#really tremendously funny stuff to me.

[remythologise]

He knows. He's Brigantes. They fought here.

[moonchild-in-blue]

You know, one thing that helps me with not over-indulging is getting the cheaper/crappier version. Bootleg treat, if you will.

I'm usually pretty good with pacing myself when it comes to snacks, EXCEPT if they are sweet. Literally any given snack - has chocolate? I'll be consuming. Which obviously is not great, cus too much sugar = very very bad. But I also can't *not* have it in the house, cus if that choice is taken from me, I'll most certainly over-indulge at the next opportunity.

What I find works for me, is to get the less tasty (often cheaper) version of stuff. Really craving some Nutella? Get the off-brand one. Chocolate chip cookies? Stay away from your favourites and buy the generic version.

9 out of 10 time they will still be delicious enough to satisfy the craving, but not enough to tempt me into binge snacking. That's the best way I found for me to keep things balanced (since I have the self-control of a famished beast). Forced discipline 💪

[wilwheaton]

In a new interview with the New Yorker ahead of his 70th birthday on Monday, the comedian explained his theory about why there’s no “funny stuff” to watch on TV anymore. “Nothing really affects comedy,” he said, “People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.” Instead of getting sitcoms like M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family, audiences miss out, he said, as a “result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.” [...] A look back at some of his earlier comments on a similar subject adds some context, if not clarity. In 2015, Seinfeld sat down for an episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd podcast, where he explained his aversion to performing stand-up on college campuses. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don't go near colleges. They’re so PC,’” he said on the show. After giving an example of his teenage daughter using the word “sexist,” he concluded that young people “just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist’; 'That’s sexist’; ‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Jerry Seinfeld Draws Right-Wing Praise for Comments on ‘Extreme Left’

This is such a bummer. Tell me you’re a privileged, entitled, myopic Boomer without telling me you’re a privileged, entitled, myopic Boomer.

It’s interesting to me that he says these legendary sit-coms, none of which were cruel, punching down, or hurtful, but were actually satirizing power, celebrating women, changing societal norms through representation, and using comedy to do it all, wouldn’t exist if “the extreme left” had anything to do with it.

Umm. Who does he think created these shows? And is he really that ignorant? Has this guy never read a single interview with Norman Lear? Or literally anyone in the cast of Mary Tyler Moore? I mean. Come on, man!

Teenagers and college students don’t know what they’re talking about when they tell a privileged, entitled, multimillionaire Boomer that his “jokes” can be hurtful, and maybe he could use his tremendous talent to do comedy that is just as funny without being hurtful. Okay. Got it. Keep saying that, and see how far it gets you, buddy.

Hey, Jerry Seinfeld: when blue checks on Twitter are celebrating you being a dick, it’s not because you’re so funny and such a brilliant comic; it’s because they love how you’re validating what garbage they are. You can’t see that, or don’t care, and that’s such a huge bummer.

[sxcretricciardo]

I’m back…

social media au

-> you and Lando have a past that it’s quite complicated… what happens when you go up to Formula 1 to race against him?

•

f1 Y/N Y/L/N is joining Aston Martin for the 2024 season.

view more comments

astonmartinf1 welcome to our team yourusername!

-> yourusername let’s make magic together 🫰🏻

username1 omg she and Lando on the same paddock????

-> username2 what’s the lore??? I’m unaware

-> username3 apparently they were dating back in f3 and he cheated on her and the guys all called her a dramatic b*tch. She crashed the next race, probably from all the bullying and pressure and was out for a whole year.

-> username2 wowww I hope she kicks his ass next season 💅

fernandoalo_oficial welcome teammate! yourusername

-> yourusername thank u nando! I’m fangirling rn <3

alex_albon missed you bestie

-> yourusername missed you albonooo 😚

•

yourusername helloooo Australia!! 🇦🇺 I was so happy to answer your questions today, now let’s get racin 🏁

view more comments

username1 girl you were SOO funny!! Loved it 🫶🏻

-> username2 she’s adorable

-> username3 let’s hope she can race too

danielricciardo you’re stealing my thunder on my own home country 🥹

-> yourusername hang in there cowboy 🤠

-> oscarpiastri OUR home country danielricciardo

•

astonmartin our girl just made p4 in her first f1 race! 😍

view more comments

fernandoalo_oficial p5 just felt more special with you in front of me! what a way to start our season 😜

alex_albon way to go!!

username1 the fact that she gave Lando the finger after passing him HAHA

-> username2 ICONIC

landonorris 🥱

-> username3 Lando is TRIGGERED

-> username4 omg we’re just starting the season and there’s already dramaaaa

•

f1gossip Aston Martin driver Y/N Y/L/N gave Lando Norris the finger after overtaking him. Note that in their F3 season Y/N was out of action for a year after Lando cheated on her and rumor has it the hole paddock was also bullying her. Is she having her revenge?

•

yourusername just posted a story

•

real life

Y/N was sitting in the coffee area inside the Aston Martin headquarters when Fernando slowly approaches her.

“Can I sit?” He asks, pointing to the empty chair that’s in front of the young driver.

She looks up from her coffee and nods with her head, to busy drinking her much needed caffeine to let words out.

“Just saw what you posted in Instagram.” He says, talking about the video where she tries to clean the air after she gave the finger in live race.

“Yeah, just wanted to kinda explain myself after what happened.” She says.

“What exactly happened between you two?” He asks.

Y/N looks at him. She knows she can trust him, despite really knowing him for just a couple of months. He’s like the father she never had. Always having her back and giving her the best advices.

“We were teenagers. Stupid kids. I was in love, he apparently wasn’t. One day we were just chilling together when his phone starts getting texts. He brushes it off, saying it’s just a friend and when he falls asleep I go through his phone. They weren’t just friends. There were thousands of texts for months between the two. He lied to me… I just wanted him to be honest and he straight lied to me! We had a race the next weekend and I was able to brush the situation off, because when I enter the track I forget about the outside world. But when I enter the paddock, the guys just start shoving me and stuff like that. Me being the only girl was not easy in any way but I managed it the best I could. Then, I don’t know… I just loose the control of the car and the next thing I know I’m into a wall. I don’t even know how it happened, I can’t even remember. I just remember having this tremendous amount of pain in my leg. After two surgeries and a lot of recovery and rehab I was back in that car.”

Fernando just looks at the young woman, whose eyes have unshed tears.

“If you ask me if I hold a grudge towards him, yes, I really do. He never apologized, never spoke to me again. But that’s what keeps me going. This fire I feel inside of me is what brought me here to formula 1.”

•

part 2 here

[n3kk1tty]

The Lost Boys Fandom Sound Off

There are a lot of amazing and talented people in this community on tumblr and I'm happy to point people to and learn about more people who exist in this wonderful place along with me. To make it easier for others to consume copious amounts of fan content I hope to make and add to this list to make it easier to track people.

If I miss anyone or you want to be added please leave a message on the post.

Writer's:

@tac-the-unseen : Absolutely phenomenal imagines. If you're looking for short and sweet imagines they are the place I usually go to.

@ria-coolgirl : Really friendly always supportive. Posts written questions or ideas.

@bubblegumbarbie33 : Funny quote posts that make me sit there day dreaming of new stuff.

@sad-ghost-of-garbage : Makes that good sweet sweet angst.

@lostbetweenvampiresandmusic : Lots of poly content.

@misslavenderlady : There fanfics are so well crafted and who can't appreciate amazing page set up.

@themarginalthinker : The best drabbles

@britany1997 : Makes awesome poly content and it's so easy to get lost in there fics.

@sunkendreams :

@charlizekkelly :

@luv4fandoms :

@darlingverse :

@berd-alert : amazing oneshots. 10/10 would reread repeatedly

@theyreonlynoodlesmike : Such amazing amount of lost boy variety content and a huge selection of top quality content.

@n30nwrites : Has x male reader content and good spicy writing posts.

@i-heart-slashers : Story scene set up is top notch

@redamancy-writes : Delicious angst and variety

@writinginatree : Platonic Fic and Romantic

@chubbyreaderchan : Fixed focused on chubby reader

@ebony-blood : Detailed yet more bitesized requests for the casual fast paced reader.

( recommended list by: @dustofbrokenheart , I took the direct dialogue and recommendations from their reply post to the list )

@thoushallnotfall especially for the "Blood and Water" and "Prey" series but all of Rachel's stuff is great!

@brideofcthulhu10 who was one of the first writers I found for tlb here on tumblr.

@datsrightbby shak has a bunch of fics and headcanon/preference posts.

@garlicdontwork has a few series that include thompson!reader and frog!reader.

@peacepey did a lot of good request work back in the day.

@monsterfuneral wrote some memorable poly imagines. (I believe violet's main account is now @grudgecollector.)

@tinywritinghana has a few series, as well as lots of one shots. A favorite of mine is the "Student's Guide to Raising the Dead" series!

@kurt-nightcrawler cara has fics for both the lost boys and a lost girls project she started at one point.

@dustofbrokenheart : who is another talented writer in the fandom who helped me tremendously with adding valuable members in the community to the sound off page. I couldn't have done it without them.

(end of recommendation list this portion)

@chevvsgotanumbrellatattoo : Have 2 wonderful fics of and trying their hand at lost boys drabbles. Undoubtedly they will be making even more amazing writing content in the future.

@marnievanhelsing: AO3 writer. Has some pretty funny chaotic Tlb head cannons posts that include the frog brothers. Up and coming in the fandom

Artists:

@n3kk1tty : I qualify for artist/ writer but my art has more variety as I focus most of my writing on my lost boy Au / requests.

@popironrye : There art is so colorful and eye popping I always love seeing it on my feed.

@walmart-icarus : Also a writer. Such a cute style of art.

@hypocriticaltypwriter : Truly amazing person in community with such a bouncy art style. Their fan kids are amazing and give everyone baby fever. Also writes and roleplays.

@midnight-in-santa-carla : Wonderful realistic artstyle with vibrant colors.

@gryphonsthing : sweet cute artstyle that's always refreshing to see on my feed.

@starlahuskyz : OMG ID EAT THERE ART IF I COULD

@persephone-s-moon : Amazing muscle shading / lighting.

@fleouriarts : Incredible moody / stylistic art that uses color in a eye catching manner my ADHD brain can't describe.

( recommended list by: @dustofbrokenheart , I took the direct dialogue and recommendations from their reply post to the list )

@witch-lass her drawing style is super cute and recognizable!

@garnetgh0st candy made my favorite moodboards back in the day. There's a seasons, mamma mia, and disney prince series among others. (I count moodboards in art category!)

@thornthehellhound he makes both funny and really pretty art pieces. Very talented!

(end of recommendation list this portion)

Roleplayers:

( I personally don't roleplay at all in the fandom but I know there's people who do and love to do so. I mostly compiled this list using @hypocriticaltypwriter 's recommendation list they have on their blog and thought putting it on the main fandom track sheet to help push the rp blogs center stage. I'm sorry I can't give much of a review. )

@blog4horror : gives great requests

@marko-boy

@paulie-lostboy

I've reached tumblers max tag list. Which who even knew was a thing. I'll continue on my quest in the post reblogged from this one.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hi! last anon here again. i won't go over all your advice here, and there's some i disagree with, but i have found it helpful and insightful as a whole, so thank you. i don't know if you actually wanted clarification on these things, but i figured it would be worth providing in case you genuinely wanted it.

straps as female disidentification - i do see it as different from other sex aids; it's partially about not imposing man/woman sex dynamics on sex between women, and also that as part of recovering from trans identity i've been encouraged to disengage with any practices, thoughts, or self-beliefs that represent false consciousness/male identification, and that includes a desire to have a penis/penetrate women/take the male role, and replace that with meditation and mindfulness. unfortunately i suck at meditation so i haven't gotten anywhere. i see it more as a behavioural problem than an object problem; it's unhealthy because it's a maladaptive coping mechanism about reality; i don't have a penis and can never have one and pretending i do during intimacy is hurting a theoretical sex partner.

female infantilization - this is about the bush thing; attraction to shaved vulvas is dysfunctional and unnatural.

being put off women's bodies - again this is a dysphoria thing mostly. i like how pretty much all women's bodies look, particularly femmes, and before radfem stuff i mostly just felt horny seeing nude women, but being in an environment that's very focused on the importance of reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics to female identity has involuntarily caused me to fixate on this; when i see a woman naked i end up thinking about her uterus and the size of her breasts and her hips in relation to passing; i know that things like testosterone/hysterectomies/double masectomies/binding are really unhealthy for you physically and psychologically now, so seeing a woman's body makes me uncomfortable now because i just feel a kind of despair that if she has big breasts or big hips she'll never be able to pass for male without hurting herself and if she has small breasts or hips she got lucky with natural androgyny and she's wasting it, either way neither her or me have any way out of this and we're female forever. which is not very arousing.

once again, thank you for your advice. it's definitely given me a lot to think about (and read). i appreciate you hearing me out.

I'm actually stoked for a response, because these clarifications are very illuminating and genuinely so saddening to read.

that entire paragraph about disavowing the strap is genuinely tragic to me, as an advocate that people should just fuck however they want to fuck. you'd think if womanhood was such an innate and unchangeable thing then a fake dong wouldn't have the power to somehow impose manhood in a relationship between women, but I guess the strap is more powerful than I realized. I would love to know if this applies to fingering, given that you can't really argue that fingers are specific to any gender, or women who use straps to peg their male partners.

being told to meditate instead of want to fuck women is so funny, it's really giving 15th century nunnery.

you may not have been born with a penis but it is just literally a factual reality that you could have on if you wanted; regardless of what radfems think of it, phalloplasty is a very real surgery that can in fact produce a sexually functional penis that many people are extremely satisfied with.

okay sure super normal to fixate on someone's uterus.

I do actually very seriously need to correct this part: testosterone/hysterectomies/double mastectomies/binding are not unhealthy. they're healthcare, and the people who benefit from them - which, reminder, is not only trans people - tend to experience tremendous boosts to their physical and mental health because of it. there's nothing radical at all about opposing people's rights to determine what they do with their own bodies, and between that and the hyperfixation on reproductive organs you sound /this/ close to explaining why women shouldn't be allowed to get abortions.

in the politest way possible if looking at women makes you sad because it reminds you of your own dysphoria, you need to get out of radfem spaces and start hanging with some trans people who can help you figure some stuff out and help you envision a future where you don't fear your own body and sexuality.

[ryuichirou]

Replies

I’ll start with some news.

I am currently locked out of my twitter account. We did everything we could to try to get it back, but no matter what happens, it will most likely take some time.

I don’t like bringing attention to this kind of stuff because we have tons of other things to talk about which are more important than some toddlers trying to obliterate us for 1000th time (frankly I would rather talk about the colour of Leona’s butthole), but this time it’s kind of serious and important. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but for now I wanted to say that if we won’t get the account back in time or will lose it indefinitely, we will have to ask for your help. I am sorry for that in advance.

Also, if you were discussing/working on commissions with me via DMs there, please email me or contact me via any other platform as soon as possible. Just in case.

Mass-reporting is wild, eh?

I am rambling a bit, and I didn’t really want to complain, because I know for a fact it would give satisfaction to some people, but you know? I am going to complain: it sucks ass. It happened at the worst time possible and it happened over nothing (literally, the art that got it was a Todd/Wallace non-sexual piece that got too many likes for children’s liking). I don’t care if people don’t like us, I don’t care if they gossip with their girlies about us, all I want is for them to leave us the fuck alone and let us do our thing in peace. Imagine being so unbelievably boring and so incredibly unlikeable and unable to make meaningful connections not only with other people but also with any kind of media that you just have to go out of your way to ruin things for others because this is the only thing that makes your immature brain produce something that even remotely resembles joy. Because your own pathetic self is so deeply insecure and constantly frustrated at yourself that you just have to create an illusion of control over someone else to feel important. I can’t even call it a troll behavior – at least trolls are funny sometimes. This is just someone who hit a midlife crisis at the age of 16 and made it my problem for some reason.  

And yet, it’s okay. Even if we end up losing our account, it’ll be a huge disappointment and it will hurt us tremendously, it already did. And it’s scary to think about this scenario, and it’s difficult to talk about how, if it happens, that it’s going to be okay. But eventually we’ll get over it and build ourselves up again, just like we did before several times. And these clowns will still be boring, unlikeable, lonely and very likely shit at drawing.

So yeah. Take care of yourself and block everyone who seems suspicious on sight. It’s not a panacea, but certainly is helpful.

Alright, time to talk about Leona’s butthole (not really, but we will talk about SebeMal, and it’s even better) 💪

Anonymous asked:

Seeing Vanitas made me curious about something: did you ever read Pandora Hearts? I think for a lot of people that series went hand in hand with Black Butler as the main "victorian aesthetic mangas" from the late '00/early '10. Gothic lolitas really had it all back then..

Ohh you’re so right Anon, it was the ultimate late ‘00/early ’10 aesthetic! Boys in vests with bows/ties, crosses and rosaries and traumatic and problematic backstories lol I really miss it sometimes. What an era.

I personally haven’t read/watched Pandora Hearts, but Katsu did! But it was even before we met… So my only association with this title is that Katsu’s old username was “ozbezariusnya” 🥰 Oh, and that Gilbert (?) looks very cute, but let’s be honest, of course I would think he is cute.

nebula-ryuu asked:

Regarding my question, I mean if the Malleus and Sebek ship has a dynamic or a context 😅😅 a background or a story. I have a certain feeling about what it is like but I don't want to affirm anything hehe

I don't know if I made what I said better understood, in any case I can explain it again, no problem 🙏

Oh! Thank you for clarifying!

As for our background for shipping them, we just really really love loyal characters that are a bit unhinged about their loyalty and love/obsession. So we didn’t even have a choice, they stole our hearts… and Malleus is very interesting in his interactions with Sebek too; he is annoyed by him sometimes, but he tolerates a lot and teases him.

As for the ship itself, we tend to think that in addition to Sebek being loyal and obsessive with Malleus, he is also deeply in love with him ever since he was a child. He is conflicted because he really wants to be his lover, but also thinks that he isn’t worthy. Malleus is amused by Sebek and allows him to do much more than he probably should. Actually, I think I talked about their dynamic in this post!

I hope I understood you correctly. Thank you for your question! And if you have any more questions, please let me know.

Anonymous asked:

would Lilia and Azul ever fight over who gets to have Idia?

Replied here! Thank you for your question, Anon.

[staghunters]

The case for an ND reading of Jackie Taylor, a decently-sized post.

I got a lot of scrambled thoughts on this, and they need a space for coherence. Maybe this is more for my own headcanon-ing, but feel free to take this if you want to. A lot of this comes down to a certain reading of text that I do with a certain kind of lens that may not be there for everyone. And that's fine! This is just silly analysis stuff that I wanted to do.

Am I an "authority figure" on this? Probably not by some standards! I consider myself to be on some spectrum, but only my brother has a diagnosis (tm), so do with that what you will.

This a mix of new thoughts and some copy-pasted from messages i sent on discord once.

SO, where to start. The first proper introduction of Jackie with other people is that gruelling opening sequence, but I think the more interesting is her first scene with Shauna where we get the big chunk of what the history is between these two and on what dynamic they interact with each other.

Jackie's got the whole thing color-coded and planned out. She likes that, but from all the other things later in the episode -- and the season -- it becomes very clear that she likes to have some input that ranges from voicing her opinion to micro-managing in order to feel in control and somewhat safe in her position as (social) captain of the Yellowjackets.

That Shauna is going to Rutgers with Jackie is taken as a given by her. One interpretation is that Jackie thinks that Shauna, obviously, will go with her to Rutgers on the basis of their friendship. However, I would like to propose a lil switch in that maybe Jackie hopes that Shauna will go with her to Rutgers. Getting into Brown isn't nothing, and there's gotta be some pointers at High School that Shauna would be/feel overqualified for Rutgers.

High school is a game of social credits. Jackie knows what to wear, what to say, what to do. Coach points out her "influence", and she demonstrates some skills at conflict-resolution during the kegger. Soccer is a game, one that she's very passionate about, as is her supposedly on-and-off-ish thing with Jeff. The funny thing is that Jackie seems way more interested in calling out how her boyfriend's team has been doing at baseball, rather than stuff that concerns him (or the both of them) personally.

To segway back a bit: Everything is a game with rules. Jackie knows them, but is shown to be really out of her element in the wilderness and trying to bring back normal societal rules into it (this will be a surprise tool that will help us later). Is Shauna going with her to Rutgers a naive wish on the basis of their friendship, or is it also so Jackie can have someone to scout and feel out all the social conventions for her? College means that a new playbook needs to be made, and it saves embarassment if you can base it on someone else.

Jackie assuming that Shauna would go along to Rutgers to be her roommate can very well be an expression of "this is my best friend and my sole, kind, understanding constant in my life, and I need her there with me in this unknown territory." College means starting over from scratch, and if we assume the manual-based functioning to be true, then Shauna's presence there to take cues from could help a lot to smooth out this transition.

On the other hand, this is of course the opportunity to drop some masking that Jackie might've been doing. Shauna being there could then very well work against her

My greatest argument, I think, is that you can see the entirety of Jackie's lil subplot of going after Travis as an example of how such a process backfires tremendously against her.

A little step-by-step:

Jackie is shown to give Shauna multiple chances to come clean about the Jeff Thing. Shauna doesn't, but Jackie still sticks around her.

Jackie proposes the plan to have some fun with Travis to Shauna. Shauna voices her thoughts about it, underlining that it would be a bad thing to do to Natalie.

This notion is repeated throughout the episode. Travis himself brings it up, the high group of hunters brings it up, Nat herself looks not too pleased at Jackie and Travis slow-dancing at doomcoming.

There's an interesting reverse happening once the hunter girls confront Jackie about having had sex with Travis. Everyone is out of their minds, so idk how well we can factor in that almost all of them proceed to go after Travis despite mentioning once again that "he's Natalie's".

Doomcoming is post journal discovery, yet quite some time has passed between that and the episode. Jackie makes some very obvious comments at Shauna to signal that She Knows, and the Travis plan is set up after that. Hooking up with Travis can serve the plainly stated "I'm not gonna die a virgin :/", but over the course of the episode, it also creates this whole new catalogue of reactions from the others. And all of these, in their defence of Natalie, would speak in favor of Jackie if the news would break that Shauna had sex with Jeff.

So at the end of Doomcoming, we can get some sort of list of "rules" that would apply out here in the wilderness appendix for the section on CHEATING

People can call dibs on someone, and those are to be respected

Acting like the "bigger person" by calling everyone out on how little value it has out here is not going to do you any favors

The group will react badly if you crossed a line in their eyes. Taking someone's boyfriend falls under that.

It's how she plays the fight with Shauna! Shauna wants to bring up that most problems were caused by Jackie hooking up with Travis, which Jackie follows with an uno-reverse card she now (thinks) she has in her hands

If I (Jackie) hook up with Nat's boyfriend (Travis), then the group takes Natalie's side. Therefore, if Shauna hooked up with my boyfriend, then they should take my side.

And it goes so bad! Shauna outplays her by making the whole fight not about the cheating, but about their friendship as a whole, which Jackie has been viewing way differently and blinded than Shauna and the others. There's plenty of moments of Jackie "not reading the room" and either waving it off as the others being party-poopers or a lil mishap of her own.

Of course the big difference is that Jackie isn't really awkward in the highschool setting. She won homecoming queen for a reason, has many people looking up to her, and Coach Martinez probably made her captain for similar reasons. I guess what I'm going for with what's provided in Doomcoming is that Jackie lacks that "reading the room" skill (we can see it a number of times with Shauna in the pilot. In particular I'd say the Rutgers discussion, the boob dress, and telling Jeff to drop her off first) but makes up for it a lot by having a sort of manual of how to act in certain situations.

She's not seeing how Shauna might feel about her constant input on things. She's not seeing that others might orchestrate stuff outside of her knowledge. Nobody ever outright goes head-to-head with Jackie until the wilderness, and on good grounds there. If rescue isn't coming, we go to the body of water that's just been discovered. But the crash site is (ironically) safe. Whatever might happen if we leave it behind for something we're not even sure of?

It also doesn't look like Jackie has any (good) friends outside of Shauna. Might come with their years long codependence that nobody even wants to put themselves into, but also that with a captain position/being a generally popular high school student, she might not seem as approachable on a personal level. Jackie does make herself very open, and she's shown to be able to set up brief but very attentive conversations (Allie, Mari, Misty) but beyond that on a superficial level, there's not someone who she turns to when she suspects Shauna of something. Shauna's very obvious other friend is of course Taissa, but there's nobody out in the wilderness like that for Jackie.

and for some random bits:

Verbal stuff! The Beaches quote is peak, because who else would drop a line like that in such a moment. If Jackie's lying about not quoting it, then it does really speak of it being a hyper-focus movie (and we can also discuss why Shauna can recognize the movie from just the one line). But I think the possibility of it just being one of those phrases that you whip out like a vine quote, even if you've forgotten the origins of it

Presentation and maybe textures! Her luggage lacking skirts/dresses is… yeah. She wears a dress at the party in the woods and going to school with Shauna in the pilot episode, but besides the doomcoming dress, that's it. The article that says that while the others are already sharing clothes, Jackie sticks to her own wardrobe OR borrows some thing from Shauna (shoutout to the Doomcoming flannel!)

[queer-ragnelle]

hi I was wondering what your opinion is on how to deal with anachronisms in arthurian legend. so many stories include jousting—which didn't exist in early medieval wales. which historic kingdoms do you chose to include, and from which period, and what if two kingdoms sound really cool and you really want to mention them both but one existed in england circa 500ad and one existed around the norman conquest? thank you!

Hey!

I could've sworn I answered this before but I must've been thinking of a conversation in my writing group. Anyway the short answer is:

Do whatever you want! Anachronism is a feature not a bug! Harness it!

The fact is, all of Arthurian Legend is anachronistic and it's great. We don't even have concrete proof that Arthur, as we understand him, existed. We don't have written sources from the era Arthur supposedly lived in, only artifacts. There are some sporadic texts throughout the early Medieval period which mention Arthur, then the majority of what we understand as part of the Legend began with the work of 12th century authors. When Chrétien de Troyes was writing his stories, he depicted the world he lived in. The same goes for Marie of France and Wirnt von Grafenburg and Sir Thomas Malory and of course the many many Anonymous authors throughout the entire Middle Ages. They wrote about knights as they, personally, perceived them, as if the Saxon conflict took place in the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, etc centuries. After that, modern authors did similarly, while keeping the setting Medieval.

I have found that reading the forewords, author's notes, and letters of modern writers tackling this same dilemma has helped me tremendously. I have a deep respect and admiration for John Steinbeck, both his The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights and his other novels captivated me, so I cherish his philosophy regarding the creative process. In letter to his editor, he wrote:

He gets it!! Everyone is writing for their audience. Themselves, too, but with special attention to the current era and what that looks like.

When it comes to the nitty gritty stuff, you'll drive yourself crazy if you focus too much on what's "possible." Now Persia Woolley and I have our creative differences, but in her author's note at the start of book 1, Child of the Northern Spring, she wrote:

This makes a lot of sense to me. She has adopted a similar method as J. R. R. Tolkien did regarding the stories "coming out of Middle Earth." No, a Hobbit may not have called the circular green thing covering the entrance/exit to his home "a door," but that is the name of the object as the reader understands it, so that is what the author or "translator" has decided to call it.

In the end, you'll just have to sit down and make decisions. If you intend to use the names as they were in the era Arthur lived, it'll be more historically accurate, but unless you also provide a map and name key as Edward Frankland did in Arthur The Bear of Britain, you risk confusing your readers who only comprehend these locations in their Modern form. On the other hand, if you use exclusively Modern names, there's a chance it could break the immersion of your readers who perceive the story as Medieval.

I personally like to have of Medieval and Modern terms as well as technologies and cultural aspects. The fact is that we simply don't know enough about history to ever be 100% accurate about anything, so breath easier and offer yourself some allowances. I haven't scanned this book yet, but in the author's note of Phyllis Ann Karr's The Follies of Sir Harald, she wrote:

This is especially funny considering I don't recall any mention of a specific year to which the "historical accuracies" could be compared, but I assume she means the 12th century, when Chrétien de Troyes lived.

It comes down to what sort of story you want to write. Is it going to be Historical Fiction as Edward Frankland, Persia Woolley, and Bernard Cornwell wrote? Or will it be more loosely "Medieval" such as Cherith Baldry, John Steinbeck, and Phyllis Ann Karr wrote?

It really comes down to your own point of interest which kingdoms you include. I generally tried to stay accurate to the 4th-6th century, a huge 2 century window, which gave me enough wiggle room to pick and choose some names that made clear what I was talking about. Most if not all ports and islands retained modern names for ease of comprehension: Beirut, Isle of Wight, Mainland Orkney, and even Drake's Island, which is named for Sir Francis Drake, who wasn't born until the 16th Century, simply because its older name, St. Michael from the 12th Century, was not only too recent to be "accurate" anyway, but may have caused confusion with the giant of Mont St. Michael, which was of more importance to me than the impossible accuracy of landmasses in the Plymouth Sound. I did away with wooden longhouses in favor of stone castles; some I "built" on top of abandoned Roman forts that can still be visited today, others I invented completely from scratch, each brick and syllable original to my work. Many aspects called for improvision, so I did the best I could to make it all appear cohesive, even if historically those names or practices or fashions or whatever weren't actually as synchronized as my writing would have you believe.

This applies to characters too.

I refer to the main character as Gawain, although he claims it derives from the older name Gwalchmai. Other Mabinogion characters retain their Welsh names, such as Owain, Morfydd, and Bedwyr. Yet others take after their French names, such as Kay, Perceval, and Mordred. I even sometimes use both names, such as with Welsh Cynon/French Calogrenant, who was named the former at birth and referred to as such by Morfydd, but then Christened as the latter, which is what the majority of the cast call him. The Vulgate gives Yvain, son of Urien and Morgan le Fay, a bastard half brother called Yvain the Bastard. Because I had already changed the first character's name to Owain, so too has his brother's name been changed to Owain, as well as introducing a moniker of his own to more clearly identify him as a separate character without constantly referring to him as a bastard. They are from Rheged, but Owain the Bastard is known as FitzEden, as he was born in his mother's house near the Eden River. If you look it up, Rheged/Cumbria are the same general area, so I've linked the character to it through a name I made up for him. Owain FitzEden he now is. Did people use the term "Fitz" in the 5th century? No, they didn't have surnames. Was the river called Eden at the time? Probably not. But I did it anyway because I'm not writing in the 5th century, I'm writing now, for you, for me! And because I like the character enough to "bend the rules." It's not like historical Owain mab Urien had a pet lion, anyway!

It doesn't matter if these characters have "era appropriate" names or come from locations which didn't exist until recently. Say Lancelot is from Brittany or Less Britain or Gaul or France or Benwick or the Lake Kingdom, who cares! I've seen them all in one book or movie or another and they all register the same to me: Across the channel. Foreign. A new guy.

I had to do all of this twice, once for Medieval Britain and again for Medieval Persia. So trust me when I say it's time consuming. You're going to take a lot of notes for your own reference that your readers will never see but will help you keep an internal consistency once you decide what kingdoms and names to keep and what to avoid. The key is to stay accurate within your own world. Even if two kingdoms didn't exist at the same time, if you want to include them, do so, but then you have to follow through with that. Your readers will figure it out so long as you avoid giving the same area too many different names or accidentally changing a location's name between scenes. Locals may call their village something the outsiders don't, that's cool for worldbuilding, but every time you do it, you're making a bid on your reader's ability to hold all that information. So do so sparingly and with good reason.

Reading helps a lot. All the books I've mentioned do a good job of this and would be useful tools for understanding what your preferences are and what the vibe of your story will be. I hope that answers your question and gives you a bunch to think about! Take care. :^)

[sueheesblog]

I'm rewatching The Bear...... And Lord Syd really walked into fire the same day she started working at The Beef. T being a pain, the loud music, and Richie being loud like Mickey. I got some boring opinions. Let me rant n be delulu 😂🤣🤣😍

Richie saying that The Beef didn't have money problems until after Carmy showed up😬😬😱😱😱..... Knowing what I know about season 3, I see a pattern of Carmy trying to change things too fast, too soon. The Beef been running for 25 years, which means something was going right for it to last that long (we know some d.rugs money was involved lol). Richie confessed about selling from the back a few times lol.

Anyways, I say all of that to say, I think Syd was the only one who walked into Carmy's life with a plan. Carmy saw that n respected her for it. Everyone else was going with a flow that was no longer sustainable (this includes Claire). Yes, she and Carmy had a past, (well to be honest they don't even have a past. They never dated or hangout in HS) it's more like a fantasy. People grow n change..... n love interest can also change. I don't think Carmy like Claire the way he did bk then. It's life!

Carmy was happy he found someone who shared his passion, yes he wanted a business with Mikey..... but I honestly think Carmy wanted it for himself too. He's only wanted 2 things The Bear with his brother and Syd (yes, Syd). He was willing to make a complete stranger help him run his family business after 1 - 2 weeks of observing her. He made that decision with no outside influence (his family). HE WANTED SYDNEY and that want slowly turned into NEEDING HER. I'm not talking on a romantic level of want/need, but business wise she will always be his first option.

The romantic level, based on my opinion started flickering when the mere thought of her calmed him. Now, he's probably too naive to notice that he has developed romantic feelings for her and its pushing to the surface. The mere thought of her brought him peace and steady the tsunami in his mind. That is a leave of intimacy that is top tier. She touched him mentally. Carmy n Syd's conversation in the beginning of Season 2 are soo charged that they don't have to touch to sell the audience a romantic story. This is because their way of intimacy is through food, thats how they express themselves to each other. It's like talking about the menus n stuff is foreplay. It was also funny to see Carmy gave Syd the best orgasm of her life and then take it back. (This was when he said her braised short ribs was tremendous, and then decided to take it back). She like, no sir, we ain't doing that cause I'm still on cloud nine trying to come down. 😂🤣😂🤣

Carmy suspected this and he didn't want to entertained Claire (gave her the wrong number). Now, she's all tangled up in Carmy n Syd's weird mind fuck with food..... Syd feeling jealous is kinda vaild (hear me out). It's valid because all the time they spent together being mentally intimate through food...... those feelings were reciprocated. So, CARMY out here cheating on Syd.... giving all the focus she deserved and EARNED to Claire. Like, Syd should packed his shit up and put him out!

BUT, at the end of season 3 they stopped connecting through their food. It's like when married couple is so far apart that sex/intimacy longer plays a role in the relationship or it took the back burner. Days or weeks would pass and they wouldn't touch each other...... This is what Carmy n Syd are facing. Their relationship is so disconnected that intimacy is no longer on the table.

Let's see if they get a divorce or make up.

[stillness-in-green]

What do you think about Horikoshi ending the manga without a canon couple? Do you ship or used to ship MHA characters? Did you see romantic potential? Do you think Horikoshi might confirm a couple later?

No canon couple?  Au contraire, my dear anon!  The manga ended with the most important canonization of all!

(Everybody give a huge hand to The Only Hets Who Matter, Gentle and La Brava; they deserve it.)

As to the ships people actually care about or were expecting some word on (e.g. the stuff with the students), my reaction there is overwhelmingly “lol gj hori”.  I’m glad he ended it with no canon student couple to speak of!  While I do sympathize with the position of certain people on Twitter who contend that Ochaco’s arc about repression really needed her to actually confess to Deku, I hated what her crush on Deku did to her arc anyway, so I don’t have it in me to be too annoyed.  Anyway, I don’t think it’s possible to do the Iron Might 2.0 part of the epilogue if Deku and Ochaco[1] have been dating the entire time, so I’m perfectly happy to run with the headcanon that she did confess at one point and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, so by the time the last chapter rolls around, they’ve just been friends for years.

1: Or Bakugou, for that matter, but with all due respect to the BakuDekus who haven’t been seeing Shonen Jump battle manga come and go for twenty years with nary a confirmed gay MC amongst them, that was never in the cards.

I remember posting once ages ago about a Japanese fan’s hope that Horikoshi, who the fan perceived as being at least somewhat progressive about women, could manage to end the series without a bunch of timeskip romances showing up at the last minute.  While I have some deep reservations about Hori’s progressive cred at this point in time, and am not tremendously impressed with his writing of women, either, credit where credit is due: he did end the series without any timeskip romances.

As to there being any confirmation of couples in the material we have remaining, I imagine the last train station[2] for that is going to be the final volume release in December, as, on top of the usual volume extras, Horikoshi should be considerably more free to include expansions that his schedule and exhaustion kept him from in the weekly publication.  I could even see a bonus chapter of some sort, maybe something post-epilogue so we can see the power suit in action or something silly and fourth wall-breaking to celebrate the series conclusion.  There’s also going to be one last fanbook released in January, which I have been assuming will be a data book like Ultra Archive.

2: Or harbor, I suppose, since we’re talking about ships.

Now, do I think any of that stuff will confirm ships?  Eh, that’s not really in my analytical wheelhouse.  The farthest I’d venture to guess is that I would a) not be surprised to get some clarification on Deku and Ochaco, and b) definitely peg the volume release to have material like that over squirreling it away in the fanbook.

For myself, my shipping habits are somewhat erratic—it’s not really where my primary engagement in media lies, and certainly not for this series!  But that’s not to say I don’t have ships, or that I’m not happy to talk about them, so if you’re curious about that, do feel free to hit the jump.  I’ll order them by general sphere first, then by how passionate I am about them compared to ones I just think are kinda cute or funny for whatever reason.

DISCLAIMER: While I have not explicitly stated as much here before, I am a 40-year-old asexual proshipper, proshipper here meaning I'm in favor of curating your own fandom space and not harassing people about their fictional ships under any circumstances.  When I say I ship something, that does not mean I’m idealizing the relationship, want it to be canon, think it would be cool in real life, or am mentally putting myself in the place of one the characters.  It’s solely because there’s something in the dynamic I think is fun or interesting, and “interesting” can very much include the same kind of interest one might have in watching a building get demolished. 

That is to say, there are a handful of Too Problematic For Tumblr ships in here—one age gap but otherwise wholesome, one age gap and tacitly abusive, and one that really hits the Tumblr Trifecta by being age gap, abusive and incestuous. I've put all three at the very bottom in their own section in descending order of Most BadWrong, but if you’re one of those people deep into The Discourse about how ships need to be Morally Correct otherwise the shippers are terrible people who should kys, this is not the post for you.  The block button’s there if you need it—and be advised that it’s there if I need it, too, and I’m not afraid to use it. (I grew up in dark fantasy shoujo fandoms; I am not litigating my ships with anybody.)

~~~Stillness’s Dubious and Delightful BNHA Ship Opinions~~~

Villain-o-rama-rama:

Spinarakiya, ShigaRD, Spinaraki: Alas for my short-lived OT3!  I was really, really pumped for this in the stretch between MVA and the early stages of the first war, what with there being such interesting possible angles between all three parties, only for Re-Destro to get arrested and never seen in person again, Spinner to get snatched up by Gigantomachia and never look back, and Shigaraki to get lost to the possession plot for, at least as far as scenes with his allies were concerned, basically the rest of the series.

Not exactly great material for my shipping heart, though I’ll refrain from the rant comparing how long the PLF members were living in close contact with each other compared to the League of Villains and why that should have meant they developed stronger relationships than what we got.

But canon being what it is, I do still ship the hell out of these three in a canon divergence situation, or any number of potential AUs.  I love the connective tissue there, with Re-Destro + Shigaraki having some startlingly strong background parallels and lasting injuries courtesy of each other, Shigaraki + Spinner having the gaming and the emptiness themes, and Spinner + Re-Destro having their Big Gay Feelings About Shigaraki as well as an appreciation for patterned fabrics some shared early frustrations about Shigaraki’s seeming lack of plans or direction.

It's a good dynamic, and I think they could all do a lot for each other, though certainly not in ways that are good for the continued survival of Hero Society.  But fuck Hero Society anyway.

As to the component parts, I don’t ship Re-Destro and Spinner without Shigaraki being at least an invisible part of the dynamic (though I would read the fic where he wasn’t with considerable interest!), but I’m also very much on board with ShigRD and Spinaraki individually.  My constant refrain about Shigaraki and RD is that they have a lot of common ground but very little common language, and I’m fascinated by how much of that they could recognize in each other and how much of it they could then recognize back in themselves, versus how much you’d get one of those cases of, “This guy is a freak and I’m so normal.”

It's so, so, so important to me that Re-Destro is the first ally Shigaraki won entirely on his own merits.  He's got no borrowed reputation from Stain, no monsters on loan from Sensei, and no help from people on Sensei’s payroll, yet still, as a result of his efforts (both in his own fights and in making the League his own, even if it didn’t start that way) he wins himself an army and a follower who never saw a light that wasn’t his.

I weep for the Shigaraki/Re-Destro relationship we could have had if Horikoshi didn’t decide that Shigaraki in the endgame was to be nothing but a pawn, and therefore couldn’t be allowed to keep any of his markers of independence and growth.

As to Spinaraki, man, what is there even to say?  The relationship so clear and obvious that it had even the mhatwt bros out there saying, “Spinaraki but at what cost?” in the last chapter!  I will admit that I liked them better when their romance had that apocalyptic tinge than when it suddenly started getting painted as primarily about them being Gamer Bros, but at least that melancholic “beauty at the end of the world” shading came back when Shigaraki talked about destroying Mount Fuji for Spinner (be still my heart!).    

They will meet and be close in every world and I will hear nothing else.

RiKoku: I don’t think I truly understood the appeal of ex-lover ships until these two.  They snuck up on me in a big way, pretty much entirely a result of my realization when I was halfway through the (first and only, sadly) MLA Week event that Trumpet was pretty free-roaming and independent from Re-Destro all the way through Deika only to be glued to his side from there on out.  Together with the Spinner parallels (the subordinates who fought each other and then came together to the crater to see their worlds remade) and my jokes about wanting to see the MLA heads during their stressed-out, over-achiever college years, all the pieces fell into place for a Rikiya and Koku who had dated for a few years and then broken up when Rikiya realized that his authority as Re-Destro—and Koku’s strong subordination to that authority—meant that he could not responsibly stay in the relationship.  (This also presents several good explanations for why a man in Rikiya’s situation isn’t married with at least one child already.)

Anyway, to me, they never really fell out of love with each other; Re-Destro just couldn’t justify overlooking the power dynamic problems once he realized how extreme they were.  (This does make for a fun alternate angle on RD’s personal life post-Deika, wherein Trumpet watches RD pass the mantle of leadership to Shigaraki Tomura and then more or less immediately pounces on him because now he doesn’t have the power dynamic excuse anymore.  Look up the great Whatever Is Spared by @leftofrevolution on AO3 for more on this.)

Overhonest: I just like Nemoto much more than I like Chrono, and thus my Overhaul ship of choice follows suit.  I like the idea that their feelings are wildly unbalanced but not totally one-sided—Overhaul has more baggage than a freshly loaded airport carousel, but he does like the Shie Hassaikai, as proven by them being mentioned in the Likes section of his character page. Nemoto in particular is someone whose presence we know Overhaul finds reassuring and we know it because he told Nemoto so directly when Nemoto asked, which means it can’t be anything other than the plain truth.  He relies on Nemoto enough to make demands of him, he expects (and gets!) effectiveness, and he even bothers to take the time to justify out loud why it would be okay for him to merge himself with Nemoto physically (because Nemoto would say yes if asked, right? of course he would) rather than just doing it with no thought to Nemoto’s feelings about it because why should he care about that.

And Nemoto, for his part, is of course an obsessive weirdo who’s totally smitten with the first person he’s ever found who legitimately wants him around, so smitten that he’ll happily overlook the fact that Overhaul primarily wants him around because he’s useful.

Moving away from what’s on-the-page canon, I enjoy (and write) the take that Overhaul is sex-repulsed, not because he’s fully asexual, but as an extension of his mysophobia.  This makes his sex life extremely fraught, but not non-existent.  When I dabble with writing them (and they’re by far the ship I’ve written the most explicit material for in this fandom), I write him as basically a sex-repulsed demi (not that he would know or use that terminology!) who is attracted to Nemoto but has been largely left aggravated and sexually frustrated by their periodic experiments in non-traditional ways of getting him off.  (Nemoto, for his part, is more than willing to keep trying!  No kink is too weird for this guy if it means finding something Overhaul would actually like.)

(To get real here for a second, if Spinarakiya is meaningful to me as a person who’s comfortably poly, Overhonest is meaningful to me as an asexual person who's only ever had allosexual partners.)

AFOUji: Truly the Evil Husbands of all time.  I wish the shift from Final Boss Shigaraki to Final Boss AFO hadn’t left Ujiko with a few truly inexplicable characterization beats,[3] because I truly do love these two as just the worst pair of mutually enabling monsters making the world worse and more dangerous for everyone while being 100% supportive of each other’s passions the entire time.  Here’s to 70 years of Dark Lord/Mad Scientist domestic bliss.

3: For the record, I consider these to be his, “I've only been living for the boy's sake,” line in Chapter 269 and his clear reticence and dissastisfaction with Shigaraki getting the surgery in Chapter 240.

DabiSkep: Skeptic is the only man Dabi has ever thanked for his contributions.  Dabi goes out of his way to kidnap him.  I’m 90% convinced that they’d been working on the video together prior to the Villa raid.  The combination of Skeptic’s deep and abiding neuroticism with Dabi’s swings between lazy malice and manic pushiness is extremely funny.  What can I say; it’s just about the only Dabi ship that really clicks for me.  I enjoy leftof’s take that Skeptic had a goth phase he never completely exited and so Dabi appeals to his inner Hot Topic teen, which he is 100% aware of and 150% embarrassed by.

   

School Environs:

Mirio/Tamaki: Tamaki literally regains consciousness at the exact moment Mirio loses his quirk.  Other than cases where there’s some actual explanation for that—a magical connection, psychic powers, etc.—I have never seen that kind of beat happen outside of a shoujo manga.  The bit where one romantic lead just mysteriously has a Bad Feeling in the same instant that something Bad happens to their love interest is so shoujo-coded.  Jesus Christ, Tamaki is so moe.  And Mirio so clearly thinks the world of him, too, as evinced by what an over-the-top sobriquet he dubbed Tamaki with.  They’re great, end of story.

Monoma/Shinsou: I’ll admit I liked this somewhat better when I thought there was any chance at all Shinsou might end up in Class B—I kind of loathe that he wound up in Class A for the self-evidently terrible reason that it’s The Main Character Class, when it seems so obviously a conflict of interest for Aizawa to be teaching him.  But eh, it’s okay; it just means Monoma will have to nobly learn to look past it after a lot of time spent being completely obnoxious about it.

My annoyance with Shinsou’s class placement aside, Monoma is one of my favorite students, and I like that he immediately latches onto Shinsou as a kindred spirit.  And, like, if that were 100% one-directional, I would probably shrug it off, but Shinsou, despite trying to play at being aloof, does actually get invested enough that he gets pretty bothered by the idea of Monoma needing help, even in something as inconsequential as a class exercise.  It’s just a much, much more interesting dynamic than Shinsou has with Deku or especially Kaminari.

Also, as someone with a bit of a Thing for mind fuckery, the way Copy and Brainwash can play off each other is Good.

MomoJirou: The fanart is cute and I like Momo better than Kaminari.  And the culture clash thing is fun.

Shouto/Inasa: The fanart is cute and I like Inasa better than Deku or Bakugou.

   

Professional Sphere:

Hawksdeavor:The age gap adds flavor.  The fact that Endeavor is still married but deeply unhappily so makes it even spicier.  The difference in what they represent (or could potentially represent) to each other is the best part, with Hawks, for Endeavor, being someone who represents a totally clean page, while Endeavor, for Hawks, represents a lifelong adoration.  Finding each other’s reality in all of that would be an interesting relationship arc and could be extremely fulfilling and strengthening for both of them.

The spoiler is (or at least should have been, if I’d been writing the series) their divided feelings on Dabi.  Honestly, I really wanted to see them clash over the matter of Touya and how to deal with him, with Endeavor wanting to save him but not knowing how and Hawks just wanting him gone but not knowing how to get away with it.  A certain pair of facts is glaring to me: first, that Hawks was a chief architect of the second war’s battle plans, whereas we never saw Endeavor involved with them at all, and second, that, when the big day came, Endeavor was slated to fight All For One with Hawks at his side despite at least some guilty protests from Enji that he really ought to be facing Dabi.

It smacks strongly of Hawks making some profoundly selfish decisions under the guise of clear-headed strategy and I really wanted it to blow up in his face when Dabi found his way to their battlefield anyway.  Pushing Endeavor into a place where he had to choose between them and ultimately chose his son (say, by protecting him from an attack coming from Hawks) would have been validating for Touya, done a lot to lever Endeavor’s arc out of the reactiveness and passivity that drag it down so badly in the canon, and also handed Hawks a real consequence for how dismissively he treats the lives of Villains and how much he’s tried to avoid reckoning with both Endeavor’s abuse and Enji’s own attempts to do said reckoning!

In summary, Hawks and Endeavor could be very good for each other, and the incredible amount of baggage they’d have work through first would be key to either making that good ending feel earned or lead to them dramatically and deliciously imploding.  Either one works for me, and either one, even without the romantic angle, would have been more interesting than the pablum we got.

NightMight: Speaking of could-have-been-good relationships that dramatically imploded!  I love Sir Nighteye as the most visible cost of All Might’s lifestyle, the one he lost because he couldn’t step away from the path his ideals had set out, and how that ideal inevitably took him full circle so that he found himself standing, for Deku, in the same place Nighteye once stood for him.  And of course by then it was too late and Deku wouldn’t listen to him anymore than he himself listened to Nighteye back then.

But Nighteye didn’t give up on caring about him, even if he had no avenue left to express it but throwing himself into finding a successor All Might would accept, which led to Nighteye's own (wonderful) relationship with Mirio.

Just great, difficult, adult stuff about irreconcilable differences that never stopped them from caring about each other even as those differences forced them to their parting of ways.

Mount Lady/Kamui Woods: They’re cute and I like the idea that they both have trouble, for opposite reasons, with cameramen.  I like that he calls her just Lady when he thinks she’s in trouble.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but I like that they’re kinda the most explicit Pro Hero couple and yet she’s the more prominent and important character with the more visible arc, which is a nice contrast to most of the other hetero relationships in this benighted manga.

   

Other/Cross-faction:

Togachaco: The yuri ship that could.  My god, the canon divergence I want to give these two.  You know why I want Deku and Ochaco to not be together in the end?  Because I want Ochaco to realize that she did everything in her power to save her Villain while Deku—after all that talk on the cliff!—just killed his, and triggered Toga just before he left to do it, meaning Ochaco had a harder time with Toga than she might have otherwise.

But, I’m not here to talk about No. 2 Green; let’s talk instead about the canon divergence where Toga survives (shove that absurd death-via-blood-transfusion right into the incinerator) and then Ochaco has to come face to face with a system that does not want to let her be anywhere near as kind as she wants to be.  The canon divergence where Ochaco realizes that her forgiveness is immaterial to justice, where she watches the system she fought to defend gear up to try Toga as an adult because Japan needs a scapegoat for the destruction of the war and all of the people who are actually most responsible are already dead or dying.  Where Ochaco realizes that she has to do something drastic if she doesn’t want to live the rest of her life haunted by the knowledge that her compassion got a 17-year-old victim of emotional and psychiatric abuse executed by the state.  The one where she decides to take a fucking stand, and it forces the rest of her class to confront that need as well.

“The cutest girl in the whole world,” my god.

Kotarou and Nao: I’m not as big on it by the time we’re seeing them in the Tenko flashback, though I certainly wasn’t pulling for some mean-spirited, allegedly feel-good “Nao slaps Kotarou and the whole family walks out of him” thing like you see in fanfic sometimes.  No, what I really like with Kotarou and Nao is thinking about them when they’re both still young, in the stretch of years where they really think they'll be happy together.  That her being with him can make all his problems go away, that him being able to bury his past and be better than all the people who hurt him (and there were so many people who hurt him) will be enough, that love is the answer to everything. Sure, the cracks are there, but they’re thin, and they can be hidden beneath all the days when things are good, when the two of them hold each other and feel safe and loved and sure.

The cracks are still there, and love isn’t enough when love becomes a band-aid and a blind eye.  But the love is still there too, and it’s so fierce and so desperate, and it still won’t save them.

Sorry, everyone; they make me emotional.  They are beautiful in the way of sparks dancing above flames, or early flowers blooming right before a vicious cold snap.  Ah, me.

StainMight: GOD, All Might really needed to grapple more with Stain’s side of his legacy.  Like, StainMight is really a victim of the way the story looked like it was setting up to criticize All Might’s methodology as well-intended but not sustainable long-term, but then, like every other aspect of the series that was about systemic critique, that criticism just evaporated and Stain became an All Might cheerleader with nothing to say about the system All Might supported for thirty years.  Maddening!  But for real, All Might should have been badly hurt in that car attack and then rescued by Stain, both to give Deku some stress about how All Might could be in danger after they parted on bad terms, and also to really make All Might have to sit with this opinionated zealot all-too-prepared to talk about how no one else is really living up to his example.

And there should be UST the whole time.

Yoichi and Kudou: I am almost entirely negative towards the OFA Collective these days, especially Kudou’s role in the endgame, but I still have some fondness for what he and Yoichi could have been.  My god, the first One For All transfer really should have been because they kissed.  More beautiful, more tragic, more profound, and preserves the Yoichi that had some actual fucking agency in the life he lived instead of just constantly being AFO’s or Kudou’s trophy princess there to talk about how respectively terrible and awesome they are.

TogaTsuyu: I just think it would be interesting if Tsuyu were actually allowed to be more present in the Toga plotline, rather than only arriving as a spoiler to avert major shifts every time.  Toga says she likes Tsuyu, too, after all, and Tsuyu is so different from both Ochaco and Deku, so much more thoughtful and considered.  I dunno, I just wonder how things might have gone if, for example, it had been Tsuyu that Toga managed to draw away in the Jakku fight.  Given that side story with her snakey friend Habuko, evidence suggests that Tsuyu is a good deal more observant and intuitive than Ochaco, and I wonder if she might have been able to suss out what Toga was actually asking there better than Ochaco did, and how that might have changed things.

   

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THE TUMBLR PROBLEMATIC ZONE:

Gentle Criminal and La Brava: I was willing to follow the canon’s initial vagary about these two, but I also like them quite a bit together, so if canon wants to put them in wedding rings at the end of the series, that’s fine by me!  Yes, I’m aware that there’s a pretty significant age gap there, which would have been at its most apparent when she first sought him out, but I don’t for one single instant believe that he’d be anything less than a total gentleman to her.  Indeed, it’d be entirely plausible to mount an argument based on his behavior that they were not at all romantically involved circa the Culture Festival arc,[4] and only become so after Gentle’s imprisonment and subsequent release.  But in general, what I’m more concerned with is the dynamic—I regard a power differential in a relationship as a reason for both parties to be cautious and mindful of that differential, but not as an immediate game-ender.

4: Most obvious is that when she says, “I love you,” he only says things like, “Thank you,” in return.

In that sense, Gentle and La Brava are great—they click together perfectly and obviously make each other tremendously happy after a lifetime of rejection.  La Brava, in Gentle’s theatrical attention-seeking, finds someone who accepts her overflowing way of showing love; Gentle, in living up to La Brava’s feelings, finds a reason for his skewed heroism beyond satisfying his pride.  To whatever extent their life together was heading anywhere bad (and there’s no evidence of this at all save that Heroes were always likely to catch up to them eventually, making La Brava’svery extreme response to Gentle’s defeat likewise inevitable), Deku’s intervention got them off of that path and back onto one that let them be accepted by the world, which they seem to have capitalized on marvelously.

They’re the only Villains I can think of whose turn to Team Hero in the endgame works for me without any significant quibbles.  Good for them!  I hope they are so, so happy together, because they deserve it.

AFO and Kotarou: MEANWHILE, IN MY OTHER KOTAROU SHIP.  I love AFO knowing Everything about what he’s doing here while Kotarou knows absolutely Nothing about what AFO is doing here.  I love an AFO who is self-amused in being friendly and reassuring and distractingly attractive to Kotarou, an AFO who knows that his toying with Kotarou would make Shimura Nana sick with terror and rage, and even if she isn’t alive to be so anymore, the fantasy of it is satisfying enough, especially since Kotarou is himself a very handsome young man, one whose hurt and resentment AFO finds beguiling to sometimes prod at, as if unable to leave a bruise alone except the bruise isn’t on his own skin.

I have an AU I’m never likely to write where Kotarou winds up successfully knocking out Tenko on the night of the accident before going on the run with him, only for them to get picked up by AFO a few weeks later, and let me tell you guys, that’s where all my guilty pleasure AFO/Kotarou really lives.

That said, I liked this one much better before we got the opening for it in canon, and not just because AFO’s disguise persona was doofy-looking instead of devastatingly handsome.  It was always one of those ships that tickled my inner hedonistic wickedness fancier but that I never wanted to be canon because my affection for the ship's vibe was not more important to me than the integrity of Shigaraki’s arc, and Shigaraki’s arc was far better served by his early childhood being as free from AFO as possible.  Alas, the reveal is very AFOtarou but at what cost.

Dabideavor: Sorry not sorry everyone, but all the people screaming about how this is SICK FILTH seem to have missed the point that it is indeed, absolutely and completely, sick filth and that’s part of the appeal.  Personally, I like it for two main reasons.

Firstly, I want Endeavor to have as hard a time as possible, and times don't get harder than this. I enjoy it when he's frozen and helpless in the face of the son whose life he destroyed because I have a long history of enjoying stoic male characters being made vulnerable through suffering.

Secondly, and more importantly, I like it because I like the version of Dabi you see in it, particularly compared to the Fanon Dabi who made so much League of Villains fan content un-fucking-readable for years.

I'm going to try to keep the hot fandom tea to a minimum here, limited to the upcoming footnote, but I hated Fanon Dabi.[5] He was an incoherent mash of a character designed to be a vehicle for the unabashed revenge fantasy of bloody murder against Bad Dads while also presenting no danger whatsoever of splash damage, a Woobie Big Brother who was completely harmless except to the father whose organs he was planning to paint the walls with. Every excuse that could be made, would be made, for Dabi's more questionable or even outright nasty moments, even if it meant minimizing or outright erasing the harm we saw Dabi do, right there on the page in literal manga monochrome.

5: There's a particular type of flanderization that goes into Fanon Dabi, the same kind of flanderization I saw attached to Steven Universe's Lapis Lazuli, and which informed the absolute umbrage certain people took with Rebecca Sugar for describing Spinel, the SU movie's villain, as toxic. There is a portion of fandom that loves abuse victims who get angry and lash out, but which will go absolutely ballistic at the slightest suggestion that abuse victims are themselves also capable of harm, that lashing out has the potential to hurt innocent people. In a perfectly executed DARVO, it becomes "victim blaming" to confront an abuse victim about the very real abuse they're inflicting on others. I only specified fictional characters here, but it's a dynamic you see in real life, too. Some people hunger for nothing so much as an acceptable target and abuse victims are not exempt from that statement.

The Dabi I thought was fun was the high-energy maniac who doesn't give a shit about anyone else getting caught in the crossfire of his revenge. Both that version of Dabi and the Endeavor who's paralyzed with guilt and despair are facilitated by Dabi’s father-obsession having a taboo sexual dimension to it that Dabi is all too ready to shove in the face of absolutely everyone who would think worse of Endeavor for it.  That means Endeavor himself, of course, but also all the good little civilians who Endeavor keeps telling to watch him.  Watch this, says Dabi, as he makes lewd hand gestures on force-streamed national television.

It's not about Dabi healing as an abuse victim, and it’s not about Dabi having a fulfilling arc—covering that stuff was canon's job!  It's about the fact that I, for reasons both personal and related to fandom spite, am personally entertained by Dabi being pedal-to-the-metal deranged about doing whatever it takes to seize Daddy’s attention and never let him look away again, which also means acting to ensure that no one is capable of or willing to save Endeavor from that fate. Like, if you want someone who would spend ten years plotting the most agonizing possible way to torment his abuser, then it’s sophistry to suddenly declare some agonizing torments off-limits.  Dabideavor is just committing to the bit.

[malwaredykes]

honestly tbh leigh's relationship with the ncr is REALLY funny because. she hates them. she has 0 allegiance to them. she doesnt help THEM she resolves matters in ways that often happen to benefit them in some way or simply prevents needless loss of life, but it never is about them and aside from that shes always stealing, sabotaging, disrespecting them, turning people against them, encouraging members to desert, putting their legitimacy into question, especially the legitimacy of them being in the mojave in the first place, and exposing their ineffectiveness. she has 0 intention of venerating The Republic that she comes from. she thinks its hilarious that anyone should take that stuff seriously.

but she ends up being a celebrity to them. because crocker likes her despite everything, and hsu likes her, and because shes from new cali but important in the mojave, and because shes done stuff like calm things down in the freeside and help at refugee camps and retake nelson. which makes her even more of a problem in a way. if she were Only a nuisance thatd be one thing, theyd just put a bounty on her. but shes a celebrity. she has a status in new vegas and in the ncr. shes kind of untouchable. and her crimes and sabotage can never quite be proven. of course to the higher ups theres having proof and theres Knowing. shit only gets worse when she and her buddies storm the legion fort and kill caesar and free a bunch of slaves because like. this strengthens her vip status AND is absolute humiliation to the ncr. like they cant take the credit and instead they have to live with the fact that what a lot of them dismissed as some upstart with a bunch of clueless locals backing her did something they never couldve achieved. "oh this was pretty much an angry mob of townies and misfits" yeah and they got caesar in his own fortress. shes out there making the ncr look like shit and pointing people to seeing the ncr as the problem and yet she never does it in a way that she could be prosecuted for. by the time the ncr realizes shes a lot of trouble they also know they would lose a TREMENDOUS amount of support if they did something to her

like shes never openly hostile. she never provokes open hostility. shes not Openly Antagonistic to the ncr but its not exactly a secret shes got something planned and would like them to leave. young ncr recruits seeing her are like Omggg ma'am its an honor!!!! ^_^. there are officers and rangers whod be REALLY appalled if you said anything bad about her because Well she sure has done a lot more for us here on site than any of you government people. and that was her goal. that is the game shes playing. folks youll eventually realize its not the ncr that has done good in the mojave despite its flaws, but yours were the hands doing the work, and all the reasons one might consider ncr good or necessary are within you, Are you, the people who joined hoping theyd make a difference. folks youll realize that the ncr has to lie and obfuscate and make bullshit orders and directives to maintain claim over that good work and whitewash its own crimes. folks, i have this ex-ncr friend here. do you know what the ncr got him? complicity in atrocities (lyrical miracle), ptsd, apocalyptic thinking, countless biases to unpack, hopelessness, enemies where he shouldve made friends. and so on. and do you know what he got from *me*? a chance to actually do good. a chance to question those false beliefs of his. a friend. new opportunities. 40 rolls of duct tape. new rifle. lots and lots of soda. TWO toy trucks. and an apple. just ask him

[gffa]

Hey! What are your favorite Obi-Wan-centric books/comics, if I may ask? Have a nice day and may the force be with you

Hi! I have a bunch that I've enjoyed! Trying to keep this as Obi-Wan-centric as I can, though, honestly, for as much as he appears in a lot of stuff, he's not necessarily always the center of the best stuff for his character. NOVELS - CANON:

Padawan by Kiersten White - This book dethroned all other books for me to take the #2 spot of Lumi's Favorite Star Wars Book Ever! It's charming, it's thoughtful, it's good-natured, it's funny, it had a fun adventure, it gave Obi-Wan some hellion little best friends as a Padawan, and just made me fall in love with the world all over again.

Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure by Cavan Scott - The CYD books (same concept as Choose Your Own Adventure books) can be an acquired taste, but I found so many lovely moments in this book, some genuinely delightful details (MACE WINDU THEATRE NERD) and some great Obi-Wan & Anakin moments. Plus, Bant Eerin recanonization!

Brotherhood by Mike Chen - I have talked at length about the problems with the Anakin parts of this book (basically: if you take it at face value, it's pretty vile towards a Black character), but I have a ton of affection for the Obi-Wan half of this book. The way he moves with his feelings, acknowledges them and lets them pass through him, the way he genuinely cares about the Neimoidians, the way he tries to be thoughtful and you can see how deeply he cares about Anakin, is all really good.

From a Certain Point of View: A New Hope (specifically the first one, not the second one) has three short stories that are stellar for Obi-Wan: "Master and Apprentice" by Claudia Gray (make sure it's the ANH anthology, not the full novel by the same author), "There is Another" by Gary D. Shmidt, and "Time of Death" by Cavan Scott. All have either really lovely insights into Obi-Wan's character during ANH or have him being utterly hilarious.

NOVELS - LEGENDS:

Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover - While not actually perfect, there are some things I don't fully agree with or think the book matched what was on the screen, when this book gets it right, it gets it so right that no other book has ever compared. This utterly elevates what was already my favorite Star Wars movie, and this man can turn a hell of a phrase.

Wild Space by Karen Miller - This is a book that I could pick apart in a lot of ways (it feels like two half-books stitched together rather than one coherent story, it doesn't earn its ending, it doesn't really do justice to the Jedi), but I love it because it's such an utterly dramatic book, everything about the events is larger than life, and has a spar with Obi-Wan and Anakin where he smacks Anakin on the ass, touches his face and tells him he did well and the look on Anakin's face in return almost makes Ahsoka cry because she's so touched, and contains the phrase "wringing wet and blowing hard" about their duel. Like, that's the kind of chaos you're in for and it's AMAZING.

COMICS - CANON:

Obi-Wan by Christopher Cantwell - It's only a five issue mini-series but it's a great look at Obi-Wan's character at various points in his life and I had so much to say about it, so I really felt it held up to analysis, and it really brought the feelings.

Obi-Wan & Anakin by Charles Soule - Another five issue mini and it does not get near enough credit for being tremendously well plotted and illustrating a lot of bigger points about Obi-Wan, Anakin, the Jedi, and the Republic, why good people were making the best choices available to them. Also, the single most gorgeous art I have ever seen in a comic.

Any of the Age of Republic comics by Jody Houser - These were a series of oneshots focused on various heroes and villains, and if you're specifically looking for Obi-Wan content, the Obi-Wan one and the Anakin one were FANTASTIC looks at the character.

Clone Wars: Battle Tales by Michael Moreci - Another mini-series and IIRC Obi-Wan was only in some of them, but he got some truly great moments of defending the clones and being an amazing leader in them.

COMICS - LEGENDS: These are so much harder because they're so spread out and often times it's just one or two issues that even have Obi-Wan in them. Ones I do remember enjoying:

The Clone Wars: The Smuggler's Code by Justin Aclin - A short graphic novel where Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka go on a beach vacation and run into a criminal from Obi-Wan's past and the entire story is UTTERLY UNHINGED, it's so hilariously over the top that I hyena laugh ever time I read it.

The Republic series from Dark Horse had a bunch of good Obi-Wan moments in it, if you don't mind paging through a lot of other characters. It's about all the Jedi, so they all get their turns, so I would suggest getting this one from your local library to find the issues you're most interested in!

Honestly, so much of reading SW books and comics is the willingness to pick out small fragments of gold amidst the bigger blargghh, like would I recommend Jedi Apprentice or Jedi Quest as some of my favorites? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean that Jude Watson didn't know how to turn a hell of a phrase and that I won't pull out fantastic quotes from those books! Would I recommend the Titan magazine comics? No, they're charming but the art is wonky a lot and they're too short to really go into much depth. If anyone has any comics recs to include, feel free to add on! The novels were easier to remember, but there have been so many comics that I feel like I'm missing some obvious ones.

[chirpingfromthebox]

My favorite bits from the Boston post-game press interviews after PWHL Finals Game 4

You can find the entire interview here! Be sure to give them some views/likes/nice comments/etc.

At the table were Aerin Frankel, Alina Müller, and coach Courtney Kessel.

Since we're so close to the end now, I just went ahead and did the full transcription so as to be sure y'all didn't miss anything. I'll still put dividers between the questions though, just to aid in readability.

All that and a handful of my closing thoughts after the break.

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REPORTER: For all of you, did you think that game was over before it was actually over?

COURTNEY KESSEL: I didn’t think it was over, I thought it was goalie interference. But you never know, right? So you challenge and kinda wait. So, no.

AERIN FRANKEL: Obviously being in the net, I didn’t really know what happened other than the fact that I was pushed. But I didn’t know who pushed me into the net. It kinda just all happened really fast. But then after seeing the replay I was confident they would maybe overturn it. Obviously it’s tough being in their rink, and second overtime, and stuff. But I’m glad that they made the right call.

ALINA MÜLLER: Yeah, same. I had no doubt that it was goaltender interference. And I knew- I mean, that’s tough when you get a goal overturned. The momentum is for the other team, for sure. For us.

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REPORTER: Maybe to follow up on that, Alina, or for anyone who wants to take it, how did you guys kind of keep the emotions of that in check? Or did it really feel like you knew that the momentum was going to be in your favor?

ALINA MÜLLER: Yeah, just really saw the play and knew that this could be a good challenge for us, so just try to stay in the game. As I said, I think once it got overturned we had more power, more speed, more legs. So, yeah, it was on our side.

R: Aerin, do you have a thought on that? Like how do you lock-in as the goalie, knowing that the game is either over or you have to go back in?

AERIN FRANKEL: You just gotta force yourself to. You don’t have the option. We made it that far into the 5th overtime, so at that point you’re playing for everyone in our locker room. It’s just a family, so it doesn’t matter how tired you are, but everyone just competes until the job is finished.

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REPORTER: And for Courtney, Aerin has played 7 overtime periods now and hasn’t been scored on yet. What can you say about the way that she’s been able to rise to the occasion in the most important parts of a hockey game?

COURTNEY KESSEL: I think we’ve seen that she’s the Green Monster. Tremendous. I think from the moment we came back from World’s we’ve come back with a different group and the resiliency has been tremendous. They’re gonna kill me, but I think it starts with our goaltending and it starts with Franks. Just her ability to stay calm through all these ups and downs. And her ability to keep us in games and win games for us. And that’s what you want heading into the championship. If you have a hot goalie you can win.

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REPORTER: Aerin, when you first heard of “The Green Monster,” what was your reaction to it?

AERIN FRANKEL: Coach actually sent it to me and I was laughing. I thought it was funny. My teammates have started saying it as a joke. Yeah, I think it’s cool, because Boston’s one of the greatest sports cities and obviously that’s a big part of the history at Fenway Park. So, I think it’s cool. Kudos to whoever thought of that. It’s pretty awesome.

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REPORTER: Alina, congrats on the game winner. Can you take us through what you saw in the play?

ALINA MÜLLER: Uh, yeah. I just tried to put my body against the wall, against the other player, trying to break the puck out and then somehow try to get inside positioning and the puck bounced to me. I think it was a good forecheck and I tried to get it off as quick as I can and as high as I can. I didn’t really see much.

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REPORTER: For either of the players, so when the goal gets taken off you mentioned the word momentum. What is that like to now realize you have this new opportunity? Do you feel like you have the advantage in that moment? Is it a mental thing? Take us in your minds right there.

AERIN FRANKEL: Yeah, I think so. It’s obviously deflating when you’re playing a game this long and you think you score a goal and then you’re celebrating on the ice and it gets called back. I think right away we just kinda hit the reset. We’ve been in overtime so much already this year and we just stuck to the systems that have been working for us this year.

ALINA MÜLLER: Yeah, same. I think the advantage was on our side just from a mental side. It reminded me of the World’s Final, I think it was Finland against the U.S., where the same thing kind of happened. It’s pretty tough if you’re on the other side.

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REPORTER: For Courtney, wondering if you can speak to what you’ve seen from Jessica Digirolamo tonight and through these playoffs?

COURTNEY KESSEL: Yeah, Jess is- it’s funny, I coached her since she was like 13 years old, so it’s pretty special to be standing behind the bench now she's a grown adult. I think her physicality, you know, her physique, her build, is built for this game, this style of hockey. And she’s raised the bar since we’ve been back from World’s. And I’m not surprised at all. I really do think she has all the skills to be on the national team one day if she continues to develop and work hard.

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REPORTER: Do you [Courtney Kessel] have a thought on Alina’s game winner?

COURTNEY KESSEL: I’m not surprised. I’m not sure who I spoke to, yesterday or two days ago, but they asked me who we should be watching out for and I said Müller. She’s just a tremendous 200-foot hockey player that can put the puck in the back of the net. We’ve been waiting for it all year and I know it’s there and I’ve been telling her that it’s there. Just so happy to see that happen and just watch her grow this year, in the first year with this league.

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REPORTER: Alina, your coach talked about your goalie, can you describe just being on the ice with Aerin and what the- if you’re often amazed, do you see all the stuff- you know, just what it’s like and speak to just how much she kept you in the game for the chance at the game winner?

[It might not looks that way, but for the record: this was a beast of a question to transcribe. The reporter was really fumbling on their words here and I had to rewind it a ton to try and get it down right.]

ALINA MÜLLER: Yeah, I mean, she’s the best goalie in this league, in the world. I got the chance to get to know her really well through Nordeastern already. We’re really good friends. I trust her so much. She makes it so much fun in practice too, trying to shoot on her. Just the competitiveness. The fitness, just everything is elite. She deserves all the success there is.

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You know, I said I was hoping Boston would battle back in true Boston-style and sure enough: they did! This game felt very different from the other games this series to me. Reminded me more of how a lot of other playoff games seemed to go...except with a lot more Boston-style physicality.

If anything it has shown once again that you never want to get into a defensive war of attrition with Boston.

And now the shoe's on the other foot. Boston seemed a little defeated after last game and now it's Minnesota's turn. The difference is that Minnesota either refused to do a post-game press session or I just can't find it. So I can't really say how they compare. While I can understand not wanting to talk to the press after something like that, I can't say that it bodes well for their mental state.

[they did do one! It just got posted wicked late for some reason? I dunno. I haven't got a chance to watch it yet, but it exists!]

As the players here noted, it's hard to mentally come back from what Minnesota had to deal with there. It certainly had an effect tonight.

But we'll have to wait until Wednesday to see if they wind up letting it weigh them down or fuel them forward.

We already know you never want to put Boston into a corner. And if Minnesota comes out for blood in Game 5? Should be a spicy end to the finals.

(and hopefully that end is a more decisive, less "what is even happening right now?"-styled one)

[painted-bees]

I just binged through all the HiNote and I love it! I was curious - in a couple posts Margie having siblings is mentioned. I was wondering what her relationship with them was like growing up, and what it's like now?

aw howdy!! thank you for giving Hi-Note some of your time ; 0; it means a tremendous amount to me aaa♡♡♡

Margie's relationship with her siblings has been mostly positive. She and her younger brother are the closest in age, and kinda grew up as each other's best friend. They played videogames and watched anime together, and Benji really enjoyed Margie's music more than anyone else in her life while she was in highschool. They got on each other's nerves plenty while growing up, but took care of each other and enjoyed being around one another for the most part. That hasn't changed. Margie defended and vouched a lot for Benji while he was growing up, and now he tries to do the same for her, where he can.

Her relationship with her older sister was...a bit more distant. Lize was the babysitter... The "mother lite". She was also a bit prissy growing up and wouldn't let her dorky siblings infringe upon the sanctity of her room or touch her stuff. She had like...designated items that she shared with them, but there was always a lot that was off limits. Lize's circle of friends and the circle of friends that Margie and Benji shared--had no overlap what so ever. Elise was a lot more socially adept among her peers than her two younger siblings were among theirs. So she had a lot of friends and enjoyed more """normal""" interests/hobbie with them. Outside of watching movies and quoting funny lines at each other, Benji and Margie didn't share many interests or hobbies with Lize haha

Buuut...Lize was often there for them when it mattered and did/does care about them a lot. But often, whenever there is a moment when Benji and Margie aren't seeing eye to eye with their parents on something, Lize is usually on the parents' side. This holds true even while they are all adults, haha

If you get them all in a room together, there'll be a lot of loud excited banter punctuated with frequent bouts of laughter. They get along pretty well, for the most part! And none of them have any volume control at all, especially when they are excited.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 1/9/2024

the BEAST (phil) has been SPAYED

listening

my sister ALSO, INDPENDENTLY, keeps tuesdayesqe lists in the back of her planner! which is what i used to do before these posts! You Got A Man by JAWNY is off her 2023 playlist. this philly artist's claim to fame seems to be that he dated doja cat for six months? the song is short, bratty, and fun indie/alt not-quite-rap. i have no knowledge of how much the man overlaps with the song. spotify

-

reading

ive never watched supernatural, except by osmosis bc i signed up for this website in 2011. this book is what i imagine people say when they say "what if supernatural was good?"

Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning (her debut) and Storm of Locusts takes Maggie, a typical lone hero/monster hunter/horrible bitch of a woman (i say this approvingly) and says listen! you can do way sicker shit if you like. accept help and community and have a support system. it does not read like booktok found family or approach this in the typical fanfic way, which is refreshing. it points out that you will be a much longer lived and successful monster hunter this way. this is optimization, if you really look at it.

most postapoc stuff doesn’t contend with the fact (if it even acknowledges indigenous people at all) that indigenous people have already lived through several colonizing apocalypses. these books make a very sharp point that there is not a tremendous amount of difference between the reservation before the apocalypse and the reservation after the apocalypse. the worldbuilding in these is a interesting spin on sea levels plus the Energy Wars, to keep all of that at arms' length the Diné built a magical and physical wall, which i think is a funny spin on the trump border wall.

neither of them are really romance or kissing books, there is romantic interest but they are kept extremely busy not dying and admiring each other's competence. they are action and gore heavy. this is notable bc the books are fairly short (took me about two and a half hours each) and they have pretty fuckin good action scenes! the first book has an underground club and fight ring run by a cat god: club atmosphere was terrific (there's a bit about them having to drag in hastily camouflaged cheap walmart tables to handle some overflow and i instantly knew exactly the table), it had a dress up scene I was very weak to. i thought the series of events by which they ended up at the big boss battle post-club was kind of stupid but (forgivably) the big boss battle was quite enjoyable. figuring out what to do with your life next when you’re highly trained for a very specific thing but also not trained enough to be a serious danger and were set up to fail was extremely compelling to me, an astronomy major who cannot actually work in astronomy.

second book really hits its stride and (girl who has only played fallout voice) feels very fallout-y. desperate quest to save a loved one. girls' trip through a bunch of weird places with a bunch of weird guys. there's a lot of references that play with tone without ever going HEY REMEMBER THIS OTHER WORK YOU COULD GO LOOK AT RIGHT NOW? there’s a plane and a weird guy that made me think of mad max thunderdome, except the weird guy is his own character and has his own arc. there’s a weird grandpa on a boat who i don't think is a reference at all, except maybe to the timeless genre of weird grandpas on boats. there’s a sentient casino trapping people inside that reminded me of the new vegas dead money expansion, except Maggie barely steps inside bc she immediately gets caught up in a day-long battle of wits against the god of gambling. Maggie is a little more settled in her own skin now that she’s regularly talking to other people and has rejoined her community in her own small ways on her own terms and it HAS made her a much more successful monster hunter. the dialogue is snappier, the action scenes are more elaborate and smoothly choreographed. it's nice to watch an author grow so quickly (from this is serviceable to oh SHIT this is fun) over the course of a duology :) this feels like it was meant to be a trilogy but this book came out in 2019 so i am not holding my breath. it has a nice solid endpoint right here imo.

past sexual violence is sort of orbited around but no sexual violence is actually depicted, which i appreciate as a woman trying to enjoy postapoc.

libby has a very helpful Indigenous Voices category/reading guide/thing. thank u libby now i want to read everything else she's ever written

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watching

saw a piece of fanart i cannot find now for the three minute short PUPARIA by Shingo Tamagawa.

Something is about to change drastically. We can only be witnesses to it.

it's a weird and stunningly beautiful little thing i am still worrying at like a dog with a peanut butter kong. if you have a thing about eyes or clusters of round shapes this is NOT the three minute short for you btw

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playing

the free epic game was the Eidos Montreal Guardians of the Galaxy game, and since i am allergic to dead moms i will not be playing it. widely reviewed as "good writing, but not very much fun to actually play" so i don't feel like i'm missing out on too much.

i have no good story to tell about my time with genshin this week. we're aiming for "can i turn my brain off for forty minutes in the evening" and grinding a lot of one specific boss while listening to podcasts does seem to be enough to turn my brain off.

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making

i have been frantically deep cleaning (including soaking the office in enzymatic cleaner [thanks phil]) bc my siblings are coming to town for a couple days and despite several setbacks (a completely different arrival time than the one they told me) and absolutely no sense of an itinerary we will be fine! we will all be fine and have fun! i will be SO fine and calm and chill and we will all have some fucking fun so help us god

ALSO also phil has finally been spayed and is now dealing with four separate issues: the giant wound still on her side, the spay incision, the necrotic abscess in her mouth from going too hard on a springy toy, and being underweight from trying to heal three things at once. we'll get there! we'll get there. it's just taking a while. we are going to have friday afternoon vet visits every week for the foreseeable future.

i love her so much and i'm glad she's feeling better but i genuinely think owning a horse would be cheaper than owning this one wonky cat. they shaved SO much of her tummy she looks even sillier than usual.

other than being Very Alert for the persistent little orange tomcat that keeps hopping up on my windowsill, mackie is doing fine. no concept of the fact that my siblings are going to pick her up more in two days than she gets picked up in a whole month. this is a girl that likes her feet on the ground thanks much