#the movie does a lot of telling instead of showing and just felt very shallow | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the-black-birb · 5 years ago

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ahh hi ! congrats on 600 omg, that’s such an amazing milestone !! do u think I could get some first time nsfw hcs for kuroo, oiwawa and kageyama? like it’s their s/o’s first time aha, I think I worded that kinda weird I’m sorry alsklssn

Mmm i love first time stories bc they can be dorky and cute!! Nsfw warning <3 also sorry these are very long

Kuroo Tetsurou

Before your relationship, Kuroo has had one other serious partner so he kind of knows the drill

When you to started getting really heated with your make outs and you told him you were a virgin he was completely cool with that! He wanted to make sure the two of you took your time so you'd never feel uncomfortable

You two do plenty of things before sex. You give him handjobs, he eats you out, you help each other get relief

But you haven't gone all the way yet, until the night after a comp

You didn't know if it was the adrenaline rush of winning that had him pumped, or the way he looked playing that had you shifting in your seat, but you two were all over each other

Nekoma was staying at a hotel, the boys were rooming in groups of three. Somehow kuroo convinced yaku and kai to stay with the 2nd years so you and him could have alone time (he has to take them for ramen to make up for it)

Neither of you expected it to escalate. You were all over each other, you straddling his waist and his hands flush over your skin, pushing your shirt up

But you were certain this would just end when you got too nervous about the boys one room away from you

Wrong. Absolutely wrong.

You were grinding against him hard, breaths shallow, getting lost in the heat of the moment

"I-" you choked out in between breaths. "I want you inside me."

Kuroo stopped to stare at you. "Are you sure? Y'know the guys are right there-"

"We'll just be quiet then," you cut him off with a kiss.

Kuroo wasted no time in shedding his clothes, you followed suit

It was only then you realized you'd never seen him fully naked before. You'd gotten him off, but usally his pants stayed on (or at least his shirt did)

Kuroo in his naked glory. Wooh. That was a lot to take in. And the way his eyes looked at you, drinking you up, you felt heat pooling in your core

Ever the gentleman, Kuroo wanted to prep you first (he was impressive). He uses his fingers, making sure to stretch you out nicely

Probably makes you orgasm just on his fingers so he can tease you about it later

And the whole time he's doing it you've got your hands clamped tightly over your mouth, trying to keep quiet. Kuroo delighted in the way your chest heaved and your neck tensed as you swallowed back moans

Once your prepped, he asks you one more time if you're certain you want to lose your virginity at a hotel in the middle of nowhere with his teammates on the other side.

You do, and he wastes no time in entering you (he had condoms with him just in case something like this happened)

He enters you slowly, giving you time to adjust

He likes sex rough and fast, but he knows right know is about you. Once he bottoms out and knows your good, he rocks himself back and forth slowly and gently

His cock is long, so even his little motions have you convulsing with pleasure

But as soon as you adjust, Kuroo starts to speed up. He can't help it, his patience and self control is thin

He's bucking into you fast when you come, but he's focused on riding out his own orgasm

There isn't much he can do for aftercare without the two of you being found out, so he just texts Yaku asking if they'd be able to stay in the 2nd years room for longer than planned

Yaku is like "yeah we can all tell you were going at it please shut up"

No one questions why you're limping the next day

Oikawa Tooru

I don't think Oikawa sleeps around, but he's definitely had a fuck buddy or two, as well as exclusive relationships

Safe to say, he's far more experienced out of the two of you

You're a little intimidated by it, but he assures you he wants nothing more than to treat you right

So with Oikawa you have to tell him when you're ready to have sex

When you do, he plans everything out. Gets his parents out of the house, sets the mood with candles and incense and everything and spoils you silly

Oikawa is a switch, but he likes to be a whiney sub. That being said, you need him right now and he intends to show you how much he can help

Is absolutely a giver. Worships your body, doesn't leave a single inch of skin un-kissed

His lips are all over you, your neck and breasts and stomach and thighs- everywhere

He doesn't leave marks (yet) because he wants to be loving and caring and for you to remeber your first time sweetly

When he finally sees you starting to relax under his touch and loosen up, he starts pressing kisses closer and closer to your core

Eats you out, and he is damn good at it. Eats you out like your pussy is the last meal he'll get to eat and, damn, he is trying to savor it

When you've come for the second time and you're whiney and needy, cheeks wet with tears, only then will he finally fuck you

Probably has flavored condoms, idk why i just need to include that

Oikawa has incredible self control, so he takes his pace incredibly slow. He's pushing into you slowly, and when he's finally all the way in his thrusts are long

The feeling of him inside you lingers, even as he backs away, and has you gasping for more

But even as you're cumming around his cock and squeezing him so damn well he doesn't waver

He keeps his pace slow and consistent, so much so you're going crazy

Praises you as he does it. "You're taking me so well, baby." "You feel so good, love." His words fill you with just as much pleasure as his actions

Doesn't make much noise until he finally comes, at which point he just lets out a low grumble. Frankly, it's uncharacteristic of him but he's doing all he can to keep the attention on you

King of aftercare. Runs you a bath, massages your muslces, and keeps asking you if you're alright

"Was that okay? Are you tired?" He's so insistent you're rolling your eyes

"I dunno, Tooru, I think we'll have to try again to make sure," you say lazily, still tired out from the multiple orgasms he ripped from you

Oikawa just smiles, running an arm up and down your side. "Let's rest for now, love. We can go again in the morning."

You hold him to his word.

Kageyama Tobio

Listen if you havent had sex yet, Kageyama definitely hasn't either

So you're both virgins, you're both clueless, and it ends up being kind of funny

Unlike Oikawa and Kuroo who both know to have a conversation before sex you and Kags are both flustered and confused

It was a pretty typical weekend, your parents weren't home so Kags came over to watch a movie. The two of you got into a heated makeout (again, fairly typical at this point) and as you were adjusting how you were sitting, kags hands tight around your waist and yours flush over his neck, you accidentally push onto his crotch

And Kageyama groans. Loudly. As in, he throws his headback and lets out a noise from the bottom of his chest

You freeze. He's never done that before. Soon, you notice the growing erection in his pants and you, very much a virgin, have no idea what to do

So the two of you sit there in silence, staring at each other, neither of you sure how to talk about this

"Should we-" "Did you-"

...

"I mean-" "we could-"

Finally you've had enough and you burst, going "are we about to have sex?"

And Kageyama is sitting there, straining against his pants like, "um, if you want?" bc he doesn't know how to explain exactly how eager he is although it's certainly almost obvious

"D-do you have condoms?"

Of course not. Neither of you were prepared for this. But if there's a day to lose your virginity, you'd much rather it be a weekend that your parents are out and you can take all the time you want

So you rush to the newest corner store to pick up condoms (but you're embarassed so you buy a bunch of snacks and sneak them in) and leave Kageyama sitting in your bed, with an erection

And Kags is there sitting there thinking "just wait for her to come back, she'll be back soon. Just distract yourself" and he tries to put the movie back on or think about volleyball or anything to calm his raging boner but then he thinks about you again and it all comes crashing back down

By the time you get back to your house, he's red and sweating all over and damn his pants are straining around his cock (he's a grower)

And you'd like to do everything you can to help him, really, but you're still absolutely confident so you walk into the room and go "uh, I've got condoms?"

And Kags is trying not to touch himself before you got there but as soon as he sees you he's feral

"Fuck [Y/N] come here-" and he's pulling you on top of him and ravishing you with his lips

As much as Kags wants to dominate you, he's feeling awfully needy right now so you end up doing all the work, stripping both of you of your clothes while Kageyama admires you and lays kisses all over your collarbone and chest

Finally you get to the underwear and you look at him one last time, settled between his thighs with your face dangerously close to his crotch and go "are you sure, Tobio?" with your big doe eyes

Kageyama thought he was about to cream himself in his boxers right there

He didn't, though, instead insisting you just get on with it and you did, popping out his cock (wincing, slightly, because you've never been this close to a penis and damn they're kinda...ugly...) and rolling a condom onto it

The first condom tore bc you didn't know what you were doing but fortunately you had a whole box to spare

And finally (Kags cannot stress this enough: finally) the both of you are ready (you haven't done much foreplay bc neither of you realized that's an option)

You end up riding him bc Kageyama just wants relief and he's gotten choked up with how hard he's gotten

And while it'd be magnificent to say the penetration was euphoric and you felt yourself fill up so well, it's also unrealistic

You just feel weird with something lodged between your legs. You're not really sure how it's supposed to feel so you just start moving

As it starts to feel good, Kags is bucking up into you at the same time and, fuck, it's just starting to get good-

And Kags cums. It's over way too fast and you've barely even gotten any pleasure but what did you expect?

Kageyama wants to apologize for not being better (even as he's sweating, hair plastered to his forehead and breath shallow and fuck thats hot) but you're just rubbing soothing circles over his shoulders

"It's fine, baby, we'll just have to practice more."

Well, he won't mind that

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kaban-bang · 3 years ago

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Since you seem to take the opportunity to dunk on it regularly, I’m curious what exactly your reasoning is for disliking Dynazenon? I get the impression it’s less in your (my, for that matter) strike zone in regards to being very gay like It’s predecessor, but I didn’t think there were major fundamental problems with it (certainly I had some minor gripes with it myself, but overall I liked it despite being very Heterosexual)

God I don't even know where to begin. Overall it was very shallow and just a huge disappointment. REALLY LONG POST so, more under the cut

cw: Dynazenon spoilers, me getting heated over things that don't matter.

The problem isn't that it's het, it's that it's mediocre het and we spend so much time on it that it ends up ruining every other theme they were going for.

The show ends up contradicting itself a lot. Text and subtext say completely opposite things it's just frustrating.

Dynazenon introduces a lot of cool concepts, themes and characters then decides to do do absolutely fuck all with them. Because we need to spend all the screentime focusing on Yomogi, who is a nothing character because we need a blank character so that boys can self insert into him.

I think the show would be exponentially better if they wrote around Yomogi not existing.

Chise is far more interesting as a character and would've been a more compelling protagonist but instead she's just wasted potential. The way the show treats her is pretty shitty too. Her whole deal is that for her entire life she's felt left out by her peers. And here is no different. They try to have her pilot Dyna Soldier, and having her be Yomogi's tag team partner would've been so interesting, but instead a bedridden Yomogi has to step in because she sucks so much I guess. She's still feeling left out by her "team", because she never does anything with them other than stick around. Her character arc is resolved when she gets a robot-kaiju of her own. The team realizes her potential and... they take her robot and still leave her out. Nothing really changed but she's happy about it now, I guess?

In text, Gridman is about a group of broken people coming together to form a strong group of friends, that's one of its core themes. Yomogi even tells the main villain that's the reason they lost to team Dyna.

But in subtext, they were never really shown as friends or as a tight team. This is one of the reasons why I dislike Yomogi and Yume's relationship so much. We spends so much time forcing them together like Fire Emblem units to make them get to S rank but the final dialogue is just mediocre and we wonder why we did all that.

Yume and Yomogi don't really have friendships in the team outside of each other. Dynazenon doesn't feel like a team because Yume didn't have any time alone to bond with either Gauma or Koyomi. Yomogi never hung out with Chise or Koyomi. So we're supposed to believe that the baddies lost because they don't have any real bonds unlike our heroes, yet we see the villains be a closer group than them. (We see them go to the movies, bowling and karaoke together).

It feels kinda like this:

Then there's also the way the show treats Yume.

She starts as a very compelling character. She's obviously got her own issues to deal with, and over the course of the show she deals with them. But the problem with her is that over the course of the show, she gradually becomes entirely dependent on Yomogi.

I imagine they were going for a romantic thing, something like "No matter if you're lost, I will always find you and be there for you". But the way it's presented just comes off as her not being able to do anything without him.

After they start hanging out, that's pretty much it for her because the narrative doesn't allow for Yume to have a life outside of Yomogi. Even Yume's friend, Mei, whom she actually had a connection with her and showed genuine emotion and even joy with, gets pushed and fading away away by Yomogi's screentime with her.

Sure, Yume gets to be sad about her dead sister but he worms his way into every part of it. He literally ends up breaking into her memories.

Yume's sister tells her she should start to rely on her team more. Yume says she's learning to do so, but the narrative shows that she can only rely on Yomogi and no one else. When she gets lost, they keep pushing the idea that only Yomogi can find her, and even though Chise finds her first, she pushes the idea that only Yomogi is the only in the team for her. Again, contradicting its themes just to push this couple.

In the final episodes, Yume and Yomogi get separated because they need to find their robots that are in opposite directions. But Yume isn't allowed to have a life outside of Yomogi, so of course she fails and has to be saved by him.

The manner in which their relationship starts also rubbed me the wrong way. It starts with Yomogi feeling insecure that Yume is talking to Sizumu, a potential threat to his goal of dating her. The way he asks to help her form then on just feels less genuine and more like he just wants to make sure that she's not talking to other men.

Every other time that Yume talks to Sizumu, Yomogi is always there like a dog and when he finds out that she was talking to him without him being there, he immediately tries to pry. (While Sizumu, in the same situation, is shown to respect boundaries)

But then at the end Yomogi is proven right by the narrative and it wasn't wrong at all for him to be jealous and doubt the other boy getting in his way to pussytown, because he drops his calm and quiet façade and reveals his true colors, he wants to genocide everyone!

We don't even know why Yomogi likes Yume at all. He starts pursuing her because his coworker was like "hey girl and boy are always lovers maybe ask her out ;)"

Also this is me reaching but I do find it sus that the gnc looking kid that turns into a rainbow kaiju was the biggest threat to humanity.

I know it's not the case but it often feels like Dynazenon is Trigger's apology for making Gridman look gay. They spend so little time developing Yuta and Rikka that all they could do was add a quick blushing at the idea of him liking her even though they're complete strangers. So on Dyna feels like they were like "oh shit, let's spend the entire time focusing on them this time"

But yeah, like I said, overall it feels like it wasted so much of its themes and ideas.

Like when they introduce the Kaiju control on Yomogi, while every episode has been about defeating the monster of the week, suddenly there's the possibility that maybe humans and kaiju can coexist. That's something I'd have liked to see explored! But instead we spend our screentime with Yomogi trying to get his dick wet.

But yeah tl;dr: Yomogi sucks, this show is shallow and saved only by having the trigger logo slapped on it and the pretty animation.

My friend @sleepy-hailey put it into better words:

#rant #dynazenon #long post #anyway if formatting is weird is because this took a long time to write and I didn't proofrea

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manie-sans-delire-x · 4 years ago

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My thoughts/analysis of We Need to talk about Kevin

From abnormal psych class paper:

The character I chose to analyze and diagnose is Kevin Khatchadourian from the 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. Brilliantly depicted by star Ezra Miller and various other child actors, Kevin is an angry, emotionally detached boy who struggles in his complex relationship with his mother. We see the unhealthy relationship develop between the two through-out the film as Kevin grows from a baby to a young man, ending in tragedy as Kevin achieves his ultimate revenge against his mother by massacring the rest of their family as well as several classmates in a school shooting.

After carefully noting Kevin’s behavior and the way he and his mother Eva interact when he is a young child, I have decided to diagnose Kevin with reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The diagnostic criteria from the current Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM-5) for RAD reads as follows:

A. A consistent pattern of inhibited, emotionally withdrawn behavior toward adult caregivers, manifested by both of the following:

1. The child rarely or minimally seeks comfort when distressed.

2. The child rarely or minimally responds to comfort when distressed.

B. A persistent social or emotional disturbance characterized by at least two of the following:

Minimal social and emotional responsiveness to others

Limited positive affect

Episodes of unexplained irritability, sadness, or fearfulness that are evident even during nonthreatening interactions with adult caregivers.

C. The child has experienced a pattern of extremes of insufficient care as evidenced by at least one of the following:

Social neglect or deprivation in the form of persistent lack of having basic emotional needs for comfort, stimulation, and affection met by caring adults

Repeated changes of primary caregivers that limit opportunities to form stable attachments (e.g., frequent changes in foster care)

Rearing in unusual settings that severely limit opportunities to form selective attachments (e.g., institutions with high child to caregiver ratios)

D. The care in Criterion C is presumed to be responsible for the disturbed behavior in Criterion A (e.g., the disturbances in Criterion A began following the lack of adequate care in Criterion C).

E. The criteria are not met for autism spectrum disorder.

F. The disturbance is evident before age 5 years.

G. The child has a developmental age of at least nine months.

Specify if Persistent: The disorder has been present for more than 12 months.

Specify current severity: Reactive Attachment Disorder is specified as severe when a child exhibits all symptoms of the disorder, with each symptom manifesting at relatively high levels.

Kevin displays behavior that meets both criteria A and B. As a baby he cried constantly, reportedly even when held, showing an inability or unwillingness to be soothed. As a toddler he shows defiance, disinterest in social interaction, and a refusal to engage in play, such as when his mother is attempting to play with a ball with him and he refuses to roll the ball back or respond in any way, instead staring at her with a sullen expression. Kevin also refuses his mother’s pleas to say the word “Mommy”. As a slightly older child, Kevin continues to act defiantly and shows anger, ripping up the paper when his mother attempts to school him, immediately soiling his newly changed diapers on purpose, throwing food against the wall and onto tables, breaking his crayons, making nonsensical noises to irritate his mother, and destroying his mother’s artfully decorated room. When he is taken to the doctor to be examined, he shows no expression, does not speak, and stiffens his body. When his baby sister is born, he purposefully sprinkles water onto the newborn, causing her to cry. It should be noted however that in one instance Kevin seems to relax his cold exterior and accept comfort from his mother, shown by the scene in which he falls ill and cuddles with his mother while she reads him a story. He even apologizes for her having to clean up his throw-up. Unfortunately, as soon as he is feeling well again he is back to being rude and rejecting any attempt of hers to take care of him, refusing her help to change his clothes.

As for criteria C, although Kevin has not experienced extreme abuse or neglect, I believe Kevin suffered from a traumatic birth as it was mentioned that his mother was resisting. His mother Eva did not desire a child, especially not one as difficult as Kevin, so she emotionally neglects him and is cold to him. Eva makes it very clear to him that he is unwanted, telling him straight to his face that she was happy before she gave birth to him and not correcting him when Kevin mentions that Eva does not like him. In one instance, she is accidentally too rough with him and breaks his arm, which Kevin later refers to as being the most honest thing she ever did. Kevin also meets the criteria of D through G, and his symptoms are persistent. I would say Kevin has moderate to severe symptoms as he does exhibit all listed symptoms quite regularly.

I believe Kevin’s psychological problems may also have developed into conduct disorder (CD) as an adolescent and then antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy in adulthood, especially after taking into consideration the mutilation of his sister’s eye and the killing of his sister’s guinea pig, his father, his sister, and several classmates. He shows no guilt or empathy, appears to have shallow emotions besides anger, and shows no evidence of having affection or emotional bonds to anyone. He is also very manipulative; putting on a fake act of normalcy for his father, turning his parents against each other, and navigating the legal system to get his best outcome. However, I know that children with RAD can also be violent and if not treated, behave in a way very similar to conduct disorder in adolescence and ASPD or psychopathy in adulthood. The main reason I chose to focus on RAD over CD or ASPD is because I believe the root of Kevin’s problem is immense pain at being rejected and unloved as a child and that he harbors a deep desire to have that connection but is unable to accept affection. He is so focused on and consumed by his anger towards his mother, while someone with true psychopathy may be more detached and indifferent. I also leaned more towards RAD given that he showed symptoms from such a young age and did not seem to have any problems outside of his issues with his mother, such as acting out in school or engaging in petty, impulsive crime. I do wish that the film showed more of his interaction with his peers. Lastly, I felt RAD was a more accurate choice because of the subtle signs of it that are associated more with RAD than CD, such as stiffening his body when others try to hug him, making nonsensical sounds, and not making eye contact as an infant, although that may not have been intentionally put in the film. Either way, his parents certainly needed to talk to professionals about Kevin when he was a child. Had they done so, perhaps they could have prevented the tragedy of both his life and the pain he inflicted on others.

Response to tumblr ask:

I agree! I would have loved to see how he interacts at school, what he does when he’s alone and has spare time, and more of his childhood.

I think he had multiple reasons:

1- To make his mother suffer since he obviously has a lot of anger and resentment towards her

2- Because he doesn’t feel much positive emotion and gave up on ever feeling pleasure or enjoyment from regular life. Normal life is incredibly boring for him. He wanted to DO something- real, meaningful, make something happen. He wanted to Live. I very much relate.

3- He enjoys the attention he gets from it.

We talked about this in my forensic psych club- whether we should give interviews and all this attention to violent criminals. Our society is fascinated by them to the point where we make movies and books. People sell and collect memorabilia. They have fan-girls writing love letters and showing up to their court sessions, even fighting each other over them. It’s pretty crazy. But on the other hand, it’s important that we study them. Or is it? There’s a debate about everything.

4- His philosophy and world view.

He is very nihilistic, he doesn’t believe life “means” anything and right/wrong doesn’t exist/is just a matter of opinion or viewpoint. His actions don’t really matter either, nothing does. I used to think exactly like he did when I was a teen, and I still do in a way.

As for your last question, it’s easy to forget one way of thinking when you’re in another. It’s hard to remember how one state was when you’re in a different one. Also, as shitty as outside life can be, life in prison is even shittier. Makes you appreciate the ability of choice and being able to do things, even just to walk around outside or buy an icecream cone. He was also only 15 at the time of the crime, and in the last scene he’s 18. A lot of chemical changes and neural development happens in that time. He matured- his way of thinking about himself, the world, and the others around him changed.

#we need to talk about kevin #analysis #op #forensic psychology

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forgotten-daydreamer · 4 years ago

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Haikyuu sick/hurt characters headcanons: Karasuno edition!

⚠️ sickness, injuries, phobias, allergies and correlated symptoms ahead. If these themes upset you, proceed with caution. If you use these, credit me, please. ⚠️

Sawamura Daichi:

He doesn't let anyone know when he's sick. He'll show up to practise with a fever of 39°C and say that he's fine if someone points out how warm he is ("It's just overextertion. If you're not warm, it means you haven't been exercising well!")

He doesn't actually believe that he's fine, he knows his limits, but he just doesn't want to alarm anyone.

Luckily, he always manages to hold on until he reaches the bathroom if he's feeling pukey.

When he does get sick, he's very quiet and discreet. He always tries to go back to what he was doing before, insisting that he's okay.

When he's sick or hurt, the other third-years can see through his "I'm okay!" act (remember that time he hit his head and insisted that he was fine to play?), and know how miserable he really feels, so they force him to take it easyー he's no match for Suga, who will use mild violence if that's what it takes to make Daichi give up and rest.

Sugawara Kōshi:

He's anemic, cue to his constantly cold hands (and feet). Because of this, he takes iron pillsー or he should, because he forgets more often than not.

When he forgets the pills, he gets dizzy and weak, and needs to sit down for a bit. Once, he passed out due to anemia during practise, and he doesn't want to repeat that ever again, so he's extra cautious.

It's easy to understand when he's feverish, because he gets unexpectedly sleepy and quiet. He will fall asleep in class without even realising it if his temperature's any higher than 37,5°C.

He rarely gets hurt, but when that happens nobody's sure if he's okay or not. It's not that he denies it, but he simply doesn't say anything ("why didn't you say anything sooner!?" "B-because you didn't ask..?")

Once, he twisted his ankle and walked on it for a little less than thirty minutes before actually asking the coach if he could go get himself some ice. Of course, they didn't send him to get the icepack, but he had to sit there and listen as Coach Ukai yelled at him for not speaking up sooner.

Azumane Asahi:

He gets anxiety-induced stomach aches very often, and that's why he's used to feeling dizzy and to puking. Vomit doesn't scare him anymore.

Whenever he's sick, he runs away from the others; he needs to flee, far away. He loves his teammates, but he's scared that they'll accidentally overwhelm him further, and he doesn't want them to feel guilty.

This man can't stand the sight of blood. Like, at all, not even a little. Not even in movies. When Shimizu got a shallow paper cut, the Coach actually had to physically support him when getting him seated on a bench.

He broke his left index finger when he was a first-year, and as soon as he saw the bone sticking out of the skin (it looked worse than what it really was) he fell backwards and on a very concerned Sugawara without a word.

Cue to lots of tears and puke on the way to the hospital. He was inconsolable, but when Daichi had the idea to hide the injury from his eyes, Asahi managed to calm down a bit. In every situation, it's not the injury that scares him, but the blood.

Nishinoya Yuu:

He's reckless, he won't even notice when he gets injured. Since he's so used to bruises, bumps and shallow cuts, he doesn't understand when he's actually injured.

This guy played a whole set with a sprained wrist before realising that "hey, this feels kinda weird..?" and he didn't tell anyone until the end of the game, when his wrist was visibly swollen.

High pain tolerance plays a major role when he's injured or sick. Still, the others wish he would have a more average pain tolerance, because, once, Nishinoya felt sick during math class, and still claimed he was fine. He thought he was.

When he was rushed to the hospital due to a "mild ache in his lower stomach" that had been going on for two days after the math class incident, along with a 38,7°C fever, he was told that he had appendicitis ("I thought I just ate something bad or that I needed to take a huge dump! How was I supposed to know!? I thought I was fine."). It was clear that he wasn't, in fact, fine.

Tanaka Ryuunosuke:

He will try to toughen everything out and ignore the pain until it gets unbearable. Be it an injury or some sickness, he will automatically ignore it if he doesn't think it's serious enough to be life-threatening.

That's why he almost died when he ate one of the peanut butter cookies that Yachi had baked. Turns out, allergies do existー but he wished he'd found out in a different way. Sometimes, "My throat's kinda itchy. Does my tongue look... too big? It... it feels too big." can be synonym of "Hospital, now." Bless Takeda-sensei.

The time when he collided with Daichi, Tanaka completely ignored the fact that his arm hurt, and only realised when he took his shirt off in the locker-room and heard a screech from Yamaguchi. The bruise went from his shoulder to his elbow, blue and swollen. Cue to lots of pain relief cream and ice packs.

Ennoshita Chikara:

He never broke a bone in his whole life, but he's very good at dealing with it when it happens to someone else. He's just fascinated by how the human body works, and sometimes people think he's being cold in front of someone else's pain, when he's really just being logical.

He's good at dealing with his own pain too, though he rarely gets hurt or sick.

When he gets sick, he recovers pretty rapidly, but this leads him into relapse. That's why he's not allowed back to practise for a whole week after he recovers ("I'm fine. I've been fine for three days already, my fever wasn't even that high..." "Last time you said you were fine, you almost got pneumonia. Go home.").

He gets bad allergies during spring, and takes a lot of antihistamine pills which make him sleepy. He often has to excuse himself from class to go take a nap in the infirmaryー the teachers and the nurse know, so they always allow him to.

Narita Kazuhito:

This man is the embodiment of health. His diet and lifestyle will probably allow him to live until past the age of 100.

That's why he's not used to getting sick. And when he does, he's a confused mess with no idea of what to do with himself.

When he puked on himself after practise he was so shocked that he chuckled nervously and stood still, frozen, until Kinoshita and Ennoshita dragged him to the bathroom. He almost found the whole ordeal funny.

Kinoshita Hisashi:

He really despises vegetables and fruit, and often gets mocked because of it. He often stuffs himself with sweets and fried food until he feels sick ("But... how? That cake had strawberries in it! It's supposed to be healthy!").

He gets very bad seasickness. Once, his friends decided to drag him to Miyajima: he spent the time on the ferry and first hour on the island puking his guts out.

The thing he doesn't do good with is fainting: if someone passes out in front of him, he does the same, always. When Daichi passed out in the middle of the court, Kinoshita was thankful that Narita was there to hold him up, because he was ready to leave the land of the living.

Kageyama Tobio:

Always denies everything ("my nose is not bleeding!!") and this only makes everything worse for him. If he feels shaky, he won't take a clue and sit down; instead, he'll push himself and end up falling down on whoever's closest to him ("Daichi-san, nice receive!" "Now's really not the time, Hinata...").

When he gets sick, he gets sick hard. The flu has him puking all day long, with a fever of 39.5°C that, he insists, is not that high. His family and friends are smart enough to understand that he's lying. Not even the doctors and nurses at the E.R. can convince him that he's sick.

To be fair, he does not lie when he says that he's not hurt or sick: he genuinely thinks that whatever's going on with him is normal and not that bad.

He accidentally tripped on the leg of a desk in class, and fell face first into the teachers'. The deep, bleeding cut on his forehead wasn't enough for him to understand that he needed to go to the infirmary, and he just sat back at his desk, apologising for the mess. Turns out that his "little cut" needed six stitches in the end, and that his "mild headache" was, in fact, a mild concussion. He showed up to practise the following day anyway, and the Coach had to physically prevent him from joining.

He doesn't do good with nausea, though; he doesn't mind fevers, joint-pains, blood, bruises, or the act of throwing up itself. But when he feels nauseous he actively wishes to pass out, because anything is better than dealing with feeling like that. That's why he'd rather stick his fingers down his throat to get rid of the nausea already than waiting for it to pass naturally.

This got worse when he started suffering from migraines. As soon as he feels one starting to build behind his eye, he throws himself over the toilet, waiting for the dreaded nausea to come so that he can get rid of it before it gets too bad. He stays like that for hours if that's what it takes.

Hinata Shōyō:

He pukes a lot, and for a number of reasons: nervousness, motion sickness, fear, hungerー this guy can't even take it to the bathroom.

His guts are a mess, and he either vomits or poops every time he feels any strong emotion (which is...pretty often, for him). Thank goodness his friends always have pills that help with motion sickness with them, along with antiacid pills and sparkling water, and that Kiyoko and Yachi often restock the bus and everyone's backpacks with paper bags.

The higher the fever, the more he moves. Ever since he was a kid, a fever has never stopped him, and to be fair, fevers make him feel more motivated and energetic. He takes "Hey, no. Sit down, drink up, and rest." as an insult because "I'm fine. You're benching me because you think I suck, huh!? But I was doing fine! I- I was being good, right..?"

Yes, fevers make him emotional. He'll cry for anything once they make him admit that he's sick. He mostly cries because "How could I get sick? I'm going to be useless! I should've paid more attention, I should've been better!" but Kageyama knows for sure that he saw a feverish Hinata crying over a picture of his sister, for some reason.

He doesn't mind blood when he's the one to be bleeding, but if it's someone else, he freaks out. Seeing someone else having a bloody nose or bleeding from some injury, even small and insignificant, makes his stomach flip.

Tsukishima Kei:

He's never said "I'm in pain." in his whole life. The most honest statement he managed to grit out was "It kinda hurts.", but he never said anything more than that. He won't show himself being so vulnerable, ever.

Whenever he has to go to the optometrist, he won't eat anything for at least half a day before the appointment, because he knows for sure that he's going to throw up after the doctor dilatates his pupils.

He's a quiet puker, and he always locks himself up in the bathroom, which can be dangerous in those situations. After that time when he passed out after throwing up, his mother got an extra key of the bathroom, and always lingers close to the door when she knows that her son's about to be sick.

If anyone tries to interrupt him when he throws up or when he's in acute pain, he will yell at them. It's not that he doesn't appreciate the help, but he hates how everything feels so crowded around him when he's down. The only person who's brave enough to help him when he's like that is Yamaguchi, mostly because he's used to hearing his angry words (even if Tsukishima's never insulted him personally).

Yamaguchi Tadashi:

Terribly emetophobic, he won't throw up even if he has to. He just won't do that, no way... Which is cruelly ironic, since he gets sick pretty often due to anxiety and weak immune system. Tsukishima doesn't mind helping him out (but he would never step close to anyone else when they're sick) but he can be a bit rough sometimes; this both reassures and agitates Yamaguchi. "I'll stick my fingers down your throat if you don't throw up now." doesn't sound too kind, but when Tsukishima adds "it'll make you feel better, I promise." Yamaguchi feels a bit calmer. He’s also a loud puker.

He's a type-2 diabetic, though he has it under control and hasn't had any problem related to that in a while, not since the beginning of middle school, at least. Still, sometimes he needs to reluctantly sit practise out because he's obviously too shaky and weak to strain himself that much. When that happens, they all make sure that someone sits with him to make him feel less alone... and he appreciates it immensely.

He's on anxiety meds, but they make him feel dizzy sometimes, which leads him into a spiral of panic for fear that he'll get sick. It's a huge contradiction, really, and he hates it with his whole soul.

He's one of the people in the team who can handle others' sickness and injuries better; it might shock him for a second, but he's ready to jump into action and solve the problem in order to help his friends out.

Injuries don't scare him, though the worst thing that ever happened to him was when he got punched in the face by a bully. He also broke his arm in middleschool once though he doesn't remember muchー maybe it was the shock, or maybe it was that it hurt less than he imagined. The punch freaked him out more than that.

Yachi Hitoka

She's a good caretaker, but an absolute mess when it comes to taking care of her own injuries and sickness.

She's clumsy so she's not new to bruises and cuts, but this doesn't mean that she doesn't freak out a bit whenever she sees blood on her legs or arms. On their way home from school, one day, Hinata and Yamaguchi decided to get her band-aids with little chicks and kittens on them. She finished the 30-pack in less than a month.

She got her period a bit late in life, a couple of months before turning 15, and whenever she's on her period, it hits her like a train at full-speed in the guts. Kiyoko taught her some yoga moves that help with the cramps, and the boys never bother the two of them when they see them doing yoga in the corner of the gym. In fact, they also bought her an electric heating pad for her birthday along with an indecent amount of chocolate that didn't fit in Yachi's bag (and various other presents not concerning periods).

Shimizu Kiyoko:

The scars on her legs are fully healed, yet the skin there is thinner, and so the wounds reopen whenever she accidentally hurts herself there. They sting quite a bit, and though it's unusual, she hisses out loud when it's bad. Everyone agreed to make sure that medkit is always equipped with antiseptic cream. To this day, Kiyoko insists that it isn't necessary, but they disagree.

She always knows what to do when someone else feels sick, but she's unsure about what she'd do in case of her own sickness. She hasn't been sick in too long to know.

She hasn't gotten a cold since elementary school, and that one time when she thought she'd caught something, when she sneezed at the age of 16, it was actually just a bit of dust allergy. She doesn't even need meds for it.

Takeda Ittetsu:

He hardly gets sick, but he ends up hunched over the toilet more often than not after a Friday night out with his friends. He drinks quite a bit for a teacher, but only when he knows that he can do that without compromising his career or setting the wrong example. Hangovers also leave him a messy wreck, and that's why he only drinks on Fridays: that way, he has until Sunday night to recover.

For someone who's constantly surrounded by teenagers, he doesn't get sick much. He catches a cold every now and then, but nothing more serious than that. And when he's sick, he always tries to prevent the others from catching what he's got, without actually taking care of himself to heal.

Once, he got a fever of 40,1°C and luckily for him Ukai was coming over to discuss about the volleyball club; he found Takeda sprawled face-down in front of the open door. He was boiling, so Ukai took him to the hospital where he stayed for two days. ("I didn't think it was this bad." "So you knew you had a fever and still went to work?" "Yeah, but I had a mask on so that the others could be safe." "And you didn't buy medicine in the meantime?" "Ah, no." "...what the hell!?").

Ukai Keishin:

He catches a cold every other month, no matter how many layers of clothes he wears. These colds are often accompanied by low fevers, but he's used to those so he simply chugs some orange juice and moves on.

He tried to quit smoking countless times, especially since he started coaching these kids, but he can't help smoking at least three of cigs per day. Still, sometimes his chest aches a bit, and maybe it's just paranoia, but when that happens he doesn't touch tobacco for a couple of days.

His liver would even be able to survive Takeda's nights out; his guts, in general, are strong and he swears he's never felt nauseous in his whole life.

💫 I might think of more sick karasuno hc soon, but that's it for now. Expect more characters hc soon! Again, credit me if you use these, and please feel free to share this post! 💫

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thetypedwriter · 4 years ago

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Lore Book Review

Lore Book Review by Alexandra Bracken

Lore by Alexandra Bracken was one of 2021’s most anticipated YA novels and it's easy to see why. The plot summary itself is enough to pull you in with the intriguing concoction of calling it the combination of The Hunger Games and the Percy Jackson series.

What’s not to love when you fuse the illicit danger of Katniss Everdeen with the mythological enchantment of Rick Riordan’s masterpiece?

Turns out, quite a lot unfortunately.

Before I get into why this book didn’t live up to the insurmountable hype it built up, I’ll attempt to give a basic summary. The key word being attempt as a good portion of this novel’s plot was a mind boggling and convoluted mess.

The book takes place in modern day New York which Bracken likes to remind you every other paragraph with small snippets about how the city that never sleeps smells like sewage and is yet still the best place on earth apparently.

Don’t get me wrong, I love New York as much as the next person, but the pandering to the Big Apple got annoying after awhile.

Within the cantankerous city lives a girl named Lore which we are introduced to by means of her kicking ass in an underground Chinese restaurant’s fighting ring.

Pretty strong start.

Lore’s world (and the reader’s frankly) is tipped upside down when Lore’s long lost childhood friend, Castor, reappears to warn her that he is looking for her. Terrified, Lore is then at first unwillingly thrust back into the world in which she was born-a world dominated by violence, bloodlines, and the Greek gods who are very much alive and out for vengeful retribution.

In a very exposition-dump heavy conversation, we learn that Lore is the last of Perseous’ line with the rest of her family having been horrifically murdered, that a week long event called the Agon occurs every seven years in which the original nine Greek gods or their reincarnated selves become mortal for seven days, and that a series of killing often happen because if you kill a Greek god you then become that Greek god as well as inhabit their powers, abilities, and immortality.

Well, until the next Agon that is.

The currently reincarnated God by the name of Wrath is attempting to end the Agon by killing all the other Gods, but in order to do it he needs to wield a special weapon called the Aegis.

Unfortunately, only the Perseides can wield this shield (for some reason) and thus, Wrath is out to get his hold on Lore as the last of her line so that he can bring this eons old competition to an end with himself as the sole victor and only remaining God.

Confused?

I’d be surprised if you weren’t.

Now, I love Greek mythology. I’ve read the classics and would say I’m fairly up to date on the stories, the legends, the gods, and the stories they represent. I’m not an expert, but I would say I’m knowledgeable on who the major figures are and what they stood for.

I genuinely think this book would have been miserable for anyone that didn’t know anything about Greek mythology.

Bracken does a terrible job of explaining what the hell is happening at any given point, and she often throws out allusions and references to Greek mythology without bothering to explain a single shred of information about it.

In addition, after this laughably and poorly explained world and plot at the beginning, it is almost never explained again. It’s brought up, as are names and titles and weapons and relationships, but it’s never explained in a way that’s feasibly understandable.

At the beginning of the novel Bracken lists who all the important characters are, their bloodlines, and their titles.

I soon figured out why, as every other sentence a name like Wrath or Reveler or Tidebringer or whoever was brought up, and it was impossible to keep track of so I didn’t even bother.

Even Lore brings up that the names are ridiculous, which I appreciate, but the meta moment of clarity doesn't make it any better.

Also, what Lore and her friends get up to over 90% of the novel is a muddled mass of bewilderment.

Why do Lore and Castor and the others need to find Artemis? I don’t know, but sure, whatever, sounds good. Why was Lore the last of her line again? Oh yeah, right, okay, I guess. Wait, Castor died? Oh, he didn’t? Why not? Oh, we’re not going to explain it. Sure, sure.

Throughout this entire novel, what the characters are doing and what is happening is almost impossible to follow with the way it's presented and the way Bracken developed her world. I think this was a really cool idea that had very poor execution.

Points for the originality and the inclusion of Greek mythology, but all of the positives were taken away when that originality was flushed down the drain with a lack of explanation and logic.

Lore very much reminded me of a shoot-em up, bang-em up action movie. Almost every other chapter was some sort of super intense, super climactic fight scene, chase, theft, break-in, etc.

Now. I do think action scenes are hard to write and I think Bracken actually did an incredible job of writing action in a way that was entertaining and thrilling.

However, when the action takes place every ten pages it gets really old, really quick. Towards the end, I downright started skimming the fight scenes, because they lacked so little depth and stakes and we had read so much action at the end point that it had lost all vigor and vitality.

Continuing with the action movie metaphor, most action movies focus solely on the bright explosions and the crazy fight scenes as their selling point of the whole movie, often to the detriment of the characters, plot, and development.

Now, some people like this. I am not these people.

I find action movies boring as most of my enjoyment from consuming media comes from the characters and the developments they undergo.

My biggest criticism with Lore, other than the astonishing storytelling, is by far the characters. I just...didn’t care. About any of them.

Bracken tried to make Lore come across as a strong, opinionated, fierce, angry female character and while sometimes she succeeded, more often than not I found Lore temperamental, aggravating, impulsive, selfish, and shallow.

Bracken very much invoked the tell-not-show strategy that makes any book hard to get through. While there were some decent moments of showing instead of just stating, more often than not, Bracken would tell us that Lore was strong by having other people say it or others calling her weak.

I appreciated Bracken’s feminist agenda and how strongly Lore felt about gender inequality, even if it was a bit heavy-handed at times. Still, I did appreciate this inclusion of civil rights on this front, even if some of the circumstances to incite it were ridiculous or over the top.

In addition, I hated that there was all this backstory that we were just told but not shown. Like in my last review of Wilder Girls, Lore suffers from an intrinsic failure of getting me onboard with these characters and their relationships by telling me how I should feel about them instead of exposing them through action.

I was told:

Lore and Castor haven't seen each other for seven years, but my gosh, Castor is just the best and is so beautiful. Ensue obligatory YA romance.

Lore has a best friend! Yeah. Her name is Iro. Here she is! Um. Okay. Why was this necessary?

Miles is just the coolest best friend ever. Like, look how cool and chill he is. How funny is it that he has no idea what’s happening? Really not funny at all. He was a useless character used to build empty stakes.

The list goes on and on, but Bracken will throw out some sort of fact or relationship and just expect the reader to go “Okay!” Which. I didn’t. On any of those occurrences.

Often Bracken would do this in the use of flashbacks at the most inopportune times (during a fight scene, after someone was injured, right before a huge revelation, etc). These flashbacks were the worst. I do not care for adolescent Lore and child Lore was somehow even worse.

The romance in this book, much like an action movie, is off to the side and really only there to fulfill the trope of having a romance.

Lore and Castor are boring. I don’t know what else to say. Castor is too perfect to be likable and Lore is the opposite. Nothing about their romance was unique or well-crafted.

The kiss between Van and Miles I also saw coming a hundred miles away. I also thought it was pointless as Van and Miles had known each for six days and had had maybe two conversations. So. No. I didn’t care at all about the romances.

It actually made me laugh and scoff simultaneously at the end when Lore is looking at Van, Castor, Iro and Miles and smiles because she realizes that these people are her family.

Ummm. Sorry?

Castor disappeared for seven years and you’ve been reunited for seven days. You’ve hated Van your whole life until this week. You also haven’t seen Iro in seven years and she tried to kill you at least twice in this book. Miles is...fine, but again useless. I don’t even know why Bracken included him except to make Lore worry about him which she only did about half of the time.

Phew.

I know this review has come across largely negative, so this might be surprising, but I didn’t hate it. It lacks substance and depth, but it was entertaining.

Just like an action movie.

If you want some hyped fights and a plot that really doesn't matter and characters that won’t stick with you, but a fast-paced narrative that keeps you on your toes nonetheless, then you would probably enjoy this.

It’s like the equivalent of watching a James Bond movie or one of the millions of the Fast and Furious. Bracken tries to develop the characters, but at the end of the day, most of the story is made up of cool fights, magic, and weapons. If that’s your speed then you would probably really love Lore.

Recommendation: Action, action, action. If you want some high intensity, get-your-blood-pumping enterprise then this is your novel. The writing is fluid, the adrenaline-inducing scenes are non-stop, and everything else falls to the backdrop of external fights and villainous monologues. If action is not your preferred genre, then your best left to get your Greek mythology needs from Percy Jackson or the Song of Achilles instead.

Score: 6/10

#lore #alexandra bracken #6/10 #ya fiction #YA Books #YA literature #book blog #book review #top books #teen books #Teen Romance #teen fiction #Book Recommendations #YA Book Review #ya book rec #popular fiction #popular books #greek mythology

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headofhelios · 3 years ago

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Ok I am a single follower but I like hannibal tv but would enjoy ur movie thoughts I like some of the books too and have been meaning to get around to the movies 😳😳

OKAY I'M EDITING A READMORE ONTO THIS LOL I REALIZED THATS SOMETHING I CAN DO! so now my incredibly waaayyy too long answer abt my thoughts on 2002 will is under there. apologies bc this is less "movie thoughts" and more "2002 movie will thoughts" but well thats how the chips fell

GOD okay sooo for the record i am reading the red dragon book and am like 7 or 8 chapters in and full transparency im not like. enjoying it lol. the book pisses me off with its misogyny (all the women in it are either dead or it feels like you're supposed to think theyre Selfish Bitches or theyre just there for like. bizarre and uncomfortable sexual moments like the guys talking abt that woman in the elevator, or that one part of mrs. leeds diary which is like. i guess could be there to Show Her Humanity or whatever but 1. there are more ways to do that 2. the book doesnt seem particularly concerned with her humanity considering she's barely even given a first name and so far the novel hasnt seemed to disapprove of how will thinks of her as a possession of her husband) and its inconsistency with will's most important character trait or whatever (he's so intensely, extremely empathetic towards EVERYONE, even serial killers, which makes him really good at finding them! and he can never turn this off, to the point where every time he has a conversation with someone, he ends up mimicking the way they talk, even if he tries to stop! but also he never empathizes with the victims or HIS OWN FUCKING WIFE? HELLO? so it really feels less like "extremely strong empathy for everyone that he cant control" and more like "he can empathize with serial killers extremely well and also other people if we want to Make A Point in one scene instead of letting the point show through the whole book") BUT UHHH ANYWAY. MOVIE THOUGHTS. THE MOVIE THOUGHTS YOU ASKED FOR COMING RIGHT UP!

okay this is what i am worried will either 1. draw annoying tv will graham stans to my blog like flies or 2. end with me being hanged in the town square BUT. it must be said. i prefer 2002 red dragon will graham to tv will graham. and quite frankly? so far? i think 2002 red dragon will graham is better than book will graham. i cannot lie.

my reasoning: because 2002 will actually empathizes with more people than serial killers and his boss! y'know! like you'd assume someone with constant extreme empathy would! the difference between the first scene with molly in the book vs in the movie are SO striking to me now that i've read that part of the novel. in the novel he seems very... rough, i guess, and like he doesnt care about molly's worries. he doesnt seem to see things from her perspective, which especially feels like a kick to the gut because MOLLY! SEES! THINGS! FROM! HIS! PERSPECTIVE!!! she literally empathizes with him more than he does with her! what the fuck! MEANWHILE in the movie, he does seem to care about her. his assurances that he wont get too involved seem like assurances rather than him trying to get her off his back. he hugs her and tells her he loves her and i actually believe that yeah, he loves her, he knows she's worried about him, and he wants to comfort her and ease her worries. and the victims! AGAIN such a stark difference to me! in the book, will is like... uncomfortable empathizing w the red dragon, of course, but he doesnt seem to empathize with the victims all that much, ESPECIALLY not the women. he doesnt care about them. he sees them as possessions belonging to their husbands and its so fucking gross. despite already suspecting that the red dragon chooses families based on the women, he decides to waste time focusing on the husbands as a way of "asking permission to look at [their wives]." what the fuck? meanwhile in the film, he feels for the victims so much that he can barely even say that the kids were shot in bed! when he watches the tapes, he focuses on the women! because that's his fucking job!!! and we see him empathizing with them! wow!!

siiigh okay im gonna stop talking abt the book vs the movie now bc again im only like 8 chapters or so deep. but now we come to tv will vs. 2002 will, which is admittedly gonna be more subjective and part of that it bc i cant remember a whole lot of specifics from the show bc my memory is Very Bad. but anyway

let's get the shallow stuff out of the way. yes i prefer ed norton's face to hugh dancy's. call hugh dancy "gender" or whatever have your fun i support you and your right to call any blood covered man a gender but by god is that not even REMOTELY my experience. next shallow thing to get out of the way: ed norton's line delivery is like music to my FUCKING ears compared to hugh dancy's i am so sorry. like the jokes about will shaking like a damp chihuahua before taking 5 minutes to stutter out "he's killing them....... On Purpose, jack." are funny and all but christ i had SUCH a hard time watching the show bc of that im not lying. literally hearing 2002 will just say "he's not keeping them. he's eating them." nice and quick, matter of factly is better than well im actually gonna end that sentence there but you get the idea. like YESSS you little blonde bitch get to the point i love you!!!

OKAY NOW less shallow points but also less uhh idk man i just dont remember a lot of hannibal. but basically: after seeing how caring 2002 will is, i'm kind of... idk i'm just so over tv will and how abrasive and harsh he is in comparison. like i fell in LOVE with how vulnerable 2002 will is, how he feels like he cares deeply about the people around him (and honestly... idk i cant remember a moment in the hannibal tv series that made me feel the way i felt when 2002 will can't say "the kids were shot in their beds". it's like... yeah this is a guy who feels so deeply for everyone around him at all times. i believe that.) and i just dont remember getting that same feeling from tv will. i have been gently spoon fed the most excellent chocolate pudding and everything else in my memory is just a snack pack. i guess tv will has those moments (what comes to mind is when he brings gideon to hannibal's house and is crying and he says "please dont lie to me") but idk they just didnt really do for me what 2002 will does. and then their scenes with reba! wow! i rewatched the tv version after watching red dragon, bc the film version made me tear up, meanwhile the tv version i barely remembered and i wasnt sure if that was just bc of the different mindsets i was in while watching them or what. and ok i just rewatched the tv version again and like... yeah. it's the wills lol. i LOVEEE tv reba SO much she is giving everything in that scene!! she sounds so like... broken, both bc of dolarhyde's apparent suicide and bc of finding out who he was + what he was doing, she sounds so fragile and guilt ridden! she's amazing!! but will. idk. tv will's delivery just seems... idk this feels dumb to say but it sounds like writing. i admittedly LOVE the line "people who study this kind of thing say that he was trying to stop because you helped him." and his delivery there is good. but between tv "you didnt draw a freak, you drew a man w a freak on his back" and the 2002 version, the 2002 delivery seems more genuine while the tv delivery sounds rehearsed. idk overall the 2002 version of that conversation just makes me feel more? its like. idk i can feel the 2002 version gently holding my heart while the tv version is a scene that is nice in h/nnigram gifsets or w/e.

umm ok this is already suuuper long and my brain is getting a bit mushy so i'm gonna start wrapping it up lol. i'll probably compare book will and 2002 will again after i finish the book, and then i miiight rewatch hannibal, or at least parts of s3. but right now my thoughts are basically: book will is a fucking dick who has an easier time empathizing with serial killers than with his wife. tv will is a nothing girl after being so completely catered to + also idk he doesnt have the same fragility that i want from my wills now. and 2002 will is my little caramel apple. he has this delightful vulnerability and feels like he cares so much and empathizes with more people than serial killers and his boss and 4 people in a diner for one scene! 2002 will made me care about will graham! which is honestly kind of a feat!

#long post #like so so so long #my condolences anon and also anyone following me who doesnt want this on their dash #but yeah 2002 will is my booboo bear my cinnamon swirl coffeecake my little heavensent angel #and ed nortons performance made me feel more than hugh dancy's #i think ed norton does a really good job at giving his characters that kind of vulnerability and i LOVE that!!#like yeah whatever 'you're gat arent you dont you just think hes hot' sure say that but also like #have you seen him in primal fear? its a movie thats a firm Its Complicated for me but his performance is so good and he feels so vulnerable #and even in fight club and kingdom of heaven i think he gets that in there! idk i genuinely think he's a good actor #personal #red dragon #if im writing an essay i may as well put it in my tags #asks #anonymous #<- FORGOT TO ADD THOSE TAGS. anyway #EDIT: NOW FEATURING A READMORE LOL.

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thattimdrakeguy · 4 years ago

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Joker War in my opinion, is just so shallow. Even the good things feel so shallow.

Joker War has been one of the most un-enthralling big Batman stories there’s been in a while.

Joker getting Bruce’s billions was cool, but nothing else in the story was freaking interesting. It’s generic and bare bones as it could be. It’s a nothing story. It feels so flat, and wastes who’s supposed to be Batman’s biggest enemy again.

Practically anyone could’ve been the bad guy of the story and nothing would’ve changed that much.

Dick back as Nightwing = Cool

Babs back as Oracle = Cool

Cass back as Batgirl (I think) = Cool

I would say Tim back as Robin = Cool, but they called him Red Robin, and made a reference that only made sense if he was “Drake”, so I don’t know wtf is going on there.

But that could’ve happened on it’s own, in a more personal character focused story, and it would be much better. It’s held down by the fact it’s a part of Joker War.

Joker War has the writing pace of a Michael Bay movie, except thankfully without the crude and offense humor, and oversexualization.

It’s so shallow in the end. I think that’s a thing that has always bugged me about Tynion’s writing, it’s more about what it looks like than what it actually is. It’ll look grand, the character’s will act melodramatic, the action gets over-the-top, all shallow things to make it seem important, when really it’s not.

These character’s getting their identities back is good, and it’s weird it took so long, but it feels like such a fan fiction the way they ended up doing it.

And some fan fiction can be great, but lets face it, a lot is shallow.

BUT,

That’s because fan fictions are written by amateurs. They’re doing their best and still learning to be good at something they’re very passionate about. But they shouldn’t be judged the same as professional’s because of that. Wouldn’t be very fair would it?

However, this IS a professionally produced comic, it’s judged on what things should be when it’s on a professional level, because this isn’t an amateur, this is someone who has been releasing professionally produced and sold comics for years now.

Yet his work just always feels the same.

He panders to the fans, and to himself. All while doing his big shallow blockbuster thing.

The Eternal series’: “Oh, look the Bat-Family is together! Who cares if they’re out of character most of the time!”

Detective Comics: Rebirth: “Oh, look the 90s generation are together and are a thing! Tim has a costume that looks like his most iconic one! Yay! Who cares if they’re out of character most of the time, and the writing is super shallow!”

Now with Batman, it started off good, I feel Tynion can actually write Batman, where as compared to the others he has such a shallow understanding that it’s downright painful to read sometimes.

He even more or less half-way admitted to self-inserting Tim in Detective Comics Rebirth.

And while I don’t think he considers himself a genius, he has called himself obsessive over making everything he wants, the way he wants.

But why does he want what he wants?

He made Tim, a charming, super genius, who can hack alien tech, fight off trained murderous drones for an extended period of time, can trick Krytonians, builds super houses and bases, and is for some reason the most O.P. Batman alive.

That is not what Tim is. But why does he write him that way? Even Red Robin didn’t treat Tim like that.

He certainly didn’t write Tim that way because that’s the character.

Now, why does Tynion want Babs back as Oracle? I won’t mention Nightwing because that’s obvious, and it’s a different situation. But why Oracle? What about her made him want this? And how come he doesn’t really represent it since it’s just hallow

I know so many people (me included) preferred her as Oracle, but in the story-- she just ... becomes Oracle. It’s very fastly done, I’m not sure if her reasons why are mentioned anywhere. But it’s so fast it’s shallow, it’s unrealistic. It doesn’t feel like something that would naturally happened just like that.

He wrote it to be that way, because he just wants what he wants.

Much like how fans will write incredibly self-indulgent fan fictions that doesn’t even mildly resemble what would happen, and is literally just all they want. Half the time because they don’t know everything. But again, they are a freaking fan, they are not a professionally paid writer, giving out a professionally sold comic. They’re just a fan who wants to make themselves happy. It’s not exactly fully comparable given that, but it’s just how fast and self-indulgently they do it.

Tynion is so fast to just give himself what he wants that the characters just end up shallow puppets instead of anything with depth that feels real.

No genuinely good stories come out of it, because there’s no character to it. It makes the character’s look bad when it’s treated like all they are is this image. Their personalities don’t matter, their backstories, what they’d do, their perspectives, even what they actually look like some of the time. They’re just an image.

“If I put glasses on Babs, and call her Oracle it’s good.” Is how it feels, even if that’s not actually what’s going through his head.

“If I put Tim in a costume that resembles her old one, and keep making shallow references, that’ll show as if I understand him.” Was how Rebirth Detective Comics felt. He didn’t write Tim, it felt more like a trick.

I feel like Babs being Oracle again, Tim Robin, Dick Nightwing, Cass Batgirl, are all great things, but from a writing standpoint, it’s much like “Is that it?”, because there’s nothing more to it.

No story, no character. It’s shallow as hell.

There are reasons why them being those identities are good. I know a lot of people get upset Tim is Robin again, but to be frank, I do not care. It’s not an actual regression. It’s only an actual regression based on superficial elements people just accepted without actually looking into the characters, and what had happened, with contexts and more. “Robin = for kid” is freaking ridiculous when you look more into it.

There where stories to tell about Oracle being Babs again and Tim being Robin again, and Cass being Batgirl again. They’re attached to those identities for a reason. there’s parts of their character that makes that work, but it’s not shown.

And a part of me feels even if a character study was attempted, it’d fail, because I’m not certain that a lot of writers at DC Comics nowadays know how the characters work.

Without an understanding of how the characters work, every story is just going to be held back from it. You can’t make a genuinely good story with them if you barely understand them. It’ll all seem cheap, and shallow, or at worse, out of character.

You won’t be able to make the next great story that people will actually remember otherwise. They’ll be no meat to it that feels real. Nothing for longstanding fans to care for. New fans won’t get much out of it, unless they just cheer for what they know others wanted.

It’ll be nothing.

#Barbara Gordon #Oracle #Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Cassandra Cain #Batgirl #Tim Drake #Robin #DC Comics #Joker War #Batman #Bat-Family #Batfamily #Batfam

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devilsskettle · 4 years ago

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can i ask u to elaborate on ur feelings/notes about swallow? i rly liked it and i would love to hear another person’s thoughts!!

yes! i’m so glad you asked, i was just writing about it actually!

the main two things i think this movie has going for it are the visual appeal and the strength of the acting. every shot in this movie seemed intentional and considered thoroughly, none of them seemed unnecessary or even boring to look at. everything from the set and costume design to the camera work was well done. i think that’s really impressive! most films don’t have that kind of intentionality. it felt kind of like “wes anderson does a psychological thriller” lol but not in a way that felt distracting to me. also the actress who plays hunter, haley bennett, did such a good job of conveying her as a character, and with so much nuance to her emotions. i also think it’s thematically interesting, the way it explores ideas about health, bodily autonomy, financial inequality (this is another “rich people suck” movie), gender, i could go on but you get the idea. it’s very gothic in a lot of ways, discussing the confinement of and violence towards women in the domestic sphere, especially the entitlement to their bodies and ideas about motherhood. i’ve also rarely seen stories about pika but i think here it’s framed in a sympathetic and respectful light that points out its seriousness but doesn’t place the blame on the person who struggles with it, which is a good way to handle any mental health issue in stories imo. i also think it’s rare to have abortion portrayed as a neutral choice that is right in certain circumstances so i think it did that well enough (there have been several movies/tv series in recent years that also discuss abortion without bias so it’s hardly revolutionary but i still like the way they went about it). however, i didn’t love the direction the movie went, i was hoping for more horror than that, in fact the only reason i think it’s labeled a psychological thriller is because people aren’t used to seeing pika portrayed and while it’s a scary problem to have, i don’t think the movie as a whole feels like a thriller. it feels more like a drama about marriage and mental health, if maybe a little bit more intense for that genre. like you can tell it’s intended to be a thriller based on the tone and everything, but the story itself doesn’t back that up. also it only really gets at surface level issues, and gives you a clear reason and solution for her problem (reason: guilt about the method of her conception + problems with her home life + pregnancy. result: pika. solution: confront father + leave husband + abortion. i wish it hadn’t been that simple)

which brings me to: the things i would’ve changed about it or liked to see more:

1. they opened the movie with several close up shots of food and i thought that would be a motif that they carried through the movie, which it was with the items that hunter ate, but not with actual food. like i thought in the birthday party scene, they would have a close up shot of the tray of sandwiches she was carrying, for example. i would’ve liked to see that and how by treating both the food and the objects the same way visually it would blur the line between the two, also i just think it would be visually appealing

2. i’m uncomfortable with the way they portrayed getting mental health help, with the therapist breaking confidentiality and the family of her husband coercing her into checking into an inpatient facility, even though imo that’s exactly where she needed to be (she almost died! she should’ve been in more intensive treatment). i don’t mind the therapist thing as much because it shows how money can open any door and how alone hunter was, but there’s nothing wrong with having to go to a psych ward even if it feels like an extreme step so it kind of felt bad to me but maybe i’m just hypersensitive about that kind of thing

3. again, i wanted it to go darker. i wanted for her to snap at the end and do something fucked up to her husband or his family. honestly i didn’t mind the ending, i thought the bathroom scene under the credits was a very strong final shot, but the narrative after she leaves the hotel feels like it diverts into soap opera melodrama territory. in some ways i like the ending but i wished it had something else to it

4. i wish we got to see more of hunter’s real personality but i think that’s difficult when she’s so isolated. maybe in some of the therapy scenes she could open up more and we’d see more past the facade (besides when she’s having a breakdown, which is also not indicative of her “real” personality)

5. the fact that we get to hear from her father and very little from her mother - none of which is positive - is a little bit questionable to me given that he raped her and we see him humanized and her - maybe not dehumanized, but she’s framed as not being a very good mother, at least to hunter, despite what she says about it. but it’s also surprising and moving in unexpected ways to see her confront the real person face to face instead of literally carrying around the image that she has of him and never really dealing with it, and it also shows that what he did and who he was when he did it was truly pathetic and entitled and massively harmful to both hunter and her mother and potentially to the family he has now, and also there’s not some magical line that separates “normal” people from people who do terrible things to other people, they’re also just people, which isn’t to say “we should forgive them and give them another chance! they’re only human,” more like “you are a person who is capable of hurting others so think about your actions and hold yourself accountable for them.” so i don’t know if it works or if it doesn’t work for me, i maybe have to sit with that one a little longer

6. while i think this movie is better, it does feel like it’s potentially getting into promising young women territory with the pastel aesthetic, focus on women, and shallowness of the storytelling (everything in either of these movies stays very surface level imo). i think it’s a much better movie but still there were parts that felt pretty meh in the same ways

that having been said, it’s a movie i think is going to stick with me and i definitely think it’s worth a watch for anyone curious, but if you’re not already curious, i don’t think you’re missing out so terribly much if you skip it

if you enjoyed this movie (or even were just interested in its themes) here’s some things i would recommend checking out: the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman (a woman experiences a mental breakdown after being shut away in her room to recover from “hysteria” while suffering from postpartum depression), white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (also deals with pika as well as horror in domestic spaces), the invisible man 2020 (i feel like these movies have a lot of overlap - isolated glass houses on a cliffside, abusive/possessive men that they have to escape both of whom threaten to - or actually do - hunt them down, a woman experiencing a serious problem that no one takes seriously and is threatened with - or actually experience - institutionalization, commentary on wealth and autonomy), wide sargasso sea by jean rhys (after reading jane eyre of course! follows the character of bertha from jane eyre during her childhood, the early days of her relationship with rochester, and the breakdown of that relationship - similar in relationship with her husband, etc)

anyway yeah that’s all i have to say about it for now but i’d love to hear what you think about it!

#swallow 2019 #swallow

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xviminds · 5 years ago

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Too Close: Part Two (Jasper Hale x Reader )

Summary: Edward is not the only one who craves human touch.

Warnings: Making out, Jasper being a bit creepy.

A/N: Gif is not mine, comment for credits.

Since your last encounter with Jasper you tried to stay away from hanging out with the Cullens. Instead, you spent more time with Jacob and his wolf friends. It was obnoxious to switch between vampires and werewolves, but you wanted to avoid all contact with Jasper as much as possible. He was confusing, charming, and above all, had poor self control. He could bite into you anytime he wanted, and although you saw him and his family as nothing but peaceful, you could not risk your life like that. The feelings that you began developing for him grew too fast and too strong, and you did not want to be another Bella.

“You don’t really think it’s a good movie, right? I mean, cmon, it’s bad,” Jacob laughed as he walked you to your doorstep.

“I think it had a lot of potential, but the actors were doing a horrible, horrible job,” you defended yourself.

“Fair enough,” the wolf stopped and nodded towards your front door.

“Thank you, J. It was a horrible movie, but I had a great time,” you hugged him feeling the warmth of his body radiate through his clothes.

“Anytime. I could come in if you want,” he shrugged, a small pout appeared on his face.

You shook your head and looked down at the ground, trying to hide your grin. Jacob was nice and you were glad he was moving on from Bella, but you were not gonna be his rebound.

“Maybe another time, love.”

“I understand,” he wrapped his arms around you once more and waved goodbye.

When you got to your room you flopped on your bed and massaged the bridge of your nose. Part of the reason why you rejected Jacob’s offer was also because your mind was somewhere else; well, on someone else. You reached to turn on your lamp and once the dim light reached every corner of your room, you jumped up holding in a scream.

“Hello, darling,” Jasper greeted you as he stepped out of the shadows.

“You son of a bitch,” you mumbled and pressed your hands against your face. Your heart pounded against your chest as the adrenaline rushed through your veins.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the vampire stood next to the window, keeping some distance between the two of you.

“Just because Edward does this doesn’t make it okay,” you exclaimed, still trying to calm yourself down.

“Why are you here?”

You questioned and stood up from your bed. You haven’t seen him in weeks and now he shows up in your room, out of the blue.

“Came to check up on you. You’ve been dodging Bella’s calls for weeks and rejecting any chance of hanging out with us,” he spoke slowly.

“Edward thinks it’s because of me and the ‘threats’ I’ve made towards you. So, I came to apologize if I did offend you or scare you.”

“This is a very poor example of an apology,” you shot back at him. “You can’t just show up uninvited.”

Jasper raised his eyebrow and locked his hands behind his back.

“Would you have invited me in?”

You stared at him for a second and then folded your arms in realization.

“No.”

“Exactly,” his confident tone made you feel frustrated.

“Well, you’ve said your piece. You can leave now,” you motioned towards the open window, but the look on Jasper’s face didn’t exactly read ‘goodbye’.

“First you’re scared, then you’re angry. You really can’t stay consistent with your emotions,” his eyes searched your face. He wasn’t wearing contact lenses allowing his vampire features to be more prominent.

“Or are you hiding something behind this facade?”

One thing you didn’t know about Jasper was his gift, which gave him a greater advantage. He could sense how attracted you were towards him and how frustrated that made you feel.

“Inconsistency in feelings and emotions is a human thing. I don’t suppose you’d remember, being as old as you are.”

You made a step closer towards him and took a sharp breath in. Hopefully snapping your neck wasn’t on his list today.

“Sharp tongue won’t get you anywhere with me, sweetheart.”

Jasper looked completely unaffected by anything you said, he stood his ground and it was impossible to get any reaction out of him. He only showed emotion when he wanted to.

“What do you want from me?”

You made another step towards him as if testing your territory. He was beautiful. His honey blond hair fell perfectly around his pale face, his sharp features outlining his cold demeanor.

“You ask too many questions, darlin’.”

He was standing too close to you now, you were sure he could hear the insane beating of your heart and the shallow breaths you took. His hand pushed a strand of your hair behind your ear, lingering there for a few seconds while his gaze was fully on your lips.

“I’m usually not fascinated with any human,” his golden eyes shot back at yours. “I find you all extremely dull.”

“I guess brooding is more fun,” you whispered, trying to keep yourself in character.

“You spite out words left and right, but maybe it’s time you let your guard fall back a bit,” his hand moved to grasp your hair, pulling your head back a little. You let out a low moan, hoping he wouldn’t hear it, but of course he did.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time now,” he raised his other hand and trailed a finger down your neck.

“That is not creepy at all,” your eyes fluttered shut unable to keep yourself together any longer.

“Why are you doing this?”

Your throat went dry causing your voice to sound weak, defeated.

Jasper brought himself closer to you, your scent completely filling up his nostrils and making him lightheaded. He never felt this way about a human before, he never found anyone so damn impossible to stay away from.

“Too many questions, Y/N,” your name rolled of his tongue like a blessing.

Silence filled the room as Jasper contemplated his next move.

“Can I kiss you?”

His words echoed in your head, repeating themselves over and over again. The vampire sounded different, as if this was his first time and he was too shy to proceed with it.

“Yes,” you finally replied, licking your lips.

Before you knew it his lips met yours. The kiss was gentle and slow, not exactly what you expected from someone like Jasper. But, it was just perfect for you. He pulled away a moment later, staring into your eyes as you forced yourself to open them.

“I don’t think I should be doing this,” he said.

You placed your hands on his face, gently caressing his cheekbone with your finger.

“I will tell you to stop if it becomes too much, okay?”

You tilted your head up as your nose brushed against his, standing on your tippy toes to reach him. His one hand was in your hair and the other grasped yours.

“Still, what if I don’t? This is a mistake,” Jasper shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

He thought of all the times he drained a human out of blood, or ripped them apart like nothing. He observed you for months, hesitant to make a move or start something that might end tragically because of him. He was a vampire after all, and he wasn’t very good at controlling his blood lust. He was afraid of hurting you, afraid of going too far.

“It’s not,” you whispered and crushed your lips on his.

His eyebrows furrowed, he wasn’t expecting this from you- he thought you were afraid of him. He beat himself up for weeks over that small exchange you had.

Jasper’s hand squeezed yours tighter while his lips moved in unison with yours. He enjoyed the taste of your tongue as it entered his mouth, the warmth and softness of your lips as you continued kissing him. He pulled your head closer to him to the point where you started running out of oxygen, but that did not matter to you. You had him right there and then, and that’s all you could think about- all you wanted for awhile now.

“I need more, Jasper,” you whispered against his lips. “I want you.”

He wanted to take this further, he truly did. He felt strongly about you and wanted to have you in every way he could. However, this was moving too fast and Jasper was losing his head and judgment the longer he stayed there with you.

“You’re irresistible, Y/N,” he sighed and brought your hand up to his lips, placing a small kiss on it. “But this is moving too fast, and I don’t want to lose myself and hurt you.”

“It’s okay, Jas. I understand,” you smiled softly at him.

“You caught up with the nickname,” Jasper chuckled.

“Yeah.”

You decided he was right to take it slow. You didn’t know much about him, only the things you’ve heard. And even though you wouldn’t regret sleeping with him, you wanted more than that, you wanted a connection that was only shared with him.

“I could stay with you for the night,” a boyish smile appeared on his face.

“So you could watch me sleep?”

You questioned jokingly, fiddling with his fingers while looking up at him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Your mouth hung open for a second as your brain thought of all the times you left your window open for the night.

“Listen, buddy, we gotta talk about boundaries.”

#jasper hale x reader #jasper hale imagine #jasper hale #jasper cullen #twilight imagine

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antialiasis · 5 years ago

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Jesus Christ Superstar: all of my thoughts

Allll right, this will be me watching my way through Jesus Christ Superstar 2012 (the arena tour with Tim Minchin/Ben Forster) and rambling about e v e r y t h i n g as I go, prompted by me having a lot of thoughts approximately every two minutes while watching it on YouTube/rewatching it/listening to multiple other JCS productions in between. Unusually for me, there will be very little complaining. This production is not perfect but that's not really what I'm here to talk about right now, shush, let me just go on about why I love this musical, at incredible length.

(I will be talking both about particulars in this production and about JCS in general as a narrative, without explicitly distinguishing the two, but please rest assured I do know which is which. I am pretty hardcore, I have seen five different productions live (including the 2013 leg of the arena tour) as well as the movies, listened to a lot of different Gethsemanes, I know this show.)

(this will also jump wildly between deep intellectual analysis and just me shamelessly appreciating the whump content, please bear with me)

can I start off by saying I really love the band and instrumentation and arrangements in 2012

The JCS overture is really long but I love it and it's always fun to see exactly what they do with it when it's staged. This production goes with showing Jesus's followers as protesters clashing with police, following news headlines, and then, during the calm choral "betrayal leitmotif", they're all gathered around Jesus staring at him in the most ominous way - then, as the first notes of "Heaven On Their Minds" play, Jesus closes his eyes and shakes his head a little, as if snapping out of a thought - as if he just felt the coming of betrayal. Neat.

Anyway, "Heaven On Their Minds"! This is such a good song. When I first saw JCS, as my school's production in 2005, and it opened not with Jesus but with Judas, presenting these totally reasonable concerns that he has about Jesus, I was already so intrigued by where this was going. Judas is the actual protagonist of JCS; one of the main narrative things it's doing is telling these events largely from his point of view, imagining how what he did might be interpreted to be sympathetic and understandable. This is why he gets the opening number and the final proper song with the show's closing musings. If you put on JCS and treat it like it's a story about Jesus with Judas as a side character, you're doing it wrong.

The iconic opening riff of “Heaven On Their Minds” is what I’m calling the “Agony” motif in my musical motif chart, because the places it recurs are the moment Judas resolves to hang himself in “Judas’s Death” and... “The 39 Lashes”. Originally I connected it to Judas, but “The 39 Lashes” has nothing at all to do with Judas; instead, the one thing that connects these three occurrences of the motif is pain - which really rather underlines how painful it is when Judas’s mind clears and he sees what lies ahead.

So, Judas: he was one of Jesus's closest friends, and a real, true believer in what this movement was originally about: charity, compassion, noble ideals. But lately, he's seen it turn into more of a cult of personality around Jesus himself - you've begun to matter more than the things you say. Now they're all thinking Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God - and worse, it's like Jesus is starting to believe it himself.

(Tim Minchin does this little frustrated eyeroll on you really do believe this talk of God is true, and I love it. I know his vocal performance is not to everyone's taste, and I get why especially with the unwarranted autotuning on the official recording, but I just love his actual acting here, his expressions and body language, so much. I was watching him for most of the show when I saw this live, because I usually spend most of JCS looking for whether Judas is doing something interesting in the background, and it was choice. Unfortunately the editor for this official recording isn't quite as interested in what Judas is doing in the background as I am, alas, and there are a lot of bits where I'd like to get a better look at him but we don't, but there are still some very good reactions.)

So, the reason this is bad, this whole messiah thing, is not only that calling Jesus their king might rub the authorities the wrong way, but also that now they're all expecting Jesus to up and free them from Roman oppression. Which is just not a thing that he can do! Judas is worried if Jesus doesn't deliver his followers will turn against him (and they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong). He's worried if Jesus actually does try anything, or heaven forbid, his followers just do it on their own - Jesus's words are already being taken out of context and twisted to justify whatever the speaker feels like - if they step so much as a toe over the line, that'll be all the excuse the Romans need to regard the Jewish community as a whole as violent insurgents or a delusional cult and bring in the army. This movement used to be a beautiful thing, but it's become an existential threat with the potential to get them all killed. And - when Judas tries to voice these concerns, Jesus brushes them off. He won't listen. Things are spiraling out of control, and Jesus won't do anything about it.

(Note, by the way, that a big part of Judas's worries is worries about Jesus in particular getting hurt.)

(Judas is very focused here on the future, all these things looming on the horizon that could happen if things continue as they are - so when we transition abruptly into the upbeat "What's the Buzz?", where Jesus tries to get his followers to think less about the future and more about the here and now, for all that it feels like a musical and textual non-sequitur we're actually kind of staying on theme.)

Jesus hasn't been doing anything about things or listening to Judas, and is very focused on the here and now, because as it happens he knows (or at least believes) that in a few days he is going to be tortured and executed, and really he doesn't entirely know what's going to happen after that, and this is pretty terrifying and stressful and right now he's dealing with that by trying to not think about it.

Why are you obsessed with fighting times and fates you can't defy? He basically means this at this point. Why would you try to fight inevitable fates? That’s pointless; it’s not like Jesus would ever do that. You just don’t think about them. Jesus is fine. It’s fine. This is fine.

(Mary is the one person who’s actively helping Jesus take his mind off things and stay in the moment. Emotionally he really needs to just relax and think of nothing and be told everything's all right, and Mary's the person who provides that. She alone has tried to give me what I need right here and now. I contend that this is the main point of Mary's role in the first act of JCS, more than her infatuation with him.)

Buuuut of course Judas has no idea what's behind this. As far as he can tell Jesus is just kind of hypocritically wasting his time on hedonistic indulgence, like the whole Son of God thing's just gone to his head, and like everything else about the situation, it's concerning, and he tries to speak out about it, in “Strange Thing, Mystifying”...

...which prompts Jesus to lash out. There was a sort of frustration behind some of his lines in “What’s the Buzz”, but he still just seemed to be preaching a general philosophy of staying in the here and now. At Judas’s criticisms, though, he's defensive and confrontational, exhorting him to not throw stones... and he's not done: I'm amazed that men like you can be so shallow, thick and slow! There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go!

That's a total strange overreaction, especially since he starts out addressing Judas but then goes on to "There is not a man among you", when nobody else was saying anything, much less anything implying they don't care about Jesus. So, obviously, this isn't really about what Judas just said. What this is showing us is that Jesus has a lot of pent-up frustrations and concerns, too, and he's in a strangely delicate mood. It's kind of an odd sequence watching it for the first time; this lashout is weird! I thought it was weird when I first saw the show! But that’s the point. It’s here because it is weird, because Jesus is not as fine as he seems.

(This is what almost every song with Jesus in it in Act I is about. It's a series of incidents - many of them based on actual bits from the Bible - of Jesus lashing out unexpectedly and/or being strongly disillusioned with his followers and vaguely, bitterly alluding to his upcoming death. The weight of anticipating his own execution is taking a real psychological toll on him from the start, and this is all building towards where all those fears and doubts and worries and anger come out in "Gethsemane". It took me the longest time to properly notice this, that Jesus isn't just sort of being a drama queen out of nowhere here; these events are being presented like this to connect them into a cohesive speculative narrative that this was all just manifestations of Jesus's anxiety about the fact he believes he's going to die in a few days and he's not sure what he's really accomplished.)

While the apostles join together in a chorus of No, you're wrong! You're very wrong!, Judas silently pulls out a cigarette, because 2012 Judas smokes to calm his nerves and I love it. The nerves don't stop him rolling his eyes again in the background at Jesus's Not one of you!, though. (Jesus has probably been having these weird, oddly self-pitying lashouts for a little while now - it feels like a "this again" sort of eye-roll.)

Judas tries again to confront Jesus during "Everything's Alright", even more emphatic, but in a more sincere and genuine way - he really wants to get through to him. No, seriously, Jesus, why are you wasting expensive ointment on your feet and hair when the poor are starving - you know, the thing this movement was supposed to be about. Mary, probably a bit higher in emotional intelligence than Judas, can obviously tell that Jesus is just pretty stressed out right now and really needs some rest, and basically just tries to get Jesus to ignore him until he goes away - but Jesus responds to him anyway. Starts calm, but there's an oddly defeatist quality to what he's saying - there’ll always be poor people, we can't save them, look at the good things you've got... and then he launches into another bitter lashout: Think while you still have me, move while you still see me - you’ll be lost, you'll be so, so sorry, when I'm gone. Strike two on Jesus-is-not-as-fine-as-he-seems.

(Seriously, though, at this point it'd be reasonable to be pretty alarmed; from an outside perspective, these lines sound kind of suicidal. Perhaps that’s why Mary immediately steps in again to try to calm him down.)

Meanwhile, Judas silently backs off. What he takes away from these two confrontations is that Jesus isn't really happy either. He's not actually thrilled with his followers or what’s going on; he just seems to feel helpless and unable to change anything at all, and has apparently just resigned himself to it, instead of even trying to fix it.

I love how gloriously ominous the "Hosanna Superstar" bit of "This Jesus Must Die" is. It really makes this upcoming cheerful song sound like an omen of doom and horror, the way it feels to the Pharisees. It’s the same melody as “We need him crucified” in “Trial Before Pilate” - apt, since the crowd’s devotion to Jesus is the real problem that causes the Pharisees to believe they need to get him killed.

Thus, the Pharisees have basically the same concerns Judas does - Jesus's mass of fans is growing out of control, they're blasphemously insisting he's their king, and it's only a matter of time before this brings the wrath of the Romans down upon the entire Jewish nation. They only go a bit further by believing the only way to properly quash this movement is to put Jesus to death. (Which is kind of dubious - surely there's a danger that martyring him will just make people more devoted - but I appreciate that they, too, get basically sympathetic motivations. It’s the oppression of the Romans that’s the real enemy here; they only see Jesus as a real problem because of how the Romans might react.)

By "Hosanna", Jesus has recovered his usual composure and passion. This is the one Jesus song where he does genuinely seem to be doing all right, and in that way it serves as a good contrast to literally everything else in this musical. In it we see a glimpse of the preacher and activist that he’s been for these three years, almost bursting with glee as he tells the Pharisees they're not going to be quiet at all thank you very much. He preaches his message to the crowd: There is not one of you who cannot win the Kingdom - a kind, positive echo of yesterday's angry lashout. He loves this, and he still loves this movement. This is what it's all supposed to be about.

...only, of course, for some people to yell "Hey, J.C., J.C., won't you die for me!", and he turns his head, his smile fading just a little (I wish the camera stayed on him a little while longer here). But he recovers and carries on. Ha ha, yeah, he'd die for you.

Jesus's own rally leads directly into Simon's rave, full of adoring fans begging Jesus to touch and kiss them. Same enthusiasm, but more obviously a product of that cult of personality that Judas was worried about. And there in the middle of it is Simon, so bright-eyed and enthusiastic about the whole thing, telling him about how with his probably over 50,000 followers, he should add just a smidge of hatred towards the Romans, and you will rise to a greater power, we will win ourselves a home! He's one of those who want Jesus to be leading a violent revolution to free them.

I like how the first portion of "Poor Jerusalem" echoes a slow, somber version of the same melody as "Simon Zealotes" as Jesus laments, almost to himself, that none of them, nobody at all, understands power, or glory, or anything. This time Jesus isn't really angry, just kind of exhausted and contemplative. Nobody really seems to get his message; these poor misguided people won't get the revolution they're hoping for; Jerusalem itself is doomed. The city wouldn't be willing to do what's needed even if they knew.

To conquer death, you only have to die is one of my favorite lines. I’m an atheist, but as a kid I remember being taught at the Christian summer camp I went to that by dying himself, Jesus conquered death. That idea is twisted and presented the other way around here: to conquer death, you only have to die. Only. An darkly ironic presentation of it as if it were easy. It’s not as easy as Jesus would like it to be - but he truly believes that it’s what he must do.

"Pilate's Dream" has the same melody as the second half of “Poor Jerusalem” - because both Jesus and Pilate are contemplating an unsettling future that they have seen.

I do think it's a little wrong that 2012 Pilate chuckles at the end of "Pilate’s Dream”, though. The whole point of this song, as far as I can tell, is that he's unsettled by this dream, and it's probably part of why he's so reluctant to sentence Jesus to death later, so I think it's an incongruous choice to make it seem like he just sort of brushed it off as nonsense.

As I mentioned before, the arena tour staging includes Simon buying a gun during "The Temple", a really chilling detail that I liked a lot and that is in no way discernible in the official recording. Maybe the editor didn't notice, maybe it just wasn't very clear in the footage they got anyway, maybe it's some sort of ratings issue where showing a gun for a few seconds would just be too much (while the lengthy, brutal torture and execution scenes coming up are totally fine). Obviously it doesn't mean anything for the later narrative or anything (especially since the actual narrative is taking place in 33 AD and guns don't actually exist, regardless of the staging choices of any particular production), but it’s a nice way of using staging to lend further support to the overall point of how Jesus's followers variously fail to understand his teachings - it strengthens both Jesus’s and Judas’s concerns.

When Jesus and Judas arrive at the temple, they're arguing once again, though we don't know what about. Given the way Jesus is striding towards the doors and Judas is trying to hold him back, I imagine Judas is worried that doing something like running into the temple and breaking tables and screaming is the sort of attention-grabbing, polarizing stunt that'd be a really bad idea, and Jesus is upset and doesn't care.

(The bouncer doesn't let Judas in. I'm guessing Jesus tells him Judas is harassing him or something, within the staging-narrative where the temple is a nightclub that has a bouncer.)

So Jesus goes and smashes a table and yells at everyone to get out. This is probably where Jesus begins to alienate a lot of people, who were having a great time at the temple only for him to come in and have a breakdown at them.

(He's so angry, breathing hard, fists clenched after everyone's left. This isn't really about the temple either. He's really begun to realize how many of his followers don't get it at all, and he doesn't have time to fix that. He's been trying for so long and he's so tired.)

The leper bit makes a pretty similar point. Jesus wants to help all these people, and tries - but there are too many, and they're crowding him, and he's not going to be around to help them for much longer - so he desperately tells them to heal themselves, and they leave, probably thinking wow Jesus is kind of a jerk.

I'm sorry, I don't have anything to say about "I Don't Know How to Love Him", love ballads are pretty consistently my least favorite song in every musical, I like and appreciate Mary but my investment in this song pretty much begins and ends with its role in setting up the twisted reprise in "Judas's Death"

I enjoy the fourth-wall-leaning audacity of having the guitarist spotlighted on stage playing the solo before "Damned For All Time", and Judas is looking at him like "who are you, go away", and keeps looking evasively back at him while he's slowly getting the Pharisees' number out of his wallet and calling it. (It also helps show Judas feels pretty guilty and shameful about doing this, and works better for that than having extras on stage - if it were extras, we might expect that them witnessing this could actually mean something later, but when it's the guitarist, it's obvious he's just serving as an anonymous stand-in for a hypothetical random stranger who isn't literally part of the story.)

I like the shot of Judas looking into the security camera outside the Pharisees' building. (That’s decidedly not the same hairdo Tim Minchin has on stage, though.)

Judas opens his talk with the Pharisees, without even greeting them first, by frantically justifying himself, talking about how this is weird and hard for him but there was just nothing else he could do, he's not hoping for a reward or anything, he's been forced to do this, he's not a dirty traitor, please don't think that. He really doesn't want to be here. But here he is anyway, because Jesus can't control it like he did before - and furthermore I know that Jesus thinks so too, Jesus wouldn't mind that I'm here with you. He's seen Jesus over the past few days and he's pretty sure he has this figured out. Jesus can see just as well as he does where things are headed - it's just he's helpless to control it and doesn't know what to do about it. So this has to be done. He'd probably want Judas to bail him out of this, just get him arrested and the movement shut down, for everyone's sake. (Jesus is so self-sacrificing, after all.) Right? He'd be fine with this. Right? (Judas is fine.)

("Damned For All Time" is just Judas wildly word-vomiting trying to placate his own guilt and I love it. He's legitimately afraid of where things are headed if he doesn't do this, and thinks it has to ultimately be the right thing, but that doesn't make him feel any better about it.)

(I like how Caiaphas just sort of coolly listens to him ramble his head off like this while he sips his drink.)

Judas goes for a cigarette again (calming those nerves), and Annas helpfully lights it for him - prompting Judas's next ramble. Annas, you're a friend, a worldly man and wise - Caiaphas, my friend, I know you sympathize. It's not like he's selling Jesus out to anyone unreasonable. Annas is nice! We three, we get it, right? You get it. We're the people who can see when a difficult thing just has to be done, did I mention I HAVE to do this and this is not about money - only for Annas to tell him to cut it out with this blather and excuses and just give them the information they want. And also, they'll pay him handsomely!

I don't need your blood money! Judas says, then I don't want your blood money! Sometimes these lines are reversed, which sounds better - there's something more satisfying about the vowel in need than in want - but I think textually this original order is important. First he's sort of polite-ish-ly declining, saying no, he doesn't need any money, but then when they insist, he declines more firmly, that he doesn't want it either. (I love the way he shoves Annas's hand away.) It's so important to Judas's own principles that he came here because he thinks it's right, not because he wants payment; the idea of being paid makes it way worse.

...But then Caiaphas grabs the cigarette out of his mouth (leaving him a bit shaken with nothing to hold onto anymore) and goes well, you can give it to charity, or to the poor; they understand that's not why he's doing this, but they'd still like to pay him a fee. And that's the reason he ultimately does take the money: because just a few days earlier he was telling Jesus off for letting money be wasted when it could have gone to the poor. How could he do the same?

(Judas is not doing this for the money in this show. He is not being tempted by the money. He was not going to take the money until he was told he could give it to charity. One of the professional live productions I saw just did not understand this at all, and no. Judas is the protagonist! He is not here for the money! It's done right here, with the Pharisees just throwing the money at him after he names Gethsemane, and him not even reacting, just slowly picking it up afterwards. Tim Minchin gets Judas.)

I like to think the Well done, Judas / Good old Judas chorus is sort of the voice of the Divine Plan, such as it is, which he's now done his first part in.

"The Last Supper" has slowly become one of my favorite parts of the entire show, and I particularly enjoy it in this particular production.

Judas walks in and doesn't look at Jesus at all - can't quite bear to, at the moment. Jesus looks after him, knowing exactly what's going on... and that's when he starts in on The end is just a little harder when brought about by friends.

Jesus has a drink of the wine, which I like a lot. This definitely is a drinking sort of moment. I like the idea of him being a little inebriated in this scene.

For all you care, this wine could be my blood. For all you care, this bread could be my body. The end... This is my blood you drink, this is my body you eat. Judas reflexively rolls his eyes again - Jesus off on one of these weird sorts of rants yet again. (As with so much, I love that Jesus Christ Superstar takes this bit of the Bible and lets it just be a weird thing to say, recontextualizes it as an empty, halfhearted statement that he doesn't feel like his followers even care hours before his impending arrest, instead of treating it as something profound and meaningful. Again and again, Jesus is portrayed less as a noble profound religious figure and more as just a person haunted by mounting dread and anxiety, and I love it so much.)

Jesus sort of tries to make this into a nice, comforting thing, to ask them to remember him when they eat and drink - but it doesn't work. It's happening tonight, and here they all are, these people, his supposed followers, who don't understand a thing he's said, ever, and Jesus just breaks. I must be mad, thinking I'll be remembered! Yes, I must be out of my head! Look at your blank faces! My name will mean nothing ten minutes after I'm dead! (Judas looks up vaguely, kind of concerned - Jesus, this is further than he usually goes.) One of you denies me, one of you betrays me! And that's when Judas really looks up. Jesus knows.

There's a pause, a commotion, and Jesus is going to just retreat and leave it at that - but no, then he keeps going. He calls out Peter specifically for being about to deny him three times, shoving him, and then yells about how one of my twelve chosen will leave to betray me! At which Judas finally stands up. Cut out the dramatics! You know very well who! It's obvious that somehow Jesus found out. (Maybe Judas thinks the guitarist might have told on him.)

Judas's surprised You want me to do it? when Jesus tells him to go do it delights me. Judas, I thought you knew that Jesus totally wanted you to do this. It's almost like you didn't really know that at all and just convinced yourself of that to feel better about it. (Obviously, though, Jesus clearly doesn't actually want it so much, does he, the way he's shouting.)

Judas tries to explain himself but Jesus doesn't care - he doesn’t want to hear about why one of his most trusted friends wants to betray him to the authorities, not when this has to happen and he can’t prevent it. Judas is really nervous and defensive and hurt by his hostility, declares he hates Jesus now. (You liar, you Judas! Jesus says, which is kind of hilarious and also - yeah, he's a liar, he doesn't hate Jesus at all.) You wanted me to do it? What if I just stayed here and ruined your ambition? Christ, you deserve it! Judas still kind of wants to just stay and cancel the whole thing, even if it's simply justified as petulant spite. But Jesus tells him to just go already; he just wants to get this over with, as quickly as possible, because it hurts.

Judas is near tears as he turns away to get his things. The apostles have no idea what's going on, singing, some of them trying to see if Judas is okay, which suggests they have no idea what they were even talking about - whatever this 'betrayal' is supposed to be, it doesn’t cross their minds that Judas is about to get Jesus arrested.

Judas trudges up the steps, batting them away, still on the verge of tears - only then he stops, his face changing. And he throws down his backpack and turns for one final confrontation with Jesus. You sad, pathetic man! Look what you've brought us to! Our ideals die around us, and all because of you! This is still about their ideals for him, after all. And yet, saddest of all, someone had to turn Jesus in - like a common criminal, he first says, but then, like a wounded animal, someone helpless to help themselves, who needs to be pitied and put out of their misery. Jesus could have done something. Jesus could have put a stop to this. Why does he have to do it? (Why does he have to do it?)

Every time I look at you, I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand. You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned. Why? Jesus does have a plan, of sorts, of course - it's just that this is all part of it. Judas doesn't believe Jesus is actually the Son of God, or that he could possibly have a "plan" that involves dying for some grand cosmic cause. As far as he can tell Jesus's actions are just bizarre and pathetic and self-defeating, and he's been saddled with the unfortunate, dirty job of saving Jesus from himself.

(Judas presumably still doesn't realize that the Pharisees plan to literally have him killed. I doubt he'd be doing this, or at least not in this way, if he knew.)

In the wake of this final confrontation, Mary hugs Peter, who Jesus just shoved and accused of denying him. She considers going to Jesus too, but Peter convinces her they'd probably best leave it alone. Peter himself seems to be considering going to Jesus, but then doesn't. Everyone dejectedly goes to sleep. Jesus is alone for tonight, his apostles alienated, his right-hand man gone as Jesus must wait for him to return with soldiers and set the dreaded end in motion. This must be the loneliest, most awful night of his life.

Jesus rubs his hand hard against a stair as the apostles are finishing their song - an agitated fidget that I am far more fond of than I should be. As he realizes they've all gone to sleep, he grips it instead, something to hold on to. Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? He just sounds broken and like he's about to cry. Which is good. He sings all of Gethsemane sounding like he's on the verge of tears and that's exactly how it should sound, do not at me.

(Please bear with me as I go on about this Gethsemane because it's my favorite one ever at this point, haters to the left)

See, when I first saw this production (I saw the official recording once before I realized it was still on and I could see it live), I didn't really like Ben Forster's Jesus for the first half! He seemed sort of over-the-top and I wasn't the biggest fan of his voice and all in all I was ehhh on him. But then he did "Gethsemane" and I just felt it to my core in a way I'd never felt it before, and it floored me. I've watched and listened to a lot of versions of this song. There are better singers who make it more pleasant to listen to - but they tend to be very dignified and Jesus-y about it, like this poised religious figure just having a brief moment of vulnerability and emotionality. Even the performances specifically praised for being emotional tend to be the ones that just make it really angry. And I've seen a lot of great ones of both varieties! But Ben Forster just makes it so raw and human. Like this terrified, exhausted, desperate human being who's spent the entire preceding hour of this play dreading this thing that's coming, his resolve finally faltering in this moment of agonizing solitude as his doubts and fears and frustrations finally come pouring out, how much he wants to call the whole thing off, begging to either not have to do this or at least be properly convinced why he should. It's what made me properly start to look at Jesus's character progression during this story in the first place and notice all the buildup about his fragile mental state that's always been there in the lyrics. This is the “Gethsemane” that made me really, truly care about Jesus.

he's rubbing the stair again at the beginning of the song, I'm sorry I love fidgets and nervous gestures you guys

I've never heard anyone emphasize three years the way Ben Forster does, and the desperation of it hits me in the heart. Weren't these three years enough?

Let's talk about You're far too keen on where and how, and not so hot on why, which is pretty key to this show’s interpretation of Jesus. He and the Almighty are definitively not the same entity here; Jesus knows or believes he knows a lot of things about how this is all going to play out, and even some of the future beyond that (in "Poor Jerusalem"), but he doesn't actually understand what his death is supposed to accomplish. He knows that he's going to be crucified and it's going to happen because Judas betrays him and so on and so on, and that this is all supposedly very important, and Jesus has been willing to accept that without question, but really he doesn't know the whys here and never has, and as much as he's just never questioned it anyway because of his absolute conviction that this is God’s plan, he can't not do so now, when he's going to have to suffer an agonizing death in the service of these inscrutable goals, not sometime in the vague far future but soon.

(Technically, for all we know, Jesus isn’t the Son of God. God doesn’t answer him; the song is a monologue. Jesus has suspiciously specific knowledge of the future but that’s about it as far as actual concrete evidence of his divinity goes in this show. But what matters is that he believes this is what God wills.)

His initial All right. I'll die. Just watch me die! is so spiteful, only for the following lines to just turn into this anguished scream, and it kills me

I love the way he collapses on the stairs, and just finally breaks down and starts crying, and there's that agitated rubbing of the stair again

The second three years is just exhausted and my heart still breaks for it. These have been a hard three years. Seems like ninety.

Why then am I scared to finish is probably my favorite line in this. He just sounds so broken and desperate and actually scared, and his body language is so tense and agitated and desperate; he's so angry at himself for being scared when this has been the plan all along and for some reason now he just can’t seem to go through with it.

And then he has that realization. What I started? ...What you started. I didn't start it! This isn't his plan. He's just a cog in God's machinery. It's a fixed, unavoidable fate, isn't it? And he finds a kind of desperate acceptance in just thinking of it that way - at least for a moment (before I change my mind!). But it's a spiteful acceptance. He's addressing God now. I will drink your cup of poison, nail me to your cross and break me, bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now! Because it's you who are doing this. It's your cross, you who are killing me. Note the contrast to earlier: Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, nail me to their tree. It's not actually the people who are responsible for any of this, even if they’ll technically be the ones to do the deed; it's God's plan, his cross, his crucifixion.

I love how he looks so tense standing there afterwards while the audience is applauding, because he's not actually waiting for applause, he's waiting for the soldiers to arrest him and set him on the path to his execution. Arms spread at first, in a come at me sort of way, but then he just clenches his fists at his sides, eyes closed, still waiting.

There he is. They're all asleep, the fools. Implying Judas wouldn't have just gone to sleep, if he'd been left there. AU where Jesus has literally anyone to comfort him, instead of standing there alone desperately pleading to God to not have him killed. Hnngh.

The kiss is just as it is in the Bible, of course. But there, it's presented as a sort of extra nasty element of this betrayal, that he'd be betrayed with a kiss. Here, it's more like Judas just wants to say goodbye, one last time, and does it in this kind of tender way.

And... Jesus breaks down crying, clings to him, pulls him into a hug. Because of course he does. The reminder that Judas still cares, memories of everything they've been through together, and the knowledge this is probably his last chance at some kind of comforting human contact? Of course he does. He just wants to not be alone, for a few seconds, before the end.

At first Judas just sort of lets him do it, but by the time the soldiers come along to separate them, Judas is clinging to Jesus, too. Ohh, my heart.

The apostles wake up at the commotion and are immediately on their feet to fight off the soldiers. There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go, Jesus said, a few days ago; now here they are, worrying for him, wanting to save him. But he has to stop them. He mustn't be saved, and they'd only get themselves hurt. Put away your sword - don't you see that it's all over? It was nice but now it's gone. That exhausted resignation.

Why are you obsessed with fighting? Stick to fishing from now on. He doesn't sound angry here - it's just kind of a gentle rebuke. He's touched that they tried. I like that he plays it that way; it'd be legit to make it angry, but in the context of how Jesus has spent a lot of time feeling like they don't really care at all and in this moment it finally becomes clearer to him that they do - not to mention that this is basically his final goodbye to them - it makes sense to let it be kind of tender.

From this point on, Jesus has to just quietly accept his fate. He's very silent, barely says anything - because now things just have to play out how they play out, and nothing he says will change anything, nor should change anything.

The reporters asking questions here (to the melody of "The Temple") are one of the relatively few major anachronisms baked into the actual lyrics as opposed to any particular production. They're not really reporters; it's kind of a representation of some of his previous followers watching this as a kind of spectacle, expecting him to make a dramatic escape or fight back, excited by what's happening (you'll just DIE in the high priest's house!), rather than sympathizing or caring. These are the people who are going to ultimately turn against him as a mob and pressure Pilate into crucifying him.

Caiaphas asks if Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus says That's what you say, yet another line based directly on the Bible. Growing up I always just found that kind of a silly thing for him to say - why won't he just stick to his story instead of suddenly acting like he never said such a thing? But it makes real sense here. Again, Jesus is resigned to his fate, to passively letting this happen. He's not going to deny it or try to get out of it, because he can't and mustn't. But he has no desire to speak up about how the rocks and stones will sing for him right now, or actively provoke them and give them more reasons to persecute him. He's just going to stand here and let things happen until it's over.

(also, he probably doesn't really feel so much like the Son of God right now)

Judas, thank you for the victim! Stay a while and you'll see him bleed! In this production, Caiaphas and Annas both say the last sentence together, but originally it's just Annas, which has always led me to feel that where Caiaphas is pure cold pragmatism and just believes this is what needs to be done for the sake of the nation, Annas is bit of a twisted son of a bitch. He's obviously intentionally twisting the knife here, because he thinks Judas's conflictedness about the whole thing is a bit pathetic and hilarious and likes to see him squirm.

(let me complain again about the editor not letting us see Judas's reaction to this line)

Peter's reluctance to throw his phone on the fire is a mood

also him threatening the homeless people with a broken bottle when they keep pressing him on whether he was with Jesus, before Mary takes it off him, is something I enjoy

Pilate and Christ probably takes place at Pilate’s gym in this staging to show Pilate hasn’t even made time for Jesus in an official capacity - he’s just being unexpectedly brought before him in his off time, hence why he’s particularly dismissive here.

Jesus barely looks at Pilate. Another dispassionate That's what you say.

How can someone in your state be so cool about his fate? An amazing thing, this silent king. Of course, Pilate doesn't understand any more than anyone else that Jesus being crucified is the plan. Again, Jesus is just letting this play out.

He does look up when Pilate declares he should go to Herod instead, though. It must be torture for him having this drawn out further. Poor Jesus, having to suffer through a comic relief number when he just wants to get this over with.

Jesus does look at Herod as he's making all these offers of letting him free if he'll just perform a miracle. It's got to be a tempting thought despite everything. But no, he must still sit there and let it happen.

"These results are for entertainment purposes only and do not reflect any real votes. The outcome is predetermined by the character of King Herod who clearly is going to find Jesus guilty of being a fraud otherwise it would be a very short Act 2." Going all the way with that fourth-wall-breaking.

the bit where they put the hood over Jesus's head sure hits some specific button I didn't realize I had

Judas there with his head buried in his hands in the background towards the end of "Could We Start Again Please" ohhhh

I feel like the usual implication with the abrupt opening of "Judas's Death" is that Judas has just been seeing Jesus being beaten, whereas here he's explicitly sitting there with the apostles contemplating what he's done and just gets up and freaks out when Caiaphas and Annas happen to walk by. I like him punching Caiaphas, but the way he just goes from zero to sixty there does feel a little weird. I don't care, though, Judas in the background during "Could We Start Again Please" is worth it.

For all that Judas is mortified by the way Jesus is being made an example of, he can also see the way his name will forever be associated with treachery, and none of his good intentions meant anything at all in the end. He’s wracked with guilt at what he’s done, but additionally all he can see in the future is being vilified and reviled, blamed for Jesus’s murder.

Ugh Annas kicking Judas while he's down he's such a bastard

Tim Minchin goes so all out on making "Judas's Death" just ugly anguished screaming and crying and I am so here for it.

Judas has never believed in the divinity of Jesus, but Jesus has some strange, intense, frightening quality that both Judas and Mary can feel, and just before his final breakdown, although Judas is telling himself that He's a man - he's just a man!, he seems to be starting to feel that that's not quite true: he starts to wonder if Jesus will leave him be after his death, and then right after the "I Don't Know How to Love Him" reprise is where his mental state takes a turn as he realizes God is behind all this, that perhaps the whole thing was planned.

The projecting images of Jesus' torment up onto the background screen as Judas is despairing is also very good - Jesus hasn't even been sentenced yet but he knows where this is headed and he sure is imagining it and feeling responsible for it.

Judas, like Jesus, concludes here that it's God who orchestrated all this and he never got a choice. In his case, though, it's serving as a way of running from his guilt. We got to hear all about his reasons for thinking this was the right thing to do, after all - it's not as if he was literally controlled into anything. He didn't realize he was dooming Jesus to a horrible death at the time, but he still did it of his own free will. And it isn't a real comfort - all it means is that in his final anguished moments he has someone to scream his despair at. You have murdered me!

(hang me from your tree)

the particular scream and sob that he does as he kicks the box out from under him hits my buttons very hard hhhh

Poor old Judas, so long, Judas, goes the Plan chorus. There's a pretty callous quality to that, appropriately enough for a very callous Plan involving a lot of suffering.

Please give my compliments to the sound designer who makes a point of turning on Jesus' microphone so we can hear his strained breathing before "Trial Before Pilate" begins

Jesus's resolve to say nothing of substance is breaking by this point, and he actually answers Pilate's "Where is your kingdom?" I have got no kingdom in this world, I'm through, through, through - there may be a kingdom for me somewhere, if I only knew. It's probably pretty hard to feel like he's headed for a triumphant resurrection right now, and the fact he's spilling those doubts to Pilate in a moment of frustrated honesty is pretty tragic.

(Some versions, including the 1973 movie, change this lyric to if you only knew. No! Bad! The whole point here is Jesus doubting it! If you want to change it you should not be putting on this show!)

Then he's a king? It’s what you say I am! I look for truth and find that I get damned! This frustration coming out here is so good.

Pilate's frustration is very good too - just dripping off every line. This mob of people insisting he sentence this harmless fool to death (one who reminds him uncomfortably of this dream that he had the other day), crowing about Caesar all of a sudden like they're oh so very concerned with protecting Caesar's authority.

As Jesus once again refuses to talk, there’s a brief mournful instrumental interlude before Look at your Jesus Christ - this is a slowed-down version of a bit of “Prescience”, the motif from “Pilate’s Dream”. He remembers that unsettling dream, consciously or unconsciously, and feels sympathy and pity for this strange man before him. After that is when he begins to argue that Jesus hasn’t committed any crime and there’s no reason to kill him.

can we appreciate that Webber and Rice went and made a song called "The 39 Lashes" that's literally just Pilate counting excruciatingly to 39 while Jesus screams in pain

can we also appreciate Jesus writhing on the floor after rolling down the stairs, Ben Forster really goes for it in acting out all this pain and torture and I love him for it

Why do you not speak when I have your life in my hands? asks Pilate, and Jesus just about musters the energy to say, You have nothing in your hands. Any power you have comes to you from far beyond - everything is fixed and you can't change it! He's kind of desperate to make Pilate understand this. Pilate keeps on trying to get Jesus to say something that'll let him release him, but that can't happen, because this must be so. Pilate needs to just play his part and get it over with, please get it over with.

And so, Pilate has to appease the mob and let him die, even though he doesn't want to at all, and tries to wash his hands of it. Much like in his dream, though, he'll in fact be remembered as the guy who sentenced Jesus to death. Clearly didn't wash your hands well enough, Pilate

It's such a delightfully bold creative decision to place an upbeat number like "Superstar" right here as Jesus is about to be crucified.

It's fascinating to see the differences in how this song in particular is staged; it's so abstract and disconnected that different directors really go nuts with it. Some productions, including the 2000 movie, imply Judas has come out of Hell to taunt him; the movie in particular makes a point of having Judas lazily, cruelly stand on the cross while Jesus is trying to carry it, grinning at his agony, surrounded by scantily clad demon women, though he has a moment of doubt and guilt as Jesus stares at him. (That movie generally posits Judas as not in control of his actions at all - so God is apparently basically just making him do this as part of his torture in Hell, which is delightfully twisted.) Others (including this one and the 1973 movie) have him among angels, as if he's descended from Heaven. In the 1973 movie Carl Anderson seems largely to just be singing it to himself - it cuts to Jesus carrying the cross a few times, but Judas isn't there.

Here, "Superstar" feels a bit like a delirious hallucination Jesus is experiencing. Judas descends on the stage lights that are about to form the cross (what an entrance) and performs the song surrounded by angels while Jesus is being affixed to the cross; they look at each other, but Judas doesn't really interact with him. There's definitely no taunting; Tim Minchin plays it in a very good-natured way, not even the kind of angry questioning of Carl Anderson in the 1973 movie. Effectively, despite the hallucinatory vibes, the way it comes across to me is Judas really is actually there in spirit, from a timeless afterlife, having had an eternity to think and come to terms with and understand what Jesus was doing - and finally just asking him some questions, without judgement. Is he what they say he is? What does he think about Buddha and Mohammed? Why didn't he choose a different time period where it would've been easier to spread his message? Did he know his death would inspire millions? It's all a sort of musing, fourth-wall-leaning modern perspective, not hostile, just curious.

Also this version just makes me happy because Judas seems happy and mentally at peace in the afterlife and who doesn't want that

Anyway, from that to Jesus crying on the cross. And I mean crying. Once again Ben Forster delivers the human suffering element of this story. "The Crucifixion" is a weird, weird song, chaotic and noisy and kind of offputting and tends to feel sort of inappropriate for the mood; in this production you don't even notice because the staging is so brutal. There's no cool symbolic dignity to this; Jesus is just crying and screaming and sobbing the whole time, yelling the disconnected final-words lines in an agonized, delirious haze. You actually believe you're watching a man dying in agony, God damn. It hurts and I love it.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? is the most gutwrenching line, of course. (And straight out of the Bible, lest we forget - I think it’s fascinating that in the likely oldest gospel of Mark as well as Matthew, this horrible, heartwrenching, human cry is all he says on the cross, while the gospels of John and Luke instead each feature their own disjoint sets of more profound-sounding sayings. It’s hard not to wonder if the other lines might be inventions by those gospels’ human authors or their sources, people who perhaps just didn’t want Jesus’s final words to be something so achingly desperate and vulnerable.) He's done all this to carry out God's great plan, and yet in this moment, in the middle of this nightmare of slow, unending agony, he feels certain that God has abandoned him and he's just dying, alone, pointlessly, for nothing. Ow, my empathetic heart.

You can hear him feeling death approaching at last and the relief he feels at that realization just before It is finished and Father, into your hands I commend my spirit

(it's easier to believe again when his suffering is finally, mercifully about to end)

Ben Forster also does a very good job not visibly breathing when he's playing a corpse. On this blog we appreciate the little things.

I've always found it pretty neat and interesting that Jesus Christ Superstar does not include the resurrection or any allusion to it at all; he just dies on the cross, they mourn and carry him away, and the show ends. Again, the only thing in this show that’s at all supernatural is that Jesus seems to know the future, and even that is fairly ambiguous. It's a story about human suffering, and it's a hugely compelling story without him rising from the dead at the end, which'd just kind of cheapen it. You can imagine that he did, but this ending invites you to contemplate that this story is just as meaningful if he did not.

In conclusion, Jesus Christ Superstar is one of my absolute favorite things and the 2012 arena tour is my baby

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

#jesus christ superstar #ramble #review #character analysis #my buttons #holy jesus this is long #8500 words of JCS rambling #which is almost as much as I wrote about episode four of Breaking Bad

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idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf · 5 years ago

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Gothel Parallels

You know an odd thing about the Tangled fandom is that everyone is pointing out parallels between Cassandra and Gothel but nobody wants to point out the even less prominent but very fascinating parallels between Rapunzel and Gothel. And idk why because I think those are much more interesting (about the only time I find anything to do with Rapunzel more interesting than something to do with Cass but like...of course you can find connection between Cassandra and her mother, especially since Cass is an antagonist now, but those parallels always seem kinda shallow based just on 'hey Cass is Gothel's kid and she a villain' while the ones with Rapunzel run much deeper in the show's narritive and actually lend themselves to analyzing Rapunzel's character)

Like usually, from what I've seen, parallelism is most effective when it connects back in with whatever themes the media is trying to convey, reveals or says something about a character's personality or thought process, or show's that the hero's and villains aren't that different/that they both could've gone down the other path easily, or to foreshadow.

So what does using parallelism to connect Cass with Gothel do? It doesn't seem to connect to any of the themes of the show, Cassandra and Gothel are extremely different personality wise (That's not just me being a Cass fan either. Gothel was vain while Cass has low self esteem, Gothel was selfish while Cass has spent her entire life serving people, Gothel was always emotional and almost overshared her feelings- albeit usually for the sake of a guilt trip- while Cass never really talks to anyone about her feelings. Gothel pretended to be a poor, frail but caring woman who's always worrying- which was a lie- while Cassandra refuses to show weakness even if she's actually struggling. I can't think of a single trait they actually share) So what exactly does parallelism reveal about their characters aside from 'Gothel was evil and now Cass is a villain' which, thanks, we could figure that out without wasting time drawing parallels between them. It isn't a hero to villain comparison, it's a villain to villain comparison so the whole 'we could've been the same' thing doesn't work. And some have theorized that Cass is going to die during the show and since Gothel also died, any parallels between them would be foreshadowing, however I literally don't believe that, and if she did die (which again, doubt she will), those parallels would just feel kinda lazy tbh. Like really, you can’t think of any reason to compare Cass to Gothel other than killing her off?

But look at the Gothel to Rapunzel comparison! Does it go with the show's themes? Yeah, I mean the show focuses a lot on how Rapunzel messes up (even the protagonists can make mistakes kids) and it also focuses often on how she was raised and the fact that she never really knew anything but the tower and Gothel, and having her act a bit like her kidnapper is a good way to show that her upbringing has effected how she behaves (and it has). Does it reveal anything about either character? Yeah. A lot of people tend to ignore Rapunzel's character flaw of being dismissive and honestly a bit controlling since it's often muddied in good intent and 'I love you's from Rapunzel to the point where people are like "Well even if it ended bad she had good intentions and all so it's fine". However if we draw parallels between her and Gothel- someone who was also dismissive and controlling and hid it with (fake) good intentions and 'i love you's- then it becomes a lot harder to ignore her flaws because it's something the connection exposes. This IS a hero to villain comparison and while it's not a full on 'what you could've become' situation, it still shows that, if Rapunzel's intentions weren't quite so good, she could have been a villain very similar to Gothel in a lot of ways. And finally...foreshadowing? Well, I don't know if this connection is currently foreshadowing anything, but the fact that the person who Rapunzel's main Gothel-like traits were directed towards was Cass is interesting and may have hinted at Cassandra deciding to break away from Rapunzel like Raps broke off from Gothel. So yeah, the Rapunzel to Gothel parallels are a lot more interesting and have more to analyze than any similarities people can find between Cass and Gothel, and yet everyone is comparing Cassandra to Gothel and I've only seen like one person point out the genius use of parallelism for Rapunzel and Gothel.

And I find analyzing any parallels between Cass and Gothel to be more tedious than anything. “They both broke a bridge”, like okay, cool, does that say anything about their characters? In Cassandra’s case her breaking the bridge between Rapunzel and herself at the end of Crossing The Line was her way of getting out of what she (validly) saw to be a toxic situation, meanwhile Gothel was abandoning her only daughter in a pursuit of youth. You could argue that their motives were both selfish, however with Cassandra- as much as I disagree with many of her actions- it feels like her deciding to finally do something for herself after a life of servitude, wheras with Gothel, that woman had never in her life thought about anyone but herself and this was just another example of her taking something for herself when she already had piles and piles of stuff for herself. So what about that time Cass fell from the tower just like Gothel did? Honestly I can’t for the life of me figure out what that would tell us about the story or characters except...Cass is a bad guy and her mum was too. And then there’s the Once A Handmaiden “You want me to be the bad guy? Fine, now i’m the bad guy.” thing. And I just...ugh. Why was it needed tbh? The contexts of Cass saying it and Gothel saying it are very different, first off. I mean Cassie had just been lead to believe that her friends were attacking her and would continue to attack her- and lied to her face when they said they wouldn't- and she felt hurt and betrayed and of course the whole episode she’d been terrified nobody would forgive her and seeing first hand that everyone was treating her like a bad guy- and probably always would? Yeah, the build up to “You want me to be the bad guy? Fine, now i’m the buy guy” with Cass was a lot fucking different from with Gothel, who resorted to that when....her gaslighting tactics failed on Rapunzel and she decided to just hold her against her will instead. And I can’t see any common trait they’re trying to draw a link to with the characters or highlight a theme of the show or anything, it’s just “Gasp, Cass said this thing that another villain said too” for the sake of shock value.

While on the other hand, most parallels you can find for Rapunzel and Gothel are actually interesting. For example, the way Rapunzel snapped at Cass in Rapunzel And The Great Tree, saying “Enough, Cassandra!” was very similar to when Gothel snapped at Rapunzel in the movie with “Enough (about the lights) Rapunzel!” followed by a shot of Cassandra/Rapunzel looking shocked, and their hands slowly moving backwards. As I said earlier, this exposes one of Rapunzel’s flaws that she happens to share with Gothel. Rapunzel is dismissive. She says she cares about how other people feel but she also believes that her mindset is the only right one. Rapunzel doesn't actually take other’s opinions or feelings into consideration most of the time, and goes ahead with what she wants to do anyway. Actually arguing back is just completely out of line and uncalled for in her eyes because she thinks nobody has a right to argue because she sees herself as always having the final say, something she thinks other’s just need to accept. It’s understandable why Rapunzel feels that way, she’s a princess so of course the sad truth is that people will have to listen to her no questions asked, and she was raised by Gothel to never question her- thinking it was the only way to do things- and while she knows Gothel’s bad, that doesn't necessarily mean she realizes how toxic that particular part of their dynamic was, especially when she was placed on the other side of that dynamic directly after she was rescued and told ‘you have subjects now, you rule them, what you say goes’. There are differences between Gothel’s intentions and Rapunzel’s but in the end it exposes a common character trait they have in dismissing the thoughts and feelings of those around them if they deem these feelings ‘incorrect’ or if these feelings fall outside their own.

I was able to write as much analysis on ONE parallel between Rapunzel and Gothel as THREE between Cassandra and Gothel, and even then most of my section on Cass and Gothel was analyzing why these aren’t good parallels. The show is pushing them for the shock value of “omg the other evil person did that too :0″ but idk why the fandom tends to focus so much on them since from what I've deduced they don’t actually mean much.

#tangled #tangled the series #rapunzels tangled adventure #tangled cassandra #tangled gothel #tangled rapunzel #mother gothel

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years ago

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

Dr. Seuss is no stranger to cinematic adaptations, and even less of a stranger to animation. And whenever Seuss gets animated, you can typically expect good things, as opposed to when his work is live action, in which case you can expect…

Yeah…

Anyway, imagine the excitement people must have felt when the creative team behind Despicable Me and the writing team behind the underrated gem Horton Hears a Who got together to do a fresh new take on The Lorax! This was in Illumination’s heyday, before they ended up showcasing that they’re more interested in churning out cheap products for maximum profit, so there was plenty of hope that this could be good. Then came all the commercial tie-ins.

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Now, this alone shouldn’t be indicative of the final product. Maybe stuff like this is just a bunch of suits horribly missing the point of the original story! Maybe the actual film will be better! Well… while the film was no flop, and while it certainly got a better reception than most of the films I’ve talked about here, the film was derided by many for being an extremely shallow and lacking adaptation that adds unneeded junk to a story that didn’t need it in such a way that ultimately dilutes the message. It turns a story that operated on shades of gray and turned it into a cartoonish spectacle that would make even Captain Planet blush. Not helping was the rabid fanbase on Tumblr who shipped the Once-ler with… himself… or Jack Frost… forever tainting the film in the eyes of those on the internet.

Things got so bad eventually even the [REDACTED] Critic reviewed the film in his usual over-the-top, accentuate the negative style, and as some people still treat his word as gospel, this has most likely colored the perception of the film. So while it’s certainly not to the same level of infamy as the usual subjects of Is It Really THAT Bad? I still wanted to put this movie on here and ask one simple question:

How ba-ah-ah-ad can it be?

THE GOOD

So let me just get it out of the way: the movie’s villain song, “How Bad Can I Be,” legitimately is awesome and is frankly one of the best villain songs ever. No, I’m not kidding. It’s just a fun, rocking number with some neat visuals, and while it’s a shame the cut rock opera-esque “Biggering” is probably the better song, this one is definitely more fun and meme-worthy. Shake that bottom line!

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Now, the casting is, for the most part, pretty fantastic. Minor characters like the grandma played by Betty White are a lot of fun, but really, the main piece of awesome casting is Danny DeVito as the titular Seuss creation. DeVito as the Lorax is just so incredible, perfect, and inspired that it boggles the mind how anyone could possibly come up with such amazing casting.

As far as antagonizing forces in the film go, the Once-ler’s awful, vile family are enjoyable in a “love to hate” sort of way. While it’s certainly kind of iffy that they felt the need to give the Once-ler more of an excuse for his actions beyond just simple greed, it isn’t so bad that what they came up with was familial pressure. In fact, they’re actually much better at antagonists than O’Hare, the actual villain of the film, and the fact the movie give him so much focus despite having such fascinating characters that would have had a really great thematic purpose; hell, they should have been the rulers of Thneedville instead og O’Hare! There’s so much untapped potential with these, quite frankly, very interesting characters.

I guess I should say the Once-ler is a pretty decent character in and of himself, but he very much suffers from the same problem the Jim Carrey Grinch does – he’s a good, enjoyable character in his own right, but he’s not a very good Once-ler. In fact, he at points borders on “in name only” territory. Still, he does have a pretty solid arc, and that villain song slaps, so… I think he’s solid, and Ed Helms does a good job voicing him.

THE BAD

Jon Lajoie, while in character as his misogynistic moron rapper MC Vagina, said this:

When I first heard this lyric, I didn’t understand it… but his words were a prophecy, because that is, in all honesty, the plot of this film. Our flavorless protagonist Ted really just wants to get the Truffula trees back so he can get into the pants of the local smoking hot redhead hippie, Audrey. It gets to the point where Ted’s motivations are so boring and shallow that Audrey actually would have made a far more interesting and compelling protagonist, seeing as she already has an inexplicable knowledge of the trees and cares about nature. When they already changed so much in the story I don’t see why they couldn’t just make the protagonist a girl while they were at it. As it is, she barely has any presence and feels like a waste, which becomes all the more awful when you know she’s being played by a stunt casted Taylor Swift instead of an actual voice actor or even an actor period. At least Ted is Zac Efron, an actual actor, though he doesn’t do a particularly good job himself.

Then we have our villain, O’Hare. O’Hare has all the subtlety of a Captain Planet villain but none of the cheesy goodness and fun. Sure, Rob Riggle does some good delivery and gives O’Hare some memetastic moments, and sure, his selling of canned air is oddly prescient of things that happened in real life in India (though technically President Skroob Spaceballs beat him to the punch by a few decades) but it doesn’t really redeem O’Hare from being an excessively weak villain who is shoehorned into the plot solely to turn the story into a black and white morality tale. It… doesn’t work at all. What also doesn’t help is that O’Hare has an absolutely repugnant character design, looking like if Edna Mode got mangled by a sixteen wheeler and left in a ditch on the side of the road.

Finally, this movie just doesn’t really respect the story to any great degree. As mentioned above, it waters down a story that presented arguments from both sides and, while still ultimately showing the Once-ler to be wrong and shortsighted, did have him make some valid points. Here, the story is presented as there being a clear cut good and evil in a horrendously unsubtle and unpalatable way. Yes, we get that extreme deforestation and overuse of resources is bad, you don’t need to beat us over the head with it. It doesn’t help that the film also crams in a bunch of cringeworthy pop culture humor that really doesn’t add much to the story; say what you will about the anime scene from Horton, at least there was a bit of substance and reason for it. Having characters sing the Mission: Impossible theme is just making a reference for the sake of making a reference.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

So I’m gonna say that I don’t particularly find this movie to be good, per se. It’s very dumbed down and more than a little undermined by the various brand tie ins. It is a poorly executed black and white morality tale that was crafted from a very deep and engaging piece of children’s literature, and on that level, I don’t think this movie works even a little bit. Still, there’s some enjoyment that can be mined from this, particularly from some of the more so bad it’s good moments, as well as DeVito’s performance and some actual good moments of story and character. There’s some stuff to like here if you dig a bit, but really, I don’t think you really should have to do a deep dig into The Lorax to get some enjoyment.

Overall, I wouldn’t really say this movie is totally bad, but it’s definitely not good, either; it veers more into the territory of “so bad it’s good,” which is a shame but also kind of refreshing. It’s definitely an interesting film to talk about, and there are a few things about it that work, but ultimately it’s not enough to really raise the film to the level of the classic animated Seuss adaptations or even to the level of Horton. At its best, it’s okay, and at its worst, it actively undermines its own messages. I think the 6.4 it has is pretty fair… maybe a bit too fair, if I’m being honest. I’d give it something like a 5.7 or 5.8.

Again, it’s not the worst thing ever like some might tell you; hell, the adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas Illumination would go on to make is probably a worse movie. But it still doesn’t really do anything that adds to the story its telling, and it ultimately comes off as saccharine, forgettable childish fluff. It’s really a harmless movie, but it’s still probably gonna grate on anyone who holds the original story in high esteem. The {REDACTED] Critic was a bit hyperbolic in his review, but I do think he was right in principle. This movie feels like a calculated, corporate adaptation meant to be as inoffensive and marketable as possible much like every Illumination film post-Despicable Me. And if there’s one thing The Lorax shouldn’t be, it’s “inoffensive and marketable.”

#Is it really that bad?#IIRTB #review #movie review #The Lorax #Dr. Seuss #animation #animated movie #Illumination

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sakurasangcl · 5 years ago

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Redamancy

Pairing: OT7 x Reader; Yoongi x Reader

Word Count: 4.3k

Warnings: soft dom!Yoongi, oral (f receiving), Yoongi is actually being hella vanilla for once

Summary: After what was called the Near End, humanity was left with mostly males and few (fertile) females. As one of the “lucky ones” you were sent off to be given to generally two or three men and have their children. You end up in a situation where you are with seven insanely gorgeous men. (idk I suck at summaries man)

It was the day after your twenty first birthday and you were on a plane going to your new home. It was a normal occurrence in society, and you were supposedly lucky. You, however, did not give in to the propaganda so easily. One of your friends almost convinced you to run away with them, but you decided against it after hearing what happens to the people who get caught. You didn't have a death wish, nor did you want to die like they did. So, you were trying to stay calm as you flew to Seoul where your husbands, for the lack of a pleasant term, lived.

Women would pick and choose what to call to call the men they end up with. Some will say mates or soulmates, boyfriends, husbands, and even master. For you, you stuck with the more common word: husband. You felt unlucky with the fact that you had more than one, despite the average woman having two or even three. Your parents were one of the few pairs, and you wished that was you.

You let out a dejected sigh as you open your phone to the file again, reading the slim amount of information given. All you had were names, age, a picture, and the address.

The only bright side you could find was that at least they were all handsome.

Your mind wandered through the flight, hardly paying attention to the movies playing. You only snapped out of your daze when the flight attendants brought you food or water and when you were finally landing.

You felt so nervous that you could feel what you did eat trying to come back up. You swallowed and got out a piece of minty gum, trying to calm your nerves.

You walk out and get your luggage, then look around where to go. When you find a man with your name on a sign, you knew he was your driver.

"Hello, you must be Minsoo, correct? I'm Y/N." You greet him, bowing as you introduce yourself. His eyes light up in recognition, and you figure he must have seen a picture before. You glimpse his agency badge as he verifies you're you before leading you to the car and taking your luggage.

"The rest of your things are at your new home. They all have the day off work at least today and tomorrow. Things should go well, as they have been living with each other for a few years. Honestly, I'm surprised that it's just you. It's no wonder we need more people nowadays…" Minsoo talks, letting you aimlessly watch the world go by and halfheartedly listen to him speaking. "You'll have to stay at home with them for three months to start getting used to things. If they all agree after that, then you can start job hunting. Its normally suggested to get a part time job, but work and hours here have really improved and the benefits suit women really well."

"Now that we're almost there, I'll give you a few brief official words. Contact us if you don't feel safe or welcome, report any adulterous acts that may occur, and reach out if you are not being treated properly. I will have to clear you after three months before you can job search, so I'll see you then. When we stop I'll give you my card as well. Do you have any questions for me?" Minsoo says.

"Are a lot of girls treated unfairly around here? Where I'm from it can be pretty mixed…" you softly ask, staring at the giant house you pulled up to.

"Seoul has lower abuse statistics nowadays, but it does depend on who you've been paired with. Your partners should be fine. They're wonderful and I think I'm leaving you in great hands. Here is my card, and let me help get the luggage out of the car." He responds, smiling.

"Oh, um, thanks." You respond, taking the card and putting it in your purse before getting out of the car. He gets out of the car and takes out your suitcase, then follows you to the door.

You take a deep breath before knocking, wondering who would answer.

You didn't have to wait long until one of them opened the door. You recognized it as the eldest of them all, Jin.

He smiled brightly at you and opens the door wide. "You must be Y/N! I'm Seokjin, or Jin for short. Let me get your luggage for you. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable." He says, stepping out and taking your luggage from you and Minsoo.

You go inside and take off your shoes, looking around at the house. It definitely looked lived in, which came as a relief to you. Obviously, the boys must have lived together for a while for it to look this way.

Jin steps in behind you, your luggage in tow. "You must be tired. Was your flight too long?" He asks you kindly. "Let me take you to your room."

You mindlessly nod, your breathing a bit shallow and your stomach in knots. Your hands feel clammy as you follow Jin through the house.

"Don't worry about getting lost. You're welcome in any room, but it might be good to knock first in case it's someone's bedroom. After you take a nap one of us can show you around more. This one's your room. It's actually the master bedroom." Jin says, opening the door.

The room was very large and beautiful, but also rather bare. The walls were a soft gray, and a blanket on the white comforter matched it perfectly. The sheets and pillow were white and the entire room was begging to be filled by you. The few boxes of your things were by the end of the bed, which came as a relief to you. You had hoped that they wouldn’t go through your things. You were embarrassed at the thought of random men going through your clothing.

“Oh! You’re here!” A voice calls from the bathroom. You hear a little stumble and then a smaller man came out with a duster and a large smile on his face. “Hi, I’m Jimin! Don’t mind me, I’ve just been doing some last minute cleaning!” Jimin giggles. “There’s a towel hanging up in the bathroom for you so you can shower. Feel free to take as long as you’d like. If you need a hairdryer or just can’t find yours, ask any of us. Or I can blow dry your hair for you! Whatever is most comfortable for you.”

“Someone will wake you up for food if you haven’t woken up by dinner. So please, make yourself at home. Sleep, I’m sure you need it.” Jin says, setting your luggage down by the door.

“Thank you, Jin. Nice to meet you Jimin.” You say, politely bowing as they leave. You hear them saying a few things as the walk away, and make out the words “cute,” “sweet,” “very polite,” and “lucky.” A shy smile etches its way onto your face as you dig through your luggage, getting out your shower essentials.

When you walk into the bathroom, it was not what you were expecting. It was about the size of your old room, and was stunning. There was a steam shower with glass walls, leaving it open to the room. The bathtub was more of a jacuzzi, and could definitely fit two people, if not three.

You made your way to the shower, setting your things down in an alcove of the wall. You turn the shower on, delighted to find that it was easy to adjust to the perfect temperature and that the head was removable. You manage to angle the water so that when you sit down on the stone bench in the shower, the water is perfectly hitting your hair. The glass windows soon begin to fog up as you clean yourself off, humming to yourself.

Once you’re done and in your pajamas, you’re extremely tempted to just go to bed with wet hair. However, you remember how Jimin offered to dry your hair. Letting out a sigh, you opened the hallway door. “Jimin?” you softly call, putting on your bathrobe and walking down the hallway a little bit. “Jimin, where are you?” you ask, startled when a door nearby opens.

“Erm, you must be Y/N, right? I’m Taehyung.” He says, smiling brilliantly. “Jimin is down playing a game with Jungkook; I was about to go. Can I help you instead?” he gently asks you.

You pause uncertainty, unsure if you should say yes or go get JImin instead. “Would you… would you mind drying my hair? Jimin offered to but if he’s busy, then…” You begin, very uncertain of yourself.

Your request seems to delight Taehyung, as he brightens up even more. “Sure! I’d love to. Do you know where your hairdryer is? You know what, just find your brush and I’ll get the one from the bathroom. There should be a bench in your bathroom, go sit on it and I’ll meet you there.” He says delightedly.

You nod and do as he says, yawning as you sit and wait for him. You look out the window you didn’t notice earlier, enjoying the view of the woods.

Taehyung soon join you with a hairdryer and some sort of spray in hand. “This is a heat protectant, and doubles to help hair dry quicker. I saw it in the store and figured that it might help with your hair.” He admits, plugging the hairdryer in. “Let me know if I’m hurting your scalp of if it's too hot, okay?” Taehyung requests, soon beginning to blow dry your hair.

You close your eyes and easily relax under his care. He was gentle with brushing your hair, and constantly making sure the air wasn’t too hot. Once he was done, he unplugged the hairdryer and offered you his hand.

“Here, let me tuck you in. Jin said you looked exhausted. I don’t blame you, to be honest. I would be if I were you.” He says.

You take his hand and he gladly leads you to the bed. He untucks the covers and unceremoniously pulls back the sheets, opening it for you to lay down in.

“Thank you,” you say, blushing but too tired to really care. You take off your bathrobe and set it on a chair nearby before laying down. Taehyung pulls the sheets back up and bends down as though he was going to kiss you, but thinks better of it.

“Sleep well,” he tells you, turning off the lights and shutting the door behind him.

You smile at Taehyung’s cute behavior before letting your exhaustion take over. You easily fall asleep in the comfortable bed, burrowed into the sheets.

You wake up to a loud clap of thunder and a lightning strike that you swear was right outside of your window. Your skin crawls and your hair stands on end as you creep into the bathroom to use the toilet. You jump as you wash your hands, another strike lighting up the dark bathroom.

You grab one of the blankets you had been cuddling with and wrapped it around you for security. You felt slightly nauseous and your heart was pounding in your ears. Your breathing was a bit shallow as you snuck out of your room, looking around for company.

Because you don't know where the light switches are, you walk down the dark hallways with a hand on the wall. You find your way downstairs and hear gunshots. You pause, your heart stopping in your chest. Cursing and laughter follows, and you realize it must be the video games Taehyung told you about.

You cautiously head towards the sound, finding a few familiar faces and one unfamiliar one. You notice room next to Jimin, who was watching the others play, so you sneak in the room and sit close to him, jumping at the sound of the thunder again.

Jimin turns and smiles at you, softly giggling when you jump in fright. He points to the other male playing with Taehyung and says, "That's Jungkook. He's the youngest of us."

You nod at his words and unconsciously lean into him, craving his comfort from the storm.

"Did the storm wake you?" He asks.

You nod, looking up at him as he talks.

"Did you at least sleep well?' He asks again.

You nod once more before speaking up. "It frightened me. I had to pee and now am hungry. I have no clue what time it is. My phone died and I didn't plug it in."

Jimin nods and checks his phone, showing you that it was seven in the evening. "Jin should be making dinner. I'm sure he will come get us soon. You can meet everyone else then." He tells you.

You nod and yawn, holding a pillow and cuddling into it. You watch Jungkook and Taehyung play, jumping a little at the joint sound of explosions and thunder. Thankfully, soon Jin came and told everyone it was dinner time. They had just finished their round, so it was perfect timing.

"Here, let me help you up," Jimin says, smiling and offering you his hand.

You shyly take it and he leads you to the dining room where Jin had made pretty much every dish you could imagine. It was a large table, but not too large. Everyone fit, but the food was overflowing.

Your mouth was practically watering at the sight, and Taehyung pulled out one of the chairs on the end for you. Thankfully, it was facing away from the window so you would be less startled by the lightning outside.

Jungkook sat beside you shyly, and introduced himself. "I'm Jungkook," he tells you quietly, smiling.

You can't help but blush at how cute he looks and say, "Y/N. It's nice to meet you."

"I'm glad you got here safely," he adds, looking up with wide eyes as the others come in and snicker slightly at his behavior.

Taehyung sits next to you with Jimin on his other side. Jin sits across from you while the others you hadn't yet met sat on the far end.

Jin takes the opportunity to introduce everyone. "Y/N, this is Yoongi," he gestures to the smaller man next to him who had a super intense aura, "Hoseok," who was sitting next to Jimin and had a brilliant smile, "and Namjoon," the final man sitting next to Jungkook and Yoongi, who seemed very gentle and kind.

"It's nice to meet you all. Please take care of me and I will do my best to do the same for all of you." You respond, bowing your head some.

"Now that we've all been introduced, please eat. Ladies first!" Jin says, smiling as he sits.

You blush more and take food, trying a bit of everything. You find yourself getting along well with all of the boys and enjoying yourself too. Jin tries to get you to eat a third serving of everything, insisting that you should eat more. You laugh and shake your head no, shy from all of his attention.

At the end of dinner, Jimin sneaks out and gets a little cake for you to cut. "We went to a cake shop and got this. It's just a regular vanilla cake, so we hope you'll like it…" he tells you, setting it and the knife in front of you.

You're speechless; you didn't expect to have a wedding cake. "Vanilla is perfect. Thank you." You say shyly, going ahead and cutting a piece for yourself. "Do you all want a piece?" You ask them.

Because they do, you cut a piece for everyone and ate the cake happily.

At the end of dinner, Namjoon brings out paper straws cut different lengths. "I know it may not be something you like, Y/N, but for the first week we all need to…" he begins, trailing off a little and insinuating sex.

"Officiate things?" Yoongi suggests.

"Consummate our marriage?" Taehyung suggests.

"Oh, just say have sex!" Hoseok says, shaking his head.

"That. We figured that, since you don't know us well and vice versa, the easiest way to make an order is with straws. You will hold them so the part we see looks the same length, and we'll go longest straw to shortest. Does this sound alright?" Namjoon asks you.

You nod hesitantly, swallowing your fears. You had the opportunity to run away, but this is what you chose. Namjoon hands the straws to you and you fumble with them as you go to the living room to wait on the others. You make them seem the same length from where they would choose from, and wait for the few doing dishes to finish.

They come in the room and take straws, comparing them to each other. As they were figuring out the order, your heart felt like it was going to escape the cage of your chest and fly away. You couldn't make out them talking either, as all you could hear was essentially background noise.

You were nervous for what this could bring, and if you really were ready to have children.

After a few minutes Jin crouched across from you, trying to get your attention. "Hey, we have the order now. Its Yoongi, Jungkook, Hoseok, Namjoon, Taehyung, Jimin, and finally me. Obviously, the best is saved for last." He informs you with a wink.

At this, Yoongi came over to you with a shy, very gummy smile on his face. "Let's go, you must be exhausted," he says, offering you his hand.

You hesitate and look around at the others - who were watching you expectantly - before taking his hand. Yoongi led you upstairs, and paused outside a door.

"I don't mind doing this in my room or yours. But before we do, we should brush our teeth." He admits, still smiling. "That way we won't have to worry about it afterwards." Yoongi adds.

"Let's do mine. I'll meet you there?" You say tentatively. Yoongi nods and smiles.

You walk back to your room, your hands clammy and stomach in knots. You go to the bathroom and take a few deep breaths, focusing on breathing.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

When you feel calmer, you go ahead and brush your teeth. You keep your eyes closed, trying not to think about what was about to happen. Right as you were finishing your teeth there was a knock on your door.

"Come in," you say, rinsing your mouth out as Yoongi comes into your room.

"It's a lot more homey now with your things in here. It still is missing some things, but it looks a lot better than before." He tells you as you walk over to him.

You sit on the bed next to him and he gingerly takes your hand.

"It's still kind of a mess, but I can work on that in the morning. I'd like to finish unpacking at least. I'll have to set up my bookshelf too and figure out how I want things. It will look nice though, i hope. Here is a lot nicer than where I was before. It was just a measly and small apartment, so this is a pleasant change." You admit, blushing as he holds your hand.

"I'm sure most of us won't mind helping you with all of that. Make sure you take it easy though, I'm sure you will need time to get over your jet lag and to become accustomed to the time here."

"I suppose you're right…" you agree, shyly looking away.

Yoongi gently squeezes your hand once more, before asking, "Are you really okay with this? If you don't want to… we can wait."

You shake your head no. You had a feeling you could get in trouble if you said no, and you didn't want to chance that. You didn't necessarily fully trust Yoongi, but you're instincts assured you that you would be okay.

"Yoongi, I'll be fine. I'll tell you to stop if want you to, okay?" You say, turning to face him and meet his eyes.

"The safe word can be red then. Is that okay?" He asks, brushing stray hairs out of your eyes.

You nod and suddenly his lips are on yours, sucking and nibbling your lower lip. It was a hungry, devouring kiss full of lust and need. You moan softly as he grinds against you, and he takes the opportunity to let his tongue explore your mouth and dominate you.

Although his mouth and the force of his kiss is anything but soft, his fingers were gentle as he explored up your shirt, playing with the band of your shorts.

"Such a good girl for me, hmm?" Yoongi whispered, his fingers tracing up your side and squeezing your breasts through your bra, causing you to moan. "You even sound so pretty for me." He adds in a hushed voice.

Yoongi suddenly pulls away and makes quick work of discarding your shirt and bra, leaving your upper half exposed. You could see the outline of his hard on in his jeans, straining to come out.

Yoongi makes his way between your legs, settling to grind against you and suck bruises onto your neck. He works his way down to your breasts, the sensation of his teeth nibbling at your pebbled nipples causing you to gasp softly. The sound is quickly followed by a moan as he sucks harshly on it, causing your hand to pull his hair and tug it. Yoongi smirks at the sounds you're making, and let's his tongue play in the valley of your breasts before giving the other one the same treatment.

"I'm gonna make you feel so good, princess," Yoongi tells you, moving down towards your throbbing clit. He gently nips your hip as he pulls down your bottoms and underwear in one go, exposing your slick heat to his hungry eyes.

"So wet for me too," he whispers, taking his shirt off and exposing his pale yet toned body. "Can I taste you, Y/N?" Yoongi asks, looking up at you and fully enjoying the view.

You shyly nod, taking in his appearance as he licks a stripe against your throbbing core. His nose parts your labia as he finds your clit, sucking on it and causing you to get goosebumps from pleasure. A soft moan escapes you, and Yoongi is soon lapping up your juices and thrusting his tongue into you. His eyes are trained on your face as he watches you react, your eyes rolling into the back of your head with a soft gasp at the sensation. Yoongi smirks against you and begins to familiarize himself with what makes you feel the best.

As he eats you out, a tight feeling grows in your stomach, causing your gasps to get airy. At the sound, Yoongi inserts two of his fingers, stretching you. He sucks on your clit when you whine at the new sensation. His fingers quickly find your sponge like g spot, and you're soon thrown over the edge and you cum on his hands and chin.

Yoongi laps up the mess you made, and sits up smirking as he meets your eyes. You are panting softly, but still need more.

"You taste amazing Y/N," he whispers, quickly discarding his pants and boxers. Yoongi's erection proudly slaps against his toned stomach, the tip an angry red and leaking precum. "I can't wait to feel your tight little pussy wrapped around my cock." He admits, trapping you with his arms on the sides of your head as he kisses you.

Yoongi grinds his erection against your heat, and quickly reaches into the bedside table, where it turned out they had stored lubricant. He squirted some onto his hands and rubbed them together to warm it up before coating his cock with it.

"It may hurt at first, but I promise it will feel better after I get all the way in," Yoongi gently explains, kissing your lips and resting his forehead against yours. "Just tell me to stop if you need me to. Remember the safe word." He urges, the head of his cock tapping your swollen clit.

Yoongi then slowly guides himself into you, moaning at how tight you were for him. The pressure initially does hurt, but once he's fully sheathed in you, the pain starts to fade. Yoongi looks you in the eyes before beginning to thrust into you, steadily hitting your spot.

He takes your hands and buries his face in your neck, grunting softly. Yoongi sucks on the skin as he begins to pick up his pace. "Fuck, baby," he moans.

You whine and clench around him, the coil beginning to build up again.

"Are you getting close? I'm not going to last much longer…" he pants, a hand reaching down between your bodied to rub and pinch your clit.

You suddenly scream his name and cum on his cock, orgasming hard. He grunts and cums inside of you, the feeling of his seed prolonging your orgasm as you milk him dry.

When Yoongi starts to get soft he pulls out, taking a moment to admire the mess he made. "I'll be right back," he whispers, kissing your forehead and getting up.

Yoongi returns with a damp washcloth, and gently wipes off your skin. He finds you a nightgown and clean cotton panties.

"Here, let me help you get these on," he says, his touch gentle. "There you go, that's it," he murmurs.

Yoongi kisses your forehead before asking, "Do you want me to stay or should I go?"

You tiredly rub your eyes as he helps you under your covers. "Stay and cuddle?" You ask hopefully.

Yoongi gives you a wonderfully gummy smile as he puts his boxers on and slips into bed with you. He gently pulls you into his arms, and you easily fall asleep.

#ksmutclub #bts smut #bts fic #yoongi smut #ot7 smut #ot7 x reader

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