#some of the images in episode 23 were fucking incredible

[spindleandsnake]

I am thinking so hard about how Jack said they sampled audio of wind in the stellar combustor that got negative reviews on the website it was uploaded to because it “didn’t sound like wind”

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

MAC!!! GOOD EVENING!!!!!! im thinking soo hard abt interesting fairytale things rn but also. i would LOVE to hear abt ur danny phantom thing?(images aren't loading for me but i think? graphic novel? normal novel?? 👀) ??????!!!! i'm peripherally interested in dp on the basis that my beloved mutual (u) is into it & im!!!! curious!!!! whys it so good!!!! tell me!! free infodump card for u 👀👀👀

THIS ASK IS A MISTAKE. BEWARE. FUCK. DUDE I COULD TALK ABOUT DANNY PHANTOM FOR SO LONG IM NOT EVEN KIDDING IVE GOT . NEARLY 20 YEARS WORTH OF LOVE FOR THIS SHOW. I AM 23 YESRS OLD. THATS HOW SERIOUS I AM . IM.*THE* DANNY PHANTOM GUY THERES A REASON ALL OF MY USERNAMES ARE DP REFERENCES. ohhhh my god. where do i even fucking start. i guess ill start with agit but im still so overwhelmed with love that i have not fully processed yet so prepare for this to be a total fucking mess of words

so. the show ended in.. 2007. and. god the last episode sucks so fucking bad. bad enough that the fandom as a whole collectively agrees it does not exist it never happened . phantom planet isnt real phantom planet cant hurt you if you dont look at it or think about it ever. i could go on a whole. rant about how much phantom planet sucks but instead ill just say butch hartman (<< creator of the show) is a fucking. annoying awful person and he was greedy + wanted more money from nickelodeon than they were willing to give him so they gave him a hard limit on episodes before the shoe would be canceled. so. season 3 goes downhill SO fast and ends with the fucking disaster that is phantom planet . and !!! you know how disappointing it is to have your facorite show have a garbage ending!! it sucks!! so then there was like. a HUGE HUGE long silence where there was. 0 canon content bc hartman considered it a flop and kind of just. abandoned it until he wanted clout (there were a few gameboy games that came out after the show ended + some nickelodeon games that included danny as a character + butch made a youtube channel where he would spout absolute death of the author garbage about the show every time he wanted attention but it was mostly dead silence) UNTIL. AGIT. A GLITCH IN TIME IS THE FIRST CANON SHOW COMPLIANT CONTENT THAT HAS BEEN RELEASED SINCE 200 GODDAMN 7. FUCK . and not only is it canon compliant it is ALSO A CONTINUATION OF MY FAVORITE EPISODE IN THE WHOLE SERIES.

so. my favorite episode. is ultimate enemy. it was one of the 4 movie-length episodes and the basic premise is. danny uses his ghodt powers to cheat on a huge standardized test and this sets off a butterfly effect reaction that leads to a timeline where his family + friends get killed in an explosion and he loses his mind and turns into the worlds most powerful villain <3 you can see why i like it so much im sure (<< guy who has a documented chronic weakness for stories where a good guy turns bad etc)

SO AT THE END OF THE EPISODE. Dan (the evil future danny) is trapped and locked away forever . but at the end of the ep theres a scene that hints to a possible future episode where he escapes !!!! so there was always a teased sequel but this sequel was never created due to aforementioned. budget issues and cancellation. etc. buggest disappointment of my life. UNTIL AGIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

it was released. july of this year . and i am just reading it now bc its been burning a hole in my bedside table bc it never felt like the right time to read it until this morning for some reason. and fuck its so good its literally everything i wanted.

i dont know how involved butch hartman was in the creation of it but the author (gabriela epstein) is obviously someone who cares deeply about the show and the characters and im so fucking happy about it she did an incredible job. i literally had to pause a handful of times in the first few pages just because the characters and dialogue were written so well and it was like SUCH a breath of fresh air (the fandom is. so bad. its so bad. because its been around for so long people have such insane warped takes on a lot of the characters and its become completely unbearable to me ive had to block the tag and its so painful. this is literally the only reason i am not reblogging dp content constantly. i have to filter it through artists i know can handle the characters properly. if i was not nerfed by the awful fandom it would be 24/7/365 dp lockdown and id be so unbearable) OH ALSO not only is agit a continuation of my alltime favorite episode, it also retcons the garbage pile that is phantom planet in a way that acknowledges that it was a real thing that happened but going back on it in a way that feels so so so so natural for the show. so it wasnt a throwaway "no that was bad lets forget about it" it was a well crafted well thought out "this was real and it sucked and the characters remember it BUT we can play with timeline so things will continue as normal" and . holy shit it was so fucking good. i will begrudgingly acknowledge phantom planets existence if only for agit.

uhhhhhhhh fuck this is so long and i am running our of directed steam so if i keep talking i will just start rambling about the intricacies and holy shit dude i could literally talk about danny phantom for hours and hours and hours and hours if theres anything else u want to know i am the guy . i am the guy forever

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Tuesday, November 22

Spike : Help me. (Buffy shoves him back and he goes tumbling.) Ohh! What part of help me do you not understand? Buffy : The part where I help you. Spike : Come on, I'm parboiling out here. Buffy : Want me to help make it quicker? Spike : Invite me in. Giles : No. It's fairly unlikely. Spike : Oh, damn it! Look, I'm safe. I can't bite anyone. Willow, tell' em what I did. Willow : You said you were gonna kill me, then Buffy. Spike : Yes, bad, but let's skip that part and get to the part where I couldn't bite you.

~~Buffy Episode #64: "Pangs"~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

All I See is the Slayer (Buffy/Spike, M) by thedreadslayer

Once and Never Again (Buffy/Angel, T) by angelus2hot

Deliverance (Buffy/Spike, ) by VeroNyxK84

[Chaptered Fiction]

Bound Chapter 32 Coming Clean? (Buffy/Spike, unrated) by spnae

Absolute Destiny Ch. 7 (Buffy/Faith, T) by Forgotten Conscience

Shadow Over Hellmouth Ch. 23 (Buffy/Tara, M) by Tuxedo Mark

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Reunion (Book One of the Reunion Trilogy) Ch. 30 (Ensemble, M) by MCorey1317

Dies Irae Ch. 4 (Ensemble, T) by michael t

All That Is And All That Seems Ch. 40 (Buffy/Faith, M) by Malk McJorma

Waiting On My Spaceship, Chapter 6 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Chelle

The Road to Hell...., Chapter 27 (Buffy/Spike, E) by All4Spike

Baby Love, Chapter 25-26 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Niamh

Things Changed Ch. 2 - Belonging (Cordelia, T, Harry Potter xover) by Buffyworldbuilder

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork:Kiss the librarian () by lonelyhedgehoh

Artwork:BtVS Cartoon () by heroofthreefaces

Icons:Lesbian demigirl Tara pride icons () by pridebicons

Video: Buffy & Faith | Can you feel my heart? () by Liam

[Reviews & Recaps]

Buffy Rewatch 2k22 6.2 Bargaining Part 2 by handsofabitterman

I Was Made To Love You & The Body by therobinbear

Buffy Rewatch 2k22 6.1 Bargaining Part 1 by handsofabitterman

Angel Season 3 by wikiangela

[Fandom Discussions]

it’s like you have to stop yourself from tearing your hair out by badrecognition

Thinking more about the Tento di Cruciamentum by petpluto

i think about holden telling buffy she might think she’s better than the men she dates by badrecognition

“then i have to get close to spike,” you literally do not. by badrecognition

the First was so fucking funny. by badrecognition

i know s4 of angel got a lot of bad rep bc of the incest angle by badrecognition

Giles’ whole, “which shouldn’t prevent you from eventually procuring some more gainful form of employment, such as I did” line is such utter crap by petpluto

the Unseen trilogy by oveliagirlhaditright

the “first date” script by silvermars

I really wish they would have leaned more to the Xander from the end of The Zeppo by Ok-Carpenter-9778

It is absolutely mad that the show tries to make Buffy look bad for working in fast food by Brilliant-Problem605

Just started season 3 on my rewatch again and miss Joyce… by cutestcatlady

Cordy was my first mean girl Crush by The810kid

Faith’s first appearance possibly foreshadowed a couple episodes earlier. by icrystalizedx

'Think before you speak' - These characters often did the opposite of that. by Opening_Knowledge868

After the events of Chosen by GreyStagg

Thought I got rid of these by eVoesque

You’re organising a “Buffy special” at the cinema by Weezlecheesle

Is the Boom comic series over? by Dapper3031

I love the friendship Angel & Faith have by Almighty_Push91

Spike and Joyce by PopularScarcity2243

angel in what’s my line by all-seeing-ifer

for anyone who has read the “Unseen Trilogy” by oveliagirlhaditright

Some of the ways people talk about Drusilla is a bit odd? by gh-0-stcup

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

PUBLICATION: Buffy's Forgotten Replacement Has an Incredibly Cool Backstory by Screen Rant

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

The Many Faces of the Strong Female Character

The much-requested, positive counterpart to my classic “Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing” and it’s much-later sequel.  

Here, I will discuss some of my favorite fictional ladies and what makes them work so well;  given my rapturous love of women, there will probably be a sequel!  In the meantime, I talk more about portraying female characters here.

Happy writing, everybody!  <3

1.)  The Warrior

(Gif credit.) 

When most people hear “strong female character,” they picture the most popular definition of the term:  a stony-faced, emotionally shallow, conventionally attractive broad who punches and kicks stuff.  She may occasionally shout things like, “I DON’T NEED NO MAN,” while perhaps punching a small baby. 

I decided to start with my wife Diana, because she is the perfect antithesis of this trope.  She isn’t stony, she’s courageous.  She’s unabashed about showing her doubts, hopes, affections, and optimism.  Her love interest never steals her spotlight, but she feels no need to shun romance to appear “strong.”  She’s beautiful, but not sexualized or objectified.

And while most Strong Female Characters™ are ironically reduced to damsels in distress at some point in their own narratives, Diana consistently takes the lead, totally autonomous over her own story.

You can kick ass AND love babies, people.  Joss Whedon, please take notes.

(Gif credit)

Other examples:  Okoye from Black Panther, Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road, Rey from Star Wars, and Ser Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones.

2.)  The Comedian

(Gif source)

If you haven’t watched Chewing Gum on Netflix, stop whatever you’re doing and watch it right now.  Its relatively simple premise – a twenty-four-year-old from a fundamentalist Christian household struggles to lose her virginity – is a segway into a hilarious, genuine exploration of human sexuality, relationships, and how we forge our identities.

Brilliantly portrayed by the series’ creator, Michaela Coel, Tracy is essentially that one friend who knows exactly what you’ve been thinking and isn’t afraid to say so.  She is never relegated to a single trope or stereotype.  She’s stumbling, clumsily but enthusiastically, through the life experiences that shape us.  Most importantly, she is allowed to be sexually curious, awkward, aggressive, insecure, and – I can’t stress this enough – hilarious.  The dialogue is infinitely quotable, and endlessly relatable. 

(Image source)

Watching shows like Chewing Gum makes me realize how few female characters – and even fe wer Black female characters – are portrayed as truly human.  Typically, they’re allowed to be sexy, but not sexual.  They’re allowed to be awkward, but only if it’s cute.  They can be insecure, but only if that insecurity can easily be solved by the affirmations of a male love interest.  And they’re rarely allowed to be the main source of a series’ comedy.  

So remember:  let your female characters be human.  Let them be awkward, funny, sexual philosophers.  It’s easier than you think.  

(Gif source)

Other examples:  Abbi and Ilan from Broad City, Leslie from Parks and Rec, Tina from Bob’s Burgers.

3.)  The Drama Queen

(Gif source)

Watching Riverdale is like hurtling along on a structurally unstable rollercoaster.  It’s utterly insane, a lot of fun, and once you’re on, you can’t stop.

But amidst the explosions of batshit crazy plot points, killer cults, and the existential perplexity of finding yourself attracted to emo Jughead, there are some real gems.  One of these is Cheryl Blossom, and pretty much every plot line surrounding her.

Cheryl is introduced as a fairly one-dimensional, catty mean girl, though the Regina George-esque charisma with which she’s portrayed makes her instantly likable.  Initially, we expect her to be a character we’ll love to hate.

(Gif source)

And yet, within the first few episodes, I was impressed by how layered and complex her motivations were.  Much of contempt towards others was misdirected rage from an upbringing of extreme emotional abuse, and grief over her dead brother -- all portrayed without a Snape-style condonation of said behavior.  By the end of season one, my thoughts were generally, “Oh, crap, I don’t think I can claim to be watching this ‘ironically’ anymore,” and “MORE CHERYL.”

(Gif source)

Season two answered my wish, and then some.  Cheryl was saved from an (impressively conscientiously portrayed) attempt at sexual assault by a pack of her female friends, and her attacker got the shit beat out of him in one of the most cathartic moments of modern television.

To the exaltation of my queer heart, she also came out as a lesbian, in a deeply moving story arc that I never would have expected from this show.  Without spoiling too much, she and her new love interest kissing in front of anti-gay propaganda footage was legitimately one of the most powerful moments I have ever witnessed.

(Gif source)

Before the season was over, she viciously threatened her abusive, homophobic mother while covered in blood, shot a serial killer with a bow and arrow, and joined a gang.  If that’s not gay culture, I don’t know what is.

Oh, how I wish this show was just about her.

Other examples:  Alexis from Schitt’s Creek.

4.)  The Lovable Bastard

(Gif source)

Ah, The Good Place.  I have never experienced such a breath of comedic fresh air.  A new philosophical principle each episode, examined and applied in hilarious and thought-provoking ways.  A complete absence of harmful stereotypes.  Incredibly lovable, three-dimensional, and ever-evolving characters. 

I was considering using my queen Tahani for this list, who externally larger-than-life and internally vulnerable after emotional abuse by her parents.  Also, she’s hilarious.  Everyone and everything in The Good Place is hilarious.  And I also thought about talking about Janet, who is the best character in anything ever, but of course:

(Gif source)

Instead, I’ll be talking about bisexual icon Eleanor, who is something very few female characters get to be:  the lovable bastard.

(Gif source)

Eleanor, when we first meet her, is not traditionally good in any sense of the word.  She turned down a high-paying job because she was expected to be nice to people.  She sold placebos to the elderly, and was great at it.  She was drunken, slovenly, hedonistic, and selfish.  And she’s instantly incredibly likable.

Why and how Eleanor is so enjoyable, even at her very worst, merits an essay all its own.  But in a nutshell:

We empathize with her.  We are introduced to “The Good Place” completely through her eyes.  We are in her shoes.  

The stakes are high.  When we discover that her entry into the good place was a mistake, we want her to be okay.

We come to understand her, and how her terrible childhood shaped her destructive behavior.  

She wants to be a better person, and with time, effort, and character development, we watch her become one. 

Not only is this an amazing lesson in how to endear audiences to your character, it is also infinitely refreshing.  The most famous lovable bastards are all men --  Han Solo, Dr. House, Captain Jack Sparrow, the Man With No Name, et cetera -- but women are rarely afforded the same moral complexity.  If a woman in fiction has done bad things, she’s not usually a lovable bastard.  She’s usually a bitch. 

Eleanor isn’t just a great character.  She conveys an important lesson:  women are people.  People with the same capacity for mistakes, growth, redemption, and love as anyone else.

(Image source)

Other examples: Chloe from Don’t Trust the B*tch in Apartment 23

5.)  The Cinderella

(Gif source)

Yep.  I said it.  Cinderella is a strong female character.

My girl not only survived in an abusive household, she persistently stayed positive.  She worked each day to make the best of an impossible situation, from which she had no means of escape.  That takes an insane amount of courage and tenacity. 

But Caff, I hear you scream, she needed help to escape!!  Well, my imaginary counterargument, so the fuck what?  MOST people need help to escape their abusive situations, and there’s no shame in that.  Accepting help from someone you trust is the best thing you can do in a situation such as that, and implying otherwise is horribly damaging to victims of abuse.  

But she married the prince, you more feebly protest.  Yes!  She did!  She found love and happiness and a great life in a socially influential position!  And that’s an amazing message!

So in the flurry of female warriors, let’s not forget Cinderella, who tells people that their terrible circumstances won’t last forever, to stay hopeful and kind, and that accepting help from a trusted friend can lead to a happy life.  

Cinderella is a bad bitch, and she deserves her happily ever after.

(Gif source)

Other examples:  For some reason, I’m thinking of Sansa from Game of Thrones.  When people try to discredit her as a strong character, they often make similar complaints.  But both, quite fittingly, end up as queens.

[desdemonafictional]

2020 Fanfic Year End Summary

Hey ho let’s go

Nev does these every year and I think they’re interesting, so for the first time I’m gonna give it a go too. I feel like this has been the longest fucking year--the Zine feels like it was two years ago and last January feels like it was ten years ago.

I’m gonna answer some questions and do a little reflection on the year 

This year I technically finished Icarus with 2k words of a 36k story, and after that I went on to produce 197k words not even COUNTING the stuff from GPAU which I do not know how to divide up for 2020. 

That’s 23 fics in one year, 8 of which were cowriting projects. This year has been, objectively, insane. By comparison, in 2019 I produced 17 fics and at the time I thought THAT was doing pretty impressive work. Now it’s not my best year by sheer number of titles--2018 was an oil boom while I was into JTHM and I actually put out 25 fics that year, some of which were short oneshots and some of which were two- or three-shots. But in terms of words? 2020 knocked them all out of the park. Which is absolutely something I owe to my amazing friends who let me ride around in their brains like the parasite I am.

In 2018 I started cowriting with Chokopopo, in 2019 I started cowriting with Neveralarch, and in 2020 I just did a fucking ton more of that with no looking back. It’s so incredibly motivating to have someone to show your progress to! And to have someone to hand the project over to when you’re stuck. If I hadn’t had Nev to bounce off of, most of this fic wouldn’t have been thought up at all, let alone finished. And don’t even get me started on GPAU! Choko and Zephyr and me have done such amazing things with “Welcome! Everything is fine”, and I can’t wait to be able to wrap that up and leave it for posterity.

I switched job positions around July of this year, and it’s changed the way I produce fic. Not sure if it’s good yet or not. I was never actually under a stay at home order this year because I work for a state agency, so to a degree I’ve missed out on the ways that quarantine affected other writers. I think I was fortunate?

Best Title 

Ahhh this is tough, I put a lot of effort into my titles this year--I promised myself in 2019 I was going to stop using song lyrics for fic titles because they make songs loop in my brain and it’s self inflicted torment, which is a promise I... mostly kept. “Dress Your Idol in Gold and Ashes” is the one I put most effort into probably, because I kept toying around with it trying to find something that was evocative of the right pagan imagery, and also the idea that got me started on the fic was a passage in a text book about the daily dressing of an idol statue in ancient Egypt.

“Broke My Last Glass Jaw” gets special mention because I named it after an essay that I wrote in undergrad for my African American Lit course, in which I broke down themes of the spoiled american dream via the lens of 90′s rap.

Worst Title

“Take one for the Team” is definitely my laziest title. It’s just super self indulgent kink fic, no character arc or anything, so I couldn’t find a good image or phrase to bring in for the title. Also I remember I really wanted to post it quickly, since it was a response to some art I was looking at, and I wanted the artist to see. I’m sure I could have done better with the title.

I did end up titling “Fear and Delight” after a song but I forgive myself because I literally only wrote the fic because the song existed first.

Best Summary

Some of these summaries I wrote and a some I did not, but of the ones that I wrote I think.... “ I'm All Full Up on Yesterdays, Don't Sing Me No More Blues” is the best one. It launches you directly into the action, while preserving the surprise reveal at the end of chapter 1. I actually wrote chapter one with this summary in mind, so it was baked in there from the start.

Jazz turned in his seat, cube at his lips, just in time to spot the white pursuit vehicle steaming and panting in the doorway. “Jazz of Staniz,” the enforcer shouted, “surrender the matrix and come quietly!”

Jazz knocked back his drink. “Well!” he said to the open-mouthed bartender, “time to split!”

Worst Summary

I mean, summaries are hard for everyone, right? That’s the thing we all universally struggle with, I think? I usually end up liking mine, and this year I was less afraid to just let a section of the story speak for itself. Anyway the worst one is “ Broke My Last Glass Jaw” by virtue of the fact that I had to come back months later and add another line because I wasn’t satisfied with how it was reaching audiences.

After the war, Impactor is at loose ends.

(They were friends once, weren't they? After all this time, Impactor wonders if Megatron hasn't managed to forget.)

I really wanted that one line to say it all, but honestly it requires a lot of trust in me as the author and most of the people who pass by the fic in the archive aren’t gonna know me from adam. The second line clarifies what kind of story it’s going to be in terms of tone and theme.

Best First Line

I’m pretty ambivalent about most of my first lines. Since Nev already pointed out the first line in “ Apotheosis”, I have to admit, it is pretty good. It gets off to a real jaunty start.

“Excuse me,” Starscream said, striding down the steps of the senate chambers with his cape flaring out behind him, “get your cowcatcher out of his face, you tin-plated amateur despot, he’s with me.”

I also like the audacity of a run on sentence that is the opening to “ Desecrate You”

Ratchet clicks the video because it was auto-recommended, and because First Aid is always dropping hopeful hints that he wants her to watch his show when he’s supposed to be grading papers, and because something about the title (“This is Definitely a Hoax! None of this is Real! Short Cut Footage Episode”) makes her wonder why the hell someone who runs a Ghost Hunting youtube channel would bill their own hard work as a hoax right out of the bag.

Worst First Line

Definitely the least interesting is from “Tantric Sex, and Other Mysteries of the Divine”. I guess it’s another fic where I was really eager to get to the meat of the fic, and so I just went back after I was done with the fic and wrote a paragraph of bare bones setting context so we could move on already.

It’s game night at Swerve’s, and Nightbeat is out in the thick of the crew for once, getting the lay of the land.

I have the same problem in a few fics, which probably arises from the fact that when I read a fic, I often skim the first paragraph or so to see if I really want to commit to the read. So I sometimes write like I’m expecting the audience to do that too. I probably need to work on that. Man, I even did it in Sexy Staycation.

Best Last Line

I like endings! I usually have a good gut instinct for where stories should end, and how to pace that, and what image I want to close the fic on. Often times I’ll be writing a story and feeling really lukewarm about it, and then the ending will come to me, and I’ll feel totally won over by it. That happened with my Suicide Squad fic years ago. So this is for the most part me picking the best of the things I already like. “Broke My Last Glass Jaw” has a good pithy one; I like how it isolates this moment as a moment of choice, and how it’s also ambiguous whether he will change because of this or whether he’s doomed to go back to his predetermined pattern.

And despite the unguarded door and the empty inviting streets beyond, where no one wants or expects anything of him but his feterless bitter trog onward into the next waiting prison cell, Impactor lays down, and Impactor does.

Special mention goes to “ The Sky Dark in its Eclipse : Orange Light Remix”, because the ending section is one of the big changes I brought to the remix, and I’m really happy with how it alters the shape of the narrative and also how it changes the focus of Rung’s arc. Most of the actual words in this fic were written by Choko in 2018, so this is like a collab in slow motion--I changed loadstone moments mostly, some of the framing, all of the backstory, and updated the setting for Cybertron. But the ending is all me.

On the morning of Intro to Psych finals, while Hot Rod hums and taps and scrolls back and forth through his test on the front row of the testing hall, Rung will sit behind his desk and brush the dust from the rotors of his fateful archetype, and start the long process of putting the pieces together once and for all.

Worst Last Line

Again, I like my endings, so this is really the worst of the best. The original ending line I wrote for “ All Our Urgent Restless Sighing” was:

Deadlock’s finials twitched. “...I am a reasonable amount of interested,” he said, “in this topic.”

And in the beta process, Nev came back in and added the line about Ratchet and cuddling, which was a big hit with the readers it seems like. So clearly I benefitted from some help there haha!

Looking back, did you write more or less than you thought you would this year?

you know what, I definitely wrote more than I thought I would. I didn’t see “Don’t Sing Me No More Blues” coming at all, and that was once a month for most of the year. I was hoping that I would be able to write a few things outside of Transformers, because I always worry that my long spans of hyperfixation are driving away my longtime readers... and I did manage to get one hxh thing written that was good, and one hxh thing started that is mediocre so far. So I guess I’ll call that good enough.

 What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, just your favorite.

hmm I’m really proud of the Pharma chapter me and Choko put together for GPAU--the body horror, the tragedy, the lotus eater machine plot. But even though that felt like a whole ass story of its own, I guess it’s only a chapter at the end of the day. So my favorite story would be “Apotheosis”. It’s just SO much, and we had SO many things we wanted to do, and somehow we managed to do them ALL. Corpses! Children! God! It’s got everything! The only thing it doesn’t have is the idea that literally started us plotting out the fic. And that was “ritual public sex with Starscream and Rung”. Oh well. Maybe someday. Probably not.

Okay, Now your most popular story

Ha! I tend to view the success of a fic more based on its bookmark ratio than its hit count, but by the numbers, unsurprisingly, “ Don't Sing Me No More Blues” is my most popular fic of the year at a whopping 3k hits and 113 bookmarks. Well, it is jazz/prowl which means it has a built in audience of considerable size, and it also updated seven times this year which increases its net range, so no surprise. But I think people also just really vibed with it--it’s very much a product of the times we are living in, and I don’t think it could have been written in any year except for 2020. 

“Dress Your Idol” has 58 bookmarks, by the way. I’m extremely proud of that fic for having such a high bookmark to view ratio. I guess the people who did read it liked it a lot.

Story most underappreciated in its Time.

Okay nothing is as under-exposed as the stuff I produced in JTHM, so I’m definitely not complaining. It’s hard to think about leaving TF because TF is such an enthusiastic community. That said, “ Neggnog Cozy” did not get eyeballs. I’m not surprised, it’s short and it’s gen, and Thundercracker doesn’t have the built in audience of say Starscream. Still, I thought it was really funny and cute and I would have liked it if more people would have given it a chance.

Story that could have been better

Oh, “ Melusine Among the Tombs” for sure. I went into that with only the first chapter planned and immediately after realized that I had no idea where the fic was going and also I had lost my grip on canon characterization after a couple years going rusty in other fandoms. I plan to finish it eventually, but I need a better plan than “wing it???” first.

Sexiest Story

I wrote SO much weird kink this year. Like. Shout out to past me for writing some pretty spicy JTHM fic, but this year I really leaned into how weird you can plausibly get with an all robot all alien cast. 

“ The Sensual Machine” is the most unabashedly horny because it was written specifically for a weird kink themed zine that I was an editor on. “Desecrate You” is also quite horny but I almost exclusively wrote the frame device for that, so I don’t get sexy credit lmao. “Fear and Delight” was a big hit with all the hxh readers and I think it has an element of sexiness more so than pure horniness--its has a kind of glamour and style to it.

Most fun story

“Starscream's Sexy Staycation” is by far the most unabashedly comic and sexy and silly and low stakes. It has one of my favorite kinks, a beautiful stupid moment of Ratchet suffering, and Rung calling safeword which is something new and fresh and I want a lot more of it in the world.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

“ Lacunae” was given to me as a yule gift prompt with the express intention of explaining who the fuck Carmilla’s mother was, and what the deal is with Carmilla as well. This would have forced me to reevaluate my understanding of the novel except for the TEENSY insignificant fact that I realized I had never finished reading Carmilla, somehow, and ended up reading it for the first time in December in preparation for yule. So uh. Hmm.

I think “ Don't Sing Me No More Blues” made me think about Prowl in a different way. I wasn’t really expecting him to be this hard-edged idealist when I started out on the fic. He was originally going to be much more like the autistic coded Prowl of “The Cop and the Cryptid,” one of my favorite fics ever. Also, I started writing the fic about a month before the riots and police protest kicked off in America this year, and it really caused me to zero in on how Prowl being part of a system like that affects his relationship to the world and other characters.

Hardest Story to Write

“ Elegy for Actaeon of the Hounds” took me a total of six months to write from start to finish. I don’t know why. Well, It’s partly because there are three involved sex scenes and sex scenes are actually very difficult and time consuming for me to write. It’s also partly because I kept wanting it to have a character arc, and I kept getting stumped on how to handle that. Beauty and the Beast plot lift? Have Rodimus be a rabbit? Eventually I settled on the version that kept the cast tightly cinched down around Megatron and Rung, and I’m happy with the result.

Easiest Story to Write

When we were writing “Apotheosis” it felt like we were on FIRE, we were so productive and we started three other projects between us while it was in motion. But “Take One For the Team” was absolutely the most fun to write, it basically wrote itself

Most Overdue Story

“Champagne in the Final Days of Rome” was based off a conversation I had with Nev pretty early on in our friendship--Discord says it was June 2019, so that’s uhhh ten months between discussion to actual writing? And it still didn’t turn out to be the fic we were originally outlining, haha.

Oh god you know what was really the most overdue? The last chapter of “Icarus; or, Look Who's Digging His Own Grave”. It was literally a year, January to January, between chapter 12 and 13. For a while I thought maybe I was just going to have to leave it there, without resolving the time loop problem at all.

Did you take writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Writing for the zine was a big risk. I remember Nev had to reassure me at least twice that what I was writing wasn’t too weird or off-topic or embarrassing to be part of the project. Now, of course, I’m very happy with it. But my god I was nervous to post something that was like.... straight up actually bimboification applied to one of the most popular toy characters of all time.

What I learned from this is that people love horny shit, are READY to take a chance on a weird fic when its in the right wrapping paper, and when in doubt you CAN sell people on a kink they’re not really into by making the kink actually a reflection of a character arc. Are you writing this down?

Do you have any goals for writing in the new year?

Finish GPAU!!!!!!

I’d like to FINALLY sit down and do some hard work on my original fiction. I’ve been kind of waiting for the tf hyperfixation to wane so I could move forward, and I think that process is in motion now. But who knows. If Rung shows up in the new comics I might get nerfed again.

Other than that I’d like to write at least one fanfic that isn’t TF, and I would like to get this really crunchy Rung/Pharma fic off the ground so I can make some people CRY

[rhodanum]

COVID-19 roller-coaster

Despite its personal nature, I'm making this entry public, since it may be of aid to others as well, in these circumstances. Particularly for people who might end up having highly atypical symptoms like I did.

Long story short, I've been scarce from most forms of social-media for over a month because I caught COVID-19 some time before my country instituted lockdown measures. I was in hospital from the start to the middle of April (roughly two weeks) and started showing symptoms as early as March 18 (runny nose, sneezing, that I ascribed to a common cold, since at that time they weren't considered something that could present in the case of COVID-19). It took me well over a week and a half of battling symptoms at home and calling four ambulances in that time-frame, always getting dismissed on account of my symptoms not matching up with the standards presentation (aside for the runny nose and sneezing, the vast majority of my symptoms have been gastrointestinal, neurological and renal in nature, not pulmonary) before I was finally tested (on April 1st) and admitted to hospital the following day, when the test came back positive.

My timeline of events has been the following (and I'm still currently symptomatic + showed one new COVID-specific symptom even after two negative tests and discharge from hospital):

March 18 - March 23 -- constantly runny nose, post-nasal drip, sneezing all the time, a light cough. Nothing too bothersome, I dismissed it as a seasonal cold. At this point I started burping heavily, out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason.

March 24 -- woke up with a terrible back-pain, roughly in the area of both kidneys. The pain lessened as the day went on. In the evening, I had my first very clear neurological symptom -- my eyesight filled with a sort of black static (like a TV without cable signal), to the point where I could no longer read letters, discern my own features in the mirror or tell how many fingers my father was holding up. Thinking I was having a stroke or hell knows what else, I called an ambulance. The static-like effect lasted around 20 minutes and was completely gone by the time an ambulance crew arrived. They checked my blood-pressure and it was high due to the panic (174/109), so they dismissed the static as a result of the high BP and gave me an ACE-inhibitor pill to lower it.

March 25 -- started feeling kind of grotty around lunch-time. At around five in the afternoon, I vomited up all of my lunch completely undigested. An hour later, the true wave arrived. I went to the toilet with explosive, orange-colored, watery diarrhea, massive urination (wasn't drinking more fluids than usual) and vomiting, all at the exact same time. I'm not joking in the slightest when I say that I had my head in the sink, to puke and my ass in the toilet, to pee and shit out orange water, all three at the same time. The puking subsided, but the diarrhea and the urination kept up and, for the next two hours, I went to the toilet to shit and pee every fifteen minutes. By this point I was getting dangerously dehydrated, so we called our GP. She, suspecting it might be Norovirus, told me that the diarrhea needs to be stopped ASAP and my father went to buy me the necessary medicine.

March 26 -- the diarrhea was relatively under control due to the medication, but I was still pissing buckets and having to constantly drink tea to stay hydrated, with how fast my kidneys were clearing fluids. The light cough that started on March 18 got a bit worse, but not by much. I had no appetite whatsoever and attempted to eat a little at lunch, but only ended up puking again. I was worried enough about the whole thing that I called an ambulance again. The doctors claimed it couldn't be COVID-19 (by this point I was reading reports of diarrhea as a common early symptom). He listened to my lungs and said they're clear. Then he gave me an anti-emetic shot in the bum (so I wouldn't keep throwing up) and tapped my kidneys a few times. When I flinched, he said it might be a urinary tract infection and prescribed me a list of medication, with the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin at the front of it (keep this one in mind, it's very relevant for what happened next). I didn't actually have any pain when I urinated and the urine itself wasn't dark, but rather almost as colorless as water. I was just peeing far too much and the area round my kidneys was tender.

March 27 -- woke up with a persistent cough early in the morning and a sensation of  tickling in the throat, which made the cough worse. This morphed into a  very specific kind of migraine, starting from the very back of the skull  and radiating to the front, to the point where the backs of my eyes  hurt terribly as well. Still peeing a ton and drinking tea and water to stay hydrated. General state of malaise, as if there was something terribly toxic in my body, leeching all the strength and vitality out of it. Started taking the UTI antibiotic (Ciprofloxacin). My eyelids were twitching involuntarily and I had an up-and-down sensation, with some parts of the day being slightly better (able to sit at my desk and watch an episode of a show) and others, just one or two hours later, making me feel so horrid that all I could do was lie motionless in bed. Still had no appetite and force myself to eat a bit of vegetable broth Dad made for me.

March 28 -- horrendous night between the 27th and the 28th. A sensation like a knot developed in my throat and got worse and worse. To the point where, at around three in the morning, I could no longer swallow my own saliva. I could still breathe perfectly fine, no shortness of breath of anything else like that, but the feeling was as if my esophagus went and swelled shut. I had to gather up a large quantity of saliva in my mouth, tip my head back and struggle for several dozen seconds, to be able to swallow. I very nearly choked when trying to take my medication in the morning, after a sleepless night. The inability to swallow subsided, but the sensation of a knot in the throat remained. Feeling of malaise and weakness grew worse. A sensation of brain-fog came on and I could no longer focus on anything. I attempted to read fic on my phone and just ended up reading the same chapter three dozen times, because my brain could no longer process the words. Difficulty speaking and articulating my thoughts. I could still think well enough, but translating said thoughts to words or writing was incredibly difficult. I spent a whole minute just trying to get the word 'insulin' out through my mouth. I knew it, I remembered it, I just couldn't transform it from a thought into a word without a great deal of effort.

March 29 -- another nightmarish night. Not due to problems swallowing, but inability to actually fall asleep. All attempts went the exact same way:

closed eyes and attempted to fall asleep

started hearing a loud, constant and almost nonsensical monologue in my head, in my own voice, often jumping from one language to the other (English, Romanian, Italian, etc all languages I knew). It's difficult for me to describe the contents now, since they barely made any sense, but they were almost everything from a recitation of a shopping list all the way to narratives that didn't make any sense ("and then, get this, the clock bashed his face in!")

started seeing images behind my eyelids, almost as nonsensical as the words -- parades of wild color, me falling through Salvador Dali-like landscapes, images shifting hundreds of times per minute

None of these were dreams, everything was happening while I was still awake and struggling to fall asleep. I'd close my eyes, struggle mightily to empty my head and go the fuck to sleep... and within seconds, the cavalcade of words and disjointed images would erupt again, with me having almost no control over it. After a few minutes I always found the strength to jerk up and open my eyes, which silenced the voice and ended the images... but then I'd have to try closing my eyes again and the circus would repeat again. This happened hundreds of times over the entire night, before I was finally able to fall asleep for a few hours, at six on the morning.

Woke up absolutely soaked in incredibly foul-smelling sweat. So much of it that my bedsheets were wet as well, not just my pajamas.Used what little strength I had to strip the bed, take a shower and change my pajamas. By lunch I was feeling the worst I'd ever felt, shaking convulsively without having any kind of fever and begging 112 (our emergency number) for help. Several friends were worried I might be going into some kind of shock. Our ambulance service was swamped and Dad used his connections to get a hazmat-equipped team to come home and test me for COVID-19. The hazmat team claimed, like the previous ambulance crew, that I couldn't have COVID-19 since I didn't have a fever and wasn't coughing my head off. I pressed to get taken to the hospital and tested, but between them berating me for taking the risk and Dad looking petrified at the idea of me going to a hospital (and getting exposed, at this time he was still convinced I just had a strange flu), I caved and remained home. They said I was probably having an anxiety attack and left.

March 30 -- yet another sleepless night with visual and auditory hallucinations whenever I attempted to fall asleep. Utterly desperate and frantic, I spent the night scouring the Internet for links between COVID-19 and other viral illnesses and hallucinations. In the end, while reading the prospects for all the pills I was taking, I found the culprit -- the goddamn Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic for the presumed UTI (the area around my kidneys still kept hurting, but the urination continued to be painless, clear and frequent). Hallucinations and psychotic episodes were listed as one of its 'rare side-effects'. Not so rare in my case and other researchers are now taking a hard look at it and other antibiotics in its family, since the numbers of people who end up hallucinating while on the things is apparently larger than previously suspected.  

I immediately contacted my GP, who was shocked at what reaction my body ended up having to Cipro. Nevertheless, she immediately switched me over to another antibiotic we had in the house -- Augmentin, a more broad-spectrum one, but one I'd taken in the past for bacterial infections and responded well to. Urinating slightly less and able to eat a bit more, but the pain in the kidney area was getting worse.  

March 31 -- night hallucinations continued, but at a slightly reduced intensity, once off Cipro. Woke up completely covered in horrible-smelling sweat once again. Left arm numb and then painful, a reaction I was left with after a long bout of the monster-flu two years ago left me with peripheral nerve-damage due to the immune system going completely bonkers and attacking the nerves. This symptom appearing again made it clear that I was experiencing autoimmune issues once again, as a result of my immune system fighting against the SARS-CoV2 virus.

The pain in the kidney-area was growing worse and worse, even with the Augmentin treatment. By evening, I'd called a fourth ambulance in roughly seven days. The paramedics were even more dismissive than the last crew, said I just had some sand or maybe a small kidney-stone and to wait it out at home. They completely refused to take me to the hospital, claiming that I ran the risk of a COVID-19 infection over a small issue.

April 1 -- a slightly better night of sleep, the hallucinations reduced to 10% of their previous intensity, so clearly an effect of the Cipro. The brain-fog was still presence and further research pointed to it as a possible effect of COVID-19, rather than the antibiotic. Woke up drenched in sweat once again, with my cervical area hurting horribly, my kidneys in pain as well and my left arm numb once more. Completely furious and utterly fed-up, I said "fuck the ambulance service!" and begged Dad to take me to the nearest ER by car. By this point I was fearing for my kidneys and feeling so horrid that I was 100% willing to take the chance of COVID-19 infection, if I didn't have it, just to figure out what the bleeding fuck what happening to my body. He refused initially, fearing I would be infected, but was left with no choice in the matter when I threatened to walk to the hospital by myself if he wasn't willing to help.

At the ER closest to our apartment, a hazmat-equipped doctor working triage had me sit down and fill up a questionnaire of symptoms. Even without fever or difficulty breathing or persistent cough (my cough came only in the morning and lasted just a few minutes each day), everything else was enough to make him note "possible COVID-19" and give me a paper to present to our national institute of infectious diseases, so I could get tested. So Dad and me left the ER and drove to Matei Bals Institute, where the doctors were rather puzzled by me, coming in without a fever  and not coughing my lungs out. The chest x-ray turning out perfect (nothing in the lungs) only seemed to increase their skepticism, but they nevertheless tested me, before sending me home and telling me I'd receive the result in 24 hours. Their only recommendation was to talk to a nephrologist on the phone, re: the kidneys.

April 2 -- felt slightly better, though still under heavy malaise and the kidneys were more painful than ever. At about nine in the evening I got a phone call from our local public health authorities, who told me that my RT-PCR test for COVID-19 was positive. Honestly? Instead of being frightened, I was relieved. After almost two weeks of the strangest collection of symptoms I'd ever had, I finally had an explanation as to what on earth was causing them and was vindicated re: the four ambulance crews that dismissed me. The authorities sent an ambulance that picked me up, right along with Dad (quite unwillingly in his case, he only had some sniffles and a minor indigestion, despite having nursed me for well over a week). We got taken back to Matei Bals Institute, where Dad was tested and sent back home (since he didn't have much in the way of symptoms and they had no reason to keep him) and I was admitted into one of the wards. The time was roughly two in the morning.

April 3 -- barely slept due to the noise and light in the ward. Had blood drawn, for blood-work. Malaise as terrible as ever. Started treatment with HCQ (Plaquenil), the anti-malaria drug. The rest of my ward-mates were absolute sweethearts, but I was much too weak to do much other than get out of bed to trudge to the communal bathroom down the hall. Urination (which had slowly reduced in frequency from March 25) still a bit more frequent than usual. Begged the doctor for something to let me sleep and was given a few metallic-tasting, oily drops to drink in the evening. Had the first good night of sleep in well over a week.  

April 4 -- at this point, the kidney pain got so bad that I could barely walk to the bathroom and would grit my teeth in pain whenever I sat down in the bed. Asked one of the nurses for help, with no visible result. The pain was getting worse and I could no longer get out of bed, just lying there in a listless lump. Several of the other people in the beds next to me went to pound on the door separating the 'red zone' from the 'green zone' and demanded that the nurses or doctor see to me. In the end, a young nurse came and struggled for almost thirty minutes to get an IV in me. She was inexperienced and, coupled with having to wear three pairs of gloves and a visor on her face, she could barely see or feel my veins. The result was that she ended up blowing thee of my veins (two on the right hand, one on the left) before she finally managed to get the IV needle in and secured it. Then I got put on a heavy-duty regimen of IV Ceftriaxone (antibiotic), hydration fluids and painkillers, for the next few days.

April 5 - 7 -- slowly got better on the IV regimen. Gained a bit more strength, the pain in the kidney area subsided and I could walk again. Gave urine samples twice and they came back clean (no bacterial infection in the kidneys or urinary tract). On April 6 we were told that the whole lot of us (the seven of us crowded in that ward and everyone else in the same wing of the Institute) would be transferred the next day to Colentina Hospital, just a stone's throw away, which had been officially designated as a COVID-19 support unit. The reasoning was that we'd be placed in smaller wards and the Matei Bals Institute could focus on the critical and very difficult cases, that required everything from oxygen support to full intubation. My IV needle was removed on April 7 and we, dragging our luggage after us, walked from our wing at Matei Bals to the entrance to Colentina, just two hundred meters away. We were dispersed all over the Internal Medicine wing and I got lucky enough to be placed in a room with just two beds, sharing with a lovely 81 year-old lady, who was COVID-19 positive, but utterly asymptomatic. Got blood drawn again and also had an EKG done (no cardiac abnormalities). Also had another x-ray, lungs still entirely clear. Got tested for COVID-19 once again, but the result came back 'inconclusive' the next day. The treatment with Plaquenil was ceased and I received no further medication, save for what I requested to handle inconsistent stools.  

April 8 - 9 -- kept getting stronger and stronger, able to sit out of bed and walk for extensive periods of time. Bowels still somewhat disturbed and shifting between constipation and diarrhea and then back again,with the stool always being a bright, sun-yellow. Otherwise no pains or other malaise present. Got tested for COVID-19 once more on April 9.  

April 10 -- some of the first ever symptoms I had, in middle March (runny nose, sneezing, stomach constantly full of air and always burping) came back at this point, along with noticeable muscle soreness in my upper arms and shoulders, even though I'd never made any great physical effort. The test taken on April 9 came back 'negative', so the doctors ignored me when I told them that I was having old symptoms come in for an encore. Tested once again.

April 11 -- the burping and stomach-distention due to air grew worse. The 'knot in throat' symptom returned. The test from April 10 came back 'negative' as well and since I fulfilled the criteria of two negatives in 24 hours, I was discharged and had Dad come and pick me up. The Colentina doctors, completely inexperienced re: COVID-19, claimed that my gastro symptoms were likely caused by something else.

April 12 - 16 -- uncertain period, with the typical 'up and down' pattern making a return. One day I was feeling fine and had energy, the other way I was wiped out and could barely get out of bed. Frequent urination (once every twenty minutes) decided to make a return as well and I broke down in tears. Also got a brand-new symptom -- pink-eye straight out of nowhere, which has also been associated with COVID-19 infection.

April 17 -- worst day since the first ones in hospital. Completely exhausted and dealing with a horrible pain at the base of my skull, that was pulsing slowly, radiating down the spinal column and up into the skull. Doesn't respond to Paracetamol and I didn't want to risk taking Ibuprofen. Getting dehydrated due to the constant urination once more, so I started drinking water with electrolytes whenever I could. Fell down on my way to the bathroom, when a veil of darkness passed over my eyes for a few seconds. Everything was spinning and I felt as if I was disassociating and floating away from my own body. Felt better only after more water with electrolytes.

April 18 - 20 -- still felt crappy, but marginally better than on the 17th. Pumped myself full of vitamin C, vitamin D (have a long-standing deficiency there), magnesium and potassium from bananas, kale, spinach, probiotics from yogurt with live cultures in it, to re-balance my likely ravaged gut flora. My appetite, decent in the hospital and shot to pieces again on the 17th, was slowly making a comeback once more. Still burping and full of air no matter what I ate, still pissing frequently. One of the things with COVID-19 was that it made my GERD flare up about ten times worse than usual. Started treating it with a proton-pump inhibitor (Omez) which handled the extra acidity and the heartburn, but not the burping and trapped air. Kidney region started hurting again and at this point I didn't know if it even was the kidneys themselves (both urine samples and blood-work in the hospital showed no problem whatsoever with the kidney function, in spite of the weird symptoms) or just nerve-pain in the area of the kidneys.

April 21 - 23 -- slowly gained strength once more, able to get out of bed and work at my PC. Pain in the kidney region came and went, urination slowly started to reduce in frequency once again. Still drinking water with electrolytes, taking vitamins, eating as varied as I can.

April 24 -- best day so far today (hope I don't bloody jinx it). Energy levels almost back to my baseline, though still left with burping, constant air in stomach and general laziness in digestion. Stool of normal frequency, color and texture after the probiotic regimen. Left with lingering nerve-pain in the cervical area, the shoulders, the lower left ribs in the front and the lower back. Urination frequency reducing to more normal levels once again, feeling less like a constantly dehydrated prune.

It's been... almost five weeks since the first symptoms. A long and exhausting ride and I still don't know what might pop up again. But still far preferable to those poor souls who end up unable to breathe and in full-blown ARDS, needing to be sent straight into the ICU.

Why did I have another flare-up, after two negative tests? Your guess is as good as mine, right now. I have a few theories:

consistent with those articles coming out of South Korea, false negative results might be more widespread than we suspect, in some cases. Either because the virus might be able to hide in the central nervous system and pop back up again for another tangle with one's immunity or because the immune response can lower viral concentration in the body enough for a test to come back negative, without the virus actually being defeated for good.

the test results are correct, the virus is gone from my body and all of what I'm still dealing with are a the result of post-viral systemic inflammation. Not an unlikely thing, since I have a short history of dealing with autoimmune bullshit after that flu two years ago left me with enough nerve-damage that I was unable to walk for a whole month and took six months to recover fully + still wake up with the left side of the body temporarily numb and huge pain in the spinal column if I ever sleep on a shitty mattress, that doesn't offer decent back support.

I want to do more blood-work, see if markers for autoimmune activity show up, but unfortunately, that's pretty difficult to do now, with most hospitals up to their eyeballs in COVID-19 and private clinics charging an eye-watering price for such tests. Dad is almost broke until pay-day, due to how much money he spent in the last month on medicine for me, so it will have to wait or we'll figure something out if my situation worsens again and it becomes imperative to get treatment against autoimmune response. Taking this thing one day at a time.

An overview of my COVID-19 symptoms, good to keep an eye out for:

Gastrointestinal:

explosive, orange, foul-smelling diarrhea

excessive flatulence

vomiting

aggressive flare-up of GERD

excessive burping

swollen, painful stomach due to constantly trapped air

difficulty swallowing

feeling of knot stuck in throat

lack of appetite

Neurological:

temporarily failing vision due to static-like images over the eye's perception

twitching eyelids

nerve-pain in the cervical area

migraine starting at the back of the head and radiating to the backs of the eyes

nerve-pain in all sorts of odd places, coming and going (the left ankle, the left front rib, the right back rib, the kidney area)

dizziness

brain-fog and temporary difficulty with focusing / with coherent speech

Renal:

very frequent urination, though blood-work indicated no disfunctionality with the kidneys

Upper respiratory:

runny nose, post-nasal drip

sneezing

light cough, early in the morning, accompanied by a ticking in the throat sensation that set it off

Unsure how to categorize:

foul-smelling night-sweats, intense enough to soak through clothes and sheets

pink-eye

No shortness of breath, no fever, no lung involvement in my case. This is a virus that the human body responds to in ridiculously varied ways, from that cute little old lady at Colentina, who was totally asymptomatic, to me, where it manifested almost like bloody cholera (the violent diarrhea, vomiting and pissing at the same time, like something was trying to squeeze all of the water out of my body), to one of my ward-mates at Matei Bals, who had developed pneumonia and required moderate oxygen support and was well on the mend when we got dispersed, to the unfortunate souls who end up in ICU with ARDS.

Take care of yourselves, be vigilant and stay safe.

[snkpolls]

SnK S3E13 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 539 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

RATE THE EPISODE 534 Responses

WIT kicked off the arc fantastically according to the viewers! This episode got overall positive reviews, with 95% of respondents giving it a 4 or 5 rating.

An ideal opening episode in my opinion!

Incredible start for possible the best season yet ♥

Awesome opening episode to set the stage for the arc to come. Pacing was just right, imo.

HYPE MY SOLDIERS

I think it was a great ep and did pretty well with the chapters it adapted. The dialogue was there and so were the scenes, the ending hyped what is coming so much so I'm already in love!

Lack of creavity when it come to the OP and ED visuals, but the ep overall was good.

The soundtrack slaps, voice acting is on point, and the animation proves to be very promising. Overall, it's a great episode to start off the second cour!

Awesome episode with awesome soundtrack.

One of the best episodes of the whole series, which was surprising.

RATE THE OP 533 Responses

Overall respondents liked the new Linked Horizon opening, which was a great summary of the current arc, but overall it fell flat as a song that most would be willing to label as their favorite.

OP depicts the upcoming battle well!

Great adaptation, just wish the opening was a little more original

It is the worst OP of all. The song is disappointing; it sounds like typical, boring song from random shonen series.

The opening definitely had some parts to it that felt recycled from previous openings, but I guess it's just Linked Horizon's way of linking them all together.

SPACE OPERATION RAINBOW!!!

To me it looks like they ran out of time to make an OP so they slapped a green filter on what they had done already.

RATE THE ED 530 Responses

The 104th-centered still-frame ED has some mixed reviews with most of the fandom sitting somewhere in the middle between loving and hating it. Respondents overall are leaning more toward the positive, however.

ED is perfect with the time skip just over the horizon

WE GOT A FEW NEW SAWANO TRACKS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT THEM? 530 Responses

Well over half the fandom are already pumped for new music from the series’ composer Sawano Hiroyuki! A whopping 76% already feel that he’s killing it. 22% need more time to decide how they feel. A small sliver of respondents don’t really care for the OST. Who hurt you?

ost perfect as usual

It was good but at this point everything sounds like it's been reused a bunch of times. Hopefully we get some new great tracks later on..

Hyeh

The bassline in the new rendition of "Attack on Titan" (or however Sawano spells it) is amazing. I cannot wait for the S3 soundtrack to be released.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 532 Responses

The scene with the Beast Titan appearing with his army of titans took 30% of the vote, with Levi attacking Reiner as a close second with 22% of the vote. 10% overall liked the entire episode, and 7% favorited the cliffhanger staredown. We can all agree the battle to come has us all hyped!

I repeated the scene where Reiner appears until the end of the episode tons of times already

Did they really had to skip Levi's frustrated expression after he failed to kill Reiner? It was my favorite moment…

Levi attacking Reiner and everything after that has become one of my favorite scenes in the series. Damn!

Nice Erwin Screentime, nice Levi nyooming behind Eren

Best girl makes her appearance

the last three minutes of the episode where the warriors show up was fucking amazing

ON SCALE OF ARMIN TO ERWIN, HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT GIVING ORDERS? 526 Responses

The majority of respondents relate to Armin’s timid nature a bit more when it comes to overall confidence in giving orders. Just a small 6.3% of you guys feel you have the charismatic swag that Erwin brings to the table.

I loved Armin giving orders politely.

How was Armin overcoming social anxiety a billion times cooler then eren flying over a 60m wall, becoming a titan and basically saving humanity.

ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO GO HORSEBACK SURFING? 528 Responses

This was in no way a serious question. But at an almost even split, 35.8% of voters would totally try their hand at horseback surfing, while 35.2% would never risk their life doing such a dangerous activity!

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE ANIMATION QUALITY IN PART TWO SO FAR? 529 Responses

Overall respondents are pleased with the animation in the first episode of the RtS arc, with 54% stating that it’s the best animation they’ve seen from the series yet. 42% feel it could be better, but is also not the worst. A small percentage don’t find the animation all that impressive.

I can’t believe how clean all of the animation is looking. SUPER impressed with the difference in art-style compared to season 1 as well.

The animation is on the highest level.

i miss the thick lines the show used to have

i really love the colour palette of this season and the op especially.

IMO the color tones on this episode could've been handled better, it was too gloomy on some scenes :(

The animation & art style was almost as good as season 2’s (which is one of my favorite pieces of animation of all time) but still lacked in some areas.

Looks like they went all out with budget on this season and I'm loving it

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CG COLOSSAL TITAN IN THE OPENING? 532 Responses

57% of respondents aren’t too upset about the GCI Colossal Titan in the opening and say they don’t mind either way. 35% aren’t happy at all with the decision to make the Colossal CGI, while a few actually find the effect super cool.

ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW EXCITED ARE YOU TO FINALLY SEE THIS ARC ANIMATED? 533 Responses

The overwhelming majority are extremely excited to see this arc animated after all these years. With its high levels of action and drama, it’s no surprise to us to see that the fandom is looking forward to getting this arc in an animated form!

IVE WAITED MORE THAN 2 YEARS FOR THIS IM NEVER BEEN SO FUCKING HYPED IN MY WHOLE LIFE

I've waited so many years that I'm satisfied and ready to pass now that my favorite arc is being animated

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE ADAPTATION OF RTS SO FAR? 532 Responses

67% of respondents are feeling very satisfied with the way the arc is unraveling in the anime, finding that it’s a very close adaptation of the original source material. 23% feel that it’s still too early to judge the adaptation properly, and a few less feel that the adaptation so far is somewhere between good and bad.

Fantastic adaptation.

Good pacing jumping right into the action, while staying faithful to the manga.

Overall very good, but could be a TAD better

I think the adaptation so far has been great, but I need to see how the action is handled before I say for sure whether it's well adapted or not.

It was ok.

It was very well-adapted! All the important details were there and nothing important seemed to be missing, which was something I was sad about in the last arc. It seems like everything I want will get covered.

How do we come back from there without breaking my heart?

PART 2 IS SLATED FOR 10 EPISODES. DO YOU THINK THIS WILL BE ENOUGH TO ADAPT THE ARC WELL? 531 Responses

Voters are confident that WIT knows what they’re doing by shortening the amount of episodes that will air for this action-heavy arc, with only ¼ of respondents feeling that they haven’t given themselves enough screen time to cover every last detail. 10% don’t want to say either way.

i was disappointed in knowing it was a 10 episode arc, but seeing the quality and taking into account that this is an action-heavy arc, i'm bouncing off of the walls to see what wit has underneath their sleeve. hopefully they don't ruin the best arc

one advantage of the short season is that they cant draw out the serum bowl for too long. God, that was a painful wait when the manga was dropping those chapters.

Really well done, the pacing in particular was great. After seeing it I was convinced 10 episodes was perfect for this arc. A 6-4 split is perfect.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE VERY SPOILERY OPENING? 532 Responses

61% of respondents agree that the opening, while spoilery, is a great summary and teaser of what is to come for those who only watch the anime. Without context, they can’t know what every last symbolic image in the opening means, after all! 23% of voters expressed distaste at how much WIT is spoiling the viewers, however. 9% aren’t even concerned about it.

The whole opening was just one big “fuck you” to people who don’t read the manga.

it only becomes obvious b/c manga readers keep pointing stuff out. Yes, the intros have always hinted at things but it goes so fast that I don’t think every person will know exactly what something means if they’re anime only.

The Opening is good representation of this phase of the story ending.

I don't get why people are making a big deal over the "spoilers" in the opening when they're not even anime-onlies themselves in the first place.

Man, it only seems spoilery for those of us who know what's coming. Anime onlies don't understand the context of the images, so they can't recognise them as spoilers unless it's directly identified as such! We gotta stop judging this stuff from the perspective of someone who already knows what's coming.

It's definitely not holding back on the indications that'll happen in the arc

HOW DID THE NEW ED MAKE YOU FEEL? 527 Responses

61% of manga readers felt nostalgic seeing the images of the 104th during their trainee days coupled with a somber song. 20% felt sad about the ending, and 15% were just disappointed with the entire thing.

Lazy ending.

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE RED EYES ON THE TITANS? 533 Responses

Just over half of the fandom feel that the red-eyed pure titans was a cool aesthetic to add to show that they are under some form of control by a shifter. 33% feel it’s a cool addition, but not really necessary. 11% don’t care.

I was on board with the red eyes until the cart titan also had them. No longer made any sense.

I don't get why Pieck's eyes are red when she's not a mindless being controlled by Zeke…

Like the red eyes but why does Pieck have them too.

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 530 Responses

Perhaps unsurprisingly, over half of the fandom is most hyped to see the Eren vs. Reiner showdown in Shiganshina. Although not far behind, 28% of respondents are excited about Erwin’s badass unhooding moment as he challenges Reiner.

THUNDER SPEARS FOR NEXT CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

Even though I totally know what will happen, the episode is written and directed in a way I still get goosebumps and forget I actually know what will happen. And the music, oh god. That's amazing. These two together have a really good effect.

I need the next one RIGHT NOW.

AAAAAHH!!!!

It was an introduction episode, so imo, it's just there to put the basis for the rest of the season. There was a good balance between the "emotionally charged" scenes and the more quiet ones, all this accompanied with an increasing tension in the background.

I wish theyd reanimated the scene of armin talking to eren about the opening instead of just reusing the animation from season 1.

that Zeke smile is like : hey there, i am here to euthanize you all. Love it !

I'm buying tickets into denial islaaand, bye, bye!

Airpipes. AIRPIPES. p.s. cracking soundtrack

Reiner has been enjoying himself some Marley protein, he extra swole now.

Armin was the MVP

PIECK!!!

I don't like the fact that WiT decided to spoil a lot. Some anime onlies already have guessed that Armin is going to be burned and then will become the next CT. So the serumbowl won't be as emotional and exciting for them anymore. I don't understand why WiT decided to do such thing. Don't they want anime-onlies to enjoy the show?

Exactly as expected you'll find a strange titan next to the beasty

I love Mikasa’s improved design and hope they show more of her working in a team like the manga. Focusing on the mission ect without pandering

RIP nameless soldier killed by Reiner.

Very happy to get a glimpse at best girl Pieck

Really no questions about our exactly right girl in this poll ? I am dissapointed :/

Watching this episode is bringing back all the suspense and awe I felt when I read this part in the manga. What a treat to be able to relive it!

They did a great job at keeping the tension and the "well shit everything's about to go wrong" from chapters 73 and 74, and managed to make the explosion at the end worth it, despite the fact I still think Reiner's continued survival throughout the arc is stupid and wish the anime had changed it so it'd be more believable, but here we are.

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 514 Responses

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again in a few days!

[neverisalongtime-ja-blog]

Chapter 24: Hurricane Drunk

Here we are again with another chapter! The feedback has been amazing let’s keep it!

Remember to visit Anastasia’s IG profile:

Anastasia_Truman  ❤️️

As always I wanna thank you all for reading my fic, I love you all so much!

Read Chapter 23

Even with that hurricane of emotions, the first two shows in New York were a success. Anastasia and the rest of the band gave their all on stage and the crowd loved it. They even sang along to most of the songs. Her brother and Andrew were at a side of the stage rooting for them; Kelly and Josh’s parents enjoyed the show as well. When it was the Chilis’ time to take control of the Madison Square Garden, the four Dead Curse members joined the family and friends. Anastasia felt an incredible amount of discomfort. That was, for sure, a surreal experience: the guy she opened her heart to and then cheated on her was on stage, with his new barely legal girlfriend screaming his name in an exaggerated way on a side, and she was there, standing still and witnessing that decadent scene. She couldn’t handle it and ran away from there; Mandy followed her to their dressing room.

 -          This is stupid! – Anastasia said – Extremely stupid! I can’t believe I’m going through this.

-          Let it all out – Mandy hugged her – The show is over you can let all the pain out now.

-          Mandy, he cheated on me with her – Anastasia said breaking the hug – Do you understand that? Because I don’t. My brain can’t process that shit.

-          I’m telling you, something is not quite right here.

-          He left me alone on New Year’s Eve to be with her! That’s the girl he was working with.

-          And do you think that in a week he decided to change girls just like that?

-          I don’t know! I don’t know him anymore.

-          That’s not him, I’m sure of that.

-          I don’t care. All that matters to me is that I’m fucking sad and angry and I can’t believe this is happening again.

 At that moment the girls heard a couple of knocks in the door. Mandy opened the door and Mark’s and Andrew’s faces appeared behind it.

 -          You need to get out of here – Mark said.

-          Let’s go to have a true New Yorker dinner in the streets and let’s go for drinks after that – Andrew suggested.

-          Yes that’s what I want to do, I wanna get drunk!

-          Are you sure of this? – Mandy whispered to Anastasia so only she could hear.

-          Mandy, I need this. I need to forget about everything, just for tonight.

 Eric, Nick and Kelly joined the group and the seven hit the New York streets. Anastasia loved the walks around New York, there was always people wandering in them, going places or going nowhere, just like she was in that moment; she didn’t know what she was doing or what she was going to do but right now the purpose was to stop the feeling. She looked at her friends and felt jealousy of how they were smiling; she couldn’t smile, even if Andrew’s or Mandy’s jokes were very funny. She just kept looking down at her shoes, wandering the New York streets. The last time she walked those places she was with Josh and then his presence took her mind as hostage again for what seemed like minutes until she felt a pair of arms around her shoulders.

 -          Do you want pizza? – Her brother asked.

-          Yeah, sure! – She answered, not paying attention to her truly hunger intentions. It didn’t really matter what she ate that night.

-          Let’s go a couple blocks from here – Mark talked again – There’s a new bar with great pizza and we can have a couple of drinks.

 Anastasia had more than a couple of drinks, and after the bar closed the group decided to move to the hotel bar to drink even more alcohol. The walk back to the hotel was a lot different than the one hours before. Anastasia was smiling, demonstrating her evident drunkenness, she went from hugging Kelly to hugging Mandy and then back to Kelly, alcohol did its thing and she forgot Josh for those hours. She knew it was all a lie and the following night she would have to go back to see him at the venue, try to mend her life and go on… go on, how hard did that seem to achieve right now.

 Another two hours were spent drinking at the hotel bar. At around three in the morning Anastasia decided it was time to go to bed, but the rest were still having a good time.

 -          Sure you can walk alone to your room? – Andrew asked.

-          I’m fine! For real! And we are just in the hotel bar; it’s not that far away. I just need to walk to the elevator and then get to the room. Just make sure that if I throw up on the hall nobody takes pictures – She said leaving the table.

 She struggled to walk but she managed to act lucid and get inside the elevator, behind her another person entered. She turned around and saw him, Josh. She blinked a couple of time hoping she was hallucinating because of the alcohol and he would go away, but there he was, he didn’t go away and that filled her with rage. She was angry because he was there, and she hated him so much at that moment.

 -          You got to be fucking kidding me! – She screamed looking at the ceiling. Josh didn’t respond – Man, I’m too fucking drunk to handle this right now - Josh just stood still there, looking at her, no reaction, and that made Anastasia burn with rage – What the fuck is wrong with you?

-          I’m sorry – That was all that he managed to say.

-          You are sorry? That’s it? You are sorry? For fuck’s sake Josh! Even your initials say it so: you are a joke.

All the anger Anastasia was feeling accumulated in her head and she couldn’t think straight anymore. She just jumped at him and started hitting him in his chest with her fists. He did not put up resistance; he just stood there, letting Anastasia release her anger at him, without moving a single muscle. She hit him hard and after seeing his lack of response she stopped, tired, it was hard to breathe.

 -          I can’t believe that now I’m stuck in this tour watching your new girlfriend cheering for you every night while I’m still dying for you! So fuck her and fuck you, Josh Klinghoffer! – After her rant the elevator stopped at her floor and she exited it without an answer from Josh.

 She cried until she fell asleep. The next morning, it was Mandy the one who made her open her eyes and the first image in her head was her hitting Josh inside the elevator.

 -          Oh my God, Mandy! – Anastasia started to say slowly – Last night…

-          Yes, you were really drunk but you managed to find your way to the room – Mandy said laughing.

-          No, Josh… - Anastasia talked again and Mandy’s expression changed to worried – He was in the elevator with me and…

-          You kissed him? – Mandy asked.

-          No, I hit him. Real hard. I was so angry – Mandy burst into laugh.

-          No fucking way! – Mandy kept laughing – Anastasia!

-          Don’t laugh! I feel so bad but I was so drunk and so… so angry.

-          He deserved it – Mandy said trying to catch her breath – What did he do?

-          Nothing, he just stood there letting me hit him. He just said he was sorry and that made me angrier.

-          Man, you can’t make shit like this up – Mandy said.

-          Do you think I should apologize?

-          Apologize?! No! – Mandy said – Not in a million years should you apologize to that guy who cheated on you with a child – Despite Mandy’s opinion, Anastasia felt guilty, she felt she overreacted – Get up and get changed, we need to be at the Madison Square Garden in an hour.

 Dead Curse went back to the venue for the last show in the Big Apple. At that point Anastasia hated New York, a city she always loved with passion; this girl was ruining so many things for her.

 The midnight-blue-haired girl was hanging out in her dressing room by herself trying to read a book without having a lot of success on it. The elevator episode from last night kept playing in her mind and she could only think about that… and Josh, and she felt so guilty. She didn’t want to hurt him, well yes, she thought about doing it a couple of times but her reaction wasn’t something very Anastasia-like, she never chose violence, she always had this power of destroying people with her words so she stuck to that. She was angry at Josh and with this chick, it was confusing and her brain was working at a thousand miles per hour. She decided to search for him and talk about last night; she blocked Mandy’s words from her head and got out of that room.

 She walked around the entire venue; she searched for him in his dressing room, at the stage, even in the bathrooms and he was nowhere to be found. Feeling defeated, she realized that she needed fresh air and walked out of the MSG. She went to a parking lot in the back of the building and there he was, leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t aware of her presence until she took a few more steps in his direction. He looked into her eyes like he used to do during the first part of the tour last year, she saw his pupils shining but his mouth was tense, it was like two different expressions in the same face.

 -          Hi – She was the first to talk. He didn’t reply – Listen, I want to apologize for my behavior last night.

-          Don’t worry about that – He said looking to the floor and having another smoke.

-          Wow, you haven’t smoked in a while – She said.

-          Sometimes I need it.

-          I was so drunk last night – Anastasia stood in front of him – And so angry.

-          You have the right to be angry – Josh said looking so sweet and Anastasia hated that – Look, I broke up with you because I didn’t want to hurt you.

-          Should I thank you for that? – Anastasia answered sarcastically – Wow, Josh, you are so benevolent on breaking up with me so I don’t get hurt. Well, for your information, you weren’t successful in that, I got hurt. I am hurt, goddamn it! You just threw me away like garbage.

 Josh threw his cigarette to the floor, opened his arms and positioned himself to give her a hug; Anastasia put both hands in front of her as an automatic reaction to stop him.

 -          Don’t you even dare hug me – She said and turned her back to him to walk back to the venue.

 For some strange reason, Anastasia felt worse. Josh was being so polite with her, deep inside she wanted him to be rude and treat her bad so she could really hate him and leave all the good feelings she had for him behind. She didn’t even realize that she arrived to the door of her dressing room and once inside she faced Mandy.

 -          Something happened – Mandy started to say. There was nothing she could do to hide something from that pink-haired girl.

-          Can you stop looking through my soul? – Anastasia said taking a seat next to her friend – The fact that Josh is not giving me reasons to hate him is annoying.

-          Um… he cheated on you… isn’t that enough reason? – Mandy asked.

-          Despite that… I mean, yeah! I’m still angry about that and his coward attitude. But these days in New York, the two times that I could face him he acted so polite and… fuck! The fact that he doesn’t do things to make me mad actually makes me mad! – Anastasia looked at the ceiling.

-          He is walking the bitch everywhere like a trophy, don’t you see it? – Mandy said – Don’t worry, I can hate him for the both of us.

-          You know? Inside of me I wanted to see him being an asshole because that’s the image I put in my head about him this last month. I wanted him to be this Josh I imagine, this other Josh. But no, he’s still the same and that makes me sad and even more confused about why he chose her over me.

-          I don’t share your opinion at all. I do think he changed, the Josh we knew would have given you a reason to end your relationship, he wouldn’t hide. I mean, we were never close to him but we’ve known Josh for almost seven years now. He is no stranger to us, to you – Mandy continued talking, this time Anastasia was looking directly to her eyes – What I don’t understand is why her? You two are so different. Despite the age gap, she is this vibrant blond girl that does not have a drop of depth in her brain, she is not creative and she is nothing like you. I’m pretty sure she knows nothing about music and certainly doesn’t write songs.

-          Yes, I don’t think she writes songs about bloody sacrifices to the Gods and putting rocks on your pockets to drown in a river – Anastasia answered.

-          And that’s why I’m in a band with you because I couldn’t play plain songs about cheesy love – Mandy smiled – You are going to be fine, believe me. I know you feel hurt but never stop believing in love because it does exist.

-          Of course it exists, I love you! – Anastasia said and threw herself to hug her best friend.

 That night outfit for the show included a t-shirt with the phrase “Players only love you when they’re playing” printed on the front and making reference to a Fleetwood Mac song, Dreams, and of course as a nod to the situation with Josh. In general it was a great show to end the New York row but Anastasia didn’t feel the same energy that she had the nights before, maybe it was because Lauren was there, with a couple of friends, watching her from a side of the stage, and singing to some of their most known songs. How dare she do that?!

 To close this leg of the tour everyone decided to visit the karaoke bar once again but this time Anastasia had to deal with Josh and his young girlfriend joining them. She couldn’t say anything, Josh was friends with 99% of that group of people, she couldn’t just forbid him to hang out with them, that was immature and an attitude Anastasia wasn’t going to fall on. Andrew took the first turn on the microphone and he and Mark sang the song Africa by the band Toto, a golden piece to start the night. After them, Anastasia and Mandy performed a funny version of Wannabe by the Spice Girls, Nick decided to go with Waterfalls by TLC and Anastasia and Mandy joined him, the midnight-blue-haired girl could notice that Josh’s girl didn’t recognize some of the mega hits that were performed that night on stage. They decided to rest for a while, letting other people at the place take their turn on the karaoke.

 -          It’s not real karaoke if you sing well – Andrew said to Mandy and Anastasia.

-          You sing well too! – Mandy said.

-          Thank you. You are making me blush – Andrew answered joking.

 After an hour of talking and drinking, Anastasia grabbed the board with the songs available to sing and she saw the perfect one: Rumor Has It by Adele. She chose it without even thinking about it. The alcohol was responsible, she didn’t think what she was about to do.

 She, she ain't real

She ain't gonna be able to love you like I will

She is a stranger

You and I have history

Or don't you remember

Sure, she's got it all

But, baby, is that really what you want

 She started to sing avoiding eye contact with Josh and Lauren, they were sitting with Nick and Eric at a table at her left, she focused on Mandy instead who was cheering with Andrew and Mark from the bar.

 Bless your soul; you've got your head in the clouds

You made a fool out of you

And, boy, she's bringing you down

 Anastasia could feel the tension in the air but she wasn’t going to stop now.

 She is half your age

But I'm guessing that's the reason that you stayed.

 She saw him then. He was angry, she could notice by his face expression. Josh grabbed Lauren by the arm, nodded Nick and Eric and then Anastasia saw him walking to the door. The amount of alcohol she drank that night and that silly song at the karaoke made her feel victorious, even if it was an empty victory. A victory she regretted next morning.

 Then it was time to go back to Los Angeles. Andrew and Mark joined everybody in the flight back home. Josh wasn’t there; he decided to stay in New York with Lauren for the next week. Mandy and Anastasia sat next to each other, since Josh wasn’t there to give her moral support during the flight (like he used to), her pink-haired friend happily took that position.

 -          Rumor Has It, last night… That was brilliant! – Mandy said smiling.

-          I feel bad, though – Anastasia answered – I need to stop the emotional drinking.

-          He ran away – Mandy said, still smiling – He deserved it. Don’t even think for a minute that any of this is your fault. You are not the one who should feel bad, he should.

-          I know Mandy, but I think about so many things, maybe she is good to him. Maybe he is in love, maybe I wasn’t what he expected me to be and then he found her and she makes him happy. I want him to be happy but… - Anastasia made a pause – I want to be happy too.

-          And you’ll be happy because you fucking deserve it.

-          I’m starting to think that I’m always gonna end up having this unstable love life – Anastasia said- That’s my call. I mean, the universe thought it would be fun to put me in an elevator with him and while I was hitting him I realized that I loved him like I never loved anybody before. You know what was the hardest thing this week? – Anastasia said to her friend – Looking into his eyes and not being able to say “I love you”.

-          You still do? – Mandy asked.

-          A week ago I would tell you yes without even thinking about it but, right now, I’m not sure anymore – Mandy put an arm around Anastasia’s shoulder and cuddled with her friend so she could sleep for the rest of the flight.

Read chapter 25

[screeningclub]

Weekly Round-up: April 23-27

There’s not enough time in the week to write feature reviews for all 70 of the airing shows that I force myself to watch, so I’m testing out this Weekly Round-up format, with hopefully new posts every Friday. However, for great weekly coverage of The Leftovers, be sure to check out reviews like this one every Monday from the stoic Chris Moore. It’s a show so nice we have to review it twice! Sorry, that was terrible.

Sunday

The Leftovers – “Don’t Be Ridiculous”

Last week’s season premiere provided a wondrous and fatal (that fucking domestic drone strike) return to this bleak, off-kilter, immersive world through the eyes of its profoundly fucked up male lead, Kevin Garvey, and this week, now through the eyes of its adjacently fucked up female lead, Nora Durst, the barrel keeps on rolling. Nora has long been the show’s most complex and sympathetic character (thanks to both Carrie Coon’s amazing acting abilities and the incredibly tragic past she’s been dealt by show creators Tom Perrotta and Damon Lindelof) and it’s no coincidence that every Nora showcase episode – “Guest” in season one, “Lens” in season two, and now “Don’t Be Ridiculous” in season three – always winds up as a season highmark. This episode was as much as ever about (as all Nora episodes are and really every episode of this show but rarely as much as this one) the extreme ways in which people cope with loss, grief and insurmountable pain, and in Nora’s case, in the face of both the unexplainable (the loss of her departed children) and now as we learn the explainable (the loss of Lilly at the hands of her aggrieved biological mother, Christine). With Nora and Kevin and whoever else that follows about to set sail for whatever the hell crazy shit that awaits them in Australia, it would appear things are about to get even more preposterous and exciting and sad. Definitely sad.

Episode grade: A

Veep – “Library”

What an emotional rollercoaster to turn from the tragedy and bleakness of The Leftovers to the relentless wit and hilarity of Veep; although it could be argued that in the tragedy department the two shows have never had as much in common. As the premiere made very clear, this season is going to be a rough ride for former (never elected) President Selina Meyer, and this episode continues hitting home that very point through her exhaustive efforts to construct a Presidential Library as prestigious and glorified as her predecessor’s. But of course that can’t be; she stumbled upwards into the job and then had it embarrassingly torn away by a younger, elected fellow woman a year later. As Selina tries desperately to reclaim some form of relevance in the public sphere, most of her former team continues scattered across the country. The Jon H. Ryan/Kent/Ben trio shows the most promise, but I’m not sure what to make yet of what’s going on with Dan and Amy’s respective storylines. Those two are at their best when together, as is much of the rest of the team. I hope we’re nearing a (permanent?) reunion of sorts in the next couple episodes.

Episode grade: B

Monday

Better Call Saul – “Sunk Costs”

It’s been five long years since Mike Ehrmantrout and Gustavo Fring occupied the screen together on Breaking Bad, and their long awaited reunion on season three, episode three of Better Call Saul did not disappoint. These two men are titans of their respective crafts and it was such a joy just sitting back and watching these grisled professionals size each other up and unite, however reluctantly, towards bringing down a common enemy. And the Jimmy/Chuck/Kim half of the episode was equally compelling, too, just in an entirely different way. The Jimmy/Chuck relationship is the axis on which the world of this show rotates and that conversation the two share in the episode’s first act, and the conversation Jimmy and Kim share in its final scene, cemented a significant turning point. Chuck wants Jimmy out of law practice, and Jimmy (with Kim’s help) isn’t going down without a fight.

Episode grade: A-

Bates Motel – “The Cord”

Bates Motel capped off its psychologically daring, often-frustratingly plotted five-season run this past week in I’d say appropriate, albeit similar fashion. As a deep-dive through the mind of a criminally disturbed and unstable “psycho”-path, this show and this season and episode in particular thrived. But arriving gracefully at those various points of emotional and psychological exploration was never easy for this show and this final stretch of episodes were no different. Romera had to clumsily bust Norman out of jail just like he had to stupidly turn his back to Norman for a prolonged period of time with his gun sticking out of his back pocket because… it’s what the plot required. And the White Pine Bay sheriff’s department had to be incompetent enough to leave the Bates residence and motel unmonitored for a half a day long enough for Norman to recreate the timeline of the show’s pilot in his mind and for Dylan to intervene in the final moments because… you get the point. But that final scene between the two brothers and especially that final image of the two deceased Bates side by side in their graves was perfect, as was so much of this final season when it opted to lean into that emotional well. It wasn’t always pretty, but when it was, it was pretty great.

Episode grade: B+

Tuesday

The Americans – “Immersion”

The lives of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are spiraling, however slowly and painstakingly. Their fatherly spy handler has abandoned them, their daughter is emotionally destroyed as a result of all they’ve shared with her, and their commitment to the Cause is… waning. At least in how far they’re willing to make secondary their family and marriage in service to their spycraft. They do not like participating in the wheat crop operation, and in this episode they, subconsciously even, appear willing to destroy their involvement in it because of the wedge they perceive it to drive in their relationship. There hasn’t been a whole lot of forward momentum flowing from episode to episode in the way that other, better seasons have had, but as long as Philip and Elizabeth and their familial struggles continue to remain the heavy focus (which of course it will, that is The Americans), my commitment to this show will remain firm.

Episode grade: B

Wednesday

Fargo – “The Principle of Restricted Choice”

The plot is kicking into high gear in this second episode and I’m just genuinely thrilled to be along for the ride. Yes, the characters and story (at least to this point) feel a tad on the thin side but those weaknesses are overwhelmed by the first-class performances from literally every actor involved and the unique, familiar aesthetic sensibilities of this world. The Stussy brother feud is obviously the driving force behind all we’ve seen to this point and it’s certainly been ratcheted up to ten with Ray and Nikki’s latest move – I love that pairing by the way, Ewen McGregor is great in both brother roles but so far Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the season MVP. I’m pumped to see where that goes along with Gloria’s investigation of the murder of her step-father. That both her step-father and the Stussy brothers share a last name cannot just be a coincidence.

Episode grade: B+

The Handmaid’s Tale – “Offred”

Wow. This premiere blew me away in 30 more ways than one. From Elizabeth Moss’s intimate, bare-bones performance, the masterful world building, the tense, artful pacing and direction – it’s all there and it’s all great. Even though you still walk away with far more questions than answers, the shadings of answers you do get are enough to paint the picture of this bleak, dystopian version of an imagined future in which women exist on this earth to serve men and bear their babies. Or most women at least; there are some in the premiere that remain in positions of power (chief among them, the goddess Ann Dowd who’s amazing here) that I’m really curious about the how of it all. But damn. So good, so haunting; I’m as excited for more as I am dreadful.

Episode grade: A

Thursday

Grey’s Anatomy – “Don’t Stop Me Now”

I still watch every episode of this damn show and I ain’t never stoppin’!

Episode grade: A++++

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The post Weekly Round-up: April 23-27 appeared first on ScreeningClub | Insight Into the Media You Love.

from ScreeningClub | Insight Into the Media You Love http://screeningclub.com/2017/04/28/weekly-round-up-april-23-27/