#technically this was from my rewatch last week but i think i got the timing right for ep5

[lu-sn]

don't overthink this.

[phi8]

Recently rewatched Gravity Falls with its resurgence online, and I was itching to give my take on an older Mabel with an absolute unit of a Waddles (who is a regular farm pig after all). To go along with this, I also wrote some fanfic: a letter from Dipper to Mabel, about his return to Gravity Falls years after the show. Read it on AO3 or below!

Dear Mabel,

I hope everything is going well back home!  I miss you already, but it’s so good to be back in Gravity Falls too. A  lot has changed since our summer here.

The first week of my internship at McGucket Labs has been amazing. McGucket has really transformed Northwest Manor into a fantastic campus (though he still insists everyone call it “the Hootenanny Hut”)! There are so many  brilliant scientists and engineers here, and most of them have a refreshingly open mind about the nature and use of all the weirdness you can find in Gravity Falls. My experience with all that stuff is already paying off big time. Yesterday some PHD dude asked for my opinion on practical applications of necromancy (I told him it was a bad idea)!

Candy says hi by the way! It’s funny, for me this internship is all the way across the country, but for her it’s practically in her back yard, even though we both got that scholarship. Also, she tells me Grenda is more or less officially part of the Austrian aristocracy at this point? Apparently she and that Marius duke guy got engaged, did you hear about that?? Turns out I’m completely out of the loop with your friend group.

Candy and I have been hanging out with, of all people, Pacifica and Gideon. Can you believe it? Pacifica works at Corduroy Lumber these days. Probably in some misguided sense to get back to her roots, but I think it’s doing her some actual good. Working with her hands has been teaching her valuable life lessons I guess. It makes it a bit weird if Wendy also comes hang out, because she’s technically Pacifica’s boss – but you know Wendy’s cool about that.

Gideon is still running the Tent of Telepathy, so, not all winners. But he’s turned into a more lovable kind of swindler I think, like a younger Stan. He’s honestly kinda funny now (except that he’s taller than me). Wendy also told me he has a thing for Pacifica, and once she did, I couldn’t unsee it. He’s all over her! Pacifica hasn’t noticed, even though they spend a lot of time together. Or maybe she just hasn’t deigned it with a reaction... Either way, both of them are a ball to go for a drink with, whoda thunk.

You also have a lot of hugs from Soos, Melody and the baby (Stan Jr is sooo cute). (Yes, I asked. Melody promised to make you godmother of the hypothetical next child. You owe me.) The Shack is as charmingly ramshackle as it was back when we were here, but Soos finally got the old man stink out. I’m staying in Grunkle Ford’s old secret office because our room was converted to baby chamber. I still haven’t gotten the Bill murals completely off the walls and I have no natural light down here, but I spend most of my time at Northwest Manor the Hootenanny Hut anyway.

Or in the woods! Being back here really was a good move for my Youtube channel, there’s so much more supernatural stuff here than in California, and people are loving it. (I saw you liked my last video, thanks!) I’m currently tracking down what I think is the actual Gobblewonker. I analyzed some detritus samples from the lake, and there were feces from a large reptile present. From what we know, none of the dinosaurs in the mine were aquatic, so my current hypothesis is that it’s an unrelated creature. Especially since, according to my research, the Gobblewonker story dates back at least a century. I also gotta show Ford some of my findings. You know they’ve come across some aquatic monsters in the Bermuda Triangle. (Have you also been getting his mails with scans of the fourth journal? Truly fascinating stuff.) Either way, I’ll keep you posted, and you’ll be able to watch the result online.

Give my love to mom and dad, and Waddles a tummy rub! Awkward sibling sign off, Dipper

PS. Along with the photo’s in the envelope is that stuff you wanted. Be safe with it! There’s a reason it’s illegal in the parts of the forest controlled by the gnomes. But also have fun, I have it on very good authority it’s the good stuff.

[sweetlullabyebye]

ok so during a strangers from hell rewatch i started looking at jongwoo and moonjo's outfits and

i find it pretty interesting how their outfits (well, their shirts) contrast each other so here is my analysis (feel free to disagree) (also i tried to apply it to other characters too but except for seokyoon it didn't work so well):

first time they see each other (first image): moonjo is doing that thing where he tries to pretend like he's 100% normal and getting jongwoo's trust. he got rid of his black jacket that he was wearing earlier in the day, and as you can see, they're both wearing more or less the exact same thing. jongwoo's trust in him is still high

second time: technically the second time they meet they're not wearing clothes, so it's pretty difficult to make a comparison here

third time (second image): i couldn't tell exactly whether moonjo's suit is navy blue something or black, but honestly their shirts' colors aren't too dissimilar. jongwoo still half trusts him, but he definitely doesn't trust him as much as before.

fourth time (third image): this time jongwoo doesn't trust him, moonjo just made the 'do u think it's human meat haha' joke-that-isn't-a-joke, their shirts are not so similar in colors (also their trousers are opposite colors with jongwoo's very light colored trousers and moonjo's black ones)

fifth time (fourth image): moonjo is being a little creep as usual, jongwoo realized that everyone in the building is very very weird, and their clothes are opposite colours (shirts are white/black)

sixth time (fifth image): jongwoo is growing convinced that moonjo is stalking him (and he's right) and he absolutely does not trust him and calls him a creep a few moments later, and their clothes are opposite again (jongwoo has a lighter yellowish white shirt, and moonjo is in all black)

seventh time (sixth image): this time completely opposite, with jongwoo wearing all light cream/grey colored clothes, while moonjo... is in the mood where you just don't want to change your clothes at all, so same as last image. jongwoo is disturbed and does not trust him, as per usual

seventh image (i'm not taking into account moonjo appearing to stalk him wearing his stalking outfit because i'm never sure when those scenes are real or not): actually seok-yoon doesn't appear in the picture, but he wears both jongwoo's white-and-some-red colors, and moonjo's black colors, as he is still in somewhat of in a middleground. jongwoo and moonjo still wear opposite colors, with jongwoo wearing a white shirt with red and blue lines (at least that's what it looks like on my screen), and moonjo is still in all black

eighth image: still the same day, but moonjo changed into a blue-and-white shirt with lines (although jongwoo's lines go - and his go |), as he tries to convince jongwoo to kill people. seokyoon and jongwoo are still wearing the same clothes, but seokyoon doesn't trust moonjo that much anymore, and his black patterns no longer match moonjo's black outfit

ninth image: jongwoo beat up some kids, just like moonjo wanted, congratulations, but jongwoo is very scared of moonjo and even if their buttoned shirts both look dark in this picture, jongwoo's is a lighter blue while moonjo's is a darker brown.

tenth image: jongwoo is scared of moonjo and doesn't want to be near him, is still wearing the blue shirt with blood on it, and moonjo's back in his black outfit

eleventh image: the whole massacre happens, jongwoo is in a dark brown shirt, moonjo is in his black outfit. especially with the lighting in this episode, the colors don't look too dissimilar, as jongwoo becomes a fellow serial murderer.

(also when we see seokyoon again, he is wearing white when jongwoo abandons him, which contrasts with both jongwoo and moonjo's darker clothes)

twelth image: congratulations to moonjo on completing his 1 week masterpiece, they're both in white and we even get the final shot of jongwoo being moonjo

[cawdra]

Good question, @avvielalame-blog

GATHER 'ROUND, FOR I HAVE A STORY TO TELL ABOUT MY WEIRD HOSPITAL OPIOID TRIP THAT MADE ME HALLUCINATE NEW GOOD OMENS EPISODES:

Last year I went to the hospital. It was some cyst (idk the medical lingo), and it was painful af. They gave me some sort of strong opioid (again, no idea what the medical lingo is, but I think it was Buprensomethingsomething). Mind you, I was on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, but I hadn't taken them for almost a week, cuz I couldn't get out of my bed the whole time (before I eventually went to the hospital). I told them I was off that medication, and because the prescription is pretty old, they gave me the painkillers. TURNS OUT THE FUCKING MEDS WERE NOT OUT OF MY SYSTEM YET!!! So uhhh... yeah.

(If you don't know, mixing these two things can be very dangerous because they can raise dopamine levels too high or something, which is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS!!! I'm a pretty large person, so this didn't hit me that hard (and also I was off the meds for longer than 24 hours), but if I was slightly less of a fatass and more of a responsible medicine taker, I might have actually been comatosed.)

Anyway, I was riding high that night. I didn't have anything else to do, so after seeing a good omens edit, my first thought was, "That seems gay. I'm in." So I turned on Prime and watched it all in one night. It's not like I was going to sleep in a ward full of screaming people anyway, so might as well make the most of it. The nurses told me to sleep, but I told them I wasn't sleepy, so they just gave me my antibiotics and, whatever else, took my temp and walked out. Did they care about the gay shit I was watching on my phone? No, they've seen worse.

Anyway, I watched the show, ugly cried for like an hour (harder than I did from the cyst that was torturing me for about a week), and then went to sleep at around 2 pm. When I woke up, I, as a responsible queer, decided to rant about it to my friends. After telling them all those things, one of my friends (who actually watched the show with his sister) said, "Are you sure the anesthesia didn't scramble your brain, cuz none of that happened lol."

When I tell you I was DEVISTATED!!! Literally a "You... you serious?" moment. Cried almost as much as I did at the ending.

Also, if you want to know: I had a dream about how the Ineffable Husbands teamed up with some nun (who was as much of a nun as she was a saint - only on a technicality) and they made her carry the Second Coming, which eventually got her kicked off the nunnery of whatever cuz 'These days, if you get pregnant as a nun, you won't be called ‘The Virgin Sarah’ or ‘The Virgin Linda’. You will be called ‘a common whore’. So much for being a virgin.' (Quote from my fanfic (and the weird opioid trip).

I don't know what the rest of the dream was because Mr. Party Pooper (aka my friend JK Juno ily (^з^)-☆) cut me off because I was talking nonsense.

Long story short, the painkillers got out of my system, I took my meds, renewed the prescription, and went on my still-on-going recovery journey.

Did I suffer two heartbreaks in less than 12 hours? Yes. Were they worth it? Eh. I mean, it inspired my fanfic, but wasn't THAT worth it. Did I enjoy my trip? No, I threw up, had diarrhea, and then constipation for two weeks.

I still get an awful surprise when I rewatch Good Omens for a specific scene, only to find out AGAIN that I was just hallucinating.

Moral of the story - don't do drugs and be honest with your doctors and nurses cuz you might actually die.

Anyways, TOODLES!!1!!111!!!

~ CAwdra

[coraniaid]

School Hard is, in retrospect, one of the pivotal episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  

In this episode, Buffy is trapped in Sunnydale High School, forced to confront one of the most significant villains the show has yet introduced; one of the most iconic and memorable of the show’s seven seasons.  Somebody who, the first time he speaks to Buffy this episode, casually threatens to kill her and walks away without so much as a scratch.  Somebody who we’re meant to see as an altogether different proposition than his Season 1 predecessors.  Somebody whose attempts to destroy Buffy this time around are only foiled thanks to unexpected support from her mother, leaving him free to try again and again for the rest of the season. 

A villain who, unlike Luke and the Annointed One and all the other Season 1 monsters of the week, actually seems to be having fun while he does his best to ruin Buffy’s life and inflict misery and torture on the population of Sunnydale. Somebody who relishes in inflicting pretty cruelty.  Somebody who was originally intended to be killed off after only a few appearances, but who – thanks in no small part to his performance in episodes like this one – will instead continue to appear on the show for years to come.  A character it is impossible to imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer without.

I am, of course, talking about Principal Snyder.

(Also there are some new vampires in town this episode I guess but whatever.  This post isn’t about them.)

I didn’t talk about him much during my Season 1 rewatch, but I really enjoy Principal Snyder as an antagonist.  I think he might actually be one of my favorite minor characters.  He’s incredibly well realized from his first appearance in The Puppet Show: instantly this note perfect pastiche of a self-important petty little bully with just barely enough power to be really dangerous.  The show uses him as a contrast to the other adults in Buffy’s life (Giles, Joyce) to such good effect (especially at the beginning of Season 3).  And Armin Shimerman is fantastic in the role: you can see why the writers gave up on their initial idea of Sunnydale High having a whole string of different principals who got killed off every few episodes.

He’s such a well done comic character too: funny, but never slipping up and giving the impression of being in on the joke.  We’re only seven episodes in, and we’ve already gotten gems like “I can smell trouble – it’s like a sixth sense.” and  “What are you, ghouls?  There are no dead students here.  This week.”.  All delivered with this perfect growling sneer and no acknowledgement at all that what he’s saying is ridiculous.

He’s just fun, in a way that I really don’t think any of Buffy’s other non-supernatural antagonists are.  Yes, Buffy will continue to find the non-supernatural parts of her life hard after high school, but it’s all so impersonal after this.  Other than Maggie Walsh (who is really part of the supernatural world anyway, as head of the Initiative, so barely counts), none of the bad professors she has to deal with in college are recurring characters.  Neither is her bank manager, or her boss at the Doublemeat Palace, or Dawn’s security worker. (Okay, very technically her second manager at the DMP is recurring, but you know what I mean.) 

Of course, being a Slayer still causes Buffy problems in her day to day life, but for whatever reason – I don’t know if it was a deliberate choice or just a result of the later seasons becoming increasingly serialized and story-arc focused - the show becomes less and less concerned with showing us that everyday life.  (Is Parker the last recurring character of any importance who never finds out that Buffy is the Slayer?) And when Buffy goes back to work at the high school in Season 7, everything’s so tied up with her being the Slayer that we just don’t get the same juggling-two-lives thing anymore.

And ... well, I guess Buffy doesn't miss Snyder. I can hardly blame her. But I do.

[felixcloud6288]

PMMM Episodes 1-4 recap

Before I continue watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I want to gather my thoughts so far.

I think it's worth pointing out that I knew the basic premise going into the story and I know it's a deconstruction of the Magical Girl genre. I also know Kyubey is not a benevolent being. But I don't really know anything else.

I've seen a lot of fanart of Madoka in her magical girl attire so I'm genuinely surprised the series isn't her taking the deal on day 1 and going on magical adventures. Instead, the conflict seems to be Kyubey trying to get Madoka to become a Magical Girl while Homura tries to stop her from doing so.

The song that was playing during the cold opening in episode 1 is also the second ending theme, so I'm expecting that scene is near the end of the series and Madoka still hadn't become a magical girl.

I kind of think Kyubey is full of shit when he talks about granting wishes. He made his offer to Mami when she was about to die in a car crash and tried to get Sayaka and Madoka to make a contract when Mami was killed by a witch. These were situations where they had nothing to gain but everything to lose if they didn't accept his contract (By the way, the technical term for this is a Leonine contract).

He does have magical abilities as proven when he healed Kyosuke's arm but he seems to try putting his targets in situations where he effectively doesn't have to do anything for them.

I'm also curious about those soul gems. Anything called a soul gem is obviously bad. And magical girls need to constantly recharge them using grief seeds. So do they have their souls placed in those gems and they die if they run out of magic? Also, the animation when Mami used the grief seed showed something flowing OUT of the soul gem. So does using magic cause some sort of negative buildup in their souls?

I'm kind of curious what those witch runes all say. At the very least, the witches are all using the same alphabet though they're all using different fonts. The witch in episode 4 is exceedingly chatty compared to the previous ones since there's tons of writing during its scene.

But since I don't know what language everything is supposed to be in, it would be hard to transcribe everything. For all I know, everything is in German.

And speaking of the witches, each of them has a different theme about their domains, personalities, etc. But they all seem to have an obsession over something.

The one from episode 2 seems obsessed with flowers and gardening. It got really upset when Mami damaged the flowers.

The one from episode 3 is obsessed with food, especially desserts. Strangely, its familiars look like mice. Not really sure how they tie into the food theme.

The one from episode 4 has the least cohesive theme but I want to say they have an obsession with dolls and games. The gameboy directional pad is a recurring pattern in their domain and several background elements had an NES/SNES sprite design to them.

I guess my last thoughts so far are going to be toward the art and music. PMMM has a very distinct art style. If you know what PMMM is, you'd definitely recognize any screenshots or fanarts that it is PMMM.

Most of the budget probably went into the witches. The animation tends to be a little off-model from time to time. But the animation team knew where to put their focus because motion is wonderfully fluid.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned rewatching .hack//SIGN and realizing that that anime was very formative in the kind of media I like, and this show is hitting the same brain chemicals. If I were ten years younger, I can imagine watching this show and it being what forms the basis of what I like in story-telling media. I love the music (Yuki Kajiura made the music for this and .hack//SIGN), I love the disorienting animation style with the witches, and I love how there's clearly so much more to this story and it would require a second rewatch to fully understand everything.

I get why this is such an iconic anime despite it being so short.

back

[oneatlatime]

The Chase part 2

Apologies for the technical problems. Battery power must be conserved for necessities, which unfortunately does not include Avatar. But the power's back on now, so!

Picking up from Toph treating a senior citizen like a snooker ball...

I do like how Mai's not shy about participating in Ty Lee's nonsense.

The way Zuko Jr. says "I'll follow this trail" is very menacing.

We're continuing last week's cowboy theme.

This village has the same menacing single windchime as the village in the Spirit World Part One did.

This was may more satisfying than I was expecting! It was completely unfair how easily the Fire Nation ladies defeated Sokka & Katara so getting Appa'd was a nice payoff.

No disability unmocked this episode. Also nice stance from the lizard.

This whole scene with Toph and Iroh has the most beautiful backgrounds. I sense phone wallpapers in my future.

Forget about the visuals, every line of this exchange was golden. Two towering pillars of wisdom and emotional maturity meet for tea and not a soul goes untouched. Also a nice moment of calm in an otherwise frantic episode.

Can this PLEASE be the rock bottom for Zuko. I can only take so much more second hand embarrassment.

Fully-provisioned princess of the fire nation v. sleep-deprived half trained avatar v. starving outlaw who seems to have forgotten to bring his swords, the only weapon he's good at. Place your bets, folks!

Zuko in a nutshell.

Ok so we're getting the whole gang back together.

The whole whole gang.

The whole whole whole gang.

How the hell did they mess up six on one?!?!

A princess can't surrender with honour when she doesn't have any!

That was kind of Katara to offer to help. I didn't expect that.

Final Thoughts

This episode doesn't let up once. Even the break with Toph and Iroh having tea doesn't do much to dispell the rising tension from the chase. The musical stinger that plays over the title card was a surprise bit of foreshadowing in that way.

That tank thing was neat. Shame about what it contained, but that's a really cool design.

Poor Appa was once again the MVP this episode. It was uncomfortable watching him get so exhausted.

It seems like the thin veneer of level-headedness cultivated by Katara over the last season or so is indeed quite thin. It was interesting to see how the different characters reacted to being tired. Sokka was alternatively amped up and completely chilled out, Aang got quiet (until he felt Appa was being insulted), Katara reverted to her early season one characterisation. It's hard to say with Toph, because we've only known her one episode (it feels like more) but I think she just got more Toph-like.

Please let this be the end in Zuko's experiment with independence. He's not good at it. He needs uncle. Points for trying, but he failed, so please bring uncle back.

Sokka low key wins this episode. He's the one with sense, the only one who stays clear-headed when it counts, and it turns out that clear head of his can defeat the pokey thing Ty Lee does.

I don't know how much time is supposed to have passed between picking up Toph and the start of this episode, but I can't help but feel that Toph really got the short end of the stick here. She did give up everything, even if much of what she gave up was not that great for her personally. And in return she got to travel in a way that completely blinds her and get yelled at. Meeting Iroh was a nice consolation prize.

Now I kind of want a story where Toph doesn't come back to the Gaang and instead goes around unleashing bending hell on the earth kingdom.

Was there no b plot or c plot this episode? Everything kind of collided in the final couple of scenes, which I did not see coming.

Frantic is the word I keep coming back to for this episode. Everything fit together nicely. I'll definitely rewatch it when I have the chance to do so in one sitting, without unforseen technical problems.

[mil-doo]

Shin Evangelion

So I’m rewatching the rebuild movies with some friends who are more into them than me both for funsies and in hopes of gaining a more positive perspective of them. We just finished 3.0 last week and I’ve got some thoughts so far.

I really appreciate the story they’re trying to tell here. It feels like each character has an inch more autonomy and assurance than their Neon Genesis counterparts. It’s a story where the characters are able to hang on to some of the lessons they learned in NGE and EoE and take them along to this new continuity.

That’s an interesting story! I like the idea of our friends from Nerv learning a little while still clearly struggling with the areas that are still too sore to heal and with the areas where they still need to grow. It would have been really boring if we had the exact same copy and paste characters as before.

I really appreciate how early Misato starts to rely on Shinji and be transparent with him about the machinations of Nerv (to her knowledge). Similarly I love the breakdown of that trust between her and Shinji (and everyone else and Shinji) in 3.0 —a movie whose conflicts could never have happened without a failure of communication born out of long pent up and still raw emotions.

Where it doesn’t work for me is I think primarily an issue of preference. The rebuilds, Shin Eva, etc. feels excessive to me. Maybe that just comes down to my obsessive love with the 90s television series and subsequent film ending, but both the aesthetic choices of the rebuilds, as well as what they choose to use their run time on, don’t work for me as well as I would have liked (Thrice Upon a Time aside, I still want to give that one a fair shake again).

So much of the run time of both 2.0 and 3.0 is dedicated to massive bombastic battle sequences, 2.0 especially feels like it refuses to slow down for longer than a moment or two, while 3.0 has some beautiful character moments sandwiched between what feel like two massive and kind of exhausting 45 minute battles.

Don’t get me wrong, 3.0 especially is visually stunning. It has some of the most technically impressive animation out there, it really shows how well Khara has mastered CG animation in their almost 20 years of making these movies. But Evangelion to me was never really about the flesh mech on abstract terror action, that was always important and appreciated and often had a lot to add to the story but it was always in aid of it and not the central feature.

The aesthetics of 3.0’s final act also kind of looks like someone trying to do EoE again but BIGGER (and a little Micheal Bay-ified). MORE Adams, MORE lances, BIGGER cosmic crosses, a sea of eva skulls, a million billion floating blood red evas! Just give the CG team a bunch of work and make sure the frame is absolutely gushing with objects.

I’m probably sounding harsher than I intend to really come off. I do like these movies, and I respect them more on this viewing than I did before! There’s a lot that they do have to offer and while I don’t like every decision made here I am excited to revisit 3.0+1.0 in a week or so!

I went into Thrice Upon a Time the first go around in 2021 hoping it would resolve every hang up I had with the rebuilds up to that point. This time I’m willing to let the rebuilds be their own thing, with their own goals, and I’m really excited to see its final film with that mindset.

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ofmd s2e4 rewatch where i pause to jot down my thoughts and other random shit

it's been a busy week since last thursday and shit's only gonna get busier for me after tomorrow so hopefully i can get through these two episodes out before i go to bed lol!!! anyway once again these posts are just me rambling so i can process the insane amount of information in these episodes and if u want to read them too that's fine.

s2e1, s2e2, s2e3, s2e4, s2e5, s2e6, s2e7, s2e8

rip everyone who wanted homoerotic sword fighting in the gentebeard reunion. have a headbutt as a consolation prize.

obsessed with stede holding raw room-temperature meat against his bruised face bc that's not even a little bit how that works. i love this show.

ok so jim saying "he'll probably get around to killing you after he's rested" in response to stede saying ed needs to regain his strength actually gives some pretty good context to why they want ed of the ship so bad. bc they DID fully try to kill ed and now he's here and alive and like. if i were jim i would be pretty worried abt ed holding a grudge abt that.

wont lie stede being like "we dont just banish people, that's not us!" makes me thinkg abt how they fully banished izzy from the ship in e6. i mean technically izzy banished himself on accident but. lol.

also izzy's absence in this scene indicating he is not yet considered part of the entire crew

roach: i need that steak back, it's dinner stede: (pulling the steak away) oh, right fang: maybe let's put the banishment to a vote? stede: (steak back on his face, apparently having forgotten he was literally just about to give the meat to roach) aw do we have to :(

ed chained to the ship is doing. a lot for me. i wont lie.

buttons saying he's been to the gravy basket a few times... how many times has this man almost died??????

it is deeply funny to me that they edit the split second flashback of the drowning and mermaid hallucination to look all creepy as if that whole scene wasn't set to an incredibly sappy 80's love song (said with immense affection)

OBSESSED with stede trying to be like. encouraging to izzy. and being like "he cant hear you he's got no head" about izzy yelling at the ruined figurehead. this fucking dork.

so ive seen ppl talking abt how the crew's in a deadlock abt banishing ed and which ppl they think were pro-banishment and which were against, but the scenes with the crew make it look like everyone's voting for ed to get kicked out. so tbh i think like either of the following interpretations are pretty valid: the crew is split 50/50 on if they should banish ed OR the crew 100% wants to banish ed and stede was gonna try and leverage izzy's vote to try and get more ppl to change their mind. doesnt rlly matter either way tho

also the fact that izzy was the one to keep ed's body is. interesting. the others must've known abt it and helped izzy hide the body in the secret room. but izzy being the one to be like "no we're not throwing him overboard" is. something. no conclusions abt this atm im just rotating this fact in my brain.

i also just have a lot of thoughts abt the mutiny and the fact that like, jim's a trained assassin and the others are also pretty experienced killers and they probably knew they hadn't completely finished the job. and there was plenty of opportunity for them to do something about that. but instead they hid his body and waited for ed to succumb to his injuries. it feels kinda like ed's "technically i outsource the big job" rule. idk. thoughtssss.

frenchie in this scene is so funny bc he seems both actually apologetic abt kicking ed off the ship but also very relieved/vindicated to see him go.

didnt realize olu almost said smthng to ed lol i thought ed was just saying "fuck you" to him for no reason ghfjkghjkfh

"first time i've ever been on this side of a walk of shame" wee john i have so many questions. how many times have you been banished from a ship.

obsessed with archie just being like "way to make this awkward brah." her shitty boss put her life at risk in an attempt to make her and her coworkers kill him in a weird roundabout suicide attempt and her summary of the situation is "well, this is awkward :/"

"shitty sailing with you" sick burn, jim

"you're making it really hard to look up to you, man" LOVE how black pete is still a blackbeard stan. despite everything.

just ONCE i want someone to appreciate roach's sandwiches :(

"dont you want your sammy" STEDE I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

also i disagree with the subtitles here im like 99% sure says "you're no fuckin mermaid" not "you're not a fuckin mermaid" but that's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stede looks SO sad abt not being a mermaid

love how everyone in this episode just sort of nods and is like "yeah okay" every time buttons tells them he's turning into a bird

altho with stede in this scene specifically im convinced that he's just jumping at the chance to follow ed to the island. he was absolutely gonna come up with some shitty excuse to go ashore anyway but it's nice of buttons to give him plausible deniability

i love how much ed hates nature

why do the subtitles say "gyp-" this has been bothering me all week. the line is "like a drifter"

i also love ed's line delivery of "a wolf?"

anyway dumb posts abt the spider tattoo backstory: 1, 2, 3

i love to see ed getting hugs... wish i could give him a hug :(

ok also buttons talking abt the gravy basket made me think ed needed like some sort of spell or smthng to snap out of it but instead it just kinda wore off by the end of the episode (maybe, depends on how you read the whole buttons turning into a bird scene). this is very funny to me for some reason

anne rubbing the cup she's holding against her tit. queen.

stede bonnet idiot dumbfuck moments

i LOVE anne's line delivery of "eddie motherfuckin teeeeach" like yeah that's cj's girl alright. or was cj's girl. who knows.

SECRET HANDSHAKE im cryinggggg. i love them.

stede's voice sounds so weird when he says "i wasn't looking for you" and that's because he's fucking lying through his teeth

LOVE how anne and mary look at each other after the "shipmates" "former" interaction like they are immediately on the same wavelength. and that wavelength is fucking with ed and his ex. they sniffed out a messy relationship dynamic and were like "oh hell yeah we need more of this in our lives"

ed is SO bitchy this whole scene i fucking love it. ed's face when he says "him?" fdhjksgfjhdgkj

ed: whatever 🙄 anne: whatever? 👀 mary: whatever! 😈

wee john getting more goth is so good

drunk izzy rambling at the ship's figurehead is so funny to me tho i miss drunk izzy

ed's crew lady macbeth "out damned spot" moments

i like how there's a goat in the background of this scene in anne and mary's house and it is unexplained and also never seen again.

ed's face after stede says "that's romance" is soooo good this bitch is so pissed. like oh would you have met me at the docs if i peeled the guard's face off instead of just paying him off? is that what fuckin does it for you???? not that it matters bc i dont care. but. cunt.

yeah im just focusing in on all of ed's faces in this scene. "quite the shift going from wearing people's faces to antique collectors" gets ed to freeze in the middle of bringing his drink up to his lips and just kinda stare off into the distance.

"how did you meet" has ed kind of frowning for a split second before stede starts answering and then he rolls his eyes very dramatically and sighs deeply

ed immediately being like "actually i was gonna kill him myself!" trying to undermine stede's meet-cute story. also anne and mary nodding along in complete unison bc this is just normal pirate conversation to them.

~~~

also as someone who has been team "no ed was dead serious abt the plan to steal stede's identity" this was very vindicating for me. it's a bad plan and it doesn't make any sense but logistics literally dont matter in this show. what matters is giving this story the "falling for the mark" trope makes ed's character arc in season 1 that much tastier!!!!

ed and stede going back and forth telling their story i cant fucking wait until theyre happily together telling this story and instead of ed trying to downplay it and ruin the meet-cute-iness of it they're just building on each other and being sappy and adorable

"more like i relented" one of the biggest lies i've ever heard this man say fjhkgjkfdhk

"until he completely boned it" SAY IT. FUCKING SAY IT. SOOOOO TRUE ED.

auauhghgh the beard bit......... crying

THE!!!!! QUIETEST LITTLE "thank you" OF ALL TIME. TIED MAYBE WITH ED SAYING "thank you" AFTER "i think you're very sophisticated" IN 1.05

i dont blame stede for trying to get ed to open up right after that bc that was the first bone ed's thrown stede's way since he woke up. unfortunately ed is not in the mood to talk abt his near-death experience and mermaid hallucination sequence.

LOVE anne's little gesture when she says "rabbit" and the little hip cocking

stede being like "uhhhh we could leave" during the knifeplay exhibitionism moment

i giggle every time at the way the crew is instantly like "fuck closing our eyes we're doing any fucking surprises"

ngl idgw the crew yelled abt the piñata reveal. but ok

loooove stede's half of the crew just blowing past all the screaming and tension from ed's half. jim screams "STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!" abt the blindfold and roach is like "you won't want to stay the fuck away from this caaaake!" like roach fdhsjfgdhfjkghkj read the room?????

i love how much stede just. completely misses all of annie's flirting

ed coughing during the blunt session i love himmmmm

ok but ed's trying to be like "im totally over stede i dont even like him" and then ed reminiscing fondly with a distant smile abt the 1.06 stabbing scene

"and that was the... second time you left your wife?" underrated line

love how annie's been all quiet and seductive and then when she goes to make her move she's just like "WOUND THIS" and aggressively sits in stede's lap

also ok. "they're gonna be so jealous" is that annie talking abt ed and mary or is that annie using they/them pronouns for mary.

BUTTONS JUMPSCARE

also i love how they have that one medusa painting just. in their kitchen. im obsessed with the interior decor of this lesbian antique store that annie and mary live in

the way she's so touched by the poisoning attempt hjfgfjksghskjhgjkh

buttons being like "aahhhhhh do i give her... this bowl......????" fhjkghkfsjhk

"yeah, babe" TEALORANGES WIN

im honestly sad izzy's pathetic wet beast moment only really went for like three tiny scenes in one episode bc this shit was so funny to me. crawling away saying "you're born alone you die alone" over and over again. sir what are you even doing.

god buttons in this episode is so fucking funny bc i keep forgetting he's there. also why is he even there. like was he even invited to dinner or did he just sit down and annie and mary were like "oh ok i uh. guess we'll go make another plate??"

ed's face after buttons says the bit abt "i can tell this rabbit was intelligent" is soooo funny why is he so fucking pissed fdhsjkgyjdfkghjk

NO WAIT HE'S PISSED BC THAT WAS HIS FRIEND. THAT WAS HIS FRIEND THE WOLF HE WAS TELLING HIS SECRETS. NOW IM KINDA SAD :(:(:(

stede talking abt the sea when what he's actually talking abt is ed part 2 electric boogaloo

ed very calmly. standing up. and smashing the chair. im obsessed with him.

stede bonnet stupid dumbass moments

IMPROMPTU BLANKET FORT TIME

ed's voice is so quiet at the start of this scene he's not even yelling at stede until stede says "it's not fair" ohhhhhh my babygirl is so fucking sad........

"you ditching me without a note or anything" ed's literacy confirmed

"expecting me to just melt back into your arms" eddie my man. stede has not given literally any indication that he expected this at all. you are telling on yourself fhdjskghfkjshd

this scene is so fucking good i barely have anything to say abt it. just. u can rlly tell david jenkins wrote this ep himself lolll

"i was all in, mate. i was all in." IM SOBBING

oh nooooo i forgot that ed's line delivery of "im sorry my horrible naked chin disgusts you so much" isnt actually as sarcastic as the words itself make it seem. like it feels like ed wanted to say that all angrily and bitter but instead he just sounds sadddddd

ok ok but the way stede says "i love your chin naked or otherwise" and then after a pause (during which ed is keeping INCREDIBLY still bc u know otherwise he's just gonna burst into tearssss) stede whispers "ed" and ed is immediately like "don't" and then. stede going in for the "i love you" but like the way he's so slow with it?? he's literally like "i. love." and idk if it's bc he's trying to make this as clear as possible or if he's giving ed enough time to cut him off if he doesn't want to hear it

and ed DOES he DOES cut him off with "you don't get to say that to me" and he like. keeps glancing at stede out of the corner of his eye but not quite looking at him directly bc he knowwwwws it's like staring into the sun baby and ed knows if he looks at stede's face it's literally all over.

but also ed's face after stede pivots to "i love everything about you" he's SO pissed. he quietly groans and rolls his eyes bc this bitch. finding stupid loopholes to not being allowed to say "i love you." fuck this guy ed hates him so fucking much (lying)

oooooh when stede says "you don't have to say it back to me" ed's mouth opens and closes a bit before "not about to" bc this man is trying. SO hard not to cry (so am i but it's not working sorry there are tears on my face right now)

idk idk idk smthng abt "it's nice. feels good." makes me hurt so fucking bad bc the entire time since ed's woken up stede's been getting headbutted and snarked at passive-aggressively but stede's still like "i love being near you it makes me happy :)" brb i need. a fucking moment.

honestly tho how did annie and mary even overhear that bit bc they were on the other side of the room and stede was whispering SO quietly. opposite of when ppl in this show dont hear things despite the things being said like two feet away from them (1.03 geraldo and jackie talking abt how blackbeard was looking for stede, 2.01 zheng saying the indigo was worth way more than she spent on it)

LOVE how anne being like "stede likes the ladies" is how ed figures out "ohhhh wait ok theyre just fucking with us, got it" bc this guy??? liking women????? lmao

this also HAS to be why he gets over mary like his brain mustve gone "wait hang on why the fuck would he go back to her he doesn't even like women. guess maybe he really did panic huh" hdjksghfckghkjsh

obsessed with these TINY tiny details abt the ed/jack/annie/mary polycule dynamics we're given. ed would've expected as much from annie bc she's a fucking psycho. mary apparently used to not be like this. im putting the pieces together im connecting the dots.

ed and stede's knowing smug looks at each other. im obsessed.

annie being rlly sensitive to the word "bitch" im considering that more hints abt the polycule backstory

yayy fanny newspaper

"really? i mean she stabbed you, you poisoned her, and then she jumped on my face" stede this is all part of their very elaborate and deeply toxic sex life ok stop kinkshaming them

~~~

curious if ed and stede are too distracted by mary spelling out their worst fears to comment on all the smoke coming into the room

"everything must go" like a fucking clearance sale. this is such a silly line. this is a silly show. i love it here.

WHY DONT THEY MAKE OUT SLOPPY STYLE HERE THO

wait are they crying while they hug??? bro these girls are so fucking messy i love them

ed saying "see you guys" before he leaves them in their burning house. i would die for him

ok team arts and craft time while making a prosthetic for izzy. obsessed with how the b plot of this episode is literally "the crew struggles to get along but they eventually set aside their differences and work together when they realize there's someone even more cringe and pathetic than any of them"

"YOU ARE!!! HARASSING A CRIPPLE!!!!!!" is suchhhh a funny line im sorry im gonna miss izzy at his lowest fhsjkhjksf. literally they just knocked on the door my dude calm downnnn

obsessed with izzy being genuinelly touched and expressing it by saying "fucking cocksuckers." this man is allergic to having feelings.

stede and ed painfully talking over each other bc everything is awkward and difficult. i love them.

ed's face when stede offers to let ed stay. his very quiet "yis." the way he says "might be nice" and then VERY QUICKLY looks away

stede yelling GREAT at the top of his lungs fhdsjkguydfgfjkhl

i love when these guys try to play it cool bc theyre so fucking bad at it hgdfgvjfxdkgjjdkkgjhfdkh

stede bonnet dumb idiot moron moments

ed staring off lovinglyyyyyy

buttons jumpscare

also is that fucking sage. are we doing cultural appropriation here

buttons saying "Earth Wind and Fire i wanna go higher" hfjkhgfdjkhgjkh

i love how ed. does not question this "fuck yeah, brother. fly."

ed teach lovesick fool moments

i love how happy ed sounds telling stede abt buttons he sounds like his old goofy self for the first time all season.... im gonna cry

also i like how the crew adopts izzy as their new creature. 10/10

post credits scene is annie and mary at dinner with buttons. i guess it's after stede goes to comfort ed but before they go eavesdrop on that convo.

buttons enjoying his last meal as a human. and also he's like "there's too much fucking on that ship i need to get away from it all." and his way of doing this is becoming a bird. love that.

[oppositionresearch]

Tagged by @thebreakfastgenie

Last song: If It Makes You Happy- Screaming Females (it's a live cover of the Sheryl Crow song and it goes so hard)

Currently reading: lol lmao. I did get a copy of The Puritan Family (the Edmund Morgan book from 1969) recently and I've been meaning to read it... but I also meant to read the last 20 books I bought and guess how many of those I read (it was none)

Last film: Barbie for the third time. I don't watch a lot of movies either but when I find one I like I get annoying fast

Currently watching: Doctor Who NuWho rewatch. I've gone from series 1-7 for the first time since high school and I'm not planning on stopping until I'm caught up

Currently craving: a dr pepper. please hold. i now have a dr pepper

Three ships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Amy Pond/Rory Williams (Doctor Who), and uh... frankly I'm not a ship heavy person and those two are far and away my largest two

First ship: I technically saw and enjoyed Amy/Rory first but I think Jake and Amy was the first one that appealed to me As A Ship yknow

Favorite color: god i don't even know anymore. purple? I think? maybe blue

Currently working on: getting work to a place where I can finally take a vacation (the last time I was away from work for more than like three or four days at a time was because I had covid and before THAT was July 2021 so I got time saved up and I am very very ready to not think about work at all for like two weeks thank you very much)

[bookshelfdreams]

TAG SOMEONE YOU WANT TO KNOW AND/OR SOME OF YOUR BESTIES

I got tagged for this by my dear friend @justmori - thanks, babe <3 It's been a while since I did one of these.

favorite color: Greens and green-tinted blues are my faves, but I like earth tones to. Autumn colours. Berry tones. Basically anything except bright red, bright yellow, and neons.

last song: The Calling by The Amazing Devil as I was driving home from work (yes, still "tad on repeat" kind of day. Week, even)

last movie: A rewatch of the 1989 DEFA Goose princess, I think?

currently watching: take a guess 🏴‍☠️

other stuff i watched this year: Oh God, I'm really not watching a lot of fiction these days, mostly shitty documentaries. Nimona was pretty good. oh and that Netflix stop motion miniseries about the haunted house? That was cool. (If that even was this year)

shows i dropped this year: I don't think there was anything I gave up on? Again, my media diet atm isn't very varied

currently reading: Emil Ferris's My Favourite Thing Is Monsters, a graphic novel that my sister loaned me :) It's p good so far!

currently listening to: again. having a putting tad on repeat kinda time

currently working on: Halloween costume, the forgotten wool coat (YES I am still technically working on it, shut up), a few other little crafting projects, a bookbinding thing, subtitle translation for ofmd 02x06 and 07

current obsession/s: the stupid gay pirates own me, heart body and soul

tagging (with no pressure, of course, as always; these things are a little heart I'm blowing your way): @areyoudoingthis @emilhe @awordwasthebeginning @eolewyn1010 @jamdoughnutmagician @jaskierx @chocolatepot @cuddlytogas @chuplayswithfire @swords-n-spindles

[amplifyme]

@tygertygerfoggybright I'm going to do some more cherry-picking and answer your latest ask here.

First of all, I love that your sister is a Father stan. And your running commentary with her, that you've transcribed for me, is priceless! 😁

More below the cut.

It's safe to say that her preferring Paracelsus over Gabriel is a majority opinion in the fandom. But I agree with your take a few weeks back that Paracelsus was more Father's nemesis rather than Vincent's, and was simply using V as a tool against him. But she's right about Gabriel being "a little man." And as soon as V was face to face with him, he knew it too.

I'm not insulted at all that she's not a V girlie. For some, he's an acquired taste, for others, they never get the appeal. That just leaves more for the rest of us to enjoy.

Vincent and Diana and baby Jacob were the PERFECT ENDING. She watched it twice herself. Jacob gives, and I quote, “PURPOSE TO [Vincent’s]LIFE”-- she loves those types of characters, or any kind of family or platonic relationship/bond. :DDDD 

Your sister is right. Jacob does give V a purpose to carry on. And the show was certainly laying the ground work for Diana to also become that for him.

I'm pretty sure we all started out as Cathy defenders - I certainly did. I didn't begin to question her choices and their impact on V's peace of mind until maybe a third of the way through S2. And that came as a result of many rewatches of certain episodes, when there was a little tickle in the back of my head telling me that all was not well and I needed to dig deeper.

Brb, we’re fighting over Paraclesus vs. Gabriel. Be right back. 

She conceded (volunteered) that Gabriel was “an interesting arc, though.” “Gave a lot of plot drama.” 

You two are cracking me up!

She made me die laughing suggesting he was Simba and John Pater was Uncle Scar (and though it’s not TECHNICALLY canon….)

🤣🤣🤣 Now I'm wondering if the folks at Disney did a bit of pilfering when working on The Lion King! This is perfect! 🤣🤣🤣

“Kick Joe” refers to every time someone came to him with info and tore it away or how he’s generally treated by everyone else around him, including life and us the audience.

Aw, poor Joe. He does get the short end of the stick a lot.

“I don’t think Vincent really has a raspy voice,” she interjects randomly, “I think he just sounds like what a lion would sound like.” I guess that’s a bad thing. “I LIKE HOW HE FLICKED HIS EYES,” she interjects again. I’ve been listening to her eye-flicking praise comments for days now. (“I’ve only said it three times,” she adds.) 

Gotta agree with her on all of this. Perlman based the raspiness of the voice he used on his belief that Vincent's "normal" voice would always sound like it was on the edge of a growl, and that's why he was so soft-spoken most of the time. Just another way to set the people around at ease. But you could certainly hear it when he was angry. There's a set of videos from a con back in the day that features a Q & A with Perlman, Roy Dotrice, and Jay Acovone that's just delightful. All three of these guys are a blast to listen to and watch. Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you a link. Oh, and yes, V was an expert at the eye flick!

She’s curious if you’ve ever met the actors and what meeting them was like (she enjoyed reading-- on her own, mind-- about your talk with Roy); and if there were any fandom Winterfest stories you could relate?  

I was lucky enough to meet Perlman at the same con as I met Roy, but the encounter only lasted a minute or two. He was meeting up with some of the actors at the con and just happened to spot Roy at the table with Nan and myself and stopped by for a minute. Lovely, lovely man. And big. Both physically and personality-wise. In exchange for mine and Nan's promise to not tell anyone that we'd seen him (his con appearance that night was unannounced and a surprise to everyone but the cast and con organizers) I got a hug in return. Still makes me grin like an idiot thinking about it, and it takes a lot to frazzle me. I also had a chance to meet and speak to Jay, David Greenlee (a precious cinnamon roll), Eddie Albert Jr. (sooo handsome in person, a real delight), David Swartz (a coordinating producer on the show - funny guy) and a few of the recurring, unnamed tunnel dwellers.

Every con that took place over the years always started with a Friday evening banquet, and was considered our Winterfest. Once everyone was seated, the lights were turned off and the Winterfest recitation began. Of course each table was decorated with candles enough for everyone seated, and eventually all the candles were lit and our celebration would begin by candlelight and with the room lights dimmed. I'll never forgot the goosebumps I got when Roy stood at the head of the cast table and began, "The world above us is cold and gray, summer a distant memory. Our world, too, has known its winters, so each year we begin this feast in darkness, as our world began in darkness."

Once the yearly cons ended, Winterfest began to take place online.

Notes: Buster remembered being abandoned as a baby-- would baby Jacob remember being suffocated by Gabriel? And what trauma would that bring (or what trauma did Vincent and the bond prevent?)

No, I don't think Jacob would remember that. I have to believe that V only remembered his abandonment because of what he is. Not only because of whatever species or hybrid of human being he is, but because of his enormous empathic abilities, which I believe Jacob shares, but not to the extent of his father's. And I don't know that their bond would've prevented any trauma, but it would certainly have been dampened the moment Vincent lifted him from the cradle and held him.

Okay, enough for now. I have a fic to work on. Tell your sister I enjoyed "meeting" her! 😊

[lovestuckyhatemarvel]

Okay so, here we are with season 4 episode 1 of Stranger Things. But before I get into the episode, I need to explain something: I’ve never actually watched this season before. I have, however, watched Steddie compilations on YouTube. Regardless, I’m labeling this as a ‘rewatch’ because it’ll keep the series consistent. And parts of it technically are a rewatch. Anyway, these are also going to be way longer than usual because a lot more is just Brand New™️ to me. Although some I haven’t seen but do know because of fanfiction.

1.) I literally can’t remember what made the Texas shooting something that would be necessary to be mentioned at the beginning when America has shootings all the time.

Edit: I have been reminded of the actual case it’s referencing. But I think Texas shooting is going to become less and less of an obvious connection as time goes on, especially for people who aren’t in America. I am in America, and there’s just…too many shootings to keep track of, tbh.

2.) I don’t know why I’m watching this recap. I literally watched season 3 last week or whatever but they really cut out the Russian interrogation/secret base locating stuff entirely from their recap.

3.) season 4 really starts out by being like, “Remember Brenner? Remember that douchebag? Well, guess what. He’s actually super boring in everyday life.”

4.) 010 come on down to get your psychic powers tested and your ability to interpret Brenner’s bad drawings tested. Oh nvm at least now they’re trying to locate people only to witness both Six and Dr. Ellis’ death.

5.) Wait why did Brenner survive this? How did Brenner survive this? Ten is dead. Also, since when does Brenner care about the kids? It’s not like he’s treated them well.

6.) El looking really crazy covered in blood and basically hyperventilating.

7.) El’s got her own room. Also, we’ve gone 185 days since season 3 and now El is painting little figures. And is giving a recap via letter. Joyce is a telemarketer, Will is gay pining, Jonathan has a broken car and is a stoner. Argyle has a pizza van and takes them to school. The bullies in school are cliches.

8.) Nancy drives Mike to school and Karen Wheeler looks great. Also they want Mike home by 9 pm because of his 6:30 flight.

9.) Suzie is editing a D- to an A for Dustin.

10.) I love this conversation about crushes between Robin and Steve. Boobies. Although I don’t like Robin’s hair as much this season.

11.) Max rides the bus and missed a Thursday meeting so needs to go after lunch.

12.) oh there’s Chrissy. And here’s the marching band with Robin playing the TRUMPET. Looks like Vickie’s a clarinet player. Jason and Lucas on the basketball team while Dustin and Mike argue about girlfriends in the crowd.

13.) I know it’s way too early since Jason hasn’t done anything yet, but I already hate him. He just has a punchable face. “Think about all these dead people DID THEY DIE FOR US TO LOSE AT BASKETBALL?” I would have keyed his car in high school. Like oh my god.

14.) Mike and Dustin are nerds and freaks and proud of it. To be fair, Lucas always has been cooler than them. But also Lucas should have gone to Eddie himself.

15.) PACKAGE. FROM. RUSSIA. Man, do not ever send anything delicate to Joyce, she fucking demolishes packages. Oh, that’s an ugly doll. I’ve read about the doll but didn’t know it was that ugly.

16.) El/Jane has to go after a blonde girl talking about Helen Keller for her presentation about Hopper? That’s rough, buddy. Angela is a bitch and I hate her Ariana Grande looking ass. Will is trying and I love that him and El are siblings but yeah, no, that presentation went badly.

17.) Max is doing her loner thing but does get to see Chrissy being upset in the hall as she heads away from the counselor.

18.) C in English and C- in Spanish. It’s not normal for Max but babe, C’s get degrees. You’ll be okay. Max’s mom is drinking, working two jobs, and stepdad is gone. Max is still my favorite even if she is a liar. Lucas’ advice about finding something she cares about is technically good but poor wording and timing. Max isn’t really open for help.

19.) Stranger Things really loves shots of people in bathrooms holding the sides of the sink. Also we get to hear Chrissy vomiting.

20.) Chrissy’s hallucinating. She has issues with her mom being awful about her weight and honestly, mood.

21.) Oh hi, Eddie. You’re a goofy guy. And now Eddie walks across the table. Also honestly, so far the bullying in Hawkins is like, minimal. All that happened in that scene is Eddie got called a freak. Dustin and Mike do try to get the game postponed. I still think Lucas should have asked. Eddie’s got to pass Mrs. O’Donnell’s class and that’s it to pass the class. Eddie really does yank both those dweebs out of their seats with barely any effort.

22.) Murray has karate from 1-3 on Fridays? Good for him. Oh and the doll from Russia has nipples. Teeny tiny nipples. And now needs to be smashed.

23.) Everyone thinks it’s weird that Nancy and Jonathan aren’t spending spring break together. I still think Nancy’s a comphet case. I love that Mike asks Nancy and Dustin asks Steve. Max is sarcastic to Dustin’s request which is very funny. Literally everyone shoots them down. Dustin comes up with an idea nad sprints off faster than I knew was possible.

24.) Oh it’s the picnic table behind the school scene. And we hear and see a clock chiming as she waits for Eddie. I’ve never actually seen the build up to the meeting with Eddie. Did not know the clock breaks and spills spiders.

25.) Eddie is tempted to leave ‘cause Chrissy is acting crazy. Eddie is very dramatic and they were in a talent show together. Eddie used to have buzzed hair and now plays at the Hideout on Tuesdays. I would have loved for Chrissy to live and for these two to be another Steve and Robin. Chrissy asks for something stronger.

26.) El failed a math test, I think? And if that’s the test she failed, it’s extra sad because that’s what she called herself good at in the opening letter. And then Angela tripped her? And her stupid friends stomp on her project. I wanna kick Angela’s ass. El forgets that she doesn’t have powers and it’s so embarrassing. El doesn’t snitch but a teacher takes Angela away anyway.

27.) Will feels so bad and is trying so hard to help.

28.) I feel like it wouldn’t require a paint can from a tree to break a porcelain doll. Oh, Murray thinks it might have an explosive. AND IT’S FILLED WITH A NOTE SAYING HOP IS ALIVE AND IT’S WRITTEN IN CUT OUT LETTERS LIKE IT’S FROM A SERIAL KILLER. WHY DID THEY DO THAT??? LMAO

29.) And now it’s the championship. I feel like fanfics stretch episode 1 into like, 3 chapters. Steve came with his date to see Lucas. And here’s Tammy Thompson. And she’s…bad. this bad performance is worth it for Steve’s sassy expressions.

30.) Oh, hey Erica Sinclair. LMAO WAIT, IS SHE WEARING AN AMERICAN FLAG? GOD, YOU DWEEB. I will say that the rest of hellfire that just kind of chortles in response to everything is so far just background noise that I do not care about. I do love that Erica is way better at insults than Eddie and he kind of adores her.

31.) I still hate Jason.

32.) Technically if we’re going with the lore of we thought Vecna was killed by Kas then technically El/Jane is this show’s Kas.

33.) Okay going back and forth is too hard when they’re going back this fast between basketball and Hellfire so I’ll just summarize at the end. Lucas going in and the gameplay mirror each other very obviously. It’s an old trope but a good one. Eddie’s unhinged.

34.) “There is no shame in running. Don’t be heroes.”

35.) Dustin misses and so does Jason. But Lucas and Erica both win. This slow mo is kind of excessive. Eddie’s fucking thrilled that Erica did a critical success. Although did they actually need a natural 20 to win? That doesn’t really make sense if the guy only has 15 HP left. Presumably they haven’t been critting to attack this fucking thing this entire session. So really it’s a matter of going above his AC. And technically you don’t need a nat 20 to do that, especially if you have enough bonuses. Although they are playing a different version of D&D than I’ve ever played so maybe I’m taking out of my ass.

36.) Aw, Max listened to the game’s result on the radio. I thought she went. Her mom is passed out on the couch. Max takes food to a dog. Eddie lives like, directly across from her. For some reason, from fanfics, I thought they were like, directly next to each other. Still, Max saw Chrissy go into his trailer.

37.) Wayne works nights. Eddie does not know where his ketamine is. Should keep track of that. That is a very cool guitar he has though. Chrissy’s hallucinations are very bad now and she’s no longer responsive. And now the lights are flickering. Vecna’s ugly as hell. There are so many spiders in this vision. Eddie really is trying to wake her up but I’m not sure how he thought I DON’T LIKE THIS, CHRISSY, WAKE UP would help.

38.) did not know we see Vecna in episode 1. “It’s time for your suffering to end.” Don’t be weird, dude. And now Chrissy is floating. Her death is like, both weirdly graphic and also sanitized. Like it looks cartoonish. I didn’t realize how cartoonish it looks. Bones don’t break through the skin. There’s barely any blood. Her skin moves like putty.

[teruel-a-witch]

tag 9 people you'd like to know better

i was tagged weeks ago by @crackers4jenn (*waves* sorry it takes me ages, i'm a scatterbrain)

last song: had to check my youtube history because i rarely listen to music and apparently it was precious by depeche mode on July 12th, lol. it's the soundtrack at the end of bones 1x10 and rewatching the episode always makes me want to listen to the song again.

currently watching: of the shows that are still on right now, only what we do in the shadows. (i think how i met your father s2 officially ended, i mean to pick nancy drew back up but i don't remember where in s3 I fell behind) but i'm in a perpetual process of rewatching/watching so many things, just since the beginning of the summer i've rewatched s3-5 of community, the entirety of black books, went back to white collar which i had abandoned after s2 and watched s3-4 in full before getting distracted, i am also in a neverending rewatch of castle and bones that's been going on since like 2016. earlier this year i was rewatching rizzoli&isles, warehouse 13, grimm, etc. did not finish them all. i jump around a lot depending on my mood. also mean to get back to my lucifer and wynonna earp rewatch at some point. i very rare finish shows and then i get back and have to start from the beginning and then i don't finish anyway, it's a vicious circle, i don't like saying goodbye. also i have no attention span. i guess technically i am also in the process of watching hawaii five-0 but i haven't watched any new (for me) episodes in a loooong time because canon is such a drag compared to the happy au land i've been living in. i do also watch some shows that are on hiatus right now but i probably wouldn't even remember them all. i only remember when they come back. suffice to say i watch a lot of tv lol.

currently reading: embarrassingly, nothing. only stuff that comes up on my tumblr dash 🤷🏻‍♀️. i haven't even read fanfic since ao3 was blocked in my country in april of this year. because of how my brain works if you add an extra step to something i am used to doing (aka i have to turn on vpn to open ao3 links) i am just that much less likely to do it. i miss losing myself in a book but my brain is too preoccupied by my blorbos to be able to invest in anything new.

current obsession: probably shocking to no one who follows me, it's mcdanno. this ship ate my brain in november of 2021 and since then its hold on me has not lessened at all, probably got worse, lmao. i found myself unable to gather any feelings about any of my old long time ships because all that space has been eaten up by steve and danny's insane chemistry and frustrating and wonderful epic love story. also within the mcdanno fandom the obsession of recent months has been building/brainstorming aus with aron @emphasisonthehomo (best rp partner one could wish for) . and i guess you can call making mcdanno screencap edits and metas an obsession of its own.

tagging (no pressure, only if you want to): @emphasisonthehomo , @stephmcx , @trickster-archangel , @pepperf , @wordybee , @alexihawleys , @aflawedfashion , @annieaceofhearts , @lukeclvez

[dwtsfun]

Dancing with the Stars Season 5 Week 6: Rewatch

Another infamous week in DWTS history. I really am not looking forward to watching Sabrina and Mark do their final dance on the show. But here we go. Let's just get this started. Also, this is the first week that the stars do two dances.

Sabrina and Mark- Foxtrot (Judges' Score=25, My Score=9)- Speaking of Sabrina, I actually thought this dance was judged way too harshly. I thought she was smooth when she needed to be but she also didn't lose the trademark Sabrina stamp of being feisty and fierce (as she should as a Cheetah Girl). Her posture was great. Her technique was impeccable. Musicality was incredible. There was a mistake where she did lose her footing, but it was great otherwise. CAI was right on the money with this one.

Jennie and Derek- Mambo (Judges' Score=27, My Score=9)- Jennie was so much more confident this week than she was last week. Her hips were moving. She was sure of herself. She had a good time. She just left it all on the floor and it was so much fun to watch. There were a couples of small mistakes throughout, but as a performance, this was Jennie's best dance so far.

Jane and Tony- Jive (Judges' Score=22, My Score=7)- So I'll say this. Jane hit every single step. There were only a handful of mistakes. The issue was that the jive just didn't suit Jane. She needed to be sharper and more precise. It was just kinda low energy. It's not that she didn't perform at a high level, the energy itself was just low. Again, like the judges said, it has everything to do with the jive not being a match for Jane.

Cameron and Edyta- Samba (Judges' Score=25, My Score=8)- This dance was good. I did think that Cameron's leg and hip action were actually really good for this dance. Taller men typically struggle with this, especially men with long legs. But he did not struggle there. I think his arms were a bit of a mess. I also wanted just a bit more energy and groundedness from him. I also wanna say that Cameron is so freaking sexy. This costume really highlighted his arms, legs and booty in the best way. Mmph.

Mel and Maks- Rumba (Judges' Score=30, My Score=10)- This was amazing. Perfect. Their chemistry was off the charts. Mel's technique was incredible. No notes.

Marie and Jonathan- Paso Doble (Judges' Score=23, My Score=8)- Marie was definitely way more in tune with her body this week than usual. Her posture was a lot better than it has been. However, she did not push as hard as she usually does and I also felt that the shaping was off. I keep saying this with Marie, but there are moments of greatness that are sprinkled throughout her dances. I just can't wait until we get to the dances where the greatness is realized the entire way.

Helio and Julianne- Cha-cha (Judges' Score=28, My Score=9)- What a way for them to come back. Helio looked so much more comfortable. He was the Helio that we all know and love and SHONE! The dance was technically good. The performance was high. I will say that I wanted his feet a tad bit sharper. But otherwise, a top notch dance. Also, I forgot that this was the dance that Julianne farted during their interview with Samantha. DWTS was in the news every single week during this season for something whether it was as small as an accidental fart or as large as Marie fainting. I miss these days.

Group Rock and Roll- I really enjoyed this group dance and it is one that I come back to and watch every so often. The thing I love the most about it is that we got to see how close this cast was to one another and we got to see how good they all are. This might be the strongest top 7 in DWTS history. There are no duds. Everyone is quite good. The pros were also just much better back then. I'm so sorry, I'm not sure what the difference is, but it's so apparent. I loved the group choreo. Even the rehearsal package was just joyous. I wish we could have DWTS go back to this. We are missing the fun and the camaraderie. We will see more of that on display next week.

My Rankings and Scores Out of 30:

1 Mel and Maks- 30 2 Helio and Julianne- 28 3 Sabrina and Mark- 27 =Jennie and Derek- 27 5 Cameron and Edyta- 25 6 Marie and Jonathan- 23 7 Jane and Tony- 22

So from this point on, every single elimination will be difficult. All of these couples are incredible and had exactly what they needed to win this show. I'm upset that Sabrina and Mark were eliminated, but I wouldn't have wanted Cameron and Edyta (the other half of the bottom 2) to go over them. If I had to choose, I would've chosen Jane and Tony and even that feels wrong because they are also incredible and have so much left to give. So yeah, it's gonna be gut wrenching from here on out. Let me know y'all's thoughts and I will talk to you soon!