#started with establishing the world setting. okay. very nice. then got to establishing the plot and. hm.

[typheus]

started reading a random comic and realized i have a lot more opinions about story structure than i thought <( _ _ )>

[spinji]

I NEED TO YAP ABOUT THIS MOVIE MY GOD-

YOU'RE NEXT SPOILERS UNDER CUT

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaokayokay-

Can I just say I DO NOT recommend seeing this the same day as watching the new episode because I have had a DAY-

Unfortunately, the theater I went to didn't have the booklets or promotional cups but not a huge loss. It's the price I pay to have my boyfriend by my side; worth it. ♡

As with all my other MHA theater outings the screening was packed with delightful weirdos (dubbed, if you happen to care). One guy had an extensive set of custom MHA lego guys (very cool) and two very enthusiastic Toga cosplayers were so kind and kept me from feeling like a dork going out in public in a Deku wig. All the love to them, fr.

The movie itself though ohhhhh MY~

If I'm being honest this one didn't surpass World Heroes Mission or Heroes Rising for me, but also I don't know what you could do to beat out the movies that gave me such extreme brainrot it got me to be a part of this fandom in the first place. Personal rankings for the movies, best to "worst" is 3, 2, 4, 1.

Maybe it's because I had higher expectations instead of being given the best character in the franchise suddenly with no warning but I did still really REALLY love it. The highest point I can give it is easily the animation. Absolutely zero scenes in this movie feel like they fell to the standard of the anime. Everything was fluid and detailed and so fun to look at. And yes, of course it made every attack flashy as fuck. I was giddy every time Bakugou let out an explosion.

The premise did sound insane going in, and it is, but it's an anime side movie. Caring about the plot is a bonus, not a requirement. I guess my only real gripe is that it felt a little too fast? Very few scenes had time to breathe and unlike the other movies there wasn't really any slow establishing opening. If you come to MHA exclusively for the action, I think this one will be your new favorite.

Okay- I'm gonna just bullet point my highlights because I'm barely restrained enough to sit down and type.

First of all GIULIO!!!

Listen- I knew I would love this guy but oh my god babygirl~

He responds to literally everyone approaching him by pointing a gun at them. No comment this is just great

When Deku tells him to stop shooting at someone, he just pulls out a SECOND GUN and points it at him too

His motorcycle also has guns. Ngl I have expected his eye implant to also have a gun for a moment there.

He is SUCH an asshole to Deku in the first half and I love it. Their dialogue exchanges were so funny.

And in the second half he just,,,,cracks under the pressure so hard,, Man is having the WORST day of his life fr. It's really nice to know he and Anna are safe at UA rn. Poor things deserve it.

Anna and Giulio are really cute romantically, Giulio is definitely adult but he's going in the Deku harem anyway. You can't stop me, I am capable of worse.

Anna herself unfortunately doesn't get much time since she spends most of the movie mind controlled but she's harmlessly sweet and adorable. Anna they could never make me hate you.

I want to smear Dark Might across the side of a wall and given how much they overanimated his expressions, I believe this is the intended effect.

Am I the only one that hopes he sees the Mech Might livestream just to rub salt in the wound? Don't you dare let All Might's name fall from your mouth again, you bag of scum.

I really REALLY wanted Izuku to get pissed off and start naming off inconsistencies between how All Might and Dark Might look: "His eyes are SKY blue, not ocean blue, and while his broad features don't make it obvious, his chin was actually much slimmer, also you got the silver age colors wrong-!" alas... you know he was thinking it though-

Big tiddy mind control gf Deborah my beloved- she has pretty privileges for everything

Actually a lot of the lesser goons of the family were kind of dorky and odd. I loved the energy! Why was one of them literally a D&D nerd that put on a wizard robe OVER HIS SUIT. Most entertaining movie villian group for sure.

The personal dreams everyone had under the mind control? Kill me. Kill me right the fuck now!

Shoto literally just wants a happy childhood with his family??? Where Touya wants to play with him????? And Rei was still happy????? UUGAHWAAAAAAAA

Tenya and Tensei being heroes together STOP-

Shoji with the little girl he saaaaaaved,,,and he didn't have his face scars anymoooooore,,,

So glad they didn't show Ochako's because you know they would have just animated that what if pixel animation of her and Toga being childhood friends and I would have vomited in sorrow.

Absolutely infuriating they broke continuity to have Katsuki call Izuku "Deku" and not "De-Izuku". Never forget what they took from us.

"Beat it, cool side character!" is the best line in the movie. Katsuki does not forget what happened with Rody and he does NOT forgive.

Followed closely by "I'm falling down crotch-first!" And you wonder why I write the fics I do about you, Deku-

Deku being a legend as a jailbreaker hunter is so amazing?? Yes baby, they're so scared of you! You're doing amazing sweetie!

I might think of more but tldr: YOU'RE NEXT IS A REALLY FUN TIME AND YOU SHOULD WATCH IT!

[tarisilmarwen]

Rebels Rewatch: “Droids In Distress”

Wacky droid hijinks and nostalgia abound, let’s get into it.

Now, this is an episode that for a different show would have been used as the pilot.  It’s got all the earmarks of a weekly serial testing out its tone and character dynamics, while acting with confidence like those are already established.

Note that this isn’t a bad thing.  It reminds me most of Teen Titans’s early Season One, there’s a certain kind of charm and innocence and an earnest attempt at convincing you, “Don’t worry, this will be a FUN show! :D”

Frankly starting off lighter eases you better into the world and characters so when things do get more serious and dramatic later you’re more invested because you’ve had more time to get endeared to the characters.

See also, Star Trek: Lower Decks, which had the audacity to end its Season Two on a cliffhanger, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MY SILLY COMFORT SHOW, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE STAKES!

Anyway we open rather appropriately In Media Res with the notes of the TIE Fighter Attack track from A New Hope, which auditorily puts us right into that OT headspace. :)

Once again the tight writing very quickly establishes the situation: The Ghost is on the run from the Empire, in need of cash flow and supplies, they have to occasionally run weapons for someone shady, Ezra is Force Sensitive, and--perhaps most importantly for the later story arc--Kanan has been avoiding training him.

Boy I miss concise exposition like this.  So much story is already set up in some densely-worded dialogue.  (Not just Kanan’s reluctance to teach Ezra but also Zeb’s misgivings with working for Vizago given the uncertain nature of the weapons he deals in.)

Also don’t think I missed Ezra being most concerned with the fact that they are running out of food.

RIGHT SO I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW GIDDY I WAS THE FIRST TIME I WATCHED THIS BECAUSE ICKLE MINI TARI LOVED THE STAR TOURS RIDE AT DISNEYWORLD.  Seriously it was one of my top favorites.  Never rode the updated version (haven’t been back to DW in years) but the classic version was iconic for me.

And this is a cameo/Easter Egg that actually works in context because you don’t need to know anything about this droid pilot, he works organically in the story as he is without any background knowledge required.

Unlike many of the other cameos we could name in certain other Star Wars shows *COUGH*.

Threepio and Artoo on the flipside... Okay, I’m not quite sure how to articulate that it still works better than in aforementioned other shows but it does.  Again Imma chalk it up to, they just fit more organically into the plot and around these characters and also advance the bigger plot by introducing a thread that suggests the crew is going to be connected to the larger Rebellion, which pays off this Season Finale... instead of being a sideshow diversion disconnected from the main characters that may or may not make another appearance down the line sometime.  Maybe.

Side note of appreciation for Chopper gleefully taking right to his role of Public Nuisance Annoying Everyone (But Especially Ezra).  I don’t think there was much acting involved for either of them lol.

XD

Still love how bouncy and dynamic the character animation was these early episodes.

Has that fun kid-friendly feel that lures you into a false sense of security lol.

Our first hint at Sabine’s backstory, cleverly hidden as part of her cover story.

I kinda like that Garel is close enough to Lothal that a very small shuttle is able to just ferry people back and forth in like twenty minutes.

Lol Zeb whapping Sabine because she’s laying it on too much.

One of the nice things about having low-stakes plots in the beginning is it allows room for lovely little breathing scenes like this one with Ezra leaping across the rooftops.  It’s not plot necessary, we could have easily just cut to him arriving at the other hanger, but it’s just... pleasant.

There’s some nice mood music (a very slowed down mellow Main Titles theme), some very mild action, and we feel a satisfied little thrill along with Ezra seeing just what he’s capable of already just knowing that he’s Force Sensitive.  This is the first time he’s consciously tapped into the Force and it’s just a little bit exciting.

Just look at his face gkjhgkjh I’m so proud of him and all he did was some parkour.

Subtle animation detail appreciation: Zeb visibly shudders backing away from the crates.

I love Threepio throwing some indignant shade Sabine’s way with his “[...] if she is an amateur.” line.

We know Zeb is the muscle  of the group, that’s already established, but it’s still obvious in the voice acting and Zeb’s intense tossing of the Stormtroopers that he’s more agitated than normal.

Threepio being oblivious and fussy as per usual.

Please enjoy the Fridge Horror of knowing that the Empire was planning to mass-produce T7 ion disruptors and probably not for their starship-crippling properties. :)

Ezra immediately backing off the hostility once he knows why Zeb’s upset. <333  He’s such an empath I love him.

See this is why I don’t understand people who hate Ezra.  Was he a little bratty this episode?  Sure, but also see how he lets that drop out of compassion once he understands the situation.

Also Ahsoka came onto the stage waaaaaaaaay brattier and a smug know-it-all to boot, just admit y’all hate the kid-appeal characters and refuse to let them be stupid and dumb in order to have some character growth.

Hera’s frustration when she hears that Kanan hasn’t been training Ezra. <333

Lol and love how there’s an immediate follow-up in the next scene.  I want to see the beginning of that conversation.

Pryce gets name-dropped here for the first time.  Predictably Threepio is making a muck of things.  See, this is why no one tells you anything or trusts you with the mission Threepio.

Ezra has clearly dealt with underworld figures like Vizago before lol.

I do wonder if all of this is just a massive Batman Gambit by Artoo, because he seems to be completely unfazed by anything that’s happening.

The AT-DPs get quite a bit of focus in this series and I think their ubiquitous presence in the first season preps us mentally for the heavy upgrade that is the AT-ATs.

Love this shot tracking Hera as she shoots at the AT-DP, very frenetic with the blocking and the camera movements.

The duel between Kallus and Zeb is honestly better than some of the lightsaber fights don’t @ me you know it’s true.

This music cue when they launch the disruptors is a unique one, particular to only this moment I think, but I like it.

Aaaaaaand the first of many times Kallus gets yeeted with the Force.  Lol.

See Sequel Trilogy, this is the general powerset of someone who only just learned they were Force Sensitive and hasn’t had any training. /salt

Kanan seems very surprised and amazed by what Ezra can already do without any formal guidance.  This’ll play into his insecurities later, his whole thing about how Ezra’s powers are growing faster than he can teach.

I think it’s safe to assume Ezra had a lot of latent natural talent that he’d been unconsciously using this whole time that just needed a tiny push to begin manifesting in earnest.

Again, though, Sequel Trilogy, all we unlock is basic shit like Force Sense, Force Jump, and Force Push.

Not surprising Kanan went to fetch Zeb, he’s about the only one even close to Zeb’s height lol.

Kanan looks so proud of Ezra, aww.

More lovely work with the subtle expressions; Kanan’s smile fades and his eyes drop a bit.  Like he realizes, “Oh boy, now I gotta face all my inadequacies and problems.”  Love it.  Love that it’s episode two and we’ve already established so many of the upcoming character arcs.

Hi Bail!

Luke’s theme closing us out once again, apropos given where we are and who we’re with.

For our first “official” non-pilot episode, this is a solid entry.  As I said, establishes a whole bunch about the characters and their relationship dynamics and upcoming arcs and plot points.  It’s also very fun, sets the general early tone of “Adventure and excitement but not too much... yet.” and the animation continues to impress in small ways, mostly the dynamic shot choices, camera angles and movements and the subtlety of emotion displayed on faces.

Coming back to this one always just leaves me with a warm feeling like, “Aahhh yes, back when everything was innocent.”  It definitely plays up the nostalgic feeling of the OT, which was always one of Rebels’ strengths as a show.

Next time, one of the many “filler” episodes that come back in an important and unexpected way in the finale.  You’d think, given the number of Avatar: The Last Airbender alums on the project, fandom would know better than to discount the seemingly light-hearted low-stakes disconnected episodes. XD

[passionateseadruid]

Netflix Death Note Rewrite

Summary:

I’m rewriting the 2017 Death Note Movie

This is the first in a series of Rewrites! Pretty much no one liked the Death Note Netflix Adaptation so I (an actual fan of the series) will try to rewrite the movie to actually make it compelling and competent.

First things first how long would this be? Ideally a mini series of 5-8 episodes maybe around 30 minutes each give or take. But let's say that we only have the original 1 hour and 40 minutes for a movie. Well we better make the most of it then.

~~~~

We open up on an old abandoned church busted pews, broken windows, and a cracked alter. The whole place furnished with old rugs and tarps to cover up the decay of the furniture, thousand of candles everywhere, maybe a mural on the wall of a brunette positioned in a stance with his arms out spread, welcoming the people, yet judging them at the same time.

"Light" Turner (still known as Donn Turner) stands behind the alter talking about Kira.

"Thank you all for coming to honor our savior. Kira the great god of justice, the god of the new world. I notice we have some knew attendants." Donn motions to a couple. Everyone looks to them and Donn motions them up to the front where they complete a ritual, something maybe to do with candles and ending in eating an apple. 

After the ritual everyone leave except for a brunette girl named Mia. She comes up and kisses him on the lips, praising him and his sermon today.

~~~~

The original relationship was very stale and didn't have much weight put onto it. It was also very toxic and the two characters didn't have much in common. By making "Light" the leader of this cult and Mia his pre-established girlfriend in said cult it tells us a few things about these characters already.

A. "Light" is very manipulative, and charismatic, while still being the toxic bitch he was to Misa in the anime. B. Mia, much like Misa is very loyal, but she's actually less interested in "Light" and is devoted heart, body, mind, and soul to Kira (You'll get to see more of that later but essentially Mia is a flip of Misa. Misa was first devoted to the idea of Kira and then her devotion turned into an obsession with Light. Mia will be the opposite but right now that's a further plot-point). And C. This takes place after either the Anime or the Manga (though I'm leaning more towards the Mange because the epilogue of that had the set up to this, where there were Kira Cults.)

~~~~

The next scene Donn and Mia enter Lights home and his dad is there preparing takeout.

"Donny! Oh Hello Mia."

"Hello Mr. Turner."

"Do you want to stay for Dinner? Donn made the Honor role again and got a 100% on his recent science project. I ordered his favorite food as a reward! We've got a lot to celebrate!"

"No thanks Mr. T. I should bet home. My step monsters will kill me if I'm out past my curfew."

"Okay, see you at school tomorrow." Donn smiles and strokes her head. He kisses her forehead and she kisses his cheek. 

"Bye love!" she smiles and walks out.

"Love huh? That's a bit soon considering your both still in school."

"Dad-"

"No no! It's fine she's a nice girl. I just don't want you to do something you'll regret,"

"I'm fine! I'll be in my room." He grabs a plate scoops some food onto it and takes it to his room.

"Wait I caught the Grim Angel today! Don't you want to hear about that? Donn? Can You at least take out the trash?"

"I will!" He slams the door. He then scarfs down the food and throws some garbage into the trash including a bag of potato chips. Then he goes to empty the trash. Once outside he throws the trash in the garbage can it starts to rain as a book drops right on Donn's head. "What the hell?" He picks it up and brings it into the house.

He goes up to his room and locks the door. "The human whose name is written in this note shall die. This will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected. If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds. No way, is this how Kira killed all those people?"

"Yes actually." Donn falls off his chair with a scream. Before him stands a big monster, 8 feet tall and looking like a demon. He had no eyes, and black fungus all over his body. His body itself was a ghostly pale and he had red flame like horns popping out the side of his head crackling and moving in a none existent wind. "Calm down! You have a father downstairs don't you. I'm sure he'll be worried if you start screaming."

"How do you know that? What are you?"

"My my. I thought a fan of our savior Kira would know a lot more about Shinigami."

"Kira? You're a Shinigami?"

"Yes... I go by Justice now."

"What does that mean?"

"I was human once. I was the most devout follower of Kira when we were alive."

"Teru Mikami."

"I cannot say. It is one of the rules."

"So why are you here?"

"I'm here to finish my work. I want you to kill off the remaining criminals."

"Why can't you do that yourself?"

"After the incident there was another rule in place to limit how many humans we can kill a year to just ten."

"Did you choose me? Is that how you know about my family?"

"Yes. I want you to become Light Yagami reincarnated, and for your precious little girlfriend to be the new Misa Amane."

The Shinigami "Justice" would then go on to push light into his first kill. He snuck into his dad's room and pilfered his brief case for the name of the Grim Angel. Damon Cher. Donn pushes him to escape custody steal a bike and ride onto the freeway.

"No one else should get hurt right? That's what it says on one of the rule pages."

"Correct."

About an hour later Mia sends him the news story via text that is identical to what he'd written down in the book.

"I'm a murderer."

"I thought that you were Kira's fan. Don't you want purge the world?"

"No! I just-"

"Lightling... if you don't do this I'll kill you and your girlfriend."

"Why me?"

"You're perfect."

~~~~

Okay that was a lot but it's all very important. Thing is... this is a sequel to the original death note and some of the themes I want to address are imposter syndrome and how you can't live in someone else's shadow. Spoiler alert but both "Light" and "L" are living in their successors shadows trying to live up to the expectation's of someone else. 

I also needed to give a reason why Light/Misa/Mikami wouldn't just rid the world of criminals once they became Shinigami. While I could just wipe their memories that wouldn't really explain why a Shinigami would come to earth other than pulling a Riuk and just having them be bored.

(also yes I know Misa didn't really care about being Kira but she may still want to be with Light in the afterlife.)

~~~~

The rest of that night "Light" killed ten criminals; and the next day he confided in Mia.

"So Justice here is your Shinigami."

"Yes."

"And you and me have been chosen as the new Kira's."

"Yes!"

"Give me the book."

"What? Why?"

"Light sweetie, the book." she holds her hand out.

"Fine. But don't be stupid okay."

"Oh and by the way, heart attacks are so cliche. People are already catching on." She whispers and leaves him taking the book with her.

~~~~

I know people didn't like Mia being the assertive one but she doesn't fit the role of Misa either. This whole movie was flawed to begin with and through these changes you get a story about three people with a mountain of expectations thrust upon them. They aren't Light, Misa, and L. That's the point. If you want these three you should watch the Anime.  ~~~~

A week goes by and the two have already filled ten pages through an assortment of different methods of death.

"According to recent chat logs the general populous think Neo Kira based in New York though a popular theory is that they're based out of Greenland. Okay hand me the book I'll start to focus there. draw their attention their."

"No. If we start to bring attention towards one area in particular it'll let people know that we're onto them."

"What does your dad think?"

"My dad thinks Kira is nuts. He and two other officers are apparently trying to catch Kira."

It's then we cut to James (Light's dad) as he enters his office and sees that it's been trashed. James sighs. "Arata!" A younger man appears. 

"They got you too, huh sir?"

"Chief Turner! There's a visitor here to see you! He says he has information on the Neo Kira case." Another man comes over to see James.

"Thank you Philip, bring him in."

Philip goes and returns with an older man dressed in a trench coat and a fedora. He holds up a silver laptop and a fancy white L on a black screen appears. 

"Chief turner! My name is L." A distorted voice cheers. "I'm here to offer my assistance."

"Why are you coming to me?"

"Because you're the only one who believes that Kira is back as well as being brazen and open that he is evil."

"What would we need to do?"

~~~~

You guys may wonder why I added two original characters. Arata is supposed to be a Matsuda stand in and Philip is just supposed to fill out the rest of the motif I'm working with. Chess pieces.

Light and L are the kings because they are both cowards that are spurred to make moves.

Mia and Watari are the "Queens" because they actually do physical stuff but have very little say in what actually goes on.

Arata is the Rook because I thought "Oh Rook. He's new he's the Rookie. Funny"

The name James has connections to the bible and God according to google. So Bishop because they also have connections to the bible and God.

And Philip means horse lover. That feels self explanatory.

~~~~

We cut back to Mia and Light chilling at home. They are watching the news when an emergency broadcast interrupts them. Several reporters are heard in the background.

"I'm sure you're all wondering who I am. My name is Landon Chef and I have been working with L on this investigation. It is in his expert opinion that these deaths are all coincidental. Kira is not back." The news report can be heard in the background as Mia and Light fight.

"Oh hell no!" She screams. She shoots up from the couch and grabs the notebook.

"Mia what are you doing?!" Light grabs the book.

"He's making a fool of us, Light. He's making a fool of Kira!"

"Don't be stupid! This is what they want!"

"Who care! Let's give them what they want!"

"Mia don't be stupid."

"No Light! We have to do this! For Kira! Kira is our god! He's my life, Light."

"Fine. Give me the book, I'll do it."

"I'm more than capable-"

"Give me the book! You want a new god of justice you'll get one! Now give. Me. The. Book."

She hands it over and he jots down the mans name.

Over in the police department the three men working with L look on in horror as their stand in dies. "I told you that they were in Seattle." L said over the computer.

Over the next few weeks the new Kiras continue to murder. The audience is greeted by a montage of the two killing people. Light writing down names and Mia doing the resaerch. We also see them back at their cult. Light starts to use his new name and Mia dies her hair blond. 

Then back at the police department we see that the three men are preparing to meet L face to face. 

"Hello Gentlemen. Please call me L. I'd prefer if we all used code names. After all we don't know what Kira is really capable of."

"Ehem." Watari clears his throat. "Don't give them to much lee way L."

"Sorry Watari."

"I'll be Rook. That's what most people call me anyways."

"Call me Kelpie."

"Chief." James said

"You can continue to call us L and Watari Respectively." L smiles.

"You probably want more sweets, don't you L?" Watari smiles but it's very clearly fake.

"No I'm..." Watari glares at L.

"...you know what? Sure."

~~~~

This seems a bit weird so but it would come up later in the story. I'm just going through a rough draft with some scenes to flesh out the story a bit. So basically this L is the fourth real L. This Watari was the third real L and was the successor to Near who died young. This Watari is very obsessed with the original L. So much so that he makes this new L dress like him (styling his clothes like how Near described him) and keeps him on the sweet heavy diet.

~~~~

After they meet L closes in on Mia and sends Watari to get information on her.

"And what's the purpose of that?" Philip questioned.

"Perry Ethan was found hanging from a tree with lacerations on his thighs and wrists. He didn't have a criminal record so I traced him back to where he lived and found out he's the step father of Mia Sutton. That’s actually how I found out where to trace the murders to.”

“You can’t go after Mia!” James protested.

“And why is that?” L asked

“Because she’s a good kid. She’s kind and caring and she’s kept my son out of trouble!”

“I’m sorry chief turner but Mia is our best bet at finding Neo Kira. If not her then someone close to her.”

“Does that mean my son’s going to be investigated.”

“If need be then yes. What would Watari say? Ah yes, he’s got a 42% chance of being connected to the murders.”

“I’m not going to sit by and watch as you accuse my son!”

“Then help us find Kira. If you believe that your son is innocent help us find other suspects.”

“…what would you have me do?”

“I need you to pull every file you have on the computer and put it on hard copy. The first Kira was the son of the police chief and he accessed classified documents through his father’s computer.”

“Right! You told us that a decade ago.” Arata said.

~~~~

Yeah so basically this Watari exposed Kiras’ identities and while most people were dissuaded from worshipping Kira. But as we know there were still small groups of people.

Mia is in custody and light comes to save her but she’s is just in holding and they haven’t officially arrested her. They have 48 hours to find evidence and arrest her or else she will be let go.

During this time Light and L finally meet. The next few scenes would be a cat and mouse chase. I’m kinda stupid and bad at writing that kinda stuff, so we’re going to skip that.

~~~~

Later on they choose to charge Mia and Light makes the very smart decision to mind control a criminal to walk into the police station and say that he (the criminal) is Kira and then control him to not speak for his stay at the police station. Eventually dying of a heart attack when he is let go. 

L is still convinced that Mia had something to do with it so she remains in custody.

Light starts to panic as Justice implores him to write down someone in the police station. He chooses the clerk who writes in his own blood that he is Kira reincarnated and that Mia is a stupid mortal woman who had nothing to do with the murders.

Despite this L (with the help of Watari) convinces everyone that the Perry Ethan incident still links Mia to the case.

Eventually Light starts to kill people on the other side of the world and they have to let Mia go.

some stuff happens and Light and Mia argue that what both of them did was stupid and Light storms off in a fit of rage.

~~~~

I’m just going to cut to the end.

~~~~

In a fit of rage Light makes several criminals challenge L. Him and L meet and Light asks Justice for the Shinigami eyes. He writes down L’s name as L tackles him and quickly writes down his and Mia’s names too.

Everyone mourns. Everyone moves on and there’s no need for a shitty sequel.

~~~~

Okay finally thoughts, I know that it’s not perfect but I really have no idea what to do with this.

I would like to expand the concepts I have about L and Light living in each of their predecessors shadows and how Light both relishes the attention and fame and power but cracks under the pressure, and L trying his best and failing over and over and how he’s in over his head, then ultimately winning in the end with the killings finally stopping. This was his justice to claim, Lionel Morgan’s view of justice.

It’s bad but I wanted to preserve and expand upon interesting concepts that I don’t think were fully explored by the writers. The shinigami pushing light. Him and Mia having a messed up romance. L being emotional over the lives he’s loosing. Light looking for power but not wanting to be a full on serial killer.

Anyway constructive criticism and questions welcome in the comments section. I’m a humble Druid who enjoys the mysteries the sea has to hold and instead of saying goodbye I’ll just wave. (Get it?) 👋

[idleglowingpixels]

Okay so, I watched the Miraculous Ladybug movie...

Originally I wasn't going to because the show was such a massive disappointment (mainly Seasons 4 and 5), and I mentally put my foot down saying I wasn't gonna consume anymore official content from the franchise. But morbid curiosity be damned, my God, it was probably everything I could have asked for from a movie for the franchise.

(Spoilers Ahead)

I'm gonna start with my critiques, with a lack of chronology, only so I can save the good parts for the end. I have a lot of nice things to say and I wanna end the post on a good note!

They really could've spent the time it took for Tikki and Marinette's song for the kwamis to explain the powers to Marinette and Adrien (and, in turn, the audience that might not know about/haven't seen the series). I love that song, and I thoroughly enjoyed Tikki's more sassy mentor-like position she takes in the movie, but I do feel that the powers are a bit difficult to understand if you're a newcomer to the show.

The fact Plagg, my favorite character from the series, got dumbed down to a fart joke made me so upset. It felt a lot like when Plagg got dumbed down to purely cheese puns and poor writing, he didn't feel as significant to Adrien's side of the story as Tikki was to Marinette's. RIP Plagg with nuance. :') To be completely honest, I think Plagg was really the only downgrade in characterization here though.

Did anyone else notice Nooroo had a different English VA in the movie??? I heard it and was like "WAIT YOU'RE NOT BEN DISKIN NOOOOO" haha. In fact it made me TERRIFIED they replaced Tikki and Plagg too, but I'm so happy they didn't. I don't hate the new voice tho! It does fit the character, but definitely leaned too grown-up and feminine sounding for me. I got too used to the squeaky, scared little baby voice Ben gave him. (EDIT: I actually really like the new voice lowkey, I think it's just as good as Ben but I do miss Ben for sure haha)

Obviously, the pacing had to heavily rely on montages throughout to move the story along due to the 90-minute runtime. I think of all children's film franchises to deserve a trilogy, this was the one, especially because of its international and overlapping appeal between its target audience and older fans. If we got the 3-act structure of this film evenly divided between 3 separate movies, it would've had much more time to flesh out the current cast of characters and narrative they were trying to tell. It's definitely the movie's biggest fault in my opinion, but I think fans of the series who have a baseline knowledge of the plot at the very least will enjoy the movie (unless they don't like musicals, I suppose).

I thought the best way to describe what it felt like watching boils down to "if someone took the series and wrote it into a 10k-to-20k-word oneshot fic." And I mean this affectionately, but with most fanfiction, generally you'd have pre-established knowledge of the world and how it works. The movie kind of goes off the assumption you have a baseline knowledge, so I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point for the show (tho I'd NEVER recommend the actual show to anyone), if only because it's so jarringly different in terms of their powers and characters. You'd only be setting up your poor friends for disappointment. :'D

The songs were fun, they're nothing crazy, but they're adorable. My only complaint for the songs is Marinette's singing VA being different than her speaking VA, another common complaint I've shared with others. Her singing VA is a wonderful singer, don't get me wrong, but Christina Vee/Valenzuela is such a talented singer and I would've loved to hear her sing for Marinette. I know Bryce wasn't singing for Adrien either, but his singing VA sounded similar enough that it wasn't as bothersome.

Okay, the best parts, let's go:

Now, admittedly, the story is rushed to hell and back. As a writer, I can't understate that. But what I can give the writing props for, unlike the show, is having its narrative not get overblown and out-of-focus. By the end of the series, there's so many characters and micro-arcs to keep track of -- Kagami's friendship with Lila, Luka's awareness of Ladybug & Chat Noir's identities, Alix being forced out of the picture at the start of Season 5, the ZagHeroes and Fae from the two specials that aired between S3 & S4, the fact I could go on should speak volumes enough -- that the actual story of the show crumbles beneath the weight of it all.

The movie condenses this narrative, and in doing so, it sets up the main characters of this film and what's looking like the next film, should this movie succeed. The main focus is on Marinette, Adrien and his father Gabriel, all of whom are well-known as the main heroes and villain of the series respectively. Through their stories, we somehow have that "vintage era" Miraculous charm that the first season or two of the show had, and also gave an ACTUALLY GOOD AND SATISFYING CONCLUSION TO THE STORY -- Sorry, I got sidetracked, we'll get back to that point later.

We also have Alya, Nino, Chloe and Nathalie, all in the movie BUT as a minor focus. The trio of kids get a bit more screentime than Nathalie, but they're present just enough to imply that they'll be important for the next film (Which I assume will have a return of Rena Rouge, Carapace, Queen Bee and Mayura respectively).

The animation, the big selling point of this film for most people, is incredible. Even seeing leaks before the movie dropped, you could tell this thing had cost big bucks for its animation. Apparently it was one of France's highest-budget animated films? It was gorgeous, I don't have much complaints with it, the style they were going for was just eye candy animation. Everyone's designs got elevated in this style, I think the only criticism I have for that is that Alya's hairstyle could've been changed to reflect the volume it has in the show, it looks a bit too thin and flat for my liking. But I guess that's just personal preference.

Master Fu! He's back, and he's a cooky AND wise old man! I was ecstatic to see him back. Once he was written out of the show in S3's finale, the show hasn't felt the same tbh. Idk why, but I didn't realized I missed him as much as I did until seeing him at the start of the movie. XD

No sentimonster bullshit shenanigans, THANK GOD. I really like the concept of senti-people, but good lord, the show's story was overly complex as it was, the movie didn't need to go making it worse. (Note, I got nothing against the theories! I just can't stand how the show executed that aspect of the plotline. It's awfully vague for absolutely no reason and screams that it was shoe-horned into the plot around mid-S3 for fan interest. The show only suffers from the inclusion of implications for the theories.)

And I'm SO HAPPY they gave Adrien some motherfucking agency. That scene where his father walks down the stairs looking disheveled af, demanding Adrien listen to him only for Adrien to say he doesn't have a father or that he lost his father a long time ago?!? Amazing. Bare minimum shit, yes, but it was executed so well. And him being an angsty teen, drowning out his solitude through music, and getting a bit of an ego through his Chat Noir persona? When I tell you this movie feels like a fanfic (affectionately), I mean it. It feels like the writers were actually competent enough to understand how to make a character 3-dimensional.

Same goes for Marinette. As much as I miss Rose, Juleka, Mylene and Alix being her friends, I think having Marinette start as a loner with no friends made her parallel with Adrien's feelings of isolation. Her arc of gaining her confidence and befriending Alya, Nino and Adrien, while Adrien's arc focuses on his grief and learning to open up to others again, was a nice contrast. And both of them actually felt equally important, which was probably the best part for me. (Side-tangent; If they introduce Kitty Section into a possible next film (which would make sense since they're a band and this movie is a musical adaptation), Marinette could befriend the old friend squad through the band. Maybe they could even be manipulated by Mayura in the next movie, and we could get a 5v5 battle between the Miraculous 5 and Rose, Juleka, Mylene, Luka and Ivan's amoks...? Just an idea I thought of on the spot.)

I didn't hate any of the songs, and the general consensus I've seen is that Hawk Moth's villainous song in the midst of the film was the best one (an opinion of which I agree, I had watched this with my cousin and we both agreed to start the song over after listening to it the first time, and it was the only song we did that to on our viewing). It also made the transformation into becoming Hawk Moth truly feel like a Jeckyll and Hyde style situation for Gabriel, like Hawk Moth was the alter-ego he could use to let his grief consume him and drive him mad. I'm a sucker for Jeckyll and Hyde tropes, and while it might've been intended, that's how I'm interpreting it. It was honestly a great change, and I joked that the top hat during the song made Hawk Moth officially a Tumblr sexyman lmao.

The 3-way reveal. WE GOT THE 3-WAY REVEAL. NO PREACHY, TIME-WASTING REVERSALS, NO BULLSHITTING FROM ASTRUC. WE ACTUALLY GOT THE 3-WAY REVEAL BETWEEN LADYBUG, CHAT NOIR AND HAWK MOTH. And it was just as fucking fantastic as the show ABSOLUTELY SHOULD HAVE made it. There was NO EXCUSES for the show's ending for Gabriel/Hawk Moth to be as atrocious as it was, nor for Adrien to be completely fucking absent and not have an identity reveal -- and I refuse to let anyone say executive meddling was the reason for it. Jeremy Zag was Astruc's executive, and clearly with the movie being his passion project, Zag cares enough about the franchise that he wouldn't prevent Astruc from writing a good story. But Astruc is a horrible writer, whose faults really began to shine the more tone-deaf and preachy his writing of the show got. Istg, half of the episode's "lessons" was just Astruc venting his frustrations against fans who had valid criticism of the writing. But goddamn, it's gotta be real embarrassing for Astruc to have his own franchise/story made and written better for a 90-minute film by his colleague than he could write with 5 seasons and over 100 episodes...Yikes. XD

When I tell you some parts of the movie -- the kwamis having a bit more agency themselves (Nooroo popping out of the brooch was so cute!!! :'D), the characters in general, Gabriel's story (tho it could've used more GabeNath imo lol), the focus on the characters while also having some engaging & wild battles, the long-awaited identity reveal, the masquerade ball trope -- felt like aspects the series just completely didn't have or vastly underutilized, it's insane. The difference between the film and series is like night and day.

Overall, it wasn't the best-written movie, but it's EXACTLY what I assume most Miraculous fans desperately craved from the show that crumbled its quality in its hands, spat on it, threw it in a garbage bin and lit it on fire. I genuinely saw parts of this movie that paralleled the rewrite fic I wanna write for the series soon (THE CAT IN ADRIEN'S ROOM WHEN HE FINDS THE RING BRUH), and unlike the series, which inspired me by how bad it was, the movie had a few parts that were so well-written that it inspired me to write scenes as good as those (THE FUCKIN PART WITH LADYBUG SAYING "I need to go..." AND THE DESPERATION IN CHAT'S "...Don't...").

I feel similar after-the-fact as I did with the Super Mario Bros Movie -- imperfect, but satisfactory to pre-established fans of the franchise. If anyone you know ever wants to give the franchise a chance, I'd honestly exclusively recommend this movie, and maybe S1-S2. A solid 8/10, only having a high ranking because of how much fun and entertaining this film was to me, a fan since around S2's airing.

[bonesandthebees]

I think it’s very fitting that your scrap bin is called ‘feast on the scraps’ cuz I am very much feasting. I love the vibes of the 80s spy au. I was not ready for it to be West Berlin, but somehow that setting is very compelling. I’m assuming the people they don’t want to get the list would then be East Berlin, the Stasi and the sovjets and so on. Would explain why it’s important that they work together. The car scene is a very nice way to force Tommy and Techno into working together. It’s also a way for Tommy to earn Techno’s respect dispite being so young.

And then Wilbur comes in already having the respect for both of them. Also, sandduo crumbs. And Niki and Wilbur being siblings is something I’ve never thought about, but it’s such a vibe. It seems like they put on thus nice polite front but there’s probably danger under the surface. Either that or they got in too deep and are now rolling with it. Chaos ensured.

Then there’s the second scarp, because we are grtting spoiled. I am once again in aw of your ability to provide exposition without dumping it all on a page. Every bit of information feels organic. It feels like we just step into Tommy’s pov and are along for the ride rather than the character explaining everything for us. There’s hints towards Wilbur being blind but it doesn’t really get mentioned because it’s something Tommy already knows and is used to.

We learn about the Caves through dialogue and conversation. We don’t know what they are or what they look like, but we know their purpose (to find artefacts), their pitfalls (dangerous creatures) and their value (to make a lot of money). When and explanation is needed, we get the bare minimum. This keeps us hungry for more, yet doesn’t leave us confused. It’s just good okay.

-🌲

aaa thank you!! yeah the 80s spy au was heavily inspired by a spy film I rewatch a lot called Atomic Blonde which takes place in West Berlin in the 80s, hence the setting. they were definitely trying to keep the soviets in East Berlin from getting their hands on the list hence why the Americans and the Brits decided to work together in the au. car scene works as a GREAT way to establish tommy and techno's teamwork super early on it was so fun to write

there's a plot reason wilbur and niki were siblings in this au because that's not usually a dynamic i would go for, but I had an idea and it was just too good to pass up. I don't want to spoil it in case I ever change my mind and finish writing it, but knowing me that's not gonna happen rip. but yeah wilbur and niki are SO fun in this au. they're just two twenty-somethings running a sneaky little information network, definitely do some smuggling between east and west berlin, and get a little in over their heads sometimes

aww that's so sweet I'm so glad all the worldbuilding and exposition felt natural!! i'm very proud of how I started introducing the world in the second scrap, primarily because I remember when i was first writing it i had zero plans i was literally just writing whatever came to my head. I was just coming up with the world as I went lol. and yeah I definitely wanted wilbur's blindness to just be referred to in an obvious way without it being stated outright because that's how tommy's gonna think of it. just hints here and there until tommy makes his stupid joke clarifying to the reader what's going on

I loveeeee providing exposition in dialogue. it's so much more interesting instead of just providing it in a big paragraph with zero action. I have a lot of fun with worldbuilding like that. just throwing pieces here and there and letting the readers form the picture gradually instead of just infodumping it all onto them.

tysm spruce so glad you enjoyed!!

[bitegore]

WIP ask; dysfunctional bulkhead fuck yeah please and thank you

This one spawned out of a conversation I had with @honestlyvan, resident Bulkhead understander and one of the friends I have the absolute most fun bouncing ideas off of because for real I have never met someone who is so good at yes-anding ideas until they turn from a one-off line into something really cool. If I remember right, we were talking about Bulkhead's very visible delineation between "people I care about" and "potential targets," since Bulkhead is pretty clearly kind of... like...

ah, continued under the cut because this got long. A lot of discussion about Bulkhead characterization and then some very light details about the fic, because I did that thing where you have a general point but no actual outline and you run out of plot super fast because you never had much to begin with.

Okay so let's take a very brief detour through the land of psychology. Empathy runs on the idea of an "in-group" and an "out-group". The in-group is where you feel strong empathy, the out-group is not. This is what empathy is for, largely; it makes you feel bad for the people around you when they're hurting so that you don't start killing your buddies. Nothing wrong with that. The trouble is where this in-group ends. And for Bulkhead, at least as far as I see him, his in-group stops right at the end of Team Prime. Miko is in, Jack is in, Raf is in, Fowler is in eventually, and Wheeljack his old friend is in. And that's it. Everyone else could drop dead and Bulkhead wouldn't shed a tear. Why should he care? They're not his people, he's not invested in them. If they die that's their problem. He's got better things to worry about.

He's also an ex-member of the Autobot Warcrime Squad, the Wreckers. The "get in, kill everyone, get out, try not to die" team. He and Wheeljack are the only ex-Wreckers still standing, which is pretty damn impressive because even outside of IDW it's still a team with pretty high turnover (see: Marvel).

Anyway none of that gels too well with the way Bulkhead gets written in fic, which is to be a nice soft sweet kind of guy a la Animated. Which is fine, all the more for you guys, but I just find it painfully boring. There's a reason I don't read Animated fic unless my friends have written it and asked me to.

So on the face of it I basically just wanted to write Bulkhead kicking ass and not even bothering to take names because who gives a shit. Not him. He's got better things to do, people to give a crap about. Don't die here and he'll remember you to kill you harder later, maybe, but unless you're annoying or matter to someone who matters to him he just sort of doesn't give half a crap about who you are. He is just going to put you in the fucking ground. Bye.

in practice that is not what I did.

In practice I wrote a couple hundred words of internal monologue and went "oh, fuck, hang on", because guess what I did? Smartest boy ever, best writer in the world. I forgot to come up with a plot.

So then it crashed headlong into my obsession with the Combaticons and I had some vague idea of pulling the FoC Combaticons in for Bulkhead to just lay brutal waste to without waiting around to care too much about who they were. I thought about having him go fight one of the Insecticons but decided against it because I don't know them well off the top of my head and I didn't want to make a whole oc up so I'd probably be working with Hardshell, who doesn't work as an enemy for "named and therefore not someone I can just kill off" reasons. I'd established that it was during the whole "hunting down the Iaconian Relic macguffins" arc(s), so it didn't make sense to me for me to pull in characters that die before that or make significant appearances after, and there's really not that many that just show up and vanish without a trace. So okay I needed a new set.

Trouble is I've never played Fall of Cybertron.

So then I was like "ooh, I'll watch a playthrough". And then I did not do that. You understand how it goes.

Anyway, as a result the fic has been languishing ever since, but because it's so goddamn short i'm just going to copy paste the entire thing down here for your perusal. Enjoy.

Things were different back when the Wreckers were still running together and no one was really running with them. Much as Team Prime was small, it wasn't a hyper-specialized unit designed for getting in and getting out and getting slag done and nothing else. Totally different internal culture. Sometimes Bulkhead didn't really know what to do with it. And the humans- anything weird about Team Prime was weirded ten times harder by the humans. They were small, and fragile, and they didn't seem to realize it at all, constantly putting themselves beyond their stress tolerances for no good reason. Miko kept wandering straight into battlefields like she'd forgotten guns existed, and Bulkhead had to admit she was better at evading fire than he'd first expected but the other two humans definitely didn't have her reflexes and they kept on following her and needing the Autobots to get the three of them out of trouble. These things were so much more convenient when he and Jackie and Seaspray and Springer and the rest were all just doing what they did. They were good at that. Team Prime was pretty damn effective, sure, but they weren't half as good as getting in and getting out and laying out everything in their path, the way the Wreckers had been. At least Wheeljack was here. If he needed to blow up a metric fuckton (thank you, Miko, love that expression) of Vehicons, Jackie was always good for it. Aw, whatever. Jackie was off doing whatever it was he was doing- wherever the action was, that was for sure- and Team Prime was on one of their completely weird and inexplicable little backwards jaunts again. Recon, digging old weapons and scrap up out of the ground to keep them out of the Decepticons' hands. It'd've been nice if the boss would've let them use the really cool ones, but for the most part Optimus Prime had a very firm "no powerful game-changing strategies" policy.

[thunderheadfred]

🤚The Second Worst (Pt. 1/?)🤚

Part 2 of my Shigaraki Thesis Headcanons. HC's // The Second Worst: 1 - 2

The half-mad ghost of Shimura Tenko is in love with you, and your life is about to become a tragic wreck. -- AKA here's when I gave up on bullet points and went off the fuckin rails

I'm self-conscious about writing so much, so uhhhh, please be kind, hahaaa. This is rather long and involved. Are these still even HCs or just a self-indulgent AU outline? There are some mysteries we may never solve.

This is on AO3 now, if you prefer reading there. Anyway. Minors do not interact.

- - - - -

You met Tenko before the League existed.

Believe it or not, there are a million ways it might have happened, but in the end: you were both bargain-binning in Akihabara.

You reached for a copy of a collectible bullet-hell cute-'em-up (near-mint! CIB!!!) and accidentally bonked hands with a complete stranger. He flinched about five million feet away from you. Ouch. You're just a nobody, quirkless and average, but you didn't think you were THAT repulsive.

(You're not. Hell, even if you were, this guy couldn't care less. He barely registers that you have a face.)

(Shigaraki is accustomed to getting in and out of this shop in seconds. He always comes in before anyone else and goes straight home. -- Is that really home? Is 'home' a real place? -- ANYWAY he's already pirated this shit, god, why does he even care? He doesn't need to be here. Father doesn't like it. Is that why he's here? Just to do something Father doesn't like? That's pathetic.)

He's had at least ten complete internal arguments with himself before he so much as looks at you.

You know in the tenth of a second he actually meets your eyes... this fucker is going to fight you to the death over this game.

- - - The death match ends in a draw. He was not expecting you to know the first fucking thing about this game. Nobody knows about it, even in Japan. Who the fuck do you even think you are? Oh, no, he's still taking it. But... maybe he can show you how to play it it. He'll give you a little taste, just to make you jealous. He's got his hoodie pulled down like he's going to commit an act of terrorism. What little you can see of his face looks twitchy and messed up. If you have any survival instincts at all, they're kicking in right about now. But... why not. You're not going anywhere with this dude unsupervised, so you suggest a crowded web cafe down the street. The cafe has the necessary console... but the retro gaming booth is laughably small. The TV is about four inches across and you end up having to practically sit in his lap. You were sure this guy was a nasty fucking creep, but he's................ only mostly terrible. Way too angry, for sure. Has no idea how to have a normal, friendly conversation. Inadvertently insults you every other sentence and seems to have a deep-seated persecution complex.

You'd prefer to be mad about the awful company, but... he's obviously deprived of human contact. When it's established that you two share a lot of media fixations, he calms down and starts treating you a little more like a human being. Or at least like a fellow elite.

Wherever he came from, he doesn't seem to want to go back. He keeps pushing you to play one more level, pretending he wants to beat your score. You feel kinda bad for him. You get the distinct feeling that his life is a disaster. He looks like he's never had a full night of sleep in his life. He trips your trigger hairs in that 'is he gonna follow me home?' kind of way, but... up close, he's a lot more depressing than scary. At the very least, you want to buy him a stupidly cute dessert. Just... as thanks. For letting you try out the game and stuff. It's not a big deal, so just pick a flavor, okay? The world isn't actually that awful, y'know.

It's not even that impressive... Definitely not a great cafe. But he takes practically a full hour to eat a single slice of strawberry cake.

When the hoodie comes down. He's all shriveled and dried out, like someone left him him in the desert to die. He chews on his peeling bottom lip and nervously scratches his neck. He doesn't thank you for the cake. Which is fine. It's not a big deal. Actually, you wish he would eat faster; you feel weirdly responsible for him now.

Under all that mess he's... gorgeous? His hair is stunning: a bright, gleaming silver that catches the light. His bone structure is flawless. If it weren't for all the scars and the misanthropic slouch, he'd look like a fairy fucking prince.

You were not prepared for that. In another life he could have been a model, the type of guy who would never even look at you. But something bad happened to him. Something... very bad. Do you even want to know? You have no idea how to ask. Has anyone ever been nice to him? It doesn't seem like it. Should YOU be nice to him? You sort of want to try. - - - This becomes a regular thing. This weird little secret. You should probably tell someone when you see him, just in case you don't come back one day, but you say nothing; how the hell would you explain why you want to see him so bad? You don't know his full name. Maybe he's on a watch list. When he gives you a long string of random numbers so you can schedule meet-ups (is THAT his e-mail, really?) he tells you to just... call him Tenko. Or whatever. It doesn't matter. (He sneaks out when Father is deep in his plots. As long as he comes home on time, it doesn't really matter where he goes, right?) He brings a different game every time. He has an insane collection. Where does he get the money for all this? You know he doesn't work. God, is it drugs? It's probably drugs. Wherever these hidden gems came from, he proudly shows them off to you, like he's never had an audience before. It's sort of cringe-inducing, the way he one-ups and rubs every little victory in your face, desperate for attention.

But at the same time, you are becoming too... something...to mind. Do you... like him? He's not funny, but he thinks you are. His mouth is huge when he laughs. He seems to hate everyone but you, and you've had to earn the distinction of being merely tolerable. Still, he gets really excited about random shit like the garage kit black market and haunted dolls and the price of weed on the dark web.

And... strawberry cake. The realization hits you both at the same time when the waitress brings one piece with two forks. God, what the fuck, are you... are you dating? Quick, think. You look forward to seeing him, and don't even mind sitting close to him anymore. Sometimes you push your leg up against him just to see if he'll still flinch away... and he doesn't.

You jealously notice the way he touches everything but you: with delicate precision, one finger at a time. His large, elegant hands always have a pinky up like he's aspiring for a fiefdom, and you wonder what his skin feels like. You go home and dwell on the way he plucks flowering weeds out of the pavement in front of the cafe. The way he stands rooted to the spot as you leave, just... looking at nothing, unsmiling.

You watch his lips too much, and not just because you want to buy him chapstick. You catch him gaping at you all the time. You thought he was just creepy like that, but maybe... Yeah. I guess you are dating him. Shit. - - - Okay, so, yeah. Bringing him back to your place was definitely a bad idea. You know you shouldn't trust him, even if he is... apparently... your boyfriend? Sort of? You still don't have his phone number. So. Um. What now? You order overpriced pizza and queue up a campy horror movie. What the fuck are you even doing. You don't really think he's going to murder you anymore, but... still. Is the suburban massacre scene gonna give him ideas? Turns out, no. He doesn't like gore, even when the blood is neon pink. He gets upset. Like, really upset. Shaky and green, like he might puke on you. He can't stop scratching that scaly spot on his neck.

Tenko, are you crying? Fucking hell, did you just trigger him? Of course he has a traumatic past, it's carved all over his face. You're so fucking stupid. You don't know how to make it right. You want to hug him, kiss him... anything. But he's never really touched you, and you're too afraid to push now. It ruins the whole night. He leaves without explaining anything. Doesn't even say goodbye. He just. Leaves. Maybe you'll never see him again. Maybe that's for the best. Your chest hurts. - - - He shows up at your door a few weeks later. You haven't heard from him since that disastrous movie night. You had pretty much accepted that you'd broken up with a boyfriend you never actually had. But no. Apparently not.

This time, he’s brought his own entertainment. He's holding a boxed set of some show you're not familiar with. You're distracted by these weird little half-gloves he's wearing, like a cyberpunk hacker. That's a new look, and even if it's a bit edgelord adjacent, he makes it look cool. You tell him as much. It's the first time you've let on how attractive you find him. He's wearing a tight black shirt with a deep, deep V-neck. That's distracting too.

He clears his slender throat and doesn't look at you.

You try to apologize for before, but he's acting like it never happened. What are you even talking about? Have you seen this OVA or not? Get out of the way and let him in already. You've watched three episodes now, but you still have no idea what this stupid anime is about. You can't pay attention to a single frame. All you can think about is how his arm has crept up behind your shoulders. A few inches more and he'll be holding you. Does he... want to hold you? You lean toward him so slowly your spine creaks. One molecule at a time. After a thousand years, your head slides nervously under his chin. His arm comes down, locking you in, fingers clutching your sleeve in a death grip. Even that snobby little pinky. His head tucks down into you hair. A sharp collarbone bites into your cheek. His heartbeat is hard, fast, and irregular. There's not a scrap of fat on him, and as you wrap your arm around his stomach, you think you see a twitch in his pants. Is that just you being desperate? Or... hopeful? This is really happening. --- Soon, you learn that Tenko is a clumsy kisser. It doesn't matter; the fact that he's kissing you at all is good enough for now. His lips are dry, but not half as dry as you expected. There's a slick of menthol helping things along; he's been using something medicated on his lips. Plus, his mouth tastes like he drank a gallon of mouthwash.

All this thrills you more than a little, because it means he came here wanting to impress you. Wanting you. Full stop. Underneath that minty sting is a strange, worrisome aftertaste, like something rotten. Your brain fires off an alarm. Stop kissing him. Right now. This thing will make you sick. But his hands nervously slide over your body... and you decide not to worry about it. Instead, you kiss him deeper. He makes a sweet, startled little noise. Your brain is a fucking liar. It occurs to you he's probably never done this before.

When you lace your fingers in his and try to pull one of his gloves off, he rips his hand away.

Don't. That’s the only explanation he gives.

No need to ask if it's a quirk thing or a trauma thing. Judging by how jittery he gets, it's probably both. You remember the way his hands almost float over objects without ever holding them. Maybe his touch is dangerous. Maybe that's why his face looks like that.

Maybe you should learn more about him before things go way too far...

No. It can't be that bad. Now that he's in your arms, everything frightening about him evaporates. He's vulnerable. He's alone. He's shaking a little. Has anyone else ever seen this side of him? You want to keep him all to yourself, just like this.

So what if he has to touch you with gloves on? You've heard of worse quirk-related inconveniences.

It's okay, Tenko. Do you want to keep going?

You put his hands back on you and wait for him to kiss you again. It doesn't take long.

---

You open his pants. He's long and thin, calloused even here. Every part of him feels untouched, unloved. You hold him tight and squeeze.

It doesn't seem to occur to him to please you in return. He looks afraid. Confused. You're sure you scared him earlier with the glove thing. Is this too much? No. He gasps and leans into you. The tiniest, broken please.

He cums in your hand right away, face buried in your shoulder, his eyes wet and hidden.

I have to go, he says. Over and over and over.

It's okay, Tenko.

You know he doesn't want to.

- - - - - (oops I wrote more)

[ckneal]

I don't know when it happened, but at some point I started thinking of the Fate characters on Supernatural as essentially being in charge of doing Chuck's grunt work behind the scenes. Just like some overworked lackeys sitting behind a bunch of computer screens. Unlike Michael and the other angels (but, apparently, JUST like the Men of Letters, as per season 15), they were perfectly aware that there were multiple universes in existence, along with multiple versions of all of Chuck’s favorite characters (or plot devices, in Michael’s case), because it was their job to keep records of all the different universes that Chuck created. And every time that Chuck wanted to start playing with a new universe that was almost the same as one he’d already tinkered with in the past, it was their job to get the universe set up by playing it through--making sure that all of history hit the same stale, tired beats that they’d seen it hit countless times before, except with the very specific, tiny changes that Chuck asked them to make. Essentially like running through a game of Dream Daddy or the Sims on fast forward until hitting the point where Chuck wanted to jump in and take over the narrative.

And wouldn’t it be funny if Adam only existed in one universe because one day, one of these Fates (we are only introduced to Atropos on the show, named after a Greek goddess of fate, but her dialogue implies that the corresponding goddesses, Clotho and Lachesis, exist as well) snapped from the monotony of it all? 

Obviously, the fate in question wouldn’t be Atropos, as her one appearance made it perfectly clear that she was happy with her job. But what about the other two? Maybe Lachesis was sitting there at one point, so bored she wanted to cry, running through the motions of making John act like the shit dad that he needed to be, so Sam and Dean would grow up with the issues they need to have in draft # 1552362 of Chuck's story--and out of nowhere, she hit the button to turn off the fast forward feature. Just to play in real time for a bit--just for a little bit, while she gave herself a break. John was in the ER, getting patched up at the tail end of an ugly hunt. As per the the instructions she'd followed in thousands upon thousands of different setup assignments, he was suppose to be curt and vague with his nurse while she asked the kind of standard, friendly questions that medical professionals often did to establish rapport with their patients. But this time, Lachesis decided to do things a little differently. 

No one was watching. This was a small little moment in John Winchester's life, it wouldn't impact Chuck's story. . .So she clicked the buttons necessary to make John Winchester tell a few jokes. And it was fun watching John Winchester be that nice at that age, with the little bar in the corner of her screen that indicated affability going up and up. And she didn't really mean to hit "Flirtatious Joke” after the two had gone back and forth for a bit, but her finger slipped, and then there was a little progress made in a pink bar that indicated romantic attraction. 

And it was at that point that she looked up and saw Clotho hovering over her shoulder, watching what she was doing, and Lachesis started to ramble off a disjointed explanation that she was NOT doing anything out of turn--but then Clotho, still squinting at Lachesis’s screen, said, "Try a Bold Pick Up Line." 

One thing led to another, and they were both more than a little drunk on the sweet, sweet nectar of misbehaving when Lachesis eventually clicked "Try for a Baby." And thus Adam Milligan was born. 

Lachesis and Clotho waited for some sort of punishment to come through. A penance, a memo, something, but Adam slipped into existence as just another mundane human in the background of Chuck's world, and the two rebellious Fates were thrilled. As happens with many first time Sims players, they approached Adam wanting him to excel with everything. They maxed out his education and his relationship with his mom, and even got him a wholesome little relationship going with another townie human--all while working around the other tasks Chuck sent them, and keeping Atropos--who had a huge stick in her ass--out of the loop. 

Then they got greedy, because Adam's loneliness bar was so high. They thought they were being so slick, having John come to visit around hunting trips, but that was what finally made Chuck aware of this random human smack dab in the middle of his special family tree. And thus the Fates got a note instructing them to quietly kill him off, just as Chuck was doing with all of the Campbell family members. Maybe a brain aneurysm, or a car crash if they wanted something dramatic. He highly recommends telling Adam to start a fire. 

The two Fates were scandalized (and the third confused). They wrote back to Chuck, "No, he's our baby."

And so the battle of wills was on. 

Chuck turned around and decided that if they were going to be like that, he'd make them sorry--by writing Adam into his story, and using him as a foil to Sam, and killing him off horrifically. 

Outraged, Clotho and Lachesis hacked into Castiel in retaliation--causing that infamous "crack in his chassis" by overriding his original function with instructions to help Dean escape that beautiful room. 

Chuck nearly bit through his divine lip at that, but then he got the idea to bring Adam back from the dead. For one second, the Fates thought this was Chuck giving in, granting them their one tiny little human to play with, but then PSYCH! Chuck had Michael possess Adam and wrote the two of them into Lucifer's cage, to spend the rest of eternity rotting in Hell, beyond help from anyone in a grand finale he came up with just for spite.

But the Fates weren't done yet. As Chuck kept trying to reclaim control of his narrative, they kept trying to find ways to hack into the storyline and save their boy.

Sadly, Chuck was not done yet either. 

"And so Dean asked Death to save his brothers. AND DEATH SAID PICK ONE AND DEAN PICKED SAM AND EVERYONE WAS COOL WITH THAT." 

"And then to complete the trials, it was said that the Winchesters must save an innocent soul from Hell, and thus they went back for [BOBBY]."

"And so the Winchesters opened the cage wide enough to make contact, and they conversed with [LUCIFER AND NO ONE ELSE]."

As time went on, Chuck became more and more certain that eventually the Fates would give up. It was just one human they hadn’t interacted with in years. How attached could they still be after so long? But little does he suspect that midway through season 6, Clotho smacked Lachesis on the shoulder and said, "Hey, I hacked the cage."

"WHAT?" Lachesis practically climbed over Clotho to get a better look, and sure enough, Adam was on Clotho's screen, hiding behind Michael, looking on in horror as Sam was being tortured.

"Our poor baby! There has to be something we can do!"

"Right, okay." And so Clotho took control of Adam, clicked on Michael, and selected "Flirty Greeting." 

"That's. . .kind of disturbing, don't you think?"

There was a pause as Clotho stared at the screen, pensively. Then, "Right, okay."

A moment later in the cage, the scenery abruptly changed. Sam was suddenly in a booth, Lucifer and Michael behind a glass counter. Adam’s standing in the middle of a tile floor, confused.

"Are we. . .in a coffee shop?"

[hamatoclan76]

Lets talk about ¨Fast Forward¨ and ¨Back To The Sewers¨

So, yeah. I was finally able to finish watching the TMNT 2003 series. I know i could write an entire review about the series but i decided to focus on the two last seasons ¨Fast Forward¨ and ¨Back To The Sewers¨ since they are quite controversial seasons in the fandom due to their writing.

I’m going to explain what i think these seasons did right and then what went wrong with the writing that made them not get so well-received in comparison to previous seasons. I´m going to start with Fast Forward and then move to Back to the Sewers.

Time Travel to the future

(Fast Forward Intro)

(Fast Forward) Season 6 starts with the turtles accidentally time traveling to the future, year 2105 to be precise. That’s 100 years from the current timeline. It´s a risky idea but not bad, right?

But here is the problem: There were already unexplored main plotlines that needed to be developed: Karai´s possibe redemption, the foot clan, Hun, etc. Instead of finishing those arcs that were already established in the series the writers/producers decided to jump to a completely new setting that had almost nothing to do with things that were previously explored.

So that´s one of the biggest problems with this season. If this was a spin off, this wouldn´t be an issue at all. That´s because the audience would know that the spin off exists as its own thing and it isn´t part of the main series. Watching ¨Fast Forward¨ was weird to me. It was like i was watching other series but with the same characters.

Before talking more about the problems i have with this season. Let´s talk about what i enjoyed:

I really liked the arc about Cody learning to be his own person and realizing how his uncle was manipulating him (if not abusing him). His relationship with the turtles and Splinter is really sweet. It was nice to see how they took care of him and he let them live with them while he was reparing the time machine.

Bishop episodes are really good. I wished we could seen more of him. The idea of him getting redeemed and forming an alien alliance is very interesting.I always saw Bishop as well intentioned extremist, In the sense he believed he was helping people with his horrible methods. I like how he recognizes he did terrible things in the past and he is trying to make up for his crimes.

I enjoyed some  of the slice of life moments.It helped developing the characters in a way that allowed me to see what they do when they are fighting aliens or the foot clan. For example: One of my favourite episodes is Raph and Leo going to wrestling match and chaos ensues. That episode explores Raph´s passion for wrestling, something i think the series didn´t before.

I like the concept of the ¨Dark Turtles¨. Yeah, i know it is a bit ridiculous but i would have been great had the series given them a proper redemption arc since it was implied they weren´t really that bad. ( DNA is thicker than water in one of my favourite episodes of Fast Foward).

Now that i have talked about the things i liked i´m going to move to my problems with season 6.

I think that one of the reasons i feel conflicted about Fast Foward is due to the lack of actual plot or stakes. It feels like things are happening but at the same time they aren´t. Many episodes have more mundane premises. The villains are less intimidanting and they don´t add too much to the story. There are some good episodes like ¨The Journal¨ and the one about Mikey training but overall it is like the writing itself is dull and boring.

It would have been better had the writers focus on developing the characters better (like Raph having problems with adjusting to the future). There are concepts that are great. The thing is that they later get dropped or forgotten (Dark turtles subplot). There could have been an entire arc about Bishop helping the turtles with getting back to their time as a way to make up for his actions.

Speaking of the time portal, that thing is brought up in only the first episodes and then its barely mentioned again in the season. Like.. wasn´t the main plot about them getting back to their respective timeline? It´s like the main characters were so comfortable living in the future that they forgot about their main goal. There episodes that are just about them hanging out instead of finding a solution. It´s okay to have slice of life moments while they are waiting for the machine to get repaired but it could have been at least hinted that is Cody is working on it.

Fast Forward would have worked better had the crew of show put more effort into writing the story, thinking what they wanted to do with the characters and explored concepts that were interesting. And before you ask: No, i don´t think this season being more lighthearted is an issue, the real problems is that writing itself is sloppy and isn´t as good as previous seasons.

Back To The Sewers

(Back to the Sewers Intro)

Season 7´s main plot is about the turtles trying to find all the ¨bytes¨ that made Splinter after he was disintegrated in Cyberspace. Many episodes are about them enterting in Cyberspace and looking for these bytes to make Splinter whole again. The team also has to deal with a new type of Shredder that is a fusion of viral and Ultrom Shredder´s memories. (More of that later)

Things i like from ¨Back To The Sewers¨

Donatello´s character arc: It was very refreshing to see another side of Donnie. At the started of the season he blamed himself for losing Splinter (something he had not control of). His arc is kinda similar to Leo´s arc in Season 4 except he was able to let go his guilt more easily than Leonardo. Unlike Leo, Donnie wasn´t so afraid of failure as he was obsessed with fixing the problem to the point he isolated himself.

I really like how the Cyberspace and the real world are connected with one another in this season. Some episodes have premises that are downright terrifying such as getting stuck in a false parallel reality or people hacking and rewriting your memories. I think this season had very interesting concepts that much like Fast Foward they didn´t reach its fullest potential.

Casey and April´s relationship was fantastic. It was sweet to watch Casey proposing marriage to April. Their wedding was great conclusion for their relationship too. I like how Casey struggles with asking April and how Raph helps him. It´s definitely one of the highlights of Back to the Sewers.

What went wrong with Season 7?

First of all, i think that one of the biggest issues was how short the season was. It has only 13 episodes to develop the main plot and characters. For that reason good concept don´t get enough time to be explored. They are introduced and dropped in one episode. I would have love to watch a three part story arc of the turtles getting brainwashed to make them believe that they work for the Foot Clan. I mean, that was creepy when i watched it.

If season 7 had 20 episodes-for example- then there would have been more time for the main plot to be better paced. What happened in reality is that with 13 episodes it made arcs feel rushed. Some things were left unanswered, dropped or forgotten.

Another issue i have is the lack of Karai content in this season. Season 5 ended with her falling in love and she was never seen again. I know she gets redeemed in the film but it is really weird how she goes to April and Casey´s wedding in the finale and she is never mentioned by the Foot Clan in Back to the Sewers. They could written an episode about how she left the Foot Clan and how she wants to settle down.. just something to learn what happened to her.

Speaking of the Foot Clan... Why they had to bring up Shredder again for this Season? Why just not make Viral the main antagonist? She was fine as a villain, Why in the world they needed to bring him back? There are so many other characters that could have antagonists for this story. 

Virtual Shredder brings up tons of questions as well. When did Ch´rell deciced to upload his memory on the Cyberspace. Why not on a spaceship or computer? Why on the web? It´s so weird.

My last point would that Back to the Sewers had potential to be a darker season because of its themes and story yet is very lighthearted despite how twisted some concepts were. I wished they could been taken more seriously with having actual consequences for jumping into Cyberspace, how risky it is and what would happen if someone got trapped in there.

So there you have it. Note that i don´t think the last two seasons are horrible, in fact i have fun watching them. I just don´t understand what went wrong with the production that made the show suffer such a downgrade in quality. Maybe the producers thought the series was getting ¨too dark¨ and decided to write a more lighthearted show. Maybe there were new writers in last seasons, that may explain why the writing became more dull. I wished the Tmnt 2003 would have gotten better treatment that the one it got.

[wondereads]

Personal Review (09/19/21)

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Why am I reviewing this book?

I first read this book in freshman year when it was the only book my entire book club liked. Now, it's really grown in popularity and a TV show has come out, so it seemed like a great time to reread it (because I didn't remember a thing) and finally finish the duology.

Plot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Six criminal teenagers pull off a heist to break someone out of the most secure prison in the world for a prize that could solve all their problems. They are lead by Kaz Brekker, a thief so ruthless he verges on urban legend, and consist of Inej, an acrobat-turned-spy paying off her indenture, Jesper, a sharpshooter with a gambling addiction, Nina, a heartrender who'll flirt with anything with a pulse, Matthias, a disgraced witch hunter in it for a pardon, and Wylan, a demolitions expert with no field experience.

The plot is so incredibly fast-paced. Even at the beginning, when the scene is being set and they're just preparing for the trip, gang stand-offs and long-standing grudges keep the story moving. The heist itself is one of the most ingenious, chaotic things I've ever read, and then it ends with a horrible cliffhanger that will make you instantly pick up the next book. In case you can't wrap your mind around it, the Ice Court Heist is so clever it takes me a moment to understand how the characters get from Point A to Point B, and yet I never once stopped in confusion because things were explained as they went.

My only complaint is that it relies a little heavily on the worldbuilding established in Shadow and Bone. For example, Nina's powers, while exemplified throughout the book, are never really explained. I remember when I read it for the first time that I had no idea what a Grisha was, and I kind of just had to pick up context clues because there is no definition given.

Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The character development in this book is impeccable. Each of the six gets their own arc (complete with a tragic backstory), and their development is worked into the plot, which forces them to face their troubles straight on. Buckle in, this is a long section.

Kaz, everyone's favorite, heartless, teenage mob boss, who starts off so unemotional at the beginning, gradually begins to allow himself to feel again. It's only for Inej, not everyone, but it's a start. His backstory is absolutely horrific, and, even though he is the self-titled Bastard of the Barrel, you find yourself rooting for him.

Inej's revelation in the incinerator shaft (yes, that is an actual part of the book) made me want to cheer. After so many aimless years, I was so proud of her to have established a clear goal for herself, and such a badass one too. I also appreciated that she set some clear boundaries with Kaz since a lot of YA romances tend to just throw away those sorts of reasonable concerns in favor of ~true love~.

Jesper makes me hurt. I really feel for him; he's the prime example of a kid in too deep, and I think if any of them got their money I would want it to be him so he can fix his past mistakes and start again. Besides that, he's a funny character that isn't reduced to comic relief, and I like action best from his perspective.

Nina is a walking easter egg for fans of Shadow and Bone. I didn't realize it my first go because I hadn't read the original trilogy, but the number of times she name-drops a character or event from there...I loved it. She's a levelheaded, badass woman who's comfortable in sexuality but not oversexualized. I do wish she'd gotten some more attention here, but I do know that the bulk of her arc is in Crooked Kingdom.

Matthias grew on me. I didn't like him much, but he presented an interesting dilemma–loyalty to love or loyalty to home. I liked watching the struggle between his beliefs and what he's been taught and the new friends he's made and their contrasting lifestyles. I also appreciate that he is the #1 simp for the girls in the group.

Finally, Wylan is a bit tough. There are no chapters from his perspective in the first book, which makes sense because he's got some information that would spoil everything. Still, he was absolutely hilarious in my opinion and his gradual corruption through his time spent with the crows was great. I mean, this fifteen-year-old kid wanted to wake up guards so Jesper could kill them guilt-free.

Writing Style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The writing is really good. It shifts nicely between the more serious and humorous scenes. I think the romance is written very well. There's quite a bit of it and yet it never overpowers the plot. I never had a moment of "please dear god we get it you're in love let's move on now", which is something that plagues YA.

As for the humor, it was really good in this book. There were points I had to hold back a snort because I was in class, and each of the characters, even Kaz and Matthias, got a chance for a fun one-liner or sarcastic quip. "My ghost won't associate with your ghost."

Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N/A

Be gay do crime. I'd say I'm just kidding but this book pretty much says breaking into a prison for a bounty is okay if you and your friends really need the money.

Overall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This book was great the first time and amazing the second time. It was well written, it was fast-paced, it was funny, it made me feel, it was all the things a good book should be. It's probably one of the best YA adventure books out there, and any adult would probably be able to read this and enjoy it. There's a reason it's so popular! I would recommend this book to people who enjoy heists, three-dimensional characters, and morbid humor.

The Author

Leigh Bardugo: 46, Israeli-American, Jewish, also wrote Shadow and Bone and Ninth House

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every two weeks, and I take recommendations. Check out my about me post for more!

[uhgood-dooghu]

Dial Tone [M]

Author uhgood-dooghu

Pairing Namjoon x Reader

Summary Namjoon’s been gone for a week. That’s it, that’s the tweet.

Rating 18+

Genre Smut, fluff, my attempt at crack, established relationship

Warnings Explicit sexual content, phone sex, daddy kink you’ve been warned, dom/sub undertones, begging, edging, orgasm control, dirty talk, use of a sex toy, Namjoon’s packing, OC is a bro girl at heart, self gratuitous porn with no plot

Word Count 2.7k

“Daddy...”

Namjoon almost swerves into a passing truck as your breathy voice fills his car.

Swearing, he composes himself, eyes flitting rapidly between the road and his phone, the Bluetooth allowing a string needy moans to ring out from the speakers.

When you’d called earlier, he’d been in the middle of the Meeting of the Year (trademarked by Seokjin), deep in the throes of negotiations but also riding high on the success of the afternoon. He hadn’t seen the notification until he’d finally left the building forty-five minutes late, waving goodbye to his business partner and waiting for his car just outside the lobby. He’d frowned when he’d seen your name. You’d made plans this morning to call him later tonight, so the timestamp concerned him slightly, but he knew well enough that if there was an emergency, you would call at least 7 times. Probably blow up Seokjin’s phone as well.

Sliding into the drivers seat, he’d connected his phone and pulled onto the street, absentmindedly hitting play on your message.

Thank god Seokjin had declined his offer for a ride.

“Holy mother of fuck,” he exclaims, panic clouding his thoughts before he has the sense to throw a hand out and adjust the volume. Does he know what’s happening? No. But he really doesn’t need the bass bumping your moans through the window for the whole world to hear.

Gripping the steering wheel, he swallows thickly, ears tuning in to the words you start to speak.

“Daddy, I need you,” you whine. “Where are you? You said you’d be done by now–“ You break off with a gasp.

When it hits him, the panic subsides, his jaw locking in place as he maneuvers his way through the evening rush. To clarify, you’d made very specific plans to call him tonight.

Apparently you’d gotten impatient.

The way your voice shakes tells him you probably had three fingers buried in your pussy, trying and failing to replicate what his own fingers are capable of. He listens to you take a few grounding breaths.

“I miss you, daddy. You’ve been gone for so long–oh my god–I miss you touching me.”

Namjoon’s eyes harden and he presses harder on the gas. A horn blares to his left, but he ignores it completely, barely seeing the angry driver flip him off, because his pants suddenly feel much tighter than they did five seconds ago.

“I miss your fingers. And your dick. Fuuuck, daddyyy!”

Your moans start to escalate, chasing after that edge, likely trying so hard to curl your fingers against your g-spot while circling your clit frantically with your free hand. His knuckles whiten around the wheel, his exhale dark as your voice turns progressively more manic, more helplessly panicked, until you cry out in desperation, the way you always do when you’re denied.

Your voice cracks and he feels it right in his dick.

“Daddy daddy, please please please, call me back, please please, I wanna come, daddy, I’ve been so good, please please please, call me.”

Your words slur, voice wrecked, and you let out a final sob before the message ends.

Namjoon sits frozen for a moment, mechanically turning his car into the hotel drive, before he inhales sharply and looks down.

Yep, he’s hard as fuck.

“Shit.”

Pulling up to the valet, he fumbles with his belt, tucking his erection into his waistband with a silent prayer that it’ll be enough to save him some embarrassment. It probably won’t (surprise, it’s actually quite difficult to hide a massive dick, who would’ve thought), but he doesn’t have a whole lot of options. At least he wore black pants.

He grabs his phone and steps out of the car only a little awkwardly, passing the man his keys before making a beeline for the glass doors. Thankfully, the lobby is near vacant as he rushes to the elevator, angling himself away from the front desk. Still, the receptionist raises an eyebrow, so he forces a smile, dimples fully on display even as his eyes stare daggers at the dial above the door. Tapping at his phone, he shoots you a text.

Namjoon: Couldn’t wait for tonight, huh? [6:31 PM]

When the doors finally open, he darts inside, choosing his floor and frantically tapping the “close” button.

The elevator moves far too slowly. That’s all he can think as he adjusts his crotch, swearing under his breath. It does nothing to relieve the pressure and he swears again. He really does have big dick problems. He nearly trips when the doors slide open, narrowly missing a wide-eyed housekeeper passing by with a cleaning cart. He is quick to apologize but does not stop as he speeds to his suite, already tugging at the knot of his tie.

Letting himself through the door, he works the top few buttons of his shirt open and glances at his phone. You haven’t responded, which, knowing you, could mean one of two things. Either you let the moment pass...or you’re too fucked out to notice his message.

Quirking a brow, he texts again.

Namjoon: You there baby? [6:34 PM]

This time your response is immediate.

Y/n: Call me [6:34 PM]

With a chuckle, he strips to his boxers and falls to the mattress. Readjusting on the pillows, he presses the phone to his ear, listening to it ring twice before you pick up.

“Daddy…”

“Hi, baby.” He hooks his arm behind his head and licks his lips. “What you up to?”

He smirks when you moan, loud and wanton.

“Having fun?”

You stutter out a yes.

“Mmm, without me?”

He listens in amusement as you keen.

“I’m sorry, daddy, I c-couldn’t help it. I miss you!”

“It’s okay, princess. I miss you, too.”

In the background, he hears a soft drone.

“You got a toy in you, baby?”

“Mhmmm!”

“Yeah? Which one?”

You take a shaky breath. “T-the black one.”

He hums in approval, cock twitching at the image of you lying on the bed, legs spread, the suction cup of your favorite toy pressed to your clit while the other end curves inside you, buzzing against your g-spot. He can picture the way your eyes squeeze shut as you bite and suck on your fingers to keep yourself from touching.

“How long’s it been in, princess?”

“Too long,” you moan, and he tuts in disapproval.

“Not an answer.”

You whimper, voice pitching. “Since I c-called you.”

In the back of his mind, he’s impressed. That was at least an hour. Giving a low whistle, he finally reaches down and briefly palms himself. The relief shoots up his spine as he sighs.

“Dang, baby. Wanna tell daddy what you did while you waited for me?”

The way you groan tells him you’d much rather not, but he waits expectantly. You know what to say if you want to stop. You exhale a few times before managing to speak.

“I u-used my fingers...and I played with my clit. I got myself m-messy for you.” You pause to breathe. “Then g-got close, I was so close, and then I called you.”

You’re starting to heave, voice modulating rhythmically, and Namjoon suspects you are rocking your head back and forth, trying to keep the pleasure at bay. His dick throbs, but he refuses to touch just yet. Not until he hears you be good for him.

“Keep going, baby.”

You huff a whine and press on. “T-then I put my toy in...I let it suck my clit–ah!”

The device clicks off and he swells with pride and satisfaction as you pant heavily in his ear. Your self-control never fails to blow his mind. He doesn’t even have to tell you what to do, you’re so desperate to please. Tugging at his waistband, he pulls the elastic below his balls, finally wrapping his hand around the base of his cock and squeezing.

“You like that, huh? You like your toy sucking your clit?”

“D-daddy sucks it better.” You mewl and click the toy back to life.

He allows himself a smug grin. Sue him, it’s nice to hear. “What then, baby? What did you do next?”

Slowly, he starts raking his fist over his shaft, swirling the palm over the tip, and he bites back a groan, because, shit, he gets so ridiculously hard for you, it’s almost pathetic. Almost.

“I–fuck–I kept it inside me, and I...I p-played with my nipples until I was close–shiiiiit.”

You’re losing coherency by the second, and Namjoon loves it. It sets his nerve-endings on fire. Makes him a little light-headed himself. Still, he murmurs soft praises in your ear, wishing he was there to stroke your hair and kiss your face, your hands, literally every inch of your body. It takes you a minute to continue, the vibe clicking on and off once more.

“I was s-so close, and then I t-turned it up and it felt so good, daddy, it felt so good!” You’re on the verge of tears, and Namjoon smiles fondly, dragging his thumb through the precum beading at his slit.

“I’m sure it did, baby. Were you a good girl?”

“Yes yes yes,” you insist, and he hears the frantic rustle of sheets. “I was good, I didn’t come. I promise.” There’s a slight change in your voice, the toy becoming more muffled, and he can tell you’ve flipped to your stomach. “I promise.” This time you actually sob, and Namjoon shushes you softly.

“It’s okay, baby, I believe you.”

You moan. “Daddy, I wanna come.”

The throb of his dick lets him know he wants you to come, too. He moves his fist just a little faster.

“I know, baby.” Biting his lip, he lets his eyes fall shut. “But I want you to use your fingers first. Take the toy out and get them wet. Taste yourself for me, princess.”

You shift and, a few moments later, audibly swallow.

“Tastes so good...” you moan.

Fuck.

“Yeah? Nice and sweet for me?”

Your affirming whimper is slightly muffled, and Namjoon can see the way you press your face into the mattress, ass up and knees wide, fingers drenched in your own slick and drool as you rock your hips in the air. The image is lethal.

“Yesss daddy, please–“ You choke in the way you do when you force yourself to hold off for him. “Please, I’m so close, I’ve been so close for so long, please.”

God, he doesn’t know why he loves this so much. It’s almost sadistic how much he gets off on hearing you beg, on hearing you so broken and needy and desperate, such a far cry from the confidently composed woman he knows you to be.

In the beginning, he was confused, reluctant even, when you asked him to take control of your pleasure. Even though the idea sent a shiver up his spine, he couldn’t imagine you of all people truly wanting something like that. You, who demands control in every aspect of your life, who refuses to take orders and sends 6’ 5”, built-like-dump-truck CEOs crashing face first into their glass office doors (a story for another time).

He asked you again and again and again if you were sure, hesitant to jump too hastily, no matter how badly his mind and body buzzed at the thought. It took you grabbing his face and shaking him, promising him you wanted this, wanted him to have that final say, for him to finally agree. You had a more detailed conversation after that, discussing boundaries and safe words and all the nuts and bolts he was adamant to set firmly in place.

You haven’t come without permission since.

And now, as you whine and beg for him, completely at his mercy even 1,000 miles away, he revels in the power trip. He feels it swim through his veins and collect in his dick, and yeah, another drop of precum oozes out because that’s how much he fucking loves this.

“Daddy,” you choke, and he can tell you’re quickly reaching a breaking point.

“It’s ok, princess, I’m here.”

Putting you on speaker, he sets his phone on his chest and reaches down to cup his balls. He’s barely touched himself, but they’re already so tight, and he knows he won’t need a whole lot to get there. You do all the work without even trying.

You keen helplessly, and he rolls the flesh in his palm.

“Alright, baby,” he coos. “Put your toy back in. I want you to turn it up high. I wanna hear it, okay?”

The answering buzz has you crying out. Loudly.

Namjoon grins in satisfaction. Resting his head back, he tugs on his dick, finally allowing the warmth to grow and spread throughout his limbs. Your moans spur him on, his pace increasing in time with your desperation, until all he can hear are your sobs of ‘daddy daddy daddy!’

Fuck, he’s close.

“You know what to do, baby,” he growls.

You’re practically wailing, words muffled and unintelligible, and he fleetingly wishes he had FaceTimed you instead.

“Can’t hear you, princess.”

You gasp loudly.

“P-please, daddy, can I come?” You break off in a desperate slur of pleasepleaseplease, and that’s all he needs to snap.

Gritting his teeth, he tightens his fist.

“Come.”

“Fuck, daddy!” You squeal, crying out for him incoherently as you fall apart, the sound slightly distorted from the way your writhing rustles the sheets against the speaker.

“Good girl,” he groans, fist pumping furiously, head falling back as your whimpers send him over the edge. Cum spurts over his hand and stomach in hot streaks. “Such a good girl for me, fuck.”

He works himself through the pleasure, dragging his cum back down his cock, all the while showering you with praise as you gasp helplessly.

“Fuck, baby, you did so well.” With a hiss, he slows his hand to a stop, giving himself one last squeeze before dropping his dick to his stomach. “I’m so fucking proud of you. You hear me?”

You whimper, panting heavily, toy already clicked silent, and he knows you’re just about boneless on the sheets. For a second he lies there, letting the cloud settle, his sticky hand hanging off the bed. Taking a breath, he checks in.

“Can you talk to me, y/n?”

You don’t respond right away. “G-give me a minute,” you eventually whisper, and he relents with a soft ‘okay.’

It takes about five minutes, but he finally hears your breathing level out, a sated sigh crackling though the phone.

“How you feeling, babe?”

“Dead.”

He laughs, grabbing some tissues from the nightstand. “How long were you–“

“Two hours. Two fucking hours, Joon.” He laughs again, wiping the cum from his abs and fingers. “How long does it take to check your messages, goddamn!”

“Sorry, the meeting ran long.”

You hum in mock annoyance, then yawn loudly. “It went well, at least?”

“Mhmm, really well. We closed the deal.”

“Fuck yeah, bro.”

Laughing, Namjoon tosses the tissues in the trash and falls back onto the pillows. “Were you really edging for that long?”

“I mean, I took a couple breaks, but yeah, pretty much.”

He shakes his head, feeling a little guilty. “I’m sorry, baby, you know you didn’t have to–“

“Namjoon. It felt good. Really good.”

“...well, shit.”

You snort, and he lets go of any intrusive thoughts. He trusts that you know what you want, and lord knows he’ll give you anything you ask for. He hears you yawn once more with a smile.

“You should go to sleep.”

“It’s only 7.”

“You’ll be asleep in an hour anyways.”

You shift on the bed with a scoff. “You calling me old?”

“If you want me to.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

Namjoon smiles, and starts softly asking about your day, content to just hear your voice and stare aimlessly at the ceiling. Eventually, though, you settle into silence, simply listening to each other breathe. It’s not nearly as good as feeling your warmth beside him, but he’ll live. Still, he’s counting down the hours until his plane lands in a few days and he can kiss you for real. It’s been a long week.

He sighs. “I miss you, y/n.”

“I miss you, too, Joonie. I love you.”

His heart swells and he closes his eyes. He loves you, too. So goddamn much.

© moodievitamine, January 2021. Please do not copy, repost, or translate!

[durotoswrites]

For the writing meme thingy: 🍄how do you get yourself in the mood to write? 🍑 do you/would you write smut? 📒 any fics planned?

🍄 How do you get yourself in the mood to write?

Getting in the mood to write and actually wanting to sit down and start writing are two very different things, but they're connected, so I'll explain both.

To set into “creative mode” it helps me to do these things:

Listen to music that makes me think of a character/situation in my story/stories. I've got playlists separated by character and pairing. Sometimes I also just work on curating those playlists for fun and get my brain going.

Bounce overall ideas off of my friends and husband/editor (but he's my best friend, too 💗)

Reread old chapters or recent ones and future snippets based on what I want to do.

Once I actually want to put words down, I get a little more strict with myself. I get distracted verrrry easily sometimes and I have to fight the urge to open a million more tabs when researching a small detail.

I move to instrumental music (I have playlists for different moods like “emotional”, “soft”, “sad”, etc. I usually listen to “soft” as a general soothing background sound, as I can get pretty dang emotional when I write, especially with the stuff I've been churning out lately.

So, yeah, I need tissues within reach if I get upset. (Wow, I'm not making this sound fun at all, lmao)

After sound has been established, I like to eat a snack (something with protein) because I can be under for hours, lol. Eat it and finish it. Otherwise, I get distracted.

I also like to have drinks available. I always have a bottle of water, but I also like having a hot cup of tea. I think it's the time of year for me to switch to cold barley tea.

I write while seated on a recliner with my feet up. I have my laptop on a lap desk and it's a pretty cozy setup.

I basically try to remove any excuse I have to get up once I start writing, because I am the worst procrastinator I know.

🍑Do you/would you write smut?

Heheh... heck yeah, I do. Waaaaay more than most people realize. Stuff I've actually posted? It's pretty limited. I posted a couple pieces (Let Me Love You and You're Like the Sunshine) a few years ago, but I've been practicing ever since. One of my planned stories literally has what I refer to as a “smut dump” in the draft where I've been experimenting with writing different moods. I like the intimate scenes to play a role in the overall plot or have it be a bonding experience.

Despite that, I do have a shameless Gray x Mary story I should just get out there that has zero plot, just two cuties in love. In my mind it's so naughty and kinky and I get flustered thinking about it (Mary is hot, okay?), but it's probably hella vanilla, lmao. I really am grateful that people have been really supportive about my writing smut despite what I usually write, and they've been so encouraging, too! I honestly feel like the smut I've posted is really stilted because I was so self-conscious about it. I don't feel like they are terrible for first attempts, but I have definitely grown more comfortable writing it.

Will The Shy Newcomer become explicit? I kinda really want it to, but I might separate the chapters for those who don't care for that content. Overall, I'd like to write more and post more, and I want to write more than just male x female smut as well. I have some of those in my planned pieces (more about them later).

📒 Any Fics Planned?

Firstly, I'm super tickled more than one person was interested in this. I copied the answer I wrote earlier.

Short answer: Yes. I also plan to bring more of my stories over from ffn to Ao3.

Long answer under the cut, heheh. I rambled quite a bit.

Ask me about my writing processes and stories!

I have so many WIPs that haven’t been touched in years that I’d like to finish, so new planned fics aren’t posted yet. Some of them have more adult themes than most of the stuff I’ve been writing, so I get flustered sharing them. I’ve been at a crossroads, as I feel that you can’t have growth without changing things up. On the other hand, I feel like a lot of my readers associate my works with a specific “wholesome” feel-good mood. It’s kinda nice to be known for something, although that might just be my ego talking, thinking that people recognize my work as a “type”.

Regardless, in the end, I feel growth is necessary.

I don’t want to leave a lot of unfinished WIPs waiting because they stress me out and I have too many of them already, so I’d like to have a bulk of my new stories with a good chunk written before I decide to post them.

Among those include:

A longfic featuring Pete’s farm in Forget-Me-Not Valley (A blend of HMDS with the FoMT plugin and AWL). It takes place in the same universe as The Shy Newcomer (Claire in Mineral Town) and there are a few overlapping moments, although Pete’s story starts first. Pete’s personality is verrry different from Claire’s, and his story was kind of supposed to be the yang to TSN’s yin. Pete’s best friends in his story are Ruby (not sure if I’m adding Tim yet), Nami, and Rock. Readers will be treated to a poorly-socialized pre-Mineral Town Cliff (if you think he was bad at the beginning of TSN, well… heh… he’s a wreck here).

Another planned unpublished story is a crossover of Harvest Moon and the movie “In This Corner of the World”, based on a manga of the same name by Fumiyo Kouno. It was written as a gift for a friend. I have the entire outline figured out and have slowly been filling it in. My friend asked for an AU where Claire and Cliff have an arranged marriage and live with his family in Akiyama, the hometown I had created for Cliff in The Shy Newcomer. I took the opportunity to expand the characters in his family. I have it written during the same time period and society as “In This Corner of the World”, but had decided to write a spreading disease as an allegory for war, but then COVID happened and some parts of it just got really hard to write. There are also a lot of sexually explicit content as Claire slowly grows and learns from her spouse that it’s okay to express what she wants despite sex being a taboo issue. If there’s enough interest in the story, I’ll post it, but I worry it’s a little too niche for there to be many people into it.

Pastor Carter and Doctor Trent are one of my favorite rare pair ships. I’ve had a partial draft for a story about them for a few years now, especially focusing on Trent growing up and acknowledging that he has an unhealthy addiction for things that he knows he can’t have. There are some more adult/sexual themes in this piece, too, including the main character lusting after a married woman (who also happens to be his patient) and some lemons. (Does anyone call it that anymore or is it just referred to as “smut” nowadays? Haha) I always feel so bad for neglecting the folks at the clinic in-game and wanted to write a piece that focused more on them, Trent specifically. It’s a multi-chap fic, but I don’t think I’m going to let it get as long as some of my other pieces.

I also really want to write a short romantic oneshot for every marriage candidate in Mineral Town, around 1,000 words each. So far, I have one for Cliff and one for Gray. I want to write Claire with everyone, because I think it would be fun to explore all the different personalities.

I have more installments planned for A Single Day, including a day in the life of the following characters, all with drafts in varying degrees of progress:

Anna

Doug

Nora (yes, I’m writing from the point of view of the cat living at the inn)

More to come – I think Lillia and Thomas would be especially interesting to explore

I do still have that Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask piece I’ve been pondering where Link befriends the soul of the deku scrub child while possessed by the mask. I don’t have much written about it, but I really love the world of Majora’s Mask. Such a fun game.

I also think about the lead carpenter’s son in Ocarina of Time and that weird side quest involving the blue chicken and the son being lost to the forest. Then that unique-looking kokiri girl explaining that all who get taken in the lost woods become stalfos. Like, did the guy die? Was he sick? Did he want to die? There’s just so much going on there that would be fun to explore.

I also have played OMORI recently and have like… A LOT of feelings about it. I don’t know what I’d write, but I’m still damn impressed at how well the characters are developed in such a short game.

Other games I’ve had vague ideas about writing for include the following:

The Flame in the Flood: I’m thinking a survivalist/action story fleshing out Scout’s backstory a bit more and her thoughts as she’s traveling. I feel like she’s a very lonely person, but isn’t given the chance to really dwell on it.

Night In the Woods: I’d love to write more about Mae’s dreams and what they mean to her. She doesn’t really talk to anyone about them openly, so it’s really hard to tell her feelings about them in some regards. We know that she’s distressed about them, but I’d like to dive a little deeper. Do the nightmares end after the games does? What about Bea’s new nightmares?

Hades (Supergiant Games): I think it would be fun to write more about the events that take place before the game starts, like Zagreus’s duties in the house of Hades, and expand on the strained relationship with his father.

[cybernaght]

Lost Tomb Reboot aka Reunion: The Sound of Providence Season 2

I swear I wasn’t actually planning to write this thing, instead just opting for random picture spams of the season, starting with every time this show got Zhu Yilong’s Wu Xie wet, because that was a trend I had not expected and kind of lived for.

All that will still happen eventually, but here’s also my five cents on the season, because it is very very important for you to know just how worthy of love it is. 

You see, Season 1 was silly and fun, and definitely, undeniably, enjoyable. 

Then Season 2 swooped in, and completely won my heart. I cannot even express how much I adored it. Everything about this show is extremely extra in the best possible way; it is likely to have been the most charmingly over the top thing I have ever seen.

(Vague spoilers for : specific monsters, narratively significant moments, fate of the certain characters, including the protagonist.)

Some of it comes from the pace, which speeds up dramatically early in the season, and only slows down marginally to allow characters some breathing room. It’s not just gripping because it makes you want to hit play on the next episode, it also keeps you engaged because you can’t wait to see how the next wild set of events may be resolved and then topped. At about episode ten I was questioning how they could possibly produce a sense of further escalation. At episode twenty, I was wondering if anything can top dramatic impact of whatever was occurring only two thirds of the way through the season. 

I need not have worried: every single incredible character moment, every mind-boggling turn of the plot, every single bizarre threat would be blown out of water by the next one. 

Partly, this seemingly has to do with the writers attempts to ground the material. I am not sure what the novel contained, but I can discern that it was something along the lines of ghosts, ghouls and various supernatural circumstance. But when you are told  “this is a curse”, your reaction is naturally to go, “ah okay, so curses are a thing, and this is one of them, gotcha”. When you are told, “this is a heavy metal poisoning combined with a neurotoxin affecting the victim’s central nervous system and making them violently hallucinate”, your reaction is to question whether this is how metals, toxins, poisons, or, indeed, central nervous systems work in any version of reality. 

The show does this a lot. From human shaped swarms of killer moths, to flying brain-penetrating eels, to probably my favourite monster of the moment: the murder clams.

Seriously, I cannot stress enough that this show has murder clams. They move with their clam mussels. They jump with their clam shells. They will murder you in cold blood. 

There are ancient “laser corridor” style set-ups, there are shapes made out of fog recording its memory, there are group hallucinations generated by the sound of thunder, there are Mission Impossible style full face masks. There is a character who walked off a gun wound and sarin gas poisoning in order to die in the arms of his lover who looks like his dead sister. And by “looks like” I mean, “played by the same actress”. 

There is a whole character of Doctor Churros, who saves our hero from imminent death by washing his lungs with oil. 

This, I suppose, ultimately, is how The Lost Tomb Reboot (Season 2 in particular) lures you in. It turns what I saw as the show’s fault in season 1 into its biggest strength by establishing the world in which nothing is too outlandish and everything is possible. It so thoroughly breaks your expectations barometer, you grow to willingly accept whatever is thrown at you. 

The most beautiful thing about all of it, is that the fun and games and moments of barely controlled hysteria do not lower the stakes whatsoever. Moreover, somehow this show makes me believe that it could just about do something as irrevocable as, perhaps, killing off the protagonist 

You know how you can watch, say, a super hero film, and then the “all is lost” moment happens, and you kind of have to struggle to care because you know that they will pull through. It’s curious to see how that happens, but you don’t doubt for even second that it will. Well, when that moment arrived here, I found myself between ugly sobbing, and going into speculation overdrive to try and figure out how the Reboot would deal with that. By then I have seen that show be an high octave action movie, a supernatural mystery, a horror thriller, a buddy comedy and a spy flick: it was not a massive stretch to imagine it turning into a revenge tragedy.

Wu Xie dying had been building up since episode one, so you had hours and hours and oh-so-many hours to brace for it, and when the tragedy does not strike, the relief is visceral. 

Despite all the moments of hilarity (whether intended or otherwise), despite the chaotic turns of the plot, despite how utterly off the charts this show is tonally, when it matters, the narrative is pulled together in a way which not only makes complete sense within the world of the series, but is meticulously set-up, satisfying resolved, and delivers lovely emotional impact. Considering that the moral of the story is a very common “live in the moment”, paired up with “greed is bad”, it was surprising how much resonance its delivery actually created. 

Ultimately, however, this show is about found family, and, more specifically, about Wu Xie’s ability to create this family for himself and for every single member of it. He starts as one of the trio, and ends as one of a large group of old allies, new friends, and people he has graced with so much kindness that they follow him until the bitter end. 

Lost Tomb Reboot ensures that you get to know them all, and it’s pretty damn hard to not love this misfit group of adventurers in its entirety. 

(The only thing I could say is that I wish the series spent more time making sure the viewer knows and likes Zhang Qiling, but it seemingly had little purpose for him apart form sweeping in as an avenging angel every now and then. I get that he is a well established character in the series, and that his whole thing is being deadly and enigmatic, but considering that you got to know the other two legs of the famous Triangle so well, it’s a shame that this one was reserved to mostly being Xiao Ge Ex Machina. It would have been nice to know what he was about apart from “really damn cool”.)

Bai Haotian remained my favourite character. She is cute, sweet, romantic, and, for the lack of a better word, “girly”. She is not shy about her crush on Wu Xie, and is prepared to do a lot of reckless, dangerous things for him. None of the above undermine her intelligence, cunningness and authority. Xiao Bai is a young woman in a position of power, and she absolutely knows how to handle herself; for every time she is a damsel in distress, she gets to be the rescuer. For every time she puts herself in needless danger, she learns to collect herself and plan ahead. For every time she is bossed around, she turns and takes charge. Her journey is not the centred around getting the guy, but around discovering her self-assertion; she finds her place within his team not by being a romantic interest, but through her personal strengths. 

My absolutely favourite moment for her came when an antagonist used her affection for Wu Xie to get an upper hand on her, and she gets restrained, knife to her throat. Xiao Bai swivels away, knocks the attacker out and goes to town kicking him, to a great astonishment of this team, as she states that liking someone does not make her weak. 

And it doesn’t. Being in love has nothing to do with weakness or strength. Being a young, and excitable, and a woman does not equate to weakness either.

I’m not saying that this show is a feminist manifesto, because it is definitely not that. Every other prominent female character suffers a pitiful fate in service of creating motivation for the men of the story. But it does spend a lot of time making sure you, the viewer, know its heroes well enough to mentally befriend them. And if this means giving the female lead complexity, I cannot possibly be mad at that. 

So, this was it. This was the Lost Tomb Reboot. It brought me a ridiculous amount of joy and I will miss it a lot. 

And yes, the picture spams will be 100% an excuse to rewatch at least some of it. 

PS. Said spams miiiiight be gif based if I figure out a way to colour correct the damn things. 

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

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But if you go up to 5 you get a guaranteed review of whatever you want every month, and will get me to my next milestone, which will give everyone including yourself a monthly public darkwing duck review, reviews of the two Ducktales minis’ I haven’t covered (Time is Money and SuperDuckTales) and a reivew of the Danny Phantom film the Ultimate Enemy. So please join today and if you cannot, like this review, subscribe and give me your opinions on it bellow. Or even if you can feedback is always appricated and I will see you at the next rainbow. 

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okay i have one final request 🙈🙈 as i was typing up my thots on your yyh post, something about kuwabara reminded me of vegeta and then i was like VEGETA... OUR MEOW MEOW MAN.. so 🤪🤪 i hav returned to ask 👉🏼👈🏼 da blorbo meme for dragon ball? 🥺

ohh sarah i had to wait until i was in the right mind set for this one...and since the mania has hit on monday im ready now >:]

GLUP SHITTO ASK MEME

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

ofc its bulma!!! (i could also put vegeta here but as you said yourself he is THE meow meow so until later bestie) shes so epic i love that she and goku meet as kids and even as a young air head teen its established that shes extremely bright and innovative. despite being a genuis shes never the "quite nice girl" she always just speaks her mind big win for women

also every bulma outfit/style ever slaps so hard she never misses and never shows up w/o being dressed to nines even w a baby in her hand (my personal fav is the big hair red stripped dress of the trunks arc)

like all other women in db she got hardcore nerfed after becoming a mom but she got it a little better than chi chi bc at least she can have some plot relevance for technical stuff but still T_T can we get a working milf in here PLS the kids are off fighting after age 2 anyways

i will touch on this later more but my GOD the power the bulma vegeta marriage has in comedy alone one of the funniest things in anime ever i was just explaining it to the bestie earlier<3

also not to bring up a whole other timeline but FUTURE BULMA wahh the way she kept on going w a little kid when all of her friends and family were dead and build the time machine that saves the earth and puts her son into knowing if he manages to change the future this version of her will cease to exist or he will die in the past and she will never see her child again damned to survive the end of the world all by herself knowing she send her own son to his death TORIYAMA u didnt need to go this hard tears im my eyes just thinking about it wahhhh

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

i would have to say puar or chiaotzu.....i love that theyre just little guys and fiercly loyal to their besties they both also started out doing crimes and being evil for fun until they decided to be good actually so theyre quite similar in that way

tldr; theyre both shaped and i enjoy looking at them very much:)

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

TEENAGE GOHAN hes soooo funny he saved the earth and then was just like ok time to return to school :) and then he has to use his superpowers but only in situations where he has no other choice and hes always in a hurry bc he cant be late for school! he wears bulmas lame ass superhero outfit w/o shame bc his sense of style is 10 years behind and calls himself the great saiya man so no one will recognize him as anything abnormal meanwhile he rides on a cloud to school every single day

on a more emotional note he had to help raise goten bc goku died before he was born....hes such a good older brother remember the episode where hes training and is like hey goten wanna throw rocks at me :} ? and goten almost kills him bc he doesnt know how the count down from 3 thing works anything wah wah wah wah siblings i very much enjoy thinking about^^

also he dabbed in the 90s before it was cool or uncool .... unbothered king....

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

shes an obscure fave in dbz only bc TORIYAMA FORGOT ABOUT HER but LAUNCH so epic so epic (i know shes supposed to be a funny take on "split personality" women but lol my city now) anyways she was so cool her design slaped and the ambush the enemy by sneezing and getting violent was always funny^^ also i thought she and tien were very sweet:) and i think there was a storyline where she wanted to get to the bottom of her condition and learn to be more controlled about it too? (iirc tho)

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

OK HERE WE GO u all already know who im talking about the original short king (3 foot troll doll hair included) male pattern baldness icon he was pondering the orbs bc it was cool he never sets foot outside w/o the channel boots and gloves ON prince of 3 subjects the original trophyhusband his name is literally vegtable what can i say that hasnt been said..... unironically one of my fav characters ever

also his cultural impact where would we be if vegeta hadnt felt it coming in the air that night...

lets not forget no trunks gender w/o vegeta either (thank you KING)

also gt only so this is a bit obscure but hes so WIPPED for his daugther (i think hes also making up for missing most of trunks childhood) the episode where she disses his cursed mustache and he IMMEDIATLY shaves and goes through the house waiting for ppl to compliment him on it OK WORSTIE

on a more serious note vegeta orgin story MY GOD. being fully aware when his planet was blown up that being taking in and working for the guy who did dude he was like 6 wah wah wah i know its been memed to death but the namek saga scene where hes deadly wounded and PLEADS goku to kill freeza for their people MAN.

also bonus german dub tidbit but SPONGEBOB VA VEGETA i think they did it bc he sounds similar to the french one? anyways we have this cursed combo intil after the first goku vs vegeta fight iirc

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

i would also say vegeta here but no doubles so im saying in a non joking way

master rochi DIE OLD FART

also toriyama for every shitty racists depiction in dbz wtf is mr popo bro

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

well superhell is p much canon in dbz and quite a lot of ppl have been there so idk

if its for gay reasons i would say trunks he is the fruitiest dbz character for SURE

OH also mr satan just bc i think it would be funny (i dont remember if he already made it in there sorry)

also i know hes already in there but freeza can spend eternity in that cocoon on that tree