Pretty much a zero-sum situation. The illegal streamers watched a pirated version just like they’d already planned to do. Did I watch it? No. I had the self-control to wait until Sunday. As for spoilers, some were thrown my way. But they didn't bother me. Why? Because I'm a fucking adult.”

[theweddingofthefoxes]

I loved the co-workers in the elevator story. I would read a whole novel on them, and just about every one of your fictelts. If you're still taking modern au kylux prompts, can i submit this gif set for consideration: fangirlftshipper[.]tumblr[.]com/post/155203493178/whatre-you-doing-little-kiss-between-brothers

What a sweet slice of pumpkin pie you are! I always see your name in my notes and it makes me really happy. Here’s a lil somethin loosely based on that gifset. (Also any mention of opera just makes me think about Rigoletto so that’s what we’re doing here.)

“I don’t think you’ve listened to anything from before the 1800′s since I met you,” Ren says, flipping through Hux’s collection of vinyl. At first it was exciting–he was hoping to mind the usual fare of classic rock favorites, the stuff his dad raised him on. Zeppelin, Who, Beatles, et cetera. Not a chance. It was all classical or opera, and the crackling of the record player made Ren feel like he was listening to a Thomas Edison recording on wax cylinder. 

“Madame Butterfly’s from 1904,” Hux answers. 

“For fuck’s sake.”

They’re listening to Rigoletto in Hux’s room, while Hux finishes some homework. Ren thinks that’s just an excuse, an invitation to come onto him, like when they were in undergrad, but so close to having this master’s degree, Hux really means it. “Soon,” Hux promises, accepting a kiss on the cheek. “The less distraction, the faster I’ll be done. Promise.”

At least there was some pep to this. Ren, bored, wanders around the room, his hands floating around like a conductor leading the orchestra. 

“Are you dancing?”

“Is that not allowed at the opera? This one’s a banger.”

“You really think so?” Part of Hux looks cross, probably because he just referred to a piece of music from Rigoletto as a banger, but it’s also a compliment and Ren does really look like he’s enjoying himself, so Hux softens. “It’s a great story. You kinda remind me of the Duke.”

“Isn’t he the one you said was a whore?”

“You were listening!”

“You always forget I have like, a photographic memory. And also that I listen to you, dummy.” Ren laughs, spills himself in Hux’s lap. He’s too big but Hux doesn’t push him away. 

“I just meant that you have a singular talent for charm.”

“And I’d get the most important song of the opera. The one even I know.”

“It’s in every pasta sauce commercial ever made.”

“You gotta start somewhere.”

“Okay, well, watch more pasta commercials.”

Ren leans over Hux in his chair, kissing him softly right below his ear. “Why don’t you just take me to the opera? Let me get all dressed up. You know you can trust me.”

“That’s the problem.” Hux returns the kiss. “Seeing that, I’d never be able to pay attention to the stage.”

He’s so close to being finished with his homework but it’s really going to have to wait. The record finishes its side but neither of them care, they’re in too deep now, making out against Hux’s desk, not paying attention to the music or much of anything else.