#the third bullet point is the 80s but i remembered that after making it

[jonathanbyersphd]

Fine, I will subject you to the shitpost

[vintagegeekculture]

The Chinese Cultural Inspirations for Dragon Ball Z and Super

Journey to the West was only the beginning. 

A lot of people are vaguely aware that Dragon Ball was inspired by Chinese culture and Hong Kong Kung Fu movies and novels, but are unaware of how deep and long lasting it goes. The Japanese spent the 1980s fascinated by China, which opened up from being a closed society for decades in 1978; the most famous human being in Japan in the 80s was either Michael Jackson or Jackie Chan. 

In fact, a lot of people commonly believe that the Chinese action movie and Kung Fu novel cultural and media influence on Dragon Ball ended very early on. This is untrue. Sure, we started to see qipaos and cheongsams less frequently when they headed to West City, but it absolutely did not finish, because there’s tons of influence to see even as impossibly late as Dragon Ball Super. Interestingly, I don’t think any of these point of inspirations have been pointed out before, mainly because a lot of Chinese adventure novels are simply not available in English. 

 The Piccolo/Gohan plot was inspired by the Chinese action novel “Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre.”

Okay, tell me if you’ve heard this story before: a truly demonic, weird looking monster villain is defeated by a martial arts hero, but by circumstance, is forced into training his greatest enemy’s young son. The villain trains the young boy, the son of his enemy, in martial arts and over time, becomes like a second father or uncle to him and his family, putting the boy in his “evil” sect, and thanks to his love of his rival’s son, this baddie turns over a new leaf and goes from evil to just…grumpy, and becomes a loyal, though gruff, ally of the boy.

Of course, the events of Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre are a bit different from Dragon Ball in details. The Lion King becomes Wuji’s teacher because they are both stranded together on an island after a shipwreck, for instance, and he is blinded and made vulnerable. Also, the Lion King wasn’t so much evil so much as he was misunderstood by the orthodox martial world. However, in broad outlines, this trajectory for a face turn (becomes friends with his greatest enemy’s son, and becomes like a second father to him as he trains him, causing the villain to become a gruff good guy and ally) is essentially from one of the most famous Chinese novels ever written in the 1960s. 

Oh, and while we’re at it, Gohan is likewise inspired by another character from a Louis Cha novel: the Prince of Dali Duan Yu in the Kung Fu novel Demigods and Semi-Devils. The Prince in that novel is a naïve, pacifistic scholar who prefers books to fighting, and who was raised to be timid and avoid combat, absolutely out of step with his family, all of whom are martial artists and warriors. In fact, the beginning of the story is the prince gets incredibly lost in the wilderness, where the hopelessly naïve prince is utterly out of his depth, with all the robbers and scary beasts, and needs to be saved by real martial artists that protect him like fairy godparents. He spends the first part of the story running away from everything, scared as hell. However, by circumstance, he has naturally high power he cannot fully initially control, and eventually realizes that even scholars and others who hate fighting have to sometimes become fighters to protect those they love.

The Duan Yu part of Demigods and Semi-Devils was made into a film, the Battle Wizard, which was reviewed by PewDiePie. The Dragonball similarities went over his head because, honestly, PewDiePie does not strike me as a perceptive person. 

 Hit was based on the screen persona of Chow Yun Fat.

Chow Yun Fat was a Hong Kong cinema superstar who was to director John Woo what Robert de Niro was to Martin Scorsese. There are three giveaways that Hit was based on Chow Yun Fat. One, he’s an assassin, same as Chow Yun Fat’s character in the Killer, and is even given a sequence that’s a John Woo homage with an assassination in an office building with guns pulled on an empty elevator in an act of misdirection. Second, he’s wearing the single piece of clothing Chow Yun Fat is associated with, a black trenchcoat (fun fact: in Hong Kong today, trenchcoats are called Brother Mark Coats, after Chow Yun Fat’s character in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow). Third, his power is essentially bullet time, a visual technique refined by John Woo in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s in his gunplay triad movies starring Chow Yun Fat (what, you think the Wachowskis invented it?).

 The Goku/Vegeta relationship is from “Legend of the Condor Heroes.”

Here’s a story you might have heard before. It’s about two rivals, but by circumstance, one is raised in the wilderness beyond civilization, where he becomes an honest and goodhearted, though overly naive bumpkin, martial arts prodigy. The other is raised a wealthy prince by a conquering enemy, who grows up to also become an armor wearing martial arts expert, but also a cunning, arrogant, emotionally distant sociopath.

The similarities go into their love lives, too. The unsophisticated bumpkin hero is betrothed to a daughter of a powerful bearded barbarian king against his will, while the one hint of vulnerability and loss of emotional detachment in the otherwise sociopathic prince, the crack in his smirky arrogance, is that he loves a girl he otherwise pretends to hate, and even fathers a child with her who becomes a main character later.

This is Guo Jing and Yang Kang from Legend of the Condor Heroes. The most fascinating similarity, and proof that female psychology is the same all over the world, is that the fangirls love the emotionally distant, arrogant, and sexy/evil prince (remember when Rhonda Rousey said her first crush was Vegeta?). Girls everywhere love bad boys and sexy villains, and oh boy, do they love Prince Yang Kang. I think you can probably guess who all the fan art is about for Legend of the Condor Heroes, and what ship is the most popular.

I have to emphasize that Legend of the Condor Heroes, which came out in the 1950s-60s, is possibly the most widely read novel by the most widely read novelist on earth - the sales on that dwarf Twilight and Harry Potter. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say nearly every Chinese person, even if they never read it, knows who these characters are. In fact, Yang Kang and Guo Jing from Condor Heroes are basically repeated over and over in Asian, Chinese, and Japanese culture. Does the unsophisticated but gifted martial arts prodigy bumpkin hero, and the glib, arrogant wealthy prince rival remind you of….another duo of rivals?

Gohan/Videl comes from Little Dragon Maiden

One of the most important and influential Martial Arts novels of all time is “Return of the Condor Heroes.” A sequel to Condor Heroes, this time, the main character is the teenage son of one of the main characters from the first novel. It gets even more familiar from there.

“Return of the Condor Heroes” was about a martial arts couple who are also master and student, the same age but vastly different in experience and skill so one somehow seems “older,” and they fall in love because the circumstances of training together requires they spend lots of time together and become intimate. The training story and the love story are exactly the same in “Return of the Condor Heroes.” The dead giveaway one story inspired the other is that in both, the most significant training sequence is one where the master teaches the student how to fly (though Return used a chamber of sparrows for lightness Kung Fu).

There are some differences of course – obviously in Return of the Condor Heroes, the genders of teacher and student are flipped from Gohan and Videl (it’s the Little Dragon Maiden who is a powerful teacher, and the boy who is the student). It was the girl (Videl) who was a rebellious delinquent in Dragon Ball Z, when it was the opposite in the novel, true. But it was obvious this story was in the back of the creator’s mind as a way to combine Kung Fu with the love story, by making teacher and student lovers.

Addendum: hey, remember that awesome movie Kung Fu Hustle, the one Hong Kong movies normies have seen? Well, remember the landlord and landlady? The landlady was named Xiao Lung Nu, or Little Dragon Maiden, and her husband was named Yang Guo – the same as the main characters in Return of the Condor Heroes. It was a joke that went over the heads of Westerners, by giving these names of attractive and naïve young people in love with each other to a surly, bitter, arguing and chain smoking middle aged couple who don’t give a damn.

 Going Super Saiyan comes from “Reincarnated” aka “Bastard Swordsman.”

Stop me if this sounds familiar: a terrifying warlord tyrant prone to killing underlings who displease him has achieved a level of skill and cultivation so tremendous nobody can stop him. But there is one, and only one, thing he fears and that can defeat him: a long-lost legendary skill that nobody has achieved in recent memory, that includes a supernatural combat power transformation that turns the hair light to indicate it worked.

This is “Silkworm Skill” from Reincarnated aka Bastard Swordsman, a novel and TV series from Hong Kong in the early 1980s. Of course, there are differences. To get the power boost and new hair color, the hero has to jump in a cocoon he weaves himself. In fact, the scene is so well known that they actually have it on the poster.

(To those saying “Super Saiyan turns your hair blonde, not white” my response is that it turns hair white, or uncolored, in the comic book.)

The idea of your hair turning white to indicate a new supernatural combat transformation or martial state wasn’t created by Bastard Swordsman, though – though it is the best example and probably the one most familiar to a 1980s audience due to the hugely popular books and TV series. For an older example, a famous Chinese movie based on a folktale is “Bride With the White Hair,” about a bride who’s hair turns white when she is betrayed, in her anger, she becomes less a woman and more a supernatural creature of vengeance (interesting that anger should be the means to unlock it).

[queen0fm0nsterz]

Going by your headcanon that Hunter used to work at the maw when Scarecrow Girl was the Lady, I wonder if the Hunter didn't kill Six is due to how he's subtly influenced to take in the girl that will became the next Lady and how he's basically there to create a situation so that Six will meet Mono in the first place?

MASTERPOST

(read this post, this post and this post for context!)

It could definetely be the case! But I think Hunter being able to see Six's face clearly had a part in him deciding to capture her instead of killing her.

I know I keep referencing this scene, however I find to be absolutely crucial. This is where he "recognizes" her. Hunter had her right where he wanted: he could have completed the hunt right here and she wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Another thing I want to point out is that Hunter only aims for Mono during the "boss fight". Six ends up getting hurt by the bullets only if she's standing close to the boy. It's not that Hunter's against killing children because he very clearly isn't, he's against killing Six.

Then, of course, there's the Hunter's (supposed) ties to the Maw. I do have an headcanon that he worked during the Scarecrow's reign: the reason why I think so is because he's in one of the paintings we have to light up to get access to her.

There's also this paper & the little Nome who came back with him.

And while I think the several broken mirrors may be tied to... someone else, I do agree that they may also be a reference to the Lady.

Now that I think about it, Hunter and the current Lady are similar to each other in quite a few ways. The mask, the broken mirrors, them keeping away from the world most of the time, their disliking of TVs... Huh. Even Hunter making himself a family through taxidermy could be seen as a parallel to the Lady rocking the baby doll like it's an actual baby.

... We'll keep a pin on that for later. Back to Hunter and Scarecrow.

If the order is correct and the Lady in Blue was indeed the third Lady, then... I don't know how to put this, uh, Hunter has been alive for much longer he should have. We don't know how many years pass between a Lady and the next, but it can't be a short time because of the Thin Man & Lady coexistence theory - which requires... well, a Thin Man. Like the grown, over 8 feet tall, 80+ year old man.

Even if Hunter arrived at the Maw extremely young or only worked there in his youth, mans should have expired a LONG time ago.

Trying to understand how he could possibly be alive after all that time, I remembered the stuffing. On his arm, on his waist. Not unlike his victims. Then, I got a good listen to his theme, Boot Through the Undergrowth, and realized how MUCH it makes it sounds as if Hunter is costantly surrounded by fleas, much like the dead bodies found all around the forest.

My hot take from this: Hunter is dead. Yet, at the same time, he isn't.

He is, quite literally, a walking corpse moved by pure instinct alone.

Meaning his choice of keeping Six was based on instinct, which is why I agree with what you said, anon: (supposed) former Maw employees are drawn to the future Ladies.

[twothumbsandnostakeincanon]

Every time you lose someone you truly love, you lose a primary feather... And Stiles realizing how few feathers he actually has left in relation to his friends, the pack, etc

oh it’s make Twothumbs cry hours huh? That’s what we’re doing tonight?? We’re making me cry??? I’m taking you all down with me. 

Scott’s feather was the first feather Stiles actually remembered growing. 

The fierce love he had for his brother-by-choice had spiked a pinfeather a year after his mother’s feather had fallen out. Once the new one reached full size, Stiles had been able to fly again. Still clumsy, still a struggle- but he’d been able to fly on his own for the first time in a year.

Sometime after that he grew a feather for Lydia too, giving him his third. He knew Lydia didn’t have one for him, but that was okay. The extra feather had given him more stability, made staying in the air a little easier, and that was enough for him to love her even more.

His father’s feather was the on the furthest tip of his right wing. The feathers he grew for his favorite deputies at the station lived on his right wing too. Melissa’s feather was on the left, in between Scott’s and Lydia’s. 

He had a total of eight primaries at the beginning of his sophomore year. Classmates laughed at his notorious clumsiness, sniggering as he banked wildly in the air, their young minds unable to make the connection of exactly why he lacked the fine control most others had naturally with ten or more primary feathers.

Stiles didn’t really care. He’d come a long way from a single feather. 

Perhaps that was why he went with Peter, though: the single primary feather hanging loosely from his wings. It was such a foreign and familiar sight; familiar from a year of seeing it on himself, and foreign for having never seen it on anyone else. 

He could have fought more. Could have argued, could have screamed, could have done any number of things on that field. Instead, he looked at that dangling feather, and went with him. 

Later that evening, he looked at it again as it drifted to the ground moments before Derek ripped out Peter’s throat. 

__________

God, he ached. 

Stiles gingerly taped gauze over the cut that Argent left in his thigh before reaching for the arnica cream. He decided to only put it on the biggest bruises, and yet ended up covering most of his body anyway.

After that, he carefully stepped into sweats, forgoing a shirt. He could put one on after he checked over his wings. 

Stiles sat down on his bed, turning on his lamp and directing it toward himself like a spotlight. Then he stopped. He needed to check them- he knew that bastard had at least ripped out a handful of coverts. 

But he didn’t look. He just sat there. Exhausted, unwilling, and alone. 

Scott was at Allison’s house. 

Just like he’d been when the kanima had trapped Stiles at the pool. 

Just like the day after Matt brought the kanima to the station, when Stiles lost three primary feathers.

Just like every other time Stiles had needed him in the last few months. 

“Well, one of us was recently dead, but by the looks of things here I’m not sure it was actually me.” 

Stiles, lacking the energy to startle, just slowly looked up at his window to see Peter smoothly duck in. 

“You’re actually back,” he said with a blink. Peter raised an eyebrow.

“You saw me at the warehouse, didn’t you?” he asked. Stiles waved a hand. 

“I got the shit kicked out of me and then crashed my car into a lizard boy,” he said listlessly. “What I did and didn’t see is up for some serious debate.” 

“Hm,” Peter said, eyes sharply taking in the bruises and cuts on Stiles’ upper body. “I can see that.” 

Stiles suddenly remembered that he’d helped kill Peter, and that he currently had all of his injured vulnerable points on display. He thought he should probably be more concerned about it than he was. 

Instead, he finally reached back and carefully pulled out his left wing, looking away from Peter and checking it over. Sure enough, he had a bloody bald patch where Argent had torn out several feathers. 

Something tapped him on the shoulder, and Stiles glanced over to see Peter holding out a tube of antibacterial. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled distractedly, twisting it open and wincing slightly as he smoothed it over the sensitive skin. Growing those back was going to itch like hell. 

After that, he carefully worked down the rest of the wing, feeling his way along the afterfeathers to check for more injuries. He found a few bent, one broken, and then just as he reached the end of the wing-

Peter sucked in a tiny breath. 

Stiles held a primary in his hand. 

He stared at it, loose in his open palm. 

There was a long moment of silence, eventually broken by Peter quietly saying, “That’s going to make flying more difficult.” 

Stiles continued to stare at the feather for another moment before forcing himself to look away.

“I still have four. I’ve flown with less.”

He carefully set Scott’s feather down on his nightstand, and deliberately turned to examine his right wing. Silence once again reigned between them, broken only by the brush of Peter handing him more antibacterial for a few more broken feathers. 

By the time he was done, Stiles was utterly exhausted. 

“Did you actually want something?” he asked. He just wanted to sleep, and he couldn’t even begin to interpret the look on Peter’s face. It smoothed out a moment later anyway. 

“Yes, but it can wait. Go to sleep. I’ll see you later, Stiles.” 

And with that, he ducked out the window again. 

Stiles watched as Peter swept his wings out behind himself to slow his fall-

Wings with absolutely no primary feathers.

__________

Stiles had so much shit to take care of. The Alpha pack was still out there fucking up everyone’s shit, and someone else was doing ritual sacrifices, and his dad had asked if he was on drugs, and he had Spanish vocab to finish-

Just, so much shit. 

And yet. And yet, here he was, opening a box from Ebay with a used pair of flight aids in it. 

They didn’t look great. And from what Stiles could remember of his childhood experience, they weren’t terribly comfortable either. But they did work, taking the place of missing primary feathers and allowing greater freedom of movement. 

Something Stiles thought was likely very desirable to a werewolf with a history of being murdered. 

Before he could think too hard about it, he threw the fight aids back in the box and drove over to Peter’s apartment. 

As he walked up to the door, hands full, he hesitated again. What was he doing here? Maybe he should just leave the box on the welcome mat- but the choice was taken out of his hands when Peter’s door opened upon approach. 

“Stiles. How… surprising,” Peter drawled. “I don’t remember telling you where I live.”

Stiles raised his eyebrow 

“I didn’t tell you where I live either, but you still showed up at three a.m.; directly into my room, I might add.” He shook his head, dismissing the question and pushing forward now that the opportunity for misgivings was gone. “Here, take the box.” 

Peter raised an eyebrow, gingerly accepting it as he scented the air. He scrunched his nose slightly in distaste. 

“This doesn’t smell like you. Whose is this?”

“Okay first,” Stiles ticked off a finger, “it’s weird for you to just casually mention that something does or does not smell like me, and two,” he ticked off a second finger, “it’s yours. I mean, now. Now it’s yours. It was someone else’s.” 

“Mm, yes, nothing says ‘heartfelt gift’ like pre-used goods,” Peter said dryly, finally stepping back into his apartment, allowing Stiles in. “What is it?” 

Stiles followed, looking away uncomfortably before answering. 

“I, uh. When I was a kid, I tried a couple of different flight aids. Just for getting to school and back, you know? This type was the best. Not great or anything, but they let you move fast.”

Peter stilled completely, frozen for a beat with his hands on the box. 

“It’s just,” Stiles hurried on, “if you get eaten by the Alpha Pack or whatever because you’re trapped on the ground, then we’ll be left with just Derek again, and he doesn’t know shit about anything, except maybe like the top ten ways to lose shirts, so you have to have something. I know they’re ugly, but like. You have to have something, and those were the ones that worked best for me, but the company doesn’t exist anymore so… Ebay.” 

He finished awkwardly, hands shoved in his pockets. 

Peter looked at him for a moment, a strange expression on his face, before saying, “Thank you.”

Stiles shrugged. 

“No problem.” He cleared his throat a little. “Anyway. Uh. Bye.” 

Stiles moved to leave, but hesitated when Peter started chuckling. He looked back over his shoulder, suspicious that he was being mocked, but Peter just smiled. 

“I’m not kicking you out, Stiles. Stay for a minute and help me try these out.” And with that, he finally opened the box and pulled out one of the flight aids, examining it. “They clip onto my primary coverts?”

Stiles watched him for a moment. 

He still had so much shit to take care of… but he could stay for a bit.

Or maybe a bit longer. 

__________

Stiles checked his primaries. Again. There were three. Still three, after the bomb at the station. After the nogitsune. One for his dad, one for Melissa, one for Lydia.

There were still three.

They just weren’t the same three-

“Any fresh word on our local hit list?” Peter drawled, entering the apartment with two cups of coffee.

Stiles hurriedly dropped his wings, tucking them behind himself and out of sight.

“Nope. It’s pretty hard to find out what’s going on when our only lead got murdered,” Stiles said pointedly, turning back to his laptop.

“As if we were going to get a word out of someone with no mouth anyway,” Peter scoffed, setting down one of the cups next to him as he looked over Stiles’ shoulder at the screen. “You haven’t been able to find any more contractors?”

“Oh no, I’ve found plenty of contractors. All with equally stupid names. ‘The Chemist,’ and ‘The Butchers,’ and ‘Bullet 80.’ It feels like a list of early 2000’s band names.” Stiles sat back, picking up his coffee for a sip. “It’s just that there’s no way to know how they’re getting job offers.” Peter reached over his shoulder to scroll down a page, leaning his other hand on Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles tried not to shiver, and as always lately, failed.

Peter was the only one who touched him so casually anymore.

Peter squeezed a bit, beginning to knead the muscle there seemingly without thought, and Stiles leaned into it.

“This is a lot of assassins,” Peter murmured as he continued to scroll.

“I mean, if the prices here are any indication, it’s a pretty lucrative career I guess,” Stiles said gesturing lightly at the screen with his cup. Peter hummed in agreement.

“Lucrative, but perhaps an over-saturated market,” Peter mused, contemplative. “However, if we were to clear out some of the competition…”

Stiles reached up and lightly flicked Peter in the ear with his free hand.

“We’re not going to start murdering for money.”

Peter scowled, pulling his hand away from Stiles’ shoulder to protectively cover his ear.

“As opposed to doing it for free like we are now? Like chumps?” he challenged.

“Like chumps,” Stiles said firmly. “Besides, you know you would hate the cleanup.”

Peter reluctantly smiled.

“Yes, I suppose that at least is right.”

With one last light stroke to Stiles’ upper coverts, Peter took his own coffee and moved to the other side of the table where his own laptop sat.

They continued searching for information long past the time the coffee was gone, occasionally speaking but more often silent. Stiles began to get more worried the longer they went without finding answers.

His fingers found their way back into his feathers again, winding around his primaries as they did so often.

And just like every other time lately, a slow sense of unease crept over him as he felt them.

“It doesn’t seem to help,” Peter said quietly from across the table.

Stiles startled, hand tightening. Peter was looking at him, and gestured at the place Stiles was gripping.

“You hold on to your primaries often lately, but it never seems to comfort you. Not anymore.”

Stiles let out a slow breath, ready to blow him off, to say it was nothing-

But.

“They’re not the same,” he murmured. “When the Nogitsune- I don’t know, made a new body for me or whatever, he didn’t quite-“ Stiles blew out a frustrated breath, knowing how ridiculous this was going to sound. “They look exactly the same, but they don’t feel right. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong, but every time I touch them… I start to wonder if they’re actually mine. And if they’re not mine, whose are they?”

His hands clenched around his feathers again, torn between the instinct to preserve his feathers and his ability to fly, and to tear out the invaders that grew out of whatever twisted facsimile of love the nogitsune was capable of. 

He startled yet again when hands covered his own, carefully prying them away.

“They’re yours, Stiles,” Peter said, voice calm, locking Stiles’ hands in his own. “Even if somehow they weren’t grown for the same people as your first feathers, they’re still sustained by that. They’re maintained for the people you love.”

Stiles looked back at Peter, wanting to believe.

“They’re yours, Stiles,” he repeated. 

Stiles took a deep breath. 

“They’re mine.” 

With one last grateful squeeze to Peter’s hand, he turned back to his laptop. 

__________

“I’m borrowing this book.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yeah I am.” 

Peter rolled his eyes at the kitchen table where he continued typing. Stiles could see it from where he lay sprawled in the living room, and grinned. 

“No you’re not. Borrowing implies you’ll be taking it somewhere else, and you spend all of your time here,” Peter said distractedly. 

“I do not!” Stiles protested. Peter briefly looked up at him with a dry expression. 

“In the last week, the only reason you’ve left my apartment was to go home to make dinner for your father. Last night you didn’t even leave to do that, you just made it in my kitchen and then took it to him at the station.”

“You offered-!”

“I didn’t say I don’t want you here,” Peter said, eyes never leaving his laptop, “just that it hardly makes sense to say you’re borrowing something when the thing you’re borrowing is unlikely to leave my apartment anyway.”

Stiles’ mouth hung open for a moment before snapping shut. Peter’s feathers shuffled a bit as he rearranged his wings, apparently intent on the email he was typing. Stiles thought it was probably a “fuck you” business letter. Peter always really got into those. His feathers fluttered a bit again, and something odd caught Stiles’ eye. 

A small new feather. 

A primary feather. 

His mouth dropped open again. 

He almost said something. He very, very nearly said many things. 

But Peter’s wings readjusted again, and the tiny feather disappeared. 

Stiles snapped his jaw shut. 

Because Peter had a point- Stiles was here most of the time. Almost all the time, in fact. 

So he would know if Peter had repaired his relationship with Derek, or if he’d found a new relationship outside the pack. 

Mind occupied, he absently scratched at the tip of his right wing, smoothing along the new quill there. 

Maybe he would get to keep this one for a while. 

[clevercatchphrase]

2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

 Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

 Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

 Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

 Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

 Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

 The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

 To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

 Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

 Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

 Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

 And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

 Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

 ON TO 2021!

 I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

 Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

 Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

 1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

 2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

 3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

 4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

 5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

 6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

 7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

 8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

 9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

 11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

 Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

 Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

 For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

 I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

 Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

 I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

 I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

 Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

 I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

 I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

 I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

 Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

 Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

 Good night.

[lightchildofthespring]

The fantastic adventures of Takeru Takaishi

Chapter 3: Takeru's amazing (ruined) plan

{In which Takeru’s marvelous plan to save the revolutionaries doesn’t work quite as predicted and one Ken Ichijouji steals his thunder when it comes to speeches}

When Osamu told his little brother to stop working on the pepper field to join the henchmen, Ken was hesitant, but couldn't think on a good excuse to decline. It was too exhaustive to work 18 hours per day, seven days per week, on one of Yamanaka's farms, after all. And the payment of 50 cents of royale per hour was far from being enough to buy food and other necessary things from the shops controlled by Yamanaka. Since most of the population of Turtle Island worked on his farms, most of the people were indebted to him and couldn't leave their jobs; those who tried to escape without paying their debts were hunted by his henchmen and murdered as examples.

However, there was one opportunity for a simple worker to gain a bigger remuneration: to become a henchman. The problem was that a henchman's job was to assure that workers remained productive and obedient, to collect taxes and other payments and to severely punish those who didn't fall in line. That was the job Osamu had chosen. His alleged reason for working for Yamanaka was to pay their family's debt and save enough money to buy a good boat, so he and his brother could start a travelling business. For Ken, that excuse wasn't good enough. Nevertheless, it was difficult to say no to Osamu.

For that reason, he was following his brother and the other henchmen up the hill to fight the revolutionaries. Osamu insisted for Ken to carry a shotgun like his, but Ken took a small pistol instead. He wasn't planning to fire it, but his brother wouldn't like to hear that.

“Just you wait until you shoot someone for the first time, Ken. You'll see there's nothing difficult about it,” Osamu told him.

“Have you ever... killed people...?” Ken asked.

“I do my job,” Osamu said back. “If everybody just did what they were supposed to do, they wouldn't have to be punished. Honestly, it's their own fault if they get killed.”

“Was it Mom's and Dad's fault...?” Ken muttered.

Osamu turned to face him. His angry expression made Ken step back.

“Stop bringing them up!” Osamu ordered. “They shouldn't have tried to run from paying their debt! They should've paid it! If it wasn't for their transgression, maybe I wouldn't have to do this kind of job in the first place! I'm the one who provides for you, so show me some respect!”

“I do work on the farm...” Ken murmured, looking down.

“You can barely buy bread with your payment!” Osamu stated. “Which is why you should join me as a henchman already! I'll show you how there's no big deal about it!”

Ken shivered, but didn't say anything else. Osamu wouldn't listen to him, anyway.

Right before they entered the woods, someone came from among the trees. It was a young man with spiky red hair and black eyes. He stood in front of the group of 80 people and gave them a severe look.

“You should turn back right away!” the stranger told them. “You are dealing with forces you don't comprehend and your insistence on fighting the revolutionaries will bring-”

Osamu shot the stranger on the forehead before he could finish his sentence. Blood splattered from the bullet injury as the man fell on his back, completely still.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?” Ken shouted.

“I did my job,” Osamu replied, coldly.

“You just killed someone!” Ken cried. “How can you act as if that's normal?! What's the matter with you?!”

“You better stop disrespecting me, Ken! Or else!” Osamu said in a threatening tone.

However, they noticed shrieks coming from the large group around them; those men and women who usually bragged about not being scared by anything were all pointing to the stranger who had been killed not long before. Ken and Osamu turned to that direction and saw the red-haired man standing up. The bloody hole on his forehead expelled the bullet and then closed itself. He tried to wipe away some of the blood on his face, but he just spread it more.

“You're still here...?” the stranger had a confused voice. “I had never come back so fast... please, don't kill me again, otherwise-”

The henchmen discharged their weapons on the stranger as if there was no tomorrow. Maybe because they probably thought there would be no tomorrow for them if they didn't kill that thing, whatever that was.

“I-I-I must've missed the shot earlier,” Osamu muttered, shaking from head to toes, “yeah... t-that's what happened... but now we definitely killed that guy!”

“OH MY GODDESS, WHAT THE HECK?!” various people shouted, pointing at the man soaked in his own blood, who was once again rising to his feet. The henchmen tried to shoot again, but realized they were out of munition.

“You all are really inconsiderate people, you know that?!” the stranger shouted, furious. “It's my third resurrection today! THIRD! I can't wait for you to die and go to the Underworld! All the people you've killed are waiting for you there! And then, you'll understand the pain you've inflicted on so many others!”

“U-Underworld...?” Osamu asked in a weak voice. “Is he talking about Hell...? D-Did that thing come from H-Hell?!”

“It's a demon!” Someone yelled. “He's going to kill us and drag us to Hell!”

“Do you see now that you're dealing with forces you don't understand?” the red-haired man inquired. “Leave the revolutionaries alone or face the consequences!”

The henchmen all screamed and ran away. Ken was the only one left behind. He fell to his knees, shaking. What had he just witnessed?

“Nooooooooo!!!” a cry came from the woods, followed by an elegant blond man running in the direction of the person who was soaked in his own blood. “Koushiro! You ruined everything! You were supposed to deliver the inspiring speech I wrote and make them see the errors of their ways!”

Five more people followed the well-dressed young man down the hill.

“Well, our group escaped safely and those dreadful henchmen are gone,” a woman with orange hair and a gentle smile said. “The way I see, everything turned out fine. Cheer up, Takeru!”

“But my beautiful speech was never heard!” Takeru cried. “I knew I should've been the one to deliver it!”

“If you had done that, you'd be the one shot on the head,” an older blond man with a grumpy face told the younger one, “unlike Koushiro, you can't come back to life. You would've died pointlessly!”

“You don't have to be so matter-of-the-fact, Yamato...” the woman with orange hair said.

“The special protection I created worked perfectly!” a beautiful lady with shiny purple hair announced in a proud voice while approaching Koushiro.

“About that, Miss Miyako...” Koushiro murmured, taking from under his shirt what looked like a deformed piece of armor, “... you'll probably have to fix it...”

“That's easy!” Miyako dismissed. “But, tell me, how did you do that trick of faking being shot in the head? It was quite impressive, I must say.”

“I was actually shot in the head multiple times,” Koushiro told her. “I died twice.”

“Yeah, right!” Miyako laughed.

“It's true, Miyako,” a young man with dark pink hair said, “if we look around, we'll certainly find pieces of Koushiro's-”

And, at that moment, his eyes locked with Ken's. Cold sweat ran down Ken's forehead. The revolutionaries had discovered him! What would they do to someone that had stood by their enemies' side? Ken tried to remember terrifying stories about how vengeful the revolutionaries were. But the truth was that he had never actually heard any story like that. When the common folk talked about the revolutionaries, they always used the words “good-for-nothing” and “hiding among the trees.” Maybe Ken shouldn't worry too much about his fate, after all.

“There's still one henchman left!” the pink-haired guy shouted, pointing a finger at Ken, startling almost everyone else.

“You mean you hadn't seen him?” the teenager with dark hair and green eyes asked.

“Iori, you had seen him and didn't alert us?!” Miyako was alarmed.

“I thought he had surrendered or something!” Iori adopted a defensive tone. “How did nobody else notice a person kneeling on the ground?!”

“I don't know... he has kind of an unremarkable face, I guess...” the one with pink hair said.

Unremarkable? Ken couldn't accept that insult! Sure, he had trouble standing up to his beliefs and confronting people, but that didn't mean... in truth, that probably meant he was an unremarkable person. Understanding that made him depressed. Especially because the ones calling him unremarkable were the good-for-nothing revolutionaries that did nothing more than hiding among the trees all day!

“That's kind of a mean thing to say about someone, Daisuke,” the woman with orange hair told the man who had insulted Ken.

“Sora, we don't have to be nice to one of our enemies!” Yamato pointed out. Then, he got closer to Ken and pointed his shotgun to his face.

Reassessing his previous conclusion, Ken decided that maybe he should worry a bit about the revolutionaries. Or at least about the blond grumpy one pointing a shotgun to his face like some maniac.

“Wait, no! He's an ally! Or, better said, he's going to be an ally!” Koushiro shouted. The young man covered in blood ran to Ken's direction and put himself between him and Yamato. “I had a vision of him... erhm... it's kind of a random vision, actually... you were all on a ship... or a boat... and Mr. Takeru was looking at the moon and wondering in loud voice what surprising developments the trip would bring...”

“That is indeed something I do every time I travel...” Takeru admitted, looking up at the dark sky while striking a dramatic pose. Or at least that was what Ken thought he wanted to do as the younger blond man ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head slowly and then pointed at nothing specific in the dark sky. “Because life... is the greatest mystery of all...”

Ken wasn't sure what was happening. Were those fools really the revolutionaries? Even though nobody ever gave too much credit to them, Ken had always assumed they had to be minimally competent to be considered a threat to Yamanaka. But upon encountering that group, he couldn't help but wonder how they hadn't been wiped out yet? Maybe Yamanaka's men were even more incompetent than them. To realize that his oppressors weren't actually a mighty unit but a bunch of incompetent morons that could be taken down with minimal organization and effort was a bit underwhelming.

Koushiro turned to face him, like all the others were doing. But, unlike the other revolutionaries, there was no glimpse of preoccupation in his eyes, as if he was sure that Ken wasn't a threat. Koushiro intrigued him, not only because of his unexplainable resurrections, but mainly because he had the air of someone who knew a lot more than he was willing to share. It took him a few seconds to realize that the others were expecting him to say something. Unsure about what to do, Ken stood up and raised his hands above his head, as a sign that he wasn't dangerous.

“Listen, my name is Ken...” he hesitated, remembering that revealing his family name would denounce him as the brother of someone who certainly had killed several revolutionaries, “I never wanted to work for Yamanaka as a henchman... I worked on one of his farms, though... but what other choice did I have if not working for him in a way or another? He owns everything on Turtle Island! I never wanted to become a henchman, but I was coerced into joining their group anyway! I never killed anyone, though! But if I were to kill a person... it would be the bastard who had my parents murdered because they tried to run from their debts!”

Against his will, Ken let a couple of tears escape his eyes. It was never easy to remember what had happened to his family. If his parents hadn't been caught trying to escape, his predicament certainly wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe his brother wouldn't have become a murderer for the sake of taking care of him.

Yamato put down his shotgun. The threatening aura he had been exhibiting had vanished. In his blue eyes, Ken thought he had seen a glimpse of sadness and compassion.

“My parents were also killed because of debt...” Daisuke said. He approached Ken and put a hand on the newcomer's shoulder, in solidarity. “They were good people... they didn't deserve that... nobody deserves that!”

“My family is alive, but we've been persecuted too. We tried to own a small business... our goal was to sell things for affordable prices... but it got shut-down by force by those men...they broke everything we owned... Yamanaka doesn't like anyone defying his monopoly...” Miyako muttered, also approaching Ken.

“For as long as Yamanaka stays alive, everybody on Turtle Island will continue to suffer!” Sora stated, clenching her fists. Ken was taken aback by the intensity in her voice. It was if those terrible things had happened to her. Perhaps they had, to some extent.

Ken was starting to understand that the revolutionaries were normal people, just like him and everybody he knew. Of course, they suffered because of Yamanaka as well. That should make them the most motivated people to fight him. And thanks to Koushiro, who had dispersed the henchmen, there was no better time to fight that horrible man.

“Let's go kill Yamanaka!” Ken proposed. “His henchmen ran away and, from what I heard, there's only a weird monk protecting him right now! This is the best chance we'll ever have of killing him! Let's do it!”

The revolutionaries exchanged concerned looks. Koushiro paled and looked down.

“Do you think we're foolish enough to listen to someone who was our enemy a couple of minutes ago?” Iori inquired.

“We gave our comrades time to flee, our mission was accomplished!” Yamato reminded the others. “We should reunite with them now! There's no need to do anything unnecessary”

That comment ignited Ken's fury. Was it unnecessary to fight? Was it unnecessary to free Turtle Island from that tyrant?

“Oh, right! Go hide in the woods again! That's all you revolutionaries do, right?” Ken accused. “It's not like you ever bothered about helping anyone!”

“That's not true!” Sora interjected. “We've been recruiting new people and organizing our forces to prepare-”

“For how many decades have the revolutionaries been preparing?” Ken wasn't willing to back down. “How many people have died due to your inaction? How many have lost their loved ones because you weren't ready to fight? You are all a bunch of useless spineless good-for-nothings!”

Nobody contested Ken's accusations, as if deep down they already knew all that. Ken was disappointed. If they at least tried to argue, maybe he could understand the reasons for someone to stay still on the face of injustice. And then, maybe, he would have an excuse for his own life-long inaction. But the truth was that there was no excuse and it was time for Ken to take responsibility for his future instead of letting himself follow the flow. Even if he was alone, he had the moral obligation to at least try to do the right thing.

Ken was about to turn around and head towards Yamanaka's mansion when Sora suddenly spoke:

“You're right!”

Ken stopped moving. Did he hear that right? Did his unremarkable words have an effect on someone else?

“Sora, no!” Yamato protested.

“He's right! This is our best chance! We might never get one like this again!” she stated.

“It's not intelligent to invade that place without a plan!” Yamato insisted. “We should at least head back to our comrades and plan an attack!”

“That would give Yamanaka's henchmen time to regroup,” Miyako said. “This window of opportunity won't open again! We should strike now!”

“I don't like the idea of listening to an enemy but... I'll accept anything to bring justice to Yamanaka's victims!” Iori murmured, angrily.

“To me, it would be stupid to lose this chance! Think about all the people we could save if Yamanaka's rule ends tonight!” Daisuke had hope in his voice. “We can do this! We can win!”

“It's a bit sudden... but I'm all for this new development!” Takeru exclaimed. “In the end, my words really inspired transformation!”

“You mean Ken's words,” Miyako corrected him. “Nobody listened to your speech.”

Takeru had a mortified expression. Then, he looked at Ken with rage so deep that it should only be directed at the most despicable of creatures.

“It seems that there's no stopping you...” Yamato sighed. Then, he turned to Koushiro and asked: “You said we would all be on a ship, right? Does that mean that none of us is going to die tonight?”

“That's correct,” Koushiro confirmed. “You will all survive... I probably won't, though...”

“Why do you say that?” Sora asked, worried.

“That monk that is protecting Yamanaka is not an ordinary person... he's the one responsible for most of my deaths for the last centuries...” Koushiro informed the others. “He won't stop until he kills me for good.”

“Who on Earth is that monk?” Daisuke questioned. “Another demon?”

“An old enemy?” Takeru wondered. “A nemesis?”

Koushiro hesitated for a few seconds before answering:

“My best friend.”

[tessatechaitea]

Justice Society of America #6 (1993)

Weak as an asthmatic kitten in light!

Do cats get asthma? I'd hate for somebody to fact check and discover I once said an incorrect thing! My reputation as a staunch teller of ultimate truths is on the line here. Anyway, if it turns out cats can't get asthma, I was speaking euphemistically and you were too dumb to understand that. Dumby. I don't want to call my readers "dumby" but you remember that part about me being a staunch teller of ultimate truths? Well, sorry to reveal something your parents were too cowardly to confide to you. I was too busy contemplating how incredibly fucking cute and sweet a little coughing asthmatic kitten would be pay attention to the cover of JSA #6. But now that I've really looked at it, I'm confused as to why Doctor Mid-Nite is beating up zookeepers. I hesitate to assume the reason is that he's blind because that would probably be ableist. Maybe he was just molested by zookeepers as a young man. An aside: the family member I admire most on Facebook is the one who posts absolutely nothing about anything but every now and then unlocks a badge from Untappd.

Is this an historically accurate Nazi uniform? It looks like she's trying to make the shape of a swastika.

Ugh. I can't believe I just became one of those people who put "an" in front of "historically." It's weird how a little bit of side-boob can make me start thinking, "Were the Nazis really so terrible?" But this is a fictional world where they actually weren't that terrible! They even had a giant war Ferris wheel that would roll around ravaging the world and genociding people. Kind of exactly like a carnival, really. In the real world, Nazis were super bad and they are the villains of every action movie ever set from 1938 to, I'm assuming, 2021. I'm sure we're right around the corner from a Wicked-style Broadway musical from the perspective of Adolf Hitler where the audience learns that he wasn't really the bad guy the earlier protagonists made him out to be. If you don't want that to happen, you'll probably need to go back in time to murder John Gardner before he writes Grendel because I'm pretty sure that's where this whole "let's examine the life and motivations of the bad guy outside of the light of the previous protagonist's propaganda!"

I was thoroughly anti-Nazi when I began reading this comic book but these side-boob arguments are really winning me over.

How are the JSA going to win me back to their side?! They only have one woman on the team and Hawkgirl doesn't ever show any side-boob! I'm afraid America is about to fall and all I can think is, "Hee hee hee. Hee hee hee. Boobies." The Justice Society flies in to spout some patriotic garbage about liberty while The Flash beats up all the Nazis during the first third of the speech. I wonder if The Flash ever gets emotionally exhausted having to bear so much of the load of battling the bad guys. It's a good thing he's not one of those jerks you always wind up working with who never wants to do more work than the next guy so he always works as slowly as possible. But the problem in blue collar work is that most of the people you wind up working with are that guy! So their work output winds up being that of the lowest common denominator. Imagine if The Flash was one of those guys! He'd have to wait for Doctor Mid-Nite to throw a smoke bomb and fist fight a guy for five minutes before The Flash would take out his man in one second (after standing around for four minutes and fifty-nine seconds). The battle goes poorly for the Nazis which I'm elated to see because, you know, proud patriot here and all. Boo Nazis! Boo? Boob! Nazi side-boobs! Go Nazis! As the Nazis nearly defeated, they launch a huge bomb at the White House (which is where this fight is taking place because the Nazis are trying to kill Roosevelt).

"Look! Up in the sky! A noise!"

Yes, you perverts. That's the leg of the side-boob Nazi on the left and if I'd scanned a little bit more, you would have had a nice crotch shot. Sorry to disappoint you, horny nerds. Green Lantern lets the bomb explode on a big green patriotic shield because the Nazi's were too dumb to make the bomb out of two by fours. Wildcat says, "Yay!", as Roosevelt watches through a nearby window. His nurse, Nancy, approaches him slowly from behind. She pulls a Nazi pistol on him, full of Nazi bullets! It looks like the end! But then a bag of sand hits her in the side of the face and she forgets to pull the trigger as she says, "Gast! I'll...ooooh!" Then she dies, I guess? The Nazi story was being told to Jesse Quick by Alan and Jay. It was never reported because the American populace is too weak to hear certain news items. Why when we think about a population as a whole, we attribute all of the worst attributes to them? Cowardly, stupid, irrational. Why don't we think, "I would react fine to that news so I'm assuming everybody else would too." Instead, we simply assume everybody is a bigger and weaker jerk than we are. Weird that I'm as cynical as you can get but I'm somehow not as cynical as the average person? No, no! I'm more cynical! I just use my cynicism for good!

He didn't say that, Jesse. What he might be trying to express though is that coming down hard on criminals when much of the crime is driven by systemic problems resulting in an abundance of poverty for which the government takes no action to mitigate might be a bigger evil than the crime itself. Much of crime is a symptom of a bigger problem that is harder to fix so people ignore it and try to just hide the symptoms by putting them in jail.

Alan just doesn't quite have the words (or the real world experience of the 60s, 70s, and 80s because he was in Valhalla) to express how the constant lowering of taxes on the upper brackets of income have caused the slow destruction of the middle class by allowing CEOs and upper management to keep more of their money instead of reinvesting it into the business because they'd rather improve their business than give away 99% of their income after a certain point to the government. And by allowing them to keep that money, they stopped putting it into the business which meant salaries stagnated, pensions disappeared, and health care was no longer an automatic company benefit. I'm sure that's what he was getting at though. Jay's wife interrupts so we can finally see she exists six issues into the series. Alan's beard, Molly, also arrives. You might be wondering why "Jay's wife" is only "Jay's wife" but you shouldn't ask me that question. Ask the comic book who thinks I'm supposed to remember her name from whenever it was last mentioned, if at all. Maybe Linda? Let's just go with Linda. The Justice Society is on a ship because they're headed to Bahdnesia which doesn't allow plane travel in and out of its country. That's probably because air traffic control would be a nightmare with all the genies flying around. That was a joke but I bet it's the actual reason as well. Oh! It's Joan! Ted mentions it to Al after he gets tangled up in his deck chair while wearing an ice bucket on his head. I think Al might be having some old person cognition problems.

Nothing suspicious about a country run like a well-armed Applebee's.

Doctor Mid-Nite decides to check behind the scenes to see what's going on. The place is run like Disneyland so he enters the employee only backstage section to investigate. He's eventually attacked by some guards (see the cover!) and his story ends mid-fight. Meanwhile, Ted winds up climbing into a boxing ring to stop a fight that he believes is a huge mismatch. He knocks out the big guy even though the big guy doesn't necessarily mean he's the bad guy. Ted is basically interfering in a business transaction or, even worse, a staged event! Which means he climbs in the ring and begins beating up one of the actors. Guards also swarm him and he thinks, "What are these guys doing here?!" As if what he's doing is just fine and dandy. Didn't he hear the announcement about how nobody breaks the rules here? This is why! They get swarmed with violent guards! Justice Society of America #6 Rating: B-. Nothing says "The titular team's best days are behind them!" like a story where the only interesting thing that happens happens in a flashback. The whole cruise and island exploration part of the story was a big snooze. And it only ends in two members battling guards who are only doing their jobs to keep the JSA members from breaking the rules. Poor guards are going to get their asses whooped when they're only doing their job! I'm totally into the whole "I was just following orders" excuse thanks to the unbeatable side-boob argument.

[thefloatingstone]

Hey C-Puff! So I know I keep saying that I love your taste, but I'm curious, what would you consider essential scifi movie viewing?

Oof! (and thank you! 8DD) It really depends what kind of mood you’re in. Because “sci fi” is essentially a weird genre, because it can be mushed with literally any other genre and still work without straying too far from the ‘sci fi’ concept. Sci fi is a genre the same way fantasy is a genre or horror is a genre. You can make a horror-comedy or a fantasy comedy, but you can’t make a drama-comedy (At least without some major tonal dissonance). So it REALLY depends what you feel like watching or what mood you’re in or what tolerance level you have in some aspects.

I can list a few though which I feel are super essential viewing but are vastly different from each other. I’m not gonna give a full summary break down of each one because it’ll take me like 3 hours to write (these things take a while sometimes) but I’ll give a little indication!

Edit: oops…. I ended up spending 4 hours writing this….

1: Alien (1979)(Sci-Fi horror)

These days the Alien franchise seems to automatically = Xenomorphs. So it can be hard to remember the very first movie that not only started the franchise but literally changed sci fi as a genre, you barely see the Xenomorph on screen, and when you DO the film does its best to hide what it actually looks like with lighting, camera angles and editing. Because the first movie’s Alien costume was not really good, and the movie had a VERY small budget comparatively speaking. So it literally has the opposite goal of trying to show off the xenomorph as much as possible.

Originally sold as “Jaws but in space”, the whole idea of the film was “What if you were a bunch of truckers in the middle of space and nowhere to run, and something unknown started picking you off one by one. Where can you run? Who can you contact? What can you do?”

The original’s entire focus is on fear. From long sequences of Ripley running where it’s filmed facing her so you can’t see “behind you” as the audience to instill paranoia, to hearing what sounds like extreme amounts of gore off screen where you can’t see it, the entire film is designed to be terrifying.

It’s difficult to remember that with what the franchise is known for today.

Also noteworthy is that so much of what is Alien came from Jodorowsky’s “Dune” which was never made, but nevertheless still achieved Jodorowsky’s goal of changing sci fi forever.

2: Blade Runner (1982)(Sci-Fi Noir)

in 2012, Ridley Scott said in an interview; “30 years ago, I saw the future”.

As far as I am aware, the first movie to ask the question “where exactly does ‘being human’ start or end?” regarding robots. The original Blade Runner is filmed in a way to replicate a 1940s style crime noir story, complete with brooding detective and femme fatale. However, it is set in the FAR OFF FUTURE of 2019.

The story follows our detective, known as a “Blade Runner” chasing down a specific class of robot which is illegal on Earth (but used in off-planet labour deemed too dangerous for human work) after the model number started a riot on one of these off-world labour camps. Detective Decker is tasked in finding and “retiring” a group of robots recently landed in futuristic Los Angeles, especially since the robot group is tracking down and murdering the designers in charge of creating their line.

However, the further Decker investigates things, the more uncomfortable questions he finds himself asking. How are these robots so much more different than us humans? What are their motives? Are they really just machines gone berserk? Or is there something very very human they are trying to achieve.

A film that exploded in Japan and essentially caused every anime between 1982 and 1995 to be in some way a Blade Runner fanfic, it changed the genre even more than Alien did. This time letting philosophical questions and atmosphere do most of the work, as the cyberpunk aesthetic of future Los Angeles was as important a character to the story as any of the human players. It was the first time we truly saw Cyberpunk, and literally EVERYTHING we consider “Cyberpunk” these days came from this movie’s direction and cinematography.

Watch the Director’s cut. DO NOT watch the Theatrical version. The Theatrical version was forced to add narration to the long stretches of silence as the movie distributor thought audiences would be too stupid to handle a movie with so little dialogue in it. The Director’s Cut is how the film was meant to be watched, doing away with all the needless talking and letting the film’s visuals and music speak for itself.

3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)(Sci-Fi Mystery)

Yes yes I’m biased because it’s my favourite movie. But even if it wasn’t it’s an essential film to watch in the Sci-Fi genre.

Some people will think E.T. holds this title, but E.T. came out 5 years AFTER Close Encounters and so, Close Encounters is one of the first movies if not THE first movie that came out and asked… “What if the Aliens came and were our friends?” Because up until this point, All the “Big-Eyed Grey Aliens in Flying Saucers” movies portrayed them as invaders trying to take over the planet. And the sci fi stories and movies that DIDN’T have this narrative, the aliens were always human looking (Star Trek, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc)

And so, this is one of the first movies that suggested that maybe the weird looking space aliens from another planet who look nothing like us could be our allies. Would want to speak to us. Would want to know us.

Not that the movie is full of love and friendship. in some places it feels more like a horror movie than anything else. But that’s because the film thinks its audience is smart, and it doesn’t have to have a character EXPLAIN things to us. We can understand what’s happening by WATCHING. And if something is strange and doesn’t make sense, it either will by the end of the film thanks to context, or it was never that important to understand anyway.

Also a giant part of the film’s power and influence comes from its visuals, but even more importantly, its soundtrack which I can’t communicate in a gif. And so I am left linking a trailer.

I think it says a lot that it was THIS movie, not Star Wars, that helped the first Star Trek movie to be made a few years later, and with that, helped give us Star Trek TNG. Not bad.

(You can watch any of the 3 cuts of the film. I’m most familiar with the Director’s Cut so that’s my fave and what I would recommend but I haven’t heard of any of the 3 cuts being “the bad one”)

-

4: Total Recall (1990)(Sci-Fi Action)

It was only a matter of time before Arnie showed up on this list, being in no less than 3 Sci-Fi game changers in the 80s and 90s.

What makes Total Recall Unique, however, is that we have Paul Verhoeven as director, who likes movies that have a little more to say than “Arnie shoots a bunch of bullets at things” (as great as that is, don’t get me wrong) And I think the fact that people will STILL debate this movie says a lot about it.

The story is set in the far future, where normal construction worker Arnie is bored with his normal life (which is weird considering he’s built like a truck and married to Sharon Stone but I’m not here to judge). He’s been having reoccurring dreams about going to Mars, as well as a strange woman he meets there. One day while traveling home on the subway, he sees an ad for a copany called “Rekall” who can use a sort of brain implant machine to give you instantaneous fake memories. Basically, you can take a vacation that lasts 6 months in your memories within the span of 10 minutes real time.

Arnie’s character decides to visit, and asks that his fantasy take place on Mars, and describes the woman he meets there. However, during the fake memory implant something goes wrong. VERY wrong. The machine drags up suppressed memories Arnie has of being a sleeper agent, put on Earth until needed, as well as images he’s been seeing in his dreams. The Rekall employees have to sedate him and send him home, refunding him for the poor experience.

However, Arnie can no longer just forget what the machine dragged up from his subconscious, and starts to question if his life really is his life. If his wife really IS his wife. (after all…. Someone who looks like Sharon Stone married to a construction worker who looks like Mr Universe living in a very cushy apartment? Something doesn’t add up.)

Arnie finds himself suddenly dragged into a massive conspiracy plot revolving around Mars, the corrupt governor running it, the rebellion and its mysterious revolutionary, as well as who the hell WAS he before he was who he is now?

That’s the movie’s plot at least. But as many people who watch the movie has pointed out, despite the movie itself never making a point of it, funny how all this adventure and conspiracy hits Arnie right after he’s plugged in to a fantasy machine at Rekall. Convenient.

Nobody to do with the film has given a straight answer as to how real the movie’s events are supposed to be, and film fans have been arguing to this day of it was all real as the movie shows it to be… or a meta narrative.

5: Robocop (1987)(Sci-fi Satire)

The movie that very almost got an X rating for its violence, also directed by Paul Verhoeven and even more biting in its meta-narrative than Total Recall.

The STORY of the movie is that future Detroit is a complete shithole so full of crime that the police force just can’t keep up. After a police officer named Murphy is blasted to fuck, his corpse is used by the CPO company to create a “robotic law enforcer” meant to be put on the street to handle crime. Robocop is his name, and if he proves to be effective, CPO is planning to mass produce them. During the course of the film, however, Murphy learns to regain his humanity through the help of his police partner, and uncover the scrupulous CPO company’s hand in the city’s crime wave.

So that’s the STORY of Robocop… but it’s not what Robocop is “About”.

Robocop is essentially an enormous criticism of Corporate America in a way that’s basically come true since the movie came out. Robocop is one of those rare movies that is BETTER now than it was when it came out.

OCP is essentially Apple or basically any current American company. Focused on rushing out products for the good press it’ll give them before ironing out the problems and bugs, and taking MASSIVE and inhumane shortcuts in development to meet a deadline, uncaring who gets hurt in the process.

This message is further highlighted by the fake commercials peppered into the movie, a very clear criticism of everything from America’s extreme focus on its military and racism of other countries, American manufacturer’s disregard for what is environmentally safe in favour of “Status Symbols” in its fuel guzzling cars, America’s obsession with defending people’s ownership through unethical violence, Medical and health advertised on television like a luxury product, as well as just the inane meaningless garbage that is/was American television.

As a native of the Netherlands, Verhoeven pours so much cynicism and criticism towards American culture, both in the jokes as well as the core theme of the movie, that the film as a whole is less “Watch Robocop shoot his handcanon at bad guys” and more a dystopian nightmare, and finding humanity in it despite it all.

The only movie to top Robocop in its criticism of American culture would be “Starship Troopers” also directed by Verhoeven. But that movie is so depressing I almost can’t even reccomend it, despite it being GENIUS.

It’s the movie where the human race wins a war against giant bug aliens… and that’s the worst ending that could happen.

6: Enemy Mine (1985)(Sci-Fi drama)

*leans forward and smiles at you* hey there, friend. Do you like aliens? Do you like enemies to friends to lovers? Do you like found families? Do you like “Racism is bad” narratives? Do you like non-binary aliens who have no gender? Do you like romantic undertones between non-binary aliens played by a male actor and a cis white dude also played by a male actor?

Because BOY DO I HAVE THE MOVIE FOR YOU.

You think I’m joking with that description…. I am not. Not even a fucking little.

I very rarely see anybody talk about “Enemy Mine” and that’s a fucking crime because this movie is friggen AMAZING. The fact that it exists at all, let alone was made in the 80s is borderline absurd.

The movie takes place in the future. Humanity is in an intergallactic war with an alien race called the Dracs. Battles and skirmishes between the two races explode throughout the galaxy on various planets whenever the two species run into each other, and we follow our human main character Davidgewho, during a spaceship confrontation with the Drac, crash lands on an uninhabited planet, along with the Drac pilot named Jeriba Shigan.

The planet they crash on is a violent world battered by meteors and storms, which forces the two pilots to seek shelter in a cave near their crash site (and there was only one cave!). Despite them both needing shelter, the two absolutely despise each other, completely prepared to kill the other one the second they make a move. It’s a tense and paranoid stand off where each one waits for the other to move first. Neither of them do.

They find out that the planet is sometimes used by human miners for its rare ore (who use captured Drac as slave labour) but they only visit the planet periodically when the years- long bad weather settles. And so, Davidge decides to wait for rescue, despite knowing it may take several years before any human comes to the planet. Until then, he just has to survive and NOT get killed by the Drac he’s sharing the cave with.

So… the two wait. And a weird truce is called. And they wait… and time passes… and with literally no other life to turn to for company… well…. they start talking. First spitting and insulting each other. Then, slowly, learning more about each other. Then, slowly, sharing cultural information with each other, learning about their different species, learning about what each’s species have been telling them about the other. And well…. after several years… it becomes very hard to see the only living person you have been talking to for years as an enemy.

And then, after a while, Jeriba (nicknamed “Jerry” by Davidge) brings up a tiny problem.

He’s pregnant.

Davidge asks how the fuck that’s possible. Jerry explains his race has no gender or binary sex, and they produce asexually. So… ok…. Now you’ve got an alien you don’t FULLY trust who is pregnant and going to have a baby on this hostile planet.

…..oops.

Also, as time goes on another problem arises. The humans who will eventually show up to mine this planet use Drac as slave labour. This wasn’t ORIGINALLY a problem…. but it’s kinda become a problem now.

This movie is fucking amazing and nobody talks about it. Go watch it. Although be prepared for tears and feelings.

7: Galaxy Quest (1999)(Sci-Fi Comedy)

In modern day America (or rather 1999 America) there use to be a show called “Galaxy Quest” which DEFINITELY WAS NOTHING LIKE STAR TREK OK???

It was a very big show, but it eventually got cancelled. However, it is still considered a massively popular and influential tv show, enough to have its own conventions and dedicated fanbase. (AGAIN. IT’S NOT STAR TREK STOP SAYING THAT!)

The actors who starred in it many years ago now struggle to get work in other roles which they all deal with in different ways. Our Kirk Character played by Tim Allan is an egocentric selfish asshole who bathes in the “glory” of his role as the captain, despite it having been years, in complete denial that he’s a has-been and the fact that none of the other cast like him. Our Spock character is played by Alan Rickman who wants to know where his life went wrong. He use to be a REAL actor. He use to star in Shakespear plays. How did it come to this? He hates all of you. As well as Sigourney Weaver who had the important role of “Sexy Girl” in the show (a fact she resents) and a handful of others.

One day at a convention, they are approached by some super awkward and weird cosplayers, who ask them in-character if they could help their alien species, the Thermians, who are getting decimated by a warrior race lead by a General Sarris. As the Thermians are peaceful and have no experience in battles, they’ve come to ask the “Crew of the Starship Protector” to aid them. Alan Rickman agrees, believing it to be a promotional gig, and signs up his co-stars (only telling them after the fact which they resent him for)

The next day they play out their roles as they did on the show rather unenthusiastically, ordering the Thermians to simply shoot at General Sarris to defeat him, and then take them home.

Things turn complicated tho when the Thermians show up again and say “uhm… it didn’t exactly work. general Sarris is still alive and killing out people.”

And then our motley crew find out… the Thermians are NOT actors. They are in fact a real alien race. An alien race who are unfamiliar with the concept of “lying”. Their species had picked up the radio waves from the Galaxy Quest TV show and, believing it to be a historical record, modeled their entire civilization after the show. And now they need the crew of the “Protector” to help them in the face of this threat that could wipe them out as a species.

So our washed-out has-been actors find themselves pretending to really be their characters in a real space mission to save an alien race. Which is kind of a problem considering they have no idea what they’re doing at any point during this adventure.

8: Terminator 2 (1991)(Sci-Fi action)

I could have put the first Terminator movie on here… but I didn’t. Beause although both are excellent I personally prefer the second one. You don’t really need to have seen the first one to understand the second one either. I saw the second one first and it’s pretty easy to follow since the first movie’s plot wasn’t that complex.

10 or so years ago, Sarah Conner was visited by a time traveler who revealed he was from the future, and that in 1997 an AI known as “Skynet” would launch all the world’s nukes, causing the human race to almost become extinct. But Sarah Conner is the mother who will one day give birth to John Connor, the human rebel leader who will one day vanquish the machines. The machines know this, and Skynet sent back a robot called a “Terminator” to kill Srah Connor before she can give birth to humanity’s last hope.

Fast forward to this movie, Sarah Connor has been put in a mental institution (for rather obvious reasons) and her son, John Connor now 10 years old, lives with his aunt and uncle and is what we call a “problem child”. With no father figure in his life and his mom “going nuts”, John is a kid who smokes, steals bikes and is constantly in trouble. Then, one day, a robot from the future shows up to kill him. An advanced NEW kind of terminator sent by the machines, made of liquid metal, it is another attempt by the machines to kill John Connor before he can grow up to be the rebel leader.

This time however, Humanity has sent someone else to protect John. The exact same model of Terminator who tried to kill his mother, repurposed and reprogrammed to protect John from this lethal machine.

John, being a child, has to cope with the fact that not only is a killer robot trying to murder him, but ALSO his “nuts” mom turned out to be right. And he also starts developing a weird relationship with the robot sent to protect him. Looking for some kind of father figure to fill that hole in his life.

Although the first Terminator might have been more impactful in terms of visuals and ideas, the second Terminator is the one people remember as a movie. This is where “Hasta La Vista Baby” come from. This is where “Made from Liquid Metal” comes from. This is where THIS comes from

and where this comes from

and this

I don’t know if I can call it a BETTER movie than the first Terminator… …except it kinda is…. And one of the very few sequels where it ended up having more of a cultural impact than its predecessor.

9: Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)(True Sci-Fi)

One upon a time there was a show called “Star Trek”. It then had a movie which did kinda of ok at the box office but many thought was rather boring.

And then they made Star Trek 2.

Set several years after the original show, where all the main characters are off living different lives. Kirk is an admiral working on Earth behind a desk. Spock is a training instructor to students who will one day be pilots and crewmembers in the Federation. The rest of the Enterprise’s former crew are all scattered across the Federation, either on Earth or on other Starships.

Far off in space, a Federation ship is looking for a dead planet to test a brand new technologcal creation called the “Genesis Device”. While doing so, they find Khan and his crew, who 15 years ago were left on a lifeless planet by Kirk after they tried to take over the Enterprise for use in Khan’s mad plans revolving around Genetic engineering. Khan and his crew take over the ship and learn of this “Genesis Device” with its power to destroy all life when unleashed on a living plan. Khan only has one goal in his mind; Revenge.

While on a 3 week long training mission under Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal, and go to investigate.

This movie honestly has no right to be as good as it is. Even if you have 0 knowledge of Star Trek (as I did when I first watched it) it makes complete and perfect sense on its own, and its extremely easy to understand what’s happening and why. It helps if you’re familiar with the characters, but the film on its own portrays their friendships and relationships with each other so perfectly that you completely buy every scene with them together, and WHY they’re friends. And how LONG they’ve been friend, without having to watch seasons and seasons worth of episodes to catch up. You don’t even need to watch the first Star Trek movie.

The film is a story about revenge… but it’s main core theme is about grief. Grief in many forms. Khan’s grief over the death of his wife which he blames Kirk for and his burning fiery hatred. Kirk’s grief as an aging space captain, unable to cope with himself growing old and the fact that he never truly learned how to handle loss, as someone who ALWAYS believes there is a way to save the day. Grief over lost relationships with his ex-lover and a grown son he never knew about and lost an entire relationship with.

Despite being about spaceships in space shooting at each other and long drawn out tension filled scenes between Kirk and Khan, it’s a movie about mortality, and the need to face it.

10: The Last Starfighter (1988)(Sci-Fi Adventure)

I could have put many things down for “Sci Fi movie about having an adventure”. I could have put ET or Explorers or Flight of the Navigator, but I decided to put The Last Starfighter. Even though ET may be the better known adventure film, it’s also the movie most people will have already seen, and Flight of the Navigator might look better, but it’s story is far weaker. So Last Starfighter it is.

In backwoods tiny-ass American town there lives completely normal teenager Alex Rogan. He doesn’t have that much going for him. He lives in a trailer with his mom and younger brother and has just recently had a scholarship rejection. Frustrated with his life and with little else to do in the trailer park, Alex spends most of his time playing the only arcade machine called “The Frontier”. After a lot of play and effort, Alex manages to get the high score on the machine.

After doing so, he is approached by the creator of the machine called Centauri, who is there to offer him a ride in his fancy car as a prize for holding the grand score. Having been taunted by the other teens around the area, Alex decides to take Centauri up on his offer, only to get abducted. And not in the “Teenager kidnapped by a creep” kind of way, but the alien kind of way.

It turns out there is a very real intergalactic war going on between Rylan Star League and the Ko-Dan Empire. And the arcade machine had been placed on Earth as a sort of recruitment tool for new pilots to fly for Rylan Star League.

Given the chance to actually have something happen in his Life, Alex has to learn how to be a Starfighter with the help of Centauri who reveals himself to be an alien, and the rest is simpy fighting the Ko-Dan Empire and saving the day.

Most notably, The Last Starfighter’s space battles were all done using early CG and it has… .not exactly aged that well tbh.

But is still incredibly impressive for 1988 and helped paved the way for special effects, leading to their peak in Jurassic Park in 1993. But although the CG might be why the movie is important to the genre on a technical level, the reason most people remember this movie is nostalgia in its purist form.

Who wouldn’t want to be so good at a video game that aliens come and give you a spaceship and ask you to save the galaxy?

I personally find the scenes on Earth without the CG to be the better parts of the movie, but it does what it sets out to do. To be a sci fi adventure film for teenagers and kids to watch and enjoy and see the hero win. Uncomplicated, fun, and easy to digest as a movie.

I was gonna leave it at that but I gotta add one more

11: 2010: The Year we make Contact (1984)(pure Sci-Fi)

in 1968, a year before America landed on the moon, Stanley Kubrick made the groundbreaking movie “2001: a Space Odyssey”. The movie is a sort of horror movie in space, but also not quite. It tells the story of an enormous black rectangular monolith being found on the moon in the year 2001. Upon human astronauts touching it, it sends off a signal into space. Not long afterwards, another monolith, this one more than several kilometers in size appears orbiting Jupiter.

A crew of 5 men and an AI computer are sent to investigate. But the AI, called the HAL 9000 goes mad and kills off all the crew except for one, named David Bowman, who takes the HAL 9000 offline before leaving the spaceship and entering the Monolith.

The original movie is a masterwork of film, suggesting that the monoliths are responsible for jumpsarting human evolution. But it is also a very SLOW film. Famously taking 40 minutes before the first line of dialogue is spoken. And its horror of distrusting computers maybe be seen as rather old fashioned by today’s standards.

Then in 1984 they made a sequel. 2010 takes place 9 years after the first movie (obviously). Several American astronauts and scientists are approached and recruited for a secret mission joint sponsored by America and the Soviet Union. Their mission is to travel to the long abandoned space station, find what information was retrieved from the monolith, and try and discover what caused the HAL 9000 to malfunction. Time is of the essence as the abandoned space station will crash on Jupiter’s moon Io soon. The Soviets want to know what caused the disaster, but they need the Americans’ help to get into the space station, and an uneasy joint mission is formed, lead by Dr Floyd who was in charge of NASA when the original disaster occurred and had since been disgraced, but who would prove the best person to find out what happened to cause the disaster.

The movie, although perhaps slow by modern standards, moves at a much better pace than the original, and although you could say its plot is more basic, it’s also easier to follow and understand. There are moments of extreme tension from multiple areas. Reactivating the HAL 9000 and having to try and NOT repeat whatever it was that caused it to murder the original crew. The time limit before the space station is set to crash on Io, the mystery of what happened to David Bowman. The presence of the silent monolith orbiting Jupiter. And the seemingly unimportant political differences between the American crew and the Russian crew, despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.

It also has some of the most incredible space cinematography I’ve seen in a film. Rather than the modern depiction of space in movies as a swirl of navy and stars and colourful nebulas, the space of 2010 is pitch black, with endless stars and enormous looming planets in the foreground, and nothing but a wall between you and the endless void.

Anyway those are my reccomendations.

Please consider donating to my kofi…. this took like 4 or 5 hours to write.

☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️

[bending-sickle]

motherfuckers be like “oh just enjoy doing the craft it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come out perfect” and i’m like “karen, it’s clothes i want to wear. in public. and feel good in. i have Standards.”

so do y’all want to hear about Ye Saga of how i have failed to make a dress? that i started in may of last year? and have put in i think over 50 hours? unless it’s 80. (i had to redo another dress last year because again, fuckery, and my sewing log gets confusing.)

so literally every step of this has been discouraging and has had to be done at least twice and every time the potential end result just keeps getting worse and worse.

we start off with the cloth. it’s polyester and therefore shit. double-shit because it’s for a summer dress and i might as well wrap myself in seran wrap. The pattern is floral but not quite enchanting but i buy it anyway because it’s a shitload of cloth and only 3 euros because it’s from the scrap heap.

and then i try to make a pattern for it, frankensteining two or three different historical options for which i only have the vaguest of “this is kinda what the pieces looked like. good luck scaling it up to anything usuable.” so there was a lot of drafting, redrafting, measuring, re-redrafting.

then there were the mock-ups to test out the pattern. so many mock ups. so many oh god. pins everywhere. all the contortionism to try and pin the cloth and not myself. more sewing. trying to scavange cloth bits to try and make yet another tester. it was hell.

then i went on to the lining, because even though the cloth was literally plastic, it was slightly see-through and idk, fancy clothes have lining, right? so i piece together the lining from my mom’s old pants’ lining. i sew it up all nice with great seams. let’s leave that tragedy waiting because then

then i started on the bodice of the dress. and i really wanted to put piping in between the seams so you could actually see all the nice piecing - especially in the back - that i had worked so hard on. i was super excited because i had ribbon just the perfect shade and it would be so, so very pretty. i sew up so much piping. (this is cord wrapped in rippon, like you can find on pillow edgins and stuff.) i sew the dress top, putting in the piping. the piping decides to be the boss and fuck up every curve. there is no using the piping and still having a dress that won’t stand up by itself and prance around like madonna’s bullet bra. the piping has to go. this makes the dress not as cool as i’d been hoping. in fact, the main point of all the effort in the pattern design has just gone out the window because you can’t see the nice shapes i’ve made with each piece. but whatever. it fits. so i resew the bodice.

bodice is looking good. i attach the lining, which, i mean “attach” is such a short word for all the sewing, pinning, more sewing, cutting, and fussing that happened. but i get it done. half of the dress is now done.

but no. remember the tragedy we left hanging with no period after the senence up there, a couple paragraphs back? yeah.

you can see the lining seams through the dress. which. not good. so i redo the lining. and i mean i just could have redone the gone that went down the center front, now that i think of it, and just accepted the blazing white lines of seams under the dress in the other parts, but no, i wanted things done right.

but i couldn’t do things right because i’d done them perfect before. meaning opening up the seams meant i now had much less seam space to work with, meaning OH HAI THE LINING CLOTH IS JUST GOING TO RIP APART BECAUSE YOU HAVE SO LITTLE TO WORK WITH OH MY BAD. so i do a shitty job of the lining.

whatever. the skirt

i gather up the skirt so it has nice little scrunchy bits at the waist. i redo this long, ong process at least three times.

i put the skirt together with the bodice. i also do this attempt so many times. eight months later, i’ll realize i did it wrong and could have avoided so many hours of work and headache but no. no, i put it on the way i did, because fuck my life right now.

but we’re not done with the lining.

i try and put it in with the skirt. won’t work won’t fit. redo it a few times. the cloth starts screaming and dissolving. i try and save the edges even though theyre now hideous. i end up just sewing little anchor lines to the lining, making it officially the most ugly lining in the history of any atempts.

this next step is what made me give up for half a year, because there’s the hem. and remember how i fucked up putting in the skirt? yeah. so the waist of the dress isn’t a straight line, making the hem...not a straight line, if i just take a ruler from the bottom and say “yeah let’s lop off some 50 cms and it’ll be level and good” then the bottom of the skirt is going to be a droopy, wavy mess, waving in shame at all other dresses.

so i fold, pin, hand-sew, re-fold, re-pin, re-resew the goddamned hem again, so many times, trying to just get the damned bottomg of the skirt level, at whatever length. i sort of managed.

then i gave up for half a year, meaning that summer dress was not seeing  peek of that year’s summer.

so i took my gonads in both hands this week and tried again with the skirt and that’s when i realized how difficult i’d made everything for myself because there was all that folding, pinning, sewing fun factory again, in triplicate. but i managed to get the hem to the length i wanted and i tried it on.

and the lining tore. just shredded itself to little pieces like the little fucker it was.

which means that after sewing that thing up twice, sewing it down twice - or was it thrice - i had to take the scissors to it and chop it off. chop, i say, because i was not going to unsew all the bodice bits. there were SLEEVES involved.

speaking of sleeves while i was cutting off the lining with all the care in the world i ended up cutting a little hole in one of the sleeves. because fuck everything. and since this is polyester shit, i couldn’t sew the hle up because the edges kept fraying like they were trying to become one with the dust bunnies. so i tried sewing it up like it was a buttng hole or something only apparently my fingers and eyes and skills and everything were in another room because wow it ugly.

so that was a great achievement in the unfucking of this dress fiasco.

so now i had a dress with no lining except the little shreds of shame along the edge of the bodice and a wonky hem.and the bodice was all floaty in the wrong places because it didn’t have the support of the lining helping it out and it’s, again, poly-fucking-ester.

today i did yet more of the same shit i’d done yesterday and got the hem as leastwonky as possible. i then asked my mom to help un-wonkify the hem. as i stood in front of the mirror with the bodice flopping everywhere, the lines of the pices i cut out lost in the sauce of the pattern, the scrunched up waist of the skirt not really giving nice folds but only one big belly balloon, and overall the general image of the dress being “...goddamn fuck no shit god i feel so ugly all that work and it makes me feel ugly” i thought...well, all that, and also how many hours i’d invested into this and how i might just not even wear it after all.

and then i was ironing it and thinking “maybe if i cannibalise it and make it into a skirt only and redo the bodice using the cloth on top of another one like a new lining or just a white cotton, and make it an outfit...”

but that would mean redoing this dress a third time. which, no.

also? i bought two types of ribbon thiking i could still do the piping effect on the seams, make the dress have a little oomf, but it’s just so much work already for such an ugly thing that will make me sweat like a beached whale in summer and be worn like, twice, that just... god, set the damned thing on fire maybe. what is the point.

also? since i’m the one making it, the labour is free, and idiots on the internet would be like “oh, so the cloth was 3 euros? so  it’s a 3 euro dress? cheap! noice! who cares if it isn’t perfect?” and i’ll be like... me and my 50 hours of manual labour say it isn’t 3 euros worth, karen.

so i am incredibly discouraged and disappointed and if this whole experience doesn’t sum up my entire life. like, put in the work. do it perfect. do it again. do everything right and then it’ll all amount to nothing. congratualtions, you’ve just wasted half of your life.

i mean...

dress ugly. me tired. fuck everything.

so yeah i’m going to sew the hem up one of these days and call it quits.

[okay-j-hannah]

Use the list below to make a ‘prompt’ request

Feel free to request with any sentence you come up with and not present in the list below

Rules: Describes what requests I accept and whether each type of request is open or closed

Types of Requests: Describes the different kinds of requests you can make, and includes what’s in a ‘prompt’ request

Dialogue Prompts

1.     “Have you even met me?”

2.     “Have you lost your damn mind!?”

3.     “I hate it – I absolutely hate it. I can’t help but love you, and I hate that I can’t stop.”

4.     “He’s missing, not dead.”

5.     “Don’t try to follow me.”

6.     “I trusted you more than anyone else and you lied.”

7.     “I thought you were getting better.”

8.     “How long are you guys going to stand around my bed like a bunch of creepers?” 

9.     “Are you hitting on her for me?”

10.   “I just wanted you to know that when I picture myself happy… it’s with you.”

11.   “Sorry, I have a clingy and feverish assassin on my lap. I’ll call you back when I’ve convinced him that a cold doesn’t mean he’s dying.” 

12.   “Who wouldn’t be angry? You ate all my cereal and faked your death for three years!”

13.   “On whatever honor I might have left, I swear I will end you for what you’ve done”

14.   “Actually, you are speaking to the manager.”

15.   “I remember kissing you. Why do I remember kissing you?” 

16.   “I never meant for anyone to get hurt!”

17.   “Why do you keep risking your life? To prove a point?” 

18.   “If I go through with this, I die. If I don’t go through with this, we all die.” 

19.   “Am I supposed to be scared of you?”

20.   “No! He’s not supposed to die! It’s supposed to be me!”

21.   “This plan of yours is going to get us killed. Of course I’m in.” 

22.   “I didn’t realize I needed your permission.”

23.   “Yes, it’s a questionable line of work, but I’m good at it.”

24.   “Are you banned from every bar or just that particular bar?”

25.   “I keep dreaming of you. I don’t wish to, it just happens.” 

26.   “At what point did you think that was a good idea?”

27.   “I just really need to have you here right now.”

28.   “I’m fine, I promise.”

29.   “Have I entered an alternate universe, or did you really just crack a smile for me?”

30.   “Did you steal my sister from her wedding?” 

31.   “Have I ever lied to you?”

32.   “The only thing scarier than the unknown is me.” 

33.   “I took a pregnancy test.”

34.   “You’ve got thirty seconds to explain to me what you’re doing here.”

35.   “There’s a little bit of demon in her angel eyes.” 

36.   “If I start leaking blood from my eyeballs I am going to come back and haunt you so hard.” 

37.   “Sometimes, home has a heartbeat.”

38.   “You are insensitive and apathetic and incredibly impolite. We will get along beautifully.”

39.   “You fainted. You said you were okay.” 

40.   “I had a nightmare about you and just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

41.   “If you don’t fight for what you love, don’t cry for what you lose.” 

42.   “Have you ever wanted to hate someone?”

43.   I’ll take care of you, okay?”

44.   “I guess I was wrong about you. You’re not so bad after all.”

45.   “Stop trying to make poker night happen.” 

46.   “I hope one day you’re as happy as you’re pretending to be.”

47.   “You are all remarkably well behaved tonight. What did you do?” 

48.   “The scariest moment is always right before you start.” 

49.   “One day this pain will make sense to you.” 

50.   “Don’t say you love me.”

51.   “I like storms. They let me know that even the sky screams sometimes.” 

52.   “You are the least subtle person I know. Your ‘I have a secret’ vibe is literally visible from the moon.” 

53.   “Hold my hand, dammit, we gotta make this look convincing!”

54.   “I’m not completely human anymore. Remember that next time you want to punch me in the face.” 

55.   “Don’t say ‘goodbye,’ it makes it worse.”

56.   “I’d like to see you figure out the difference between blood and marinara sauce.”

57.   “Damn it, why aren’t you obeying the laws of physics?” 

58.   “Give me five bucks, I’ll explain later.”

59.   “All you’re doing is hurting yourself.”

60.   “Don’t lie to me. Please.”

61.   “Even if I could stop it, I wouldn’t.”

62.   “Look, if you want to conjure some demon spawn from the great beyond, that’s all fine and dandy. Just wait for me to leave before you start.” 

63.   “Did you ever really love me?”

64.   “If you tell me again that we can’t do this, I’m going to kick you somewhere you’re not going to enjoy.” 

65.   “I’m going to ask you something and you have to answer me honestly.” 

66.   “I made a bet. I lost. It’s as simple as that.” 

67.   “Don’t be alarmed, but there’s a chance I currently have a bullet in my shoulder.”

68.   “Are you crying?”

69.   “You’re up late.”

70.   “I can’t do this anymore.”

71.   “Either ask her out or I’ll do it for you!”

72.   “Guess who’s going to be a father?”

73.   “I don’t know how to look you in the eye after the things I’ve done.” 

74.   “Do you think she could’ve liked me?”

75.   “Why do you think you’re not worth taking care of?”

76.   “You need to get some sleep.”

77.   “I choose you.”

78.   “Do you think if people heard our conversations they’d lock us up?”

79.   “Go on then, tell me. Tell me you don’t love me.”

80.   “It was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

81.   I’m not going to hurt you.”

82.   “I’m so sorry. I was trying a new spell and things got out of hand… really out of hand.” 

83.   “Correct me if I’m wrong but you didn’t have wings yesterday, right?”

84.   “I can’t breathe.”

85.   “Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy.”

86.   “Did I stutter?”

87.   “You haven’t eaten in how long?”

88.   “I want to believe that there’s still some good in you.”

89.   “I’m not leaving you alone like this.”

90.   “Come over here and make me.”

91.   “Does he know about the baby?”

92.   “How’d you know I’d be here?”

93.   “It’s okay, it was just a mistake.”

94.   “Truth be told, I’m not sure any of them are actually dead.”

95.   “No – I have no idea how she found lipstick in the apocalypse… We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.”

96.   “Do you need me to get anything from the store?”

97.   “There are at least seventeen ways this could have gone better.”

98.   “I can’t believe I let this happen.”

99.   “Be my wife.”

100. “I care about you a whole damn lot.”

101.  “With a smile, I can get away with everything.”

102. “But the carnival is right down the street! Can we please go?”

103. “Go then, leave! See if I care!”

104. “Sometimes memories are the worst form of torture.”

105. “Could you be happy here with me?”

106. “Is it getting bad again?”

107. “Delete that.”

108. “You’re safe with me.”

109. “Get away from me!”

Thought Prompts

110. Their hands met, reaching for the same book. 

111. There was something about him. Something about the way he watched me. 

112. The third time she broke the bullet proof glass, I knew we needed to talk. 

113. She never spoke, never made a sound, but the look in her eyes told me exactly what was about to happen. 

114. Broken glass and paperwork littered the floor of the Queen’s study. 

Conversation Prompts

115. “I don’t snore, do I?”

“Like a chainsaw.”

 116. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’m always worried about you.”

 117. “He stared at the barrel of her gun as he fell to his knees.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Tears stung her eyes. She breathed deeply, aiming the rifle at his skull.

“I wish that were true.”

 118. “Are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re wearing two different shoes?”

 119. “My friends think I’m cute.”

“I’m your only friend.”

“Yeah but you think I’m cute, right?”

 120. “Are you even listening?”

“Yes, it just takes a while for me to process so much stupid all at once.”

 121. “We’re going to be late.”

“And whose fault is that?”

 122. “Why is he bleeding?”

“Because he’s an idiot.”

“I didn’t know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.”

“I think it’s a new phenomenon.”

 123. “Should I ask why you have a knife in your purse?”

“It’s a dagger, actually. And no, you shouldn’t.”

 124. “Get out of bed.”

“NO!”

“Why do you fight me every single morning?”

“Because you never learn!”

 125. “Did you bring us here to die?”

“Obviously.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

 126. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Longer than you’d like.”

 127. “Your home is a wreck… you could’ve at least cleared the bathroom.”

“Had I known I was going to have guests at three o’clock in the morning I’m sure I would’ve.”

 128. “Which way did they go?”

“Well, based on the direction of the wind, the broken sticks in the corner, and the slight disturbance in the dirt, I’d guess they went left.”

“You could really figure it out from all that?”

“No, you idiot. They sent me a text, see?”

 129. “Don’t you have to be stupid somewhere else?”

“Not until four?”

 130. “I love…”

“Me?”

“Well, I was actually going to say dogs, but sure.”

 131. “You didn’t seriously…?”

“Yep.”

“You just…?”

“Yep.”

“Does that mean…?”

“Quite possibly.”

 132. “When did you become so smart, wise guy?”

“Since I stopped listening to you.”

“You only heard his side. You don’t know the truth.”

 133. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Oh, trust me I can’t.”

[one-of-us-blog]

Skyfall (2012)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 2012’s Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond adventure. A powerful enemy with a personal grudge against MI6 emerges, and it’s up to Bond to save M from the ghosts in her past. Can Bond save the day, or has 007 finally met his match?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I’m sorry this is so late! I don’t want to waste any time, but let me just say you’ve been doing a stellar job with your TGP recaps and I’m very proud of you for making it so far into this iconic franchise! I can’t believe you’re almost all the way through! Okay, enough of that sentimental nonsense, we’ve got work to do.

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade & John Logan, film directed by Sam Mendes

We start off with Bond and a fierce, no-nonsense MI6 lady (Naomie Harris) pursuing a mercenary (Ola Rapace) who’s gotten his hands on a hard drive which contains a list of undercover agents. After a thrilling motorcycle chase by Bond and some top-notch demolition derby driving by the unnamed agent, Bond and the mercenary end up in a shootout on a cargo train with the other agent in hot pursuit. Bond goes after the mercenary with some heavy machinery that the train was carrying, but because this version of Bond is a human being he ends up taking a bullet in the shoulder. He’s still Bond, though, so he’s able to take the shot in stride and catches up to the mercenary and the stolen hard drive. Their fight is hindered by a trip through a tunnel and a bridge keeps the unnamed agent at a distance, but luckily she’s got a sniper rifle handy. She only has a minute to take the shot before the train and the mercenary disappear into another tunnel, but Bond and the mercenary are still scuffling and she can’t get a clean shot. M is listening in on all of this and the agent tells her she doesn’t have a clean shot and might hit Bond, but M wants that list and orders her to take the shot. She does, but she hits Bond and he falls off the train into a river while the mercenary rides the train into the safety of the tunnel. So, all in all, not a great day. The agent lets M know what happened, and M doesn’t take it well. Bond, meanwhile, is swept away into a river.

That brings us right into our opening credit sequence, which features Bond drifting through a fever dream of an ocean while giant aquatic ladies swim around him and Adele belts out “Skyfall”. The trippy visuals continue with shots of graveyards, spooky forests and Chinese dragons while Bond shoots at his own shadows and navigates a hall of mirrors.

With that spooky little intro out of the way, we cut to M typing up Bond’s obituary. Oh, yeah, by the by, homeboy’s dead as hell. To be fair, this isn’t the first time this has happened, but it definitely took this time. M is taken to a meeting with Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, who informs her that the Prime Minister has some concerns. It’s been three months since the mercenary got away, and none of her agents have been able to retrieve the hard drive he stole. To cut to the chase, Mallory is forcing M to retire, though in her eyes she’s being fired. Mallory says her ‘voluntary’ retirement will happen in two months, but M says to hell with that. She knows she can’t be M forever, but she’s not going to cut and run with this whole hard drive situation hanging over her head.

On her way back to HQ, M gets a call from Q Branch informing her that someone is attempting to hack into the hard drive. They trace the hack, but, uh-oh, the call is coming from inside the house! Or, rather, the hack is coming from inside MI6 headquarters, more specifically from M’s own computer. A graphic with M’s face in the style of the Queen pops up, followed by a message telling her to think on her sins. M’s car is suddenly pulled over by some upstart bobbies, which turns out to be a good thing as MI6 headquarters suddenly blows right the hell up in the background.

On that explosive note, we cut to a very much alive James Bond somewhere in what looks like the South Pacific. Turns out being shot to death is a handy cover for retirement, so Bond’s just keeping to himself and living it up. That is, until he happens to catch a news report covering the attack on MI6. Back in London, M looks over the coffins of the agents who died in the attack and vows to find whoever was responsible for the attack. M heads home and prepares for a nice drink, only to find Bond waiting for her. M chastises Bond for playing dead, but notes that he’s come home now that the squad’s under attack and in need of his help. M tells him he’ll have to pass some tests before he can return to active duty, which might not be as easy as it sounds.

Since the old HQ got blown up, MI6 has relocated into an old bunker of Churchill's. Bond trains for his exam, but it doesn’t go super well. Bond’s retirement might have been refreshing, but it’s really done a number on his aim. He moves onto the psychological portion of his test, which ends abruptly when the mention of Skyfall. Bond digs some bullet fragments out of his months-old gun wound and has them analyzed. The unnamed agent who shot Bond meets up with him and lets him know she’s been taken off field work after the whole ‘killing 007’ thing. She’s been assigned to help Mallory with this whole transitional period, but she plans on getting back into the field as soon as she can. Bond meets up with M and Mallory, and M lets him know he barely passed his tests though Mallory thinks it might be time for him to retire for good. M says Bond’s ready to go, despite Mallory’s claims that she’s sentimental about Bond.

The shrapnel from the mercenary’s bullet has been analyzed, and with it MI6 is able to identify him as Patrice. He’s going to be in Shanghai in two days, so Bond’s off to Shanghai to retrieve the list after a meeting with the new Quartermaster. Bond heads off, and M reveals that he definitely did not pass the tests. Uh-oh! At an art gallery, Bond meets a babyfaced twink (Ben Whishaw) who’s revealed to be Q. Q provides Bond with documents to get into Shanghai and a gun with a radio transmitter. Not exactly a razor saw belt or an exploding shoe, but it’ll have to do. Bond heads to Shanghai and begins to trail Patrice. He sees Patrice enter a fancy building and execute a security guard and barely manages to grab onto the mercenary’s elevator before he gets away. Bond’s still not up to his old standard, but he does manage to hold onto the elevator and avoid falling to his death. He doesn’t manage to stop Patrice from executing his next target, however, which is a bit of a bummer.

Bond attacks Patrice, and their ensuring struggle results in Patrice falling out of a window to his death before he can tell Bond who hired him to steal the list. Bond investigates Patrice’s equipment and finds a casino token, which leads him to a casino in Macau. Back in London, M’s trying to figure out who blew up her office. This is interrupted by the appearance of a YouTube video which reveals the identities of five agents on the stole list. M calls the office and orders the exposed agents to be called in before they can be killed, but the video promises that five more identities will be revealed in a week before encouraging M to think on her sins again. In Macau, Bond is surprised to be met by the unnamed agent. She lets him know about the exposed agents, then she shaves him as part of some kind of bizarre heterosexual courting ritual. She also lets him know that Mallory has seen his share of fieldwork, so he’s not just some paper pushing democrat.

Bond and the agent head to the casino with her covering the exits while he cashes in the chip he got from Patrice. The chip has an immediate reaction within the casino and attracts the attention of a suspicious woman (Bérénice Marlohe) he saw before in Shanghai. She introduces herself as Sévérine and takes him to the bar for a drink. He asks to meet her employer, and she tells him to be careful what he wishes for. Sévérine puts on a good show of being a badass, but Bond quickly deduces that she’s terrified of the man she works for. She tells Bond that her bodyguards will try to kill him as soon as she leaves, but tells him where he can find her if he survives. Sévérine wasn’t kidding, and Bond is immediately attacked when he tries to leave the casino. His bacon is saved by a combination of some hungry Komodo dragons and the intervention of the unnamed agent.

Bonds makes it to Sévérine on her yacht just before it sets sail. He joins her in the shower, which feels a bit presumptive, and they get to know each other while we jump back to London. M is watching a news story about one of the exposed agents being executed. Turns out three of the five agents have been murdered at this point, and Mallory’s not happy about it. M tells him that whoever is doing this knows how they think, and that he’s cut from the same cloth as Bond. Bond, Sévérine and a whole squad of goons arrive at an abandoned island off the coast of Macau. Bond and Sévérine are separated, and Bond ends up tied to a chair.

Enter the movie’s villain, Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Silva shares a charming story about teaching rats the benefits of cannibalism, which is all an allusion to the sort of people that M has turned both Bond and Silva into. Bond deduces that Silva was an MI6 agent stationed in Hong Kong in the late 80s through the early 90s. Silva begins his attempts to erode Bond’s faith in M. He’s hacked right into MI6’s system, so he reveals that he failed every test MI6 gave him before sending him back into the field, and says that by sending him into the field while knowing he wasn’t ready was tantamount to M sending him to his death. Silva gets a little handsy, unbuttoning Bond’s shirt to inspect his recent gunshot wound. He feels Bond up, tasking him to remember how his training taught him to respond to this sort of tactics. Bond hints that this isn’t the first time a guy has felt him up, which delights Silva.

Silva unties Bond and tells him he can have anything he wants if he joins Silva on the dark side. Bond refuses, so Silva takes him outside while telling him about his philosophy of cutting anything superfluous out of his life. Turns out he’s talking about Sévérine, who’s been beated and tied to the ruins of a statue. Silva tasks Bond with pulling a William Tell and shooting a glass off of Sévérine’s head, with both of them knowing full well Bond’s aim isn’t what it sued to be. Bond takes the shot but misses, which prompts Silva to cut to the chase and shoot Sévérine in the head. Bond lashes out and kills Silva’s men, just in time for reinforcements, signaled by the transmitter Q gave Bond, to arrive.

Silva is taken to MI6 headquarters and M confronts him. Silva notes that M is smaller than he remembers; M lies and says she barely remembers Silva at all. Silva reveals that he was captured by the enemy and tortured relentlessly for five straight months. He never broke, though, and kept M’s secrets for her. Until he realized he was only in that position because M sold him out, that is. After that realization, Silva decided to kill himself by biting into his standard issue cyanide capsule. The cyanide didn’t kill him, though. As he makes a point to show M, it dissolved a good chunk of the muscles and bones of his skull, which he’s kept hidden until now through the use of some gnarly prosthetics

Hey, Punky Drewster here. Just jumping in to say that this:

Was one of the most jarring and upsetting moments in any of the Bond films I’ve covered. Okay, back to the recap.

Despite being told by M that he’s headed straight for prison, Silva doesn’t seem too bothered. M tasks Q with hacking into Silva’s computer and finding out what he’s done with the list. Clearly feeling the need to justify her actions, M tells Bond that Silva’s real name is Tiago Rodriguez. He was a brilliant agent, but he got sloppy while spying on the Chinese. M gave him up in exchange for the return of six other agents. She’s never been afraid to take the shot when it was necessary.

Q begins work on Silva’s computer, but it’s safeguarded to heck and back. Q thinks he can handle Silva’s safeguards, though, and gets to work while M is forced to attend a briefing on the future of MI6 and Silva appears to get ready to leave his cell. Q finds a map of the underground on Silva’s computer, but as soon as he apparently hacks Silva’s system all of the doors in MI6 begin to open. Bond rushes to Silva’s cell only to find him gone with his guards dead. Bond finds a hatch to a lower tunnel open, and pursues Silva deeper underground. Q realizes that Silva has planned all of this years in advance, and the map on his computer leads Bond to a locked door that almost results in him being run over by a subway train. Bond manages to shoot the lock off the door in time to avoid getting crushed, but when he arrives at the station he can’t find Silva in the crowd.

Q spots Silva disguised as a cop on the train, and Bond has to run to catch a ride before the train zooms off. Bond realizes the train is headed right for where M is having her briefing. Silva gets off the train before Bond and Bond takes chase, but Silva easily looses him. Bond catches up to Silva, but Silva eludes him by setting off a bomb which destroys the roof of the tunnel they’re in and allows a subway train to come rushing in and almost crush Bond. Silva makes his way up to the surface and, thanks to some fake cops that work for him, he gets a ride straight to M. They storm the building just as M begins to make her case for the necessity for her agents still being in the field. Silva and his goons storm the briefing room and begin shooting up the place, but Mallory saves M’s life by taking a bullet for her. Bond, Mallory and the unnamed agent from earlier all start firing back at Silva, allowing M and the other government officials time to escape while Silva retreats.

Bond snatches up M and whisks her off the grid. He’s going to lead Silva into a trap, with M serving as bait. He tasks Q with leaving a trail that only Silva could follow and loads M into a fancy old car that doesn’t have a tracker in it. Mallory discovers Q while he’s doing all of this, which definitely hasn’t been approved by anyone, but Mallory approves. Bond takes M into the Scottish Highlands where he was born. M asks about Bond’s parents, but she already knows how and when they died and admits that orphans make the best recruits. They arrive at Skyfall, the Bond family estate. Bond takes in his old home and is confronted by Kincade (Albert Finney), who’s been the groundskeeper at Skyfall since Bond was a baby boy. Bond tells Kincade that someone’s coming to kill them, but Kincade is a ride or die sumbitch and he’s ready to scrap.

Kincade shows M a priest hole that she can shimmy her way into if things get too hairy, and then she, Kincade and Bond begin Home Aloneing Skyfall and setting up booby traps all over the place. With all the busywork done, M is forced to reflect on her actions and admits that she’s fucked everything up. Bond refutes this and says she was doing her job. This moment is interrupted by the inevitable arrival of Silva and his men. Thanks to their traps and some handy Q Branch gadgets stored in that fancy old car, not to mention Kincade’s marksmanship, Bond, M and Kincade are able to repel their assailants. Bond realizes Silva isn’t among the dead assailants, and it’s quickly revealed that this is because he’s arriving in style with a helicopter escort.

Silva’s helicopter begins to shoot up Skyfall, and Bond tasks Kincade with getting M out via the priest hole. Silva begins pelting Skyfall with explosives while Kincade and M, who’s been shot but is keeping it under wraps for now, make it outside. Bond admits he’s always hated Skyfall and blows up some propane tanks, causing the entire estate to go up in flames while he escapes through the priest hole. The explosion is so intense that it takes out Silva’s helicopter, which is a real fly in the ointment for Tiago. Silva realizes M has escaped and heads off toward the chapel where Kincade is leading M. Bond emerges from the priest hole and pursues them, but in order to reach M he has to cross a frozen pond. Silva is waiting for Bond, though, and he prepares to have his one surviving henchman shoot 007 while he goes after M. Bond uses the henchman’s gun to shoot through the ice covering the pond, causing them to fall into the freezing water where he’s able to kill the henchman.

Silva arrives at the chapel, taking note of the graves of Bond’s parents, Andrew and Monique. He enters the chapel and confronts M once again. He keeps a gun on Kincade to keep the old groundskeeper from interfering and notices that M has been shot. Despite having her right where he wants her, Silva can’t bring himself to kill M. Instead, he tells her that only she can free both of them and tells her to shoot both of them. This is interrupted by the arrival of Bond, who throws a knife into Silva’s back. Silva dies, and Bond catches M as she collapses. Her wound is a fatal one, and she’s not interested in surviving. She tells Bond that she was right to believe in him, and she dies in his arms. Bond breaks into tears and holds her close as Kincade watches on.

Back in London, Bond is met by the unnamed agent. Turns out she declined going back out into the field and is instead staying right here in London. She gives Bond a tacky old bulldog that M liked to keep on her desk, and he interprets this as a message that she wants him to stay in the fight. Bond and the agent head inside, and she finally gives her name: Eve Moneypenny.

OH SHIII

Moneypenny takes her position outside of the office of the new M, who turns out to be none other than Gareth Mallory. M asks if Bond is ready to get back to work, and Bond says it would be a pleasure.

The End

~~~~~

What an amazing movie! Silva was one of the best villains that’s ever been used in this franchise, and his personal motive for revenge against M was so much more compelling than a thirst for wealth or exclusive broadcasting rights in China for 100 years. Javier Bardem was absolutely captivating, and Daniel Craig and Judi Dench both gave stellar performances. I hate to see Dench leave the role of M, because she’s definitely been the best one in my opinion, but what a high note to go out on! I was a little nervous about such a young Q, but he grew on me and I loved this version of Moneypenny right out of the gate. I always wanted to see Lois Maxwell’s Moneypenny shoot some guys or snap someone’s neck with her bare hands, or do literally anything other than be an object for Bond to ogle and slap on the ass. Naomie Harris is giving me everything I wanted and more, and I can’t wait to spend more time with her! I could go on and on, but needless to say I really, really enjoyed this movie. My one complaint would be it’s just so dang long; to give a peek behind the curtains, I just got a new puppy recently and trying to type this recap up while she was trying to eat my ankles left me begging for this movie to hurry up and be done already. But, with that being said, I can’t think of anything that felt tacked on or that I wouldn’t miss if it were cut out. For a movie this long to be this compelling is a pretty amazing feat!

I give Skyfall QQQQ½ on the Five Q Scale.

It seems impossible, but we’re officially in the final stages of One of Us! Soon Eli will be posting his recaps of the final two episodes of The Golden Palace, “Sex, Lies and Tortillas” and “The Chicken and the Egg”, and right after that I’ll be posting my recap of the very last James Bond adventure, Spectre.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for remembering and thank you for being One of Us!

[omdaily10]

PLEASE DON'T LET ME GO

Writers: Olly Murs, Claude Kelly and Steve Robson

Producers: FutureCut, Steve Robson

Album: Olly Murs

Release Date: 29/08/2010

B-Side: 'This One's For The Girls' (Writers: Olly Murs, James Bryan, George Astasio, Jason Pebworth, Jon Shave / Producers: The Invisible Men)

Chart Positions: #1 (UK), #2 (Scotland), #5 (Ireland), #31 (Belgium), #35 (Slovakia)

Certifications: Gold (UK, 400k)

And so, from here, we begin our story. Or rather, we begin eight months before that on Sunday, 13th December 2009. 16.2 million watched the final of that year's series of ITV talent show The X Factor, as Olly Murs, a 26 year old call centre worker from Witham, Essex, finished second place in an epic battle for a multi-million pound recording contract and instant superstardom, as affable Geordie with voice of an angel, Joe McElderry, took the grand prize home (except the other crucial element afforded to the winner, namely that year's Christmas number one, with a cookie cutter cover version of Miley Cyrus' hit 'The Climb', was denied of him by a group of angry hardcore rock fans downloading a 15 year old track by Rage Against The Machine. So, if anything, you might say it was a dodged bullet).

X Factor history, and reality TV generally, had taught us up to that point, that beyond the smoke, fanfare and mirrors of the climaxes of these shows, only in very select cases did a long-term career come for the finalists - winners or not. True, Leona Lewis had become the global, worldwide star the show had long been trying to make, and previous series’ finalists JLS and Alexandra Burke had emerged to chart topping singles, mass hysteria and adoration. But most of them usually wound up dropped after the inevitable third or fourth single/difficult second album flopped, to be found thereafter performing on the Portsmouth to Bilbao ferry, or doing panto opposite Orville the duck and disgraced comedian Justin Lee Collins.

Most of them didn't go onto be, as Olly set out in his mission statement on that first audition, 'to be famous, to sell records, and be an international superstar'. But even though he’d been in the front rooms of millions of viewers for a whole three months, no one seemed confident that this cheeky but charming Essex lad was going to become one of the biggest British male solo artists of his generation. Simon Cowell, who was Olly’s mentor in the ‘Over 25s’ category on the show, said that they had gone in with a mission to win. Speaking in 2010, Cowell said: ‘When you’ve lost, words don’t mean an awful lot … And then the next day, I had [Epic Records’ boss] Nick Raphael, who’d signed JLS on the phone, saying “I want Olly”. Perfect.’ Speaking that same year, Nick said: ‘When you meet him, you like him, and like how he is around other people, and it’s very hard for us to find artists who you can like easily.’

Olly finally signed the dotted line on his £1m record deal with Epic in February 2010, just before embarking on The X Factor national arena tour that all the contestants of the previous series appeared on. Nick, along with his long time collaborative A&R partner Jo Charrington, who’d overseen the development and launch not only of JLS, but also Jay-Z, Another Level, Blue, Paloma Faith, and then later on, Sam Smith and 5 Seconds Of Summer, envisaged Olly being his own artist, and to appeal to as broad an audience as possible by taking an active role in his own music and artistry, and not just releasing the stock album of covers on Mother’s Day to remind Doris in Leighton Buzzard of who he was before she moved on with the rest of The X Factor’s audience to the next thing.

Olly was quickly dispatched to writing sessions with several teams and established songwriters and producers. Among these were two men who have been a part of over 50% of the songs we’re going to meet along our journey through his career: New York born and bred superhit writer, Claude Kelly, and top pop producer Steve Robson. Between them, they’d written or produced countless chart-topping singles and albums for everyone, from Whitney Houston to Take That.

Whilst the search for the sound of his first musical offerings to the world got underway, the cool but contemporary likes of Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson had been topping the charts, and a lilting, reggae influenced pop song by an unknown Australian writer, called ‘Feel Free’, was demoed in early sessions. Although unreleased to this day, sources suggested at the time that it was not a million miles away from Johnson’s own ‘Sitting, Waiting, Wishing’ or Mraz’s ‘I’m Yours’. Olly immediately knew that this was a sound that reflected his personality – upbeat, fun and laidback – and that this was the direction he wanted to go in.

As an introductory record, ‘Please Don’t Let Me Go’ might seem like a strange choice with hindsight, certainly compared to later records of Olly’s we’ll meet, being as it is a plea to a former lover not to end things with the hapless, lovelorn soul in the song who’s ‘heart is b-b-beating double time’. Although it does carry a lot of the tropes key to a debut release by a mainstream pop artist. It has an irresistible, catchy chorus with a strong melody. And, at a time when the charts were full of EDM and futuristic, bombastic artists that were worshipped like other worldly creatures, it immediately stood out when it came on the radio.

And then there’s the video. The ‘gate-crashing a party as introduction to a brand-new artist’ trope of pop videos has been utilised for decades – remember the Spice Girls’ video for ‘Wannabe’? At a posh summer garden party at a sprawling country pile, Olly turns up on a Moped adorned in a Harrington jacket, grandad shirt, shades and trilby. If Terry McCann, the title character of 80s TV show Minder had been a popstar, one imagines that Olly in the ‘Please Don’t Let Me Go’ video would’ve been the end result.

It’s a clever angle for his first video, because it establishes him outside of his telly roots enough as the relatable underdog taking his first steps into the sprawling country piles and excess that represents the pop industry. It was very different to what was out there, some more toffy nosed might say it was uninvited, but over the song’s duration, he gradually charms its guests (read: we the listeners) into acceptance. Which upon its release at the end of summer 2010, is precisely what Olly achieved with this single. Locked in a chart battle for number one with Katy Perry, one of the biggest and most outlandish popstars of all in 2010, and as big as pop music got at that time – and also crucially, the polar opposite of Olly – sales for the single went through the roof, and it landed straight in at number one in the UK.

For a first single, it does what an introduction should do – announce the artist in just over three minutes, but to leave just enough to have the listener wanting more. A lot of the sensibilities in ‘Please Don’t Let Me Go’ continue to be common features of what makes an Olly Murs record instantly recognisable, as we shall see in the coming weeks. And with ten weeks on the chart, and his first gold record to his name, as well as hitting the charts in four other countries, it was clear that the public wouldn’t be letting go of him anytime soon.

OTHER THOUGHTS

‘This One’s For The Girls’, the song’s B-side, is a fan favourite, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a good time party track celebrating his love of ‘the girls all around the world’, with a sound more than a little indebted to that of early Jackson 5. Jon Shave, who’d previously worked with top pop producer Brian Higgins at Xenomania, and two former members of 00s indie band Orson had a big hand in the production of the song.

[folkloreguk]

Earth and Hell (pt.2)

Summary: Georgina, an egoistic vampire. Baekhyun, a loyal werewolf. Exo as hosts, zombies, demons, and warlocks. A city that needs saving.  ||  "You owe me for saving your life."  ||

warnings: blood, gore, death, mentions of sex (literally pure sin)

In case anyone prefers it, I also post this story on my wattpad!

Earth and Hell MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST

Sehun's finger ran over my bottom lip, collecting the drops of blood left on it. He then took the tip of it between his own lips, tasting the last bit of the innocent girl that now was no more. Minseok and Jongdae watched from their seats, not finding any liking in human blood. They weren't very fond of humans, but they were definitely not into killing them. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were having a brain - feast at a nearby table, their content chews and licks echoing through the room. I knew Chanyeol wasn't too fond of killing humans, but I guessed he must have been especially hungry that night.

Baekhyun had, to my surprise, not participated in the whole killing thing. He was sat on the other side of the lounge on a bar stool, looking into his phone grimly. Shaking my head, I looked away. I was not going to let a moody dog mess up my meal.

"Kai?" he suddenly asked. Involuntarily, I turned my head again. Just like every other person in the room. "You can have this, actually. I won't need it anymore."

Then he put his phone down on the bar. Kai instantly appeared, his head poking through the tabletop, grinning widely. Because he had no freedom to leave this place, he absolutely adored presents. I wasn't sure what he was going to do with a phone, though. Then Baekhyun got up, pulled the collar of his jacket up, and walked towards the exit.

"You're already leaving?" Chanyeol asked, a little disappointed. I really couldn't grasp what made Baekhyun so interesting to the demon.

"I can't wait to get that dog smell out of my nose," I said quietly, smirking. Not quietly enough, though. Baekhyun's throat released a low, dangerous growl. That was it. Then he simply left.

"Someone's extra moody today," Sehun grinned. Usually Baekhyun was fun to tease, making me a little disappointed at his boring reaction of tonight. But then I remembered the bar fight from the other week, and was glad he had left without a quarrel. For the sake of Chanyeol's bar. Meanwhile, Kai was busy with his newest possession. Faster than I had thought, he had found the camera function. The way he looked at the screen whilst holding it not even half an inch from his eyes made me wonder, though.

"You know what guys? I think I'm gonna get going too," I stated. "It's Halloween. Gotta scare some kids."

"Do me a favor, don't feed on them," Minseok advised.

"I said scare, not eat," I replied, getting up from Sehun's lap. He huffed in protest, Junmyeon joining him.

"I'll be back later," I grinned, pulling my dress into place a little, before strutting towards the door. I waved at the men one last time before taking the back door into the rather cold October air. Not that any temperature bothered a vampire.

The night club wasn't far from the sea, luckily. I enjoyed being down by the water at night, when it was quiet and the waves were the only sound interrupting the night. My city was not a common one. It composed of many islands, all connected through countless bridges. The one I was on at the moment was the one I called home. The high cliffs of the island were connected with the surrounding ones through five bridges, going in different directions. I preferred my home island over all others. Not only because there was no werewolf pack residing on this one. But mainly because of the old buildings and museums making up the biggest part of it. Hardly anything had changed since I had moved there 80 years ago.

I smoothly flashed my sharp teeth at a group of teenage boys walking past me. They only snickered in excitement, turning their heads my way. Silly, silly, humans. As I got closer to the north bridge, I let my eyes run along the sky and over the millions of stars. Super eyesight surely was useful if you wanted to watch the stars, even in the city. All of a sudden, something caught my attention. Not something. Someone.

A figure stood on top of a tall building, right by the edge. Taking your life on Halloween, ironic. Becoming a ghost on the one day of the year people once tried to get rid of them. I snorted. Then, I narrowed my eyes to slits. No way. That was not just any stupid human. It was the stupidest werewolf I had ever had the ordeal of knowing. Having drawn my interest, I sped up. My feet raced along the asphalt, until I arrived at the side of the tall building. My hands grabbed the rain downwater pipe while I shed off my heels. In the time of seconds, I clambered up the side of the high brick wall, my bare feet and hands accompanied by my vampire light speed. I was careful not to arouse his attention as I lifted myself up on top of the edge. I felt dizzy looking down at the small humans for a moment, but then my gaze turned. Baekhyun was standing on the edge like before, nervously knotting his fingers. He kept looking down and over the city as if someone could come and save him. The building was so tall, I could view past the cliffs to the other islands. Around us, the water surrounded the small land. I could hear the waves clearly, not sure if the wolf could too, though. I watched him for a minute, but got bored quickly.

Although werewolves were resistant and could heal usually deadly wounds, this fall would for sure take his breath. I wasn't sure what to do. My difficult decision was taken by a quiet sound. Only a vampire would hear this. There were steps coming up from inside the building. Judging by the volume of the noise, they were only one, maybe two levels away.

Soundlessly, I jumped onto the roof of the small part over the stairway that lead through the door onto the rooftop. Then Baekhyun heard the steps as well. But it was too late. Seconds before he could react, the metal door swung open. I watched from above as four figures stormed in the wolf's direction. They were pointing guns at him and shouting.

"Hands where we can see them!" a woman shouted, angrily. The figures were dressed in black, making it easy for me to spot their brown weapon belts. Silver bullets and wooden daggers. I knew what that meant, and so did Baekhyun, who held his hands high in fear. Hunters. I wondered why he didn't just let them kill him, if that's what he came for anyway. Silly dog. I waited for the loud shot. Would passer-byers hear it? Where were they going to get rid of his body? I waited, and waited.

But nothing came. One of the figures approached Baekhyun from behind, a pair of handcuffs ready. Oh no. Just like before, I also knew exactly what that meant. Capture. Torture. Slow death. I didn't feel sorry for the werewolf. I wish he could have just stop bugging me, take his pack and go someplace else. But this was a problem. I realized how much he knew about me. And judging by how mutual our hate was, he would not hesitate to talk about me. And the last thing I needed was an annoying group of hunters making my life complicated. I thought of Chanyeol's lounge, of Minseok and Jongdae, Kyungsoo and innocent Kai. They would hunt them all down if Baekhyun told them. And he would. If not freely, he would give up after being tortured for days. I knew he wasn't strong enough. I huffed in annoyance. I had to help him.

By now the werewolf had let them tie him up, the figure behind him brutally shoving him toward the rooftop door they had come through. Just before they could reach it, I dropped from the roof. I landed like a cat on my feet, right in front of them.

"I must admit," I announced. Before any of the surprised hunters could react, I had practically teleported behind one of them, taking his knife. "This is not how I had imagined my night to go."

Then I slit his throat. The smell of blood made its way into my cells rapidly, making my eyes shine in a bright red. A shot fired my way, accompanied by a gasp from one of the slower-reacting hunters. Before the bullet had even come half my way, I took my place behind the next hunter, the silver knife at his throat. His body was covering mine, so that the hunters had no chance of shooting me that moment. Baekhyun's eyes stared at me in surprise. He had been quite lucky I had been around.

"Now, if you would like to see this young man die too, keep pointing that gun at me," I said, getting annoyed. These humans really thought they stood a chance against me. "If not, I suggest you open that dog's cuffs."

For a second they blinked, and I almost wanted to correct myself and say 'werewolf'. Stupid humans. Reluctantly, the woman walked over to Baekhyun, fumbling behind his back, until he flinched and pulled his hands out of the silver handcuffs, rubbing his wrists in pain.

"Now that wasn't so difficult, was it?" I smirked. "Now, I want you all to go through that door, and don't you dare look back."

Hunters were so easily scared. They thought they knew everything about us creatures, but really they were terrified of every of our talents. Agonizingly slowly, the two remaining figures made their way through the door, while I still held on to the third member. When they had made it, I pushed the third guy inside, rapidly slamming the door closed and pressing my entire weight against it.

Just like I had expected, they weren't big on giving up. Vampires surely were strong, but three against one wasn't fair.

"Are you just gonna stand there, dog?" I asked Baekhyun, who quickly took his place next to me. He still had a look of confusion on his face as he gazed at me. Suddenly, a shot ripped through the night, and through the door. It missed me by inches. I had to get away from here. Hastily, I searched for Baekhyun's eyes.

"Let go in three... two...," I began, as Baekhyun looked at me. "-one!"

At 'one' - I couldn't believe it myself - I grabbed the brown haired wolf by the waist and jumped. The second we had landed on the small roof above the staircase I tackled him, throwing him to the ground so we lay flat next to each other. That's when the metal door swung open once more. Those hunters apparently didn't treasure their lives. But I was always careful when deadly weapons were in play. I held my finger to my lips, signaling Baekhyun to keep quiet next to me. He was way too close for my liking, our shoulders were touching. But I couldn't risk moving now.

Like headless chickens the hunters searched the roof for almost a minute. As if we were going to jump out if they stayed extra long. When they finally left, Baekhyun let out an exaggerated breath next to me. As I got up, I brushed some dirt from my dress and wiped my hair out of my face.

"You owe me for saving your life," I let out, matter of fact. He shot me an annoyed glare, but didn't fight back. "I take that as a thanks. You're welcome."

"What the hell were you doing following me?" he suddenly asked, looking pissed.

"Don't be full of yourself. As if I, a sophisticated child of the night, would follow you, a dirty dog," I laughed.

"Stop calling me that, bloodsucker," he argued.

"I was just coming to watch you jump to your death, that is all," I replied, ignoring his comment. "What was that about, anyways?"

"None of your business," he spat.

Oh really? I'll remember that next time you're almost being taken by hunters. What would your pack possibly do without you, their trusty, smelly, alpha?" I joked. At my words he flinched visibly, looking to the ground. I had obviously touched onto a weak spot. Interested, I gazed at him closely.

"There is no more pack," he suddenly said. I raised my eyebrows. "They're gone. All of them."

"Gone? Have they had enough of you? You see, I don't know how werewolf rules work but-" I started.

"Dead," he said. "They're all dead."

At his words something inside of me changed. His pack had been the biggest I had ever seen, at least 40 wolves by my guess. Baekhyun avoided my look, acting as if the black roof tiles were suddenly the most exciting thing he had ever laid eyes on.

"And you're telling me those idiotic hunters from just now managed to do that?" I wondered.

"I don't know. Earlier today I was walking home when I heard the howls from my people. When I arrived it was too late. No one's left alive. I don't know who would've been able to do a such thing and get away with it. My pack was strong," he told. In my years as a vampire I had seen werewolves fight humans. They were stronger, faster, and could get away even with deep wounds. You'd need an army to slaughter Baekhyun's pack like he had told me. Unease crept up to me.

"Whatever killed them. It was not human," he added. That explained why he was standing on the rooftop's edge at 3 in the morning. If I had a little more compassion, I would probably feel honest sorrow for the alpha. Now, I only feared for my own safety.

"I should go tell Minseok and Jongdae. Maybe they've heard something," I said. Like that, I jumped off the small roof, walking over to the rainwater pipe. "Don't try to kill yourself again or I won't be there to help."

Swiftly, I left an annoyed - looking wolf behind, climbing down the building's wall again. The rough material of the brick wall felt nice under my bare feet. I felt free. The last five meters I jumped, landing in an empty, narrow alley. My heels were still where I had left them. I gladly put them on, before walking back the way I came. I didn't get far until the dog smell drifted into my nose again. Without turning around I knew he was right behind me.

"Byun Baekhyun, what on earth could you want from me now?" I asked, looking forward sternly. He quickly caught up, so he was walking next to me, but left at least two meters space between us. I appreciated it.

"What could I, a sophisticated child of the moon, possibly want from you, a stubborn, nerve-racking bloodsucker?" he replied, making me grin in annoyance. "I wanna ask Chanyeol to stay at his for the night. Do you mind? Wait, I don't care if you do," he went on.

I had to restrain myself from ripping his head off right in the middle of the street. Like two sulky children we walked, not sharing another word the rest of the way.

[whotookcheesuschrist]

Some excerpts from the playthrough

I was pretty close to getting chills from that intro. That is the most atmospheric video game intro I’ve experienced thus far. All the way from the menu to the actual game. Fucking damn. (Apart from maybe Dragon Age Inquisition.)

Made it through the first part on the first try. Saved. It didn’t save as far as I thought it would and I had to do it again, failing four times. :-(

“Behold, my amazingly rendered abs. And flat-ass face.”

You can tell this is game was a first attempt in many things; such as delivering awkward, awkward lines.

There is a mission briefing mimicking VHS tapes and I fucking love it.

Whuh... COLONEL DID YOU KILL HIS DOGS? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So... that was intensly antagonistic of a character who have up to this point been delivering barely any support apart from diet-coke Sun Tzu.

Speaking of Sun-Tzu...

As of writing I’ve finished MGS2, and there’s a certain related part of that that I will get into on a later date, but this one, more than what’s to come, reminds me of that police interrogation in The Venture Bros.

YOUU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

In the most threatening way possible, say the words: Follow the mice.

These controls are hUaORRIBLe

In one way, yes, it adds to the difficulty without being forced, but good fucking god, trying to figure out which direction I’m supposed to push the stick while pressing up against a wall is a nightmare. And having to stand still while shooting and not being able to move while aiming at all is... not very user-friendly design. Thank God for auto-aim

In a similar vein, a third-person shooter with the camera angle being from what we Norwegians call bird perspective is a bit of a challenge

The game play is still pretty dope though

Bee tee dubbs, the ex-Fox unit is hereby dubbed the Suicide Squad

(I would totally play a super-hero video game with that kind of lay-out of the villains and the hero. I think this could actually transfer to comics as well, the way the villains are set-up, introduced and used.)

First meeting with Metrosexual Noodle Eastern.

"I love to reload during a battle! There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well greased chamber." — Revolver Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid.

I bet you do, Ozzie

This game is not complete without a ninja.

There’s a masturbation joke lying in there somewhere.

So far this game has been surprisingly Not Gay. Except from Snake’s sick abs, but then comes Otacon and fucks my shit up on so many levels.

Johny’s grand introduction: Face down, ass up

Meryl... I really like Meryl, but she is so obviously one of the “not like other girls”, tomboy-ish archetype that isn’t really all that useful. It’s pretty sad, because we see her kick ass. We know she can, so it’s a little sad that she isn’t properly utilized.

Poor Otacon.

The ninja was depressingly easy to best. I know the TWEETHT!! that comes later with this guy, but man, you’d think it’d be more of a fight.

OH. MY GOD. Let me count down how many ways Otacon’s introduction is gay.

After being saved from death by katana, Otacon stares at Snake downward-up. When the camera stops, we get a damn good shot, yet again, of Snake’s Sick Abs.

“You’re uniform is not like the others...”

The disappointment in Otacon’s voice upon learning that he was not the goal.

The symbolism of Otacon literally coming out of the closet.

Snake sitting with legs crossed like a fucking femme fatale as he and Otacon catch up to speed

Snake inspecting Otacon, crotch on up

Snake walking up to Otacon until he’s one foot away, laying his hand on his shoulder and asking “you okay?” in an uncharacteristic, caring voice: and Otacon being weirede out by it, commenting: “What’s wrong, getting all friendly all of a sudden...”, to which Snake just awkwardly backs away and says “uh nothing, just... glad you’re okay”

Forget Meryl, Hal’s your love interest and we all know it.

“I’ve been therapied into not having an interest in men and no one can break the spell at all none at all nuh-uh...” And of course Snake is going to prove them wrong. Eww. Call it a product of its time, but still, gross.

Bee-tee-dubbs, Otacon and Snake discussing Meryl’s low-pixelated ass strikes me as hilariously “no homo”. I’m pretty sure, given how Hideo is on the subject in later games, that all of it is intentional. Subtext included.

Psycho Mantis, stop dissing my game stats

Poor dude. Seriously, that is a sad and solid backstory for a character

“Riussiain lieady rieportyingk in on wieapions” I like her tho

Man, this game... In all of the silliness it is STILL on-point with its social commentary. Nastasha’s talks about the START programs, nuclear disarmament, the money involved, the ultimate plan of the Foxhound members, nuclear programs made for short-range launches... All of these are things that I’ve seen in the news this week, and what goes on in the game takes place in the year 2005. Not to mention us becoming more and more desensitized to violence and warfare. It is frightening to behold. I wish I had it in me to talk about all of this at length, because there is really a well of subject matters to discuss here.

Once again I experience a video game trying to impose on me that, in the story, something is urgent, but in reality, I have hours of backtracking if I want to.

I... kinda like the voice they gave Sniper Wolf. And that she’s Kurd; it is nice to see that Hideo remembers a little history. And it brings a little variation in a very formulaic artistic industry.

There is nothing so jarring as video game characters talking specifically about the controls on your PS controller. Abs are still sick. I like the little touch that this death will be different from the others, and set you somewhat back in progress. Not enough for it to make an impact, but I appreciate the effort; the game is present even on its own metalevel

Otacon, you sap. Oh and thank you for massaging my arm, Naomi

If Johnny were ever to be in a Rambo-parody the first movie would be called Johnny - First Brown

My old enemy... Stairs...

OTACON DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT SUBTEXT MEANS

My tactic for handling this: laying down land mines whenever possible and run like a pussy.

Sniper’s demise, the entire scene for all parties involved, is pretty heartfelt still you two should kiss

I have literally played Die Hard.

HUHHHH! THE PLOT THICKENS! WE’VE BEEN BETRAYED!

Vulcan Raven has no sense of humor. I am big man McLargebeef. Fear me.

One of the greatest things about this game is the boss fights. All of them are different and interesting, fun to play. Same goes for the rest of the game: nothing ever gets to the point of being samey.

I mentioned atmosphere earlier, and oh how I do love this for keeping it throughout. This feels like a beautiful tribute to the 80′s action movies, in tone and spirit as well. This is what the 80′s style tribute that we’ve seen lately really ought to be: specs of hilarity and ridiculoussness mixed with complete sincerity and genuine, dark depth, without getting to caught up in aesthetic.

Metal Gear Chicken.

How can anyone survive working on that thing.

I wonder what Ocelot really thought of Liquid.

GAAASP! MILLER IS BRITISH! OH NO!

Liquid is just an asshole, but if that was his upbringing I feel a little bad for him. No wonder he hyper-compensates.

Snake takes these news surprisingly well

Snake being made into a weapon, robbed of information that he really needs: this game makes his feelings and responses, however douchy, feels quite earned

I am fighting a giant mecha and this is STILL a stealth game.

Okay that... that surprise from Gray Fox actually was a surprise. And what the fuck is he MADE of.

So Richard Dawkins is to blame...

           OF COURSE-

SHIRTLESS BATTLE! OVER A WOMAN!

“MACGYVEEEEEEEEEER!”

Surprise bitch I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me

Liquid’s death is surprisingly evocative for me. I really do feel like Liquid’s plan is more important to him than anything, because he that desperately needs to prove himself in the light of his “father”.

...

                    ...

          ...

          ...

          ...

          .                           .                         .           

          WILL YOU           SHUT UP

BTW I made it through without sacrificing Meryl. I’ve learned what happens in the other ending, and it is pretty dumb how that one leads so much better into the next game than the other. And while on the subject

Woah, yet another twist. Although knowing what I do about Ocelot now it is hardly that surprising. The impact of this is still satisfying and intriguing, because there are things in the game that for someone who isn’t already completely familiar with them seems a bit weird. The reveals here makes some things falll into place, and I am surprised that the game actually did specifically build up to a sequel

It strikes me that I haven’t talked once about the performances. While there are a lot of them that don’t go all in, you gotta give David Hayter props for this, as well as several of the others. This must’ve been so very strange to work on for all of them: not quite a translation from a japanese work, not quite American either, giving this exposition-heavy dialogue a unique life of its own

And the game naming Snake after him is a very cute touch, one that I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t thought of before. And no one could give Snake the layers of believable capability and apparent ineptitude better than he. IQ of 180 my ass.

GOD that ending dragged on.

[greensparty]

Album Review: U2 “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” Super Deluxe Edition

Released on October 30, 2000, U2′s 10th studio album was a comeback for the ages. When arguing about U2′s greatest album it always comes down to The Joshua Tree (read my review of the 2017 Super Deluxe Edition here) vs Achtung Baby. But whatever the feeling is about what’s #1, pretty much everyone across the board agrees that the third greatest album by the band is All That You Can’t Leave Behind! After the band’s 1997 album Pop received a very mixed reaction, this was the band coming back in a big way, returning to their late 80s rock sound. It was like they were saying “we’re not down for the count yet, just listen!”. It was an album I picked up while I was in college and listened to quite frequently in the next few years. It is easily one of the best albums of the 00s and it was my #1 Album of 2000. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this landmark album, there are multi-format reissues that were released last week. I was lucky enough to review the 5-disc Super Deluxe Edition.

the newly released Super Deluxe Edition of All That You Can’t Leave Behind

Disc 1 is the original album remastered. It is such a strong collection of songs:  “Beautiful Day”, “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out of”, the rocker “Elevation”, “Walk On”, “Peace on Earth”, “When I Look at the World”, “New York” and countless others. Song for song, this entire album hangs together so strongly. I would easily call this their 3rd best album. This was a return to form for the band and one felt like they were trying a little harder. Sometime around 2000, I read an interview with Bono and he said he joined the band in 1978 when they were all 18 and at this point in 2000, they had now been a band longer than they hadn’t. Doesn’t that blow your mind? The band was now a well-oiled machine and it showed!

original album cover

Disc 2 is B-Sides and out-takes alternatives. Some of these I knew already like “Summer Rain”, “Always”, “Big Girls are Best”, the acoustic version of “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” which were on their 2002 EP 7, “Stateless” from the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, and the Johnny Cash cover “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”. Some of these are really great songs and I’m surprised they didn’t make their way onto another album at some point. I especially liked “Levitate” and “Flower Child”. This disc is what really makes this box set worth the price tag is the unreleased material.

the 2001 DVD of their Boston concert

Disc 3 is a live concert from June 2001 they did at the Fleet Center in Boston, MA. They performed on June 5, 6 and 9, 2001 at Fleet Center. I attended the show on June 9 and it was possibly my favorite U2 show of the 3 concerts I’ve seen (I also saw them in 1997 and 2005, if you’re curious). Later that year, there was a DVD released Elevation 2001: Live from Boston. Even though the disc said “filmed on June 6″, there were parts from all 3 Boston shows. That DVD has been in my DVD collection for about 18 years now! Disc 3 is the audio from all 19 tracks that were featured on that DVD release. It kinda surprises me that they never released it as a live album or even as a combo with the DVD. It is still as great a concert as I remember, especially the acoustic “Desire”, “Bullet the Blue Sky” and the dedication during “In a Little While” when Bono talks about how that was the last song Joey Ramone listened to before he died (Ramone passed away just a few months before that show).

Disc 4 is remixes. I’m not really a fan of remixes and don’t feel they add much to this set, but what’s kinda frustrating is that you get two remixes in a row of the exact same song...at least mix it up or something. This is the one portion of the Super Deluxe set I could’ve done without.

U2 in 2000

This Super Deluxe set comes with a 32-page book from Anton Corbijn. The longtime collaborator of U2 gets his own photo book of photos he took circa 2000, including the album cover and photos. Some cool pics in here!

This is an awesome Deluxe Edition! Disc 2 is the big highlight with several B-Sides that are better than most band’s A-Sides. Disc 3 is exciting to have in audio form. If you have the money, it’s worth springing for this, but in the end the real highlight of this album is the original album itself. Still one of the band’s best!

For info on All That You Can’t Leave Behind Super Deluxe Edition: https://www.u2.com/news/title/all-that-you-cant-leave-behind-turns-20/

Original album: 5 out of 5 stars

Super Deluxe Edition: 4.5 out of 5

[myheroimaginations]

Kyouka having a girlfriend head canons? (Like ideal dates, what the first kiss is like, and who asked who out first?) sorry if it's not too specific, I'm just mad gay for Jirou Kyouka lmfao. If you don't mind doing more how about Tsuyu, Izuku, and my man Shouji? If not, just Kyouka would be great!! Thank you :)

Dude I’m mad gay for Jirou too… I’m mad gay for all the girls in Class 1-A if I’m honest. But let’s go! <3 Sorry this is less than five bullet points per characters, but I jam packed a lot under each bullet point so I think it’ll suffice!

Jirou:

•  Who asked who out first? - She asked you out first. She’s known she’s into girls for a long time and isn’t really ashamed of it or anything, but she will wait until you’re close friends to ask you out. She likes to feel out a person before pursuing a possible relationship. Once she’s comfortable she’ll approach the subject really casually, she doesn’t want to make things tense with her confession. That way if you agree everything’s great, but if you don’t you can continue being friends without issue.

•  What was the first kiss like? - REALLY adorable. Jirou’s actually not that experienced in kissing, maybe one or two short flings that physically jumped the gun on her when she wasn’t ready to kiss them yet. She doesn’t kiss you or let you kiss her until you’re both feeling ready. And when you do, it’s tender and soft and loving. You first kiss is when you learn she wears cherry flavored lip balm, which you can’t help but laugh at since it seems to juxtapose her punk vibe. She’ll groan at you for ruining the moment, but give her another kiss and maybe you can save it.

•  Ideal Dates - She’s a fan of more casual dates. Yknow, like locking up in one of your rooms and eating 3 whole pizzas as you marathon 80s films. Those are the dates you’ll typically have. If she’s wanting to do something a little more special though, she’d prefer to do something fun and active. Her favorites are dates at amusement parks and bowling rinks, since you can still laugh and talk but you’re also up and having fun. She hates dates that are too formal though. Fancy restaurants make her uncomfortable, and while she likes movies, she hates that she can’t talk to you during one at a theater. Dates with her are closer to hanging out together than actual structured dates.

Tsuyu:

•  Who asked who out first? - You asked Tsuyu out first.  Not that she didn’t like you already or anything like that, she’s just a busy girl with a lot on her plate to handle, so she never even considered asking you on a date. In fact, she’d probably already stated she liked you by the time you asked her out. She’d instantly agree though, commenting on how she’s never been on a date before and asking you if it’s really like all the movies and stuff depict. She appears calm while responding to you, but that’s just her natural behavior, on the inside she’s very excited to experience her first real date.

•  What was the first kiss like? - STICKY. Frog saliva has a very different feel to it than human saliva. But seriously, it’s a little awkward for you because she clearly has no idea what she’s doing, but she’s doing it confidently and she seems so happy afterwards that you don’t have the heart to comment on it at that moment. It’s also a very early first kiss, like first date early. She just really wanted to experience what it was like and trusted you, so she simply told you what she wanted and went for it when you agreed. It’s not bad though. The kiss is very innocent and sweet, and it’s a good memory the two of you giggle at remembering later in the relationship.

•  Ideal Dates - Cafe dates are really popular with her. She doesn’t particularly love incredibly noisy or crowded places, so many common date places aren’t really her scene. She’d much prefer to curl up on a couch with you in a little ma and pop run cafe with some hot chocolate and just chat. Shopping dates can be fun for her depending on how crowded the center is. Her favorite kind of dates are swimming dates in the summer though! Once the warm weather rolls around she’s always asking you to go to the beach or pool with her. The water is a very comfortable place for her, and she does have a SMALL fantasy about watching the sunset on the beach with you.

Izuku:

•  Who asked who out first? - You ask Izuku out first. Good LORD have you met this boy? He’s much too much of a nervous nellie to ask a girl her likes on a date. You could probably tell him to his face that you want to date him and he’d still have fears of you saying no if he asked you out. Make it easier on the both of you and just do it for him. He’ll be much more relieved, your relationship can begin much sooner than it would if you waited, everyone is significantly happier this way.

•  What was the first kiss like? - You and Izuku have very different opinions on what your first kiss was. Izuku claims it to have happened on your third date when he was escorting you back to your home. The reality is Izuku shakily leaned in close enough to brush his bottom lip against your chin (which he didn’t notice was your chin because his eyes were closed so tight) and then bolted away faster than you could tell him your lips were up here. Your real first kiss happened on the date after that, when he moved to do the same thing and you just caught him by the tie and planted a good, soft kiss on him. He nearly fainted.

•  Ideal Dates - He looooves movie dates! Watching movies are one of Izuku’s favorite pastimes, and he has fun planning which films coming out the two of you are going to go see together. He also really likes cuddling with you in the theater, he was so IMMENSELY proud of himself when he finally gained the courage to do the “yawn and wrap the arm around the shoulder” trick. Picnics in the park are always nice as well. He always thinks you look absolutely radiant in the mid-afternoon sun! Other than that, Izuku is happy to do with at home dates of watching shows together on Netflix and such, it’s not hard to please this boy date-wise.

Shouji (NGL Anon, I found the phrase “My Man Shouji” really funny for some reason):

•  Who asked who out first? - You asked him out first. Shouji is a guy who never really focuses on material needs or wants, and he sort of places romantic relationships in this category (though he certainly does not view people as materials). More he just finds it unnecessary, so he doesn’t focus on it or seek it out. That doesn’t mean he’s averse to dating if you ask, though! He’s a very sweet boy, so even if he’s never considered whether or not his feelings for you were romantic, he’ll agree if just to make you happy since he definitely considers you a friend. You’ll have to ask him on multiple dates though for the gears to really turn in his head that you want a full on relationship, and it’ll take some time for him to warm up to the idea.

•  What was the first kiss like? - Girl, get ready to wait a LONG ASS TIME to have your first kiss with this boy. Step one, the dating period where he doesn’t even get you want to pursue a relationship. Step two, allow him to get used to the idea of a relationship. Step three, be in a relationship with him for a SOLID amount of time (like 6 months) and then MAYBE he’ll kiss you. With a mouth on his tentacle, only on his face mouth if everything so far has gone EXTREMELY well. And even then it is very short and to the point. Shouji is a boy that likes to move at his own pace…

•  Ideal Dates -  Shouji doesn’t fully “get” dating. He likes hanging out with you, but he doesn’t get what separates a date from simply chilling with you. What’s the difference? Because of this he doesn’t exactly have an “ideal date,” but like Tsuyu, he prefers to avoid largely crowded and loud places. He enjoys going on late night walks with you or just hanging out together and doing your own things as you chat. Very casual to the point where you sometimes ask if this is really a date. He always asks what makes this any less a date than going to a out somewhere. You’re together, enjoying each other’s company, and possibly learning more about each other. You never really have an answer to give, so you just shrug it off and enjoy being with him.