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joezworld · 4 years

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📁

Specifically, any headcanons of the Sodor Engines interacting with the internet, or the internet in general?

For some reason, I’d imagine that podcasts and the like are popular among vehicles in general.

That is a question that I've been working on for some time - because I'm workshopping my own Tornado headcanon (and boy oh boy does she use the internet a lot) - but I have some ideas for the Sodor engines as well:

Henry is probably the most "plugged in" engine on the island, weirdly enough. One of his drivers gave him an iPod back in the early 2000s, and kindly preloaded it with a bunch of torrented music.

BTW, that works because all the engines are now equipped with automatic train warning systems, and the little on-board computer has a USB port - as a nice side effect it allows music players to work with the engines in the same way as bone-conducting headphones do. The computer also acts as some kind of computer interface, which I am not going to explain how that works because Jesus Christ I don’t know how it does either.

Henry has managed to upgrade his iPod a few times since thanks to hand-me-down units from NWR staff, so he eventually got his buffers on a wifi-enabled iPod Touch and now downloads new music from the station wifi. He does listen to podcasts, but as every other engine will tell you, you could show Henry ten thousand new and exciting songs from the best artists in the world, and his top ten played songs are still going to be Genesis, Phil Collins, and Yes. Bear considers it a win that he managed to convince Henry to regularly listen to Rush after a mere twenty years of convincing.

Mavis and Daisy listen to a very interesting program called The News, because as stated elsewhere, they invest a shitload of money and need to be on top of things. Thomas and Percy wish that Daisy would use headphones or something similar to that, instead of listening to Bloomberg TV at loud volumes in the middle of the night. Toby frankly doesn’t mind, as it’s very nice to be kept up-to-date on the outside world.

In a move that surprises no-one, Bill and Ben have a podcast where they talk about whatever they think about at that moment - usually horse-racing, investing, and clay mining. As such, they have a wide audience, almost none of whom know that they’re that Bill and Ben, as their podcast is audio-only.

In an also unsurprising move, Edward and BoCo have been made very much aware that Bill and Ben have a podcast, but are still unsure as to what the hell a podcast is, despite being frequent guests on it.

Of the main line diesels, only Bear has shown any real interest in the internet, and was immediately put in charge of the Amazon Alexa when a unit was installed in the diesel shed. He also has an iPod that he got for Christmas a few years back. (The NWR has a very good personal electronics recycling program called give it to Henry, he’ll make use it.)

Bear does listen to podcasts as well as music, but his choices are so insufferably boring that even Henry refuses to listen to them. (I don’t really listen to podcasts - despite making one - so insert the most boring podcast you can think of here.)

As for other internet uses...

Gordon is very up-to-date on the newest social media trends - somehow - but only really cares when he is involved. He won’t admit it, but he’s been trying to figure out how to work a camera/selfie stick for some time so he can start up his own Instagram account. So far he has been unsuccessful, but one day he will manage it.

James has had an ongoing feud with his own Wikipedia page for about a decade now. The article sourced most of its information about his construction off of some out-of-print book about the L&Y. The book in question is accurate about James’ class, but not James himself - as he was a prototype engine. There’s no other primary sources available, so the very dedicated Wikipedia mod who created the page won’t change it - no matter how much James complains that he was there! He knows what happened!

Every now and again a TTTE fan blog/tumblr will make a post about hypothetical “ships” of the Sodor engines. Most of the time it’s shipping the core characters like Gordon and Henry, much to Gordon’s bafflement and Henry’s amusement!

Only one blog (a ttte fan tumblr by the curious name of @mean-scarlet-deceiver ) has gotten it right. Henry actually reached out to congratulate this blogger, but was unfortunately mistaken for a very dedicated roleplay account.

James is very annoyed by these blogs, as they have never once correctly guessed who he is “shipped” with! He has tried several times to be seen in public with Delta, but these events have never gone as planned - the “best” instance is when Edward rolled by at exactly the wrong moment, leading to months of speculation that JamesxEdward was the ship to look out for!

Thomas, being a generally oblivious sort of engine, was totally unaware of the online fan community around the TV show until he started getting actively harassed by vloggers and Instagrammers in the early 2010s. He’s fine with it now, but it was a deeply unusual experience for most of 2012.

Toby has developed an unexpectedly popular following on social media following his collab with Stormzy. His official twitter is huge now, with over a million followers, even if he has no idea what to do with it. He posts rarely, but usually manages to make an incredible post when he does.

No-one is sure who told Oliver what a “fan-production” is, but if you manage to get ahold of him for any period of time and ask him nicely, he will lend his voice to your TTTE fan-project, so long as it isn’t about [INSERT TERRIBLE SOCIAL/POLITICAL VIEW(S) HERE]. This means that he has 100% voiced dramatic readings of NSFW Fanfics before, which is always an absolute riot to spring on people unannounced.

There is a series of slice-of-life TTTE fanfics on Ao3 that have been written with such accuracy and innate railway knowledge that people are sure it was written by a Sodor engine, but nobody knows which one.

The Culdee Fell Railway has very active Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts, with all of the engines and coaches showing up regularly. It’s about the closest any of the railways on Sodor have come to what those outside the UK would call “normal locomotive social media”.

The Skarloey Railway has social media accounts too, but they don’t really feature the engines in any meaningful way, instead being used as a normal service announcements page.

The SR is a real working railway that doesn’t rely on tourism money as much as the others do, so they get a bit of a pass here.

The Arlesdale Railway has Twitter and YouTube, which didn’t usually get a lot of hits until 2020, when Ivan and Amanda Farrier started badgering the staff to make some videos just to alleviate some boredom. So far the most popular videos on the channel are a front-mounted camera video of the entire line slow-tv style, Bert explaining how steam engines work, and a video of Mike complaining about Justin Bieber for a solid half-hour.

That’s about it as far as Sodor goes, but before we’re done, I want to take a moment to talk about Tornado, because I have some fun ideas for her...

First of all, we need to establish that Tornado is very young. Her construction only started in late 90′s, and she was steamed to life in 2000, putting her firmly into the “Zoomer” category. Add in the fact that she was built by a bunch of old men who didn’t really know how to treat a new engine, and she was raised much more like a human than a locomotive - I’ll get to this much more in the proper Tornado Headcanon post, but what this means here is that when social media started being a thing in the mid-to-late 2000′s, the people at the A1 Trust decided that they needed a young person to run things like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace... and, well, Tornado was the youngest person in the trust by a large margin.

I should state here that in the rest of the world, locomotives are on the internet at roughly the same level as humans are, so there’s plenty of equipment to connect a phone/computer/camera to an engine - being English, the A1 Trust didn’t know how common it was, but they managed to get it up and running just the same.

So Tornado has very quickly become attuned to the internet, just like any other teenager would. (yes, let’s let that settle into our minds for a moment - Tornado is barely old enough to drink in the US!) Quite naturally that means that she knows social media inside and out, and is actually quite a proficient social media manager for the trust, managing all of their social pages. More than one person who has complained about the trust on twitter has unknowingly been complaining to Tornado herself!

“On the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog Engine”.

Tornado has her own personal social media accounts too, but most/all of the time she gets mistaken for a very dedicated role-player, as the general perception of British Locomotives is that they don’t tweet. This has resulted in some amazing reactions from podcast hosts (because, as you might expect, Tornado is very knowledgeable about steam traction in the 21st century, and tweets about it often, so train podcasts want to talk to her) when she gets invited onto video calls, turns on her webcam, and is met with screams from people who suddenly realize that her profile picture is accurate.

By far the best instance of this is when she was invited onto a video call with a railfan podcast. She was at the NRM at the time and managed to convince them to let her use their Skype setup. A wide-angle lens was needed because she was on the turntable in the Great Hall, so that podcast quickly got sidetracked when her webcam was turned on and revealed Tornado, with Mallard, Evening Star, City of Truro, and Green Arrow visible behind her. Whatever the original topic was quickly got thrown out in favor of a 2-hour Q&A with some of the most famous engines in the UK.

#ask response #the internet #ttte thomas #ttte toby #ttte bill and ben #ttte gordon #ttte daisy #ttte mavis #ttte henry #ttte bear #ttte oliver #tornado #nrm #trains using the internet #ttte #sodor #sodor shenangians #the formatting on this one is super fucked up and i can't figure out how to fix it - sorry

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goodlucktai · 4 years

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Could you write prompt 88 for natsume yuujjncho?

PROMPTS LIST

88. “That’s definitely not true.” “Of course it is. I read it on Wikipedia.”

Tooru is being her usual, relentlessly supportive self. Takashi would appreciate it any other time.

“I really don’t want to go on a date with your coworker,” he tells her for the third time.

“The best way to get over an unrequited love is to date for fun!” Tooru says with unfounded confidence.

To Takashi’s knowledge, Tooru has been comfortably aromantic for as long as Takashi has known her, so he has no idea where this apparent expertise is coming from and he’s somewhat afraid to find out.

“That’s definitely not true,” he says, attempting reason.

“Of course it is! I read it on Wikipedia.”

Behind Tooru, Kaname is giving Takashi a look of deep sympathy. Takashi closes his eyes, fortifying himself, and says, “Tooru-- ”

“Well, okay, it was a WikiHow article. But it was really well-reasoned!” She leans forward on her elbows, looking at him with wide, earnest eyes. “If this person you like won’t give you the time of day, forget about them! Go on a date with Hideki. You’ll have fun.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Takashi says weakly. “It’s not as though I told them I’m in love with them. They didn’t reject me. I’m not… pining.”

If anything, he’s regretting bringing up his hopeless infatuation in the first place. He fully blames Katsumi and one too many drinks over dinner last night. What had been a safe, if uncomfortable, secret for the last four years has somehow become an open discussion between three of his closest friends.

He’s deeply, exhaustively relieved he didn’t slip up and tell them who.

Tooru frowns at him.

“That’s another thing. Why are you so certain you’re not a total catch? I showed Hideki a picture of you and he, like, literally swooned. If you’d just tell this person you’re in love with them, they’d probably be over the moon.”

Takashi feels himself flush. Kaname is smiling at him now, gently but not without humor. He, at least, understands how strange the idea is that someone could look at him and see something worth having. Lucky for Kaname, Katsumi is both more stubborn than a mountain spirit and extremely vocal about the things he wants.

“I have an idea,” Tooru says brightly. She stands up, rounds the table, and offers Takashi her hand. “Come with me.”

With a deep sense of dread, Takashi takes her hand, and allows himself to be tugged out of the kitchen, past the sitting room where Kaname is half-rising from his chair with the look of someone with no idea how to stop this train wreck from happening but with every intention of giving it his best shot, and up the stairs.

She taps on the study door and slides it open. Satoru glances up from his laptop, paperwork spread across the desk beside him. He smiles when he sees who it is, shutting his computer halfway and giving them his full attention, the way he’s done since they were kids.

He always puts his friends first. It’s one of the first things Takashi loved about him.

“What are you two troublemakers up to?” he asks cheerfully. “Bring a new ghost home or something?”

“No ghosts today,” Tooru says. “We actually have a romance problem to solve.”

Something flickers in Satoru’s expression, but his smile doesn’t give an inch. “Oh? Do tell.”

“Takashi is in love with someone who doesn’t love him back,” she explains, to the very last person in the entire world Takashi would prefer she explained this to. “He doesn’t seem to realize that anybody would be lucky to date him. He won’t listen to me, so I figured he might listen to you.”

Satoru looks like a bird caught in wire, eyes round, body very still. “Um,” he says, aiming for a laugh and falling short, “why would he listen to me?”

“Well, you had a crush on him in high school,” Tooru says reasonably, as if she turns the world upside down on a regular basis, and it really isn’t that exciting. “So you’ll be able to tell him all his good points.”

For a second, everyone sits there and stares at each other. Takashi’s heart is beating so loud he thinks Kaname can probably hear it downstairs. Satoru is the first one to look away, hands doing the nervous fluttering they do when he’s about one minute away from a spiral.

“Yeah, I could definitely do that,” he says, too fast, a little too quiet, “um, but maybe later? I have to finish this paper, it’s worth half my grade in sociology, and the first draft is due tonight. It’s gonna be a whole thing. Might take awhile.”

Tooru is one of the smartest people Takashi has ever had the privilege of knowing, even if she can be kind of oblivious about some things that other girls are like bloodhounds for, and he sees it when she realizes she made a big mistake.

Her hands fly to her mouth. She’s apologizing, so fast the words break and stumble over each other, and Takashi gets the sense that this has been something of an open secret for a long time. That Satoru probably talked about it every now and then in a cheerful past-tense. That Tooru probably reasonably assumed that Takashi knew, since everyone else did.

Satoru seems as though he’s seriously contemplating the window as a means of escape, so Takashi says, “Tooru, can we have a minute?”

She looks ready to cry, so he presses her hand.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Really. I just need a minute.”

When she’s gone, flying back down the stairs by the sound of things, Takashi looks at Satoru. His best friend. His first friend. The first person who saw a strange transfer student who jumped at shadows and talked in whispers and decided there was something there worth knowing. The first person who took him by the hand and kept finding reasons not to let him go.

Satoru flinches when Takashi scoots over closer to him. He looks one step shy of humiliated.

“You had a crush on me back then?” Takashi asks gently.

“Kind of obvious, Bakashi,” Satoru mutters. “Everybody did. I’m the only one who didn’t know better.”

There’s something unfolding inside him that hurts to be trapped inside him, pressing against the walls and corridors that make up his heart as though searching for a window or a door or a crack to sneak through, too big to be contained.

Takashi borrows the same bravery that led him up mountains and across rivers and through fires when he was a child, and says, “I had a crush on you, too.”

Satoru’s head snaps up. He’s always been quick to cry, more emotional on a good day than Tooru and Katsumi at their very worst combined, and that hasn’t changed now that they’re in university. His mouth wobbles for a moment.

“Oh,” he says, with the kind of wonder and defeat better suited someone who just saw a fleeting vision of everything they ever wanted.

Takashi puts his hand on the desk, palm-up. After a beat, Satoru takes it. He always takes it.

“I still do,” Takashi admits.

“Oh,” Satoru says again, but this time he loses the battle not to start bawling over his homework.

The door rattles open with force, and Kaname is there with Tooru hovering fretfully at his shoulder, and he says, “Satchan, please don’t cry, Atsushi will kill us all. Even if none of us tell him, he’ll just know. It’s okay, we still love you, Takashi still loves you.”

Satoru buries his face in his free hand, shoulders shaking. It’s really not fair for them to have ambushed him like this, and Atsushi really will be angry when he gets home from his lecture and uses his unnerving psychic powers to find out that someone made Satoru cry, but Takashi is grinning so hard it hurts. His hand wrapped tight around Satoru’s feels the same as it always has.

“Yeah,” Takashi says, more easily than he would have thought possible even an hour ago. “I still do.”

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #nishinatsu #natsume takashi #taki tooru #tanuma kaname #nishimura satoru #shibata katsumi #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic #me making nishimura cry: someone hold that boy this INSTANT #kitamoto can tell when nishimura has been crying from like a mile away #and his wrath is uncontested #even nyanko sensei dips when nishi gets teary #wanna find a home (wanna share it with you)

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opbackgrounds · 4 years

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So I read the Ace Novel (Part 2)

I’m going to be level with you, if I hadn’t said I was going to do a write up for the novel, I don’t think I would have finished this one. The first fifty or so pages are terribly boring, and while it picks up considerably toward the end, I don’t think I can recommend it, for one reason and one reason only:

It reads like a freaking wikipedia article. And I hate it.

I described Part 1 of the Ace novel like three separate one shots with the barest hint of continuity between them. That’s not the case this time around, as most of what it covers are events mentioned in the manga: The fight with Jinbe, Ace’s 100 battles with Whitebeard, Ace formally joining the Whitebeard Pirates. Comparatively speaking, that’s a lot of canon material to get through. Consequently, it’s also quite a bit longer than Part 1, about 200 pages.

(some of those pages happen to be longer than others)

(yes this made me literally laugh out loud)

The problem is there is a metic ton of manga recap that has nothing to do with this novel, especially in chapters 1 and 2. This was baffling to me, as it seems unlikely that someone would pick up a One Piece magazine (where the novel was originally published) or a One Piece side story without bing familiar with the manga. Yet concepts like the Four Emperors, Celestial Dragons, and even the Grand Line were laid out in meticulous detail.

I am going to be unfair for a moment and compare the Ace novels to my favorite spin-off series of all time, the Kyoshi duology that takes place in the Avatar universe.

Unlike the Ace novels, they take place several centuries before the main series, so there aren’t a lot of plot details that overlap with the animated series in the way the Ace novels do to the main manga. What is in common, however, isn’t repeated. Nowhere in the two Kyoshi books does she learn the story about Avatar Wan or any of the same lore details that are important to Aang and Korra’s stories. Instead it expands on the world building details laid out in the main series and deepens them.

For example, do you want to know how the Fire Nation royalty got so good at lightning bending, or how the greater Earth Kingdom political landscape works? Read book 1. Do you want to know how the Fire Nation went from a fractured clan system to a strong centralized government or how advanced water bending healing techniques work? Read book 2. It’s exposition that fleshes out the system already in place, rather than retreading what’s already been established.

Part 2 of the Ace novel does this a little bit when it develops the Pirate Code, something that has never mentioned in the manga, and even if it was Luffy’s not the sort of character that’s going to care to adhere to it. The strongest portion of the novel shows Ace going out on a mission on Whitebeard’s behalf, showing some of what it’s like to maintain the vast territories that he keeps under his flag.

But mostly...mostly it’s just recap. Literally the entire Fishman Island backstory is written out in some of the blandest narration I’ve ever read, paragraphs upon paragraphs talking about Queen Otohime and Fisher Tiger and the civil unrest of the Ryugu Kingdom, including but not limited to Vander Decken stalking Shirahoshi and her subsequent imprisonment in the royal tower.

There’s also the wholesale recycling of gags straight from the manga that 1) don’t necessarily work as well in written format, and 2) show no originality or creativity on the part of the author. In my opinion, recurring gags are funniest when a writer can contrive different variations and circumstances around the base joke. Instead we get scenes like this beat-for-beat copy of Ace’s narcolepsy gag in Alabasta, down to using the waitress’s skirt as a napkin

I noticed in Part 1 that the author had snuck some canon elements in, such as Deuce and Ace building Striker—the one man, fire-powered boat he showed off in Alabasta—when I personally didn’t think either of them were smart enough to think up, let alone construct, anything that sophisticated. I didn’t mention it in my previous write up because there are a lot of fans that enjoy those kind of Easter eggs, and it’s a novel that runs on manga logic so it’s not exactly breaking my suspension of disbelief either. It was a minor quibble that didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment.

But the story of Fishman Island is at best tangentially related to the events of the novel. The only reason Fishman Island is important at all is because Ace decides to burn down Whitebeard’s flag on his way into the New World.

Which brings me to perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel: Ace himself.

Even in the manga, you can make the case that there are two Aces, the happy-go-lucky, cool, and mysterious older brother of Luffy seen at Alabasta/post-Enies Lobby, and the angsty, existentially depressed young man with daddy issues that shows up during Impel Down/Marineford.

The novel leans much closer to the latter. More than I expected it to. The Ace of Part 2 is hotheaded and a bit of a jackass. Whereas Luffy tends to go after people he has a personal beef with, Ace specifically targets Whitebeard because he was the closest to Roger, and he thinks that defeating Whitebeard will somehow bring him fame greater than his father. He ignores the concerns of his crew and the repeated warnings about how Emperors control vast armies...because of daddy issues. The novel goes out of his way that Ace’s dreams made him better suited to be a Revolutionary than a pirate, and it’s only because of his childhood promise that he became a pirate at all. It wasn’t something born out of true conviction or desire.

Laying it out like that, it might seem like this is a negative, but to me it’s one of the most interesting things the novel has to offer. I thought Part 1 worked best when it acted as a character study for Deuce, Ace, and the marine girl whose name I have already forgotten, focusing on how Ace brought together degenerates unwanted by even other degenerates. The same is true here: Once the exposition dumps are over and the focus returns to the titular character, the author is able to dig a little bit deeper into into Ace’s psyche, and he takes it in a direction I didn’t expect, but was consistent with his manga portrayal.

I just wish I could have seen a little bit more of it.

And speaking of characters I wish I had seen more of, after focusing so much on Deuce and Marine Girl in Part 1, they have a much reduced role in Part 2. In fact, Marine Girl isn’t seen or mentioned even once, which I thought was kind of strange. I guess I don’t see the point in putting so much effort was put into her only for her to be thrown away without even a cameo. Likewise, after spending Part 1 as the principal POV character, Deuce is set aside for Thatch and Teach. Whether that’s a good or bad thing will depend largely on how much you enjoy those individual characters.

I don’t say this often, but these are books that can be judged by their covers. Part 1, Ace is more jovial—the burning flame that attracts others to his greatness—while introducing two major new characters to his journey. Part 2, Ace is grim and angry—the dark, smoldering flame burning with the desire to destroy the system that would have killed him for being the wrong man’s son—while focusing much more on the Whitebeard Pirates and what makes them great.

It’s an interesting contrast, the two sides of Ace’s character as seen in the manga given a little bit of limelight. But damn if it wasn’t tedious to get through.

#long post #opbackgrounds #ace novel #analysis #review

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illfoandillfie · 4 years

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ok sorry but how many people do yall think rog has ever slept with cos i’m guessing four figures no lie

okay, i don’t normally respond to messages like this because, frankly, i dont really feel like its my place to speculate on roger’s sex life. Theres a difference between writing a fiction story with a character named after and inspired by him and discussing his actual personal life which i have no real knowledge about. What he gets up to in his free time is between him and the women he does it with. but i didn’t really feel able to ignore this one. please don’t take this as me telling you off or shutting you down or anything like that. If you want to speculate about roger’s body count thats up to you, go nuts with it. and i love when you guys message me and I don’t want to discourage you from feeling like you can talk to me or just send me your random thoughts or whatever about any subject. But I feel like I need to address why I disagree with this sentiment. Also so I can ask ya’ll to please stop asking me questions like this.

So firstly, just to get this out of the way. 1000 is a lot. even 100 is a lot. I think if rog had slept with 1000+ people he’d have a least a few illegitimate kids and probably would have been checked into rehab for sex addiction (not to mention STIs and such because lbr people in the 70s specifically probs werent the most careful especially if drugs were involved). I mean even if we were going to say Rog got lucky with a different woman after every show we wouldn’t reach 1000. According to google, Queen played around 700 shows in their entire career. If we add shows played by The Cross thats only another 67 odd shows (according to wikipedia).

now, i think there are 3 things that contribute to this idea of roger as especially promiscuous. 1. His attitude/demeanour/general way he sells himself. 2. the generally held conceptions about rock stars and rock star behaviour. and 3. what i’m going to call fandom dumbassery (but i mean that with a lot of love)

So lets start with the man himself. Roger Taylor is loud and opinionated and not particularly humble. He knows he’s talented and attractive though for at least some time he was a little self-conscious about how feminine he looked. He’s always up for a laugh, likes to party and has admitted to enjoying his drink and his women. He’s had kids with two different women, who’s relationships “overlapped”, and is currently married to a third. At least that’s the perception we can gleam from his interviews, behind the scenes videos, and other public appearances.

It’s easy to see how that image leads to accusations of being a womaniser and a cheater and basically a bit of a slut lmao. But here’s the thing. I think Roger, in part, markets himself that way. The thing is, if you look at his solo songs and the relationships he currently has with his kids and their mothers, and things other people have said about him/his relationships over the years, I think it’s fair to say he also has a bit of a romantic streak maybe? idk if thats the best way of describing it...he’s self confessed to not being a fan of marriage and the like but he’s not opposed to writing and singing love songs and seems to believe in ~love~ as a concept/power. He certainly cares deeply for those closest to him. Whether or not that translates to an agreement with monogamy I can’t say for certain. It’s hard to draw conclusions here because a lot of what we know of his personal life was fed to us through magazines and news paper gossip column articles and they were never looking for the truth, they were looking for scandal and sensationalism.

For instance the whole thing with the overlapping relationships. I think most people who have read anything about roger and dom and debbie realise that it’s not as cut and dry as “he was cheating with debbie and left dom for her” even though that was the story being sold by the press at the time. The reality (or at least the version closer to reality since obviously no one outside of them and whoever they were closest with knows all the nitty gritty details) is that rog and dom had already split when they got married. it was a marriage of convenience to make sure her and the kids would be looked after financially etc even after he’d moved out. So while it looked to the public like he married one chick and 30 odd days later was spotted with another, there really wasn’t anything untoward happening. I’m not saying he never had casual hookups or one night stands and i’m not saying he never cheated, but I do think some of it’s been exaggerated, whether by him to encourage the rock star perception or by newspaper/magazine articles.

Now, obviously, we have stories of rog, particularly in the late 60s and into the 70s, being with multiple women. There’s that bit in the Interview with a Queen “Groupie” (which is a fantastic read and i defs recommend checking it out if you havent already) where she talks about roger being a chick magnet and says that, at the time, it was pretty common to sleep about. But, she also says she didnt notice him doing it more or less than anyone else and seemed to mostly be with Jo (his girlfriend at the time). This is the same Jo that got a mention in the Queen in 3D book (”i think we all had the feeling that these two were together for life, but it was not to be”). Conversely, we have that quote (which i cannot find rn but i’ll link it when i do) about roger sometimes having one girl upstairs while another waited in the garage for them to be finished. I think it was about Rog in the mid-late 60s in Truro but whatever. Obviously he wasn’t anywhere near celibate and it’s likely was sleeping with people outside of his relationship(s). But one has to assume that as he got older those kinds of antics stopped happening, at least as frequently.

There is one potential story that I remember reading somewhere along the way about Roger cheating on Debbie while she was pregnant. But, take that with a grain of salt because I can’t find the article again and also I think it was from like The Sun or something equally as rubbish. The press was notoriously always printing mean shit about the boys and that might have been another thing they published to create scandal. Even so, if we assume it’s legit that is still only 1 story. Not to throw him under the bus but Brian is the one with multiple confirmed affairs, who literally wrote songs about it all. So why is Roger the one with sleazy reputation?

This is where my second and third points come in. There is a pervasive idea about what it means to be a rock star. The whole trashing hotel rooms, sleeping with groupies, passing out drunk every night thing. And I’m sure that Queen was like that to an extent. I think it’s pretty common knowledge that all of them got up to shit on the road. Between innuendo laden interviews and songs, videos and accounts of their parties, stories CT has put online, and other stories like the one of Roger bringing out lines of coke as dessert when he was having dinner with motley crue. They definitely embraced the rock and roll lifestyle. And I think with Roger’s personality being what it is, it’s easy to link him to those traditional rock star tropes and say it was all true all the time. I also think Roger has done nothing to counter those beliefs. He’s been open about how he wanted to be a rock star since the minute he picked up a guitar, he’s labelled himself as a great lay in magazines, he’s joked about girls pulling their tits out over dinner in interviews (though he said he didnt take her home), he’s written songs like One Night Stand and Dirty Mind and Airheads which explicitly mention his preference for women and alcohol. I think it’s fair to say he’s kind of encouraged that view of himself. Whether it was just a side effect of being part of such a well known band and having such a boisterous demeanour/personality, or whether it was intentional as a version of promotion i don’t know. maybe a mix of them? I mean I’m sure it didn’t hurt sales and stuff. it’s the whole guys want to be him, girls want to be with him thing, right? Maybe that’s just me being cynical though lmao.

Anyway, the fandom brain has taken all of that and compressed it into memes and jokes about rog being the band slut. Which i’m not complaining about, lord knows i’ve made the same jokes and reblogged the same posts and used those tropes in my fics. They’re funny and lend themselves to interesting fic concepts. Plus, i think roger is the sort of person who would probably laugh about most of it. But it’s an idea that keeps feeding into itself through fandom, perpetuating what is probably a misguided view of his personal life.

Again, I am sure he’s had his fair share of fun and I’m not trying to make out that he was always perfect or whatever, but I don’t think he’s been with as many women as the popular discourse would imply and I certainly don’t think he’s in the 4 digit numbers.

#i7558vjvug #please god dont let this start anything #im just here to write smut and have a good time

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afternoonpoppy · 4 years

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Camping

Poppy awakens from her slumber, aaaaaa! This was for a commission but also something I’d wanted to sit down and write for a looong while, so this finally got me to do it and I’m glad for that. This turned out longer than I expected but I had fun writing it, so I hope it turned out well!

A bit of a chill had started to creep into the night air, but Allister hardly minded at all. Being sat by a modestly-sized campfire with Wolfram beside him, there was plenty of warmth to go around. And besides, Allister was camping again!

Sort of, anyway - it was honestly more of a meetup with friends for the evening, and they weren't even more than a twenty-minute walk from Allister's house. But the group had gotten a fire together, brought out a cooler with drinks, and even found some sizable logs to sit on. Allister preferred fold-out chairs, but his cousin Sadie had insisted it would make the whole night more 'authentic.' Plus, it did allow Wolfram and Allister to sit closer together. In all, they'd ended up with about nine people gathered together, some of them being mutual friends of Allister and Sadie, with others being acquaintances invited by said friends. The total was 'about' nine since Allister's coworker Vincent had shouted that they were going on an impromptu snack-run to the nearest convenience store thirty minutes ago.

"Honestly, I don't know what she was expecting to happen," Sadie was saying very emphatically from across the campfire. While the group had split off into their own conversations and activities, she'd recruited Allister and Wolfram into listening to the evening's third rant about the obnoxious roommate she'd been putting up with for the past while. "Like, she was gonna yell at me and then just expect me to finish cleaning up the apartment for her? I am under no obligation to do her laundry, thank you very much."

Marcus, the other of Allister's two coworkers that had been invited, walked over to take a seat by the fire just in time to catch what was being discussed and followed up with, "I mean, you gotta remember, Sadie. This is the same girl that thought she'd just hand in a Wikipedia article for one of her college assignments. You think she thinks this stuff through?"

Allister's eyebrows furrowed as he stared into the fire and tried to parse that statement. "Wait, as in she plagiarized a Wikipedia article, right?" Surely Marcus hadn't literally meant -

"I mean, I guess it's still plagiarism if you download an entire Wikipedia page and send it to your professor, yeah."

Oh. Allister nodded, struggling for something to say to that, but quickly gave up. Even if that anecdote weren't so absurd that it demanded speechlessness, he'd been content to let his friends steer the conversations of the night. Allister was just glad to hear what they'd been up to as of late, as well as to have a chance to sit outside and enjoy the wilderness. Crickets chirped in the trees of the woods and stars coated the sky up above, making a beautiful sight.

That sight had been one of his favorite things about moving out here from the city. The other being that he'd been able to meet Wolfram. Wolfram who had spent the first part of the evening nearly dozing off by the fire after the walk to the group's meetup spot, but looked to have regained some energy now that he'd been sitting down for a while. He hadn't bothered to take part in the conversation much either and had also been focusing on either the fire or the stars for most of the night. Allister wasn't very surprised, though. Considering this was the first time Wolfram had properly interacted with... anyone else in this world in person, Allister was just glad to get him out of the house. Getting into the car was still a no-go, but perhaps that would be another day.

"So, Wolfram, what do you do, anyway? You work, doing the whole 'actually trying to learn' thing, what?" Sadie asked abruptly, apparently letting the previous topic rest for now. "I don't think Allister's ever mentioned."

Allister's eyes widened and he glanced at Wolfram. The two had long ago decided not to mention the whole... 'magic and other worlds' situation to other people for any number of reasons. Not least of all being concerns as to what sort of attention Wolfram would draw as a (somewhat, at least) practiced spellcaster. It wasn't as if the pair hadn't discussed what their cover story would be to other people, but it hadn't come up very much as of yet and Allister couldn't help but worry.

Still, Wolfram seemed unphased by the question and smoothly answered, "I'm a writer. Primarily focusing on short fiction at the moment."

"Whoa, cool," Sadie said with a grin. "What do you write, like, romance, fantasy, sci-fi? Romance? I'm into romance if you've got any of that."

"Apologies, no. It is fantasy, my current project is a series of stories taking place in the same setting, so right now much of my time working on it is spent on world-building."

Allister was impressed at Wolfram's confidence in that answer. Sadie nodded, reaching into the cooler near her for a drink. "Neat. I don't actually read a whole lot, so no promises, but I'll try and give it a look when it's done. Either of you guys wants a beer?" She held up an extra can and tapped on the side with one nail.

"No, thank you," Wolfram said.

Allister shrugged. "Yeah, sure, I'll have one."

Sadie aimed to toss it to Allister but realized the fire between them might pose a problem. Rather than stand up and walk around it, she settled for instead trying to throw the can around the fire at an awkward angle, which resulted in it flying off to the side and rolling across the ground a bit. Marcus stared at Sadie with eyebrows raised.

"Uh, I think we can let that one settle there for a while," Allister said, standing from his seat to grab a can from the cooler. "Let's not ask you to throw things when you've had alcohol."

Sadie objected by holding up her freshly-opened can and saying, "Hey, this is my first one, Alli!"

"That was a sober throw?" Wolfram asked.

"Wait, shit. Okay, yeah, let's say I was drunk for that."

For a while longer, the conversation shifted back and forth through various topics among the group. Eventually, though, Allister glanced over to the trees around the campsite. He leaned closer to Wolfram and asked, "Hey, you wanna go for a walk?"

"A walk?" Wolfram leaned against Allister's shoulder. "Where did you intend to go?"

"Nowhere, in particular. I just wanted to stretch my legs and get away from the fire for a bit. We don't gotta go far."

Wolfram thought for a moment, then said, "We walked here and have to do so again to get home, so I would rather not. Feel free to enjoy yourself, though, so long as you don't end up lost."

"You sure?"

"I'm not frightened of people, Allister," Wolfram said with a smile. "I can handle any questions your cousin directs at me. Either that or I can ask her something about her housemate and let her talk for another thirty minutes."

"Hmm, I guess so. Alright then, if you're sure. I'll make sure I can still see the fire anyway." Allister stood up, stretching a bit, noting that Sadie and Marcus had both wandered off to the rest of the group and were yelling into someone's phone at Vincent, demanding they return from whatever had distracted them on their snack run. Allister had meant to tell them he'd be back shortly but figured he wouldn't disrupt anything if he just stepped away from the campsite.

Once he'd gotten some distance away, he noticed how quiet it was out in the woods. He hadn't been aware of the background noise his social circle's chatter made until he could hear the contrast in nature's quiet cricket chirps. It was nice out here. Much more Allister's pace than when he lived out in the city with his family, but this was the first time he'd taken the time to stop and appreciate it even after moving out here.

He leaned back against a tree, occasionally sipping the beer he'd brought with him, and started searching the stars for any constellations he knew. The answer was none, he'd always been terrible at telling constellations apart and never knew where one ended and another began, but at least they were pretty.

Allister's thoughts were interrupted, unfortunately, as a strong hiccup shook through his chest. 'HUP!' He raised a hand to his chest in surprise and instinctively tried to muffle the next 'HMK!' to follow, his own hiccups startling him as they broke the silence.

"Why n - HULP - now..." he mumbled to himself. As usual, Allister's hiccups were fast and obnoxiously loud. Considering it was almost unheard of for his cases to start up with no reason, he cast an accusatory look at the beer can in his hand. "Thi - HUC - this is you - HIC - your fault - HUC-UP!" He sighed - or tried to with yet another hiccup interrupting - and turned his attention back up to the stars.

Allister had planned to try to wait out his hiccups in the hopes they'd stop on their own. He preferred not to return to the party only to be a distraction for everyone. Unfortunately, he did wait for some time, looking back at the campfire now and then and eventually checking his phone to see that almost fifteen minutes had passed. It was becoming apparent that just the same as the hiccups didn't typically start without reason, they wouldn't stop on their own anytime soon either.

Allister grimaced at that thought. He had wanted to be back by now, but here he was instead, without even so much as a bottle of water to try to solve the problem. He hated what he was contemplating, but he hated leaving Wolfram on his own even more. So, without putting too much thought into what a terrible decision he was making, Allister inhaled deeply and held his breath. In the past, that had always been a terrible idea, but maybe that had always been a coincidence?

Successfully holding his breath with hiccups leaping through his chest every other second proved to be more difficult than he remembered, and it felt like he ran out of air much faster than he would have otherwise. And he was forced to give up that effort and breathe fresh air when his hiccups abruptly became faster.

Allister immediately regretted his decision. "Wa - HUP - wait - HUC-UP - please ju - HIC! HIGK - just - HUK-ULP - h-hold on - HIC!" His attempt at talking his hiccups into calming down did little to help. Even worse, they had gotten stronger and were starting to hurt now. Allister would have said it was because his own body seemingly wanted him to suffer, but he knew this was his mind's fault instead, for thinking holding his breath might seriously work this time.

"Allister?"

Allister jumped when he realized Wolfram was now standing next to him. When that had happened, he had no idea. "Fr - HUP! HIC-ULP! - Fram, I - HUC-UP! HIGK! - what - HIC!"

Wolfram reached out and patted Allister gently on his back, a look of concern on his face. "Everyone at the fire is currently engaged in a round of trivia about media that is flying completely over my head, so I thought I would come to find you. And it didn't take me very long to hear where you were... Are you alright? Those sound worse than usual, somehow."

Unable to form anything even remotely close to a proper sentence at the moment, Allister could only answer with, "B - HIGK-UP - bad ch - HIC! HUC-ULP - choices - HUP!"

"I'm not sure what that - oh. Allister, did you try to stop them by holding your breath?"

Allister nodded.

"Haven't you told me that's the one thing you absolutely cannot do?"

Allister answered with another nod and a whine between hiccups.

"And why in the world would you do that?" Wolfram asked. "From what I was last aware, there are plenty of drinks available that you could have cured them with instead. That's at least had a partial success rate before."

At first, Allister contemplated how to phrase the answer in a way that his hiccups would allow, then settled for pulling up a note app on his phone and typing. 'I didn't want to bother anybody. My hiccups aren't exactly subtle.'

Wolfram stared at the message, thinking. "I hardly think anyone present tonight would mind as much as you think. You honestly did not need to make yourself suffer like this."

'Suffer' sounded melodramatic, but considering he was still putting up with nonstop hiccup after hiccup, Allister figured it wasn't exactly wrong. 'I know it was a dumb idea. But everyone's having fun, and I didn't want to be a problem.'

"Honestly, Allister, you worry too much about these things..." Wolfram sighed. "Though I... have also hidden in a crate to avoid being seen with hiccups, so... perhaps I am not the best person to hear this from."

"You - HIGK-ULP - what?" Allister asked, too surprised by that statement to bother typing his response on his phone.

Staring down at the ground and fidgeting a bit, Wolfram mumbled, "I, um, it was rarely an issue back home but I... did have a particularly stubborn case at one point and... Hiding away until they stopped seemed ideal..."

"But a - HUC! HIC - a crate?"

"It - I panicked, I was in one of the Academia Arcana's storerooms to retrieve spell materials and - and I heard someone outside the door - the details aren't important. My point is, I do understand but don't do this sort of thing to yourself in the future, please."

Allister appreciated the thought, smiling at Wolfram and nodding. "Don't w - HUP! HIC-UP - worry, I - HIC - I won't."

"Good. Now then, I'll fetch you some water. Wait here, I'll be quick about it."

After a minute or two, Wolfram returned with a bottle of water, which Allister accepted gladly, trying and failing to state his gratitude, "Th - HIGK - thank y - HULP - you, F - HUC-ULP - Fra -"

"Just drink it," Wolfram interrupted.

Allister did so, drinking the water in quick gulps between each hiccup. It took a few tries, but eventually, they slowed down somewhat and finally came to a stop entirely. He waited for a few seconds, still unsure if he'd genuinely been cured at first, but then finally sighed with relief.

"Better?"

"Much," Allister said. "Thanks, Fram."

Wolfram smiled and leaned his weight against Allister's side. "Very good. Shall we be returning to the camp?"

"Hmm..." Allister wrapped an arm around Wolfram's shoulder. "It is getting a bit cold, huh? I guess we should." He paused for a moment, then added, "But... Hey, how about we have a real camping trip sometime soon?"

"We won't have an oven for you to cook proper meals, then," Wolfram objected.

"I mean, I guess not. But you've never had s'mores before. Those are best when they're toasted over a campfire."

"I've heard of those... what are they?"

"Chocolate and marshmallows, Fram."

Wolfram's eyes widened at the statement, clearly intrigued. "When is your next day off? We can do it then."

Allister laughed and hugged Wolfram closer. "Okay, we'll talk about it when we get home. C'mon, let's head back to the camp before Sadie comes to chase us down."

#Poppy Writes #wolfram and allister #hiccup kink #hiccups #alcohol

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Tom and Jerry 2021 Review: It’s Almost Adequate!

Hello you happy people, and welcome to a surprise review! While this was on my schedule, I moved it out to make room for my new Patreon Sponsored review. Yes at the 5 dollar tier you too can get a review a month.. but enough shilling. Point is I had some thoughts on the film, and felt I could squeeze a review of it into the schedule since my review for yesterday, the 90′s Tom and Jerry movie, got canceled as I both had to finish up my tex avery birthday review and hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on HBO Max like I thought. I could’ve sworn it was once but not anymore. Gee it’s almost like they removed their overtly awful Tom and Jerry movie from the service so people woudln’t be reminded of it when they watched the mediocre new one. Or it was never on there because HBO wants to bury that mistake in a hole. You make the call.

Point is I had some room in my schedule, so if I can’t cover the 1990 movie this weekend, though I FULLY intend to still do that at some point as it still fascinates me, might as well cover the one everyone’s actually watching. So join me under the cut with spoilers to go into why this film is .. ehhhh. under the cut

Tom and Jerry follows, as you’d expect, our working boys up to their ass in shit, what is this buisness. In this case Tom literally rides in on a rail with his keyboard wanting to be a big musician one day, while Jerry is shopping around for a home but can’t find any in his bracket. The two end up fighting, as you’d expect, when Tom performs as a blind cat in a park, a great gag, and Jerry first steals his customers by dancing to his music, but then when Tom tries to stop him, not only exposes his scam, but gets Tom’s beloved Keyboard broken.

In the process of Tom trying to get Jerry back for runing his day, Tom ruins the day of Kayla, a cynical young lady played by Chole Grace Moretz who like Robin in the last theatrical film, is a blonde girl who takes up way more screen time than our heroes for some reason. Tom accidently destroys the clothes she was sent to deliver, and she gets fired from her Task Rabbit esque job... despite the fact that TaskRabbit is app based, entirely built around how you do jobs for hire as needed, and that at most she’d get a bad review and that the app dosen’t actually hire people. I know this both because i’ve seen the apps and parodies of it show up on tv shows I watch, most recently Close Enough, and because I took the 2 minutes it took to google it , read some of the Wikipedia article and do the bare minimum that me, a paid only by commissions and patreons reviewer, did to prove a point, and that the writers of this film, who likely got paid at least 10000 for a rewrite, and more for whoever wrote the treatment, which is about 30,000 at lowest as told to me by this article on what screenwriters get paid I looked up solely to prove a point. So they got paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than standard... to not spend 5 minutes looking up what task rabbit is, becuase they wanted to give her a “hip” job instead of just having her work for a dry cleaner. Then again they got thousands upon thousands to half ass it and i’m getting paid nothing to go on a rant about how they half assed it, so maybe i’m the dumbass, I dunno, but at least I take pride in my work. And i’ve had trouble spellchecking at times so take that as you will.

But so far the film is not bad: the slapstick is blended really well, the action is pitch perfect and our heroes are given good motivations: Kayla’s to find a job, Tom to play piano professionally and Jerry to find a proper home. You ready for some letdown?!

All three of our heroes converge at the Royal Gate Hotel, a prestigious hotel that’s been host to popes, dignitaries and Drake. Jerry sneaks inside, and soon finds himself at home and making himself home, Tom TRIES to and ends up getting on the wrong side of Butch, the black cat from the shorts played in this film by reggaton performer Nicky Jam. Why they choose him over a comedian or anyone who could actually act, especially since Butch dosen’t have a musical number or anything, is a riddle for the ages. My best guest, as it always is, is that Tim Story owes him a Wookie-Style life debt. Not only that but even more bafflingly Butch’s gang, who to the films credit like him are all his gang of cats from the classic shorts, are played by Kevin Hart’s Improve Troop, The Plastic Cup Boyz. I got a preview for what passing a kidney stone’s going to feel like just typing that name. I thought I had no explanation for this, not even a wookie life debt can explain how Kevin Hart’s posse, because he has one for some reason but at least unlike Adam Sandler he’s helping his smaller named friends get big instead of just promoting guys who really shouldn’t have a career or dragging poor guys like Shaq or Terry Crews into your bullcrap because they like you., can explain how this happened. But I forgot I looked up Tim Story’s filmography when I first found out he was director here, more on him later, and found out he directed both Ride Along films, both think like a man films, and one of Kevin Hart’s specials, so the two presumably are friends or at least have a solid working relationship, and given how successful the first Ride Along was for both men, I doubt Tim would turn down a favor from him and vice versa.

And while I find the Plastic Cup Boyz inclusion in this film bizzare and wish it was fellow comedy troupe and starkid adjacent wonderkinds the Tin Can Bros so I could get Joey Richter voicing an animated cat, they at least try their best, their just not given much to do and I don’t get casting them in these side rolls or not giving the butch role to one of them as Nicky Jam just sucks in the role. And I get Butch isn’t the most solid or complex character, but it still isn’t THAT hard, with the 80 drumloads of great comedians out there, to find SOMEONE better, and it’s weird Kevin Hart himself isn’t in the roll. If it wasn’t a wookie life debt i’m betting Hart was going to play Butch, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, and Tim found the first guy he could who’d take almost nothing instead of an actual actor.

Kayla meanwhile somehow takes herself from sympathetic to wholly unlikeable in the span of the scene by maniuplating and terrifying a poor woman into not taking the job, outright STEALING HER RESUME, meaning if she screwed up this might go on the poor woman’s record, and lying her way into the job. And if the woman had been you know a classist dick or something, i’d understand but this is a perfectly nice lady who worked really hard, and who looses out on a job because some little bitch talked her out of it and then stole her identity. This one act really just makes me not care: It’s one thing to do what you gotta to get a job, I myself have never lied on an application but I get new york’s insanely expensive. Even if she presumibly lives in a hole that’s cramped, has roaches or rats, who given this unvierse probably have tiny tv’s that are still way too loud and binge watch way too much Jersey Shore at 2 in the morning, and is probably haunted, probably by Droopy wearing a bedsheet going boo but still, and yes he’s also alive here but he has identical cousins. Not the point. Point is even if she has sympathetic motives.. what she did is not okay and when she get flashes of guilt throughtout hte film it’s never long enough to feel like it’s not her simply feeling bad she didn’t get this herself and not that she STOLE IT FROM ANOTHER PERSON. Again if she’d FAKED her resume, this would’ve been fine, simply set up some websites, and it would’ve worked so why they went with this elaborate setup that takes her into outright crimes is beyond me.

Point is she gets hired by the manager/owner, Mr. Dubrois, played by Rob Delany, but since his name isn’t used enough i’m just going to call him Mustache Manager. Her direct superior whose against her being hired is Terrance, the Gate’s Event Manager played by a way too good for this film Micheal Pena, who sadly is given nothing to work with. Terrance.. is supposed to be the bad guy because he distrusts kayla. And while one of those reasons is stupid, she makes a joke about the goldfish being an aquatics manger and he takes it dead seriously, he’s rightfully supscious she’s not who she says she is, since one of the places on her resume is a place he knows people from. The only way the film manages to make him the bad guy is he is COMICALLY out of touch: he dosen’t get sarcasm, as seen before, dosen’t want people posting jerry to “snapgram or instaface”, and seems to have trouble relating to his guests. What makes this not work is that he’s manger at a ludicrously expensive hotel. As such a good chunk of his events would be for Celebrties, since New York’s a big hub for them, having tons living there and visiting for films, apperances on late night talk shows, SNL and what have you and being a prime spot for events and it’s clear part of his job is talking to the guests as the two the film focuses on, more on that in a minute, know him and have met him before. He also mentions Drake having stayed there... he would NOT have kept this job.

You’d need to do through research on these kinds of celebrates and social media is the easiest way to do that, to get what they like, what they don’t, what they don’t want to talk about, what scandals or gos might be going on to keep paparazzi out. I don’t even know how this business works nor did I google it.. and I didn’t to prove a point.. that even with no real idea how this works.. I still get what you’d probably need to know to make events for rich famous people. I’m not convinced Terrance knows how an internet works. And given writer Kevin Costello wrote the well received and weird film I still want to see Brigbsby Bear, I get the sense a lot of this nonsense was added in rewrites demanded by executives and credit him more for what works in the film. More on that in a moment.

Kayla is hired on because the Royal Gate has it’s biggest event ever, the wedding of Ben, played by Colin Jost, and Preeta, played by Pallavi Sharda. Why is it big? What do they do exactly? Are they trust fund babies? Did Ben invent an app? Did Preeta cure global warming? Did they both help defeat Galactus DEVOURER OF WORLDS?!... I dont’ know. If the film told me at all why their big names, even if it’s just because their famous for being famous which would be fine, why this is bigger than a fucking pope visiting, I missed it and I actually went back to their first scene and the scene where Mustache Manager brings up the wedding in the first place to Kayla, and found nothing. We just know their rich, their getting married, Ben doesn’t listen to Preeta and is insufferable, and that they own two classic Tom and Jerry characters: Ben owns spike whose played by Bobby Canavale who isn’t bad but dosen’t try to sound like spike at all and that annoys me given unlike Tom and Jerry, the former of whom’s signature noises from the cartoon were used archivally and otherwise dosen’t talk and only sings on occasion or does that wonderfully weird “don’t you belivie it” thing., has a distinct voice they could’ve got someone to imitate. The other is Preeya’s cat toodles, that white cat Tom is always trying to bang, who got a neat less anthro redesign.

Toots, Toodles whatever you call her the redesign works, making her more of a cat, and only speaking in meows for some reason, and combinging the two female cats tom’s liked, but while still being just funny animal enough that him wanting some pussy, so to speak, isn’t too creepy.

And this is where the film undergoes a bit of a shift. While the 20 or so minutes are rightfully focused on our boys with a bit of focus on Kayla, from here on out she’s our defacto lead. Given the last film did the same damn thing of making Tom and Jerry not the main leads in their own movie, you can see the problem. I will say to the film’s credit it is still LEAGUES better in a lot of other ways than the 90′s film in that the plot is actually centered around them: Jerry, when stealing some cheese, and runs afoul of the tempermental Chef Jackie played by Kim Jeong. Though i’m 100% not convinced Ben Chang didn’t just lie on his resume at some place and has now somehow become a michline star canditate. He finds Jerry, and Kayla volunteers to catch him to help her own career and validly points out her doing this discreetly with only the staff knowing about the mouse will keep it from becoming a social media nightmare.

The 90′s film could work without them, replacing them with any animal sidekick for Robin, since nit’s so far removed from Tom and Jerry their really an afterthought. Here the film DOES feel like a tom and jerry plot at it’s core, Jerry’s somewhere he shoudln’t be, Tom wants to chase him either due to personal greivance or his job depending on it, in this case both. The small side cast are all involved, and given decent if thin justifications for being there: Butch is an ally cat and Spike and Tootles are the pets of the happy couple.

And honestly the slapstick portions, the portions that are tom and jerry focused or use the humans well, are BRILLIANT. No really, it’s good stuff once in a while using a bit from the classics but mostly coming up with new gags and the animation is gorgeous. I won’t lie and say it’s always perfect, sometimes the models are a bit off and look unfinished and that’s not forgivable when you delay your film two months, and thus have extra time to work on that. But that’s a few shots here and there versus the majority of hte film where the various animals all blend perfectly. Unlike most Live Action adaptations of an old cartoon, this one actually seemed to have good reason, as they’ve taken the basic roger rabbit tech of decades ago and expanded on it well. Just like that classic you often wonder how the hell they pulled this off, and outside of one egregrous sequence where tom sets up an elaborate trap we spend far too much time on, when they do use CG for any props, you can’t tell. This is best highlighted by what I consdier to be the film’s best sequence and what brings Tom into the plot proper after lurking on the fringes for a good 15 minutes: Tom, miserable in the rain, finds jerry living it up in an empty room, and after some fun shenanigans trying to get in, finally succeds leading to a good 2-3 minute sequence of the two chasing after each other in the room. There are no actors, no one else and the room is empty, but perfectly gimmicked to time with thier movments. Wether they used cg and I couldn’t tell or just simply timed things great, it’s utterly fantastic and shows why this film is live action: while i’td be fine animated they cleary ahd the tech and ideas to do it live and thus did it this way. Naturally Kayla meets Tom again, and after finding out the room was trashed by both him and Jerry gets Mustache Manager to hire him.

But this is the problem: While there are great set pieces like this, or a REALLY damn impressive one later where Terrance gets dragged into a ball of violence while walking Spike for Ben and we see INSIDE IT, with Terrance not moving as fast but that being okay. And I love the movie’s commitment that ALL animals are animated. So it has it’s charms and gets a LOT right.

It’s clear to me from this strong core that the script was messed with, either by director Tim Story or the execs. Some misguided and stupid bits I get even if it was a bad idea: Tom does do the piano at one point, after he thinks he’s gotten rid of Jerry thanks to again an unwieldy overly long bit of CGI that’s a down spot on the usually good just tom and jerry stuff. And he STARTS singing a 40′s jazz song, and I thought “Okay they really got this and are doing something like is you is or is you ain’t my baby this will be fun”. Then T-Pain started using autotune, because of course, and Tom’s shoulder devil started scratching next to him...

By the way Tom’s Shoulder Devil and Angel are played very well by Lil Rel Howrey , aka Rod from Get Out. So good on you man, one bit of non miscasting. There’s one or two cringe inducing moment of trying to be hip here or there though for a film like this it isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect. Still bad but i’ve seen so much worse at this point i’m not going to bother getting mad or upset over it. I’m used to this kind of thing from kids movies.

But while the film dosen’t really lack Tom and Jerry, it sidelines them way too often> There’s just too many scenes just about Kayla, whose not only not a great character despite Chole trying her absolute hardest god bless her. Her hitting it off with the bartender, her arguing with Terrance whose even more insufferable and her bonding with Preeta and Ben being annoying, we’ll get to him.. WE’LL GET TO HIM. But they aren’t funny or interesting, there’s nothing THERE to really get me interested, nothing new or fresh that we haven’t seen done better before. There’s just nothing, it feels like large parts of blank space. And to illustrate this my Niece, who I watched the film with and really loves Tom and Jerry after I showed it to her... played with other stuff during most of those scenes. And she’s young, her attention span is not great.. but noticably during the actual scenes of slapstick she was glued to the tv, just like she was when I showed her the classic shorts. It’s not just old farts like me who remember tom and jerry from their youth.. it’s the kids your TRYING to appeal to that don’t want this. If you can’t get kids, who in general and speaking from my own personal experience will watch just about anything, to pay attention YOU. HAVE. FAILED.

Okay took a second to compose myself, let’s move on to the rest of the movie. So after T-Pain stabbed music in the throat, we get to the worst section of the film as Kayla brokers peace between the two to get Preeta’s ring back after the three end up in the aformnetioned violence ball with Terrance, who she ducks his claims that she didn’t catch the mouse.. which she did not but for once she’s sympathetic as Terrance is much more likeable either, though gaslighting him and getting him put on leave is a bit extreme. Bafflingly, Kayla gets his job as event cordinator for now, and thus has to broker peace between the two warring factions.. and does so in the strangest way possible: by booking a day for them in new york to hang out and be BUDDIES!. This isn’t bad as the last film as it dosen’t last, but it is just.. surreal seeing the two having a hanging out montage around new york. Like the film just took a really weird turn with this, the montage itself isn’t weird, it’s standard shenanigans minus the fighting but still good stuff. Unlike the 90′s movie instead of singing about being palls or helping a small child, they just get into cartoony shenanigans together. More proof the film could’ve been so much better just with them.

Speaking of proof the film would’ve been better without them , Ben fucks around with a drone for the wedding, after Preeta confided in Kayla the wedding’s getting to be a bit much. So let’s talk about Ben shall we? While Preeta is just nice, friendly and down to earth, Ben... is a dumbass, a jackass and just an ass. His whole schtick is that he keeps escalting the wedding despite her wishing he’d stop, and i’ts just.. not funny. A guy ignoring his partner’s wishes, constnatly doing big gestures in large part to try and win over her dad who RIGHTFULLY hates, and in general just sucks. I do not blame this on Colin Jost: He’s perfectly charming on SNL, and Weekend Update is usually damn fun under him and Micheal Che. But like with Pena and Mortez, he’s given NOTHING to work with, and furthe rmore can’t improvise.. aka the skill most SNL cast and almnus walk away with. So it’s no suprise he instead comes off like an anoying plank of wood you want to see fall down a manhole and never return so Preeta can marry someone else. I dunno the Doorman’s a pretty cool guy, and if he’s taken or something there’s always Droopy. Droopy’s the smoothest motherfucker and we all know. And if HE’S taken there’s mustache man. The point is we have a Dating Game’s worth of elligble bachelors and the film tries to sell a plank of wood who clearly wants to bang Preeta’s dad more than he wants a genuine equal relationship with Preeta.

So that dosen’t help the final act.. which is started with something REALLY weird to round off tom and jerry’s day as Tom catches a ball, interupts a play and get.s. thrown in the pound for it?

I don’t know how tha’ts a crime, I don’t get it either, point is the animal control guy is a creep who shows them off as they pass some angry dogs.. and..

MY BOY. There was an earlier joke with him taking the place of The Joker, and I thought that was it sadly but nope there he is! While, given they don’t really have much to do with each other, it is a tad weird he’s been grafted onto the tom and jerry legacy.. I really don’t care because it means Droopy gets to show up every so often in other stuff like this.. And hopefully the spinoff series coming in the summer. I”ve talked before about how much I love this dog so having him show up here was a HUGE delight and easily the higlihgt of the film and the gag is perfect. WHy is he in prison? I don’t know. But given who we’re dealing with I also assume he just disappeared later and showed up at the Wolf’s place again to get the evidence to clear his name and to help a young brodway hopeful played by Peyton R LIst get to her audition in time. And yes I just imagined another live action film with a classic character.. but admit it you’d rather be watching that one. They also run into butch who tries to force him to eat Jerry or they’ll kill him.

Terence saw the arrest on the tv though, so he bails the two out, pits them against each other, and sets them loose at the wedding. This goes how you’d expect. the two cause chaos and thanks to Weekend UpDumbass there’s pecocks, tigers and elephants, and Jerry naturally spooks the elephants, Spike, who has it in for tom as usual, goes after tom the tiger goes after him and the wedding is destroyed. Preeta breaks up with Ben and leaves, and Kayla is fired.

Less good is that Tom gets thrown out because Terrance backed out on his deal because he’s a fucking asshole. So while Kayla gripes to her sorta loveintrest bartender man, and wishes she could fix things, T and J show up, both realizing it’s their fault and both with a plan to fix things leading to our climax. Kayla goes back to the hotel, and while Terrance tries to boject she rightfully blackmails him. Sadly neither get their commupance and while Mustache Manager puts two and two together, he’s all for ending this PR Nightmare and helping with Kayla’s plan to get ben to stage a wedding in central park that Preeta actually wants while our two actual heroes go to stop her and do some light kidnapping of toodles to get Preeta to stop.

So it ends how you’d expect: Preeta makes a huge mistake, seriously Droopy go to their honemoon I guarantee Ben will wonder off into the ocean because he thought it looked sick bro, Kayla gets her job back and in a move that makes her almost tolerable hires the woman she stole from who Terrance clearly wants to bang, and Tom actually catches Toot’s eye, but then Jerry mucks it up because cockblocking tom has been his job since the 40′s, they fight, Kayla tells them to cut it out, they put an the end thing over it. Roll credits.

As you could tell I had issues with this film and had more the more I thought about it. So it’s not very good.. but I still recommend watching it if you have Max right now. Yes really. While the human parts are pretty awful as you could tell, you can have some fun mocking them, and it’s worth suffering through them for the bits with our boys, as those bits are geneuinely energetic, fun and what you came for. If you like tom and Jerry, you probably won’t like this movie.. but you’ll enjoy those bits. Hopefully if there’s a sequel, and this film was a suprise hit so their probably will be, they’ll learn their lesson from this one and focus less on the humans and more on the hyjinks but overall this is just a medicore waste of some really great technology and slapstick. This is just one huge ball of dispaointment instead of cartoon violence and i’m sorry it ended this way. If you liked this review, you can follow me on my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even 1 dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal nets a Darkwing Duck episode a month, so if that excites you, please sign up. And if you can’t afford to that’s fine and feel free to stick around anyway. Times are hard and I get that. And I will see you at the next rainbow.

#tom and jerry #tom and jerry 2021 #tom and jerry movie #tom and jerry the movie #tom cat #jerry mouse #droopy #toodles #spike #micheal pena #chloe grace moretz #kim jeong #colin jost #hbo max #mgm #warner brothers

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lailaliquorice · 5 years

Text

I still hide you in my poetry

since parrlyn hurt/comfort seems to have become my brand, I bring you more parr-based parrlyn angst at nearly 3am! I didn’t feel like sleeping so ended up writing instead. and it’ll probably be back to boleyn angst next time but this is honestly so soft and these two are so cluelessly in love it’s adorable. this makes a few references to ‘one more chance’ but you don’t have to read that to read this

also cathy still writes like she’s a tudor lady lol

When Cathy was struck by writing inspiration, it was common that she wouldn’t set her pen down until her idea was fully formed in her notebook regardless of when or where it was. More than once she’d been struggling to scribble the last few words down when the 15-minute call for the show came and she was still in her own clothes, deaf to Jane’s complaints that Cathy was giving her grey hairs due to stress. Time became irrelevant when there were words in her head and a pen in her hand, often working until 3 or 4 in the morning just in case she forgot a crucial detail overnight if she decided to finish it in the morning.

Their Sundays off were Cathy’s dedicated research days, where she would open all the bookmarked articles and wikipedia pages she’d accumulated over the week and spend the entire day working through them for as long as she liked. Normally she wouldn’t leave her bedroom-turned-study until Jane sent someone to drag her down for dinner, too intent on taking advantage of her day off to spend it any other way.

But today the writing was slow. Painfully slow.

‘Writing has been my life’s work. My lives’ work in fact – the lack of grammatically correct ways of saying that is probably related to how rarely a person has two lives to dedicate to something. It’s what I’m good at, what I do. I don’t know why I’ve been so distracted this week, since that bad night I’ve found myself wanting to be alone less and less even during the day. It’s inconvenient at the least and I don’t understand myself at all.’

Cathy let out a groan as she rested her head on the page; there had been a headache pulsing behind her eyes for the last hour or so, and as much as she’d been trying to ignore it and keep working it had only been getting progressively worse. She’d given up on writing anything academic and was instead working on her journaling; in her old life she’d kept a diary, but this time around her journal was more of a place where she could write down what was on her mind and elaborate on deep thoughts that occurred to her. But even though she wasn’t trying to write anything worthy of publishing, she could still pinpoint where she’d started talking in circles rather than making any sort of sense.

Wondering if a change of scenery could help, after picking up her journal and pen she found herself walking up the staircase towards Anne’s bedroom. It was always cooler up there thanks to the skylights which made it nice to work in, or that was the excuse she told herself. The question of whether Anne was in or not when the door opened before she’d even knocked, revealing a hopeful looking Anne in her comfy clothes. “Thought it might be you heading up here again,” she said, her smile brightening as soon as she saw Cathy.

“Yep, me again,” Cathy replied with a half-hearted laugh, too out of sorts to respond with any more enthusiasm though Anne’s cheery face did brighten her up a little. “Would I be bothering you if I worked in here for a little while? I think I need a change of scenery?”

Anne nodded, holding the door open and beckoning for Cathy to come in. “Course not, make yourself at home. You ok though?

She was surprised yet touched that Anne could read her well enough to ask that. “I’ve got a bit of a headache but I’m fine, promise,” Cathy said, meeting Anne’s concerned eyes with a reassuring smile.

“If you say so,” Anne teased, shutting the door before sitting back down at her desk. From the papers strewn everywhere it looked as though she’d been writing too, and clearly having more luck than Cathy had been.

They fell into a comfortable quiet as Cathy sat on Anne’s bed with her back leaned against the headboard, leaning her journal on her knees as she kept on writing. But she was still frustratingly distracted, finishing a lengthy sentence with ‘and my head hurts’ before her pen stilled.

That was when she noticed the flash of colour in the corner of her vision, on her right hand side where the pain was currently sitting. Very slowly, very carefully, she crossed her legs and sat up properly as if she was moving a bomb which could explode at any moment.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Cathy almost flinched at how loud Anne’s voice sounded. She didn’t turn her head to look over at her but the worry in her tone was obvious, and even if it had been worth Cathy pretending nothing was wrong she wouldn’t have considered lying to her. “I think I have a migraine coming,” she said quietly, trying not to acknowledge the growing feeling of dread in her chest.

The mattress dipped beside her just before she felt Anne’s hand on her knee. “Can I do anything?” she asked softly, clearly having noticed Cathy’s sensitivity to sound.

“I don’t know,” Cathy murmured honestly. “It doesn’t happen often but I just have to ride it out when it does. I can go back to my room if you want me to.”

“What? No!” Anne said, grabbing Cathy’s hand from where she’d already been about to shuffle off the bed. “Please stay, you shouldn’t be on your own while you’re in pain. Nothing I’m doing is that important.”

Cathy smiled faintly. “Thanks,” she said, sitting back down. Even though there was nothing she could do to prevent the oncoming storm, it was a comfort to know that she wouldn’t have to endure it alone. Taking stock of how she was feeling, she paused a moment before adding “I’m ok at the moment. It’ll probably be about half an hour before it starts to get really bad.”

“Gotcha,” Anne nodded, a look of intense concentration on her face. “What will you need? I can go get everything now before you need it. D’you want me to get Jane or anyone else?”

Anne’s endless slew of questions was endearing, showing that she really did care and want to help in whatever way she could. The last few weeks since Cathy had first spoken to her about her trauma and particularly the aftermath of Cathy’s own night terror had unveiled a softer side to Anne which Cathy hadn’t quite expected but was honoured to know. “Some ibuprofen would really help, thanks. And something cold for my head if you can find anything,” she said, but shook her head at the last question as she added “and no, it’s ok. I trust you to look after me.” She smiled wryly at that, leaning over to nudge Anne’s knee with her elbow and ordering herself not to blush.

The wink and finger guns that Anne sent her way did little to stop Cathy’s heart from fluttering, and if it wasn’t for her headache and the persistent flashing in her vision she would probably have matched Anne’s smile with a giddy grin. “Gotcha,” she repeated, sliding off the bed and heading for the door.

Cathy watched her go, then her gaze turned to the journal that had fallen off her lap. Feeling safe enough to write one more sentence, she hesitated for a moment while twiddling her pen between her fingers before she scribbled a few words down on the final line of the page.

‘I think the cause of it all might be that I’m a little bit in love with Anne Boleyn.’

The sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs made Cathy jump like a child caught with their hand in the sweet jar, accidentally dropping her journal before she fumbled quickly to close it before Anne arrived.

“Jane sends her love,” Anne said as she walked through the doorway, carrying Cathy’s water bottle in one hand and a glass bottle of coke in the other with a box of pills tucked under her arm. “Got you a stash of painkillers, and figured this might be nice and cool for you. Aragon wouldn’t let me take the frozen peas because she’s cooking and Kat’s using the ice pack because she took a frisbee to the head about five minutes ago. Apparently it was Anna’s fault. I dunno, it was all going on down there.”

Cathy laughed softly, easily imagining the chaos that was going on in the kitchen as they spoke. After downing a dose of pills with a quick sip of water she pressed the coke bottle to her forehead, closing her eyes and humming quietly at the soothing relief it provided. “This is perfect. Thank you so much,” she said, opening one eye to look up at Anne.

Anne shrugged modestly, sitting back down and knocking her shoulder lightly into Cathy’s. “S’alright,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed by the praise. “Just doing my bit to help. Got to live up to you trusting me and all that.”

Despite her worsening headache, Cathy still found it in herself to smile.

She wasn’t able to for much longer though. An hour later found her lying down with one arm covering her eyes and the other hand resting on her stomach, attempting without much luck to breathe through the nausea that had worsened along with her now agonising headache. It was one of the worst migraines she’d ever had, proven by the tears that flowed silently down her cheeks. Her head felt like someone was trying to crack open her skull with a blunt chisel.

The light dimming behind her closed eyelids made her crack open one eye and lift her arm a little to see that Anne had drawn the curtains to leave the room in darkness. “Hey you,” she whispered as she noticed Cathy watching her, kneeling down beside the bed so they were at the same height and placing a hand atop the one on Cathy’s stomach. “Stupid question I know but how’re you doing?”

Lacking the energy to answer her probably, Cathy just gave a lifeless hum.

Anne nodded, seeming to understand. “You feeling sick?”

Another affirmative hum.

“Want me to grab a bucket or something?”

“Mhm.” The noise was intended as a ‘yes please’, as Cathy couldn’t see herself making it down the stairs from the attic to the bathroom if she did end up needing to throw up.

Anne’s departure left silence in her wake, until there were quiet footsteps on the staircase and the sound of something being placed on the floor next to her. “Waste paper bin,” Anne explained without Cathy needing to ask, the mattress shifting as Anne carefully crawled over to sit next to her. A cool flannel on her forehead replaced the coke bottle that Cathy had long since given up on, a soothing distraction from the throbbing pain on the right side of her skull.

Movement from Anne prompted Cathy to reach out blindly with her closest hand, desperately not wanting to be left alone. She relaxed with a sigh when Anne caught it in hers, squeezing gently as she readjusted her position then making no effort to take her hand back when she settled down again.

They stayed like that for a while, Anne dampening Cathy’s forehead with the flannel while holding onto her hand as a constant reassurance she wasn’t going anywhere. Anne could admit it was more than a little unsettling to see her friend laid out so helpless and vulnerable, possibly more so than when she’d been so shaken after her night terror. At least Anne had known what to do then because she knew what Cathy would do for her; she didn’t have quite the same maternal streak as Jane, Aragon, and Cathy herself did, meaning all she could do was make a few guesses and try her best.

When Cathy lurched forwards Anne wondered at first if she’d fallen asleep and had another nightmare, but caught onto what was really happening in time for her to hold Cathy steady as she threw up into the bin. “It’s ok, I’ve got you,” she said softly once Cathy had finished and she fell limply into Anne’s arms, wiping her mouth with the flannel before dropping it next to the bin.

“Sorry,” Cathy croaked in a fragile voice, but made no attempt to move from where she’d collapsed with her head in Anne’s lap.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Anne said, threading her fingers through Cathy’s curls and noting how she relaxed under the touch. If Cathy was feeling her usual self she probably would have stopped there, but Cathy’s disoriented state meant that Anne could get away with saying things that she didn’t want her friend to remember. “You’ve helped me enough these last few weeks. It’s the least I can do to show you I’m more than grateful.”

Cathy gave no indication that she’d heard anything, just curling her legs up towards her chest as Anne continued to play with her hair. Anne’s mind was racing with thoughts questioning what she’d got herself into and how small the woman in her lap looked when all her walls were beaten down, but there was one that spoke louder than all the others:

‘Boleyn, you have fallen so hard it’s fucking unreal.’

#six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #parrlyn #anne boleyn #catherine parr #laila's writing

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queenmorgawse · 5 years

Text

here we go again

CHAPTER ONE. modern au wangxian ft. family feels, inspired by mamma mia. read on ao3 for end notes.

Wei Yuan's day begins, unusually, with the loud whirring of a landing helicopter.

“Don’t just leave your plate here!” Wen Qing chides, but by the time she pokes her head outside, the boy is already halfway up the hill, shouting back apologies as he crams the last of his toast into his mouth. He stops just short of the landing zone, watching in delight as the helicopter’s rotor blades slow then stop, and three silhouettes emerge from the small dust cloud their arrival created. “Good morning, uncle, auntie! Hi, didi!” he calls, waving his arms in an attempt to clear his sight.

Jin Zixuan, Wei Yuan’s gufu , lifts his sunglasses from his nose and tucks them on his collar before shaking the boy’s hand. “Hello, A-Yuan.”

“Yuanyuan, you’re growing so fast, I can’t catch up anymore!” This is from Wei Yuan’s guma , Jiang Yanli, who’s already thrown her arms around him. He buries his face in her blouse, breathing in the breezy scent of lotuses. She strokes his hair, cooing. “Seriously, you’re getting so tall. You’ll shoot past your dad any minute now!”

“Not that much, auntie,” he protests weakly when she lets him go.

“Pscht. He told me the same thing when he was little, and look how he is now. Ling-er! Come say hi, don’t be rude.”

Jin Ling, Wei Yuan’s favorite (and only) cousin, is still lingering behind his parents, airpods jammed into his ears. He looks up at the sound of his mother’s voice, though, cracks one of his rare smiles, and accepts Wei Yuan’s hug ⎯ which means he stands still enough for Wei Yuan to embrace him, though he jerks away with a muffled protest at the attempt to pat his head.

“Your luggage is already here,” Wei Yuan says, turning back toward his uncle and aunt. “I’ll help carry it to your rooms.” ( Who else could it be? No one brings that many brand name suitcases for a month’s stay, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be stacked in the Wei family’s own living room. )

“Thank you, darling, we’ll take care of that,” Jiang Yanli reassures him. “Do you know where your father went? I thought he’d be with you.”

“He’s kind of all over the place these days, with the anniversary coming up.” All over the place is an euphemism ; the list of things to plan seems endless, and as usual, Wei Yuan’s father doesn’t trust anyone but Wen Qing and himself to get things done.

“He’ll get here soon, though! I’m sure he heard you coming!” the boy quickly adds when a worried look crosses his aunt’s face. The entire island probably heard the landing, but then again, given its size, it’s not much of a statement.

Jiang Yanli gives his shoulder a comforting squeeze. “It’s okay, Yuanyuan, we know how it is, we’ll take it from here. We know our way around, don’t we, Zixuan?”

“Of course, of course,” his uncle says, then jerks his chin at Jin Ling. “A-Ling, why don’t you go and catch up with A-Yuan? Weren’t you excited to be here?”

“Don’t tease him, love,” Jiang Yanli chides, her eyes too full of amusement to truly come off as stern. “But yes, you boys go take a walk, stretch your legs a little after the flight. Don’t take too long, though! Come back to say hi to da-jiu, okay?”

“Yes, mama,” Jin Ling mutters at the same time Wei Yuan says “Of course, auntie.” With one last glance to check the adults actually did mean it, they leave Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli to give the last of their instructions to their pilot and run back down the hill, leaving only footprints behind.

---

Wei Yuan has to admire his cousin’s poker face, because Jin Ling morphs into an enthusiastic puppy the moment they’re out of earshot. “So! What’s the super duper mysterious thing you couldn’t even text me about?”

“It’s not that I couldn’t, I wanted to tell you in person!” Wei Yuan protests. They settle in his favorite conversation spot, an old, gnarled tree so sturdy it barely moves at all when the two boys climb into it and find comfortable seats where the thickest of its branches meet.

This is when the first tendrils of what feels suspiciously like stage fright begin to curl in his stomach. Don’t be stupid, Wei Yuan chides himself. It’s too late to take it back anyway! With new resolution, he forces himself to grit out : “I think I know who my other father is.”

Jin Ling gasps, clapping both his hands over his mouth. Wei Yuan can’t tell if he’s genuinely surprised or just being dramatic. “For real?”

“I said I think !”

“Well, you can’t just say that and not follow up! Spit it out!”

“You’ve got to promise you’re not gonna snitch on me. Like, I’ll be grounded for life if you do,” Wei Yuan insists.

“Pinky promise.” They both have to lean a dangerous way out of their seats to lace their fingers together, but Wei Yuan does feel a little more reassured when Jin Ling lets go.

“Okay, so,” he starts again, clearing his throat. “We were spring cleaning last year, so I was in charge of doing the attic because Dad said the rest was too messy and he’d do it himself, and I found this box with old sketches in it. I’m not gonna show you, though, it’s pretty private.”

“But you went through them,” Jin Ling points out. “That’s not very private.”

Wei Yuan flushes. “I didn’t know what they were at first! You know how dad is, he doodles all the time and leaves it all over the house.” He spares a thought for eleven-year-old Wei Yuan, who sincerely thought this was just another batch of his father’s mindless drawings. “Okay, get this, I was just sorting through the boxes because auntie A-Qing wanted to clear the space, so I had to throw things out⎯”

---

Wei Yuan blows a layer of dust off an ancient-looking wooden box and immediately chokes, waving his free hand in front of his face in an effort to clear the air. He gives it an experimental rattle, then, when the contents barely make a sound, spends a solid five minutes digging his nails into the hair-thin line that runs across it before he successfully pries it open.

He only barely keeps the dozens of stacked-up sheets from spilling onto the floor. As things are, most of them fall into his lap. Picking one up at random, Wei Yuan immediately recognizes the style. There, in pencil and charcoal, are the same bold strokes his father puts to paper every other day. He would know better than most ; the protagonists of his childhood stories still decorate the walls of his bedroom, lovingly preserved in hand-painted frames.

But while Wei Yuan's collection is a motley group of characters as different from one another as father and son could make them, all these drawings represent the same person : a young man with long black hair and a face as regal as an ancient god's. As Wei Yuan flips through the sheets, he finds the man looking back at him, bent over a book with glasses perched on his nose, tying his hair back with a cloud-patterned ribbon — even one in which he stares straight at the artist, his smile soft and lovely. Wei Yuan looks at that one for a long time before mustering the will to put it away.

Just behind it, he finds the letter.

He can instantly tell if wasn’t written by his father. There’s no trace of Wei Ying’s messy scrawl here, only script so neat it could have been typewritten. He quickly skims through it and⎯

“I can’t read that,” Wei Yuan moans, quickly shoving it in between the sketches again.

He almost wishes it was something saucy. Instead, it feels like peering into the depths of someone’s heart, so intimate he feels like slamming a non-existent door shut and leaving the words to their business.

( He can still see them in his mind. The sun rises in my chest every time I see you. I never want to look away. )

There’s a signature. There, in elegant cursive, is the name Lan Zhan.

“A-Yuan, lunch’s ready!” his father calls from downstairs. Wei Yuan trips to hide the box behind his back before the man in question pokes his head through the hatch, hair full of rogue dust bunnies and sporting a lopsided grin. “C’mon, I made sandwiches.”

When the boy eyes him warily, Wei Ying rolls his eyes. “There’s no pepper in them, I promise. Come down before your auntie gets impatient, though.”

“I’ll be there in a minute, I just want to finish this pile!” Wei Yuan croaks.

“One minute.” Despite the ultimatum, his father winks at him and disappears again. Wei Yuan waits for the sound of his footsteps to fade to let out a sigh of relief.

The box’s content seem to stare back at him. Feeling only slightly guilty, he takes the letter out again and carefully folds it, stuffing it into his pocket before scrambling down the ladder.

---

It’s an entire afternoon of chores before Wei Yuan can excuse himself from the dinner table and climbs the stairs to uncle Wen Ning’s desk two steps at the time, making sure to shut the door behind him before he turns the computer on.

Lan Zhan , he types. The half-second the search results take to load seems to last eternally. His hand almost slips clicking on the top link, a Wikipedia article.

Lan Zhan, courtesy name Lan Wangji, born January 23 1984 in Gusu, China, is a celebrated singer and songwriter. His most successful single, Inquiry , was sold at more than…

Wei Yuan's eyes derail from the text, distracted by the article's picture. There, pale golden eyes glancing away from the camera, is the man from the sketches — older, perhaps, but more than recognizable in his otherworldly beauty.

His heart rate picks up, drumming in his chest. It's him. It's really him. Dad knew this guy. Dad liked him so much he drew him over and over again.

Just like that, Wei Yuan's enthusiasm deflates like a popped balloon.

His father has never shied away from the extravagant tales of his when-I-was-younger shenanigans, as embarrassing as they can get. If he knew someone so famous - no, if he was in love with him, Wei Yuan corrects himself, remembering the letter's gentle words -, wouldn't he have at least mentioned it?

This is how Wei Yuan’s life has always been : to the million-dollar question ( who’s my other dad? ), he’s always received the same answer, be it from his uncles or his aunts.

I don’t know, A-Yuan. Maybe you should ask your father instead.

That, of course, is an inevitable dead end. Wei Ying will ruffle his hair, maybe drop a casual can’t remember, baby, and change the subject. At this point, Wei Yuan has pretty much resigned himself never to get a straight answer from his father.

The screen in front of him seems like an ancient tome holding all the answers he’s looking for, if only he’ll bother to decipher them.

His eyes drift to a cloud-shaped logo, curling around an elegant character he recognizes as the Lan of Lan Wangji’s name. Cloud Recesses Entertainment, Wei Yuan reads. After a long moment spent staring at the computer, he grabs the nearest notepad, tears a page out of it and starts to scroll down the page.

---

“So, let me get this straight,” Jin Ling says slowly. “You found the guy you think is your dad, looked up his family's company, read their entire website, made a new email to write to them like you were an actual advertiser for the hotel and now they're having their company holidays here ?”

When put like that, it certainly sounds more convoluted (and borderline crazy) than Wei Yuan intended it to be. “...Yes?”

“And you couldn’t just invite him personally? Like a normal person?”

“ No! First, I probably wouldn’t even get past his fan mail. Second, what was I supposed to tell him? ‘Hi, I know you and my dad were in love before I was born because I looked through his stuff, and I’d like to know if you’re maybe my father too’? I’d die before I managed to send that!” He pauses to catch his breath. “Maybe he doesn’t even remember dad! Would you remember someone you met thirteen years ago and then never again?”

“I-I don’t know! Maybe?” Jin Ling splutters. “Anyway, da-jiu is gonna kill you when he finds out. Well, not kill you ‘cause he loves you too much, but you did think about that, right?”

“No! I mean...maybe I'm wrong, and it's just a coincidence. But I think I'll know when I talk to him. If he's not my dad, there's no need to tell him, it'd just be embarrassing.”

“So all of this is relying on a couple drawings and a gut feeling? That's what you're gonna use to explain?”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

Jin Ling throws his hands up. “Really? You masterminded this whole thing and this is where you’re stumped?”

“I tried, okay?” Wei Yuan protests weakly. “Besides, dad’s gonna be so busy with your mom and shushu coming over. Maybe he won’t notice for a while, I can work something out in the meantime…”

“When’s that guy supposed to get here?”

Wei Yuan squints, trying to conjure up the schedule he scribbled in-between some chemistry notes. “Tomorrow, I’m pretty sure. I don’t have to worry about it right now, I guess.”

“More time to plan for your funeral, then.”

“Hilarious, I’m dying of laughter over here,” Wei Yuan deadpans back. “For real, you can’t tell anyone, okay? Not even your mom and dad,” he adds when Jin Ling opens his mouth again.

“Fine!” Though his cousin is wearing his usual pout again, he can tell the message went through alright. “Can we get ice cream now? It’s so hot on your stupid island.”

Wei Yuan stifles a smile, beckoning the other to get up. “Sure. Dad tried his hand at some mulberry thing, it’s pretty good, actually…”

---

“Jiang Cheng! Hey, Jiang Cheng!”

Some of the locals hide an indulgent smile behind their hands as a silhouette in jean overalls runs down the pier, skillfully avoiding crashing into tourists.

At the other end of the wooden boards, Jiang Cheng runs a hand down his face. The person behind him shakes silently, as if trying to repress a giggle and failing.

Wei Ying stops in front of the couple, beaming, before holding out his arms. Despite his apparent exasperation, Jiang Cheng steps into the hug all the same, though his expression turns long-suffering when his brother gives his back a vigorous rub.

As Wei Ying pulls away, his eyes drift to the other figure and immediately crinkle at the corners. “Huaisang! So you’re the mysterious plus one! What was it like riding the ferry like the rest of us?”

“Exotic,” Nie Huaisang sighs, which sends both of them into a fit of hysterics.

A few feet away, someone whispers, “Wait, Huaisang as in Nie Huaisang ? From the Untamed?”

“Yeah, but no pics, please!” Wei Ying chirps at the tittering tourists. “Leave my guy some privacy, he’s on holidays!”

“He’s not that worried about privacy,” Jiang Cheng grumbles. “I had to stop him from posting about us on every available account he has for three months.”

Wei Ying gapes. “Three months? You’ve been together for three months and you didn’t tell me about it? Jiang Cheng,” he sighs, pressing a hand to his heart as if covering a mortal wound, “I thought you were my brother.”

“He was hiding it from you in particular,” Nie Huaisang oh-so-helpfully points out, then snaps his fan open. “Said you couldn’t be trusted to keep it on the down low.” Wei Ying has the distinct impression he’s concealing a shit-eating grin.

“I’ve been mortally wounded,” Wei Ying moans, and dramatically collapses into Jiang Cheng’s arms, who pushes him back upright while swearing under his breath.

The episode might have turned into a small brawl right there on the pier, if not for Nie Huaisang’s T-shirt.

“Oh my God, you still have it!” Wei Ying all but squeals, grabbing the other man by the shoulders and pulling away his fan to inspect his outfit. “It's the original logo, right?”

Nie Huaisang proudly tugs on the lapels of his sheer jacket to show off the shirt beneath. “The one I drew in professor Hua's class? Yup.”

Wei Ying heaves a sigh, running his fingers over each ray of the sun-shaped logo. Suddenly, he’s back in college, and Nie Huaisang just texted him a rough sketch of their band’s design, oblivious to his art professor’s shadow over his shoulder. “Holy shit, I miss Sunshot. Remember that stunt we pulled at graduation?”

“My brother was on my ass about it for a whole year after that,” Nie Huaisang shrugs, then snaps his fingers. “It was so worth it, though.”

“Right? Jiang Cheng, aren’t you mad you didn’t do it with us?”

The interested party crosses his arms, glare barely suppressing the smile tugging at his mouth. “Making a show of yourselves like that? No.”

“Your loss, didi.”

Nie Huaisang snickers. “Don’t listen to him, he brought the shirt too.”

“I’ve had enough of you two,” Jiang Cheng gripes. “Is A-Jie here already? I miss having someone sensible around.”

“She and the peacock arrived this morning.” Wei Wuxian stretches languidly, shooting his brother a wide grin. “I’d come and hang out, but I’ve got some murals to redo before the next group gets here and they’re not gonna paint themselves.”

Jiang Cheng mutters something that sounds a suspicious lot like good riddance , but doesn’t pull away when Wei Ying loops an arm around his shoulders. “I missed you, though! Facetime’s not the same, you know?”

His brother seems to brace himself, taking a deep breath before speaking again. “Mom and Dad want you over for Christmas. You and A-Yuan. We can see each other then.”

Slowly, Wei Ying untangles himself from their half-embrace. “They do?” The unspoken question hangs between them : even Mom ?

“Yeah. They’ll probably call you themselves, but I thought I’d give you a heads up.”

Wei Ying’s heart feels warmer than before. In a characteristic display of older sibling assholishness, he ignores the soft, marshmallow-y fondness and reaches for Jiang Cheng to ruffle his hair. “Aww! Thanks, A-Cheng, that’s so sweet of you.”

“How do I ever put up with you?”

Nie Huaisang’s voice snaps them both back into reality. The actor waves his fan at them, smile playing at his lips. “Very tender, heartwarming, yadda yadda. Can we do this somewhere with AC, though? I’m sweating bullets here.”

“Alright, alright, can’t make the superstar wait! Gimme that.” Wei Ying barely waits for assent before grabbing Nie Huaisang’s suitcases, wincing at their weight before pulling them up the slope and toward his car.

“What about me?” Jiang Cheng asks as he readjusts his grip on his own luggage and follows suit.

Wei Ying barely turns back. “What about you? You know the way, didi, carry it yourself.”

“You -”

Jiang Cheng’s outraged protests and his companions’ laughter seems to linger long after the jeep has left nothing but dust in its wake.

Three months ago

The telephone rings, shrill and ears-piercing. Wen Ning picks it up almost as second nature, mechanically bringing it to his ear as he flips through their latest batch of flyers. “Lotus Pier Resort, what can I do for you?”

A few awkward seconds of silence pass. He pats around his desk for a pen, drops it to the floor, and attempts to maintain a more-or-less steady voice as he crawls around on the carpet to find it again. “Ah, yes. Your flight got delayed? By how long?”

The scritch of his newly-retrieved pen on the nearest post-it. “If we can change your reservation? Um...it’s half a day, I’ll see what I can do. If necessary, will you mind different arrangements for the time being? I’ll talk to other hotels in the area, but I don’t think it’ll come to that...”

A pause.

“Okay, to confirm, this is Luo Qingyang, calling for Cloud Recesses Entertainment…?”

Present days

Wei Ying wipes his forehead, further smearing green acrylic across his face. He’s been at it all day since dropping off Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang in their room, but at least the mural is nearly done. The couple’s features are nothing special, but he likes to think he did a good job at depicting their emotions. One of the silhouettes smiles wide and contagious at the other, half-turning back with their hand held out.

It took him the better part of the afternoon just to paint the field of flowers they’re standing in, though. Even after more than a decade on this island, the heat’s still making him melt on the daily. Just a few more details , he tells himself, then I can go get myself a fresh drink.

The chatter of new guests making their way up to the lobby makes his head turn. Oh right, the group’s arriving today. They really do look like rich tourists, in their all-white outfits and⎯

Wait.

Wei Ying swallows thickly. This stirs up memories of another figure in white, which doesn’t hurt any less, even after thirteen-odd years.

It’s just a coincidence. Normal company-organized holidays, Wen Qing said. Nothing to worry about.

He looks again, and meets the gaze of the man at the forefront of the group. The other’s eyes (molten gold, bright as sunlight and most of all familiar ) widen ever so slightly, and Wei Ying almost falls off the ladder.

He catches himself just in time, sweaty and paint-slicked palms slipping on the rails, and resists the urge to let go again just to hide his face in his hands.

This is the worst. God, why him of all people?

Why, of all guests getting on and off the island all summer - as they have for years -, did it have to be Lan Zhan ?

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #mdzs fic #kim's fics #mm!au

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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610

What is a question you get asked too much? On these surveys, it’s definitely the color of my nails. :) :) :) Haha but in real life, it’s “How your sem?” which can get tiring as a conversation starter but which I appreciate nonetheless because it’s a way for us to look out for one another. Worst grade you've ever gotten? In high school, I managed to get the lowest possible grade my school gives, which is a 68 but that was on an examination; the lowest grade I got in my card was a 78. In college, my lowest mark was a 2.50 from a fucking econ class, which is probably equivalent to a C in the other side of the world. Do you like colorful sharpies? No, I don’t really use them a lot. Do you do chores? We’re all expected to wash our own dishes in the house but other than that my mom prefers doing all the tasks. Who is someone you haven't seen in a while? Angela, definitely. I don’t think I’ve seen her since her birthday in September.

Do you think double-jointed people can type better than most people? I don’t know any double-jointed people and I know even less about their typing speeds lol. Do you have nice neighbors? They don’t make fusses and there’s like zero drama in the neighborhood all year so I guess that makes them nice. Some kids are fucking annoying though and like to play INSIDE OUR GARAGE and ON OUR PATIO. I literally just demanded my parents this weekend to have a big ass gate made (with spikes, preferably hahahaha jk) so these kids can’t find their way to our house anymore. How many pets do you have? I claim ownership for one pet, which is my own dog, but we also have a cat in the house. It belongs to my sister and I’m not close with it. What is your favorite website? Wikipedia. If you find the right topic, it’ll pull you in like a black hole and you’ll be reading up articles for HOURS. It’s been happening to me since 2008 lmao. Last present you bought for someone? The last ever gift I bought before tapping out was a pair of cute Marikina sandals for Gab’s sister. But that day I also bought Instax film for my sister, a garlic press for Gab’s dad, and massage oils for Gab’s mom. Who did you hang out with last night? I was alone last night and was in my room reading about serial killers by 7:30 PM hahahaha. What is the reason behind the last time you laughed? I was watching Try Guys videos before falling asleep last night and they’re funny guys, so. Are you more clumsy or graceful? Clumsy... I don’t think I’ve ever been described as graceful. More shy or outgoing? Shy. But outgoing if with the right people. What is your favorite fruit? Avocado, I guess. Who are your 3 closest friends? Gabie and Angela are my two best friends but then all my friends after them are kinda equal in terms of how close I am with them... I guess my second-closest friend would be Laurice. Are you in a good mood? A little bit, because we’re seeing the fun side of family today. But I’ll generally be sad by default in the next few days just because it’s Christmas season, and I don’t like the holidays. Do you like Mexican food? Sure, I crave them occasionally. What’s your favorite month? April, because birth month. Do you like myspace? I didn’t enjoy it in the brief time I had it just because it was such a foreign thing, both figuratively and literally – I was *very* new to the internet so I didn’t quite understand the early social media culture just yet, and Myspace also was never a thing here because everyone was using Friendster and/or Multiply in Asia. What did you last eat? McDonald’s fried chicken. What is your favorite hobby? Right now, it’s gem/diamond painting. Gab got me a set for Christmas (she allowed me to open it early so I can deal with the depression early haha) and it’s super therapeutic and, I now realize, more fun than coloring. What is something you have always wanted to do? Go outside of Asia. What time is it? Exactly 8:45 AM. What are you listening to? I can hear my mom’s very loud and powerful fan upstairs, but I also hear her shuffling in the kitchen as she’s making breakfast. Are you better at math or spelling? Spelling. What color are your eyes? They are dark brown. Is the sun shining? Yes. Do you like the smell of cinnamon? Now that it’s breakfast time I would certainly enjoy smelling it. Do you ever go camping? I’ve never done it before.

Last thing that creeped you out? I was watching a Try Guys video where they tried to drive while sleep-deprived, and the first half of the video was them vlogging their experience staying up the entire night – by 4 AM they were a bit delirious and they plugged in this weird montage of distorted hallucinations with sounds of children laughing, and I really didn’t enjoy that lol. Have you ever climbed through a window? I don’t think I have, no. We were locked out of the house once but we made my sister climb one of the windows because she was absolutely stick-thin as a kid. Do you like rock or rap better? Rock. Are you in a relationship? Yes. Do you like the band Hollywood Undead? I was never a fan. What was your favorite music video of 2008? I was only watching Beyoncé videos at that point hahahaaaaa. My favorite video of hers from 2008 was Diva. Are you wearing socks? Nope. Last candy you ate? I had a Crunch bar the other day. What is something that grosses you out? Accidentally touching food that already landed in the sink and is soaking wet. Do you take more than 10 surveys a day? Nah, not anymore. That was me when I started though. Do you prefer summer or winter? Winter, even though I’ve never experienced it yet and just because I mostly dislike summer. Do you watch football? No. I never got the hype but I am willing to watch Gab’s sisters’, who both play football, games. When do you usually go to bed? It’s always different. I can go to bed by 8:30 or at 4 AM, or in between. When did you last login to myspace? 2009, maybe. Who is the last person you called? My mom. What do you like about Tuesdays? That’s my car’s coding day, so that means I get to use one of the family cars which is slightly larger but looks a hella lot more luxurious lol. Do you like Taco Bell? Love Taco Bell. Sucks that it’s only in malls I never ever go to.

#survey #surveys

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thirdpersonperspectiveuniverse · 5 years

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Looking at Origins

“Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.”

- Shirley Jackson

Since we’ll need to establish what the original story is, let’s first take a look at the original book, published in 1959.

Shirley Jackson, at the time before publishing her book, had already made fame publishing short stories and some occasional novels, including the famous short The Lottery. Her style was never really reflective of supernatural stories, instead being mostly in the dystopian or mystery themed. However, Jackson was inspired after reading about a nineteenth century study done where five supposed psychics had been locked in a supposed haunted house, and all had come out expressing different feelings about it. Jackson saw the study as less of a supernatural case, and more of a “‘story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and background.’” (Jackson Interview, Wikipedia). With this in mind, she energetically began to plan out her story, even channeling her grandfather (an architect) in designing a floor plan for the fictitious Hill House (seen below). In addition, while I cannot confirm nor deny this, one of the possible influences for Hill House was the Jennings Hall, in Bennington, Vermont (seen below). The book was released in 1959, to critical claim, being hailed as one of the next great stories to be remembered for decades.

The plot follows Eleanor Vance, a sheltered woman who hasn’t been able to leave her home and do things a normal adult would do, due to her ailing mother. Now, at 32, she receives a letter from Dr. Montague, who asks her to be one subject in an experiment dedicated to proving the existence of ghosts. Feeling like this is finally her chance to see the world, she drives to Hill House, in order to meet Dr. Montague and the only other two others to join the experiment: Theo, a psychic, and Luke Sanderson, the nephew of the descendant of Hugh Crain, builder of Hill House. After their first dinner in the house, Dr. Monague vaguely explains the history of the house, filled with suicides, fights, and people leaving before the lease is due. While mildly paranormal things begin to happen, Eleanor seems to be at peace in the house, even after the second night where the women are trapped in a room surrounded by loud banging, and the men are sent chasing after a child they here, which makes Dr. Montague begin to suspect that the house is trying to seperate them. Over time, the groups moods seem to improve, even when they simultaneously lose the concept of time and memory, with Eleanor noting that her time before Hill House seems foggy, and the group completely forgetting what day it is. It is from here that the group begins to split as more scary things begin to happen. Nearing the end, now Mrs. Montague and her Assistant, Arthur, start a hostile takeover of the investigation, portraying the Montague’s broken marriage and their differences in how to investigate. By now, Eleanor has fully turned herself to the houses control, and is now able to feel and hear everyone in the house, and grows more hostile. This culminates into the House deluding Eleanor into climbing the rickety spiral staircase in the library to the tower, where one of the previous owners had hung themselves. Luke luckily is able to stop her, and Dr. Montague demands her to head back home. Eleanor initially refuses, seeing Hill House as her home, but she eventually starts driving away. However, as she is about to leave the property, she seemingly loses control of the car and crashes into the same tree that Hugh Crain’s wife died at. The book ends with the remaining characters pondering whether or not she killed herself, or if the ghosts finally got her.

As said before, the book was released to critical acclaim, and it’s not hard to see why- the entire book has more levels in it than Hill House, leaving viewers so many things to theorize and speculate about. While it is a slow story being told, I think what helps with this book is that Jackson does keep you off balance, making the world seem real enough to relate to it, yet odd in certain aspects. In fact, when Dr. Montague describes the house as having all of the halls and floors at the slightest of an angle, as if it wanted to disorient it’s occupants. I can’t help but feel like Tim Burton was inspired by this house. Also, what sets this apart from other stories is that the plot itself is not the main focus; like Jackson intended, this is a character study of five people stuck somewhere that is trying to make them lose their minds. Because of this, the characters do really pop off the page, being able to make an imprint on the reader’s mind, and in turn get emotions felt by the reader for them. That’s not even mentioning how many subtle details about the characters there are; I believe that one could write a book based on each character’s backstory, personality, and journey throughout the book.

This story was an innovator for the time, and still revels in its subtle horror for decades to come. It actually does this so well that people have tried to recreate this story multiple times over. The question is, do these remakes live up to what Jackson imagined for the story? In fact, what did Jackson want to channel in this book other than an intriguing idea? Let’s find out.

Work Cited:

Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House, Viking Publishers, 1959

Minutalgio, Ross. “This Creepy Vermont Building May Have Inspired Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House,” NBC5 News, 2018. https://www.mynbc5.com/article/this-creepy-vermont-building-may-have-inspired-netflixs-haunting-of-hill-house/2394633 (For Image Only)

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abundantchewtoys · 5 years

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HS Epi: Meat p25 reaction

---

Though, we might jump to Roxy & Calliope again. It might be that, now her Reload self is... verschwunden, she's going to regain consciousness to a certain extent again. We'll just have to see if her condition is any better than Rose's, but I would hope so.

---

"ROSE: Customarily, we speak in favorable terms about “getting to know each other” as people." Uh, wut? Rose... is talking coherently? I thought post-victory Rose would mostly have stayed to short sentences, in that discourse Dirk referred to. Talk about "working through the pain".

Well then! I suppose their discussion is more related to the ultimate self than Dirk was letting on. Of course it would be, I mean, Dirk is trying to get Rose in a favorable state of mind, maybe to break down her resistence to the ascension by convincing her of the validity of his point of view.

"ROSE: The more we learn about each other, the more the barriers between us fall and the closer we become." So, is that part of the ultimate self ascension, too? The more you understand other people and vice versa, the more even the barriers between your distinct ultimate selves fall away? ... Are they all evolving into their own story's version of Godhead Pickle Inspector?

"And to question this in any way is to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological sin. ROSE: It is to renounce humanity itself, is it not? DIRK: Yo, hold on a sec. This shit is dynamite, I promise. DIRK: Gotta take care of something..." Pffff, Dirk is half distracted. And Rose was having her groove on, too! For a moment I thought he was grabbing for a pen to take notes. :P

"Rose’s phone is ringing, and I know I’m in for an encore of my last dead-end conversation with Kanaya, so I block her number. I’d like to be able to attend to Rose in peace. It’s only cordial for me to give the greater percentage of my attention to someone I actually invited over. The nagging wife can hold her horses." Oh Dirk. You garbage bag of a person, you. He's quite literally full of himself, lately.

"Rose isn’t speaking to me directly. She’s been relocated to somewhere in the workshop a little more comfortable than the fucking floor." Having her talk out loud, drowning in her own thoughts. It's almost as if he's inviting her to become like him.

"Her head is in her hands again, hair falling over her shoulders. Her face is entirely hidden from me." It's as if it always comes back to Rose biting through her issues while hiding her face. An allusion to the blindfolded Seer?

"Her shadow has faded to light behind her, assuming the shape of a Rose-like apparition. I nod to her, and she continues. When she speaks, it’s almost as if it’s the apparition that’s doing the talking." ... Is her shadow slowly detaching from her as a separate being?? That's some Peter Pan-type shenanigans. I'm not even surprised this came back to be referenced. So, what if that's what's happening, and it isn't just that her shadow is fading due to the light changing outside? If the ultimate self detaches from the body, doesn't that mean they're, like, closer to ghosts? Does Dirk have his old body stashed somewhere, if this has happened to him? I doubt it, since he was perfectly capable of fighting Jake, earlier.

"ROSE: If two people were to know each other in such a complete way, what remains of their individuality? DIRK: If you’re going there, we might as well start at the bottom and define what an “individual” even is. ROSE: Oh dear god." Rose might be afraid to let Kanaya in any more than she already is. But in the grand scheme of the ultimate self, it might also have a double meaning. Maybe Dirk is convinced they're all shards of the same self.

"I place my hand on my chin and broadcast the appearance of being deeply pensive about philosophy all of a sudden. She gulps hard, broadcasting her grim realization that I have indeed become serious as shit about this. Literally any kind of intellectual pablum could pour out of my mouth any second, and she’s not prepared. For all she knows, I’m about to start quoting Kierkegaard." Is Rose afraid her biological father is going to lay the philosophy aside and slamming psychology? ... No wait, Kierkegaard was a philosopher, I find. Then, she might not be prepared for philosophy as much as psychology, when I thought the former was taking place already, but apparently.

"DIRK: Hey, where I come from, Wikipedia is a venerated literary resource. So if I told you I boned the hell up on his pages, you gotta believe me. That’s not meant as like, a punchline or anything. DIRK: I’m a really, really well-read dude." His education came from Wikipedia. Well, it beats Uncyclopedia, I guess.

"ROSE: But there were only two human beings alive where you came from. ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable? DIRK: That would be me, obviously." Rose already ruled out trolls at the beginning of this page to have a valid opinion in this matter, so )(IC was already out.

"DIRK: I suppose you’re going to tell me you haven’t read enough Wikipedia articles on loads of scholarly shit to fancy yourself an elite academic by 25th century standards as well? ROSE: No, I guess I have. ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that measure. ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making himself feel clever." This. Such a good burn.

"apparently in any given era the standard for depth of intellectual mastery is inversely proportional to the depth of the ocean." Well, we don't know that it's true for ANY given era. I'm not sure the proportion of intellectici vs. plebs in ancient Greece was proportionally higher than in the 21st century. We just have a lot of philosophy of that age survive until today. Also, heh, ocean, makes me think of LOLAR and her denizen at the bottom of the sea.

"DIRK: Let’s have a totally amateur debate on philosophy. Hit me with the classics. ROSE: Um. DIRK: I’ll go first." Well, heh, okay, at least Dirk is aware his assessment of himself is full of crap. That continues to be one of his most endearing characteristics.

"ROSE: How about, ROSE: “Subjectivity is truth.” DIRK: Wrong, but valid. DIRK: Try this on for fucking size. DIRK: “Late 19th century existential phenomenology pre-supposes that free will is a thing.”" For all that these might apply to the ultimate self... They're just quoting/paraphrasing the Wikipedia page now, aren't they?

"ROSE: I don’t think I bookmarked that page. ROSE: Can’t back you up there. DIRK: But what if there’s no free will. ROSE: You didn’t put that in quotes." How does she even know? :P His tone of voice, presumably. And yeah, this starts coming back to the discussion about the alpha timeline and pre-destination in the existential framework of Paradox Space. I suppose it would make sense that the Ultimate Riddle comes back in the discussion of the ultimate self.

"DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident? DIRK: Our lives were meticulously planned from clone-ception up through this very post-canon moment we find ourselves riffing in about the very free will we probably don’t even have. DIRK: Don’t you think it’s all a little too convenient?" He's acknowledging his state as a fictional character again, without stating it outright. Does he want Rose to come to the same conclusion as him by herself? Though it is ironic how, post-realization, he's had so much more agency in the nature of his own life. Unless he realizes he still doesn't. Wow, that's really getting meta.

"ROSE: This seriously is just a conversation between two stoned people now." ROSE: The bad kind, where neither one even gets to be high."PFfffffff. Yeah, actually, we need Gamzee's input up in here. 'have you ever, like, really LOOKED at your life?'

"DIRK: Seriously, Rose. Do you think that you have free will?" Is it in essence the question that leads to ultimate self realization? That Dirk is hammering so hard on it? Ironic though, that the question is twofold no: one outside of the story, and one inside of it.

"ROSE: I... DIRK: Stand up." WOOOOW. He's going to show off his powers now, isn't he? What's that even going to do to Rose, realizing he can do that without so much as breaking a sweat?

She might resist similar to John though, which is proof that his influence isn't total.

"She tries to stand up, but I haven’t narratively allowed it yet." That's another application of his powers, apparently - to offset, to negate action. He hasn't used it a lot yet, though.

"She attributes it to exhaustion, an all-encompassing sense of weakness due to her condition. Of course, she has been weakened by her condition, and thus she suspects nothing." I like Blaperile's theory, that what Dirk can allow them to do is limited to what they believe they're capable of OR which they can rationalize away. I hope it's only the former.

"It’s done deftly enough that she doesn’t notice how close I end up sitting to her. To be honest, I don’t even notice myself until I’ve done it. I continue speaking, and she remains rapt. But now even I can’t help but wonder where I’m going with this." Uh... Has he really started to lose track of his own motivations? More proof that he isn't omniscient and still being narrated instead of being his own narrator.

"DIRK: Logically speaking, individuality is a collection of processes and properties, interrelations of matter and experience all bundled together. DIRK: Your experience and processes don’t want to be bundled together anymore." So, is it only that her selves are trying to merge, or that even her own 'self' is trying to become something more, merging with others? And if so, is that Dirk confessing to what he's going through himself?

"A moment goes by, and she’s quiet, perhaps puzzling over what I said. Then I remember I haven’t narratively permitted a response. I’m forgetting myself, like a fool. Distracted by the surprise my own actions have caused me. I resolve to stay focused, remain in control. I let her speak." He's getting distracted again. You can't be both a character and an author, at the same time, for an extended amount of time.

"ROSE: I don’t understand. DIRK: You do, though. DIRK: We’ve been talking about it, but using different concepts." I wonder if Dirk is trying to retroactively tell Rose what they've been talking about, filling in the unshown conversation.

"DIRK: Your Ultimate Self, that which is revealed when the mind’s partitions are stripped away, and all potentiality of who you are and what you could have been flow together. DIRK: Those are the experiences and processes that are refusing to stay bundled, that’s what your body can’t endure." Ah, okay, so not like her self is trying to merge with his and other people's.

"The unbundling itself is your mind coming apart. DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not yet. DIRK: But you can be. DIRK: I’m working on that. DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you with my own expanding consciousness." Aka, with his narrative powers, he's stopping her body from breaking down further, because he doesn't allow it. Does she have to stay near him for that to keep working?

"DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But I can help you. DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a little while. DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes." I don't think her shadow is going to develop eyes. ... I like Blaperile's theory, that he'll give her limited control on the narration, guiding her to further understanding. It would allow her to develop her own idea about what her Ultimate Self should look like, with less influence from him.

"Rose opens her eyes. Not her physical eyes. She opens the others easily, internally, beholding a field of perception elsewhere entirely. They see what I want her to see. That which quietly desires to be seen." Rose's mind quest begins. 'That which quietly desires to be seen', is that the story, or at least the part of it that is narrated, aka relevant, true and essential?

"We’re not in my workshop anymore. Physically, yes, we’re still here. But on a higher textual plane, we’ve pulled back from that, from Earth C itself. Rose takes a shuddering breath and runs an invisible pair of hands afforded by her new sight over the narrative whole cloth, and begins smoothing out the wrinkles. ROSE: I see... John." Cooool! She's starting to gain the same understanding as Dirk, here's to hoping she does a better job with it than him. But hey, Dirk still acknowledges his physical form on Earth C, so he isn't a ghost, and he still thinks of the body as important, at least that's something and he hasn't started to think of himself as some immaterial conscience.

"DIRK: Doing exactly what you told him to do, like a good boy." Not sure if he's actually done everything John planned. Plus, yeah, Dirk's been influencing him along the way.

"ROSE: ..." She might notice that, too.

"DIRK: What’s there to be upset about? You knew this was how it was supposed to go down. ROSE: He could have made another choice." And he did, in the Candy path. I wonder how that influenced the rest of the story, and if Hussie really went and showed us that. Maybe Dirk 'knows' about the Candy path and the difference it would have made.

"DIRK: Then where would we be? ROSE: Who knows." Meanwhile, in another narrative context, at the same time... :P

"DIRK: If it can happen, then it’s been written. And if it’s been written, you can read it right now. ROSE: I... don’t know if I want to see." ... PFffff, that's directed to us. No, Dirk, not planning on viewing that path just yet.

"I’m not going to describe what she sees. First of all, that would be spoiling it. Unless you already know, in which case, I guess what’s taking place here qualifies as something closer to dramatic irony. But if you really want to see it for yourself, stop what you’re doing, flip the whole thing over, and begin again. I’ll be right here when you get back, waiting. Trust me, no one’s going anywhere." ... In the Candy path the people are also going to be thinking about what could have been, aren't they? :P I do hope this isn't implying we should read the Candy path now. I mean, it's a bit awkward, navigating back, plus I would rather think Andrew'd bring the two paths together or add a REAL indication, before making it relevant to have read both.

"DIRK: So, what do you think? ROSE: It’s difficult to say. ROSE: I suppose there are negatives and positives. I can’t say if that option would be any better or worse than what we’re experiencing now. ROSE: Whichever way our fate unravels there’s too much of... something. ROSE: Too much blood, too much sugar." I think there might be a bit of a 'sugar overload' in the Candy path, in that it might seem there's too much fluff? Maybe inertia is taking hold of them over there, and people are slowly coming to regret not taking control of their lives. Even though, in a meta sense, only John could and did.

"ROSE: I almost can’t see through it. ROSE: It’s as if our extra-canon reality, our surroundings, our actions and their consequences... ROSE: They’ve all lost the ability to blend the ingredients responsibly. ROSE: Do you know what I mean?" It's like their fate has split like a cherub: a violent and a passive path, no inbetweens. But then, like a cherub, will one path 'devour' the other?

"It’s growing dark around her again. The apparition she’s been projecting behind her fades, and she starts to bleed light and shadow in all directions. Her physical eyes are open now, and shining bright. It’s a striking sight. She’s beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity." She's literally starting to project light. Cool! And if she overcomes her current issues, it would definitely be a useful tool, and something to bond over with Kanaya.

"She’s my daughter in every sense of the word. My equal, my mirror.

It used to be odd to consider it. A technical fact I’d accepted as a genetic reality, but nothing that could ever quite penetrate down to the soul. But in this moment it doesn’t feel strange at all. It feels right, suddenly. And I know she must feel the same way. There’s no way she doesn’t. All she needs is a nudge in the right direction." Is that Dirk knowing, or projecting? Still weird how Homestuck made it so parents and progeny can interact as equals in age and demeanor alike.

"We’re family. We belong together. And after years of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who understood me?" ... He really wants to co-narrate with her.

"ROSE: But what if the person you catch... ROSE: Isn’t me anymore? DIRK: Who gives a fuck. She’ll be better." I hope and suspect Rose will be a better omniscient narrator than Dirk. But I understand her concerns. If your influence is so total, it can become totalitarian.

"Would it not be to renounce humanity itself?

And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.

Her body should be dead now. But I’m holding it together until I can implement the more permanent solution I have in mind." Has he done that to himself as well? Made a connection between his ethereal ascended form and his corporeal body? If so, he at least had the good sense to want to remain grounded. Still, Paradox Space, what the fuck? Having people die at 23 is only marginally better than 13.

"She regards me with an almost unbearably bright adoration. The kind that’s difficult to look at directly, but you can’t manage to look away either. It’s like the first time you see the Green Sun. Of course it is, because that’s the way I’m describing it. The truth belongs to me. And as of now, so does she." ... Eeeesh. I hoped he'd say, the truth belongs to Rose, too, but this. It's as if by ascending, she gave away a part of her agency to him??? He planned that, the bastard. Dirk, I really don't know what to make of you and your intentions.

"ROSE: I see it now. ROSE: You’re right. DIRK: Have I ever not been? ROSE: You...

A wrinkle in her brow. It smoothes out quickly. She murmurs to herself, trailing off quietly." Him, okay, I hope that means she can still cut loose in due time.

"ROSE: What... time is it...?

I step forward and steady her, hand firm but gentle against her cheek. That’s all she needs: a stable anchor. DIRK: Rose, does time even exist?" Dave (and Aradia, and Damara) would disagree.

---

Wow. I mean. Damn. Nice way of keeping us on the fence on Dirk's motivations. At least it should be a good thing he's no longer alone on that plane of existence. I'd rather have seen Rose immediately take control of the narration, but I can only hope it's due for the next page. It'd feel like reading her draft of CotL all over, her narrating in her longwinded fashion. :P

#homestuck #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #rose lalonde #dirk strider

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