#so hard to frame some of these scenes tho so many people moving
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independent-fics · 4 months ago
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The Leverage OT3 in Every Episode
Leverage: 01x07 The Two-Horse Job
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brilliantfantasticgeronimo · 4 months ago
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thought to myself u know what. i havent watched falsettos enough. so here's a couple things i noticed in my latest impromptu rewatch (rewatch number 52th probably?? 67th?) + just some nice bits n parallel that are always Good (tm):
"he loves another" "i agree" with ("-man") going unsaid
the chess games following trina's song about stupid men and their little games
"that's the king. please protect him" That's marvin saying "please protect me. don't hurt me"
whizzer moves the pieces randomly in the revival but i like to imagine he's actually beating marvin at the game in the end... and the whole thing was him pretending to not know how to play, and that hurt marvin's ego more than anything
"now marvin, bend" as a sexy moment but later gets re-framed as a "unwillingness to change perspective" moment
"nothing is everything to me / except sex / and money" in that money whizzer is playing to marvin's insecurity that he's only sticking with marvin for his money- is so needlessly cruel (and thus such... delicious character writing lol)
"and he loves me so" that "so" at the end is sort of a "loves me so much" but also a dare. he loves me, so what can you even do about that?"
"ask me if i love him, it depends on the day"// "do i love him?… no"
"son with a brain, and nice bright mother" showing mendel is like marvin (+ many, many men) and wants a wife half just to do domestic labor for him (goes well with the "washing your laundry, washing your socks!" line)
"he loves his father" // "i love things i never had"
"im everything he wanted" here trina finally realizes how she was such a insecure woman for such a long time and why she could put up with so much / settle for so little ("love me for what i am, not what i try to be" etc)
i love that "what ive done to you is rotten" is the slap to trina, is not taking to jason about his sexuality, and is Also telling trina and jason he "never ever, wanted to love" them. triple treat of bad parenting lol (but our man gets there in the end #bless him)
"a man kid, you'll be kid, whatever your song" the kind of reversed coming out metaphor of it all. ugh. so good!! (also i always cry at this bit bc... i will never have this with my parents :) rip haha whoops)
"pretty boys are in demand" just a good line for the whole gay men dying everywhere + the 'dating frenzy' energy of the era
"im not a giant man" /"good" // "one day i hope to be / as mature as my son who is 12 and a half / and this tall… that's all i want to be, that's all"
"we'll spent BILLIONS of dollars" and then the actual thing plays the way it does
"making the most pathetical errors" as a metaphor for marvin's arc…. making constant errors in love but making a homerun at the end
"should i take this new promotion OR should i take this IBM job?" is an amazing, anti-corporate lyric that fits greatly w/ the most explicitly political (likely authorial) song in the musical that, imho, shouldn't have been cut in the revival. in hindsight tho i imagine the revival people felt very proud and """progressive""" when they made that cut lol is very much a typical liberal move: "cant have true emancipation or revolutions but u cant have some \~upward mobility in the job market xoxo". also on the same vein, cutting the line "i'll change my life, and hire a maid" from the og "and fire the maid" like it's this huge feminist moment lol ughhhh hh
(other line-cuts that frustrate me… "it's queer, mr. marvin", "i could use a little drink" and "i just bought a family" . i feel w/ all of these they tooks some "edge" of the OG characters and kind of attempted to make them "nicer". but it really just makes them a little flatter, a little less real) ( and also some scenes just plain make less sense (marvin's drink line leading to his outburst)
(but bc it's not All Bad sdklfj in fairness, i belie the whole "why don't we tell him, that we don't have the awnsers? (…) this is the start to his becoming a man" bit - is SUCH a great part for mendel, it goes so hard and from what i remember is not in the original falsettos? correct me if im wrong but if it was a new addition in the revival, imo it's a huge improvement to the scene flow… and dare i say, brings the whole climax together, and spells out The Aesop for people who hadn't gotten it by the end of Act 2) -"let me go, im not ashamed to have loved you" // "what's the matter trina, darling, why cant you let go?" -"feel all right for the rest of your life" The Message of the play implicit in it.. "even if it's cut short"
"you save lives, and i serve chicken fat / i can't fucking deal wit hthat" / "maybe is not dumb the way this whole thing ends / the food tastes really yummy!"
"it's about growing up, getting older, living on a lover's shoulder" /"but i confess, you grow up, you get old, you hate less"
"the ground shifting, the rules keeps changing" and it's when the set changes for the first time!!! (/eats all my walls)
"isn't it enough i love you every night?" "who?" // "we had trouble parking, just like on our second date" "i hyperventilate"
"good men never fail" // "but i can't help but feeling i've failed " proving once again those machista lessons marvin learned when young were wrong.... it's clear that him showing weakness at that moment to whizzer was The Right Thing To Do. and what the moment called for.
"the last little mountain ill climb" sound of music ref? maybe?
i only wanted to love and not be blamed " // "who would i blame my life on?"
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seokjinsonlyone · 3 years ago
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this what i think bts love language is
a/n: this just my thoughts besties i ain’t do no formal type of research or nun just let my lil imagination sprint 🥸🤪
namjoon:
physical affection/words of affirmation
okay so i said physical affection for one bc like he seem to like initiate contact with people around him a lot
like in interviews he be having his hand on whoever next to him thigh or like when he be performing if it’s someone next to him he throws his arms around them a lot
not to mention like whenever jimin or jk or whoever start feeling up on him he never rejects it or makes a face or anything like yoongi does he just accepts it
like there’s so many stage clips where jimin will come and rest his chin on joon’s shoulder and he just lets him
or jk will just start touching on him some way grabbing his arms or sumn and it doesn’t phase him at all
another example is like on day 2 of sowoozoo when tae randomly came and linked arms with him and hobi during mikrokosmos hobi was like 🥴🥴 but joon was just 😌
and then there was that magic shop muster moment when jk was talking about how much he loved joon and how he was his beginning you know as president of the joon fan club does and namjoon couldn’t help but to go over and give his number one admirer a hug you know the moment
same thing with compliments he lowkey be eating them up
like you know how whenever hobi gets complimented he be like “😶 don’t say those things” joon don’t do that
like when they was asked to take their jackets off during the butter shoot and namjoon was like yeah okay and everyone started hyping him up and he was just 💁🏼‍♂️😜
and again on day 2 sowoozoo when he pushed his hair back from his forehead and everyone went OHHHHHSWJJSJS SEXY NAMJOON and then he decided to murder us all by tilting his head back on top of that adding insult to injury i would insert the picture but for my mental health i will not
and again whenever they talk about him being such a great leader he never shies away from it doesn’t cringe always accepts it so you know it must mean a lot for him to hear those things
aside from that tho he’s such a poetic person
like he is definitely involved in an intimate affair with language so there’s no way he wouldn’t appreciate you verbally telling him how he makes you feel
like just think about how many times he’s said he wants to sit down with each army and listen to their story
that being said if this was your man i think you’d definitely have to both show and tell him how you feel
like if he was about to head out for work you definitely got to kiss him before he leaves
and if you on the phone with him the last words you’re saying are i love you
and he’s definitely gonna cherish it each time always gonna have that cute little smile dimples caved in his cheeks bc you love him and he feels it
seokjin:
acts of service/words of affirmation
alright so ngl the reason i said acts of service for seokjin is like almost 100% based on his reaction to tae setting up that birthday event for him where he had his friends send him messages
he talked about it for WEEKS like he was genuinely so moved that i just like he has to love it
and then there’s like how much he bothers jk to like do simple stuff like i’m specifically thinking about that one moment in bon voyage 4 when he was sitting down at the table and called jk to help him up
and then there’s also little things he does for others like when he peeled tae’s tangerines for him or when he offered to feed yoongi bc he was driving or how he always offers bites of his food before even gets a chance to taste it
now i say words of affirmation bc he always searching for a compliment
my minds going to when jk hurt his foot and jin was pushing him in the wheelchair and kept feeding him lines to say about how he was such a good hyung and how he loves him
or in the behind the scenes for the boy with luv video and he kept tryna get tae to compliment him for being witty
and my boy never misses a chance to introduce himself as worldwide handsome
even though he does a lot of those things jokingly there are moments when he’s serious too about giving compliments and shy when he receives them like in those be interviews when he called jk a singing genius and jungkook was talking about how he had the most range and he got all ☺️☺️
or that moment from in the soop when he was comforting yoongi about like not having regrets and when yoongi told him he wanted to be like him just those kinds of moments let me know words are important to him
which just made me remember how hard he tries with his lyrics and how important they are to him like when he was writing awake and he talked about how he kept getting rejected but he was super insistent bc it was important for him to sing the words he wrote and don’t even get me started on moon i just-
anyway jin done said many times he is a man of the present so if you’re with him you gotta actively show/tell him
if you’re at the store pick him up some gummies
if you know he’s got a long day ahead of him maybe pack him some snacks to take with him in the morning
if his hair looks nice tell him
send him messages throughout the day even if he can’t respond immediately
he claims he’s a man of the present but whenever he takes a moment to reminisce the past he’ll look back and know just how much you care about him
yoongi:
quality time/acts of service
listen as much as this man loves spending time alone the time he spends with others means a lot to him
like how he always go fishing with jin even tho he ain’t particularly fond of it
or how like in in the soop he had made plans to play games with jimin and did so extensively
also from in the soop when he had spent most of his day outside reading but then he had heard everyone starting to make the theme song and immediately ran to get his equipment to record and what not
not to mention his poem from the end of that one run episode where they went on like a mini trip or whatever and he was like “what a relief that we have seven members. what a relief that we have each other.”
like being all together is important to him
like i just think about that one scene from one of they movies ion remember which one but they were all gathered around the table and it was when he had told them how he actually hurt his shoulder and they was talking about how they was worried about jk and how he need to come out his room and it’s not even the content of the scene but just like the fact that he ain’t have to be there but he was
and also can’t neglect to mention how he whined for y e a r s about how ain’t nobody come to visit him on set when he was filming the videos for his first mixtape like mans wouldn’t let that go and then how touched he was when they made appearances on his daechwita set even if he couldn’t express it properly
and how he begged for them to make cameos in the video and how happy he was when jin and jk did
and he doesn’t ever forget to mention whenever him and hobi hang out he’s like yeah we went for a drink and dinner and talked and blah blah
he loves it when people make an effort to be around him
now acts of service i got this all on a whim okay like… listen… we all been there we have all watched an ideal type video on youtube don’t lie okay
and up there it be like he want someone to bring him food in the studio and take care of him and stuff like that and in this case the math maths
you really can see that in how he treats others
like just the other day i saw a gifset somewhere and the boys were like yeah yoongi always takes care of us he don’t make eye contact tho
not to mention how he always cooks for them when they go on trips
and even though he ain’t give seokjin his song yet we know it’s coming! eventually!
and whenever they be ganging up on jungkook yoongi always the first one to be like “stooooppp you gon make him cry”
my baby just always be doing little things for others to show he cares okay 🥺
so if you got with my baby you gotta take care of him 🥺🥺🥺
he really needs someone that understands him bc he not gonna say anything
if you’re all hanging out together make sure you’re by his side so he knows you want to be there with him
if he’s busy stuck in his studio drop by even if you just end up laying on the couch he’s gonna appreciate you just being with him
and bring food my baby getting buff he need all the veggies and protein he can get
hoseok:
receiving gifts
i really had to think about this one but once i connected the dots yeah it makes total sense
like he looooves shopping loves getting stuff so when other people give him stuff i know he just 🥰🥰🥰
hobi lights up when he gets gifts they don’t always have to be big but i know he very much appreciates them
like how in the army corner store festa video when asked to bring something meaningful to them he brought those figurines which was the first gift a fan gifted him
which makes me think about how those limited edition figurines dropped and hobi was like i need to get one for namjoon and then namjoon was like i need to get one for hobi and so they ended up with like two of them or something like that
also from festa in the little photo booth mission every time he won a prize he was like yaaasss omg and was thinking of ways to put it to use like when he got that picture frame he immediately stuck them film strips in it he probably got it hanging in his room or in his studio by now tbh
and i think it was on the canada run bts episode where jk bought him those slippers and he was super happy
even when they were in hawaii and him and jin were hungry on the bus and he asked jin for gummies like ofc jin had to get on his nerves first but when he finally gave him his snacks he went from 😐 to 😚
or how he still has that change purse that namjoon bought him in malta (probably still got the money in there too tbh)
speaking of malta got me thinking about how tae went out of his way to win hobi that flamingo bc he said he’d never seen one and when tae gave it to him he went parading it around telling everyone that tae won it for him and then said he was gonna put it in his studio
and he got that chicken leg pillow they gave him from you quiz on the couch in his studio
and i think it was from the 2020 winter package he was so happy when jin bought him those ugly little troll elf things with the hat you know what i’m talking about
and he commented like three times when jungkook drew that picture of him for his birthday
and we know mans be giving gifts too
like how he got yoongi that coffee truck on the set of daechwita
and when they were on the speak yourself tour and he went out shopping on a day off and bought jin a sweater or something
and how he slaved through like 2 or 3 lives making bracelets for the members and then gave it to them on the bang bang con live
and the most devastating one of all when they had to give each other gifts i think it was on the run episode with all the water games but i could be wrong anyway and like most of them gave each other gag gifts like their merch or whatever but hobi gave jimin (and the rest of the members) a cd for his song promise it had a little photo book in it and everything 😭😭😭
so like whoever gets with this fine specimen gon have to throw a few dollars together to make sure this man is kept
not really i’m sure he doesn’t expect you to sell your car for a gucci peacoat or your soul for a rolex
but if you did decide to save up for some time to get him a little extravagant gift i know he’d more than appreciate it
more often than not though it’d be the little things that got to him like if you bought a simple t shirt from the store but then kinda like upcycled it drew little doodles on it wrote “i’m your hope” somewhere on it there would definitely be a picture uploaded of him on weverse or twitter wearing it
or if you decided to compile the pictures of you two together into a scrapbook or something he’d keep it somewhere accessible like in a drawer in his desk in his studio and flip through it with a little smile on his face when he’s missing you
and even if it was something even smaller than that like say he mentioned in passing that like idk he was out of eggs or something and you bought him some he just might marry you
jimin:
physical affection/quality time
the first thing that comes to mind with this for jimin is how he comforts his boys
like there’s so many behind the scenes clips from tour where like jk or tae will be upset with their performance and crying and jimin would be the one to come up behind them and hug them and wipe their tears
same concept for that one moment in bon voyage 3 when they told him that tae was crying and he just kinda hugged him and wiped his tears and hovered around him to make sure he was okay
or when they left hobi at the gas station in bon voyage 4 and then went back to pick him up he still hugged hobi even as he was laughing evilly
also in bon voyage 4 when they went on that helicopter tour and they was on the mountain and him and tae tackled each other and was rolling in the snow
and he is just like always in jk arms like he just jumps on him for no reason like in that video where lee hyun is acting as one of bts’ management
also in the behind from i think when they were practicing for the 2019 bbmas i believe at some point jungkook was holding that man spinning him in circles or sumn like that
and there’s also that one comeback show when him and tae were in the comic book cafe and they were just cuddled up together looking at tae’s phone practicing english i think
and on that one joon live when him and tae crashed and just caused a whole lot of commotion i’m pretty sure at one point they were cuddled on the couch and then jimin told tae his breath stinks and tae proceeded to open his mouth over the air purifier
anyway clearly he is a man with hands
but he also is someone who loves to spend time together it’s important to him
like i just think about how when they had their “break” back in 2019 he talked about how he just traveled the entire time and he went with various friends and family
and i’m pretty sure it was bon voyage 3 when they were doing their friendship trips and trying to make fresh pairings or whatever he was like i don’t think there’s any surprising pairing with me and it’s like… that’s true
like you got minimoni, minimini, jikook etc… all tried tested and true man gets around his band
and he’s the main one who’s always like “yeah bro we should live in the dorms until we’re 50”
and he always talks about how he can’t be alone and how he’s always gotta be doing something with someone
and his lives!!! his lives!!!! when he spends time with us it’s always so intimate and personable
like you can’t tell me that i ain’t have dinner with him and jin after a show in the hotel room and we drank off camera even after the staff told us we couldn’t 😤🤚
there’s also that time he went live and someone said they had some kind of condition and then he took it upon himself to look it up and try to find treatments
just liiiike whenever he goes live every minute counts bro and yes this is me trying to summon him bc we ain’t had a solo jimin live since october and i know they super busy but i miss 😓😓😓
so for this mans i just feel like you just gotta really be with him
just like he makes every second count you have to as well
like he’s gonna want to have your full attention and you’ll definitely have his he’ll be obsessed with you tbh
however he doesn’t always have the time and his schedule definitely isn’t the most accommodating so he’s gonna want someone to put in the effort
but as long as you make sure he knows you’re all in he’ll always meet you halfway
taehyung:
words of affirmation
now this one has been stated explicitly multiple times and he’s admitted it himself
specifically during let’s bts in their segment within the segment and namjoon was like taehyung the kind of person who grows from compliments
and i ain’t even got the right words to express how i feel about the smile he couldn’t help when hobi had them all tell tae that they like him
not to mention the story he told during the festa video last year about how he always tried his very best to get hobi to praise him and how disappointed he was when hobi didn’t get it
and i may be tripping but didn’t like earlier this year he didn’t post on weverse or twitter for like a month or so because he wanted to keep seeing us say how much we miss him???
and in bon voyage season 2 when they had to write letters to each other and he wrote his to jimin and then cried when he read it
there’s also a moment in bon voyage 4 when he and rm were about to sleep in the same space and he asked joon if he could cuddle him and joon was like 🥴🤚 how bout no and tae was like you do like me right? and rm was like yeah of course but let’s not cuddle bro
also in that weverse magazine interview they did he talked about how depressed he got when they weren’t able to perform and he only felt happy for a while when he was able to communicate with us
and in turn he’s very verbally supportive as well
like at that one fan sign they was talking about bon voyage and they asked army which season they liked better 1 or 2 and someone said 1 and taehyung was like “😐 now why would you say that bc namjoon won’t even in that” even though really it was only like 1 or 2 episodes he missed out on
and like he’s always hyping seokjin up like when they were doing the map of the soul 7 comeback live and jin was talking about how he wasn’t a good dancer and taehyung was like 😡 don’t say that bc it’s not true you’re good and you always been good
and in the let’s bts thing again it was important for him to let jimin know that he likes him best like they really are best friends y’all 😭
and when he talks about how much he loves suga’s raps
and that moment in the soop when he set up a date for him and jungkook to talk out whatever tension they had or whatever
and how during those individual be interviews he had hobi flustered when he complimented his passion for music
and he always be saying like the most comforting stuff on weverse letting army know he’s there as a source of comfort at all times even when he can’t be
like this man is literally the creator of borahae meaning that we’ll love and support each other for a long time
so if you get with tae communication is key!!!
you gotta tell him how you feel about him
if you’re out and about and see something that reminds you of him? tell him. if you like his hair that day? tell him. if he does something that pisses you off? tell him. if you miss him? tell him. if you love him? tell him.
like y’all gon talk about everything and nothing at all some days you’ll be discussing aliens and parallel universes other days you’ll be like discussing the future of your relationship
and ya know he a busy man so you not always gon be having long and drawn out heart to hearts so i think he’d love it if you just sent messages throughout the day something that let him know you were thinking of him even if it’s just a picture of a possum you chased down or if you spammed him with tiktoks you thought he’d like
he’d be looking at his phone like 🥰🤳 thinking about how much he loves you
jungkook:
physical affection
now this lil menace right here is touchy
always down for a cuddle
like on the canada episode of run when they were about to pick out rooms and he was like firmly latched onto hobi on the couch while they waited
and when they were practicing home for the magic shop muster and yoongi sat in the arm chair and immediately jk sat in his lap and tae sat in his lap
or how in in the soop after they were done eating he just went and latched onto jin’s back
and how tae had went to go wake jk up that one time and they ended up falling asleep
or how jk had went to wake up jimin that one time and they ended up falling asleep
there was just a lot of jk cuddles going on in in the soop so i’ll move on
let’s talk about the pool water debate run episode where in the end jk decided to latch onto jin’s back yet again
i’ll take this moment to mention the jinkook moment that lives in my head rent free for no valid reason it’s from the life goes on countdown video where they were reading the post cards and he was wearing that big pink sweatshirt and jin was wearing that pink and black bomber jacket and jk just grabbed jin’s arm and held onto it and played with it and when he was done he just threw it away i… i think about that moment a lot there’s an entire section in both my head and heart dedicated to that moment anyway continuing on
i’ll talk about that time they were backstage for a show and they had them blow up mattresses and suga was minding his business resting and jk just rolled up and moved his legs and laid beside him and then hobi decided to pile on top
and whenever they’re on stage he’s always the most delighted when joon would suggest a hug he’d be the first one over there nose scrunched up giggling he loves it
there’s also many instances in interviews and lives where he just can’t keep him hands to himself
just like that last butter live when tae ended up with a crown of forks thanks to mr kook
and he never misses an opportunity to feel up joon
which makes me remember that time he kissed namjoon on the forehead
and he is just always carrying jimin for some reason
so in conclusion… physical affection
and if he was your mans you’d be on the frontlines of receiving all he has to give
not necessarily in public or around a lot of people but in a space where you both were comfortable yes
you’d just have to accept that when you’re standing around he’s going to give you a shoulder/neck/back massage for no particular reason
and he will latch onto you in different positions for extended periods of time
and you gotta do the same! like that’s your man! go give him a hug! a kiss! let him know you love him
cuddle up to him while y’all chilling watching tv
hold his hand while y’all talking
just like grab onto him and never let him go
he’ll be hoping you don’t
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anolyso · 3 years ago
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Utena thoughts...about 2 weeks later
I've been putting it off for way too long and so most of my thoughts stopped being fresh. On top of watching way too many analysis vids post-watch, but still I do at least want to put my 2cents of Revolutionary Girl Utena out there for the world.
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Utena is perhaps one of the most famous "magical girl"/shoujo action shows out there for not only it's transgressive themes of relationship abuse and low-key pretty much being the poster girl for like actual feminist perspective on/in anime...but also just doing it all in both a heavily allegorical and understated, yet super over-the-top stylish fashion
But that's it's reputation preceding itself, is Utena worth while all these years? The answer is Yes, but it also really shows it's age and budget in pacing and repetition, tho as an appreciator for "behind the scenes" compromises in art, it's more showcasing Ikuhara's talent in working around both taboo and long-form budget constraints with just well-thought out and iconic imagery that - while episodic and formulaic - is just very good at filling the 39 eps with feasts for the eyes.
Utena broadly is about tomboy Utena with memories long ago after her parents died being "saved" by a princely figure like a princess...except she's so enthralled by the nostalgia that instead she becomes a full on Prince herself and receives a dueling ring to fight in the Ohtori Acadamy secret duels for "engagement" to Rose Bride Himemiya Anthy.
Utena is divided between 4 arcs, only the first and last being Manga adapted from hearsay:
1: Student Council Saga
2: Black Rose Saga
3: Akio Ohtori Saga
4: Apocalypse
From back to forth I'd say that Akio + Apoc is more just escalation into the finale while Black Rose being anime original comes off as a glorified side-character study which while complementing the secondary cast, feels like one of those Anime movies that has to say "but if you don't watch this part, it's pretty much optional for the main plot" despite it also actually introducing the most important antagonist within it's margins.
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More importantly, it's the Student Council (arc and the actual people) that lay the foundation but also a large part of the show's focus which ironically puts Utena in the background until like almost the finale and some in-between developments, so it's less "Utena (and Anthy Himemiya)'s story" until the very end, but more like a showcase of how fucked up the system at large is (pin in that).
By the Council themselves is:
Kyouichi Saionji: The biggest jobber, like actually introduced as the most despicable loser ep 1 and proceeds to be a complete arrogant joke for the rest of the show. Honestly in another shojo "love" story, they'd find some way to redeem him but semi-compellingly they turn him into like an Aqua-lad type pathetic brat with an inferiority complex to the actual Student head
Miki Kaoru: the naive "nice, non-threatening soft boy" that also just never actually listens to the girls around him. Probably adds more complexity to the whole patriarchal idea on analytic reflection since yeah, the whole "nice guy finishes last" plays up better when the kid comes off as that "ally" energy of wanting to save Himemiya from being the Rose Bride but also low-key won't actually not just do the duels and win her cuz he's that sorta wishy-washy hypocrite. Arguably the least hateable guy in the cast (minus mascot Chu-Chu)
Juri Arisugawa: TRAGIC LESBIAN TRIANGLE LOVE. Probably the biggest point to of both "not-explicitly homosexual" but also really freaking obvious since her entire story is her girlfriend stealing her "boy crush" when actually she was crushing on her and being pretty much frustrated throughout her story as pining most of it. It's quaint by today's standards but also like damn girl, get over her she was like the worst back stabbing bitch (literally if Black Rose counts)
Nanami Kiryuu: SPEAKING OF QUEEN BITCH, it's been a long time since I've watched a High School girl bully and honestly it's kinda refreshing. If Miki is "soft-boy uwu" Nanami is a brat that gets her come-uppance often, featured prominently as an anime only with the MOST filler/comedic episodes but also not low-key, being the most out-spoken actual brother complex ironically spins perhaps the biggest twist and ironic relationships of "I love my brother but not-like-that but also like-that" by the end. Mostly comedic relief but I find her inclusion to actually add a lot more to juxtapose...
Touga Kiryuu: Big Student Council Prez himself, the first arc antagonist and also a strong foil to Saionji and later a stepping stone for Akio. Touga is THE image of a Princely Playboy Heart-Throb that in any other Shoujo romance would have the main girl win him over from all those "other girls" despite him being apathetic if not outright manipulative of them. Good thing Utena is better than that and really puts a spotlight on just not-actually-ok his power hunger for "the power to bring the world revolution" that leads him to heavily objectify Anthy, arguably even more than Misogynist Trophy Girlfriend beater Saionji, since he doesn't even see her as more than a means to an end despite professing and looking the Prince part but lacking all the actual virtues.
The Student council matters more since they're characters and subsequent tragic flaws are the ACTUAL meat of the show and on second rumination actual shows more how fucked up the system/gender dynamic/power hierarchy is since - while it blatantly fucks over Juri who can't just outright say who she likes - also show almost it's own sub-text of Masculine failings: Saionji desperately clinging to being TOXIC MASCULINE™ and completely falling short underneath Touga; Miki's "nice boy" act belying him trying to replace his low-key nostalgia for his sister (also a bitch, but apparently was more like Nanami in the manga); and best yet Touga being the quintessential "Prince in all but actual behavior" by emulating a cutthroat and Machiavellian world view but coming up empty because well, he's just an illusion of a prince...but that leads in way more to the big finale piece where I'll reintroduce the actual story's main trio
Utena Tenjou: Tomboy Prince with brain empty except for lesbian thoughts. Honestly probably what every western "STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN" archetype wishes they were since while having very tomboyish personality in athletics, blunt speaking and also VERY oblivious to the actual plot for REAL DRAMATIC IRONY, but also never actually demeaning her being feminine partially due to her love of an childhood prince and how she maintains her relationship with both her friend Wakaba and later Anthy. Honestly mostly a plot device after S1 until she gets ACTUAL development by the very end and instead kinda bumbles her way into undoing the entire REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD. I kinda wish she felt either more cognizant or at least felt like she was developing/properly rebuking the rest of the cast's power obsessions but I guess that's for the movie.
Anthy Himemiya: Actual Trophy Wife with a dark secret (darker than ski- wait no that's terrible scratch that). Set-up very much as an immediate princess in distress while also being the most femme Yamato Nadeshiko, Anthy being the Rose Bride as a literal prize who acts and behaves as whom she's "engaged" with desires while otherwise being quiet, wry, mysterious and noticably submissive, by the end it actually plays up into THE BIG REVEALS of just how abused she's been into a hopeless acceptance...like y'know actual abuse victims.
Akio Ohtori: Grade A Antagonist, probably the most insidious I've seen a villain in a while, Akio is notable for, back in 1997, being perhaps the big go-to of actual deconstructing the facade of a whole shoujo genre's "hots for a teacher/sexy man putting the moves" and highlighting how actually exploitative and abusive a person like that really is. Being Himemiya's brother (somewhat justified in the manga by both being a weird Sailor Moon-esque reincarnation of gods/godesses of Dios), despite how much of his motives are runing the background and how the entire back story is  uh...brought up in like barely in the last arc with little lead up (some scenes feel like they'd be a full melodrama season and they just have like 1 scene in the final arc episodes) he manages to one-up Touga (in the plot as well) by instead of "just" objectifying girls, not-just-flat out saying Utena looks best as a princess, but y'know the fact that he is implicitly yet constantly exploiting and victim-blaming Anthy for her own suffering for "the power of Dios/Revolution of the world" turns it on its head
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I've spent all this time on characters but in truth a lot of the meat of the show relies again on the Council Members fleshing out the issues of system leading to outright divorcing "being a Prince" (heroic altruistic virtues) and "being a man" (considering like all but maybe the comedic relief have some deliberately misogynistic behavior) and beyond just the plot (or rather character) synopsis, the talent goes far more in how it's framed, the symbolic/allegorical shots, the repetition adding a good episode formula flow to character showcases, probably the most "tasteful" allusion to uh...*ahem* sexual abuse that so many other edgier/prentious shows fumble. Both in how intimidating yet understated it's foreshadowing is until they hard-reveal it despite never explicitly naming it even tho it sends Nanami into hysterics
Really it's both a massive blessing and reason for it's cult beloved status for it's aesthetics but also it's burden, for being a full 39 episodic season by season character development study of everyone BUT the main trio except for snippets and the very end that makes it greatly appreciable as a legitimate work of art.
What I wanted more to say however (long overdue) is that a large part of following is, visibly at least, western feminist critiques and yes while it almost seems like Utena fits the "deconstructing patriarchy" story like a glove...it's weird how almost none of them actually can give a good historical account of actual Japanese female/gender/sexuality norms nor Anime contemporaries actually were. Like Tenchi Muyo and Berserk came out the same year (Cardcaptor Sakura the next) and despite how you can "feel" the influence in lots of modern shows like SHAFT's signature visual imagery cuts or many WESETERN shows having straight scene references to Utena....almost no one has a similar feel to Utena until like Princess Tutu comes out.
Really tho probably should've watched Utena and then Tutu because while it's undeniable that Utena is a major pillar of shoujo re-codification - what with everyone before Utena was saying they thought it'd be like a Rose of Versaille or Lady Knight rip-off...whose laughing now? - it's almost like there's a missing link between it and it's major western fanbase (probably with what few anime did get overseas, this one probably rose to the top), or how very noticeable there IS an influence on it's genre in Japan
Almost none of the big analyst fans actually know A) it's not "a deconstruction of Magical Girls" since despite Ikuhara working on Sailor Moon just before this, almost none of the tropes line up and instead more with Shoujo genre as a whole. or  one of the major inspirations was Takarazuka theater.
And this is not to dismiss how inspirational it is to it's western fandom, but while I am notably cynical towards placing things on pedestals, there's probably something about cultivating the whole pop-culture feminist reading commune with people making weird time-loop theories while kinda most of it is just filling in a mad-lib mostly thanks to Ikuhara just keeping things on the vague and letting the audience take away their own perspective.
Again, most of the show is completely sub-textual or visually/symbolically depicted and never stated nor properly defines it's weird key words (End of the World, Revolutionize the World, Power of Dios, Rose Bride, all things said constantly but never really said what they "mean". But that's also perhaps its charm, in it's allegory and very Death of the Author approach, it has definitely allowed it's fan theorizing and appreciation to flourish so there's something there for that.
Ultimately I'd say Utena the TV series is great more so for what it isn't...or rather I should say it's great for not just subverting Shoujo tropes and archetypes for the Japanese audience but also that despite dealing with some very serious and heavy subjects in obtuse and perhaps understated ways for the time, people have allowed it to be put on it's pedestal because they can easily fit it in themselves.
Honestly though, not that a more "straight forward" approach wouldn't detract from Utena but I will say that the movie, Adolescence of Utena, is very much the best encapsulation of what Utena strives to be (for another big blog post) and while the TV series has plenty of time and flexes it's directorial muscles with budget constraints and season pacing UNrestrained, the movie will trim a lot of the fat
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sambergscott · 4 years ago
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notes from the palm springs commentary !! 🏝
i know not everyone has access to hulu and i know i'd be gutted if i couldn’t watch it too so bc i'm lucky enough to have an american friend who let me use her hulu account i thought i'd share the commentary with you all on here <3 
- their first bit of commentary is “there’s a title” (cristin) and “there’s a goat” (andy)... 10/10 anaylsis thanks guys
- andy joked that they talked about waiting for an earthquake but decided they didn’t have the budget to wait that long (he said the glowing lights at the end were real tho 🙄)
- andy: “we’re gonna start off pretty racy” djfdjfkdjgh
- “for all those kids out there, the b99 fans, you probably don’t wanna watch this”.... but andy,, we absolutely Do
- andy was cristin’s least favourite person in the movie
- nyles spread eagle on the bed was in the script not an acting choice
- according to andy there were 700,000 bugs just hatched where they filmed the wedding scenes that they had to edit out in post (also it was suuuuuper cold and cristin was shivering)
- ANDY CALLED HIMSELF A BUTT UGLY WEIRDO. NO SIR. U ARE THE FURTHEST THING FROM THAT.
- the dance move when he clapped his hands over his head “lightly hurt his schlong”
- they had 20-30 options for orchid explosion by fournier, cristin pitched some too that she “does not remember!” (she said that very cute)
- they talk about how great june squibb is and how andy is impressed that she wasn’t complaining about the cold/shooting at 5am/the fact that they improved a lil bit.  “she doesn’t not give a what”
- during the make out scene on the rock cristin goes “ohhh ~spicy~”
- they also had to have a snake wrangler come out before they shot that scene and he was like “uhh i think it’s good?”
- andy was excited about having to get shot by an arrow when he was reading the script (it was also the moment they realised this movie was zanier than first thought)
- the cave was the same place they shot the old batman movies
- they started working on palm springs on november 9th 2016…. hence the wedding date
- cristin said they did about 30 takes (at least) of her opening her eyes/sitting up.. basically the entire first half of the first day shooting she spent doing the same thing
- “i just think you’re the coolest cristin, way to go man!” “you too andy!”
- the beer is fictional and has a meaning behind it.. the tortoise is to do with a myth about the universe or smth
- andy wants someone to make the beer fr
- “so here is cristin in the desert pretending to be hot” “he means physically” “TEMPERATURE HOT… i have no opinions on her appearance”
- they wanted to skip past the set-up-y parts to avoid it being too groundhog day and add diff dynamics and comedic elements that come from that
- according to andy, nyles has been in the loop an “insanely long time” (cristin and andy like that you don’t know the exact number of years bc however many years it’s been nothing has changed for nyles)
- cristin’s fondest memories were spending days in that dusty ass car together (i too would like to be that girl in his car)
- “i like your hat” “of course you do” was improved by andy and jk
- andy said jk is a “national treash”
- andy loved shooting the montage w jk (and he thinks that montage + the scene at the end is why jk signed up to do ps)
- “i went full butt” - andy samberg, 2021
- HE HAS A STUNT DOUBLE CALLED SETH WHO HAS A SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER BUTT THAN HIM (but andy’s butt was funnier so they went with his)
- the very last shot of the movie was nyles getting the handjob in the car
- max or other andy i can’t remember who talked for a while about how talented our andy is. can’t wait for that oscar nom!!!!!
- if andy were in a time loop he’d try to catch up on shows for a few years (and then try and leave)
- cristin is horrified that he’d choose to watch all of MASH to get him through a time loop
- cristin LOVED filming all the deaths
- andy said that their dance scene in the denim jacket replaces every iconic dance scene ever like fame/dirty dancing/etc etc and he’s right
- he dropped her in that scene bc his arms are “weak and floppy like a baby calf”
- the tattoo moment was the only fully improved scene
- they REALLY wanted it in the movie
- cristin insisted on the hook hand and eye patch and they obliged and she said she kept the hook hand and put it on her mantle and andy was like “prove it prove it prove it prove it prooooooove it”
- she did Indeed prove it
- orange in the movie significies intimacy and that whole montage is coloured orange to show them falling in love
- they loved shooting the tent scene
- the first night they filmed it there was a sandstorm and rain and they had to hide under a tarp and they came back the next night and they were able to get looser with it bc it was the last day of shooting and they’d basically done the whole thing the night before
- the dinosaurs bit was a “symbolic moment between the characters - they are 2 people who don’t believe they can be loved so they’re feeling something impossible and therefore they should see something impossible”
- the wake-ups were like an acting exercise in a way bc each wake up was diff emotionally based on where they were in the loop
- nyles finally cares about something (her) for the first time in maybe hundreds of years and he immediately gets slapped down :(((
- “suck my dick officer bitch” was cristin’s ad lib!!! (if anyone makes a montage of her life’s work she would like it to either begin or end w suck my dick officer bitch, andy said why not both)
- “for some reason i rolled up one of my sleeves [after nyles woke up after their fight] and then we couldn’t get out of it so that was a lesson! it was a terrible choice”
- andy loves the overhead pool shot
- everytime andy watches the confrontation at the wedding he feels terrible for tala, we love an empathetic king
- re: roy’s arc andy talks about how important it is to relish what you’ve got and it was v v v v sweet
- everyone laughed so hard in the arrow/garbage bin scene
- apparently tyler’s shirtlessness in the shower was distracting for people in early tests and they had to tone it back w colour correction 💀
- cristin was like “did that happen when i had to take my shirt off?” and andy was like “uh huh yeah”
- the goat was on set for a couple of days + apparently cristin would talk to it in between takes 🥺🥺🥺 can she get any cuter
- max talked about how they lucky they were to get andy and cristin and how the movie wouldn’t have worked without them, they were so on the same wavelength and there was an early meeting where nobody else could get a word in bc they were talking so much
- nobody was in it for the paycheck, “it was for the love, and dare i say it, for the art” <3
- they took 3-4 nights to shoot the entire wedding, andy can Not stress enough how much they were rushing
- they haven’t busted out any bloopers yet bc they used pretty much every frame they could/reused them in different places
- cristin doesn’t want to know if nana knows bc the mystery of it is what makes the movie so great!
- andy said there’s no definitive answer to a lot of stuff bc a lot of the people working on the movie had diff opinions
- the french song w the slo mo bit of sarah in the bar was cristin’s choice
- andy is v confused why people think spuds is nyles’ dad,, he’s just tricking him into getting a ride and andy’s sorry to everyone who thought it was real
- cristin liked that the payoff at the end felt like payoff while still staying true to who nyles and sarah are and not just super romantic bc “it’s a romcom!” [andy said throwing his arms in the air]
- cloudbursting was andy’s idea from the very first meeting about the movie but we been knew
- andy: “here’s the ending! nobody knows what it means!”
- the family at the end was the producer’s family, they drove a very long way to do that 2 second scene lol
- andy and cristin were swaying to when the morning comes at the end 🥺
- andy clapped and shouted “WELL PRODUCED” when his/tli’s credit came up hahaha
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frederickthegreat · 4 years ago
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my thoughts on TUA season 2
(spoilers, obviously)
- opened with Klaus and Ben, my kings. Klaus’s hair looks so weird straightened while short 
- AWESOME opening soundtrack 
- seeing all their powers so controlled makes me wonder how they leveled up to that skill in the alternate timeline. like the only time we saw Klaus use the powers of other ghosts in the correct timeline was when two of them caught him falling out of the sky. however Diego did end up controlling bullets and Allison used her voice to technically kill one of the Swedes
- the homeless man screaming Allison’s name alongside Luther... funny shit
- big teddy bear Hazel
- Elliot was fucking awesome i think he was a great addition as a side character. rip tho :(
- honestly i don’t understand why Diego would WANT to save JFK. like it’s not that big of a deal. does he not understand what messing with the timeline can do??
- Lila... impeccable
- Sissy and Vanya... impeccable <3
- yeah and fuck u Carl
- ugh, Klaus’s beard. disgusting <3
- Ben and Klaus definitely act like they should be, given that they’ve been stuck with each other for over a decade. i’ve seen some people calling Klaus an asshole for not telling his siblings about Ben, which is completely understandable (cause he was an asshole), but I’m guessing it was because he was afraid? that sharing Ben with his siblings would mean that he would lose him to them, or his siblings would find him selfish, or they would ask something of him that he couldn’t give. if that makes sense
- that ghost bitch comment was funny tho 
- to the guy who called Klaus pretty boy at the bar: sir you don’t know what you’re getting into
- Raymond!! he’s such a sweetheart, i really liked him in the show. i’m really happy that Allison has found a bit of normalcy (as normal as the 1960s Civil Rights movement could be). it shows how passionate she is about what she believes in: even though she knows the movement is far from over, even back in 2019, she’s not gonna abandon it
- Allison staring at the moon every night: either thinking about Luther or how the moon blows them all up. maybe both
- of course Luther would be working for Jack Ruby
- awesome cinematography during the mental asylum escape 
- yeah it makes sense that the Handler would still be alive. she was a cool villain. although it would’ve been awesome to see how evil a fish could be
- Diego’s plan was pretty stupid. that’s my boy
- honestly they revealed how Klaus started a cult really well by having one of his followers find him at jail. Klaus, ever the musical aficionado, of course writes his scripture based off of pop songs
- Raymond and Klaus meeting!! that was cool to see how their paths connected
- Lila painting Elliot’s toenails green. ugh i love that crazy bitch
- i LOVE how they incorporated the umbrella man!! tbh i’ve always believed he was the one behind the assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald was framed 
- honestly a bit understandable that Luther was planning on killing Vanya? cause he had no idea who she is now, but them reuniting was actually really sweet. he’s grown up so much
- the Swedes and their cats.
- the Umbrella company building with the nuclear family mannequins... creepy, awesome shit
- baby pogo baby pogo baby pogo baby pogo
- shanked diego shanked diego shanked diego shanked diego
- did anyone else get vibes from Klaus’s episode opening that he was an escort to the old woman? like how he was being shown off at her arm or something and getting out of jail from a call from the governor. idk maybe the lady was just very taken with him, as anyone would be
- Elliot, our helpful king
- Allison and Klaus’s reunion was so sweet!! i’m so glad they got to interact so much more in this season 
- Ben getting Raymond out through a haunting... hilarious
- sweet intimate moment between Lila and Diego
- Ray meeting Luther was hilarious, but i do feel for the poor guy. i mean i’m not in love with my adoptive sister but still
- the sit-in was really well done and beautiful while terrible. the ��riot’ that ensued was very appropriate for today’s setting 
- D-Dave
- honestly i was scared that Klaus was gonna be overly attracted to him or whatever, which would be weird cause he’s years younger than Klaus, but honestly, at the core he just wanted to save Dave’s life. even if it means never meeting him in a different timeline. he truly loved Dave. and that ptsd flashback was done so well
- i knew Lila wasn’t trustworthy but i didn’t REALLY expect that! 
- Vanya and Luther talking with each other, Luther admitting the apocalypse wasn’t all her fault. beautiful
- the Majestic 12 reminds me of the conspiracy theory that only a few families control basically everything in the world. the Majestic 12 may be based off of that, idk
- idk about everyone else but Klaus’s scorpion and the frog story made total sense to me! frogs ARE bitches
- the diner scene.... ugh. it really shows that the two of them did fall in love and they did stupid in love things, like talking about their family, about why Dave wanted to join, favorite colors, favorite foods, etc. however that’s seen later on when Dave visits the compound
- yes it’s very disheartening when Klaus is attacked, but honestly i think it had to happen, just like the riot had to happen. the 60s weren’t a fun time for lgbt people and poc. it was only going to be a matter of time before the show HAD to acknowledge the consequences of Klaus’s ‘flamboyancy’ in 1963 Texas. it doesn’t make it right or easy to see, but it’s realistic. 
- it also makes sense that Klaus fell off the wagon after experiencing something like that. yes we all would’ve liked him to stay sober, but sobriety and recovery aren’t linear. 
- Allison is so happy with Ray can we please drop this pseudo-incest plotline let’s MOVE ON 
- Texas Grace ! who is not actually Grace rip (i think? i was a bit confused lol)
- the scene with Harlan running off was really upsetting but we got to see those weird light particles that we saw in the first season
- Pogo Pogo Pogo Pogo
- Klaus being a dick to Ben again, as brothers do. i do feel bad for Ben though it must be sooo frustrating. that scene with him and Allison was really sweet and funny tho
- i just have to say that Luther and Diego are so fucking funny this season it’s awesome. like there are a LOT of good lines overall by everyone but they’re hilarious. “At least he didn’t shank my ass” “no bro, he shanked your heart”“Dads part of a sinister CABAL that’s plotting on killing the president.” “a caBAL?”“You two still a thing? *leans in* do we need to talk?” “No, she’s married.” “Woah dude... that’s rough.” and countless others
- the sibling reunion!! 
- Klaus really does get left out of everything tbh
- Ben :(
- sisters and Klaus!! that was so awesome to see. and Klaus’s hairpins, Vanya saying she’s gonna tell Sissy she loves her, their dance sequence, Klaus calling Allison out on that incest. beautiful
- the fucking Swedish cover of Hello was PERFECT i mean i was sad for the Swedes but it was hilarious. there were a couple beautiful shots of the boat on fire though
- god it must’ve been so traumatizing for Allison to be thrust into such a hostile place with no voice and no way to contact her family
-  idk about you guys but long live Team Zero
- calling Ben that he was becoming their father was a bit uncalled for 
- the fact that Klaus didn’t help Dave’s chances, and in fact escalated Dave’s own timeline.. his trembling hands... robert sheehan is an amazing actor
- the Black president bit lmaoo loved it
- the way Reginald spoke to Diego.. i’m gonna throw hands with an old man
- Klaus LITERALLY looked like he was having a seizure and they all just... played it off?? 
- poor, poor Carl. nah fuck him lol
- that bloody opening scene was awesome! and thank god Five got to say fuck. the fact that it was about a candy bar makes too much sense
- Robert Sheehan acting as Ben: amazing showstopping spectacular he’s so talented
- the whole multiple Fives and Luther bit was honestly really funny, and i immensely respect smaller Five over bigger Five. 
- yes Klaus, you survived a family of seven. you got this
- not sad about Carl dying one bit!
- Ben... that was such a beautiful scene. not just the content of the scene, but the cinematography. Ben fading away... Vanya hugging him... ugh. the main takeaway i had from that scene is that at the core of it all, Ben and Klaus love each other immensely. they have a weird, dysfunctional, fucked up relationship, where Klaus is an asshole and Ben definitely shouldn’t of possessed him without his consent, but they’re still brothers, and Ben forgives him. 
- oof Ben’s funeral was hard. also was it just me or did Klaus’s kid actor sound weird? like it sounded like Robert was dubbing his lines 
- all the siblings back together again!!!! Klaus going with Vanya to save Harlan!! Vanya telling him Ben forgives him and that it wasn’t Klaus’s fault Ben got stuck with him!! everyone in the car!!! be still my beating heart
- yeah didn’t see Lila having powers coming tbh. i really feel bad for her she’s had such a rough and traumatic life, especially with the Handler as her only parental figure
- the Swede brother and Five putting down their weapons: “enough.” the Swede wanted revenge for his brothers - an eye for an eye, but there was a mutual understanding between the two of them: they would do anything for their family. if the Swede hurts one of the Hargreeves, Five would never stop coming after him. i thought it was very beautiful 
- mmm Reggie’s foreshadowing coming into play. proud of u Five
- the ending was so beautiful. everyone got closure in some type of way. except now Klaus is alone with nothing but his dog tags :(
- EMO BEN HAHAHA WTFFF?? is Lila in the sparrow academy? why was Ben’s portrait over the mantle piece? did Five disappear?? is the sparrow academy just older versions of the siblings who stuck around?? so many questions
FINAL THOUGHTS
- Ellen Page’s acting consistently blows me away. she is amazing 
- beautiful cinematography, funny writing, pretty good acting. i didn’t like the soundtrack as much as i did the first season’s, but some of it wasn’t bad.
- i’m glad ben got peace, but i’m also glad justin min isn’t gone for good. his social media presence is too vital for us
- i swear to god if they keep treating klaus as a joke and don’t let him get any actual development like everyone else had (he barely got closure with Dave, he reconciled with Ben through a second party) next season, i’m gonna riot. PLEASE i want to learn more about his powers now that Ben is gone. what happened to seeing tons of ghosts when he’s sober??
- Luther and Diego were probably my favorite duo of the season, I’m so happy that they’ve reconciled and are bonding more. 
- just seeing Vanya grow and be happy was amazing 
all in all, really wonderful season. i probably liked it better than the first one. now it’s time to consume fanfiction and maybe finish my own (check out “god doesn’t want him and neither does the devil” on ao3!)
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maryhanna · 3 years ago
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Day Uno
Film Adaptation- Skylight Room Shoot
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Having helped set up the production design the day before, I was very excited to begin shooting. I was very happy with how Anne's room was looking and it really brought out elements of her character that I wanted to portray visually. As cinematographer I worked closely with Sofia, the director of our project. Being on set and in the space before the actors arrived allowed us time to scope out some shots we’d like to get as well as explore the lighting of the room. Ben McEggMorran was excellent in organisation during the first day. As first AC and producer he really went above and beyond in keeping everyone on schedule and prepared for when the actors arrived. He also taught me the ropes when it comes to using his camera, which I haven't used before. I had been very nervous beforehand as it was his camera, twas a responsibility I dreaded, I am clumsy, I am not stable HOWEVER I shall pat myself on the back for not dropping it and also learning quickly how to adjust shots and so on.
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Before we began shooting Sofia gathered all the cast and crew together to introduce ourselves which made the initial on set environment very warm and friendly. I was so happy to see our cast in person, they were all such lovely people.
Day one, we shot the interior of Anne's room. This involved the moments of Anne looking out the window, Anne moving in and decorating her room and climax where Anne passes out and is rescued by the residents of the building.
I really enjoyed how much there was to shoot in terms of the inside of Annes room. Lucy, Sofia, Jenny and Jack had brought certain key items to create mise en scene. There was also so much light to work with inside the room. We used Jack's bedroom and completely turned it around. I wish I had taken before and after pictures, but the room had been completely transformed. Anyway, light. The amount of light that came into that room was wonderful to play around with, I will discuss more in my reflection however as many shots were over exposed and too bright. Could’ve been diffused if I had paid more attention, but considering this was my first time working with this camera I won't be too mean to myself.
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The climax however I can be mean to. In hindsight those shots I had framed were ugly, boring and not creative. I had a hard time with some points on set. Some creative differences or the time pressure, but I wish I had developed more interesting shots. There was also an apparent timidness the actors, which is COMPLETELY understandable. They had just met a few hours prior and were shooting an intense scene where each character was deeply connected to Anne. It's fine tho, I think having the cast meet up before the day of the shoot would have been beneficial but hey ho, lesson learnt, still an amazing cast to work with. Day one was good!
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oh-for-fic-sake · 5 years ago
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The Neighbors Son
You meet your new neighbors son.
Masterlist
Warnings: Swearing, Mature-ish, angst
A/n: so this is the start of my Clark Kent Imagine series that will sort of run alongside my Bruce Wayne ones, I re-wrote this about eight times so hope you like the final result as for the health insurance I'm British so have no idea how it works I just went along the lines of how car insurance works here.
Taglist: @two-unbeatable-beaters​ @thatgirly81​
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The Neighbors Son
Martha chuckled as you sat at her kitchen table grumbling over the papers in front of you.
"You do you lot have to do things so weird?! What the hell is this shit ?And what the fuck does that word even mean. Its not a word that's the fucking alphabet in the wrong order! THEY MADE UP NEW WORDS Martha can you take me out back and shoot me please? At this point I think that's my only option" You grunted resting your head on the table. Martha sighed rolling her eyes at your dramatic display you felt her slip the paper from underneath your head.
"Just whats gotten you so work up now girl..... Health insurance? Well its about damn time! You've been here four months .....I can see why this can seem difficult." She scanned the documents and slapped the side of your head making you sit up.
"Come on up, right this one is the best value but doesn't cover dental or opticians, so you have to pay for them, but it covers illness and emergancey care, if you choose the next one up you’ll get that and it also covers for maternity care." She pointed out the different options, you knew that you’d been lucky in England to have the nhs but until now you didn't know just how lucky.
"Can I upgrade? Like at a later date if I wanna have a one?" The older woman scanned the documents.
"Yes but you wont be able to claim anything for prenatal or maternity for at least six months after adding it to the policy." You nodded you didn't really see yourself accidentally falling pregnant for that you'd need to have sex and you've been on a dry spell since being here. You nodded taking the paper from her."So I will just do that then"  you said wanting it over and done with she sighed at you crossing her arms giving you 'the look' that every woman got when she became a mother."How many have you looked at?" You shrunk under her stern gaze and rubbed the back of your neck nervously.
"Errr so far? In total? One" she sighed shaking her head at you, before pouring you both another coffee setting it in front of you,she hadn't realized how lonley she had been once the farm house across the field had been empty not until you had moved in, all the way from England you had bought the house with your inheritance selling most of the fields to others in the area just keeping a small two acres around the house for yourself. She had met you the day you moved in coming over to introduce herself see if you needed help, you both instantly hit it off and it wasn't long before she was looking out for you. It was hard for you to adjust to life here, loosing your dad was bad but she then found out that your mother had caused major problems practically chasing you out of the country, the woman had been unhappy with the will and wanted her 'half' tho it wasn't millions it was enough for you to live comfortably in the end you'd had to move as she kept coming around to the house causing problems and harassing you for money, you'd had to get away far away so settled in Kansas. It was different but a welcome change, slower and laid back sure sometimes you missed not being in the Hustle and bustle but you had everything you need, a comfy house ,decent car and an income from your books, you was an author writing adult books, tales of gorgeous cowboys, dominant business men and mafia king pin's all falling in love with the women of their dreams with erotic twists and scenes that would make a porn star blush. Martha had been a huge help since you got here ,she had taken you under her wing watching over you and you'd become fast friends, always finding yourselves at each others houses helping each other out. You groaned as she shook her head at you knowing the look. There was a lecture coming.
"That’s just silly, you should look around compare prices and policies, it could save you a lot of money in the long run, especially you i mean your a trouble magnet how you haven't already ended up in ER I don't know?" You smiled sweetly at her
"Because a have a kind and loving neighbor to patch me up" you said casting a look to the scar on your arm where she had sewed you up after a nasty fall on some farming equipment in the barn. She huffed at you rolling her eyes kids. And you was a kid only twenty seven years old younger then her Clark, sometimes she asked you why you don't go into town and meet some people your age you'd always cringe and shiver saying that they were to immature or just banged on about marriage and kids, which neither interested you in the slightest you were quite happy with things the way they were. Martha looked up as the dog perked up outside whining and yipping happily before she heard him
"Ma? You here?" She smiled as he entered the house wrapping her up in his arms she hugged him back.
"Clark? What are you doing here?"  She pulled back a little seeing him upset she cupped his face.
"Oh god whats wrong? Is everything okay? Whats happened?"
"Its Lois...we had an argument I had to leave her Ma, its over she couldn't see past the super-" Martha quickly shushed him as You stood awkwardly thinking it better to leave not wanting to intrude. The man snapped his head in your direction releasing his mum and you were floored he was stunning, sure she had showed you photos of her son but they didn't do any justice. Tall broad and strong his biceps were fucking huge his chest tapered into a perfect v, dark hair hanging in messy curls atop his head some falling forward just skimming his eyes that were a glistening bright blue you felt your pussy clench violently. Fuck. You was so lost that you failed to notice him staring right back at you it was Martha clearing her throat that snapped you both out of what ever trance you'd both been put you under.
"Cheers for the coffee but I should get back and leave two to catch up, anyway this next chapter isn't gonna write itself..... at this point I don't think I’m gonna write it either." You said with a chuckle Martha turned to you putting her hands on her hips.
"Oh no you don't, your going park you butt right there and stay here to search other quotes" you gaped at her looking to her son he held up his hands staying out of it.
"Don't you go looking to him,he wont help you" you huffed crossing your arms
"Did you just give me homework? It sounds like you gave me home work." She nodded
"Damn right, health insurance is a big deal and you don't just pick the first one that pop's up on the internet" you pouted at her trying to change her mind she just stared you down tilting her head then you threw your hands up.
"Oh for fuck sake, fine I will look Jesus Christ" she nodded smiling not missing the way you and Clark was stealing glances at one another, well you stole glances Clark was out right staring. She slapped him upside the head.
"Don’t be rude son introduce yourself" he stuttered shyly flushing at being scolded before holding out a hand towards you quickly.
"Er Clark Kent nice to meet you Mrs?" You took his hand not surprised by how warm it was I mean this guy was hot, it only made sense right?.
"Miss Y/n Y/L/N but just call me Y/n everyone does....apart from your mum she calls me 'a pain in the ass'" he chuckled
"Then we already have something in common" you laughed as Martha motioned for you both to sit at the table smiling knowingly, she saw how Clark couldn't look away how the sorrow in his eyes disappeared as he looked at you. Clark couldn't tear his eyes away from you he gulped eyes raking over your form his mouth gone dry speechless. Wow. You was very attractive like you walked out of one of his fantasies, a tiny homely looking girl light tan with deep chocolate wavy hair in a short bob twisted in a half up do, tiny bun in the back with a few loose strands framing your small face that had a dusting of freckles from being out in the sun, tho he guessed that some were more permanent as they didn'tstop on your face trailing down into you blouse, his breathing hitched as his eyes couldn't help peeking seeing the tops of you breasts spilling over the cups of your bra as you slouched over the table barely resting your elbow on it due to how small you was. His cock twitched you were very tiny the top of your head didn't even reach the top of his chest, he estimated you to be around four foot nine maybe four foot ten he grunted a little, he did have a thing for smaller women, he loved that he towered over average sized women but you were like his dream girl,fuck if he didn't want to fold you in half and fuck you senseless. His pants tightened at the thought, he bet you'd struggle to take him but given the chance he would find a way to impale you forcing your little body to take every punishing inch he grunted a quietly his stomach clenching. He quickly pulled his eyes away before either you would notice trying to calm his slightly ragged breaths this wasn't like him at all, he had been raised a gentleman but sitting here he felt anything but. Drawing his eyes up to yours. Incredible, he got many compliments for his eye but yours were something else, one a light brown honey colour the other was the brightest green he had ever seen, like someone had captured an emerald with in it, he swallowed dryly again becoming hot under the collar twitching in his pants as he continued to assess you. He wasn't sure what you was doing in his Mothers house but he had no complaints whatsoever.
"S-so Y/n your not from around here." his voice cracked a little as he spoke you shook your head at him a little uncomfortable as Martha pottered about the kitchen busying herself with making a fresh pot of coffee, you moved to help her but she just shook her head at you.
"No I moved here four months ago from England, your mum has been helping me get settled, America is a lot weirder than I had initially thought" you giggled a little nervously crossing your legs trying to fight off the building tension between your thighs, it wasn't every day you sat across for a delicious looking male, already picturing him as the main character in your next book with the amount of fantasies you were sure to come you'd probably have enough material for a whole series. He grit his teeth a little as his cock jumped at the melodious sound of your voice and thick southern British accent, he wouldn't admit but your voice had now become his favorite sound of all, imagining just how high he could get it if you ever gave him a chance.
"Wow that’s pretty far, and you chose Smallville why not one of the big cities?" He asked as Martha walked across the kitchen washing up some dishes in the sink, you frowned she never did that when you was here, she was up to something.
"Well Gotham didn't look to promising and I couldn't find anything in metropolis, I didn't have much time to move and when I saw the farm house I thought why not and bought it now I'm just  across the field from your mum. I might get a small place in the city at some point but right now I'm quite happy here"
"You haven't even been to metropolis yet and your already thinking of buying a place there? shouldn't you check it out first? Maybe you could show her around when she does visit Clark? Take her to see the sights she'd like that? Wouldn't you y/n?" Your jaw sort of hung open....was she trying to set you up with her son? You chuckled nervously seeing the smirk on the other woman face.
"Oh Martha he's probably busy-"
"No! No I'm not, I'm not busy at all!.....I-I mean sure I could to show you around." He interrupted you then flushed, Martha shook her head the boy wouldn't know sublty if it bit him on the ass. You blushed sipping more of your coffee.
"Well if your sure... but I need to finish my book I've already postponed the release date once, don't think the publisher will like another one" he smiled as his mother set down a cup and fresh coffee pot he refilled everyone's cups as she took a seat at the head of the table sitting back watching you both fumble around your words blushing and stuttering, there was definitely something going on here and she was a little smug and had a feeling she was going to enjoy this next bit.
"Your a writer? What do you write?" You blushed bright at his question. Oh shit.
"Haha Yeah, well I sort of write books, fiction"
"I don't think I've heard of you tho?" you looked down going beet red your pussy dampening your panties at the idea of him lying back in his bed reading one of your raunchy books.
"I use an alias so I don't get any backlash" he looked a little surprised but it wasn't uncommon even some journalists did this mostly if the do honest reviews of shops and services
"Oh so what type of fiction do you write children's books?" You flushed more at his innocence looking to Martha who was snickering quietly to herself. She was going to be no help here whatsoever.
"No..Not children's books...My stuff is more...Mature" you desperately looked to Martha eyes screaming. Help me!. poor Clark tilted his head a little not understanding why you seemed to be getting so embarrassed
"Oh for teens then?" his mother finally cracked up laughing out right at the face you pulled at him deciding to put an end to to sorry affair, it was painful to watch.
"Oh for god-She writes porn Clark! Erotica, Adult fantasies" Clark spat his coffee not ready for that at all, coughing and spluttering,you got up quickly just dodging the drink sprayed in your direction.
"MARTHA!..Oh shit are you okay big guy?" Patting to poor mans back as Martha sat there sipping her coffee smirking into her cup.
"What? Like I'm wrong? we'd be here all day if I'd let that pan out" You flushed at her words as he finally caught his breath before you sat back down and sunk in your seat mortified she just came out and said it.
"Ah okay then wow I didn't expect that....I mean you look so cute...Not that I don't think you can be sexy and cute cos you are shit I mean er what do I mean?...Its just not what I'd have thought you'd write....But there's nothing wrong with that, I imagine its quite hard NO!no not hard...Not that its easy that's not what I meant just that it would be hard-Difficult! difficult it would be difficult to write." Martha laughed out loud having the time of her life as you both flushed bright red, Clark was trying to talk himself out of his own embarrassment, you on the other hand just Blinked at him as he had a melt down so red he looked like his head was going to pop, finally taking pity on him you interrupted his babbling.
"Its okay...I get what you mean...Sometimes its... Difficult but you just you know keep at it..." Martha smiled oh yes you two definitely liked each other, now if only she could find a way to set you up together. An awkward silence fell over the kitchen as you fiddled with your cup a little and Clark trying to look anywhere but you failing miserably, she decided to have some mercy and change the subject and let you know that he was available all at once.
"So you and Lois are over for good this time?" You leaned back in your seat watching his face drop you couldn't help feel sorry for him.
"Yeah, she just kept pushing, wanting me to be someone I'm not, to play that part all the time I'm sick of it! it started got to the point I no longer had any choice, I'd do what ever for a quiet life even if it made me unhappy" Martha sighed at him she had seen this coming for a long time but had to step back and let him figure it out for himself.
"Clark I'm sorry things didn't work out I really am but she would never be satisfied until everything went her way you knew that"he nodded solemnly sighing you could tell who ever this Lois was had meant the world to him.
"I think I knew deep down she wasn't the one, I just thought if I carried on, if I stuck with it she would see how it was effecting me and change just a little for my sake. Just like I did for her you know?"
"She was never going to son, in her eyes you had become what she wanted so she didn't have to change at all but she forgot the most important thing in a relationship that's its give and take she forgot to be what you needed" Martha held his hand  he sighed looking at her nodding.
"Well this happened just over three weeks ago and she is still carrying on like we are together, like nothings changed! showing up at my apartment when she feels like it and throwing a fit when i don't let her in and is telling everyone I'm her date to this party now I'm stuck, I don't want to go with her but if I go alone then she's going corner me." he sounded exhausted and fed up and slightly bitter towards this woman and with good reason you knew how this type of thing could were on someone, you'd seen it first hand growing up.
"Party? what Party?" he waved his hand at his Mothers question
"A staff party celebrating another award and I don't want to go alone, if I do I know I will end up going back to her I really don't want to. So need to find someone else but there is no one shes still letting everyone think we're together! and none of them want to be on her bad side. I just need a woman to pretend to be my girlfriend for one night"
"Now Clark that's not fair on whoever you take, your a handsome boy and anyone you take might really like you it could crush them if they find out your using them. You can't use one women to prove a point to your ex it isnt right your father and I raised you better then that." You interrupted before she could lay into him anymore.
"I can understand what he is getting at tho, sorry to interrupt and if I'm being out of line tell me, but she sounds like my Mother, relationships are give and take, you can't just take and take and expect your other half to put up with it, Clark if you need someone to go with you to make it clear your finished with her I will go with you, no strings attached or hard feelings but women who think everything should revolve and change around them and their needs really fucks me off!! especially when they pull that shit on a sweet genuine person, in the end these women just destroy the men their with. I don't know you very well but Martha raised you so you can't be that bad and that's enough for me." You hissed some of the words it was like your parents all over again. Your mother was spoilt and selfish always demanding that your father change the way he was for her, you had watched as he had given up everything for her but it was never enough, he had to play a part and it ate away at him for years sending him into a deep depression, yet she never did anything in return or tried to help him. In the end, you at seven years old had found him trying to commit suicide. The thought of you being the one to find his body was what broke the camel's back he threw her out the next day then tried divorcing her but she wouldn't sign the papers so instead they remained separated she had nothing so you was left in your dads care, he was happier then ever but the damage had been done he never found anyone else, she hung around every few months trying to weasel her way back in missing the money more than her family, when she didn't get her way she tried to destroy any happiness he found. Luckily he had sense enough to rewrite his will and piddle away the money in the account he had left to her his final fuck you to her was when the executor of the will read out that you was left with the car, house and just over seven hundred and eighty thousand pounds the housekeeper Susanna was left the holiday home in Devon and forty thousand pounds and your mother well she got twenty nine pound sixty seven pence and was aloud to have the expensive china that the Susanna had been instructed to smash after his passing....Yeah your dad was a bastard but it was funny as fuck. That’s why you had to leave she kept coming to the house harassing you for money. The restraining order hadn't worked so you decided to move you had the means to do it so went for it, she would never find you here and couldn't use the fact shes your mother to find you because you wasn't a minor the cherry on top the account that your dad was leaving for your mother was what he used to pay for your college and university. Martha sighed knowing why you got so wound up and you was right Lois was similar to your mother.
"You'd do that? Really?" You nodded to him smiling
"Absolutely I ain't afraid of no American.... apart from your mum shes scary as fuck, but seriously I can handle anything she tries to throw at me and you can show me around town while your at it, I'm guessing its in metropolis? when is it?" Martha sat back a little stumped turns out she wont have to set you two up after all.
"Err Its this Saturday ,you sure you want to come what about your book?" you waved him off
"Its fine Clark I can bring my laptop and work on it in the hotel" he nodded grinning wide suddenly excited about this next week then faltered.
"Don't bother booking a hotel you can stay with me for the week after all your doing me a huge favor its the least I can do to repay you" he chose to ignore his mothers raised brow. She had a few guesses at exactly how he was planning to pay you back and she doubted it was just going to be bed and breakfast.... probably breakfast in bed if the looks he gave you were anything to go by, not that she minded you would be a better fit for him anyway. Call it mothers intuition but she got the feeling that Clark would be around a little more now that you were just across the field.
"Oh no I couldn't! a hotel would be fine"
"I insist I would love nothing more then to have you to myself for the week" Martha tried to bite back a laugh, she never realized how cheesy her son was trying to flirt, no wonder he didn't have much success but she could see you fall for it hook line and sinker as you flushed squirming in your seat a little, he smirked at you from across the table getting more confident, he liked to think that he had already caught you. Prick he new exactly what he was doing as he leaned back man spreading, making your walls clench.
"You could spend the week ,we can catch a train tomorrow afternoon if you like, be back in time for dinner there's a nice diner near my apartment" you nodded a little suddenly feeling like one of the women in your books flustered heart racing a mile a minute as the man of your dreams offers to take you away from the boring daily routine. The question was were you brave enough to follow through with it, hell you'd moved to the other side of the world on a snap decision, spending a week alone with a drop dead gorgeous man should be a breeze, it didn't take long to decide giving him a shy smile nodding as you had butterflies in your tummy. His face lit up
"Great I will check the train times It's Sunday service but there should still be some in the afternoon"
"Perfect! I should go and pack then I suppose,Martha if I leave a key here could you watch the house for me and feed the fish when I'm gone" she nodded quickly excited but anxious at the same time, hoping that you would hit it off with Clark but at the same time apprehensive about how fast you was going, after all you only just met, but you were both adults and could handle yourselves and she knew you'd be safe with him.
"Oh is it formal or what?"
"Oh yes, its theme is Hollywood glam"
"Oooo I've got the perfect dress, any way I'm off and will see you both tomorrow be back around eleven tomorrow morning?" he stood nodding walking you to the door making you swoon inside as he opened the door above you reminding you just how big he was, a gentle giant.
"I-I'll see you tomorrow then Clark" he leaned down to your ear whispering
"Can't wait, sweet dream's Y/n I know mine will be" you gasped as he pulled away winking chuckling at your hot cheeks, he could have a lot of fun making you blush he decided as you turned quickly scampering down the stairs away from the house towards yours, who's roof you could barely see over the crops from this distance. He stayed there leaning on the door frame arms crossed groaning watching your ass sway as you made your way into the brakes in the crops what the tractors used to get across the field disappearing into the high crops.
"So you like her then?" he jumped back bumping into the door frame making it creak a little at his mothers sudden appearance, she giggled folding the tea towel in her hands.
"Wow you must have taken a shine to her if your so mesmerized by her or more specifically her backside, that I can sneak up on you,I haven't been able to do that since you were a little boy." he chuckled embarrassed that she'd caught him staring
"Not that I think you would but Clark? don't play with her feelings okay? shes a good kid and had it tough over the past few years and she doesn't need a heart break on top of everything else" he snapped his head to his mom.
"Ma you know I wouldn't-" she fixed him with a look
"You just admitted in there that you was going to use some poor girl to make a point to Lois and I'm telling you now if you hurt her I wont be impressed"
"I wouldn't do that to her, I wont hurt her I promise, but I would like to get to know her more...see if we could you know" she smiled softly at him
"I'm just saying your a handsome man and she could fall for you easily, don't use her as a rebound." he sighed she had a point but after seeing you all thoughts of Lois died.
"I like her Ma do you-do you think maybe she could like me to? this time have a relationship with me, get to know Clark Kent before Superman? that Clark could be enough this time?" that made her pause clenching the cloth in her hands twisting it, there was something in the way he said that, so unsure and hopeless she fumed inside his confidence was knocked she felt like she was speaking to the shy beaten down preteen he once was. He truly believed that Clark Kent wasn't good enough anymore and there was only one person to blame for that,it was with those words she realized that Lois had hurt him and hurt him bad, she sighed pulling him down kissing his cheek then cupped his cheeks making him look her in the eye.
"Now you listen to me and you listen well. You are good enough and you are loved, I don't know what Lois has put into your head, and for her safety I don't think I should know, but you forget it right this instant! you hear me?" he nodded a little still unsure as Martha searched his eyes for a little glimmer of confidence but her heart clenched when she couldn't find any, that confidence from earlier must have been false bravado. Lois was lucky she wasn't going to metropolis herself she's probably kill her for hurting her baby, tho she's sure Y/n was going to rip her apart in her stead it was a pity she wouldn't be there to see it.
"I think Y/n is already smitten with you and that you'd be good for one another. I've only known her four months but She doesn't try to be anything she's not, she takes people as she sees them and doesn't have time for all the games other women play its why we get along so well. And as a side note she has never reacted like that to any one else's attempts at flirting trust me there have been quite a few try when we've been out and she shut them down....Quite brutally now that I think of it. But if your serious about her give it your all I don't think you will be disappointed I think you'd be a good match." she wiped under his eye as they welled a little with unshed tears.
"Y-you really think she could like me?" he asked in a small voice.
"There’s no doubt in my mind that she already does, you think she'd agree to spend a week with you if she didn't? Honestly if you both hadn't made plans I was going to play matchmaker myself. Now why don't you go have a cold shower? and I can start on dinner"
"Cold shower?"
"You think I haven't notice your problem?" he flushed laughing wiping at his eyes and pulling his top down a little trying to cover the tent in his pants as she walked back into the house patting his back.
"Oh shit! You think she notice to?!" his mother laughed shrugging
"Who knows I mean she was checking you out to" as she entered the kitchen he stood there dumbfounded
"What Are you sure? I didn't notice"
"You wouldn't your a man, now go have a shower you are not eating at the table like that" he groaned shaking his head closing the front door making his way up the stairs to the bathroom.
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forbidding-souda · 4 years ago
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About Mod Souda
You guys should talk to me in the ask box more smh you guys are fun
Like just tell me about your day but I won’t guarantee that like 1000% I’ll respond but I’ll read them all.... efkjlwdbsc or or ask me questions or something idk I like talking
1500 followers face reveal when (shocked emoji) /srs
Anyways here’s some things about me because I never really introduced myself (since this is my account and why would I do an introduction)
THIS IS LITERALLY MY LIFE STORY GOODBYE BAHSBAH
-Mod Souda 
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Hi I am Mod Souda and I go by he/him ofc ofc I am a gay man.
Uhh I am an a native amercan mixed kid AND an Aquarius ugh I’m so unique right. I was raised by a raver and a metalhead skater in Vegas. I’ve been in the pit since I was 4 years old (specifically at a Primus concert LMAO).
The first fandom I was in was Creepypasta, and I was about 8 years old. It’s funny because the first musician I ever actively liked was Madame Macabre. 
As a child (like 7-11) I mainly listened to Vocaloid, Madame Macabre, and Nicki Minaj.
When Avengers came out I was still in elementary school. And .. Loki... wrjhfbwejdhb bro!! gay awakening!! holy shit. I was in love with him but I didn’t want to admit it smh shhh.
The first anime I ever watched was Black Butler. I was IN LOVE with Joker from Book of Circus ehbwdjqshdfb. The last episode of that season ended the day I moved to California. I remember crying bc of the last scene inside of the moving truck.
I also got into Fairy Tail a lot. Also tragic. I had the hugest crush on Gajeel Redfox mmmmmemdwkgsnekfdjsglkvcx
I live in the Bay Area, and grew up in the same house, compared to living in Vegas where I moved every two years. There are ... so many poc here ... and in vegas I was in a class with all white people. Being around so many poc was so like ?? fun ?? idk how to describe it but it feels like how life should feel like; not stressful at all.
I started listening to goth music when I was 12 because I was in the Mr. Creepypasta amino and somebody was like “you guys should join the goth amino” and I was like oh that sounds so fun !!! Boom... goth Mod Souda arrived.
I was all about Sopor Aeternus and Switchblade Symphony. 
I discovered my lifelong favorite artist in like 2016. It was because I was making playlist for my Fairy Tail oc (tragic) and I added this song I got off of a “Creepypasta Theme Songs” and it was Bernadette by IAMX (which was assigned to Laughing Jack). And I listened to the song and was like meh this is cool. Then one day I played the playlist and it just.... hit different. LMAO I was like waiitittttititit. The next day, on the way to the airport, I downloaded all 7 (at the time) of his albums and listened to them the whole way. I’ve seen him live too like mm chris corner I love you.
I got into DR in 2015 because of an edit of (anime) Syo and Junko to Pound the Alarm LOL. I was like “this looks cool” so I watched it on my phone while sitting on the couch all in one go. Spoilers but I cried the most when mondo and sakura died, fun fact. Life went down from there smh!! 
I really believed that I was dating Gundham Tanaka. Like everything in my life was Gundham Tanaka related like I was ... obsessed with him. And I coudln’t see art of him and sonia because it would make me have a breakdown bc I thought he was cheating on me PLZ BHDSABHJBAHAAHHA it’s funny because I kin sonia now and I’m in love with her.
This was the same year where I ???? got bruises on my eardrums somehow (I asked my dad recently how I got them and he went uhh idk) ???? and I couldn’t hear anything for like three years plz. My hearing has gotten better but idk if my ear percentage is 100%/100% or if I’m just grateful it isn’t what it is before LMAO so that’s when I started learning ASL.
This is also the same year where I got hospitalized for being a neurodevelopmental schizophrenic lol OOPS !
A funny story of me growing up with danganronpa is uhh when future arc was still airing ,,, Spoilers,, and the episode with Juzo passing aired,, I literally printed the frame of him talking to himself confessing his love and BROUGHT IT TO SCHOOL. I LIT A CANDLE FOR HIM TOO LIKE BYE
Freshman year of highschool I started dating an emo kid who brought his electric guitar to school. TRAGIC. We dated for like two years please what.
Sophomore year I started getting into metal and punk. This is mainly because I went to a Slayer concert. I was trying to branch out of my goth bubble and !!! metal really stuck with me. My favorite subgenre is goregrind. It’s mmm so good. Punk... was a miss. I absolutely hate punks. If anyone in the alternative community is reading this right now I’ll tell you this: the punks that I interacted with to learn more about the community were from OC .... goodbye
I still listen to Glass Street tho ^ they are hc/crossover and I really like their music omg I have their merch now plz HBSAJKH and I still like the patch pants / crusties I made so that’s cool. A lot of kids look up / glamorize me just because of my fashion but at least they give me clout ig ...
The year after that I downloaded Spotify for the first time. I was an apple music/youtube person (tragic). Uhh what else omg. I finally figured out that I was neurodevelopmental and that it affected my way of thinking and that ,, it wasn’t JUST because I am sch so that was an awakening.
Anyways now trying to get a minor in asl interpreting mmmm and trying to get a job SMH !! why is it so hard. I’m into DND now oo that’s new and I’m collecting the dice.
I started this blog in July 2020 when I was staying with my friend in a tent in New York for a couple of months. I forced her to watch despair arc (LOL) and now she’s a junko cosplayer so B^)
Metalhead anon and everyone else who’s been here for a long ass time make me SOOO happy like woah.. it’s been so long omg. I used to post fics three times a day like wtf the EFFORT (that was before school started lol oops my bad)
Since then I’ve got a boyfriend and a whole wave of danganronpa cosplayers who are my friends now. It’s really cool to talk to so many young people (sometimes) who are hella into like,, open conversations about gender and politics and whatnot. I’m used to talking to 20 year old goth people you know? 
Whenever I do something “cringey” (like if I want to do dr character impersonations or if I want to rant about how much I love this anime character or if I want to try out neopronouns) I’m like hmmmm I can go to the danganronpa cosplayers and I know they won’t judge me for this.
Anyways that’s it. It’s 22:50 where I am right now aaaanndd I go on this blog way more than I should LOL
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spiralesbian · 4 years ago
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ALRIGHT
here’s my full Stranger Avatar Sasha Archivist timeline:
(also, thanks to @artbyblastweave for being so interested in my lil au!)
SEASON ONE
sasha james is hired as the head archivist of the magnus institute!
her assistants are jon, tim, and martin
tim takes the thematic role of martin (aka getting tormented by my worm wife jane, and stays in the archives)
sasha reads thru statements and is a skeptic! she really does not believe it’s real until jane comes along.
“tim……………………..did you die here?”
“no, but every time i come to work i die a little more inside.”
cute timsha moment in the supply closet tho.
until martin kool-aid-mans through the door and gets them out of there
jon used to work in artefact storage so he hides in there. he’ll be fine
i actually can’t remember how they all get out but they do it KKJSDGFJHD
sasha takes everyone’s statements. tim is fucked up, martin is also fucked up, jon is actually fine though he seems pretty normal about this whole situation most definitely.
sasha realizes this is a bit more than a regular archivist job.
SEASON TWO
sasha gets paranoid of course. she learns more about gertrude because she never got the chance to meet her
she takes a statement from a guy named michael shelley. weird dude. then helen shows up :)
jon is most definitely himself he is just a normal regular grumpy jon i swear :)
sasha starts to manifest her powers a little bit. she doesn’t know it, but she is an avatar of the stranger, and a prisoner of the eye.
she starts to notice more things about jon? similar to this comic but with jon
eventually she + tim + martin help get jon out of the grip of the NotJon. this is my au and i get to choose who dies (it’s no one because i miss the s1 archival assistants too much).
jon is pretty fucked up from this though and at like a season-3-tim mindset already.
fucking goddamn leitner avatar of the fucking whore shows up to trap the NotJon in one of his shitty fucking novels. fuck this guy tho
he’s like Sasha We Must Talk and shes like okay but stay 8 ft away from me at all times you bitch
she leaves the room for 10 minutes and pipe murder occurs. good riddance
wait are the cops in the season i genuinely can’t remember. if they are, their roles don’t change very much. melanie and sasha feud, battle of the bi queens
SEASON THREE:
uh oh! girlie’s be framed for murder! she crashes at her ex gf georgie’s flat. also the admiral is there don’t think i would EVER cut him out of this story
(also jon is georgie’s ex too because i think that would be fun JDHBFHS)
sasha learns abt an upcoming web ritual (mirroring the unknowing), all that shit. gets kidnapped a ton of times, as usual.
helen is like “i am going to kill you because i hate gertrude <3 i was that dumb bitch’s assistant for too long” but michael busts out of the door like Hi Guys and traps her in the hallway.
sasha also gives her statement about a leitner she found as a child that marked her. its a stranger book and we learn her edgy orphan origin story how her parents were both murked by the stranger. fucked up if true!
back at the archives jon is like so fucking tired of this shit honestly and now martin is also pretty paranoid. also jm romance subplot is still very present!
tim is just trying to protect sasha at all times and he’s pissed she keeps leaving the country and getting fucking kidnapped
(remember when jon persuades the traffic cop?) sasha starts to fill her archivist role in a different way. she can shapeshift into the subject of a statement and uses her affiliation with the eye to coerce statements or info out of people. (example: if she needed a live statement from the guy in #90 Body Builder, she could temporarily make herself look like jared hopworth to the guy and ask “what happened to me?” or “what did i do?” and the guy would be like well he built some fucken bodies i guess let me tell you all about it) while reading the statements in america that refuel her, she fully shapeshifts into the statement giver while reading out loud.
once again i truly can’t remember daisy + basira’s roles until the end of the season. also melanie get shot by the ghost at some point
anyways sasha gets kidnapped by trevor and julia and they gerry lays out all the shit for her and she’s like ah! i’m fucked
tim offhand mentions the web ritual to martin and he loses his shit cause he’s marked by the web blah blah this isn’t a web!martin thing i swear i just need someone to fill tim’s role in the ritual and a lonely ritual would be fucking boring as hell as we learned from ass man peter lukas. i hate that man
so they make the plan to stop the web ritual (which is fucking hard when the offense knows your every move) so sasha, basira, daisy, jon, and martin go.
tim stays back at the institute to burn shit and distract elias. elias does some fucked up shit as usual and it makes me sad
the ritual starts! they have a plan to blow it up and run but like. u know how it goes
instead of the unknowing-stranger-dream-sequence, we get everyone kinda mixed up in a huge spider’s web on the big stage and its still quite confusing because this ritual not only manipulates the prey, but also the prey’s perceived reality. the web is also in current control of the buried coffin cause they think that shit is kinda fun. they yeet daisy into it.
hard to describe what happens, but basira keeps her cool, jon is a bit lost in his own mind, sasha tries to use her powers to escape but fails. she manages to get through to martin through the strings and mounds of spiders and she tosses him the detonator.
[squishing spider noises]
SEASON FOUR:
martin doesn't die, i told you i can't kill the og archival assistants! he does lose most of one leg though, he took the blunt of the explosion.
sasha in da hospital in da coma. tim is mad he can’t wake her up and then my man ollie says “ur fucked up mate” and she wakes up
(and because coma jon has such wild hair controversy, i’m establishing that her head was shaved when she was in the coma. it grows back thru s4. it she keeps one side shaved cause she’s cool)
meanwhile tim is recruited by that dumbass man you know who i don’t even wanna say his stupid fucking name
sasha gets daisy out of the buried. they become avatar pals!
(there is the biggest blank in my memory where all of season four should be. at this point i should just relisten to the entire fucking show but i would literally just forget it all again)
melanie says hm. fuck this! and blinds herself. she goes to live with georgie (and that’s the moment jon and sasha realize they are both georgie’s exes FHFHDJD)
tim continues to fight the lonely pull. he thinks that since p*ter l*kas is tied to the institute, he can blind himself out cause melanie was successful. he is wrong. he is also interrupted by elias midway, and only blinds one eye, and loses most of his sight in the other. elias’s hold on him is weak, but this just drives him way farther into the lonely.
gotta be honest i remember the end of season four but like i couldn’t visualize what was happening at the end so i like don’t understand what happened JGDKFJGD but sasha intervenes (???) and peter yeets tim into the lonely (???) and sasha jumps in (??????) after him. elias is just there i guess?
instead of “look at me martin,” sasha finds tim and at this point her form is warped and hard to recognize because of stranger powers, and tim is almost 100% blind, so she says “don’t look at me, see me. see me tim, it’s me.” and finally creates a clear image of herself. “it’s...it’s you. you’re my sasha.”
they break free and go to scotland i guess KHSDDKDSF
idk what happens with jon and martin im losing continuity at this point. fuck it, they smooch <3
“ah these are the statements.”
“yes. basira said last week she’d send some up as soon as the archives weren’t a crime scene. and she wasn’t sure which ones you’ve read already, so she, she just said she’d send a bunch.”
“.........Hello Sasha.”
(alternate ending: personally i think sasha would read through each statement before speaking them aloud cause that’s what i would fucking do, so she would get this statement and be like “lmao tim come look at this elias trying to prank me dumb bitch think i’ll start the apocalypse for him. fucking little puny bitch boy. anyways what do you want for dinner?”)
SEASON FIVE:
“just. listen.”
“...i’m dead. and you have been chosen to be my replacement as head archivist. hopefully, this means you, jon, but if someone else is hearing this, and elias has made a different choice for some reason, then these words are still very much intended for you.”
sasha in full stranger avatar mode and is like 8ft tall and her faces shift a lot as they go through the realms. except the stranger is the second to last one (the panopticon is last obviously).
helen and michael actually talk shit out in the spiral hallway and now they are mlm wlw solidarity and both like tim and sasha are such bi and trans icons <3 this is so fun don’t you love the fearpocalypse <3
oh daisy n basira trapped in the hunt, and jon and martin are trapped in the stranger. wtgfs + the admiral are like in space or some shit idk but they are ok :)
not much to report other than she is my monster wife <3
i really don’t have many theories to how everything in s5 is gonna pan out, and i would like to closely mirror the actual show, so maybe as we get closer to the end i’ll build more on to this! thanks a lot for all the notes on my first sarchivist post!! also if u wanna make art this specific au DEF tag me in it i’d love to see!!
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bnha-scenarios · 4 years ago
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☕️ Special Thanks ☕️ 
As always, thank you so much for the coffee! Your kindness are very much appreciated! ♡
Emilija | Regan | Nela Kovaříková | 1 Anon
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Onwards to the progress update.
I had. So. Many. Things. That I actually wanted to complete.
… Alas, work decided to be a bitch and swamp me with things to take care of. To put it simply, there were a lot of issues that caused a lot of overtime work even on weekends, so I had to step away from coding most of the time so I won’t burn myself out.
So yeah, I didn’t manage to complete a lot of features, though I did dabble on some stuff here and there. I’m not happy with the rather small progress either. But life happens, and there are just other things that are more important sometimes. So we just have to let it go and look forward to the next month!
I’d say that this month I was quite productive in terms of organization and planning instead of the actual coding. I have at least identified what I need to write for the ‘free activity’ time of the game, which makes about 30-40% of the gameplay itself. However, actually writing the scenes and executing it is a different effort altogether, which I have only started to embark on.
Still, it’s crazy to think that the development for the full game has been actively going for around three and a half months now. Whew. Knowing that I have a tendency to hyperfocus and then get tired of something after a short time frame, I’m going to at the very least give myself a pat on the back for still keeping this project up and running until now.
More details below ↓
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Added Route: Kirishima
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Let me preface this first with a declaration: I won’t be adding any more love interest after this. Please please please don’t make me do it 😅 Going through all the plans and re-setting up things to figure out how to add him in was such a painful experience…
But anyway. I will be adding this boy’s route to the full game, because a lot of people seem to want to have him in the game. He does seem like a fun character to write, so I thought I’ll give him a chance.
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Gameplay
Places, Schedules, and Hanging Out with the Boys
I think you would have noticed from the last two devlogs, but there are several activities you can do in-game. One of them is to visit a place of your choice at a certain time in a day.
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Some places can be unlocked when you reach a certain threshold in a specific stat, and there are others which will be unlocked when you reach a specific threshold in a character’s affection meter. Nai will message you whenever you manage to unlock a new place to visit, so keep a lookout for that!
But what happens when you visit a place?
Well, each character has their own schedules -- which you should be able to figure out either by coincidence or by talking to them at school when prompted to do so. Your Quirk will allow you to see the unlocked schedule of each of the characters, so my advice would be to check it out before deciding where to go! If you manage to come to a specific place at the correct time, you will bump into them. Normally, this will trigger a set of actions you can perform: Talk, Action, and Skinship.
Talking is a safe way to increase your love interest’s affection meter, especially in the first half of the game. More topics can be unlocked under some requirements. Generally, it doesn’t matter where you are, the topics you can talk about will be the same. There are topics which might trigger different reactions depending on how high your love interest’s affection is, so have fun finding them! However, be warned that most topics can be selected only once!
Action is another safe way to further increase your love interest’s affection meter. Unlike talking, different places have a different set of actions you could select from. More actions can also be unlocked under some requirements. Responses to this doesn’t exactly change based on the character’s current affection level, and it’s not limited to one time only.
Skinship is a riskier way to boost the affection meter: simply put, it’s a high gain with a high risk. Consider the character’s current affection level when you’re selecting from this list! He might not like it if you go touchy-feely when you’re not that close yet.
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On the other hand, when his affection is high enough, you’ll find that you can have a lot of fun choosing the various options here. So be smart, bide your time, and have fun ;)
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And that’s not all! Interaction is a two-way street, so depending on how your love interest views the main character, he will initiate Talk, Action, or even Skinship. There’s a lot of variations in here, and I hope you’ll have fun with this mechanic! I certainly am having fun while also pulling out my hair out of frustration designing this and trying to put the mechanism to control this into code…
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Progress-wise, I think at the very least the functions for controlling this specific mechanic have been 80% completed. The actual writing however, is another story. There are still hundreds that I still haven’t had the time to write yet, and most of them are not yet coded in. Those who have been coded in still don't have sprites and music, so really, I’ll just say that the writing progress for this part is less than 1% completed….
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On the left is the currently WIP full game project, with what I would say around 2-4% dialogue scripted in. And on the right side is the completed demo project.
…. Can you see how much effort the whole game is going to take me now? I did say to strap in and relax, cause this is going to be a long ride. And I wasn’t kidding lol
"Nai"
Although throughout the first week, the story will flow as your environment / characters around you teaches you on how the game works, I’m aware that the game mechanics might be hard to understand for casual players who aren’t too used to playing otome games (or games in general). Which is pretty much why I’m giving you a ‘helpline’ of some sort, in the form of another character.
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Why a character? Because I can and I want to. Shush 😆
If you’ve played the demo, chances are, you’ve encountered a name which you had no recollection of existing in the canon My Hero Academia universe. Well, you’re right. Like the player’s character, Nai (full name: Namae Nai / 名前 ない) doesn’t exactly exist in the canon universe, but she’s here to help you throughout the game. (She’s also there because if she wasn’t, 1-A class members becomes odd number in total and that just feels weird to me -- plus, the team exercise system in Heroics wouldn’t exactly make sense if the class has odd number of students)
For those of you who hate Original Characters with a passion (why tho), you don’t need to worry too much. She won’t be an intrusive character in the plot and will mainly not contact you unless she really has to (seriously, her full name literally means ‘no name’, so give her a break, ok?). And if, even then, you still hate her, well.... Too bad you won’t be able to enjoy the game, I guess.
For those of you who don't mind her existence: I hope you’ll take a liking to her dark sense of humor and appreciate her helping you get through the game!
Others
Fixed some bugs regarding unlocking Special Moves from certain activities and games.
Played around and customized the ‘input name’ for a little bit, so it wouldn’t awkwardly sit on the bottom of the screen. I have 0 talent in designing UI though, so the background still stays as a black screen -- but at least it looks more prominent now.
Added a little sign to indicate which route the player has entered. I think it’s pretty cute! Hopefully you’ll like it.
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Assets
Those who follow me on Twitter would have seen this coming, but anyway, I’ll be using TMGS OSTs as the main character theme for the four love interests. Hush hush, okay?
Other than that, unfortunately I didn’t have time to do any assets gathering this month.
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Writing
Nothing much to say here. I think I managed to script around 50% of the events in the first day, but honestly I’m not completely satisfied with it so I might go back and tweak them a bit. Still a lot of scenes to be written!
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Plans for December
I'm not too sure whether there would be much progress for the next two months, since there are so many things happening and deadlines to be met at work, which is making me really unmotivated to do other side projects in my free time lately. I also feel like I haven't been taking care of my health enough ever since quarantine started, so I'm trying to get back into doing more exercises and looking for healthier food options, which also cuts into my free time and motivation I guess.
With that said, I'll still at least aim for getting some scripts coded in -- particularly for the events in day 1. Other than that, maybe hopefully some assets gathering for supporting Kirishima's newly added route, and finishing up the coding parts that I was unable to finish this month.
I'll see y'all again at the end of next month!
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vroenis · 4 years ago
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Part 2
This is part 1.
Can you tell how tired I was getting by the end? This is life under meds, but given the other benefits (I think?), I’ll take it for now.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a whole lot I was thinking about and it’s stuff I want to say given I said a lot, but didn’t cover this stuff. I’m still happy with part 1, I think that’s just how I write, moving from subject to subject more or less organically and it does show me to more unstructured even if there is a vague plan for how I want the piece to go.
Anyway let’s get going.
As always, mild spoilers for well, everything. If you haven’t seen this stuff and are mildly interested in watching them then ah, you may have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t think I’ll drop any real hard spoilers for anything but you never know.
Ghost In The Shell is an Outsider story
There are whole stacks of lore you could dive into with Stand Alone Complex in particular, with Motoko having been in an aircraft accident and getting her first shell (cyber-body) at a very early age, what that means, the thing with Kuze (avoiding spoilers here), and the extended cast - not that Paz, Boma and even Ishikawa get a whole lot of time anyway - but it’s not really that important.
Looking at just Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film, and even more-so his 2004 film Innocence (not really a sequel but usually regarded as such), the narratives cast the characters very much as Outsiders. In the first film, Section 9 is already at odds with the government in general and while it’s subtle, Aramaki as a department head is certainly different from his contemporaries, even if we don’t see much of it - again, so much more of this in Stand Alone Complex. Motoko’s early conversation with Togusa in the first film is probably the most telling as far as playing it loud. She speaks in pragmatic terms to why he’s there, but this is a precursor to what will ultimately transpire for herself at the conclusion of the film, something very intentionally written into the film. Batou is also an Outsider in more ways than one, not only in the role he plays in the department but in the very clear personal boundary between him and Motoko. There are boundaries between Batou and everyone and they become more apparent in the second film. Togusa is easy pickings so I’ll leave him alone, suffice to say if the film needs one, he’s the audience’s window of ignorance which is why he’s discarded so willingly half way in. He gets his time in the spotlight in Stand Alone Complex and it’s pretty amazing.
As for Motoko... I admit it is difficult separating my understanding of her character from Stand Alone Complex and attempting to just isolate what’s shown of her in the first film but I’ll try.
I mentioned the film’s centrepiece montage in my previous journal, in which we might say Motoko is the centrepiece but if so, she probably shares it with the city itself, and I feel much more is being said about the two together rather than separated simultaneously. This would be one of the first indications of Motoko’s sense of identity, of otherness, isolation, questioning. Again the scene that plays it most loud would be diving on the boat and her speech to Batou. There are other moments tho; single frames of her face, looks, movements that are lingered on, I feel like Oshii is constantly telling us about her and what she’s going to do, but more important than that, why she’s going to do it and how she feels.
Ghost in the Shell is a film about great emotion, and not like I’d know because it’s been a long time since I’ve looked into the discourse around it, but I suspect no-one really talks about it as a film about feelings.
I realise these days I talk more and more about moods and art being mood pieces. I labelled my Instagram account as being “A catalogue of moods” and I’m very fond of the use of the word in vernacular. It might seem flippant but it’s immensely empowered, especially for me as an individual when I understand my moods and can translate them into, via and thru art. I do appreciate many struggle with Oshii’s cinematic language as it can appear cold and detached and that’s fine, but it’s anything but for me - it’s immensely emotionally charged, it just appears differently to what audiences are perhaps accustomed to seeing. It’s a different language that perhaps takes time to learn, but it’s all there.
This couldn’t become more evident than in Innocence (the Ghost in the Shell 2 moniker I think was a western addendum). Batou takes centre stage and is  immediately presented as bluntly as possible as an Outsider, reaffirmed later by Aramaki who also cements Togusa’s position in limbo.
I should pause and say that within the GitS canon, I feel Togusa is definitely embraced by Section 9, so he’s not wholly an Outsider to the department, but for obvious reasons, he doesn’t fully share all of their daily or philosophical concerns - hence not wholly. He would also definitely be an Outsider to most other members of the force after joining Section 9, but unfortunately I’m not here to love Togusa, poor guy - I feel like he’s always a bit unloved. Someone write a giant essay in service to his greatness. He actually is great.
But I adore Batou in Innocence. I love his story, his struggle, his emotion. I love how present Motoko is without ever appearing on screen and then when she does, the impact she has on everything, especially with the lines she delivers, one of which I quoted to open the last journal. Batou is in many ways a shadow of what Motoko was and is/has become, just in physical form, mirroring her in a real world manifestation with the natural physical limitations that comes with.
For some reason I feel like I need to inject a comment about Batou putting the jacket/vest on Motoko’s body. I don’t know if people perceive this as an act of masculine modesty but it’s not how I read it. I did stumble on this action for years but as I began to interpret the films as Outsider stories, I realised that he does this as an act of inclusion, and that Motoko consents, permits him to and doesn’t immediately react with violence or technological recourse we know she is well capable of, indicates it’s mutual. Their inclusion isn’t just about the boundaries of the Section 9 department but extends beyond that, an inner circle that may only contain the two of them - inside which there are still boundaries between them Batou can never cross. Those boundaries become infinitely more apparent after the final events of the first film, and the second film effectively is all about how he feels about them. He is an ultimate Outsider, but so is Motoko in the state she now is in.
Section 9 is a department of stray dogs. Individuals who haven’t quite fit in where they belong, and found belonging with one another. Then, after a time, one of them moves on - at the conclusion of the first film, and then another feels an almost permanent and ultimate sense of separation - more or less the duration of the second film.
Ghost in the Shell isn’t about technology and sentience and hacking and corporations at all. It’s about loneliness and belonging and acceptance and affection. It’s about how that feels.
I’m Not Sure Why People Struggle With David Lynch Films
I need to stop talking about anime. Honestly I looked at the list at the start of the last journal and thought hell yea Sky Crawlers, Jin-Roh, Haibane Renmei and Lain let’s unpack some shit! but honestly I’ll run out of time and I should really draw from a variety of mediums and sources.
OK I’m not being facetious when I say Lynch’s films are fairly straight-forward narrative-wise. Again, it’s hard for me to position myself in a place where I’m not into the stuff I’m into and maybe that’s what gives me the cinematic language familiarity to parse them but that just sounds like wanker bullshit to me. I don’t mind if folks don’t like Lynch films, that’s fine. But they aren’t difficult.
So in the context of everything else, even on that short list on the last journal, plus how I keep trying to shift the discussion of works from the pragmatic reading of them to an emotional reading of them from a mood perspective, I feel as tho the same process can be applied to Lynch. So much about his films are about how they make you feel, or I’ll say - how they make *me* feel. It might be grandiose to assume I’m feeling the correct emotion, that these are the moods that David Lynch himself is attempting to create and evoke and thus, I am interpreting them correctly but hey - I enjoy the hell out of the films, feel I understand them and watch them over and over again so that’s all I’m basing it on.
That’s not to say there are things I dismiss as meaningless or that I don’t understand in his films, it’s just that I don’t have to parse them immediately at first watch and perhaps that’s the audience’s problem. I don’t know if reverse-diagnosis is appropriate but looking at how much hand-holding there is in other directors’ films might be just as telling. I mean I saw Nolan’s Tenet and was about the least confusing thing I’d ever seen in my life but apparently *that* confused people, and you know hey that’s fair I guess, but I mean Nolan did a whooooole lot of audience hand-holding in that film, I mean, the dialogue was terrible. There was so much unnecessary exposition, which I generally find in all of his films, so if an audience can’t follow that then OK sure, Lynch is going to be a problem.
The thing is popcorn cinema is totally OK. I watch it. I really love it, I’ve written about it before, it’s good Industry. There’s a lot of great creativity in popular cinema, I don’t at all think poorly of it and I love seeing a really well produced, Hollywood picture... but I guess if that’s all you consume, and I guess if folks’ short-format episodic media (aka series - think Netflix, HVO etc.) is more or less to the same standard, then it begins to make sense that anything outside of that isn’t going to make sense.
Long story short - Lynch films tell simple stories where the feeling of the film is as important as the narrative of the film. To understand the story, you have to understand the feeling, and vice-versa.
Surprise surprise, it turns out independent and deemed “fringe” film-makers... aka Outsiders... make films about Outsiders.
Now I wouldn’t know if any of the Marvel films thematically are about Outsiders or Outsider culture, they probably are and very loudly at that, but the reason I’ve never included one in my catalogue of moods is they all read the same way. Not only are Marvel films mostly indistinct from one other to me, they’re also mostly indistinct from much of popular culture in general. That doesn’t make them bad, some of them still have some pretty awesome stunts, visfx, even parts of the narratives, funny jokes etc. in them, but on the whole they’re not useful to me as things I deem truly valuable in the long-term.
It’s OK, I’m not at all going to lament the proliferation of Marvel films, a lot of them have been pretty cool and they keep people in work. Meow meow meow “the death of cinema” mate, sure - I find it more difficult to find the sorts of films I like but that’s always been the case. Humans will do what they do, it’s not a read on cinema, it’s about being an Outsider and what that’s all about. True, maybe weird shit like Lynch and Noe might be more difficult to make, but the weird-indie corner was also dominated by white men and that needs to change, so who knows what the future holds.
Can you detect the point at which I took my meds and started getting tired?
Ghost in the Shell // Innocence // What We Want // What We’re Left With
Growing up as an Outsider, I feel as tho the first Ghost in the Shell film carries the weight of isolation, questions of identity and belonging, ultimately of acceptance, empowerment and liberation. Then Innocence brings to bear very similar moods but states that things may not necessarily change for the better, they simply change state. I love that in both narratives, the main texts of hacking or corrupt corporations, crime etc. are the least common denominators and barely relevant to heart of the films. I think about the theme of icons in Innocence, icons operatively being the dolls throughout the film, and the final image of Togusa’s daughter’s gift. As humans we assume we’re to take the position of biological humanity as representative of sentience, taking moral priority over all other beings. Earlier in the film we think Togusa is in limbo, but  at the conclusion Motoko asks the question, or perhaps states that perhaps we’re all in limbo together.
I think that’s a significant part of what growing up as and being an Outsider is like, what it feels like. Christians have this saying about “living in the world but not of the world” (derived from a bible verse) and honestly I don’t think they know what it means because they just operate like a cult, but I think queers and folks with long term mental health conditions have a better idea. We are pushed out to the fringes of our social groups from an early age, long before we know or understand what’s different about us. Our peers and the adults around us do this to us because their social behaviours are so well hard-coded, even they may not even know precisely what’s different about us, they just do - and they’re right. We are different. And they don’t accept us.
Maybe I am starting to get a little more upset that weird/different art is becoming more difficult to fund and make, because it’s for us, for me. It speaks to me. You already have so much, and representation and inclusion is so important. I don’t just need queer cinema, I need weird cinema, I need moods. I need quiet, introspective, pensive, reflective, Outsider moods.
I still feel like an Outsider. I have a few people who understand more about me, but I don’t think I have a place, not in a real sense. I have never felt that. Art is one of the few places I feel any connection with anything, and connecting with people is a very odd thing to consider - honestly, I actually would really like to connect with people but the unique combination of being queer *and* autistic comorbid with bipolar makes it really tough, more difficult the older I get. And now all you want to do is fund Marvel movies. I can’t feed off of that.
I’m getting tired, I’m not making any sense. It’s time for bed.
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yannsscarf · 6 years ago
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A personal selection:
every favorite shot from every episode of Skam France season 3.
episode 1: the moment when lucas made up his mind and took the first step.
to me, its a hard one between the moment when eliott walked in le foyer and that facial expression lucas made. it's like a hit to the head and something was growing inside from that moment. but again to me the story of lucas begins here. he chose his fate, his instinct. he hesitated, swallowed, yet he still walked forward. i just love this moment so much.
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episode 2:  the moment when lucas becoming the Polaris of eliott.
specifically this shot. lucas looked back and its almost like he was searching for acceptance. its so telling with his careful, longing, slightly doubted face. he cut himself open and presented his heart to his crush, it's so bold of a move but it's so beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful. and you can see eliott’s eyes, they are lightening up like there’s nothing brighter than lucas.
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episode 3: the moment when they challenged each other.
where do I begin? or do I even need to? lucas’ eyes are telling everything. if there’s any moment that they are confirming things between them, this is the moment. lucas is challenging, eliott is challenging, they dare each other to take the first move. the tension, the desire, the nameless butterflies flying around in the air. name one stronger eye contact in tv history I’ll wait.
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episode 4: ‘i’ve watched your project.’ ‘guess we have to marry now.’
this particular shot is hands down my fav in this season. just how it resembles the dream of eliott, how it shows that lucas is definitely the polaris to eliott, how brave and beautiful it is for lucas to take a lead and show his pure admiration and love to eliott. at this moment they stopped questioning, they stopped guessing and teasing, they found each other. I might be the weirdest person but to me, locking fingers is waaaaay more poetic, sensual and significant than other physical contacts. and this moment completed me.
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episode 5: the ending shot.
how do you say, disappointed, hurt, brokenhearted, numbed and despaired? this ending shot tells you how. I don't know where to begin or how to begin to describe the feeling that I had after this scene. or how much it is enough for me to appreciate the cinematography in here. every time I watch it I'm always amazed by that certain amount of blurriness in the ending shot, as if its seen through the eyes of lucas, blurred out from time to time, losing focus every now and then, crushed by rage, despondency, and hopelessness.
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episode 6: utter vulnerability, emotionally raw, and friends become family.
I love how lucas is being the one who comforts people in the beginning and tried so hard to get himself together, yet failed in the end. the whole blue in this shot, tone-wise and emotion-wise, is thoroughly conveyed. somehow in the mood of sadness and sorrow, we felt the warmth. in the moment of taciturnity, sadness was flowing under, and the tears were their way out.
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episode 7: a fascinating dance in the rain of oil paint.
I probably rewatched this episode 200 times before i made my decision. what can say besides the fact that this clip is not only a tribute but a poem of its own. the way they swing, how they hold onto each other, the holy intimacy, and colors are everywhere as if we just walked into someone’s dream. the shot is so perfectly done it almost feels sacred to me, and nothing there should be violated. hold your breath, stop whatever you are doing, drop your phone, take a seat, and enjoy one the most beautiful shots in tv history.
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episode 8: lucas’ ability to love people.
episode 8 is probably the hardest one. too much has happened and too many need to be remembered. i actually made a final 5 and then ditched them all, come up with this one. funny thing is that no matter how many times i watch this clip, especially this scene, i can't tell if its an improvisation or its actually in the script. but either way, they have given a whole new layer of lucas’ character, his ability to love. he stares at eliott until he has gone from sight, he blows a kiss to him even no one is there to catch. this moment is when i go, this boy is far gone in love, its so silly so pure so heartwarming yet so full of strength. he has the world’s strongest empathy even tho he’s gained less during his childhood. this level of devotion and loyalty made lucas the most loveable, angelic and relatable. (btw the tip of his nose bounces when he blows kisses I’ve watched it for two hours no regret.)
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episode 9: remember stopped and lucas whispered, ‘T’es plus tout seul.’
kudos to the editing team because how many of us had goosebumps when remember was put on hold, as if the whole world has stopped and all you can hear is lucas’ mad heartbeat, following the line, ‘you are not alone anymore.’ its so simple, so heartwrenching, yet so powerful. they way lucas put himself in a lower position, forehead against eliott, hands cupping eliott’s face, you don't need to hear it to know how much he loves him. its written on his face.
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episode 10: the tears of Juedi 17h32.
lucas has cried many times during this season. too many times to the point some pious, mindless people started to complain about it. I’ve said it before but I gotta say it again, be grateful, be devoted, it really is a privilege for us to sit there and witness them all. his emotions through his tears in this season are priceless. and how amazing the whole crew is because they aren't afraid to show it to the audiences. society tells men that its a shame to cry, and most of them act along. lucas said, fuck it, I’ll cry whenever I feel it. and isn't it just the most beautiful, important thing in the world? to me, episode 10 has blessed us some of the most accurate, sincere, on-point reactions. eliott’s honest monologue about his mental health, lucas’ overprotective status and his strong empathy showed up everywhere in those little details. but nothing hits me harder than this shot. the bus drifted, then the camera started pulling away but remained closeup, lucas’ emotions was poured out, everyone is feeling it through the screen. his tears are shed for sadness from parting, happiness from love and tenderness from eliott. his tears are the proof of living the moment, that lucas is living in the moment and feeling everything. and it has to be in our recognition that no one should be reserved from showing basic human emotions. 
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I specifically took some of those out and highlighted some frames just to show that I really really love them. it’s not ranked, its nearly impossible to rank them. I already had a hard time choosing between scenes. again it’s only my personal taste and some might not seem to be important at all to others. but they are truly my favourite, cinematography wise, symbolism-wise, just anything.
I can’t even say its a tribute or anything to season 3 because it’s just my simple modification of the original work. I only picked them just so I can show my genuine appreciation to the whole crew. they are the real MVP. they have to know that I for one appreciate every second of the season and every piece of transmedia content. I laughed, I cried, I got upset, I became furious, I smiled, I rolled my eyes, I looked into the void, I sighed, but most importantly, I learned.
lucas lallemant, being the little hero he is, really had me fall hard. i don’t even know how to use my pale, plain, tasteless words to describe how much i love him. i love him knowing that i could never reach his level of bravery, and it doesn’t matter. i have thousands of words for him yet somehow I can’t say anything.
I guess if parallel universe does exist, maybe I’ll meet him, hold his hands, might even say thank you even if it sounds strange as hell. but I do thank him.
thank you lucas, for you being you, for always choose love. Thank you for never quitting, for never stop fighting. Sometimes I take a look at you and I tell myself, somewhere in this universe you exist, and that’s such a bliss. I don’t know what did I do to deserve you, such a gentle soul, such a golden heart. Thank you for just, your whole existence. I take a look back of the teenager me and seeing the things that I’ve missed, people who I’ve been wronged. And there’s you, lucas, there’s you. You did things that i never had the guts to do, you choose the one that I’ve lost a long time ago. And I’m so happy that you did because you deserve all the love.
You are my little hero and always will. It’s been such a short amount of time, if only I knew parting was this hard, I would give up anything just to live through these all over again, just so I can meet you one more time, just so I can see your beautiful goofy smile, hold your hands, and give you the biggest hug in the whole world, and say a proper goodbye instead of being a mess and totally out of breath because of all the tears.
I’m gonna miss you so much.
Goodbye Lucas, I love you so, so much, I really do.
Until next time.
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neven-ebrez · 5 years ago
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15x01, a look at the future through the past
Back home! I watched the episode last night and rewatched it just now. I’m sorry to say that I was baseline bored on most levels but the second time through things felt better (yay!) even if the bland factor was still there for me personally (I’m bored with most ghost stuff from SPN these days). Imo the characters basically served the plot of 15x01 instead of the other way around which is very Game of Thrones-y and 1000% not what I’m here for but I won’t talk about the details of that because I’m sure no one wants to hear that and I’m also sure things won’t stay that way long so I’ll talk about some other things instead. There are some things I can tell are a thing but I don’t know exactly what the shows means in depicting them, and others where I’m more confident in my interpretation so here we go.
I’m like 99% sure the demon in Jack is actually Chuck and that he’s basically trying to maintain his torture (I mean... the guy admitted to being a torturer ffs) of the Winchesters with the best viewing seat possible as it were (he even tells Dean point blank he’s a “fan”). For some reason only Dean and Cas got the focus for this (torture) tho and not Sam. With Dean it was the demon reminding him of how dark and brutal Dean can be himself (via his time with Alastair). Dean blows that off pretty quick and isn’t too visibly effected, commenting that it was a long time ago. With Cas the torture came in the demon’s possession of Jack himself, Cas saying bluntly that he can’t even look at Jack and that demonic possession is basically defilement. Cas is clearly more effected and Dean’s harsh “Jack is DEAD!” tonally recalled S13 in many ways. Also oddly the demon admits Dean is gorgeous but not the same is said of Cas, with the demon insulting him instead. Two interactions. Two wildly different responses. It’s the demon putting Dean and Cas at odds without any interaction needed from them themselves, though the latter comes in spades and is the only focused on “true” conflict of the episode, set against soft Sam/Dean exchanges.
The blend of Cas’ angelic nature along with his human nature was also heavily, heavily highlighted in the episode. It was probably the most highlighted thing in fact. Cas smiting and healing. Cas shooting a gun and throwing rocks. Cas tells Dean he wouldn’t starve to death in the crypt (which, on a side note, has huge Buffy vibes for me, along with Belphogor (sp?) calling the Hell rip or whatever the “Hellmouth”). Cas can see the demon’s demonic face easily despite episodes like 14x01 (also written by Dabb) where he can’t see a room full of them (I think I argued back then that Cas was willingfully trying to ignore and was annoyed with his angelic nature). Cas’ angelic side gets another highlight when Sam accidentally shoots Cas and he doesn’t get truly injured. This particular scene seemingly serves no other purpose other than to highlight Cas’ difference (as non-human) in general. Emotionally tho, Cas’ human side is on full display. He’s worried about the town’s people. He’s annoyed with both Sam and Dean for different reasons at different points. Cas bodily removes the demon from sharing the same space as him because the demon upsets him. Cas can not even LOOK at “Jack” but Dean (and Sam) can. As I said, it’s similar structurally to how S13 handled Dean dealing with Cas’ death in comparison to Sam moving on from it. It functions to show that for Cas his relationship with Jack is different from Sam and Dean’s, however otherwise similar in the fact that TFW all see Jack as their child, their family. It’s exactly like how Cas is different to Dean as compared to Sam.
Back onto demon “B” whatever tho. Interestingly, we never see the demon smoke into Jack. Then he just “”happens”” to know every spell needed to help the Winchesters but for Dean and Cas two things are required for sacrifice/gathering. In each, one component is dead-like and protecting (salt, goofer dust) and the other channels life/creation (a heart and angel blood). Each time there’s a duality in play. Curiously Sam is not involved in any of this with the demon for whatever reason, making the demon (within the season’s structure as presented so far) a primary component of Dean and Cas’ differences. They are tests of free will for them specifically in a way. What will each person “freely” give/obtain for the demon? To me, it just all screams this thing/demon is really just God fucking with them in every way he can but while maintaining some ally aligned position physically. It’s Chuck’s literal MO.
Also. The show is back to Dean blanketly treating Cas like shit. Which we know happens in waves constantly but as a Cas fan it’s still annoying to watch for the umpteenth fucking time. And they haven’t even pinpointed the *exact* reason here for all the snapping (yeah, pacing, I know). The audience has to do some connecting the dots here I feel. They have to have a certain understanding of how Dean needs Cas. I *think* the takeaway is that Dean uses Cas as an emotional punching bag when he’s actually mad at himself and that instead of getting so angry with himself these days that Dean’s decided yelling at Cas is a better/healthier way for him to deal with himself. Which is absolutely unfair and devastating to Cas, but it’s what Cas (unfortunately) has become to Dean. It’s like when he told Cas he was dead to him at the end of S14 because of Jack killing Mary. Dean’s really mad at he, himself, for ignoring the warning that was always there. Not really Cas. But Dean has yet to apologize and/or rectify this. This is the (ongoing) problem for Dean and Cas. Point blank.
At this point if I was Cas I’d just leave and not come back. He doesn’t deserve the way Dean constantly treats him. Dean doesn’t “need” Cas like this but he’s become comfortable using him like this. This is so jarring from the understanding Dean shows Cas in late S12. And from the grief arc he has in S13, followed by the relief he shows when Cas returns. Dean never learns how to properly “claim” Cas, however. Looks like this time instead of killing Cas the show (like in S8) is gonna have Cas choose to stay away (after 15x03?) I guess, prompting Dean to do some reflecting or whatever following this (What is Cas to me? Why do I actually need him? How should I treat him?). But honestly I’m not thinking of the reflecting right now. Or the “after” or whatever. I’m just thinking about how shitty Cas is being treated RIGHT NOW and it 1000% makes me wanna just drop the show and not watch anymore until it’s over. I’m just not interested in torturing myself for months watching this slowly drag out but apparently I’m so masochistic and love Cas so fucking much that I will. GODDAMMIT
Onto “pipes” I guess. This is where I point out that I don’t know what the show is going for here but I’ll throw around some ideas. Pipes had a lot to do with the episode. Sam thinks he hears water flowing in a pipe in the crypt and they think they can escape through the sewers. Wrong. Later, Sam tells the sheriff that a pipeline burst near the town. Lies. And lastly there’s a plumbing truck outside the home where the clown ghost slaughtered the birthday party (uh... where’s the bodies btw?). So everywhere we have the imagery of pipes bursting and needing to be fixed. Which, water has nothing to do with Hell, not really. I guess the Hell “rip” is kinda acting like a burst pipe?? Water is usually associated with angels/Cas/change tho. My best guess is that it’s repurposed Michael imagery since good ol’ Bel-whatever let us know Michael’s cage door is busted open and he’s just sitting there for now apparently. I’m not confident in my interpretation here at all though. All I can tell is that busted pipes as imagery (something likely associated with lying/wrong) for something is a thing.
In general I’m going to say 15x01 didn’t even feel like a Dabb episode to me. I honestly wouldn’t have guessed he wrote it. Since I didn’t care about the random people under attack (women running and scared and not tougher is always a hard sell for me personally) I found myself frequently saying “why aren’t they doing _______?” a lot during the episode. Ghosts needing to run? Why? I mean, I get the show wanted to show how the magical border worked but this could have been done in many other more effective ways utilizing tension more. It almost felt like the show didn’t know what to do with its S1 self and so visually everything ended up looking so very incredibly cheesy and not just in the way the colors are no longer desaturated. It literally looks like the show can’t go back into what it was. We saw this visually with a sign that cropped up in several shots as Sam and Cas tried to get the girl and her mom to safety. It was a cul de sac sign.
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Here’s a video on why cul de sacs as a design became popular. In short, following the rise in popularity of the automobile neighborhoods are designed for safe car use, above all else. They don’t want outsiders passing through and they want things to be slower. When cars got popular streets were redesigned away from the traditional city “grid” (where accidents happened at intersections most commonly) with features that instead had safety in mind. I choose to interpret this as a visual comment on the show’s design. The Sam n Dean show is like a city grid, dangerous, while the Sam, Dean, Cas, Rowena, and Jack show offers more “safety”. That’s why we get it framed like this imo, between Sam and Cas. Things looked one way before Cas, and another after. Things have changed from the grid and they aren’t going back, for a variety of reasons.
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Since the episode title recalls the movie Back to the Future I thought we’d have more of a visual/dialogue tie in tbh. I’ll try to talk about what we thematically did tho. BTTF is a movie about a boy overcoming his impulsiveness to be an alpha male who isn’t scared. This wasn’t a goal of the boy himself necessarily but it was an effect had upon him just the same by the story and his experiences. The movie bookends on this character development. In between the movie is about the disconnect of generations, how kids don’t see their parents in the way they see themselves and vice versa. It’s also about trying to set right familial relationships into proper categories. Marty’s mom, Lorene, accidentally falls in love with her own son instead of Marty’s father, George. Marty’s existence is then threatened and he must spend the movie trying to understand his parents and help them fall properly in love, thus saving and changing himself and them. We only get shades of these themes in the episode, like when the demon (in Jack’s body) calls Dean gorgeous and it makes him uncomfortable. Divorce (unhappy marriage) is also touched upon with the sleepover/makeover girls. In BTTF Lorene and George do not have a great marriage as George lacks confidence but Marty’s interactions with George in the past help change this in the future and their family is much better for it.
We are told in PR that Dean’s “conditioning” and him changing from that is a big part of what SPN is and has always been about. This is similar to how Marty must learn to properly deal with bullies (as he sees his father as weak and overcompensates to distinguish himself from him) and not letting them have power over you. Chuck is like Biff in this structural comparison. Biff is someone we watch become depowered over the course of the movie and I feel this is similar to what the show will likely do regarding Chuck. I could go further in depth here but these are the general thematic points this episode alone addresses. Only with Marty’s character development does he stand to have a happy life with his girlfriend, Jennifer. Back to the Future ends with another call to adventure and its script is widely regarded as “perfect” by many. Quite the structural comparison for SPN to be making. We’ll see. We’re currently stuck in the past for now. Onward, to the future...
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smokeybrandreviews · 5 years ago
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No Fate But What We Make
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I was watching someone go in on Terminator: Dark Fate for having too many identity politics and it got me thinking; Why are all of the Terminator sequels after Judgment Day, absolute sh*t? I really enjoy the first two films and even consider the third a guilty pleasure. I remember seeing Salvation in the cinema and thinking to myself how goddamn terrible it was a a film. I passed on Genisys when it was released in theater but caught it on VOD. Man, the less said about THAT clusterf*ck, the better. I passed on Dark Fate, too, until it hit home. Admittedly, i liked that one more than it’s predecessors but that’s because it’s basically Terminator 2 with hints of the emotional sprinkled in, and the T-X from 3. With a world rich in potential like the Terminator franchise, why can no one make a good sequel? Why do all of these movies constantly suck? Interestingly enough, i think each subsequent film explains, through there very existence, why the franchise needed to end after Judgment Day.
Judgment Day - The Narrative is closed.
Sarah and John Connor are over. Their story is done with the climax to Judgment Day. There is no where to take those characters. Forcing them into a narrative outside of the future war will never work. I liked what they tried to do with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but even that plot got convoluted and asinine real quick. Which is why i find it funny Genisys cribbed a ton of ideas from it. Sarah Connor’s story is, one hundred percent, resolved. After Judgement day, she’s irrelevant. That film was the passing of the torch to John, so to speak. It’s supposed to be his franchise now, like Dragon Ball Z was supposed to be Gohan’s series. Thing is, how do you tell that story? How do you embellish John’s narrative without making a contrived cash grab? The answer is you can’t. That’s why Cameron never revisited the world of Terminator. His story was done. Those characters were finished. To him, the story was told and there weren’t anymore to tell. That don’t stop studios, tho!
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Rise of the Machines - No one cares about awkward adult John Connor
Terminator 3 is a notorious cash grab of a story but i like it enough. It’s harmless to the mythos, overall, and has some cool ideas but it falls short in so many other aspects. I think this one was the first to be rated PG-13, which neuters much of the action the franchise was known for. It kind of made up for it with Kristanna Loken naked and wet for a little while. Also inflate-o-boobs. The killer flaw with this movie is the fact no one cares about John Connor as an adult outside of his war time bad-assery. That bit with the nightmare he couldn’t possibly have, because he has no idea what the future war looks like, in the beginning off the film? Yeah, that’s where the franchise should of went. That’s where the logical narrative progression goes. That’s what everyone wanted to see. Instead, we got a vagabond John Connor who’s too stupid to move out of the city he grew up in, after “dropping off the grid.” Shenanigans ensue, Terminatrix occurs, Judgment Day still happens. Colonel Candy is the best thing about this movie and that scene was cut completely out of the goddamn movie. Also, what the f*ck happened to Cyberdyne?
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Salvation - The future war needs to have a compelling story
The thing about Salvation and why it failed so miserably even though it is exactly what fans wanted, is the fact that it’s rehash crap. You get glimpses of that dystopian future in the beginning of the first three films, each peek getting better and more elaborate as budgets increase and tech gets better. By the time Salvation blew it’s load all over cinemas, every one had an idea about what that war would look like. How awesome would it be to see a wave of robot skeletons unloading on human targets. The “creatives” chose to set this film in the beginning of the goddamn war. John is not the bad-ass he should be. He’s kind of a petulant asshole, to be honest. I mean, motherf*cker ain’t even in charge. More egregious is the fact that this is literally Terminator 2. all over again. Adult John is Reese, Young Reese is young John, and the T-8oo is that weird hybrid dude. There are some original elements but they’re terrible and inconsequential. We were promised a barren, dystopian, world of ashen skulls and metallic terrors, slaughtering humanity in unrelenting waves. We got Vietnam with cyborgs. No one asked for that. You showed us what we wanted and gave us a box of sh*t instead.
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Genisys - Set it in an alternate timeline that convolutes the already convoluted mythos
Alternate timeline is actually a viable option and completely plausible withing the established law of the universe. Genisys made an attempt at this and i thought it was an admirable try. Unfortunately, the movie starts a convoluted mess. If you go this route, you have to set up a brand new narrative, a brand new arc. You need a new conflict and new characters. You can’t rehash the sh*t you did before because, at that point, why the f*ck am i watching the new movie? Why wouldn’t i just watch the original content? That’s exactly the trap Genisys falls into. There’s a lot of great ideas but the execution was just plain awful. All of that time jumping and alterations and whatever else, created a plot so bloated, you’d be forgiven in you thought it was ripe for slaughter. Terminator was never this heady. The plots to the most successful entries in the franchise are exceedingly simple. Protect Sarah Connor. Protect John Connor. Stop Skynet. What the f*ck is the plot to Genisys? Why is there so much extra sh*t in the way of the three leads and their development? I liked Terminator John though. That design was dope as f*ck. Also, i have a massive crush on Daenerys Targaryen so watching her in anything is kind of dope. Even this fart. 
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Dark Fate - Reboot the franchise but cling to the old like your life, and profits, depend on it
This option is probably the best option going forward. I would love to see the future war that Cameron envisioned but i doubt he revisits this franchise. He’s got a hard-on for Fantasia or Avatar or whatever the f*ck the blue cats do over there. Dark Fate f*cked up by being wildly unoriginal. Everyone says it’s the best sequels since Judgment Day but that’s because these assholes pulled a Force Awakens and literally just remade Judgment Day. It’s the same movie, beat for beat. They even brought Sarah Connor back to be the mentor figure. Like i stated before, there is a ton of “muh feminism” all up in this movie and that is divisive to lesser people but my problem with all of this “GRRRL Power”, i s the fact that none of them are good, well written, characters. They even found a way to make Sarah Connor a caricature of who she once was. You’d think watching her son be murdered in front of her, buy a machine from a future they eliminated, would give you some kind of PTSD. That sh*t wasn’t even remotely explored. Dark Fate hits the rarefied air of being a terribly bad narrative AND a botched rehash.
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The Terminator franchise should have never made it past Judgment Day. Those two films were excellent and told a comprehensive story. The characters reached their inevitable conclusion and most plot points were resolved. If you wanted to make a Terminator sequel, the Connor saga had to end. You absolutely had to move away from those characters and that part of the world. But that’s that conundrum; How do you create that story? What characters are even relevant to that very specific, very Connor-cenetric, narrative? Who in the Resistance is worth following? Who is in the Resistance, period? What event is worth creating? A lot of long running franchises have this problem. Aliens is crippled by this sh*t. We finally got off the Ripley train but now we’re on the David train. I feel like there are incredibly creative individuals out there that can do something with the the Terminator toy box. Neill Blomkamp immediately comes to mind. The stuff he wanted to do with Alien was incredible and I think time traveling, cyborg, war machines is one helluva world to play in. Alex garland can probably give you some sort of existential terror to grapple like he did with Ex Machina and Annihilation. I think he'd be great with portraying the incremental evolution of Skynet and it's eventually take over. Denis Villeneuve did wonders with Blade Runner. His flair for sweeping visuals and impactful scenes would be perfect to frame the future war. Any of these directors could create a dope ass Terminator film but it would be an original tale, something not tied to the Connor saga, and there's no way any studio would allow that to happen, not in this tepid Hollywood atmosphere. There is a distinct lack of creativity in Hollywood and an acute aversion to taking actual risks. That sh*t has handicapped the box office. That sh*t is why all we get are reboots , sequels, and reimaginings. That sh*t is why Terminator should have died back with Judgment Day.
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smokeybrand · 5 years ago
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No Fate But What We Make
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I was watching someone go in on Terminator: Dark Fate for having too many identity politics and it got me thinking; Why are all of the Terminator sequels after Judgment Day, absolute sh*t? I really enjoy the first two films and even consider the third a guilty pleasure. I remember seeing Salvation in the cinema and thinking to myself how goddamn terrible it was a a film. I passed on Genisys when it was released in theater but caught it on VOD. Man, the less said about THAT clusterf*ck, the better. I passed on Dark Fate, too, until it hit home. Admittedly, i liked that one more than it’s predecessors but that’s because it’s basically Terminator 2 with hints of the emotional sprinkled in, and the T-X from 3. With a world rich in potential like the Terminator franchise, why can no one make a good sequel? Why do all of these movies constantly suck? Interestingly enough, i think each subsequent film explains, through there very existence, why the franchise needed to end after Judgment Day.
Judgment Day - The Narrative is closed.
Sarah and John Connor are over. Their story is done with the climax to Judgment Day. There is no where to take those characters. Forcing them into a narrative outside of the future war will never work. I liked what they tried to do with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but even that plot got convoluted and asinine real quick. Which is why i find it funny Genisys cribbed a ton of ideas from it. Sarah Connor’s story is, one hundred percent, resolved. After Judgement day, she’s irrelevant. That film was the passing of the torch to John, so to speak. It’s supposed to be his franchise now, like Dragon Ball Z was supposed to be Gohan’s series. Thing is, how do you tell that story? How do you embellish John’s narrative without making a contrived cash grab? The answer is you can’t. That’s why Cameron never revisited the world of Terminator. His story was done. Those characters were finished. To him, the story was told and there weren’t anymore to tell. That don’t stop studios, tho!
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Rise of the Machines - No one cares about awkward adult John Connor
Terminator 3 is a notorious cash grab of a story but i like it enough. It’s harmless to the mythos, overall, and has some cool ideas but it falls short in so many other aspects. I think this one was the first to be rated PG-13, which neuters much of the action the franchise was known for. It kind of made up for it with Kristanna Loken naked and wet for a little while. Also inflate-o-boobs. The killer flaw with this movie is the fact no one cares about John Connor as an adult outside of his war time bad-assery. That bit with the nightmare he couldn’t possibly have, because he has no idea what the future war looks like, in the beginning off the film? Yeah, that’s where the franchise should of went. That’s where the logical narrative progression goes. That’s what everyone wanted to see. Instead, we got a vagabond John Connor who’s too stupid to move out of the city he grew up in, after “dropping off the grid.” Shenanigans ensue, Terminatrix occurs, Judgment Day still happens. Colonel Candy is the best thing about this movie and that scene was cut completely out of the goddamn movie. Also, what the f*ck happened to Cyberdyne?
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Salvation - The future war needs to have a compelling story
The thing about Salvation and why it failed so miserably even though it is exactly what fans wanted, is the fact that it’s rehash crap. You get glimpses of that dystopian future in the beginning of the first three films, each peek getting better and more elaborate as budgets increase and tech gets better. By the time Salvation blew it’s load all over cinemas, every one had an idea about what that war would look like. How awesome would it be to see a wave of robot skeletons unloading on human targets. The “creatives” chose to set this film in the beginning of the goddamn war. John is not the bad-ass he should be. He’s kind of a petulant asshole, to be honest. I mean, motherf*cker ain’t even in charge. More egregious is the fact that this is literally Terminator 2. all over again. Adult John is Reese, Young Reese is young John, and the T-8oo is that weird hybrid dude. There are some original elements but they’re terrible and inconsequential. We were promised a barren, dystopian, world of ashen skulls and metallic terrors, slaughtering humanity in unrelenting waves. We got Vietnam with cyborgs. No one asked for that. You showed us what we wanted and gave us a box of sh*t instead.
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Genisys - Set it in an alternate timeline that convolutes the already convoluted mythos
Alternate timeline is actually a viable option and completely plausible withing the established law of the universe. Genisys made an attempt at this and i thought it was an admirable try. Unfortunately, the movie starts a convoluted mess. If you go this route, you have to set up a brand new narrative, a brand new arc. You need a new conflict and new characters. You can’t rehash the sh*t you did before because, at that point, why the f*ck am i watching the new movie? Why wouldn’t i just watch the original content? That’s exactly the trap Genisys falls into. There’s a lot of great ideas but the execution was just plain awful. All of that time jumping and alterations and whatever else, created a plot so bloated, you’d be forgiven in you thought it was ripe for slaughter. Terminator was never this heady. The plots to the most successful entries in the franchise are exceedingly simple. Protect Sarah Connor. Protect John Connor. Stop Skynet. What the f*ck is the plot to Genisys? Why is there so much extra sh*t in the way of the three leads and their development? I liked Terminator John though. That design was dope as f*ck. Also, i have a massive crush on Daenerys Targaryen so watching her in anything is kind of dope. Even this fart.
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Dark Fate - Reboot the franchise but cling to the old like your life, and profits, depend on it
This option is probably the best option going forward. I would love to see the future war that Cameron envisioned but i doubt he revisits this franchise. He’s got a hard-on for Fantasia or Avatar or whatever the f*ck the blue cats do over there. Dark Fate f*cked up by being wildly unoriginal. Everyone says it’s the best sequels since Judgment Day but that’s because these assholes pulled a Force Awakens and literally just remade Judgment Day. It’s the same movie, beat for beat. They even brought Sarah Connor back to be the mentor figure. Like i stated before, there is a ton of “muh feminism” all up in this movie and that is divisive to lesser people but my problem with all of this “GRRRL Power”, i s the fact that none of them are good, well written, characters. They even found a way to make Sarah Connor a caricature of who she once was. You’d think watching her son be murdered in front of her, buy a machine from a future they eliminated, would give you some kind of PTSD. That sh*t wasn’t even remotely explored. Dark Fate hits the rarefied air of being a terribly bad narrative AND a botched rehash.
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The Terminator franchise should have never made it past Judgment Day. Those two films were excellent and told a comprehensive story. The characters reached their inevitable conclusion and most plot points were resolved. If you wanted to make a Terminator sequel, the Connor saga had to end. You absolutely had to move away from those characters and that part of the world. But that’s that conundrum; How do you create that story? What characters are even relevant to that very specific, very Connor-cenetric, narrative? Who in the Resistance is worth following? Who is in the Resistance, period? What event is worth creating? A lot of long running franchises have this problem. Aliens is crippled by this sh*t. We finally got off the Ripley train but now we’re on the David train. I feel like there are incredibly creative individuals out there that can do something with the the Terminator toy box. Neill Blomkamp immediately comes to mind. The stuff he wanted to do with Alien was incredible and I think time traveling, cyborg, war machines is one helluva world to play in. Alex garland can probably give you some sort of existential terror to grapple like he did with Ex Machina and Annihilation. I think he'd be great with portraying the incremental evolution of Skynet and it's eventually take over. Denis Villeneuve did wonders with Blade Runner. His flair for sweeping visuals and impactful scenes would be perfect to frame the future war. Any of these directors could create a dope ass Terminator film but it would be an original tale, something not tied to the Connor saga, and there's no way any studio would allow that to happen, not in this tepid Hollywood atmosphere. There is a distinct lack of creativity in Hollywood and an acute aversion to taking actual risks. That sh*t has handicapped the box office. That sh*t is why all we get are reboots , sequels, and reimaginings. That sh*t is why Terminator should have died back with Judgment Day.
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