#sibling (evil) also pointed out i have adult money now and no one can stop me from unlocking exclusive areas

[suburbanbonfire]

i have been trying to game more often since i enjoy it and dont make enough time for myself, so at the behest of one of the siblings i redownloaded beloved-childhood-game Wizard 101 and have been absolutely sinking so much time into it, oh my god perfect water over smooth brain game

and then the other game im playing is Bloodborne

[lappel-du-vide83]

You know when brains merge together stuff you know like ooh this is cool let me add it to my obssession

Yeah so have og cale and asoue TOGETHER

Okay so obvious parallels first: the three siblings. The henituse county might have fallen during the battle but doesn't mean they had to die then and there. If i may be so mean, the siblings died one by one with ogcale the last one standing.

The extended family members are already presented in the story as douchebags so why not make it one step further and make them secretly work for the white star?

So it goes, once the henituse county fell, without Deruth and Violan to take charge, the reconstriction is delegated to an extended family member but with none of the existing family members willing to take on this burden in times of unrest, they come across a thames willing to take over who is very eager andhella suspicious (the evil uncle if you will) (also i have yet to read past like chapter 200 in part 2 of tcf so the hunter lore WILL be headcannon). And surprise, surprise, he wants the henituse fortune. (the want for money runs in the family) So begins the torment as the siblings protect eachother and try to find a way out. They finally manage to convince someone from deruths side to take them in, finally escaping his clutches.

Thus begins the hunt.

The uncle starts killing every new guardian they get and they try explaining that this mysterious uncle that is not one record wants then either dead or in his clutches but no one will listen to them. They get called the bearers of misfortune that will kill anyone that cares for them and why would anyone believe them? One's trash and the other two aren't even adults.

Bonus points if, like i said earlier, if they were working for the white star, the very bane of their existance and the reason why their family is dead. Because yes, how awful, but they were still better than living under that guy and there's this guilty conflict of emotions.

Now unfortunately, canon dictates (wait does it tho im not actually sure) that i must kill off the siblings so it happens as freak accidents--unexpected and something that couldnt be prepared for. They were already living on the edge but then something slips past (more pain of its a betrayal) and (e.g) basen dies. And it slowly consumes the other two because they couldnt protect him because why was it him it should have been me.

And then its lily. She dies honourably in battle because she wouldn't have it any other way but it ruins cale because what if he's the reason everyone he loves is dying?(i stand by the parallels in ogcale and krs life) He's literally been the centre of it--the only one connecting these deaths.

There's no one else for him to blame and take the anger out on because i think the uncle would die tragically and in vain too(cant believe he spent part of his life hunting down kids) and now there's nothing tying cale down except his obsession to kill the white star anddd we come to the part where he signs up for the final battle and dies.

In the middle, i think it will be cool if he encouters the hunters and theyre like the vfd. They keep seeing references to it everywhere and meet members that either want to help or kill them but never get a concrete answer for who they are and everytime they get close to finding out the truth something stops them (or just cale trying to find out who the FRICK his mom was being affiliated with for them to cause mass destruction so easily)

And just like asoue we get an ambiguous ending. Is he happy? Is he not? Who knows--not the readers! But we can imagine he is for our mental health.

Dang the angst is strong but i think it gives way for more thames lore and sibling shenanigans and, well, more angst and this was run on 11pm hyperfixation so ill add more if i can think of it. Hope you enjoyed reading! Also lemme know if you can think of more i would love to read it

[fellowstrangetownappreciator]

Playing Favorites (part 2)

Here we go again! Another 4 TS2 premades that really strange my town! (I’ll see myself out.) Anyway, I have to preface this with saying that so far I’ve only played the 3 base game hoods and although I really enjoy PV and VV, I added them to Strangetown just recently, so I’m still getting acquainted with their casts. That’s why my Playing Favorites posts are so dominated with desert-dwellers - but I definitely plan on including more non-ST Sims once I got to play with them more!

And I also low-key love everybody in Strangetown.

TOP 15 TS2 Premades (according to my personal tastes somewhere in May 2021) (not in any particular order) (and I can’t guarantee I stop at 15 either)

Tank Grunt (Strangetown)

Yes, I am one of them. I am a Tank Grunt apologist. Brace yourself!

Similarly to the Pleasant twins, I view Tank as a victim of his father (Buzz Grunt, the esteemed Strangetown's Worst Parent Award nominee). Of course, that's not to say he's innocent. He is absolutely guilty of bullying Ripp and Johnny and equally guilty of being a bigot. And, most importantly, totally guilty of casually wearing camo face-paint. (that he canonically gets tatooed on his face down the line, which is... its own kind of tragic.)

But that is exactly why I like him so much!

Let me elaborate.

Tank is a very multilayered character, albeit a bit cliché. He is very artistic a eager to always do his best, whether that is in school or home where he competes for his father's affection and approval. Buzz provides both of that but it always feels conditioned – if Tank was to stop getting A+, stop parroting his opinions, stop working out, stop following in his footsteps, would that go away? Even though the answer depends on your interpretation of Buzz and his levels of horrible, Tank definitely thinks so. Just take a look on how his father treats Ripp!

I read Tank as somebody who believes firmly in order and good but has a very twisted understanding of both given his militaristic and hyper-masculine upbringing. He has an enormous potential for character growth. Can he gain (psychological) independence of his father? Can he follow his dreams and become a dancer? Can he free himself of his father’s biases now that he’s out on his own? Can he mend his relationship with Ripp and Buck? (...or maybe even Johnny?) It makes him so fun to play.

Also, I think that it was indeed very cowardly of the developers not to set his gender preference as gay.

Conclusion: Tank is fun! (Although he would probably resent me for saying that.)

Dina Caliente (Str- wait, Pleasantview)

Finally someone who doesn't live in the desert! Both Nina and Dina are such interesting characters, with their connection to Bella’s disappearance, their alien bloodline and their opposing personalities and ambitions.

I feel like the sisters are often getting unjustly demonized. (or mixed up together, I’m looking at you, TS3 and TS4) They’re young, very attractive and in unconventional relationships, thus often labeled as predatory. They’re not.

Dina is a very nice Sim, with Nice points above the average and many Playful points and she tends to roll wants to start a family by the start of the game, although she is not a Family Sim. She’s actually a Fortune Sim, smart and business-oriented. She’s a widow who wants to remarry and has her sights set on the husband of her missing former sister-in-law.

I know that doesn’t make her sound that nice but there is nuance. First of all, the man in question is Mortimer Goth, well in his twilight years, a father of two, simply an adult. He is not a hapless trophy, the decision to start an affair with Dina not long after his first wife got pronounced missing, is his own. He knows he won’t be here for long and doesn’t want to die alone, he wants someone who can make him feel young again and loved once more. Dina, on the other hand, pursues a shotgun wedding to take an advantage of the Goth fortune that will kickstart her business ventures but she is ready to provide what Mortimer needs. She canonically loves him. (proven by the love flag in her relationship panel)

In my personal gameplay, I had Don take Dina on a date before their marriages to their respective Goths, and Dina kept rolling wants to flirt with Mortimer instead. Later down the line she also helped out the Brokes financially, and after her close friend Brandi died young in childbirth, she took in her youngest children, so that her oldest son Dustin could go to college and not worry what’s gonna become of his younger siblings in his custody while he’s gone. I figured it made sense because of Dina’s Nice points, her relationship with Brandi and her now being partially in charge of so much money it isn’t even funny.

In conclusion: I support and condone Dina! Even if it’s somehow implied that she and her sister might’ve just staged her rival’s alien abduction.

Circe Beaker (Strangetown)

Circe is yet another... unwholesome character on my list. She canonically tortures people, namely Nervous Subject, and her bio eludes to there being more in the past or the future. She's cunning, ambitious and very mean.

But she is also very fun to play! Her aspiration being Fortune (not Knowledge) puts an interesting spin on the whole evil scientist routine. She doesn't do it for the love of discovery like the Curiouses and she doesn't care about credit as her husband does. She's out for power and she may as well get it.

Her rather extreme personality would lead one to think she has to be rather disliked around the town but her default relationship panel says otherwise. She doesn't have any close friendships except her husband, though. That makes me think she is superficially charming and tends to act diplomatic to obtain people's loyalty without necessarily caring about any of them. It makes playing her unique from most other Sims.

She is also canonically bisexual! I personally have a deep appreciation for each and every Sim that Maxis sneakily preset to be LGBTQ+. I may not seem like a big deal now but it is.

Conclusion: "She could gaslight, gatekeep and girlboss me any day.” - half of Strangetown’s population

Lazlo Curious (Strangetown)

Lazlo is a ray of sunshine in the Curious household! A very sloppy ray that makes messes wherever it goes, true, but sunshine nonetheless.

I’m very fond of Lazlo because he’s the type of person that looks like he can barely count to five with his easy-going and messy nature but is in fact very clever and, by some measures, the most competent Curious brother, since he is the youngest and it seems like he’s fresh out of college, yet holds a higher career position than his older brothers. “A smart person that doesn’t necessarily seem smart on the first glance” is a trope I have a big soft spot for. (...and it shows)

In my current gameplay, Lazlo wanted to resurrect Vidcund (who died in childbirth), so he switched from Science to Paranormal to swipe a Resurrect-O-Nomitron and, like the madlad he is, succeeded before their round was over (in a span of few days). It was a combination of dumb luck and him having a compatible degree that gave him a hefty bonus but it still made me realize Lazlo could achieve whatever he sets his sights on.

Luckily, his sights are generally set on pizza and video games.

(relatable)

Anyway, I find Lazlo somehow cute, most probably for his constant and very unfruitful attempts to make Vidcund laugh, and in general, how friendly and easy to get along with he is. While he doesn’t have that many Nice points (5, which is a pretty average number), combined with his playfulness he usually tends to act very amicable.

In conclusion: I simp for Knowledge Sims and it shows.

Ok, I’ll be back with another 4 when my horrible procrastinating gruel of a brain feels like it. See ya!

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #428

“there’s more money in tragedy, more net worth in self-pity  /  so you’re doubling down inside of your screen, hiding behind attention you seek”

Have you ever told someone, besides family, that you love them and meant it? Yeah. I've told friends that platonically, and I've said it to two people and romantically meant it. Are the blankets that are on your bed now made by someone you know in life? No. Have you seen all The Lord of the Rings movies? I haven't even seen one. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had in 2014? I had one. Can you walk in heels? I mean I can, but I don't like to. What does your mom say about the pictures on your Myspace? First the '14 question, now this... I don't think Mom ever had a Myspace, but I can answer for Facebook. She's always the person to "heart" react them and say something about how "beautiful" I am or something. ;x; What was the last thing you and your parents argued about? Idr. Do you feel your life is at its best? Fuck no. There better be better times than this. What do you worry about the most? The most? That's hard to say... but probably my career future. Or really just the future in general. Have you ever let someone be your everything? "Everything" still feels like an understatement. He was my source of happiness, a massive part of my own identity, and my promise for a better future. It was so, so unhealthy. Think back to the last person you kissed, how many times have you cried in their arms? Two times, I wanna say? What are some things you do when you’re mad? I get snappy and try to isolate myself to cry it out. How do you feel about your hair right now? I hate itttt. It's getting too long and just boring. I'm hoping I can get up with my hairdresser soon for a trim. What’s an interesting fact about you that not many people know? Uhhhh... I guess that I was a dancer for many years. I feel like I don't really fit the general "aesthetic" of dancers, so people have definitely been surprised to find out I was one. Do you do anything embarrassing when no one is home? No. Just because no one ELSE is there, I'd embarrass my damn self lol. If you had the chance to move to a completely different state/county, would you? Fuck yes I would. Could you ever be friends with someone that broke your heart? It's funny, because that's what the traumatized, overly-attached part of me wants (at the bare minimum), but my common sense knows that's dumb as fuck. I could never healthily be friends with him. Are you scared of fireworks? No, but others are terrified by them, so keep that in mind. Does anyone know every little detail about you? No. You woke up one day and discovered that you were only able to see in black and white… as well as one other colour. What colour would that be and why? I guess red? It sounds morbid for it to be the first thing my mind goes to, but that way, I'd be able to see blood and therefore be able to detect a symptom of danger. What is your favourite soundtrack for a film/video game/television show? (Though feel free to name as many!) Silent Hill 2 and Shadow of the Colossus have fucking LEGENDARY soundtracks. What is your favourite Pokémon? Ninetales! I also really love Espeon and Umbreon, too. And Charmander. And Pikachu. And Skitty. And... well, too many, ha ha. What is something your best friend of the opposite sex does that you can’t stand? He calls me "kid" a lot. Is the last book you read a really well-known book? It's not world-famous or anything, but it seems relatively known by teens/young adults. At least, I follow a lot of artists who make fanart for it. Do you have anything besides just songs downloaded on your iPod? No. When at the beach, do you spend more time on the beach or in the ocean? In the water. I hate the beach itself. Do you have any siblings you absolutely despise? Why do you despise them? No. Have you ever babysat before? Did you enjoy this job? Yes, and no, not at all. Have you ever busted a window before? Why did you bust it? No. Do you still get scared watching old horror movies? You watch them alone? Horror movies pretty much never scare me, never mind old cheesy ones. I don't mind watching them alone. Do knives scare you? Is it from watching scary movies? I'm terrified of big knives, and it has nothing to do with movies. It's a fear that started after Mom stopped me from a suicide attempt where I was going to slit my throat with one. They just radiate danger for me. Have you ever tried to sing opera? Did it work out for you or no? No. What was the last piece of furniture you purchased? I've never bought any furniture, and I don't recall the last thing Mom bought. Have you ever broken up with someone for a reason other than lack of feelings (ex. moving away, etc.)? Yeah; we split because we were essentially two shaky towers leaning against one another. We have to learn to straighten ourselves up independently before that relationship even becomes a "maybe" again. Has anyone ever told you that you are too picky when it comes to the people you date? What about not picky enough? Neither. Was there anything unusual or unique about your birth? Nothing really, besides being born in an icestorm. My birth itself was totally normal, as far as I know. Mom considers it pretty extraordinary though because according to her, I took one look at her and smiled so big. Says a lot about our relationship now. What was the best conversation you’ve had recently? *shrug* What is the next book you are going to read? The book that comes next in the series I'm reading. Who was the last person to do something nice for you? My mom does nice things for me every day, like making dinner, letting me live under her roof... a lot of stuff. Is there any artwork in the room you’re in? Yeah, some of my stuff. Have you ever made out on a couch? Yeah. Someone asks you what you want; what do you say? Happiness. Direction. What was the last thing you complained about? Just being incredibly sore. The gym's kicking my ass, but it needs to, so I'm fine with it. How do you feel when you hear other people complaining? It depends on how frequently and about what. It can become overwhelming sometimes, especially if it's over something truly trivial. Has your name been in someone’s Facebook status lately? No. Do you own any Sims games? Which ones? I have the original animals one, as well as the African animals one (which I surprisingly like less). What was your first job? I was a sales associate at GameStop. Do people praise you for your looks? Yeah, definitely not. Do you like your eyes? No. I wish they were bluer and wider. Tell me what your back pack looks like: My last one was a galaxy texture. What celebrity do you think is hot? HMMMMMMMMMMMM I DON'T KNOW????????????? NEVER SEEN ONE IN MY LIFE O: O: O: Last movie you saw in theatre: The The Lion King remake. Has someone you were dating ever cheated on you? No. What’s the cutest thing someone’s ever done for you? I'd rather not dig through the memories to find what I'd consider the "cutest." What was the last thing you heated up in your microwave? A chicken pesto bowl for lunch. Did you ever watch Phil of the Future? Occasionally, but I was never big on it. Do you have an online game that you play often? I play World of Warcraft pretty much daily. Do you prefer regular or electric toothbrushes? Electric. What was the last thing to piss you off? Truly piss me off, I'm not sure. When and where was the last time you took a picture of yourself? Months ago in my room. I want to take a new one to update my Facebook profile pic, because I think I'm ready to return there. Who was the last person to pay you a compliment or praise? The first day at the gym, Mom told me she was extremely proud of me, and it meant a lot. I truly think I can stick to this, and it's a fucking phenomenal feeling. What’s one thought you have regarding the subject of love? It can be the most beautiful thing in the world, yet simultaneously has the capability to be one of the most painful. Do you think that it’s possible to fall in love at a young age like eleven or twelve? Who am I to say, honestly. I lean towards no because at the age of puberty, you're really all over the place with your hormones and emotions, and I just don't know if it's possible for two pre-teens to have the maturity level to grasp what it truly means to be in love with someone. But again, what do I really know? Everyone is different. Are sex and sexual activities something you enjoy? Yeah sure, if it's something I'm in the mood to engage in and I'm in love with the person. What’s an interesting fact about the state in which you were born? We're the home of Pepsi products. I know, of course I would share a fact about soda, ha ha. What’s one aspect of your life that did not turn out as you expected? Where I am now as far as "adult development" goes. I don't drive. I don't have a job. I still live with my mother. I could go on and on... By this point, I definitely expected something much, much different when I was younger. What was the last event to cause you any sort of heartache? Hm. I don't know. What was the worst phase you’ve ever gone through? *shrug* What excuse did you use most often to skip school? There were times I'd pretend to have a really bad cough. I could fake a nasty cough, man. Are you shy about singing in front of people? Very. Honestly, do you put your elbows on the dinner table? Yes, because why the fuck would that matter. I don't get how something so simple and harmless is "bad manners." Have you ever taken a picture in a public bathroom? No. Yes or no: corsets? I. FUCKING. LOVE. CORSETS. UGH I wish I could pull one off, omfg. In your opinion, is money the root of all evil? All evil? No. There are some horrible crimes people can commit that have nothing to do with money. Do you own a pair of overalls? Ew, no. I hate overalls. What is the best game to play while in the car? Uh, idk. Has a movie ever made you jump in fear? I'm sure at some point. Jumpscares are hard to be unfazed by; it's just a natural reaction to something sudden. Yes or no: pickles? Bro I LOVE pickles. Yes or no: strawberry ice cream? Ugh, no. Do you know what your mom’s favorite movie is? No, actually. Are you a role model to anybody? No fucking way I am. Do you know how much you weighed at birth? Somewhere around six or seven pounds. Look outside the nearest window. What can you see? From where I'm at, I can just see the shed. What are you interested in that most people would be surprised to know? Cutesy, pastel stuff, probably. How many bathrooms are in your house? Two. Do you prefer stripes or polka dots? Polka dots. Are you considered a very sensitive person? Very. Have you ever told someone you never wanted to speak to them again? Yes. What’s the weather like today? Is it nice enough to go outside? It's hot as fuck outside. You will NOT see me outside today. What does your last text message say and who is it from? It's just a thumbs up emoji from the woman who works at my psychiatrist's office. She schedules my phone appointments with him. Do you listen to any podcasts? How do you listen to them? No. Why did you leave your last job? It was WAY too fast-paced with lots of responsibilities that I just couldn't handle. Have you ever eaten at a restaurant and left without paying? No, that's awful. What’s your favorite scent of air freshener? Probably something floral and subtle. Are your hands and feet in good condition or could you do with a mani-pedi? Ugh. I pick my fingernails off badly, so they're a mess rn. I also DISDAIN my feet because they are horribly callused from when I used to walk like crazy. It's so weird how I can exfoliate the area and scrub (... and sometimes tear) them off, but they're pretty much immediately back. When was the last time you played a board game? What did you play? A couple years ago with Girt and Sara, I think. We played Scrabble. How old were you when you first became sexually active? Do you mean like, doing anything sexual? In which case that would be 16. I woulda been 16 or 17 when I actually lost my virginity, though. Do you know anyone who has been through a divorce? A load of people. Does anyone not know somebody? Have you ever done a juice cleanse? No. Do you have to pay for parking in most places in the town/city you live in? No. That's a foreign concept here. It's one of the very alien things I experienced in Chicago; I don't really think I knew it was a thing (save for massive attractions, like Disney Word and stuff) before then. Can you hear lots of traffic from your house? Does it bother you? No. We live in a cul-de-sac, and our road is further into it, away from the main road.

[pizzagrlmeetsboy1980]

So many people have given me feed back on the Alan and Sarah have 4 evil children AU so I made some more vignettes!

How Alan responded each time to Sarah telling him she was pregnant.

Oliver: Was absolutely elated. It meant he would appear as a family man and would be more likely to get re-elected.

Marie: Was overjoyed. Didn’t know he was going to be ousted though. Was in awe that he had a girl and liked that she looked like Sarah from day 1

Constance: Was happy, told Sarah that this was it. No more children. Was hoping that this would be another boy, but was happy none the less.

Grace: A surprise! He was furious. How could Sarah be so forgetful?! How hard is it to take a damn pill?! Another child, it threw his plans completely out of whack and that new yacht he was wanting would have to wait. However the moment he first held Grace he knew she was going to be special. But no more. Sarah’s getting her tubes tied.

...

Connie: Honestly, what kind of night vision goggles are these?! I can’t see a thing!!

Gervais: *takes them and looks at them* These are regular binoculars..

Connie: Then why is Dad always using them at night?..

-Awkward silence from all of them-

Connie:...Oh.

...

Oliver: *dangling keys at Marie* Do you need a ride home or is your trust-fund prince taking you to the local stupor?

Marie: I never should have pulled you out of the pool that one time..

...

Leslie( Pier’s and Clarissa’s middle child. 14): I worked all summer for these arms! Why won’t Constance notice them?

Oliver: You shouldn’t have stopped. You look like a potted plant that’s barren.. also you’re never going to get my parents permission to date my most problematic sister. *lights a cigarette*

Leslie: Why not?!

Oliver: *takes a drag* Because my father hates The Gentry. Sir Leslie. He hates it when blokes just get handed things without working for them.

Girl: Oliver!...Here. I did your biology homework.

Oliver: Aww..thank you, Darling. Shall I see you at lunch?

Girl: Sure..*giggles and walks on*

Leslie: Who was that?

Oliver: Hell if I know.

...

-A girl has threatened to beat up Connie for running her mouth. Leslie is trying to save her but it does not go as planned-

Leslie: ...Honestly why must we fight, ladies? We are the children of the most powerful people in Great Britain. What on earth could we possibly want for? After all Neville Chamberlain once said : “I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me; but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it must be resisted...”

-Girl punches him in the gut and falls to the ground-

-Oliver steps over him-

Oliver: Yes, but Winston Churchill said: “Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war."...You have a mean right hook. I like that. Oliver B’Stard. Future MP, current president of the Senior Cla-

-Girl knees him in the groin, he’s now on the floor with Leslie. Both groaning-

The girl’s father has requested to speak with Alan and Sarah.

Alan: “There is no need to fuss. We will have a civilized discussion..Pay attention, Oliver this is how -adults- handle things.”

Oliver: “If her parents are anything like her you might want to keep a reasonable distance. I’m still recovering...oh..here Mum..”

-Oliver reaches into his pants and pulls out a bag of frozen peas-

Sarah: Here. Thaw out these carrots while you’re at it. -hands him the bag and he slides them under his belt making a tiny noise of relief-

-Sometime later-

Girl’s father: As a doctor I can tell you it would be in your incredibly unstable child’s best interest if she were immediately sedated sent to a personal care home.

Oliver: -Watching from the stairs with his siblings. chuckles. Knowing how this will end now. Accepts the bag of popcorn Connie gives him-

Alan: Oh really? It’s my understanding that your child is jealous of mine. I mean...look at my wife...look at me..she comes from incredible stock. She’s going to be naturally beautiful and popular..if ..a bit of a late bloomer..

Constance: -offended gasp-

Girl’s Father: You know what? All of your children are spoiled, problematic derelicts and they’ve done nothing but bring the academy into a further social decline since they arrived!

Sarah: -stands up- ...I would tread lightly, Doctor..you’re standing in a mansion full of guns, explosive devices and illegal immigrant ex-assassins from Russia working as our house staff...

Marie: I thought there was something off about Mrs.Gorbachev..

Girl’s Father: I knew you B’Stard’s were evil but raising children to be evil?...I‘lol report you all to the school board...

Alan:...Now now..let’s not get hasty...-Alan reaches into his jacket-

Connie: Aw here it comes. I bet it’ll be 12,000

Marie: No more than 10

Oliver: He’s made Dad pretty mad. I say 3

Grace: I think it’s a gun. -points at Alan having a gun-

Oliver:..Well. That’s certainly new.

..

Sarah is watching Grace play with William, Pier’s youngest son who is one year older than Grace.

Sarah: Alan...come here. Look at Grace playing with William Fletcher-Dervish.

Alan: Another one? They just keep spawning like Sea lamprey..

Sarah: Watch her. She’s being incredibly demanding and bossy. I don’t like that one bit..

Alan: Oh dear, I wonder who she inherited -that- from.

-She glares at him-

Alan: But I can see your point...She won’t attract a husband with that attitude.

Sarah: She’s seven years old!

Alan: And that’s my point, we’ve got to get on this NOW, Sarah. I mean by the time she turns 21 who knows what society will look like. We have to have submissive conservative women or the Tories will die out!

....

One of their children is in trouble

Alan:...Alright Sarah. Which one is it?

Sarah: It’s Oliver.

Alan: Oliver?! He’s the good one! I mean..Marie will probably get pregnant before she’s 21, Connie will marry the first bloke that gives her attention and Grace will probably be in prison before she’s 13 for money laundering or leading an organized crime syndicate. He’s the only one that has a future!

Sarah: Alan! Surely you have more faith in your daughters than that.

Alan:...I would if it were legal to keep them at home until I find suitable husbands for them. That was the plan when I was Protector..BUT NoOoOoooo. This is the 20th century women are “liberated”. They get to pick their -own- husbands.

Sarah: Do you know who you sound like?....My father. You forget..I got to pick you...*rubs noses with him*

Alan: *pushes her away* I’ve had a bitch of a day, Sarah. Don’t tell me things like that....and our marriage was a strategic masterpiece, Darling. I only hope Oliver finds -his- Sarah one day...hopefully one that doesn’t try to kill him all the time. I’d like my name to live on.

Sarah: I’m only stating the truth, Darling. Just admit it. You’re protective over them. It’s okay to love them. I love them...sometimes.

Alan:...*sighs...running a hand over his face* ....What did he do?...

Sarah: He was caught in the girl’s locker room. Showering with the girl’s field hockey team.

*Alan grins and nods approvingly*

*Sarah crosses her arms and rolls her eyes*

Alan: Oh, that’s just a healthy growing boy’s habit, Darling. I was doing the same thing at his age. Except I showered with the future homemakers club. A conservative boy’s fantasy come true...

Sarah: You were showering with them because they couldn’t tell you were a BOY.

Alan: Your point? I still got to see 12 naked girls all at once.

...

Sarah: Marie...that Diamond bracelet is lovely where did you get it?

Marie: Oh. I bought it with the money Daddy gave me to breakup with Brian.

Sarah: Aah. I see. Seems it wasn’t serious as you thought?

Marie: Oh no. I really just wanted this bracelet and I knew you and Daddy would never give me the money to get it so I fake-dated Brian Crippen and poof!...Bribe money. Bracelet. Pity though I don’t think I’ll be able pull it off twice

Sarah:...Marie...That’s ..brilliant. I’m so proud.

[jung-snoopy-woo]

How I Met Your Grandfather

~ Chapter 4 ~

(gif credit: @ katelin via Pinterest)

Pairing: Bang Chan × reader, twin brother! Felix.

Other Chapters: Masterlist | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 (coming soon!!).

Genre: fluff, a bit of angst.

Warnings: None :)

Word Count: 1.6k+.

Summary: Felix and his sisters go to the movies together after a long time. Felix is surprised to see Chan there too and they have a talk. When Felix and the girls get home, he decides to tell her about the situation.

A/N: Decided to upload it today bc I might not have time in the next few days (I’m so stressed and busy vndsfjkvdvnk)

Also, I think this chapter was the hardest for me to write so I’m sorry it’s not the best 😢😢 but hopefully you can still enjoy it!! 

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"Y/N!!!", Rachael, your older sister, called from downstairs. "We're only going to the movie theater, what's taking you so long??"

It's not that you were slow or anything like that, it's just that it's been a while since you last went out with all of them and you were so excited, as a huge Marvel fan who finally gets to watch the new movie with her siblings who are also her best friends in the world, that it might've taken you a while to choose what to wear and how to look presentable.

As you walked down the stairs, Olivia and Rachael complimented the way you looked and Felix gave you a little smile. You two started talking again (of course, as you two are like the best siblings... Also, you got mad about something that wasn't even his fault), and you seemed pretty fine after that day (when you stormed outside for a reason Felix haven't figured out yet, but as you already moved on- he just thought it was better not to ask. I mean, all siblings have small fights they don't even know what they're about, right?).

He missed hanging out with his sisters so much, and it's been a while since he had some break from practicing or performing, being busy all the time. He always felt sorry for not even telling them that he was okay, as he always fell asleep before he could even think of doing so. He was exhausted, but he loved what he was doing.

Rachael was driving and she let you choose the music to play in the car. You decided to play some Stray Kids songs (such a supportive cute family awww) so you all jammed to them on your way to the movies.

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"Shhhhh~!!", you told Olivia who was sitting to your right as she was moving uncomfortably, "it's about to start!"

"But uhmm.. I... I really have to go to the bathroom.. please, Y/N, come with me", she said, begging. You couldn't get angry at her because you remembered how you did just the same to Rachael not too long ago. And you know, no one wants to go to the public toilets alone.

When you got back, the lights were already off but you could see from afar that there was someone now sitting on the seat to your left, which was empty just before you and Olivia left. You said "excuse me", as you made your way to your seat, trying your best not to step on anyone's feet (Olivia was a lot better than you at that). "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!", you told the guy sitting there. Of course, if you succeeded going all this way without stepping on (almost) anyone, it had to happen just when you were one seat away from yours. And thank God you balanced yourself back, a second before almost tripping and falling over him. 'Ugh, this is probably going to be so awkward now', you thought. 'I'm just going to avoid looking at him the whole movie so I don't have to deal with his judgemental look. "Oh, it's okay", a somehow familiar voice said. 'Don't look', you told yourself. 'It's not him, stop thinking and just enjoy the movie.'

'Why isn't she looking at me?', Chan thought. When you almost lost your balance as you stepped on his foot, he was ready to catch you if you fell, movie style, somewhat disappointed you didn't. He thought you'd turn to him once you heard his voice, but he was faced with disappointment, yet again. Maybe you didn't recognize his voice? Or maybe you knew it was him and just didn't care?

But he had so much fun watching you as you got excited when your favorite character appeared or the way you got mad at the evil ones. He enjoyed the moments you'd be the only one laughing in the whole theater, the most. Just listening to your laugh made him feel ×100 times better. He even stopped making up scenarios in his head as to why you didn't turn to him at the beginning of the movie. He thought of how you'd laugh at his stupid jokes, when him and the boys visited, and smile to himself.

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"Chris hyung??", Chan heard from behind him, on his way to the male's restrooms during the Intermission (a/n: I don't know if movies still have them out of my city but yeah we have those halfway through the movie lol). Felix could recognize the older boy's back everywhere. 'Oh, no', Chan thought. 'Why does it have to be Felix? Ughhh and why did I get myself into this mess? I didn't even get to say a word to her...Should I walk faster or...', he stopped. 'NO Chris, you have to face it like an adult'. He turned and gave Felix the most I'm-innocent-and-didn't-ask-your-younger-sister to-buy-me-a-ticket-so-I-could-see-your-twin-sister smile he could pull, saying "Heyyy Felix, how's it going?"

"I'm pretty good, just got out of the new Marvel movie... You?", Felix asked. He wasn't stupid, of course. When Y/N and Olivia left to go to the bathroom, in the beginning of the movie, he could see someone that resembled his friend way too much, sitting on the left to Y/N's seat, but he let this thought go, thinking it was just his imagination ('Thinking of the members during the holiday? Come on, I have to just relax'). But now, seeing him standing in front of him, there's no doubt it really was him. And to be honest, Felix wasn't very happy to see him here. The chances of Chan sitting so close to them in such a big movie theater were... Well, very small.

"Oh, I was just...", Chan started. The look on Felix's face made it pretty obvious that he saw him there, and that he was pretty mad too. There's no point in lying here. He sighed. "Listen, Lix, I'm sorr--"

"How?", Felix asked, as Chan lifted his eyes to look at his, confused. "How did you get that seat?", He asked, now being a bit less angry and more curious.

"I... I asked Olivia to buy a ticket for me when I saw her after grocery shopping", He admitted. He couldn't be any more embarrassed than he was at that moment. "I gave her the money!", He added. Chan couldn't read Felix's face. Was he mad? Disappointed? Did he want to punch him in the face? All of the above? But then, Felix started laughing. "Oh my god.. Chris hyung... you went that far...", He said between giggles. "For Y/N? So you could see her?"

"Felix, listen I...", He started, a bit confused and taken aback from Felix's reaction, but feeling more sorry than he could describe in words. "I know I promised to be okay with your decision, but I--"

"No, no, Chris, bro, stop", Felix said as his laughter stopped. And so did Chan's heartbeat, almost. "You know what? I'll be honest with you, I am pretty angry seeing you here...", He started. Chan wanted to apologise, again, but Felix continued before he could say anything. "BUT it also made me realize how much you really like Y/N and that you're willing to do some very weird stuff just to see her... So I think... uhhmm.. I think I'll maybe give you two a chance".

Chan couldn't express the happiness he felt at that moment. Oh my god, these were the words he wanted to hear the most (Okay, maybe they were in like 2nd place?). "Felix, bro, thank you", was all he could say.

"But I want you to know that if you hurt her in any way, I'll break you. Somehow. Because you're like super fit and strong and--", he was stopped by Chan's hug. "I promise I'll never do anything to hurt Y/N", he said with the biggest smile, almost choking the younger as he hugged him even closer. Finally, he got the chance he wanted. And he's not going to ruin it.

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You were NOT okay.

You told yourself for the 5th time today that it was normal. It's just a crush who didn't like you back (again), and not a heartbreak. And you tried telling yourself that a guy (that you only met once, by the way) is not worth being sad over.

In the past month you already finished reading 7 books, tried 20 workout routines you added to 'Watch Later' and never had the time or energy to get back to, learned baking 10 new types of cakes and cookies, did some drawings and paintings, and you even played a few video games with Felix (you now understood why he spent so much time doing that, because woah you were one competitive girl and as so, tried so hard winning, "Like, come on, I have to at least win ONCE", to which Felix replied with "I can lose on purpose if you--", "NO WAY").

But now, after coming back from the movies, you finally realized something was wrong. You did enjoy the movie, though. You laughed and you cried and you showed love towards some characters and hate towards others. It's just that you noticed how your heart started beating so fast when you heard that voice in the movies, saying "it's okay". This voice... Sounded so much like him. And it made you feel weird the whole movie. You kind of regretted not looking, and for letting your feeling of awkwardness take over. But what could you do? You didn't want to embarrass yourself by looking in the eye of the poor guy you stepped on.

"Y/N?", You heard Felix say from behind you. You turned, and saw his troubled eyes. "Can we talk?", He asked. You didn't know what it's going to be about, but whatever it is- it seemed to be very important.

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Hope you enjoyed!! (Pleaseee let me know what do you think)  💕💕

[okayoonoh]

TEN’S FAMILY

here’s the guide to ten’s rambunctious family! i have so many ideas for ten’s family it’s hard to settle for just one main one lol

here’s the masterlist to all things nct dad related! a johnny family scenario is coming out soon ;)

CHITTAPHON LEECHAIYAPORNKUL (TEN)

he has three kids, 2 boys and 1 girl. kasem leechaiyapornkul (kaleb) is the oldest, 3 years later, somchai leechaiyapornkul (shawn) was born, and 5 years after that, amarin leechaiyapornkul (aria) was born.

(when aria was born, kaleb was 8 and shawn was 5)

KASEM LEECHAIYAPORNKUL (KALEB): >> as a baby <<

ooh boy

he was a trouble maker from the start

you guys thought you were ready for parenthood

which you were

but you weren’t ready for kaleb

he was a handful

he broke everything he touched

like he was gifted with a mountain of toys

broke every single on of them

how?

the world may never know.

he was a handful that never gave you guys a break 

but those few moments when he’ll flash you a smile that looks just like his dad’s?

everything was worth it

he honestly just was a lot tho

like if you know return of the superman

he’s a lot like ko seungjae with how crazy he can be

like he was really advanced as a baby too

like the second he learned how to crawl

he was already trying to stand up by himself

he was really good with rhythms at a young age

like most babies just bang on stuff

but if you played music

he would genuinely try to keep in time with everything

and he lowkey does

a musical prodigy tbh

he wasn’t that sensitive

like he wouldn’t cry at the smallest things

he just was full of energy 24/7

like if you didn’t swaddle him while he was sleeping

he would mess up the whole entire bassinet

he also loved to grab your hair like all the time

it was really annoying

it got to the point where either you tied your hair up constantly or you cut it

but he didn’t grab your hair just for the fun of it

he grabbed it because he wanted to bring your face down closer to his so you can give him a big ‘ole kiss

he was full of boundless energy but it’s with good reasons

>> as a child <<

still a trouble maker

he’s the main source of your’s and ten’s headaches

you know how like ten can be annoyingly cute?

that’s kaleb 24/7

loves to boss around his younger siblings

you’ve had to have many conversations with him about that

ten: kaleb, your siblings are not your servants.

kaleb: but i’m the oldest!

ten: that’s true. we take it back

you: nO THAT’S NOT TRUE TEN WHY DID HE SWAY YOU SO EASILY?

ten is so happy that his first child was a son

all of the things he mentioned in that one live about his son

he’s gonna do it

from a young age, kaleb already knew how to speak thai, english, and a little bit of mandarin

he taught him how to dance

he taught him how to play piano

honestly just like

baby ten?

that’s kaleb

ten is really good at handling him

but like if it’s logic that ten can’t argue with

then you’re screwed

for example

kaleb: dad, let’s cover the house with bubbles so it cleans everything and we can play in them

ten: that is a compelling argument son, but i like the way you think. so efficient

kaleb: anD MOM WILL LIKE IT TOO! WE’LL CLEAN THE HOUSE FOR HER!

thank god you were out of soap that day

the two of them feed off of each other’s energies tbh

like, again, return of the superman

ten and kaleb would be running up and down the streets

like you’ll send them on a task to just get some eggs or something

and they’ll return with the eggs!

but also like 500 different kinds of candy

and a cat

he loves animals

he’s really empathetic

he doesn’t deal with any bs tho

like if someone is complaining about something that isn’t a problem

he doesn’t deal with it

he’ll straight up tell them to stop

he’s best friends with johnny’s oldest, noah seo.

they’re honestly just like their dads when they hang out

genetics is weIRD

they relate with each other a lot because they both are the oldest and they both have a little brother and a baby sister

noah calms kaleb down

kaleb brings up noah’s energy

a dynamic duo if i do say so myself

>> as a teen/adult <<

a little better

he’s still pretty bubbly and playful

but when it gets serious

he can be serious

he became a dancer alongside lee youngchul

they work together in their studio

they learned baby don’t stop for their dads and their dads were sO HECKIN PROUD LIKE THEY CRIED

he loves to choreograph stuff for groups

he’s usually the one who choreographs the dance of the year like every year

he has tens nose and lips, but your eyes

he loves to tease people

not so much a prankster

he loves to tease people like vocally

he can sing, but he prefers dancing

everyone wants him to debut lol

he doesn’t really want to

he already kinda does

he’s so wholesome and goofy

but when it gets to dancing

he can be bad cop

youngchul doesn’t have it in him to be bad cop

but kaleb?

it’s all about the dance

he’ll apologize before every practice

like “i’m sorry if i say something that offends you, but you don’t get to your goals by slacking.”

he makes his dancers work HARD

youngchul usually deals with the rookies and the newbies and the younger ones

but kaleb deals with the advanced groups and stuff

and ooh boy

he tells it as it is

like if he can tell that no one practiced

he’ll just end rehearsal right then and there

people still want to learn from him tho

and they know that he’s not doing this with any evil intent

he just respects dance and visual arts so much that he needs to know that people will be as dedicated as him

he’s a genuinely cool person tho

like when it’s not about dancing, he’s one of those guys who you can do anything with

if he sees one of his dancers genuinely struggling, he’ll stay with them after practice as late as they want to work

he’ll order them food too while they work hard

he admires hard work more than talent

honestly, a really good person/teacher who gives off the best results because of it.

SOMCHAI LEECHAIYAPORNKUL (SHAWN): >> as baby <<

an actual sweetheart

it’s like the universe gave you grace bc kaleb was such a meanie

he didn’t really cry that much

he was pretty calm

even when he cried, it wasn’t super loud

like he made the face of a crying baby

but his volume was somewhat quiet

his brother would make him cry a lot (on accident tho)

like kaleb would just want to go and play with him

but then he forgets that babies can’t catch

and the ball hits shawn in the face

and shawn will start crying

but kaleb would go and hug him, just repeating

“don’t tell mom, don’t tell mom, don’t tell mom.”

shawn wouldn’t

shawn can’t even talk yet lmao

anyway

he was just a sweetheart and people pleaser

like his older brother, he started learning languages asap

he was pretty smart too

but he was way more empathetic than anything

like he knew when ten would be gone for tour

and he’d cry if he saw a video or picture of him

same for you too

like if you were gone, he’d cry too

he loves his family so much

he was pretty curious as a little baby tho

like he would always follow kaleb

he would even copy everything kaleb did

like from a young age he looked up to kaleb and wanted to be like him

he wasn’t too much of a hassle

he would play by himself well

he was a little bit of a picky eater

he had a weak stomach :(

if you gave him something that was a little too strong in a certain flavor, he would throw up

but he wouldn’t want you to worry and most times he’d try to hold it in

but his stomach is just too weak :(

it’s okay tho, he’s still a pretty happy baby regardless

>> as a child <<

still calm

adores his older brother

does whatever his older brother says

he thinks kaleb is the coolest person in the world

he looks just like you tbh

he’s really good at taking care of his little sister

he doesn’t boss her around

shawn tries to keep the peace

he doesn’t have the most overwhelming personality like kaleb and aria

he’s just chill

he’s best friends with mark’s oldest, ethan lee, and jaehyun’s oldest, jung lani

they’re honestly the dream team

like their all so smart

they just make such woke decisions

like for example

if you sent the three of them to go get snacks

they would combine their money and get one of those gigantic value bags

seeing the three of them together is so endearing

like the three of them listen so well

if you’re out with them and they walk together, they’ll all hold hands so they don’t lose each other

no one knows where this adorable bond comes from

but it’s just so nice

they’re all supportive of each other too

ug h

just the sweetest

i’ll stop now bc this is about shawn lol

he loves his friends and family

he’s not super sensitive

but if kaleb is mad at him, he’ll cry

he still likes to follow kaleb and do what he does

kaleb tries to mess with him, but shawn just replies with so much love

like kaleb would pull a prank

or say something like “why did you do something like that?”

“because i love you, phi*!”

*the thai version of hyung

kaleb can’t stay mad at him for too long lol

shawn likes to follow you around with whatever you do lol

like if you’re cooking, he wants to watch

if you’re cleaning, he’ll help you

he loves his family so much

he enjoys the sun and outdoors

he also enjoys taking care of the younger ones

he’s such a good older brother to aria

like he can prepare her formula, grab her diapers, etc. 

he’s so helpful and just a joy to have in the house

you’ve only had to scold him once or twice in his entire life lol

kaleb has to be scolded like once or twice a day lololol

honestly, he’s just so wholesome and made your’s and ten’s life easier

>> as a teen/adult <<

became a kindergarten teacher

he loves the simple life

doesn’t really want to be a full time idol, but he loves that his friends and family are

he is SO attractive tho

literally everyone is attracted to him

he does a little modeling on the side

after ethan and lani tricked him into going to an audition

but he prefers his job as a kindergarten teacher

he teaches at like an international school

he’s really good at it too

he teaches in english, but he can also teach in thai, mandarin, korean, japanese, etc.

moms put their kids in his class just so they can see him lol

he loves teaching kids

he loves seeing them get so excited over tiny accomplishments

he also loves being that positive role models in their lives

when it comes to girls tho?

he’s REALLY REALLY REALLY bad with girls

like

really bad

he cannot pick up hints for the life of him

like lani, ethan, and shawn would be out eating lunch

and the waitress would CLEARLY be flirting with hiim

like she even gave him his number on the receipt

and lani would be like “so... the cute waitress seems interested in you, shawn! go add her number!”

and he would turn beat red and be like

“sHE’S INTERESTED IN ME?? I THOUGHT SHE WAS JUST BEING NICE??????”

and lani and ethan both facepalm

and ethan would say something like “dude, she literally said that she’s never had a customer as cute as you.”

and shawn would be like “i thOUGHT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT LANI!!!! :(((”

and lani would be like, “shawn... she was looking at YOU when she said that.”

poor baby is denser than a brick wall

he gets flustered and freaks out in a relationship

he’s just trying is best!

when he finally gets into a relationship

he’s so flustered like 24/7

ethan and lani would attempt to help him become more smooth and spontaneous

but anytime he does anything spontaneous it goes wrong lol

he’s not a super loud dude either

buT WHEN HE GOES TO HIS SISTER’S CONCERTS?

he’s the loudest in the room

he supports the HECK out of his siblings

he’ll go to all of kaleb’s shows/competitions

and he’ll go to all of aria’s concerts

he is decked out, head to tow, with their merch

it’s like he throws all of his pride out of the window when it comes to family

he’s honestly really good with fashion too

like he does enjoy shopping and keeping up with the trends

he like looks good 24/7

he’s just a wholesome brick wall living his best life

AMARIN LEECHAIYAPORNKUL (ARIA): >> as a baby <<

honestly

basically kaleb

but a girl

she was a little less troublesome

and more needy

kaleb would honestly be like straight up mean at times

but aria was more needy 

she always needed to be with someone

like if she was alone by herself 

she would cry

thank goodness your family was full so someone can always be with her

she loves her older brothers

to be 100% honest, she hated ten at first lol

i think some babies go through a phase where they hate their dads

i for sure did lol

like aria would just not vibe with him at all

anything bad that happened, she would blame ten

ten started getting super sad about it

kaleb and shawn would help their dad tho

and aria started warming up to him

she eventually became clingiest to him

it was just a phase i promise

ten would dress her up in the prettiest things

like there’s a whole closet in your house dedicated to aria’s pretty dresses

ten is a really good girl dad

like he’ll throw away his pride for her

if she wanted to leave the house in her sleeping beauty dress

ten would leave dressed up as the prince

(he would even dress up kaleb and shawn in animal outfits or something lol)

she has been a big eater since the beginning

like the second she could eat solid foods, it was over

she was eating everything that she could eat

her favorite foods were fruits tho rip ten

she was happiest when she was surrounded by her family with food

>> as a child <<

she became the sweetest little princes in the whole world

ten spoiled the HECK out of her 

like he bought her a whole section of toys once bc she couldn’t decide on just one

she fights with kaleb a lot

they don’t physically fight

they argue tho

kaleb tries to tell her to do something

she does it reluctantly

shawn does his best to be an amazing older brother

she listens to shawn more than she listens to kaleb just to spite him lol

she’s best friends with johnny’s youngest, luna seo, and taeyong’s youngest, lee youngmi

the three of them are like the powerpuff girls

aria is like bubbles

she is so sweet and kind and rainbows and butterflies

but the second something goes kinda wrong

she’ll freak out, cry, and/or get super duper ultra mad

no one wants to let anything hurt her bc she’s so cute and sweet

everyone is drawn by her energy lol

she’s always been tiny from the start

and she remains to be tiny

but this girl can EAT

like she can easily eat her entire body weight and then some

she loves to dress up her brothers

shawn will do it, no question

kaleb will do it too, but reluctantly

honestly, everyone in the family is so whipped for aria lol

she’s usually not super shy

but the second she meets a handsome older boy?

she becomes hella shy

she loves to color and draw

she’s also super optimistic

when she’s with luna and youngmi

she becomes so chaotic

she will YELL about how happy she is

aria is honestly a delight to have around :)

>> as a teen/adult <<

honestly

the most happy and bubbly personality

she’s so sweet and giggly like all the time

she’s tiny too

she joins a girl group with luna and youngmi

and she’s the littlest in the group

she’s their main dancer and main vocalist

this girl can BELT out notes

like she’s so little

but her voice is so strong

like her range is amazing

she has perfect pitch

and she can do runs like no tomorrow

she loves her brothers

kaleb and her still fight a little bit

but their fights aren’t serious at all

she loves animals

but she especially loves cats

she also does art as a hobby and she’s honestly really good at it

as an idol, she’s pretty wholesome

she’s really goofy

aria is the groups translator

she’s just as good as her brothers at the different languages

she has a little bit of a british accent 

she the maknae of the group

the most humble person tho

she has a hard time learning dances lol

she just takes a little bit longer than everyone else

kaleb helps her out tho

he doesn’t treat her like he treats his dancers

like he’ll tease her a bit more, but he’ll slow the moves down for her and stuff

when she does learn the moves tho ooh boy

she can be so creative with her freestyles and stuff

she loves all things cute

like her room is full of plushies

she barely throws away the plushies her fans get her because she loves all of them

she’s the type of person to find the beauty and love in everything

she loves to visit shawn’s classes and help him out with the little ones

she’s so thankful for her brothers and her dad and you!

aria makes sure that she visits home as much as possible

she’s really empathetic and will cry if things get too much :,)

honestly, everyone is thankful she became such a positive and nice person

you and ten raised her and your boys well, despite all of the headaches!

---

shawn is honestly a mood lmao

the johnny scenario is done now and will be posted soon :)

i hoped you guys liked it! i’m definitely excited to write my ult’s babies haha

also! requests are open! go ahead and drop by some suggestions about the families or even just a fluff scenario for anyone! i love writing, but sometimes, i just need some prompts to help me out lol. go ahead and drop by and let me know what y’all want!

- amy <3

[evilisk]

Reading Len’En Profiles Part 4

This took a while didn’t it? This is being split up into two parts since Fumikado’s profile is way bigger (with more info about other characters, including future characters in BPoHC) than initially expected. Teams, Sese, Tsugumi, Shion and Tenkai are covered in this part.

= = =

As always, here’s a quick look on the profiles for the returning characters. 

Team Profiles

Shrine Team:

I like how Yabusame’s profile mentions that they wear lighter clothes in Winter than in Summer yet the only discernible difference I can tell from their sprite is “Yabu choosing not to wear shoes”

I can't believe Tsuba’s profile casually reveals that they remodeled their body structure so they can't feel the cold. What the heck Tsuba?

Slaver Team

Kuroji’s profile is such a swerve. We went from “gotta put food on the table for my siblings” to Kuroji going full “Ameyama Telegraph style Reimu” who shakes down people [youkai] for money

Kuroji having ambitions to open a school in Mugenri is unexpected

Wait, so Kuroji, who is described as being a scholar of pre-history, wants to open a school (and presumably wants to teach at it). And Keine, from Touhou, is a were-hakutaku who can manipulate history, that teaches at a school. HMMMMMMM.....

“This is kinda dangerous” lmao at that being in Saragimaru’s profile. I appreciate how this is referenced in Yaorochi’s profile (their profile mentions that they feel like they’re being watched)

It’s revealed that Saragimaru doesn’t actually know if they are related by blood which is kinda weird? I got the impression that the one who was in the dark about everything was Yaorochi, not Saragimaru. Maybe I should take another look at their EMS profile...

Bottle Opener Team

I mentioned previously that one of the EMS profiles confirmed that Orochi was a youkai. Well Yaorochi’s profile 200% confirms that Orochi was a youkai with the line “[Yaorochi’s] a youkai very much like Yamato no Orochi” which is good to know

It’s been a while so I forgot, and ended up chuckling at, the bottle opener stuff. Especially the “Yaorochi has been training so good they’re good at the bottle opener now too!” angle

"For the sake of creativity, [Sukune doesn’t] speak like a normal person.” So that’s the reason for their accent? Lol okay

I like how Sukune’s wings are given a small explanation here. I wouldn’t have guessed that they could fly without them (I would have assumed they can’t normally fly, and that they fought on-foot in EMS)

= = =

Boss Profiles

Stage 1 / Stage Extra+ Boss - Sese Kitsugai

Original Opinion: While I find their in-game spellcards (as a Stage 1 boss) to be rather zany, I love this Bony Baby. Seriously, I cannot look at their sprite, with their cute smiling baby fangs, and see Sese as an adult (I think they’re referred to as “a kid” by some of the teams too). I am not so hot on EX-Sese as a design, but in concept? I LOVE IT. I think their BPoHC design (which I love, love LOVE, but more on that in the next post) is a better middle ground between  “base” Sese and EX-Sese, but I digress. Sese is 'Sese-rious’ fun!

Comments on Profile:

Interesting, interesting. So apparently Sese Kitsugai (or just “Sese”, according to their Wiki entry) isn’t their real name. They just thought it was a pleasant nickname.

It seems that without their skull, they don’t remember much (like their original name). It’s weird since they draw attention to Sese’s current skull helmet in Yaorochi’s route (Sukune can’t remove it, Yaorochi seems to think it’s special) but I suppose that Sese’s original skull should be WAY bigger than their current one.

Sese has a second profile which adds a lot more details. Apparently, they were scavenging bones near Harujion while that big epic fight was happening in Stage 6.

So EX Sese’s appearance is their canon true/”original” appearance. Boo. I honestly think their BPoHC design is way better. It also seems that without the original skull, Sese cannot maintain their original appearance.

Sese’s EX Profile has an extra ability: “something like conquering the above-ground”. That’s not ominous at all.

I cannot help but wonder if Sese originally fought Tsurubami and just got whooped really hard... okay, now I have the mental image of Tsurubami booting Sese’s skull so hard that they became dumb.

Oh and Sese is mentioned as excavating becoming a hobby for them. Good for Sese.

New Opinion: Y’know, it just hit me that Sese is *basically* Rumia / EX-Rumia but canon and with 200% more bones...

Regardless, Sese is so good. Just like the two other Stage 1 bosses so far. It’s crazy how good JynX is at doing Stage 1 bosses, I dislike most Touhou Stage 1 bosses (the only good ones are Eika and Nazrin).

= = =

Stage 2 Boss - Tsugumi Umatachi

Original Opinion: Tsugumi is the one character I say has aged like fine wine (to me). I thought that Tsugumi being a grumpy goon, despite being a steampunk-looking, bat wing-wearing, eggplant-riding jockey, was such a strange design choice. Then I realized that “grumpy person who dresses colorfully” is basically my real life aesthetic and I totally got it. Though I outright like Fumikado more, I appreciate their personality and their fun musical theme.

Comments on Profile:

...After reading this profile, I’m not sure what to take at face value. 

Okay so first off, they were hired by a certain someone. It’s unclear if this someone is Fumikado (the obvious choice) or Iyozane (who is technically the person who put out the bounty that Tsugumi and Kuroji are following up on in the game).

There’s some reference to boke and tsukkomi that I honestly do not understand. Like I recognize the terms from Gintama, but I’m not sure what JynX is trying to say about Tsugumi as a character when they say “Ninjas!” or that Tsugumi wasn’t born in Japan.

Also, their species is “Eggplant Jockey”. I have no frame of reference for what this is supposed to mena.

New Opinion: I... have no new opinion because I have no idea what I just read. I was going to say “oh so Tsugumi isn’t Japanese” but I just skimmed their page on the Shout Wiki and there is no reference to this fact (which makes it seem like that was just an example of this boke and tsukkomi thing mentioned before)

I got nothing :/ Tsugumi is still cool tho

= = =

Stage 6 Boss - Shion

Original Opinion: Just as Sese continues the unbroken tradition of Len’En games having incredibly good Stage 1 bosses, Shion continues the tradition of Len’En games having incredibly underwhelming final bosses 

Yaorochi and Clause both had something keeping them from being great final bosses; for Clause, its their joke character personality that lets them down, while with Yaorochi, it’s their theme. In Shion’s case, it’s the fact that they come completely out of nowhere, hijacking Fumikado’s rightful place as Final Boss that gets me all hot and bothered. (I think that Shion giving off strong “low rent Yuyuko vibes doesn’t help their case either)

It’s an absolute shame, since Shion seems to have clearly learned from Clause and Yaorochi, since they’ve got the creepy (cool) personality and the kickass boss theme. If only they had actual relevance to RMI’s plot...

Comments on Profile:

So apparently Shion is from a magical plant that can resurrect or grant immortality, it always pops up in a random place and the Senri Priests are usually supposed to cut it down when that does happen... oh dear.

Oh I see now, Shion is like Ermac from Mortal Kombat i.e. they’re a mass of souls and experiences that collectively form a new being. That’s a pretty cool backstory, actually! ...Wait, so the final spellcard that Shion has... are those like the names of the souls they absorbed?? That seems interesting.

So it goes that the souls in Shion were split at some point: the good souls formed the body while the evil souls formed the spirit. This intended equilibrium, however, was distorted by Mugenri’s barrier and instead of a split of good and evil it was just evil and more evil. Well that basically explains why Shion went from no chill to being very chill after Stage 6. Shion is mentioned as literally getting killed in all the endings (because everyone apparently went too ham). So we basically have “Evil and Eviler Shion” dying and then Harujion bringing them back as “Equilibrium of Good and Evil Shion”. Interesting, interesting.

This last part of the profile is such a mood. “[...] a good number of those voices were playing the same melody in unison, that “the world is full of malice.” “...Shion had no doubt about that claim. If their body is a miniature copy of the world itself, then they are evil itself.”

New Opinion: While I still hate that Shion hijacked Fumikado’s role as final villain, they are a way more interesting character than I initially thought. I do know that Shion is apparently a playable character in BPoHC, but have no idea how JynX intends to use them, so I’m interested to see what JynX’s plans are for them

= = =

Stage Extra Boss - Tenkai Zuifeng

Original Opinion: I think my first thoughts went exactly like “oh god that outfit is horrible” to “oh god this fight is insane” to “oh so they’re just Tsurubami’s really, really tired friend, I dig it”. I think the aspect I appreciate most is that they’re basically the straight man character the series has been missing. Yabusame and Tsubakura are weirdos, Kuroji is a scoundrel, the Adagumos operate on weird youkai logic and Sukune lacks common, human sense.

Tenkai is your only option if you’re looking for a sensible recurring character. And this sensibility only makes the interpretation of a Tenkai who is “endlessly tired of everyone’s shit” stronger in my mind.  Beyond the personality, they have a great theme, a cool backstory and, most importantly, a really damn good shot type in BPoHC. Now if only their outfits weren’t absolutely, consistently garish. It’s like JynX heard me say “the Len’En games need more colour” and decided to concentrate it in Tenkai’s outfit which has like, EVERY SINGLE COLOUR. 

I still love my Tired Barrier Carpenter but please stop picking your own outfits

Comments on Profile: 

Okay so Tenkai is from a renowned family of barrier builders that has worked with the Senri Shrine. Note the focus on the word *builders*; apparently these builders aren’t so good at repairing barriers. Cue Tenkai getting a job to repair the Mugenri Barrier as part of her ‘training’ (at least, that’s what it seems like on the surface. It’s mentioned that this training is also an attack on Tenkai’s prestige). 

The profile mentions Tenkai pulling some prank as a way to get back at her bosses. Tenkai hating her bosses just makes tired Tenkai more and more real in my head.

From my knowledge of the routes in-game, this prank was not repairing the barrier immediately, letting the souls outside the Barrier into Mugenri and basically letting the events of the game happen (Fumikado and co. start gathering souls, Harujion sprouts near Fumikado, Shion is born, Sese transforms in the Extra etc.). I guess it’s also meant to be an excuse to test Tsubakura and Yabusame. In short, we can all thank Tenkai for the events of this game.

IIRC, I think Tenkai is referenced as being from the Outside World? Maybe? I know it’s brought up in the Kuroji / Saragimaru route. 

It’s also not mentioned in the profile I believe Lumen is responsible for punching a hole in the barrier in the first place which is HILARIOUS

Their title is of the “Old Dictators”. So basically, Tenkai is the Marisa to Tsurubami’s Reimu.

New Opinion: I already liked Tenkai, this is just cementing my headcanon of Tenkai being a very, very tired person. There’s not a whole lot to say about Tenaki since this is all just plot and worldbuilding details 

= = =

I will finally get into Iyozane (who has a small profile, but has a large role in Fumikado’s profile) and Fumikado (who has a huge, huge profile) in the next part.

[th3okamid3mon]

JoJo Rabbit, a well thought and heart-wrenching satire [SPOILERS]

Even in a comedy you can´t help to cry, there´s no way you can talk about any war without crying or feeling such a deep horrible feeling of fear and distraught.

(I´m gonna be disclosing a lot of SPOILERS, which include the ending and several key points of the story.)

Sinopsis:

Johannes Breztel is a 10 year old german fanatic who wishes to become a good nazi soldier. He goes to a military camp where he has to learn everything you need to know about being a good soldier and make Hitler proud. JoJo, with his imaginary friend Adolf, began their adventure to becoming a better German for their homeland and fighting against the evil plaguing it: jews. 

Writing and Characters:

I heard a lot about Taika Waititi, haven´t watch Ragnarok since I´m not exactly a huge fan on superhero movies (Watched most of the MCU movies mostly out of duty, in a ¨God, please just end it¨ kind of way. Loved Iron Man, hated the 3, Thor was boring, and etc, etc.), I heard how awesome he is, how good is he at also acting and such. This is a huge and great example for his brilliance to shine. 

Every story about WW2 is really predictable, you know people are gonna die and people are gonna be miserable or happy at the end of the war. Waititi does a flip by using dark comedy and the perspective of a child, which a lot of people seem to not want due to how disturbing it can be (once you get all the comedy out of the way). 

You follow Johannes ¨JoJo¨ Betzler, a 10 year old who is, as the character of Elsa says is:, ¨just a little boy playing to be a soldier with a funny costume trying to get in a club¨. We see he has blind devotion towards the evil Adolf Hitler and is really excited to participate in a training with the hopes of becoming a soldier or better yet, Hitler´s personal body guard. It is disturbing to think a young child, or any child by any means, want to become part on the worst human activity there is: war, and not only that, idolizes the worst and evilest bastard who could have ever been alive. Of course, JoJo is not good for war at all. No kid has the killing instinct in their blood, it´s not something you inherit its something they learn or, in this case, brainwash into believing. He gets into a hilariously portrayed accident that involved a hand bomb that exploded his left side. 

His character is the most developed in the entire movie, we follow his steps, we see what he sees and we feel what he feels. His mother tried very hard to taught him how awful war was, he saw Elsa hidden in a tight spot where she had to keep quiet or she and the rest could get in serious trouble, he saw the military before and after going to war. He began to understand how awful can war be, but it wasn´t fully absorb until several traumatic events happened that no child ever had to see in their young life. It´s a very likable child, you are never angry at his devotion he was literally taught from infancy how he had to serve a dictator. The fault falls in the regimen, his actions, the things he does and acts are his only responsibility and thanks to his child innocence and wonder and compassion we know he is a good person in the inside just a bit confused. 

Rosie Betzler. If you didn´t like Scarlett Johannson for his previews acting on the fucking MCU movies (like me, GOD I hated her), well I bet you are gonna like her in this one. I mean... SHE SMILES? WOW, DIDN´T KNEW SHE COULD DO THAT. Seriously, the directing in the heroes movies fucked her seriously. She is a brilliant actress and is so wonderfully funny in this one. A kind mother with brutal honesty trying to raise her now beloved child alone (since her husband is at war and her older child died from influenza, I didn´t exactly got that from the movie) while keeping certain secrets to keep him safe is hard enough, but during NAZI GERMANY while being part of the jewish resistance is IS ANOTHER LEVEL OF HARD, ITS LIKE NIGHTMARE MODE IN FUCKING OUTLAST. Badass character, keeping a balance between trying to make her child feel like a child and also keeping the orphan Elsa a secret. She didn´t had a huge development and she didn´t need one, we only needed to see what secrets she was hiding and damn... They cost a lot once you knew them all. 

Elsa, brave and aggressive Elsa. Of course anyone would act the way she did if she had to be quiet to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. The girl has a lot of knowledge in popular culture, telling JoJo about different artists who, not only were writers or musicians, but also Jewish (to the dismay for poor, silly JoJo). She didn´t have a huge development, she begin to understand JoJo deeply as well as Rosie, since both where there for her (even if they had different and opposite motivations). Elsa is like an obstacle for JoJo except she doesn´t do much and wouldn´t do so if it meant putting herself at risk. We can see she is really brave once the Gestapo stop at their home, brave and smart that is. Without her quick thinking the movie would have ended then and there. I can´t imagine how deeply horrifying it would have been to do that and how awful and sad her life was after not only loosing her fiance to tuberculosis but also watching her family getting in a train and leaving to a place where no one returns. She acts aggressive and is harsh because she needs to survive and when she begins to trust JoJo, their bond become strong and deep and become like siblings. 

Capitan Deertz is a very apathetic and silly capitan, the guy is really tired of the war and doesnt really want anything to do with the children at the camp, not because of a moral compass he just doesnt give a fuck. You get this character and you laugh at his commentary and at how Rosie can easily threaten him. And then you see more of his character, he seems to care at certain some points. He cares about Finkel, who is a second in command. Every time they appear in screen they are literally whispering stuff at each other or have certain looks, clearly a gay couple. At that time period it was EXTREMELY dangerous to show any type of love towards another man and this two werent that subtle about it but since they were high in command guess no one actually care or said anything (considering most of the people in their command were children, no one would probably even care). Finkel was just this goofy guy who follow Deertz and show a deep appreciation. Not the main thing to focus, it´s just there and it´s funny and its normal. They dont have to look or act in ¨gay way¨, they are just there and they do their work and such. Which is fine until you get the war scenes and then you want to bawl even more (Because when you get at the war scenes you already should have bawled your eyes out due to a lot of sad circumstances). He also cared about Rosie and JoJo, even when he seem not to. When he saw Gestapo in Rosie´s house he helped JoJo save Elsa and when he was trapped by the Allies he helped JoJo again by ripping a nazi jacket off of him and shoving him to the ground while screaming at him. General jerk is actually a caring character, cliche move but man, does it always fucking works. 

The dialogues were impressively well thought, no one felt out of place and they made sense. The way they make fun of the whole blind fanatism and how the military views boys and girls it´s all in your face and its hilarious, it is presented as that so please no one start saying how sexist or how wrong it is for saying the things they say. It´s a SATIRE. It´s a MOVIE. ITS COMEDY.

I cannot thought of any kind of plothole, I´m sure it has or it probably has but the story is so well thought and so well acted you are absorb into it. Your whole attention is in what will happen next, the story of WW2 can be predictable, but this story is always at 2 steps of ripping your heart and then replacing it and hoping it pumps blood normally and when it does pump blood normally it rips it off again. It´s a rollercoaster, and it´s capturing. Your attention is in the story 100% of the time, and you gotta pay attention to the details because they foreshadow so much good and so much PAIN. 

Directing and Acting: 

I almost go off in the other section about Scarlett´s acting, now here it comes: MY GOD. I hated her so much in Avengers. The mot disliked character for me was her, and I always forget it was the directors fault. Here´s a note: When an actor acts bad, it´s not always, if not NEVER, their fault. Most of the time is the directors fault, you have to give straight and good orders and to maintain a communication with them if not the story falls. When Black Widow was shown in Iron Man, I was like ¨Wow, I like her! She is really good and badass!!¨ and then Avengers happened and it fucking fall all over the fucking lava floor. And IT WAS A FUCKING SHAME. Scarlett Johansson is a really good actress! She portrayed an excellent character, even if it was a minor character, she did it perfectly and shown so much emotion with the looks and the words she said and the actions she did. She was a mom in this movie, and it showed! THIS! THIS CHARACTER MADE ME LOVE JOHANSSON! Please dont go to shit directors ever again, my god. Avengers was a fucking toxic relationship and SHE GOT OUT AND SHE IS BRILLIANT. 

Taika Waititi is such a great director, he really put his love and passion into this project and it shows. It bleeds passion, it fucking tastes passion. I dont understand, he needs more money to make more works. GIVE THIS MAN MORE MONEY. 

The kids? Holy- How old are th- 12!?!?!?!? ROMAN GRIFFIN DAVIS WAS 12?!?!?! How old was- HIS SIBLINGS ALSO WORK IN THIS?! Ok how old is the othe- 11!?!?!??! ARCHIE YATES IS 11!??!?!  Ok, as you can see, I am very impressed by this child actors. It can be a challenge to direct them because sometimes there are a lot of different needs they have and they also can´t work as much as the adults and such, this means there´s less time to work with them and maybe they have school and other child responsibilities. Waititi must have had a lot of patience and a really big understanding of their work hours, not over pressuring them and knowing how to explain the whole script. That doesn´t mean they dont have talent, though. This kids are EXTREMELY talented, they are funny and they show a lot of emotion, even when one is comic relief you can sense and see how exhausted he is while saying ¨I´m going to see my mom, I need a cuddle¨ LIKE... THIS ARE KIDS, THEY SHOULDNT BE AT WAR, WTF!? 

The actors protrayed their respective characters in such a way, deeply understanding what emotions go in each scene and making the scene so heart wrenching. 

[BIG SPOILER, SKIP IF YOU DON´T WANNA KNOW] There´s a scene I enjoyed a lot by how it is presented, it´s a good sequence and the punch hits you really hard. During the movie you can see a couple scenes where they only show Rosie´s feet, dancing or just moving while JoJo sees amused or not. Anyway, the scene I´m talking about is when he is following a really pretty blue butterfly that is flying at floors level. He walks towards it and smiles, he squats to take a better look at it before it flies away. And when he stands up again, he is next to a pair of legs, and not any legs, they have a specific kind of shoe, and they have a specific blue coat. Oh no. You dont have to see the face, there´s no need to see the face. You dont have to see the expression you only need to see JoJo. And this is where I have no idea how this kid did it, but his expression goes from wonder to horrifying sadness and desperation. I dont know what direction, what mental image did Waititi told him but he manage to portrayed a really raw and deep sadness and heartbreak you can only see in people who lost someone. And the kid is just holding his mother´s lifeless legs and crying and desperate trying to tie her shoelaces and then giving up and hugging her again. And then he is just broken, looking at her hanging with other people who might have been with her or not. The realization of how harsh the punishment is and how awful life is that day at that time. And he can´t believe it, he doesnt want to believe and maybe if he had acted differently she would have still been there but no. It wasn´t his fault, he had nothing to do with it. He later was explain what possibly happened. She was with the resistance, her husband was with the resistance in Italy. She was against nazi´s but she never told him to protect him and to protect herself. She sacrifice for other people, she put herself in danger for other people and for a better future for her son. JoJo wouldnt have known, he couldn´t know and now that he knew he just loved her so very much and it hurted him. It wasn´t the jews´ fault, it wasn´t his fault, it was the people of the regimen he was following, the regimen who promised a bright future for him and the other children. 

Sound design: 

It was delightful. Dialogues kept at their respective volumes, background noises were there and not overbearing, the sound of steps, something being dragged, the sound of bombs and artillery. Not a single time was any sound out of place, it was as if you were there, it immersive. The sound played a huge rolled into being capture in the story, with such detail at every sound that could be played at the scene. The silences where used perfectly, only backgrounds and atmospheric sounds plagued the scene, and when the moment hit you there was still no music until the realization was made. Perfect timing.

The soundtrack was beautiful, endearing and melancholic at their respective scenes. When there was music to dance on, the music played, when there was a hilarious montage the music exaggerates the ridiculous situation they are presented in. It was wonderful. 

Art design: 

They went all off!!! The clothes, the cars, the food, the plates, everything! I wonder how much investigation did they had to do to fully dress up an entire cast and also to do the little details. One thing is getting the clothes that, to be entirely fair, thanks to photos from those times and more investigation from books, you can figure out the type of clothes and materials they used, but the details from the streets, the kind of bikes and the inside of a house its an entire story:

Investigation is not entirely what you need to do, you have to consider what colors go well, what makes the character pop but also make sense, how the decor should be done and what kind of table and chairs are in a normal house. How do the hidden rooms worked and how where they hidden at plain sight, how do you make it work and how will it look. All has to be thought out, everything has to have a purpose, even the smallest change can be a whole new set. Make it look pretty but make sure it makes sense to the era. 

Photography: 

Let´s talk photography, shall we?

Look at how the colors vary, look at the highlights and shadows. Look at the saturated colors. I LOVE saturated colors, not many photographers used them out of fear, the colors can be very bright and distracting, but Mihai Mălaimare Jr. made it work! His shots are spectacular, they work perfectly to capture whats going on and how the characters feel. 

JUST LOOK AT THE CONTRAST. In the first picture there´s a big open shot, both Rosie and JoJo are in the very left corner while you can see the bright green grass. They are free from everything when they are out of town, they can be happy or enjoy their time while being there, even if JoJo likes to pretend to be mature and to still want to be a soldier while his mother is trying to make him understand how life has to be enjoyed while it last and how war has ruin that for everyone, including the nazi germans. The second shot is at the town, look at how grayish it looks. Everyone is miserable. There´s no such thing as a good war, and whether you believe it or not, even the nazi germans were suffering, the ones who werent fighting were frighten to be attacked, hungry because the food was not enough or was given to the soldiers, no one was happy at that point in life. The color palettes help tell a story, and influence how you look at the lives of the characters. It´s visual storytelling and you can feel the fresh air, the relief from the first shot and then the limited, claustrophobic and fearful atmosphere from the second. 

What a better representation of what war is. Kids going to get killed for an evil regimen disguised as the savior for their homeland. JoJo who finally sees that horrors of war, a kid who has lost so much now, who knows heartbreak but never fathom the idea of horrifying, raw, disturbing and sickening war is. How you loose more than you gain from fighting, how you see your friends being send like pigs to a slaughter, how the military blindly follows orders for a falling regimen. The look of utter disbelief and horror contrasting the he blind joy of dying for your country. This shot is everything and in motion is even more epic yet disturbing. 

Conclusion:

I might be too blinded by how well it was made that I don´t see any problems in it. I would have to watch it again to see if there´s some inconsistencies but going by the first watch I have to say it was really good. The plot was understandable, it had high points and slow points, but those were well made. It was smooth how the story evolve, the turns were expected but maybe not in the way they were presented. What i mean is, it can be predictable but you dont expect HOW it is presented. With War stories death is at every corner, it´s the manner that you don´t expect or hope to happen to anyone. The acting was phenomenal, the star was totally Roman Griffin, all the actors were amazing but you gotta give the kid credit, THIS WAS HIS DEBUT and he NAILED IT! 

By the looks of the trailer you expect so much and it gives you that and more. To the eyes is a delight, to the heart is a pain and comfort and to the ears is a melody. To the soul is a story that has to remind you history, war is not a good thing and so many people get more damage by it than saved. No kid should ever be put in that situation, and yet there are kids suffering in this world. This movie could potentially be an Anti-War movie, because it literally shows how awful it is. Wars are awful in general! It´s kind of ridiculous we need to be reminded of that but here we are. 

We are shown a cruel environment with a humorous tone to get the message straight into our heads and it works perfectly. Give it 3 watches and then watch another 3 times, every time you feel like everything is going down, remember there´s still hope even in the darkest more horrifying places and times. We have the choice to make good, humans can be evil but can be extremely brave and compassionate. Never give up being a good person, it can be hard but it is more rewarding. People need kindness and compassion. We need to be those compassionate people for others. It always starts with one brave person. 

The last thing you leave the theater is with a verse from Rainer Maria Rilke: 

                                      Let everything happen to you.                                                Beauty and Terror.                                                Just keep going.                                               No feeling is final.

Sincerely moved, T.O.D

PS: Fuck Hitler. 

[black-wolf066]

AU where Five dies young in the apocalypse part 3

[Part 1] [Part 2]

[A03 link if it’s easier to read]

Our Place to Call Home

Being homeless had never truly bothered Klaus after he had left the academy behind him. Especially not when he had chosen it of his own free will.

At the ripe age of seventeen years, four months, and twelve days old (“Yes Ben, I remember the exact date I left. No one can forget that week of utter fun; no matter how hard one tries.”), Klaus hadn’t had very many choices laid out for him to pick from. It had been either leave everything behind for the streets (where he had a better chance of making it on his own) or stay and deal with a cruel man who had never cared for him—or any of them for that matter—and never hesitated in reminding him of his uselessness in that household.

Sure, leaving would have entailed wandering into the unknown, with food, shelter and his next fix not ever being a solid guarantee, but staying hadn’t exactly been an option for him either (not after Five, and certainly not after Ben—still so very fresh in his grave at that point in time). Staying would have required him to accept the knowledge that Reginald would end up killing him—or his remaining siblings—with the missions the old man continuously forced them on.

In the end, the streets were the lesser of two evils in Klaus’ opinion.

(As he crept out late in the night with nothing more than a knapsack, three hundred some odd dollars pilfered from Luther’s shoe box hidden under the floorboard beneath his bed, and the clothes on his back; Klaus spared one fleeting thought to the rest of his brothers and sisters; hoping they too would be smart enough to leave before it was too late.)

Once out there, he—and by extension, Ben—had finally been free to do whatever he had damn well pleased. To go wherever his feet led him, without a single care in the world. Sure it hadn’t been easy; some days worse than others (a fight here, a drug deal gone south there, the lack of food or a warm place to sleep when the nights would get too cold), but he had finally been handed the reigns  of his own destiny and nothing anyone could do or say would have stopped him from enjoying that high (not even a concerned Ben dogging his every step).

It took plenty of trial and error on his part (but Five wasn’t the only one capable of adaptability in the family), and plenty of months honing the skills he had learned for a different purpose then what they were originally intended for. Nevertheless, Klaus had made his new lifestyle work.

And for seven blissfully, foggy years, it did work.

Then Five up and died, came back from the future (“Called it!” “Congratulations, you’re not a complete idiot.” “Hey! I could deal without the sarcasm, Five-y, but I’ll still take the compliment!”) to haunt him, and suddenly Klaus’ blissful little world went up in figurative smoke and flames.

His lifestyle, he knew, was no longer a viable option; not with his resolve to stay relatively clean for Ben and Five’s sake. Not with the streets being a vixen of temptation he would succumb to the longer he was out there, and certainly not with the end of times looming like a distant gale in the background of what his life had apparently become.

God, no one told him being a responsible adult would suck quite this much.

(***)

“Sorry, occupancy is full.”

With a tired sigh, Klaus turned on his heel and left the shelter for the park.

“You could try another one rather than just giving up, you know. It’s not even that late out.” Five griped.

No, it wasn’t late at all, but Five didn’t know the streets like Klaus and Ben did. Five didn’t know each and every shelter within the city limit or that that particular establishment didn’t have a very reputable reputation to begin with. Herman Housing was usually the homeless’ last pick; the staff habitually rude and ill-tempered, the food border-line questionable, and the water from the showers leaving one feeling dirtier then when they first walked in. So, if Herman Housing—of all places—was full at this early hour of the day, then there was no point in wasting his time and energy trying for a bed somewhere else.

He was too tired and grumpy to communicate any of this information to Five.

Ben—bless him and his knack for knowing just what he’s thinking—voiced this for him.

“Well, you still can’t just sleep out here on the bench, Klaus.”

“Watch me.” He flopped back dramatically in his seat for added effect and grinned as Five looked for all the world like a riled cat.

“Klaus,” Ben cut in sharply before the argument could start. “You saw the news at Griddy’s. A blizzard’s coming and it’s going to be bad. Just go to Diego or Vanya, please—you know they won’t turn you away.”

No, they wouldn’t (not with the incoming threat of four feet of snow looming on the horizon), but his wounds were still fresh from their blatant dismissal when he tried to tell them Five had finally showed up to haunt his pathetic ass. It shouldn’t hurt, not when none of them every really believed him to begin with (even before Ben), but it did and still does. Ghosts were his thing after all, it shouldn’t have been that hard to believe. Sure, the drugs fundamentally nulled his powers almost completely, but his siblings should know by now that nothing he put in his system would stop Ben—or Five or any of them—from manifesting if they wanted too. His siblings were just that right side of stubborn pain in the asses that Klaus hoped none of the other spirits ever caught on too or he’d really be in trouble.

As the temperature continued to drop, and his brothers continued to pester and hound him like the mother hens they freaking were; he threw up his hands in defeat with a frustrated “Fine, I’m moving, I’m moving, you happy?”

He went to Diego.

(***)

The next incident, was just two weeks before Vanya would begin writing her book (not that Klaus would know that). It was just a normal night, the chill not as biting despite it being the dead of winter, when Klaus’ past actions finally came to bite him annoyingly in the ass.

He fought as hard as he could—he can honestly say that he did try—against his ruthless ex-drug dealer, but hand to hand combat had never been one of his strong suits growing up, and even if it had been; eight pitted against one simply wasn’t a fair fight (and a little over kill if you asked him). Being nimble and light on his feet also didn’t help when his exits were being blocked at every turn.

He managed to take out one fellow and roughed up two more before he was down for the count; knocked out cold and still being beaten and shaken down for what little money he had left in his pockets.

Ben and Five watched it all happen fearfully and angrily; helpless to do anything but be silent witnesses as their brother was beaten black and blue in the alley he was chased into.

When he eventually, and thankfully, awoke the next morning, he didn’t go to the Emergency room despite their concerned prompting (“You could be bleeding internally, Klaus!” “Don’t care, Ben, still not going.” “You’re a dumb-ass, you know that?” “Why thank you, Five.” “That’s not a compliment asshole, go to the damn hospital!” “Nope.” “You are insufferable!”). Hospitals were as bad as graveyards, and Klaus avoided them both like they would give him the plague.

Instead, in the early hours of the morning, with the streets and sidewalks still quiet with the sun not yet out to wake the living; he shuffled and limped his way slowly and blurrily towards Vanya’s home; her apartment being closer than Diego’s place of current residence or an emergency room either way.

Vanya took him to the hospital anyway.

(***)

Within a span of five months after the incident, bouncing from homeless shelter to endless homeless shelter (occasionally crashing at Diego’s or Vanya’s when the nagging got to be too much) and applying for whatever aid the government would be willing to give him; found Klaus with his very own studio apartment to call home.

The building was washed out and unkempt, the neighborhood he was located in looking as though it had never seen what better days even looked like. The apartment itself made even his old room seem bigger, but it was affordable with the temporary grant given to him (and would continue to be affordable once he found a job to better sustain himself) and that was enough for him.

No matter how small, it was his, and between the three of them, they filled it with everything their father would have hated. With bright colors, tacky furniture (that was cheap, and well used, but still comfortable to sink into) and wacky patterned curtains, pillows and throws, that shouldn’t normally go together but somehow Klaus had made work (despite Ben’s and Five’s obvious doubt before seeing it themselves).

Ben finally had the library of his dreams. It wasn’t nearly as big as the one back at the mansion, but it was an ever growing collection that Klaus continued to enable (sure he had to hold open the books for Ben to read, but if it made the book-worm happy, he was willing to do it; a small price to pay for all the shit he’s put him through over the years). There was even a section for Five’s theory and mathematical volumes and an even smaller section for Klaus’ own collection (nothing noteworthy, just a few comics and fictional works of fantasy and romance).

The rest of Ben’s knick-knacks were just as random and odd as Klaus’, but the Polaroid camera and the photo albums Klaus began to fill up for him; were definitely among Ben’s top favorites.

In the beginning it was hard to figure out what Klaus could bring home for Five to make him feel included. Five’s interests geared more toward having to be tangible to do them (much to his displeasure). That still didn’t stop Klaus from buying the chalkboard easel he later found at a second hand store, and on days when Five would get restless and fidgety, Klaus would humor him for a few hours and write whatever complicated and convoluted equations he wanted written out on that very same easel (“No Five, I’m not writing on the walls.” “I don’t care if there isn’t enough space left on the chalkboard, you aren’t gonna be of any help when I have to paint over it now will you?”). He ends up buying another chalkboard and a white board to appease the irritable gremlin.  

The dart board he had found not long after, had also been a nice addition as well; it wasn’t as nice as the one Five had back in his old room, but it still played a melancholy homage it (to the fonder memories Five had of challenging Ben or Diego or Klaus during their down time between training—more so Ben and Klaus, since Diego’s power was essentially cheating).

Ben and Klaus also learned—along with Five himself it would seem—that the forever stuck thirteen-year-old held an interest for anything nautical or tropical in nature; having seen him eye certain pieces every time they’d walk into some of the antique stores Klaus liked to frequent.

The spyglass, the random colorful sea shells, the oceanic themed paintings, and the little anchor shaped paper weight— the metallic object situated on Five’s side of the bookshelf—went without much fanfare, but that was okay, the smile on his brother’s face when he placed them in their home was reward enough.

Their place might not be much worth noting—maybe even a little crazy, and a little over-crowded with nonsensical junk to the outside looking in—and though his brothers really didn’t need the space or any of the knick-knacks Klaus continued to buy for them; it was their home regardless.

It was the home the three of them were making for themselves and it was enough.

(Oh, and they bought a coffee machine that Klaus honestly has no idea he will even use, but said why the hell not anyway ‘cause fuck you dad!)

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/23 & 10/25/2018: HALLOWEEN (2007) & HALLOWEEN II (2009)

By the time Rob Zombie made the bold move of remaking John Carpenter’s name-making classic HALLOWEEN, the horror rock-star’s directorial career had already proved to be incredibly divisive. His 2003 film debut, HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES drew a cult from among diehard fans of his music, but was largely panned by critics who identified it as a ramshackle, self-indulgent disaster. The movie was little more than a Frankensteining-together of Zombie’s favorite things, but he managed to follow it up swiftly with 2005′s semi-sequel, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. With this project, he appropriated three of the principle characters from his cartoony, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW-like first feature, and reimagined them as the redneck antiheroes of a story that plays like a cross between THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE WILD BUNCH. While DEVIL’S REJECTS showed major improvements in terms of drive and focus, it still felt unsettled. It is an emotionally confused movie that has trouble deciding whether its tale is more tragic for the innocent victims of its psychopathic protagonists, or more triumphant, for the Rejects’ anti-establishment swagger and charisma. Rob Zombie displays a refined aesthetic sense, and seems sincere in his storytelling, but he didn’t have much time to let these things ferment into a more potent cinematic brew before he stepped up to bat again with his controversial remake of the beloved HALLOWEEN in 2007. 

Reviled even by the likes of John Carpenter himself, Zombie’s dour, ponderous retelling of the archetypal slasher story was baffling to critics and genre buffs alike. Loaded up with clunky psychoanalysis that flies in the face of Carpenter’s original intention--Michael Myers is PURE NO-REASON EVIL, FULL STOP--this iteration of HALLOWEEN worked for few people besides Zombie’s hardcore stans. In spite of that very large and general problem, the writer-director was back again in 2009 with a sequel to his own remake. With HALLOWEEN II, he took two major creative risks: Bringing the ubiquitous Sheri Moon Zombie back even though her character died early in the first film, and centering the narrative on Laurie Strode’s psychological recovery, or lack thereof, from her original ordeal. It is easy to see how this setup would draw more complex and ambivalent responses. Mrs. Zombie’s appearance as the ghost of Myers’ mother, whose character is plagued by a lot of Jungian nonsense, was identified fairly as ludicrous by many viewers. On the other hand, Scout Taylor-Compton’s return as Laurie Strode takes a character who was little more than a cardboard cutout in the first film, and turns her into a convincing mass of trauma who undergoes a profound transformation over the course of this sequel. As with THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, HALLOWEEN II suggests that even while Rob Zombie can be an incredibly frustrating filmmaker, he still seems to be on to something. Even in my most stuck-up moments, when his smug use of slow motion and arias of unshocking cuss words make me want to forget everything I just watched, his movies nag at me in a way that I have a hard time describing.  I’m just now starting to formulate an understanding of why.

Often, I find myself asking: Who is Rob Zombie? First and foremost, he is a professional nerd. His music, art, videos, and feature films are strung together by his scholarship in all things genre, whether he’s invoking Tobe Hooper’s snuff-like realism, or the innocent sitcom pleasures of the Munsters. Zombie is vastly erudite about horror, and really anything remotely culty. This is actually to the detriment of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, which is so bloated with pop culture references that it almost chokes out the movie’s dubious originality. But while he has that irritating nerdy compulsion to competitively show off what he knows, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who buys and bags comics without even cracking them open. Rob Zombie is clearly, legitimately passionate; it’s heartwarming, and enough to make you want to root for him even when you don’t totally love what he’s doing. His craftsmanship is on point, too, as a multimedia artist whose talent has been abundantly evident since the early band flyer days. It comes as no surprise that he attended Parsons School of Design, and he occasionally shows his hand as an amateur film historian with a love for golden age Hollywood. So, whatever he wants you to think about his hellbilly stage presence, he’s clearly no hick, and no basement-dwelling dweeb either. He’s an educated artist with a background in New York City’s brainy ‘80s noise rock scene. It’s because of this that I find the worshipful attitude his films take toward their sociopathic murderers to be, well...kind of annoying. Why am I supposed to think it’s so cool, as the movies’ punk rock tone suggests, that the Firefly family tortures random bystanders to death for no apparent reason? Why doesn’t Rob Zombie know how tired the whole “scary clown” thing is, and has been for a long time already, even when it’s someone as magical as Sid Haig under the greasepaint? Why do I feel like Zombie’s interest in pimps and ho’s is deeper than just exploitation pastiche, which makes it potentially worse than if it were just a shallow affectation? The thought of this Massachusetts-born college boy fantasizing obsessively about being so crude and violent and salt-of-the-earth is kind of lame. So, instead of just, you know, being a hater as usual, I looked it up--and discovered that Rob Zombie’s roots are actually in the fairway. As Wikipedia aggregates from various interviews: 

While raising their sons, Rob's parents worked in a carnival, but they chose to leave after a riot broke out and tents were set on fire. Zombie recalled the experience in an interview, stating, "Everybody's pulling out guns, and you could hear guns going off. I remember this one guy we knew, he was telling us where to go, and some guy just ran up to him and hit him in the face with a hammer – just busted his face wide open. My parents packed up real quick, and we took off."

Suddenly, it all started to make sense. Sure, the costumed popstar isn’t an undead cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Charles Starkweather in real life, but he isn’t a complete poseur either. It isn’t immediately clear, from underneath his mountain of collectory movie references, that he is, more or less, writing what he knows. He isn’t just emulating his cultural heroes, he’s mythologizing his own childhood. 

In view of this, the key to Rob Zombie’s movies is not an awareness of horror history and semiology; it’s actually all about outlaw culture. So, back to 2007′s deeply flawed HALLOWEEN. It’s a heavily bro-y movie, in its outsidery way, that breaks up the Dr. Loomis-Michael Myers-Laurie Strode love triangle, and focuses almost entirely on building a Myers biography. The fascinatingly sullen Daeg Neergaard Faerch plays young Michael, a fatherless boy on the verge of snapping from the relentless torment coming at him from all directions: his slutty sister, school bullies who fixate on his stripper mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), and his mother’s latest violent, depraved boyfriend. Michael follows the serial killer script perfectly, graduating rapidly from torturing animals to brutalizing other kids to annihilating his sister, her boyfriend, and his mother’s beau one Halloween night when his sibling chooses sex over taking her little brother trick-or-treating. He soon finds himself installed in a mental institution where he moves on to slaughtering the staff. Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) spends years evaluating the boy, though he is ultimately stymied by Michael’s profound lack of humanity. As Michael increasingly retreats behind the folksy homemade masks he spends all day crafting, the opportunistic Loomis gives up on him, instead committing his energy to a money-making true crime/pop psychology book about Myers. Flashing forward, we find the hulking adult Michael Myers (played by the 6′8″ wrestler Tyler Mane) getting ready to bust out of the asylum and wage war on his home town of Haddonfield. There we finally meet teen dream Laurie Strode, a spunky babysitter with a gaggle of gal pals who are perfect grist for the slasher mill. In the final leg of the film, Myers carves his way through Laurie’s social circle, in an apparent attempt to reunite with his sister: Laurie herself. Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) reveals that when Michael’s despairing mother committed suicide years ago, he took her infant daughter and had her adopted out anonymously to insulate her from her family’s tragic history. Laurie, for her part, is unaware of anything other than her need to survive, which she only barely accomplishes.

Naturally, Laurie’s story is the weakest part of a movie that is otherwise so focused on male experience. That is, the experience of needing a father, the ambivalent and ambiguous craving for maternal intimacy, the trauma of having your masculinity impugned by your (fag-obsessed) peers, and perhaps even the undermining influence of academia and capitalism on a man’s natural-born strength and worth. When the newly-freed Michael Myers storms through a truck stop to begin his pilgrimage to Haddonfield, and Rob Zombie chooses to accompany this scene with Rush’s regal outlaw anthem “Tom Sawyer”, it tells you everything you need to know about this take on HALLOWEEN. Like the rampaging Firefly family in DEVIL’S REJECTS, Michael is certainly evil, but he also represents something essential about the formation of and reinforcement of one’s individuality in the face of castrating societal norms--something the carnies among whom Rob Zombie grew up would have found very relatable.

It’s worth noting here that, while the sexuality of the women in Michael’s life plays a role in his distorted development, he is not reacting to their sexuality in and of itself. Michael Myers is not driven by the kind of covetousness that we associate with the archetypal slasher, who gives sexually frustrated male viewers a vicarious thrill by punishing sluts and teases. Michael’s problem is that his mother and sister’s sexuality contributes to his isolation. His classmates use his mother’s profession against him, and that profession keeps her from being able to tuck him in at night. Similarly, Michael doesn’t get to enjoy Halloween with his family and the other neighborhood kids, because his sister is too busy getting laid. Michael is abandoned, even while he still has a home to return to, an outsider even in his own house. 

This leads me to an important point about why the portion of the movie that is devoted to Laurie's struggle is so ineffective. It is a flaw in the film, but a virtue of the director: Normal, attractive teenagers are not Rob Zombie’s people. He doesn’t even participate in traditional slasher movie misogyny, he’s so far away from thinking about them. His movies are full of badass women who are fully possessed of their sexuality, and who wield it like a weapon against hypocrites and assholes, and this is always shone in a heroic light. Moreover, he delights in casting women of all shapes and ages, often assigning them immense personal power, as in LORDS OF SALEM, an enormously satisfying movie about society’s original persecuted outcasts: witches. Rob Zombie is deeply committed to outsiders, and his definition of them isn’t limited to banal lawbreaking--he also rejects conventional beauty and our cultural obsession with youth. His films are populated by all manner of human beings, and the farther away they are from looking like model material, the more likely it is that they’re meant to be the heroes. On that note, whatever you think of his movies, you have to acknowledge that they are almost never dehumanizing. Zombie is an accomplished actor’s director who gets a full spectrum of emotion out of his performers, and who excels at creating a feeling of camaraderie within his ensemble casts. It is this surprising sweetness, and compassion even for the victims of the villains he lionizes, that makes HALLOWEEN II so peculiarly effective.

If 2007′s HALLOWEEN was a remake on which Rob Zombie couldn’t resist draping some of his personal hangups, HALLOWEEN II is almost a completely original and separate entity from what one thinks of as the franchise started by John Carpenter. In it, Michael Myers is presumed dead but his body is missing--and indeed, his character is missing for much of the movie. We find a disturbed, scarred-up Laurie Strode living with her surviving friend Annie, and Annie’s father, Sheriff Bracket. Laurie is dealing, poorly, with a heavy dose of PTSD. Along with nightmares and flashbacks, she also has trouble just being nice to people, or accepting affection. Annie and her father’s attempts to be charitable with their adoptive family member are no match for Laurie’s increasing surliness and mistrust of the world. Once a good-natured and optimistic young woman, her appearance becomes vagrant-like (curiously similar to Rob Zombie’s own casual look), her attitude is more and more nihilistic, and she develops a drinking problem. I’ve always wanted to see a movie with a slasher-like narrative foundation, but that focuses on aftermath and recovery, and recent gimmicky efforts like FINAL GIRL and LAST GIRL STANDING did absolutely nothing for me. HALLOWEEN II--at least, the superbly-acted Strode part of it--is the movie I’ve been asking for.

The other part of the movie is also interesting--or more specifically, it’s as ballsy as it is flawed. The movie gets off on kind of a bad foot when a title card quotes an obscure psychology text book called The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams: 

WHITE HORSE - instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction.

This is the excuse we have for the fact that the ghost of Deborah Myers arrives with a white horse to compel her son to find his sister Laurie Strode, aka Angel Myers, to reunite their family, presumably in the afterlife. Deborah Myers is kind of a spectral cross between Glenda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, at once welcoming and sinister, drifting in and out of Michael’s consciousness in the company of a sort of ghost of his childhood (Chase White Vaneck, who is no Daeg Faerch honestly). It might be easy to dismiss this anomaly as an expression of Michael’s mental illness, and his desire to experience an idealized version of his youth in which his mother still looks after him--except that later in the movie, during the final standoff, Laurie is shown to be physically affected by these spirits. Maybe the implication is that she and Michael suffer the same psychological ailments, but for them to share such specific hallucinations without speaking is borderline supernatural in and of itself. So, while Sheri Moon Zombie does her best with her impressive force of personality and compelling physical presence, it’s hard to say what this part of the movie serves. When I first saw the film, I was completely outraged by this, not only because it made no sense to me, but because it felt like a cheap ripoff of Sarah Palmer’s similar prophetic visions of a white horse in Twin Peaks. That was all I managed to make of it. 

Today, I still don’t love it, but I have more trouble faulting Rob Zombie for trying to make HALLOWEEN his own, something more than a remake. He also does this by truly letting go of the Shape. The famous William Shatner mask was blown in half by Laurie at the end of the 2007 HALLOWEEN, and scarcely makes much of an appearance in this movie. Michael Myers is a disheveled drifter, literally haunted by his past, whose only real aim is to find a place to belong. It’s sort of funny, in retrospect: When John Carpenter made the first HALLOWEEN, he-by-way-of-Dr. Loomis declared Michael an empty shell of a person, someone who was simply born evil, as reflected by the empty-eyed mask he wears. For some reason, though, a whole legacy of directors just couldn’t resist trying to explain Myers away. The original HALLOWEEN II then says, “Well...what if Michael Myers is on a rampage because LAURIE STRODE IS HIS SISTER? What’s that you say? Why is that a reason to rampage? Ummmm...” And then HALLOWEEN 4 sees him pursuing other young female relations of his, and then in subsequent movies there’s an accursed rune, and druids, and immortality rites, and by the time you get to HALLOWEEN 6 you have this absurd stone soup of bad ideas. It’s a miracle that this franchise became such a thing. Rob Zombie makes the same fundamental mistake, but at least he tries it in the simplest possible way, asserting plainly that Nurture, not Nature, made Michael into a killer. Now, terminally lonely, he’s like a clown waking up in his trailer to find that the carnival left without him. Exiled from mainstream society, he seeks out what remains of his family, who, due to his own violent actions, has grown up more like him than he may have imagined.

I’m not saying I think this was the best thing to do with HALLOWEEN 2. Personally, what I crave in horror movies is something that is farther beyond explanation than this--something that gesturally resembles my life experience, but that plunges past the veil of mundanity into a deeper, darker world of primordial fears and urges, addressing things that unsettle me because I cannot rationalize them. For me, horror is definitionally incomprehensible, and Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN diptych is fundamentally sane. But, I think what I’ve discovered is that these movies are not proper horror movies, in spite of their relentless sadistic violence. They are outlaw fables, with more DNA in common with something like EASY RIDER, than with FRIDAY THE 13TH. It’s funny to watch myself coming to a compassionate understanding of these movies that are themselves about outsiders and rejects who are specifically deprived of understanding. My goal in all this was not so much to convince people of the value of these movies, which one might reject on any number of reasonable counts, but to explain to myself why I keep coming back to them. It isn’t to condescendingly heckle them, and it isn’t just because they’re often handsome-looking, or because they’re so emotionally authentic even when the narrative is less than compelling. It must be because, even when I’ve found him challenging, I can’t help seeing Rob Zombie as a person with vision, someone who heroically eschews common consensus on taste and sense-making--the consensus even among horror fans and his own cinematic heroes--in order to say what makes sense to him personally. Finally, he has begun to make sense to me, too.

[pyreo]

Fixing Incredibles 2: stuff I would do

Hey wanna hear some thoughts on what I’d do to tune up a movie I found slightly disappointing? There’s three main aspects I want to deal with which are

1. badly utilised new supers 2. iffy villain motivation 3. third act was a mess

So here’s a few things I’d wanna do to rework some of that

So first off, that’s a lie, there’s really 5 things that bothered me. this should not have been an immediate sequel where no time had passed. they actually had to backtrack on the character development from the first movie to have them do the same character arcs again. Helen’s back on wanting her kids to stay away from dangerous heroics. Violet’s reward for learning to assert herself, a date with Tony, is erased and she has to win him all over again. Bob, in a weird 180 from his first portrayal where he adored spending time with Violet and Dash during his training montage... suddenly struggles with caring for them, though that’s mostly the fault of Jack-Jack’s powers manifesting. 

So firstly, I’d do what I always imagined the sequel would be and push it a few years forward. Allow it room to change. Have Violet be a college student with Tony as her longterm boyfriend. Have Dash be a teen who’s still eager to save the world, but needing to learn that no danger is better than stopping danger. And make Jack-Jack a child, still in need of supervision but not a total cartoonish liability who necessitates long sequences of adjustment to discovering his powers, again, a retread we already saw last time. Every character arc was a re-do and the constant burden of dealing with Jack-Jack really slowed stuff down. (this was my 5th thing) Fix this by skipping forward. (Also, Violet’s hero moment being... learning that she has to set personal glory aside and babysit Jack-Jack while everyone else does stuff? Are you kidding me?)

We now have a different angle on Helen’s worries - she’s not just concerned about putting her kids in danger. She acts like it, she tells them not to start jumping at the chance to get into heroism. She tells them to apply themselves in school and get normal lives too, in case it doesn’t pan out. But this feels familiar, because it’s what she said in the first movie, and it’s a front. She’s worried about her kids growing up, becoming adults - Violet basically is one - and how she can’t protect them if they move out. She pretends it’s about their powers to cover this. This also refocuses the movie’s main character arc onto Helen like it’s... supposed to be, instead of putting it on Bob’s learning to parent and accept his wife’s super- importance, because despite being framed as Elastigirl’s time to shine, it’s not her story when she doesn’t embody a change of character. It’s still Bob. 

So, those things established:

1. Better villain ideology

Revenge because supers failed to save your parents? Basic. Also not that believable, because the reason the heroes failed to answer Daddy Business’s call is that they’d been outlawed and given new lives as normal people. They could not have come to the rescue; it was illegal. And a superhero enthusiast would have known that. And, hey, ‘criminals shot our dad and then our mother died afterwards of a broken heart��? Are you kidding me? Just have them both get shot, fuck it. Stop this ‘women dying because their man tragically died’ shit. It’s getting melodramatic at that point. 

No criminals, no revenge stuff. Have the Deavor’s parents die when they were in early teens. The brother and sister had to support each other as they started to navigate adulthood. This instilled in them the philosophy that’s common to the type of silicon valley startup wizards they parody - that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be hugely successful if they try hard, having come from orphans near poverty to multimillionaires. 

I want both of them, brother and sister, to be the villains together. You don’t really need to twist that. They both come off as helpful fans who want to put their money to use helping supers get back in the game. After all the biggest complaint keeping supers illegal is the property damage and lawsuits, and what fixes that? Money. They also both believe, as is Evelyn’s motivation for real, that superheroes are actually causing the public to develop dependency on them. 

I would set up the siblings as advocates of Randian objectivism in how they work. They think everyone can go from nothing to having everything. They think it’s a personal imperitive to be hard working, to contribute and make yourself a success, without relying on others. They think needing a safety net - superheroes, as a metaphor for social facilities - is a weakness that stops people from taking responsibility for themselves. I want to downplay the ‘tech company who makes tiny cameras’ thing, because that was far too modern day to fit in the 60s, and make it more about sheer money generation and the ability for the siblings to pay off debts and influence public opinion; essentially, that money can get you anything, glossing over the corrupt nature of that by claiming it’s doing the right thing to help the heroes. 

Winston still had a childlike adoration for supers as a kid, but it was killed when he grew up without parents who couldn’t BE saved, followed by extremely hard work in the financial sector, dealing with stress, and realising that he worked just as hard, but got no media acclaim, as people who just happen to have been born with powers. Both siblings invest in personal security solutions, aiming to eventually reveal a plan to put superheroes out of business by outpacing them with technology. To use the free market to provide ways that normal people can protect themselves, without becoming complacent, relying on dubious, flawed heroes, without becoming blind to danger because they expect to be saved. Their evil motto is basically ‘don’t expect anyone to save you’, putting the burden of responsibility on the individual to take care of themselves and be solely in charge of their success or failure. 

The superheroes, of course, represent altruism, saving people just because they can, just because they were given an ability and can use it to help anyone and anyone they wish. Making no judgements between rich or poor, personal backgrounds, social class... everyone can be saved just the same. 

The villains intend to gain the trust of the three main heroes - Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone - and push them into good public opinion by funding everything they do or break. Destruction is paid for, claims are settled. Heroes shouldn’t have to worry about it, they say. What they actually intend is for the heroes to become dependent on their company for money, just as they see the public growing dependent on supers instead of taking steps to protect themselves. They will set up a huge, climactic battle in the most expensive part of the city, after the heroes have been encouraged to ignore the financial cost to their feats. Then they’ll withdraw support, burying the trio in horrific debt to a level they cannot recover from, while also pushing a new line of tech solutions to make money off people’s protection. Technically, they want to help people, but they need to make sure the legal battle for supers will finally crush them out of work so they can get the maximum profit from their products. 

2. More cohesive new super team

It’s not that they were bad, I just felt it was jarring after the profiles Syndrome kept on his targets - all supers were completely normal people who happened to have abilities. The new guys were okay, but felt like oddball ideas and out-of-place mutants (the whole point is that supers are being pushed into normal lives and hiding their innate abilities. I dunno how you do that as an owl-man). I would make all the new guys young adults and teenagers. 

One, to point out the reality of the situation with supers. The new blood is going to be young. After what Syndrome did, nearly all adult heroes have been killed. I want to point out that, in order to bring back the idea of superheroism, we have to acknowledge that the ones who are going to do that are a generation down. Elastigirl meets them (we’re keeping Voyd obviously, but they’re all nervous youngsters like her, 15-22 ish). Elastigirl get confronted by her protective instinct - legalising supers means all of these kids going into danger. But, through talking with them, she realises how much it means to them, not having to hide who they are. They’re all like Voyd is. They were all shunned, pushed away, and ultimately hid their powers while feeling like absolute shit for being abnormal. There is a very clear real life allegory here. Helen realises that legalising supers isn’t just about throwing yourself into danger. It’s about allowing people to be who they are, and not shame them for something out of their control. They’re unpractised, they’re ashamed of showing their powers to her, and Helen mentally adopts every single one of them instantly. 

Helen gets a montage of training her super team to understand their powers better. She sees them become more at home with themselves after an early life full of restriction and even self-hatred. It’s not just about being cool, it’s about your identity, and Helen gets that and stops having reservations about legalising supers again. It’s bigger than her family. And the Deavors arrange and fund this, because they want as many heroes implicated as possible, they want both generations of supers wiped out and to never be able to return. Dependency is a crutch they would say, and humanity needs to learn to survive without it. We can keep Screenslaver as the fake villain setting up the big final battle, and we can keep his monologue about dependency on screens as a metaphor, but devolving into a diatribe against the nature of neglecting your personal success by vicariously watching someone else’s. 

3. The third act didn’t fit 

We already don’t have the dead weight of baby JJ crashing the pace of the story. He’s a young child, and we’re going to have Edna watch him (she can love it like she does in the movie, Jack-Jack can find her research enriching too). This time it’s Frozone, Elastigirl and Mr Incredible who get taken by mind control. The siblings are going to stage a fight between all three, pretending that superheroes are unstable, liable to turn on each other at the cost of civilian lives. That should turn the public against them for good, while causing massive amounts of damage. They use the Screenslaver persona to set up a showdown in the city, only to capture the three supers and turn them on each other. 

Not mind controlled? Elastigirl’s recruits. They just barely manage to escape it. They go to get help from their mentor, only to find the supers gone, and Violet and Dash seeing the carnage on TV and getting suited up to find out what’s going on. The kids get an introduction and team up together, heading off to stop their teacher and parents, new blood vs old guard. 

That results in six or seven barely trained supers going up against three extremely experienced ones, while they also have to try to minimise loss of life and property damage. While dealing with the trauma, for Violet and Dash, of being attacked by their own parents and not knowing why. Also, they get backup from Honey. Frozone’s wife. SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THIS MOVIE. She was designed and then cut and that’s a TRAVESTY. She’s already popular, she was a breakout hit, let her be in this. She steps forward, no powers, regular civilian clothes, and helps the kids out with advice from the ground, picking them up when they fall, and huge vocal encouragement. She kicks ass because that’s what she fucking does. She helps direct the crowds to safety, she tells these kids to look at their super suits and believe in what they’re capable of. And it’s her who snags Frozone after his powers get strategically rebuffed, she grabs him and grabs his goggles off and fixes it herself. 

With another adult on their side and better confidence the new supers manage to pull Elastigirl and Mr Incredible back to reality too, which concludes Helen’s anxiety about their capability and the passing of the torch. They did it, they were responsible - there’s no casualties and with all their powers combined, they managed to avert damage better than Helen and Bob ever did. The adults realise that the kids can be trusted to handle heroism and Helen is super proud of her trainees-slash-children. 

That leaves the actual capture of the villains, which comes down to running from the combined might of all the supers who gradually cut down their ability to escape, culminating in Winston stopping Evelyn from getting away, and having a personal realisation. A resurgence of the boyish glee he once had for heroes stopping the villains. He foils his sister and turns both of them in, willingly, in a weird way fulfilling his dream of saving the day like his idols did. 

To round off, thanks to the rehabilitated (and not sabotaged) hero image, and the display of capability the young supers put on, supers are legalised again. Helen and Bob now work as teachers to the kids as part of a new government program to make sure kids with powers learn how to responsibly control them, Helen of course continuing her role as mentor to her massive new family, and Bob finally able to work without restraining himself. The government agrees that encouraging kids to train properly and learn how to avoid risk and costly situations is worth endorsing. Dash befriends some of the other teens in the supergroup and has friends he can push his abilities with, without it being unfair. 

Finally, it’s time for Violet to move out, because things must move on. Helen, Bob and Frozone (who gets an updated suit because come on) are accepting that they’ll eventually they’ll have to let others take their place. Violet’s going to move in with Tony and get a normal job, because she still yearns for a normal lifestyle underneath it all, but she won’t be far away and can always answer the call to join the family in the field. They all bid her farewell (”Finally maybe I can get some peace without Dash bursting into my room-” “I can run to your apartment in one minute 28 seconds, I checked!!”) but Helen isn’t worried any more, because she has renewed faith in how well her children have grown up and is accepting they don’t need has as much any more. And besides, she has tons more children who need her too and it’s up to her to help them find their true potential. 

Thanks for reading this way too long exercise in figuring out what I wanted from the sequel to one of my favourite films in the world... the original Incredibles was centred around heroes also just being human, who make mistakes and have to grow up and change, and the villain’s fanboy mentality was the antithesis to that. I would’ve wanted a sequel that understood the message of its predecessor in that people have to develop and grow, one aspect of which is letting go, but what we actually got seemed too static and unwilling to move away from what we had already resolved in the first one.

[saigeboredeaux-blog]

long post warning !!

hello !! i think i might swap naeva in for somebody else just b/c i’m having trouble getting inside naeva’s head, probably b/c she tries to be rly responsible n like...............i am not responsible. i am nowhere near the realm of responsible. my idea of a good time is trash-diving with possums and running from cops. she drinks tea daily and naps like twice a day. i love her a lot but go crazy aaa go stupid, y’know

so i have a few options if anybody would like to ?? help me figure it out and/or if i should stick it out w/ naeva n become a functioning adult like she tries to be

here r my other three babies i’m considering (TW: mentions of addiction, violence implications, car accident implications.)

saige - liana liberato fc - i created her in 2013 as a drunk pixie and that is. essentially her personality. sort of an optimist ? just very friendly n happy vibes n very much a party gal, if anything she’s sort of an idealist ? puts others before herself, very bubbly, very reckless, she’s got a problem w/ addictive substances in. a few forms. rich but her parents like...are on the verge of disowning her b/c she tarnishes their reputation far too much. takes up as many hobbies as possible b/c she hates being bored. the worse of a person u are the most likely she is 2 be attracted 2 u and that’s like. essentially law. chaotic good, i’d say, she’s v well-meaning but is also a lil ignorant in terms of like...she’s very rich. she’s very irresponsible with her money. i dont think she knows how to do taxes or where her money goes. donates massively 2 charity tho. her mom’s a fashion designer n they dont rly talk much but her mom does send her like. things b4 they go public and saige 100% always gives the items away just 2 fuck w/ her mom lmao. both passive and active like she’s very energetic n while she doesn’t rly take anybody’s bullshit she’s more likely to just laugh it off than retort back unless she’s like super hurt n then i black out and her emotions take over n i wake up and she’s gone thru like fifty paragraphs of angst. shes the love of my life. 

annabel - emma mackey/medalion rahimi fc - her original fc is maddie hasson but like ... emma mackey fits her better but also ... i’ve never used medalion and i’m p gay for her so ... - anyways. goes by anna pretty exclusively n will possibly threaten u with actual physical violence if u call her anything else (this does not stop people). ex-ballerina whomstve got into a particularly bad accident n now cannot dance anymore! she has a limp and uses a cane more often than not even when the pain isn’t as bad that day. it also doubles as a weapon if need be (some mf kaz brekker vibes). soft punk but like Secretly Soft. her mom left when she was a kid so she’s always been bitter abt it which ofc led to years of cynicism. she’s v close 2 her dad tho. she can come off as mean but it’s mostly an accident she’s rly honest and also a bit of an insensitive asshole? she’s a writer of both fiction n lyrics b/c that is what she’s happiest doing. a Scammer from an early age lmao. pretended 2 b a girl scout when she was like 12. faked being a psychic the entirety of high school. probably is writing a series abt the shit tht happens in lockwood w/ changed names bc fuck. shit’s juicy. but i may also run into the same problem w/ anna that im in w/ naeva rn so sidofg

maribel - ella purnell fc - an absolute. sweetheart. comes from an air force family so her household has always been rly strict. has always felt rly out of place (middle kid syndrome prolly) and she’s like. very bad at a lot of things. like just absolutely garbage. has two siblings n theyre both real talented but maribel’s very much Not. or like, in anything practical at least. is always getting fired from her jobs like...she goes thru jobs so often...bc she’s so bad at them...she’s so clumsy, too. socially awkward. like she’s so awkward, she’s only rly ever had one friend n they went missing so she’s very bad w/ social interactions. she actually...is rly good at hacking? and forging shit? b/c she wanted to impress the popular kids in her boarding school so they’d like her but they just used her. she makes fake IDs. used to be rly on that nancy drew shit b/c her school was in nevada n like .. aliens, bro. and just general like...being nosy when she shouldn’t be. stopped being on that nancy drew shit after getting caught trying to break into area 51 and disappointing her parents even further. rambles and overtalks a lot. wanted do do smth science-y b/c shes actually rly good n smart at biology n chemistry but her parents were like ew no n she’s doing journalism instead so she complied b/c she doesnt have a backbone. turns into a much more outgoing person when she drinks but she also doesnt drink tht often. prolly used to be a stoner tho.

and then i’m bringing in aleta for hendrix and she’s essentially one of cinderella’s evil step sisters. so i m not sure if i should bring in anna bc they’ve got p similar personalities or being hardheaded n spiteful even if some of their defining experiences make them two completely different people ijsdkfglh. i’m also planning on bringing in cain at some point in the future still !! i just think that the block in my head will be removed if i deal with naeva first.

absolutely am not dropping amos as he is my lifeline. his chaotic energy is what fuels me. if he goes i would probably cease to exist. i may go on a semi-hiatus for this week just so i can sort out what i’m doing with naeva but amos will be pretty solid just b/c he’s always verging on nonsensical.

tl;dr - help me pick a new character b/c my brain doesn’t work very well !

[12-3amproductions]

Sudden Death Syndrome (SADS)

Sudden Death Syndrome is an umbrella term used for the many different causes of cardiac arrest in young people. Usually, they are caused by abnormal heart rhythms called arrhythmias. The most common life-threatening arrhythmia is ventricular fibrillation, disorganized firing of impulses from the ventricles (the heart’s lower chambers). In today’s article, we will be discussing a similar case that happened in Singapore, as well as a story regarding this.

Case description:  Elise Fitzpatrick, 24, was found dead in September last year (2016), with the dental nurse student perfectly healthy before her unexpected death.

Her family has now spoken out about the struggle to come to terms with Elise's death, remembering her as a "kind and caring" young woman who "lived her 24 years to the full".

Mum Kirsty told The Sun Online: "There was nothing physically wrong at all with her, she was perfectly healthy.

"She did the normal things a 24-year-old did."

Mum Kirsty said she usually heard from Elise the morning after her daughter had gone out, but on the morning of September 3 last year, quickly realised something was wrong.

She said: "She always texted me in the morning to let me know she was OK.”

"I hadn't heard from her by 10am, which was fine, but I texted her through the day and still didn't hear back."

The worried mum raced to Elise's groundfloor flat, with dad Sean quickly realising something "wasn't right."

Kirsty said: "I jumped in the window and we found her on the sofa. She had just gone to sleep and didn't wake up."

Paramedics and police arrived at the flat soon after but it took weeks for the family to be told what had caused their daughter's death - "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome".

But Kirsty said: "To me, that's still not a reason, is it.”

"You have someone fit, healthy and living their life to the maximum and then for some reason, that's it.

"It still to me doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

Since Elise's death, Kirsty herself has been diagnosed with Brugada Syndrome, which sees an increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

While doctors are still looking into whether Elise had a link to the syndrome, Kirsty said the other family members including younger siblings, Macie, 11, Tilly, 8, Isla, 5, and Connor, 17, will be tested.

She said it was not clear what caused her daughter's death, saying: "There was nothing physically wrong with her heart. It just stopped.

"Now, it's like a ticking time bomb for our family.

"I just want as many people as possible to be aware of this - people are aware of cot death but we just don't know enough about this.

"It's a silent killer."

The family, of Rayne, Essex, is now working to raise money for Cardiac Risk in the Young charity, taking part in a bridge walk next month to keep their daughter's memory alive.

Admins: Rest in peace Elise. Life is short so do cherish what is around us before it is long gone....

Case description: A total of 235 cases of sudden unexpected death syndrome (SUDS) among apparently healthy male Thai migrant workers in Singapore were reported between 1982 and 1990. Most of the deaths occurred during sleep and 13% were not sleep-related.

The median age at the time of death was 33 years and the median interval between arrival and death was 8 months. These deaths occurred singly and sporadically throughout the year. Post-mortem examination revealed few abnormal findings except for hemorrhagic congestion or oedema of the lungs. There were moderate to severe intra-alveolar haemorrhages with some evidence of myocarditis or pneumonitis.

Preliminary findings of serial sections of the hearts indicate evidence of anomalies in the cardiac conduction system. Epidemiological investigations showed that a family history of similar deaths and serological evidence of current or recent infection with Pseudomonas Pseudomallei were significantly associated with SUDS. Extensive biochemical and toxicological investigations were inconclusive. There was no evidence of chronic deficiency in thiamine or potassium among the healthy Thai workers living and working in the same conditions as the cases, and no significant abnormalities were detected on electrocardiographic examination. As these migrant workers experienced various psychosocial problems which could stem from maladjustment to an urban environment, separation from the family, burden of debts and long hours of work, stress could be a precipitating factor for SUDS.

Which really means that they don’t know what is going on. However the Thais have a theory which will be explain in this story.

Site supervisor, male, 52

I’ve been working with Thai construction workers for some time and I’m friendly with some of them. There’s a story that’s going around about one Thersak which terrifies them. Thersak apparently woke up just before daybreak to the feeling of soft feminine hands all over his body. He became excited and stretched out his arms to embrace his “lover”. It was still dark and though none of his fellow workers sleeping nearby had woken up, they could hear loud grunts and groans. They thought he was merely dreaming. A few hours later, however, he lay dead.

This is one of many horror stories spreading like wildfire among Thai workers. In 1990, many Thai workers in Singapore died in their sleep from no obvious illness. Terrified of the phenomenon, the Thais have taken to uttering a silent prayer before going to bed. They claim that more than five thousand young Thai men have died since 1993 and there’s no way of knowing who will be next.

Various theories to explain the deaths have been put forward: the use of PVC pipes for cooking glutinous rice(a Thai staple), genetic factors,stress from work, unsanitary living conditions, an over starchy diet, vitamin B deficiency, even a tropical soil disease. But the most popular reason offered is “ghosts”. My friends are convinced a female ghost is stalking virile Thai men.

Thai folklore tells of a sex-starved ghost which is said to seduce males and sap them of their energy. That would explain why there’s no sign of disease or foul play, why they die only when asleep. Most Thais here come from northeastern Thailand where the ghost is said to originate from - the Khorat Plateau region with its blood-red soil.

One workers claims he managed to fight off the ghost. Pretending to be asleep one night, he saw a misty shape with a beautiful woman’s face forming above him. When it floated downwards almost touching his body, he yelled. The spirit vanished.

It is stories like this that caused widespread panic in the community. In May, there was a report that up to seventy percent of Thai workers threatened to leave. They said a monk from Bangkok had to be sent down to hand out amulets and pray for their lives. Some of them, however, have turned to witchcraft to protect themselves. You can find phallic charms made of wood, painted bright red, hanging in their doorways and some Thai men even sleep in women’s nightgowns and stockings, and paint their fingernails in bold colours to mislead the ghost into thinking that they are women.

That is the end of the personal story. We will be posting our conclusion here and before we do that, we would like to mention that SADS does not happen only among Thai workers. It does happen among other regions as well. Can this happen again? Definitely. It might not be to a mass number. It can even happen in individuals and even some of us! Reason being, people do pass out and die for no apparent reasons, and with medical reports that do not state any forms of abnormalities. We believe that a supernatural cause could happen in a form of black magic. Dirt or soil are widely used by witches or in any magic spells either to bless or harm people. Whatever insider stories the Thai workers have, we suspect that it is an art of evil from the story of ‘Blood-red Soil’. It could be during the time when there were about to travel to Singapore and needed to do a blood test beforehand. Blood collected then was probably not properly disposed and were used for black magic purposes, causing the supernatural phenomenon. It is also possible that the medical research was not advanced during that point of time and doctors couldn’t rule out any possible health issues.

Couldn’t it be coincidence that it happened to the Thais only? Despite having other foreigners from different countries staying together as well? One thing for sure, death is definitely inevitable.

Thank you for all the support! We hope you enjoy the case and we wish you all the best ahead. Till the next time, goodbye!

[bookishbloggerreviews]

Obsidio and the Illuminae Series --An Honest Review

[Warning: I give an honest review that focuses not only on plot but on writing and character as well. As this is an opinion, you can take it as as seriously as you want, but understand that my goal is to review, not shame or praise the author.]

Finally, the conclusion to a stunning and (in my opinion it seriously needs one) award worthy series. Before I get into my review I want to thank the authors for providing this enchanting, one of a kind series as it certainly was worth the read and easily became a top favorite in my science fiction collection. I hope that they produce more content and I’m excited to see more from them in the future. Now onto the review. 

As anyone who has read my reviews before know, I start reading books with a general expectation that the book will be 5/10. If the book is better or worse than expected, the score adjusts from there, but I guess this rating system is rather pointless when the book is a 10/10, or a 5/5 stars. 

The ending of a series, I find, is such a difficult one for authors. Many of my favorite, and many popular series have endings that fans simply aren’t happy about and didn’t conclude “successfully” (I’m using this in the terms of a poorly thought out, or poorly planned ending), or were emotionally rewarding. (Ex: The Maze Runner, Divergent, Michael Vey, The Reign of Shadows, etc.) So when I say that this book has one of the most satisfying, well-ended, and peaceful, eased into endings that I’ve read, that should be one of the highest compliments the ending to a series can get. 

As we already know, Kaufman and Kristoff can write well, produce excellent, relate-able characters, and make the story work together flawlessly, but once again, in Obsidio, they prove just how excellent books should be. So having covered the basics, lets get into the spoilers, shall we? 

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

From this point on, everything I mention or include will probably have some spoilers laced through it. So if you have not read the previous two books, or have not read this one and are continuing to read this, just know that you’re ruining the ending for yourself. 

Starting off I’d like to take a moment to address the AI, which is probably the most complex AI I’ve ever seen pulled off in a book, and even worthy to be compared to one of my all-time favorite characters from the Alien series, David. 

Aidan is a true chaotic neutral in all of his loving glory, and we’ve seen that in the previous books but now we get to see what should be an almost characterless-character develop into a chaotic good. And not only is the character development well-paced, well-written, entertaining and charming, but it truly is development. Often times I see many writers claim their characters have changed or developed from the course of actions that have taken place in a series, when, in the end, they remain the same stubbornly attached or unchanged person that they were in the beginning. (Ex: Bella Swan.) It’s essentially the same principle of a character walking into a fire and coming out of it unscathed. But the authors have truly delivered this time. 

With each book, Aidan gets “smaller”, as he refers to himself. In the beginning of the series he establishes himself somewhat as a god over his crew and considers it mercy when he attempts to kill them as peacefully as he can. However, as time passes and Aidan gets “smaller”, he changes from a very-god-like character to a very human and very mortal character, and seems to gain human emotion while he is at it until at the very end, Aidan literally sacrifices himself to keep Kady safe. 

To have an AI become so human that it prizes the life of one human above all the others on a ship of many thousand is such a remarkable character ark that I am thrilled that I have gotten to be apart of it. But oh, the goodness and excellence of this book does not stop there. 

Moving onto Kady we have yet another well-developed character ark and in many times of the book, we see Aidan described Kady as a ghost of the girl he once knew her as, or looking like she could literally just disappear. Which is, once again, astounding, to take a character that we would often define as hard-headed rebel-leader into such a small and quiet, obedient presence, that I just want to stamp an award on it. As I often find myself saying, characters don’t necessarily have to get better to have good character development. In fact, a neutrally or lawfully good character who turns to the dark to achieve their goals is far more interesting than an already chaotically good character becoming more chaotically good. 

Now I wish I could say the same about Nick, Ezra, and Hannah, but in truth, their characters were more minor characters in the book so we didn’t see very much character development other than what we have already seen in previous books. 

However, we were introduced to more side characters that also displayed excellent character development. Oshiro, Asha, and Ben, all followed the exact same patterns that I refer to. Oshiro from Lawful neutral to neutral good, Asha from Chaotic good to chaotic neutral, and Ben from Lawful good to chaotic evil. Once again, music to my character-loving ears and even worthy of Zuko level of good. 

(May the king of character development forever reign.)

Moving on from character development to plot and writing style, everyone knows how incredibly done the writing style is so I guess plot will be the main focus here but the ability to take something so abstract and make it seem so real is another thing this series has up its sleeves. This series shows that a thousand and one things can go wrong with your plans. This series shows that sometimes you can’t just make it on what you have and sometimes you have to make sacrifices you’re not prepared to make. This series shows that even the most ordinary humans can play big parts into the plot. But most importantly, it shows that you don’t need magical dragons flying out every other chapter (Ex: Gilded) to make a book interesting. In fact, the human interaction and how they deal with stress and organize things is part of what makes this book so enjoyable because it is so realistic. 

This book isn’t about a bunch of teenagers getting together at the last moment, disobeying orders to save a country. This book has support systems, rebellions, mutiny, organization, planning, and thorough detail. There are just as many adult characters in this book as there are teenagers, and they’re doing just as much to impact the series although they may be side characters. 

And finally, moving onto romance... the romance in this series was not the highlight and I would not suggest this series or this book to someone if they expect romance. This book does not excel in romance and it’s not it’s theme either. And while I believe that the romance made about as much difference to the plot as it not-existing in the first place, it’s clear to show that this is first and foremost a science fiction series. 

In fact, I believe that if romance had been the focus of the series, the romance would have been between Kady and Aidan, instead of Kady and Ezra, as those two characters grow together and are far more compatible than Kady and Ezra ever were. And if you want romance out of it, I suggest re-reading it believing that Aidan and Kady are the main love interests because that’s the only way you’re going to get the fullest and most fulfilled senses of love and connection out of that series. 

But regardless, the book and the series overall was incredible. The book, a flawless 10/10, and the series, a solid 9/10. 

If you have any siblings or family members who want to read but are dulled by paragraphs and words, I would highly suggest this book to them as it is a series I believe anyone can get invested in. Once again, I cannot wait to see what more this duo have in store for the writing community and if they will pair up and produce again. It was more than worth the money (as this series does cost a bit extra to get) but you certainly won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. 

If you liked this review or this series, or care to agree or disagree, please leave it in the comments below. I am always happy for some book chatter on my blog and love to see fellow fans. Until the next review, your average bookish blogger out!

[angrykittybarbarian]

Egg Timers

So a while ago I wrote this one shot as a tribute to my friend’s grandfather who passed away suddenly last summer. The following story is inspired by one that has actually happened and when she told me this story of her grandparents I couldn’t help but think that my Ryder and Jaal would totally do such a thing. I hope you like it, I’m not really much of a writer.

*******************************************************************************************

It was a sunny and peaceful day on Harval. The red gas giant was looming over the sky and groups of mantas hovered across the horizon.

Two years have passed since Rachel Ryder, human Pathfinder, had defeated the Archon and effectively began the end of the kett as a meaningful force in the Heleus cluster. Normalcy began to descend over the troubled galaxy, a normalcy the Milky Way species desperately welcomed back and adult angara were absolutely unacustomed to. Even without an imminent threat most of them constantly walked around in battle armour, as if ready to strike down any possible attacker who might show themselves and Resistance patrols were still a very common sight too, although they mostly spent their time walking around and doing nothing.

Colonist settlements and angaran daara began to truly develope and grow. On Harval it meant that the hidden villages stepped into the light where they were formerly hidden by the planet's viscious jungle. And this developement contained a variety of new buildings. For the first time after centuries of chaos and disorganization the angara started to run their own buisnesses. Not the loose trading exchanges they did with eachother mostly to keep everyone alive and supplied, but actual economic structures in co-operation with Milky Way traders.

One of these buisnesses was a shop in Daar Pelaav that opened on this exact day. It wasn't really something special if it wasn't for the galactic scale war with the kett not too long ago. The shop sold mostly kitchen wares and cooking utensiles like plates, pots, pans, bowels and any tool necessary to keep the tummy happy, but also decorational items, simply made to look pretty on a window shelf.

Colourful shining balloons decorated the entrance. A big red sign read '10% opening discount on everything' and a human woman in a painfully yellow t-shirt distributed small packages of candy to any children entering the building with their parents.

Like other curious inhabitants, the Ryder siblings and their partners decided to take a look at the new shopping opportunity.

Rachel, Jaal, Jacob and Vetra came here per Vetra's request respectively. Originally it only involved her husband Jacob, but when Sahuna heared from Rachel, who was telling Jaal that her brother and his lover planned to pay a visit there, the older angaran woman insisted that her son and daughter bring her one of those flower forms she had seen on the extranet not a long time ago so she can bake her pies (or attempts of the same) in them, instead of the blunt round ones she happened to have around during her first try.

So here she stood, with her husband and a clear quest from her mother-in-law. Vetra wasn't so clear about her interest in the place however.

„So, why are we here again?“, Rachel asked, as the group walked in, deliberately ignoring the cringe worthy smile of the woman in the eye cancer provocating t-shirt.

„Vetra wanted to buy something.“, came Jacob's immediate and prompt response.

„Oh really, Captain Obvious? And I thought she wanted to sacrifice a fiend here.“, Rachel shot back, slightly too sharp. It earned her a low chuckle from Jaal and a nervous mandible twitch from Vetra.

„Well, it's because she didn't tell me either what exactly she wanted here, oh mighty queen of saracsm.“, Jacob answered dryly. Vetra beside him fidgeted with her talons restessly.

„I actually wanted it to be a surprise...“, she mumbled shyly. Jacob's face lost at least two shades of colour. Oh boy, not again...

„I found an earth recipe in the Nexus data banks and...“, Vetra explained.

„Vetra, please...“, Jacob attempted to talk the idea ou of her.

„...and I need a very large pot for it and we don't have one, so...“, the turian ended her explanation and glanced into the round.

Rachel had a wide grin on her face that reached from one ear to the other. Her twin brother had told her about the incident with the burnt steak.

„Ah, you wish to cook for him. To take care of someone's every need is a true testimony of love.“, Jaal commented.

Vetra's mandibles twitched again, this time with hope and a slight sparkle in her eyes.

„Yeah, well, she doesn't need to cook for me. There are othr ways, love.“, Jacob said hestitantly and turned to Vetra with his last sentence.

„You don't want me to cook, because of last time?“, she answered with audible dissapointment.

„What? No, no. I mean, I'm an adult-“, he stumbled over his own explanation.

„Or trying to be.“, Rachel threw in. Jacob sighed heavily almost bordering on a growl.

„Look, point is, the reason I'm with you is not because of you being some kind of subtitute mom for me. I'm with you because I enjoy your company, I enjoy you and because you show your love by being there when it counts. That's all I need.“, Jacob replied, his ckeeks won their colours back and turned into a glow of red now.

He looked at Vetra and took her hand in his, exhaling shakily. It was like he was confessing his love to her for the first time.

And here he was complaining about her and Jaal being sickeningly sweet together, Rachel thought, still grinning like an idiot.

She felt Jaal's hand wander up her back and finally resting on her shoulder. He drew her slightly closer and gave her a knowing smile. He thought the same.

„And this is why I love you.“, Vetra said softly.

„No pressuring expectations. But this is also why I want to do this. Not to conform to some ideal or duty. I just thought why not make something nice once in a while?“, she said with more confidence.

Jacob sighed defeatedly. „Alright, let's get in. But promise you'll let me help you with this.“

„Deal. Oh, and you two are officially invited to dinner now.“, Vetra gazed at Rachel and Jaal with her last sentence.

„A pleasure.“, Jaal replied happily and Rachel nodded in agreement.

The group finally entered the shop. A few signs hung from the ceiling, giving directions to the various sections.

„Okay, so cooking is to the right and baking to the left. Where do we go first?“, Rachel asked.

„How about we split up, quickly get what we need and meet up at the exit?“, Jacob suggested.

„Good plan, let's not waste more time in here than needed.“, Rachel agreed. She hated shops like this one, not because it wasn't fun shopping for dayly tools like pans and baking forms, but because she tended to get carried away by the offeres and as a result ended up leaving more money behind than necessary because that bowl was so beautiful and little else.

The group did as planned. As Vetra and Jacob walked straight for the cooking department Rachel and Jaal began looking for the requested silicone form between other baking utensiles. To their great dissapointment they didn't find the desired item anywhere.

„Maybe ask a clerk?“, Jaal suggested. As if on command an angara with a name badge reading his name pinned to his rofjin with the same sickening yellow as the woman's t-shirt from outside they walked by.

„Uh, excuse me?“, Rachel beckoned for him to stop.

„Yes, how can I help?“, he answered.

Rachel proceeded to explain what they were searching for. The angara replied that they had had only few exemplars to begin with which were taken already early on on that day.

„I'm sorry. Perhaps we'll have another load next week.“, he apologized.

„Thanks anyway.“, Rachel answerd and left the clerk to go on about the rest of his work.

„Kind of a pity but not so dramatic. We just come back next week.“, Jaal said. The words were on themselves nothing special but they way he said them made Rachel think for a moment. Like many other angara Jaal still wasn't used to having such certainty in his life. Not too long ago he couldn't even surely tell if he would live to see the next day. Rachel shook the thought away. The shop wasn't really the place to dwelve deeply into such gloomy thoughts.

„Back to our rendevouz point then.“, she prompted and the pair made their way back to the entrance which was also the exit. Rachel however was stopped in her tracks not two seconds later.

On a table she saw packages of egg timers arranged above one another in no particular order. Many of them were standing there unpacked. About twenty to thirty of them.

„Darling one?“, Jaal asked her in confusion as he was forced to stop suddenly as well. A diabolic idea came to her mind and once again a grin spread on her face. But this time it was an evil one.

„You see those things?“, she said and tilted her head to the egg timers. Jaal eyed the devices dubiously. „Yes. What are they?“, he asked. „Egg timers. You use them to see if your cooked egg is ready. They ring once the required time is up.“ Jaal opened his mouth slightly as if he wanted to say something but closed it again. His eyes wandered a bit around as he processed the information until it seemed to sink in as much as it could.

Rachel still grinned. „And...?“, Jaal questioned further as he saw the lasting smile.

„Okay listen, we turn on these unpacked ones, all with a one minute difference.“, Rachel answered. Jaal's face split into a wide smile as he slowly understood where this was going.

„And then we wait.“, he said.

„And then we get the hell out of here.“, Rachel corrected and they immediately proceeded to realize their genius plan. They worked as quickly as possible so they would have enough time to escape before the alarms would go off and returned the colouful devices to their places as accurately as possible so no one would notice that something was off. Once they were done they rushed away to the exit.

Jacob stood behind Vetra as she measured two pots that caught her interest the most against each other.

„Do you think this one's enough?“, Vetra asked and held up the slightly smaller one.

„Depends on how much you want to make.“, Jacob replied.

„Hm...“, Vetra made. She glanced at both pots in exchange before she decided to put the small one back.

„This one's only slightly more expensive. And it will not be too small if we decide to make a bit more.“, Vetra explained. She seemed to be content with her choice and that was for Jacob enough to go with it.

„Alright then, let's go pay and...“, Jacob stopped in midsentence as he turned towards the outskirts of the baking department only to discover Jaal and Rachel fumbling with the egg-timers.

„What's up, Jacob?“, Vetra now asked after his sudden silence. The turian lady followed her lover's gaze to its focus. They both observed the other pair for a few moments before Jaal and Rachel appearantly decided to jogg out of the shop, giggling maniacly and loud enough for Vetra and Jacob to hear.

„Did they seriously...?“, Vetra asked with an unbelieving surprise.

„These children.“, Jacob commented laughingly and shook his head slightly.

Only seconds afterwards the egg-timer began to go off. One loud deafening ringing after the other started to sound through the room in a seemingly unending harmony of panicking annoyance as confused clerks scuttled around the table attempting to turn the devices off.

Shopping for houshold utensiles turned out to be fun after all.