#the weird shit people let the acting world do is bonkers

[ssaalexblake]

and not to be unsympathetic and the like but if you’re not available to do a job you should not get the job because... you can’t do the job *shrug emoji*

[ofmermaidstories]

ur post about oc fic and reader insert fic made me think about how every time i see a post dragging x reader it's kinda just... thinly veiled misogyny.

like i don't wanna get super deep or whatever but a good chunk of x reader writers (myself included) are just women or people socialized as women that have felt unloved or under appreciated in their lives because of their looks or their personality or their skills in things that women/feminine people are expected to excel in and i think that oc/reader insert stories give women a really important space to make themselves (or a version of themselves) the most desired thing which is something that they often don't experience. it's a space where women can feel comfortable and loved in a world where they're under appreciated and tossed aside because of things out of their control and it drives me up a wall when i see people shitting on these spaces and these works because these are just safe spaces for marginalized people PREDOMINATELY CREATED BY MARGINALIZED PEOPLE!!

n e ways this was a long rant oops..

omg see the thing that gets me about the occassional x reader/oc drag is that—the call is coming from inside the house LMAO. like, okay maybe original characters in fics aren’t a niche thing, but x reader sure the hell is, so you have to like, know internet culture/fandom to be aware of it let alone to start using it like an insult, you know? and i would argue that fanfic tends to be a hobby that attracts marginalised identities as you say, so like, why are we clowning on ourselves? LOL. it’s like a mathlete bullying the horse girl of their class, like, buddy—we’re both losers!!! get over yourself LMAO.

i think my favourite dig at x reader (specifically) that i’ve ever seen is some rando on tiktok saying it was fanfic for people who were popular in public school—i think it’s so telling of how other fans might view oc/reader content? like, “oh that’s just some straight girl shit, they’re not putting any effort into it/they’re stealing our precious ship boys for their pORN/they’re ruining the canon story by inserting themselves into it”. and idk—part of it is just human nature (we are always going to shit on things we don’t like, that is a fact) and part of it might be fandom/internet culture at large at the moment (the purity aspect/policing) but at the end of the day all we can do is tell them to eat dog shit when they sprout up in our spaces and ignore ‘em.

idk! it drives me bonkers though, because it does feel like these spaces/niches do get targeted unfairly for it—if it’s not for the simple crime of writing a love story with your favourite character, then it’s like… being old and doing it! because god forbid you be over the age of 18 and still enjoy engaging with fiction! don’t you have a mortgage to go pay? like—i never see that attitude (within a fandom space) directed at the grown-ass men and women and gender neutral pals who play like, Dungeons and Dragons. No one (within a fandom space!) tells them they’re weird for forty-hour long campaigns where they fight and fall in love and idk, put dragons in some dungeons or something. no—it’s the blatant love stories that get picked on. the ones written by girls (gender neutral).

romance—and falling in love—is one of the most universal feelings/acts in the world. we want to fall in love with everything! in every world! we wanna—fall in love and be loved by superheroes and the villains they fight and the monsters in the dark and the good guys that rush in with swords and the cute barista at the coffee shop down the road. if other fans wanna get hung up on the fact that a tiny fraction of others want to insert themselves in these incredible worlds and experience everything they want to (having powers; being saved. saving someone else—saving yourself) then that’s their problem lmaoooo. im sorry you can’t have fun and create whimsy for yourself by drawing an oc who wins the sports festival and saves bakugou from being kidnapped—but im built different. 😌 and im gonna have fun while im here.

[marqenobi]

.

gosh I still remember when I first started watching la casa de papel, catching glimpses of it during family lunch on the TV, annoyed at my dad for choosing such a weird show. I remember finding Berlín completely insane. I didn't even know his name, or that they all had city names, so when I heard them calling each other oslo and nairobi and tokyo I thought these are just the world's weirdest people who have city names. I never watched the bella ciao scene, I missed it cause I was doing something else when the family watched that episode. But then the tables turned, and boy HOW did they turn. I remember going from freaked out to intrigued by Berlin.. the little background, how does he know the Professor's name? The russian roulette, him staying loyal to Sergio even on risk of actual DEATH. bonkers. something incredibly off about him. and yet, invariably everyone held their breath when he was in a scene, and kudos to Pedro's acting that had us on the edge of our seats every second he was on screen.

and then he DIED. and it was quite ironic, by the time we reached the s2 finale, my dad had kinda lost interest, other family too, but I was sitting on the sofa in rapt attention. When Sergio cried, I felt tears forming in my eyes. But for HIM? I hated him, didn't I? Well,, I was devastated at the ending, got my hopes up when news abt s3 broke, but again was left anxious cause what would the show be like without him... and even those early days there were so many theories, wishful thinking that he didn't really die, or they would resurrect him, a secret twin, a cure, etc etc... but I never let myself hope for a spinoff. this was back in late 2019/2020 when my life/mental health went to utter shit and this silly little show and it's characters were my one thread of light. But I never let myself hope for an actual spinoff.

And now, fast forward 4 years later, it's actually happening!!! WTF!! we're getting a fucking spinoff cause it wasn't just me and Andrés really was that much of a fan favourite (i still question why some writing choices were made tho, I know he's the most dark character I've liked) but oh my god. It feels unreal. I am excited, despite everything. Will miss sergio & martin, but with luck the show is a success and they bring in them for next season 🙏 Despite everything through sheer force of love and will we the fans have managed to hold onto that Cabrón long after he died, long after the show ended, he's still here. damn

[queenofmalkier]

OOOOOH OKAY. SO. I actually went from hating Galad, to being meh about him, to now sort of liking him. He's not my favorite but I think he's actually a lot more complex than characters in the story - even himself! - give him credit for.

I think he's really the king of compartmentalizing, self-identifying-as-Atlas, and Not Thinking About It and it's fascinating to me.

Cut because I went bonkers.

For starters I would disagree that he's self-righteous about his rule following and trying to do the right thing. Genuinely, he just does the right things because he feels he has to because they're right. (Him being based on Galahad admittedly does color my viewpoint.)

I really wonder what happened to Galad to shape him into this Must Do Good At All Costs, very black and white thinking because it's gotta be trauma, right? He's a Damodred of course it is.

His mother left him when he was two years old. Nobody knew why, I'm sure nobody could explain it to him in a way he'd really understand, but given that it's Andor and her going missing led to a major succession crisis, I'd put good money on Taringail in the very least making comments about how all of that was Galad's fault.

After all if he'd been a girl there would have been no crisis, and Taringail is canonically a power-hungry shit.

The bitterness he must have felt, losing his power because he had a son and not a daughter, could have easily spilled out onto Galad.

I can see how a child would take that and believe wholeheartedly that he'd done something wrong - that if he wasn't Good then Bad Things happened. And nobody corrected him.

Why would they? Galad from an early age was well-behaved and always did the right thing. From the perspective of the adults they probably thought they were crushing it when it came to raising him.

Until he has siblings who are like "What the hell is wrong with you" I don't think anybody even noticed he was Like That.

Perhaps Morgase did, she does think of Galad throughout the series as her son, but she would have been so busy managing the kingdom there just wouldn't have been time to unpack his issues. Especially when for all intents and purposes, Galad having those Behave Or The Sky Falls Down thoughts were beneficial once Gawyn and Elayne got older and weren't so obedient. (Much later Morgase DOES realize they all done fucked up and tries to fix it.)

It's an interesting thing that happens to a certain subset of traumatized kids. Because they're not acting out or difficult, they get lost in the shuffle. People think it's okay because they're "not that bad" and meanwhile they're just quietly losing their shit. (Me, projecting? Nooo.)

Anyway, my point is I don't think Galad does the right thing to be a dick at any point. Gawyn might be a bit flawed, but he idolizes his brother and Morgase wouldn't have tolerated it if he was acting out of self-interest, son or not.

Elayne is the only one who really expresses dislike for Galad which I think is more an insight into her character as I believe she sometimes feels like she'll never be as "good" as Galad. He also gets her in trouble and it must be frustrating.

There is a quote about how he'll always do the right thing no matter who it hurts, which we see during the incident with the ship most clearly, and I can't help but contrast that with Moiraine and her arc in the books and the show - she also is fully committed to doing the right thing (saving the world) and will not let her think about the smaller costs.

Joining the whitecloaks is more complex than signing up with the fantasy hate group of Randland. I know as readers we're like What The Actual Fuck but the in-world perspective of the Aes Sedai is incredibly complicated, even in places that fully accept them there is fear, superstition, and mistrust.

I do think one mistake made with Galad is his age, because he comes off as a 20-something for so much of the series and therefore his actions make more sense, but having him be like, a full grown man is weird. A 20-something could be coaxed into joining the whitecloaks because they're basically a cult, they've got the nice clean uniforms, everybody follows the rules, oh and look at this nice shiny book that tells you how to live!

Direct quote from fandom but: "He claims that according to The Way of the Light, not all women who wield the One Power are inherently evil, stating that such is a mistaken tradition of the Children. Galad continues by saying that the book really says that temptation to wield the One Power can corrupt."

^ Honestly, that passage is not wrong, and I trust Galad's interpretation more than I would whitecloaks who have built up a quite hateful ideaology. It wouldn't be the first time a group deliberately misunderstood their own texts.

We don't see it, but for Galad I can absolutely see why the whitecloaks are appealing. He has no real place in the world (he's not going to stand by Elayne's side as the First Prince of the Sword, he's of high noble birth but nobody, he has some shit-tier social skills) but there's Eamon Valda telling him he's special, spending time with him specifically. Maybe he doesn't quite agree with their thoughts on the Aes Sedai, but the Tower is split, Elayne has vanished, and he's vulnerable to that type of manipulation.

I'm not saying it was a good choice, just that I can see why he made it. Just like I understand why Gawyn defended the tower.

Honestly Morgase set them up to be cult fodder lets be real.

We start to see him splinter a bit when it comes to Morgase and Eamon Valda. He's telling himself he's doing the right thing, etc. but even then... you can feel his doubts. The self-blame. That maybe he did a bad thing and now the people around him are suffering for it. His mother suffered for it. But he wants to make it right again!! And he's trying!

Like most of the other leaders of the era, he sees the writing on the wall and knows they're going to need every single body they've got to fight The Last Battle which means compromising on key beliefs of the whitecloaks like fighting with Aes Sedai instead of against them. (I do think there is a clear dissonance in his head between Aes Sedai and his family - he doesn't want to see it. Sort of like the people who rant and rail about food stamps until they need them and suddenly it's okay because it's them.)

Anyway I'm gonna stop now, but for me that's the bulk of why I find Galad to be interesting as a character.

With most popular Wheel of Time characters, I get it even if I don’t agree. Like I find Lan boring af but he represents a popular character archetype and is the love interest of a fan favorite so it totally makes sense why he has so many fans.

Galad though? I Do Not Get It. He was fun at first, with his self righteous big brother I’m telling mom energy, but then he joined the fantasy KKK WHILE having a sister who belongs to the group they want to exterminate. And it isn’t qualified appreciation like “wow that’s an interesting storyline that really illustrates how otherwise normal people can become radicalized,” it’s “Galad is a gigachad and the only good one of Morgases kids.” Do people really hate the Aes Sedai so much that they think “the group who thinks channelers should all be eliminated” makes some good points? Is it the halo effect around very good looking people, which Berelain arguably also benefits from, even though it’s words on a page and not a visual medium? Is it because Elayne doesn’t like him and a lot of people hate her?

NOTE: I get that Sanderson did his usual “Galad is a Good Person and is put in charge so the Whitecloaks are now Good too!” routine, but it really doesn’t fit with RJs style, and it doesn’t erase their foundational ideology or what they’re famous for doing.

[takaraphoenix]

I love you so much and I hope you get better soon 💙💙💙 take care of yourself, and fuck anybody who can't block what they don't want to see! Shame on them, good for you 💙

*sends you love and warm tea and wraps you in a warm blanket*

Ily 💕💕💕

Aaaw, thank you, dear ;^;

And it's not serious, it's just a bit of a cold, the heavy wind storms have been getting to me maybe? Cold and drafty ùû

and THE THING WAS this asshole literally included "I should have read the tags" in their shitty comment like fhgaöfldghaöfldghölaf you should have, yes, indeed. And after noticing, you should have just left instead of going into my comment section.

Like, they really complained that I "always" repeat the same sentence in my fics? The line about Jace being a stray in front of the loft. I'm aware! This is a thing I do intentionally, you dumbass. Because I AM very hung up on this moment. My favorite character voluntarily chose to come and seek shelter with the other half of my OTP for him when he was at his lowest, that's a thing that happened in canon, fuck how could I possibly not bring it up every single time I write the two of them in a ship that'd be weird? And hell yeah I use it as a short-hand to explain why Magnus calls Jace "puppy" I mean that's kind of a weird nickname to use Just Like That.

I don't get how you can get so fucking pissy that an author writes one (1) sentence to explain a personalized nickname in a ship. Like, literally, it's one sentence, they specifically complained about ONE sentence appearing in basically all fics featuring Magnus/Jace. I am oh so sorry if it is too taxing to reread one sentence, just because it provides an important context to something happening in the fic.

Completely bonkers to me like what the fuck am I supposed to do? Stop explaining shit just because shit got explained in another of the nearly 300 Shadowhunters fics I have? Yeah if you write a lot for one fandom and have certain fixed headcanons, you WILL end up repeating yourself to explain them to fit them in, because they are still headcanons and you can't expect your readers to just KNOW this lil fact that you yourself made up. That's how fanfiction works.

I swear, that bitch telling me I'm "wasting my talent" just because I like it when Magnus calls Jace "puppy"? How's that even computing like what in the world kinda bullshit was that person on, how do you get this bitchy about something so small like shit that's just sad.

Go and read someone else's Jagnus fics then, I don't give half a fuck about "disappointing" you, personally, like, how wild is that.

I wonder if this person ever took a pen and paper and went to write a letter to CC saying that she's wasting her potential because she's weirdly hung up on Jace being a cat.

Sometimes, authors get hung up on small things because they like the thing? And this is fucking fanfiction! Aka the thing where I get to explore the parts I like I mean fuck me what do they expect, that I start catering to their personal needs and write about whatever they're hung up? Start paying me like how rich people used to keep pet authors and I will write whatever you are hung up about, but as it is, I will continue engaging with my hobby the way I want it and write about the things I want to write about?

Which very much includes but is not limited to puppy!Jace. I mean, the absolute nerve of this person acting like I am reducing Jace's character to "he's a puppy" when I've spend hundreds of thousands of words on Jace's mental health issues, his fragile emotional state and the trauma the show never let him deal with.

But sure, complain on this 600 word fanfiction tagged as "BDSM", "pet play" and "puppy Jace" that it reduces Jace to a puppy. I'm sorry, that's literally the thing this six hundred word long drabble is about, you absolute clown, what the fuck do you expect in a 600 word long smut fic about pet play.

[thiswasinevitableid]

For the Meet Ugly Prompts-38, NSFW Danbrey?

Here you go! Note: there are mentions of blood in this.

38: overhear you ordering your coffee in a coffee shop and I’m trying to place your voice when I realize that you’re the phone sex operator I’ve been calling on and off for the last few months but the realization startles me so much that I accidentally spill my drink on you and you’re pissed

“One spiced mocha, one oatmilk latte!”

Aubrey reaches for her mocha just as a painfully cute blonde in overalls grabs the latte.

“Oh, excuse me” the blonde calls over the counter, “could I get a lid, it looks like you’re all out at the station. Thanks, you’re the best.” She smiles at the teenager who hands he the lid while Aubrey tries to figure out where she’s heard “thanks, you’re the best” said that exact way before.

Oh shit. Oh shit.

She’s heard that voice every Tuesday and Friday when she calls LoveBites, the premiere service for people who really like vampires. Really, really, like vampires.

Honeysuckle, as the woman on the other end of the line calls herself, probably isn’t a vampire. Aubrey figures most of the people who work that line are just very good at pretending to be fictional monsters. She is, however, incredibly good at getting Aubrey to cum with vivid descriptions of where she’s going to sink her teeth.

“AH! Hey, watch what you’re doing.”

Aubrey snaps back to the coffee shop to discover her drink is now all over Honeysuckles shoes.

“Ohmygod, I’m, I’m so sorry.” She grabs a fistful of napkins, drops down to clean the mess of coffee and chocolate syrup from the floor. She reaches to help clean off the other woman's shoes only for her to wave her away.

“It’s fine, I got itshit” she glares as Aubrey, in her attempt to get out of her space, stands too quickly, bumping her head into Honeysuckle’s cup and sending it all over both of them.

Okay, she can totally salvage this. Right?

----------------------------------------------

“...then I just ran away.”

Duck laughs so hard on the other end of the phone that he startles Dr. Harris Bonkers.

“Oh come on, like you’ve never done something embarrassing in front of someone cute.”

“Dunno, you might have just beaten my ‘six Freudian slips in a row trying to ask ‘Dird how his weekend was.’”

“Ugggggggggggggggh.”

“It’s okay, Lady Flame” he manages to sound genuinely sympathetic through his giggles, “lots of cute folks out in the world who you ain’t spilled two cups of coffee on.”

“Yeah.” She checks the neon orange clock on the wall, “I gotta go practice my tricks for this weekend. Thanks for listening to me whine.”

“Any time, Aubrey. See you at the show.”

She gets through two tricks, including the one where Dr. Harris Bonkers disappears from a box, but she can’t focus. It’s not nerves; instead, she feels like if she got off just once, she’d stop feeling so tense and be able to run through the rest of her act without issues.

It’d be a very bad idea to call LoveBites when she spilled a drink on her favorite operator. She doesn’t feel like talking someone new through her preferences, and she knows with Honeysuckle she’s guaranteed to get off, which wasn’t always the case with previous operators. Besides, the length of her calls must be enough to pay for a replacement drink.

She grabs her phone and dials. Soon a familiar voice purrs down the line.

“Hi, Aubrey. How’s my favorite human tonight?”

“Good?”

“You don’t sound so sure about that, fireblossom.” It’s a new pet name; ever since she mentioned her stage name, Honeysuckle likes to give her ones woven through with flames.

“I, um, I'm fine?”

“Did something happen today, hot stuff?”

“Uhhhhh. Um. I, uh, I made a fool of myself in a coffee shop. I, um, I spilled my drink on a cute girl. Also hers.”

Honeysuckle goes quiet.

“I, um, I think the person I spilled them on was you.”

“..............spiced mocha?”

“Yeeeeah” Aubrey curls inwards, trying to cringe away from her phone, “I’m really sorry about your shoes. And your overalls. And your drink. I, um, I wasn’t gonna mention it but it feels, like, weird not to and I really was going to offer to replace your coffee except I was kinda worried I’d somehow spill that too. I’m, I’m sorry. I just really like talking with you.” She smiles shyly, “you’re my favorite vampire.”

Dead air, then “you really want to make it up to me with another drink?”

“Yes!” Aubrey sits up, hopeful.

“Even if the drink isn’t coffee?”

“Sure it, it can be whatever you want.”

A hungry purr that makes Aubrey reach for her trusty vibrating wand, “In that case, don’t go anywhere.”

“What? But you’re-”

The line goes dead. Aubrey stares at it, frowning. What is she supposed to do now? Did they get disconnected accidentally? Should she just call back?

She shoves the toy back in the drawer, paces back and forth between the kitchen counter and the table where her cards and flashpaper are strewn about, unsure whether she should make dinner, practice, try to get off, or just give up on everything and go to bed.

From his hutch in the corner, Dr. Harris Bonkers honks, thumps his feet in alarm, then turns his bugged-out eyes on Aubrey and thumps again as if to say, “what the fuck, why aren’t you heeding my warning?”

“Aww, it’s okay buddy. Is that cat on the fire escape again?” She looks out the window, finds nothing but some mist. Mist that’s hovering on her tiny balcony and no one elses. She blinks.

Honeysuckle is standing on the other side of the glass; she’s wearing a loose green tank top and grey yoga pants, golden hair taking on the tint of the nearby streetlights. She gives a demure wave as Aubrey throws the back door open.

“Holy fuck I thought the vampire thing was just, like, a gimmick.”

A shrug, “There’s more humans than vampires working the line, but some of us are the real deal. I know a few vampires who do it because it lets them work nights and keep an actually nocturnal schedule. But some of us do it as a side job and go out during the day. Which means we see cute girls in coffee shops who we think we might ask out who then spill drinks on us.”

“Aw beans. Wait, were you checking me out for real.”

“Uh huh. You must have been doing something super interesting on your phone to not notice.”

Aubrey resolves to delete Candy Crush immediately.

“Um, so, not that I’m not happy to see you again, but like how did you find my house?”

“We can trace numbers on our end. It’s a security thing; back when the line started some hunters kept trying to use it to go after vampires, so we needed to know where calls were coming from.”

“Blegh, that sucks.”

“Yeah, not my favorite.” She flutters her eyelashes, “any chance I could come in?”

“Absolutely, uh, here” she holds the door--which has no risk of closing without a lot of force--so the vampire can step into the apartment.

“Do I, um, should I still just call you what I always have?”

Golden eyes look her up and down hungrily, “Dani is fine.” Then she squeaks, “ooooh, hi there little guy, can I say hi? Oop, okay, some other time.” Dani smiles as the rabbit ducks into his covered box, “animals can be kind of skittish around me at first. Which makes sense.” When she turns to look at Aubrey, her fangs are visible.

“Hooboy that’s, that’s, uh-”

Dani steps back, “I can back off. I just, um, I thought since we’re both into each other and you were, um, already in the mood for some lovebites maybe we could -”

“NoItotallywantto!” Aubrey grabs her hand, pulling her towards the bedroom, “sorry, the fangs are apparently an insta-horny button in my brain.”

“Good to know” Dani spins her by her shoulders and pushes her back onto the bed, fangs now on full display, “take your clothes off, fireblossom.”

Aubrey thanks herself from two hours ago for changing into her pajamas so she doesn’t have much to rid herself of. When she gets her shirt off, Dani is down to her underwear, green boyshorts showing off her legs and completely distracting Aubrey from any unwelcome self-consciousness.

“Mmmmmm” Dani crawls onto the bed with her, “I thought you were cute before but fuck, you look incredible like this.”

“Thanks” Aubrey’s breath catches as Dani bumps their noses together, “can, can I kiss you?”

“Please.”

She raises up on her elbows, mapping Dani’s mouth with her own. Aubrey’s kissed plenty of people in her life, and there have only been a few where the gesture felt like coming home, like she was slotting against a body that was meant to be with hers. All of those pale in comparison to the way Dani’s body seems to meld with hers. She gasps when the vampire cups her right breast, teasing the nipple with her thumb as she eases Aubrey all the way down. Her other hand finds her face, traces from there to the base of her neck, touches moving from light to sharp as she curves her nails down her skin.

When the fangs scrape her sternum she moans. Dani snickers against her, kisses and nuzzles her way down her chest, sighing when Aubrey threads her fingers into her hair.

“So, my pretty snack, what were you going to ask me for when you called?”

“I, I was kinda hoping we’d talk about you eating me out.”

A kiss above her belly button, “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“OhgoodOH, ohfuck” she opens her legs wider as Dani dips her head between them, “ahhhn, please, a little higher, ohfuck, god.” Her hips twitch as Dani sucks her clit. There’s a muffled laugh as two fingers tease her cunt.

“Wow, you really do like the fangs.”

“I mean yeah, but that’s more because you’re really hotOH, ohyesfuckthat’sgood.” She moans as Dani presses two fingers in, stroking and rubbing in time with the vampire’s increasingly wanton groans.

“Fuck, Aubrey, that’s it, you look so pretty like this, be a good girl and cum for me.”

“Trying” Aubrey squeaks as Dani laves her tongue across her clit and curls her fingers inside her, “fuck, right there, yeah, ohyes, that, just like that.” She squeezes her eyes shut, clinging to Dani’s head and to the hand gripping her thigh. When she cums it’s intense enough that she’s terrified she’s going to kick Dani accidentally, but the vampire simply holds her thighs down, lapping at her until her moans die down.

“Fireblossom?”

“Uh huh?”

“You still owe me a drink. Whatever I want, remember?”

“Yeah? Oh, oh fuck yeah.” She squirms in excitement as Dani drops to the floor and pulls Aubrey towards her until she’s able to hook her knees over her shoulders.

Dani pushes stray hairs from her face, “If you start feeling lightheaded, tell me okay?”

Aubrey gives a thumbs up, winces at how dorky it is, then giggles when Dani cranes forward to kiss it.

The vampire kisses a line from her right knee to her inner thigh, sighing loudly when she noses a certain patch of skin.

“Perfect.”

Fangs sink into her skin and Aubrey clamps her hands over her mouth to avoid waking the neighbors. It’s a sharp, precise pain, flooding her body with the urge to lay back and let Dani take her fill. Then the teeth retreat and Dani’s tongue takes their place, licking the red rivulets and moaning as she sucks at the punctured skin.

“Such a perfect snack.” Dani looks up at her, heavy-lidded and scarlet-mouthed.

“Dani” Aubrey reaches for her, not sure what she’s even asking for.

The vampire takes her hand, rubs it against her cheek, “Does it still feel okay?”

“It feels so good.”

Dani smiles, turns her head to pierce the left thigh, Aubrey moaning weakly as she drinks from her. The moan is echoed, and when she manages to lift her head she sees Dani’s hand is not between her own legs.

“Oh god that’s hot.”

The vampire grins at her, “I get dinner, you get a show. It’s perfect.”

Aubrey watches her lick the bites until they cease bleeding, her moans pitching higher as she fucks herself, getting off on the taste of Aubrey’s blood-tinted skin. Then she tenses, tipping her head back, fangs glinting in the light from the windows, and gasps Aubrey’s name as she cums.

Then a blonde head rests on her knee. Aubrey sits up, Dani’s hair as they catch their breath.

“I, um, I should clean you up. Do you have band-aids?”

“Bathroom.”

Dani stands, cheeks much pinker than before, and returns a minute later with the Pokemon band-aids that Aubrey bought solely for the Charizard ones. She wipes her legs with a warm hand towel, gently pats the bandages into place, stealing giddy glances at Aubrey the entire time.

“You know that fucking ruled, right?” Aubrey rests her head on her shoulder when Dani joins her on the bed.

“Glad you liked it, fireblossom. Can’t believe I’m lucky enough that the hottest human I’ve met in years has a thing for vampires.

“Pretty sure I just have a thing for you. Which, um, I mean this can totally stay casual but, um, do you want to go out sometime?”

Dani nods, leans in for another kiss. She must have borrowed Aubrey’s mouthwash, since she tastes of mint instead of iron.

“I’d love to, Aubrey. But, um, let’s avoid coffee shops for awhile?”

“Good plan.”

[rbbalmung]

Pokemon SwSh GPL AU: Get to know ______ P3

It’s time for THE BOYS. My biggest conclusion from putting this together is that while Raihan enjoys pushing everyone else’s buttons, Leon is the only person that can fluster the hell out of him. Please enjoy. 

Get to Know: Leon x Raihan (TrueRivalShipping)

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other? Leon. He feels like the type of person whose love language is gift giving (ex. giving Hop Wooloo and Grookey, giving Gloria Scorbunny, Yamper, and Charmander, ect.). That being said, he’s terrible at getting gifts. He can tell exactly what type of Pokemon a person would want and catch it, but presents? He once got Raihan a charmander watch made for kids without even considering it wouldn’t fit him. 

2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap? Leon. They’re both tall, but Lee’s the smaller of the two. 

3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes? Raihan would definitely strut around just to get a reaction out of Leon. Half the time his intentions are to get him into bed, but the other half? Embarrass Leon when he’s on Rotom calls with his mum (don’t worry, he wears pants for those instances). 

4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway? They’re both night owls. They stay up either playing video games or watching Netflix (or whatever the pokemon equivalent to that is). They had to invest in a bigger couch due to how often they have passed out on it. (When I say bigger couch, I definitely mean a futon. They just straight up by the closest thing they can to another bed). 

5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies? Hop inherited their mum’s cooking skills. Since Leon spent most of his young adult life as a champion who never really had time to stay at home and cook a real meal, it is up to Raihan to provide. Lee was permanently designated to cleanup duty after nearly burning the apartment down. 

6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”? Leon would say,” Oh, that’s us!” and Raihan would say,” Eh, not really?” just to spite him. There is a lot of teasing and playful banter in their relationship. 

7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes? Raihan, but only because he would literally murder Leon if he borrowed one of his designer sweatshirts. There’s also the added benefit that Lee’s clothes are a lot comfier. 

8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?” Leon isn’t allowed to run errands by himself because he’d get lost, so Raihan is usually the grocery-getter. Raihan will be in the checkout line and almost always get a last minute text from Leon asking for one more item. It drives Raihan bonkers. 

9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions? Leon is the driver, and Raihan is the “direction giver” (let’s be real, he’s more focused on what song they play next than getting them to their destination). If it’s a group road trip, neither of them are allowed in the front because they’ll just end up getting everyone lost. 

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws? Ok, so I don’t really think one of them would draw the other. They’re much more of an “active, sporty couple” than an “artsy couple”. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, though. During one of their dates, they decided to doodle each other on their napkins to help pass the time. They were both terrible and it got really heated when the waitress chose Leon’s drawing as “slightly less worse”.  

11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips? Are you kidding? They’d both try to out-do each other. Both backflippers. 

12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking? I feel like even though Leon has more body mass than Raihan, he’d be the lightweight of the two. Both have been in the League since they were in their late teens, but Leon’s public image had a lot more specifications than Raihan’s. That meant Raihan got to go to a lot more college parties on his nights off and build up his tolerance. Leon’s public relations manager didn’t let him even look at alcohol until he stepped down as champion. He had to “set a good example for his young fans”. (Sufficed to say, Gloria quickly got a new PR manager when she filled his role). 

14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own? Raihan learned that if he used Leon’s last name, he could get special treatment. It’s an abuse of power! Especially when they’re having dinner at the Hoffman house and Raihan casually slips in that he’s planning on taking Lee’s last name once they marry. Leon’s convinced his grandparents like Raihan better than they like him at this point.  

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside? Raihan, though he’ll go to an early grave before admitting that. He just doesn’t want them getting webbing on his new shoes! Yeah...that’s it. 

16: Which one gives the other their jacket? Leon. It was mentioned above, but Raihan has to be in a really good mood in order to let Leon borrow his stuff. It isn’t that big of a deal, thankfully: The Hoffman boys are like personal heaters.  

17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling? Ok, ok, ok: Raihan is slightly intimidated by Hop. He just wants the best for his big bro! If that means calling Raihan out of his shit from time to time to keep him in line, so be it. Raihan can’t fight back either, because that’s his boyfriend’s little brother! One of the only things Leon gets testy over is people bullying Hop, so Raihan has to do it when he isn’t around. 

18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other? Leon. It wasn’t one of those things where they’ve always liked each other, but after being friends for so long, their feelings blossomed into something new. Lee is a big flirt and never officially came out, so Raihan just figured he didn’t mean it whenever he complimented him. Leon literally confessed to Raihan at least five time before it sank in that he was serious. 

19: How good would your OTP be at parenting? I think they’d actually be pretty good! Leon helped raise Hop and he definitely has the dad act down, so adopting children would be something he’d be super interested in. Raihan may struggle a little bit at first (especially with where the line of what he could and couldn’t post on social media was), but he has a big heart. They would always be there for their kids. If Gloria and Hop are the cool parents, Leon and Raihan are the embarrassing ones. Would tease their kid lovingly. 

20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters? Leon has sent a lot of professional texts because of his former position as champion, so he’d win by default. If they’re texting each other, it is all in numbers, emojis, and abbreviations. Sonia, Piers, and Nessa hate being in group chats with them. 

21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them? Lee is the more protective of the two, especially when it comes to people bullying Raihan online. Raihan tries to tell him that he doesn't have to do it, but he’s secretly very flattered.  

22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun? Leon makes the worst dad jokes in the world. Sometimes he does it just to embarrass Raihan. 

23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy? They take turns. Raihan will catch a Hakamo-o to beat Lee’s Aegislash, only for Lee to catch an Azumarill from the Isle of Armor a week later. It’s a never ending game of trying to one up the other. 

24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired? Leon. He’s pretty buff, so carrying Raihan around is nothing. He usually does it without asking if his boyfriend looks tired and flusters the heck out of him. 

25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering? Ever since Leon left he league, he makes it a priority to go to every one of Raihan’s matches. He often dons ridiculous disguises in order to not get recognised, but he always gets recognised. There is an online forum just made up of pictures of him in different, weird attire. He might’ve even been able to slip by public notice if not for the fact that he tries to make AS MUCH NOISE AS POSSIBLE to cheer his boyfriend on.   

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder? Is there even a possible different answer than Raihan? The man takes selfies as a living. You better believe he has 8 different folders of pictures of Leon. 

27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked? Raihan. Leon is so close to having style, but then he’ll throw on his signature snapback and a cape and ruin everything. You know the cape isn’t even a requirement for the champion to wear? Yeah, Lee just chose to wear it. He counts it as a small victory whenever Leon decides to buy something at one of Rai’s favourite stores.  

28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of? Raihan tries not to get between Leon and Charizard. It’s a similar situation to the Hop one: Charizard is Lee’s baby, which means Raihan isn’t allowed to tease them.  

29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains? Raihan, but he purposely will move the umbrella out from above Leon to get him soaked. It’s payback for all the other stuff he does. 

30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures? Like Gloria and Hop, I think they’d travel to all the regions. They’d have to do it on off seasons and couldn't stay long due to their duties in Galar, but they like seeing the new types of pokemon. Once again, Rai would take millions of pictures. He has a photo album per vacation, not just vacation in general.  

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Describe what would happen if Lily (from "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus") suddenly found herself in cannon Harry Potter world in the middle of his fifth year? Oh, and she can't bullshit herself out of this one for some reason, instead she stays there for a month or two while Rabbit, Lenin, and Trotsky somehow join forces and try to find a way to bring her back. Bonus points if Lily crashes a DA meeting and kicks some peoples butts anticlimactically.

Oh boy, that I’m sure would go so well for all involved. In the middle, you say? Alright, let’s do this thing. For my sanity I’m going to pretend this taking place in an up to date version of “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” as of chapter 7-whatever we’re on right now.

So, there’s a couple of different ways that Lily can arrive. There’s a few obvious ones that stick out to me.

First, it just somehow happens. Reality’s falling apart in Lily’s own dimension and two seconds away from collapse. Rabbit’s floating around as these things called dementors, eating Umbridge, speaking English all the time, shit’s going down. It’s not all that out of the realm of possibility that Lily accidentally falls into a wormhole which deposits her in canon land.

Second, someone summons Lily. Now, this could either be team good (hooray) or team bad (boo hiss). Lily, being a being of unspeakable power but fairly neutral alignment, could easily be summoned by both. That said, I’m not really sure who to blame the summoning on.

The obvious choice is Harry, because Harry is stupid enough to summon a god to the mortal realm to slay Voldemort and Hermione’s smart enough to figure out how to do that for him. Go omnipotent creature, kill that evil snake man! However, we’re inserting Lily into canon directly, which means no short cuts of Harry having the dumbest idea he’s never had. Otherwise it’s not so much that the Order’s smart enough to know this is a bad idea but that such an idea would never actually occur to them. It says a lot that Dumbledore only ever gives tasks of any importance to Snape, the Order is kind of just... Harry’s glorified babysitters and taxi service.

So Harry and or the Order isn’t summoning Lily to solve all their problems for them. Good on them, smart choice.

Now, what about the Death Eaters and Voldemort?

With the Death Eaters we have a similar problem as the Order. Such an idea would never occur to them or if it would then they’re smart enough to say “NOOOOOOOOOO”. That said, if it ever did, oh Bellatrix would be so down. But only if the being worshipped at the altar of Voldemort’s wonderful... Voldemortness. Whatever it is she sees in him. 

Voldemort it depends where you lean on his characterization. We don’t actually see that much of him in canon, barely even hear from him, and we mostly hear about him from a variety of dubious sources (either people who have no idea what they’re even talking about or else Dumbledore who tells Harry this information while actively grooming Harry to kill himself). I’ve seen people characterize canon Voldemort as having once been brilliant but currently mad, as being mad and yet also brilliant despite his many failures, as not mad at all and his schemes are just so intelligent, so brilliant, that none of us can follow them and they all seem to end in failure, and there’s always what I think which we won’t discuss because I look bonkers enough on the internet.

Insane Voldemort might think it’s a great idea to summon some unknown god to stomp all over his enemies. I’m not exactly partial to cookoo bannanas Voldemort but honestly, it’s either him, Lily stumbling through a wormhole, or random kids chanting Bloody Mary in a mirror three times and out comes Lily.

Right, I wasted a lot of paragraphs on that.

Anyways, in the greatest scheme known to man, while Lucius is trying and failing to get that prophecy, Voldemort unearths some ancient text to summon an unknown god. A power that is unknown to mankind. So, I imagine Lily is summoned into canon much like that scene in Ghostbusters where the Sumerian god descends from the heavens. Glowing gate out of nothingness, fog machines, maybe a little less glitter and spandex, and instead Lily having no idea what the hell is even happening.

Lily, realizes she’s in deep shit as she notices Bellatrix prostrated on the ground in worship (of Voldemort of course, not Lily, Lily is just a deity and is nothing compared to the magnificence of the dark lord) as well as the various other Death Eaters all either looking terrified or in mindless awe of their lord’s amazing power. Lily feels like she’s entered Twin Peaks as she eventually is able to put together that the lisping snake man is supposed to be Wizard Lenin/Tom Riddle.  Lily and Voldemort probably have tea or something, but as he’s crazy bananas in this version per my own convenience and he looks like something that eats children, it doesn’t go well and Lily gets increasingly weirded out and convinced she’s in some sort of parallel hell reality that comes about when Rabbit eats the entire goddamn universe. So much like someone in a surreal horror movie, Lily flees into the night and goes to Hogwarts to see what madness is there. At first, she’s confused, as Hogwarts looks... mostly Hogwartsy. There are some differences. Umbridge is still alive and apparently torturing all the children as opposed to just Lily. The dementors are gone and apparently Black has now been on the run for years. Default doesn’t exist, instead Hermione Granger is still happily in Gryffindor with Luna Lovegood sorted into Ravenclaw. The biggest marker that everything has changed is that Ellie Potter appears to have been replaced by Harry Potter: A boy who looks oddly like Uncle Death. Now, Lily knows that Death is an alternate reality’s version of her, but this guy doesn’t act anything like him or sound anything like him. Not even a much younger, amnesiac, version. Death... plays quidditch. What is this? Lily tries to return home but is blocked, realizing this means that the Rabbit explanation is more likely, and in Hogwarts decides to see if she can resurrect something of the world she knows out of this monstrosity or at least see where Wizard Lenin ended up. Rabbit, missing in action, should certainly be hunted down.

Lily decides that her best bet is to tail this Harry Potter, who might be the result of whatever happens when Ellie Potter (the persona) is digested. So, Lily cons her way into being a student, joins Gryffindor, and tries and fails to get into Harry’s friend group. First, though she’s older than the thirteen-year-old she’s pretending to be in her original story thanks to time travel, she doesn’t look fifteen yet either. Second, no one just injects themselves into the Golden Trio.

Still, Lily tries and while Ron thinks she’s damn weird and Hermione finds her suspicious, Lily earns herself a billion bonus points by figuring out that all she has to say is, “Oh gee, Harry, I believe you that this bloke named Cedric Diggory was murdered and Voldemort is back from the dead. It’s so awful the Prophet is calling you a liar now have you happened to see a fellow with white hair, black eyes, might be a rabbit? No? Well, do let me know when you do, because he’s late for a very important date.”

Unfortunately, even being close to Harry, there’s no sign of Rabbit but Lily starts getting pulled into Harry’s woes. She hears about his detention with Umbridge (laughs awkwardly as she remembers what happened to Umbridge in her world), hears about quidditch being cancelled (Lily could care less but pretends to be sympathetic, yes Rabbit-eaten Ellie, it is awful that quidditch is cancelled), hears about Dumbledore ghosting Harry (Lily unimpressed as this is what Dumbledore does), and hears about Voldemort’s mysterious actions of mystery involving glowing orbs.

Lily drops that she doesn’t exactly think Lord Voldemort’s a man with a plan here but that’s not what the gang wants to hear so reluctantly, and unprompted, Lily promises to look into it. 

In the meantime Lily attends one DA session, turns it into horrifying dodgeball where the children are traumatized forever (because the patronus, Harry, really? That the grand self defense method against dark wizards we’re going to teach these people. No, no, we have to teach ‘duck or die’. You duck, or you die!) and is politely kicked out by Hermione who reminds Harry that he’s the one who should be teaching self defense and not terrifying transfer students who appear out of nowhere.

So Lily goes to fetch the prophecy instead. Having bullshit abilities and being secretly Harry Potter, in a way, herself she’s able to collect it and hears the thing. She remembers hearing this from her own dimension but decides to give it some more thought, then some more thought, then even more thought. She probably spends half a day trying to decide if this means Lily is secretly a zombie or Harry is the manifestation of her being secretly a zombie because ‘neither can live while the other survives’. Like all of us, Lily eventually decides prophecies are stupid, heads back home, and delivers the thing to Harry who is even less able to understand it than she is. Lily tells him that it probably means he’s a zombie, congratulations buddy, glad that’s been working out for you.

Meanwhile, as Lucius no doubt flips shit that the prophecy is simply gone, Voldemort starts taking action. He sends “I know where you live” letters to Lily at Hogwarts which promise doom and destruction and even more doom. Lily finds the idea of doom squared alarming. So, Lily decides to do what she does best, she sics one Tom Riddle on another Tom Riddle. What could go wrong? Lily asks Harry if he’s ever seen a diary with the name “Tom M. Riddle” on the inside cover. Harry flips shit and Lily has to talk fast to get him out of believing she’s the devil. When he tells her that Trotsky was murdered in perhaps the most hilarious manner possible in this world (a very true Rabbity end for him) she nearly gives up when impossibly she catches another hint of Tom Riddle in the air. She follows it to the source, the old Default Common room, and finds a very pretty tiara that Tom Riddle stuffed himself into.

Lily wakes him up in a very jarring manner, tells him that the other Tom Riddle is out there being Voldemort while he’s stuck here in a sad little crown, and tells him that it’s clearly his right to go beat the shit out of Voldemort to take what’s his and never bother Lily again. Tom is very, very, very confused. Instead of doing that he decides he’s going to stick around Hogwarts. That was not in Lily’s plan.

Forced, to hide his identity, Lily introduces him with the good old Albanian refugee trick. Only, without the excuse of A.L.F or Quirrell getting mauled by vampires that just sounds weirder than usual. Lily then backtracks and announces that Voldemort burned down his rural Welsh village (That’s right Umbridge, Voldemort is alive and burning down villages! I will take that detention, thank you!) Mot Elddir here is a true hero for surviving such an awful event and should be placed in Gryffindor now.

Harry is dumb enough though that meeting Tom Riddle face to face, even with blonde hair, Harry can’t quite recognize him though there’s something familiar with this chap. Dumbledore is not that stupid and starts gagging in horror at the staff table and has his suspicions of this Lily girl being a Death Eater/Voldemort himself confirmed. Dumbledore confronts Lily, Lily plays hilariously dumb, “What Death Eaters, people who eat death? Never heard of it, sounds contagious.” Dumbledore confronts Mot Elddir who just finds this all hilarious and has decided that Lily is his new favorite thing that he’s kidnapping as soon as he discovers what he wants to do with his life. He tells Dumbledore this is the best thing since Christmas, and yes he has many many evil schemes involving all the children (he has none).  Voldemort instructs Snape to poison Lily, and while Snape feels a pang of conscience at murdering children, Dumbledore gives the go ahead in that they’ll send Lily to the hospital wing where perhaps they can then give her veritiserum and get some answers about what the hell Voldemort is up to. Well, Lily gets poisoned and realizes that she has so many enemies now that she honestly can’t tell if it’s Dumbledore (who is her enemy for her having blatantly released Tom Riddle) or Voldemort (who is her enemy because... she’s not actually sure why for that just that she maybe didn’t burn down London). Being Lily, she doesn’t die or is sent to the hospital wing, and just kills herself to wash the poison out. Snape is horrified and astounded that the girl appears perfectly fine. He’s even more horrified as he hears news of what he missed out on while at Hogwarts, Voldemort summoned some great power into this world and rumor has it that it’s loose at Hogwarts.

Lily talks to her newest Tom friend and tells him that if he’s going to stick around he should help her find out who just murdered her and all that. She doesn’t like being murdered, while dying’s alright, somehow being murdered makes it all that much more unpleasant. New Tom is not very sympathetic and notes that he’s here for his entertainment, not preventing her from being murdered. He just spent the past several decades as a crown, give him a break.

Dumbledore decides that time’s up, time to put Harry to the test. Unfortunately, Harry takes this as a moment to go “Welly well well, look who finally has time for Harry Potter? Finally has time to tell him a prophecy HE COULD HAVE TOLD HIM ABOUT YEARS AGO!” So, Harry destroys his office. After Harry has his Tommy Wiseau temper tantrum (I can’t imagine it any other way), Dumbledore tries to tell Harry that his new friend (who was so kind to fetch him that prophecy, impossibly, from the department of mysteries) is likely some eldritch abomination summoned by Voldemort from another world. Harry alone can defeat her.

Harry at first is angry and disbelieving. Dumbledore notes that Harry must have noticed that dear Mot is really just Tom Riddle going blonde. Harry is speechless, but it’s all true, and he desperately points out that Tom could have done something to Lily. Dumbledore notes that Lily was weird before Tom showed up, hasn’t Harry wondered why Lily doesn’t ever seem to need a wand? Ever? 

Harry is horrified and leaves in a daze. On returning to Gryffindor he confronts Lily and asks her some of what Dumbledore asks him. Lily badly tries to pretend she had no idea Mot was evil incarnate, “Tom Riddle? What? No. No! There’s no way that Dear Mot could possibly be Tom” but has no excuses for why she’s so unbelievably talented. Lily decides to just go for it and explains to Harry that this world isn’t even real, it’s a cheap reflection of what reality used to be, that an extradimensional creature other than her has devoured them all and this thing is the result. Lily’s not sure she can fix it, but she can at least try to find the thing that did this to them.

This is enough confirmation for Harry and, fueled by betrayal, he demands a duel with her. Lily notes she doesn’t want to duel but Harry insists. Rather than do it, she runs away, grabs Tom and notes they’re leaving Hogwarts now. Only, outside of Hogwarts protection, she and Tom are easily tracked down and picked up by Death Eaters.

Tom is vaguely embarrassed by the whole get up, as Lily points out how and why it’s ridiculous, while Voldemort probably circles the pair of them and gives some very menacing lisping speech of evil. Lily points out that this is not her fault, Voldemort’s just weird and Lily kind of likes London, she feels no need to stomp on it. 

Before Lily’s forced to kill Voldemort, Rabbit finally shows up, notes that Lily’s the one who’s late, and pulls her into a wormhole. 

The other Tom Riddle is left behind in dumb horror, realizing as the seconds tick by, that apparently Lily is not coming back for him.

The end.

[snickiebear]

i woke up way too early for my preference today because i agreed to do a thing for someone i love that is mostly incompatible with my essential nature (i'm taking what learning i can when i can, but it's mostly me trying to not roll my eyes audibly). but that means i get to jump into your inbox, so.

what are the weird subjects that light your brain up? not necessarily something you want to make a career or speciality out of, but just the topics that you love learning something new about and excite you so much you can't help but share specific details with everyone you meet? the world is so big and vast and unknowable, and i just think it's neat that we can hold little pieces of it in our hands to find magic and excitement and light in.

(also, death to capitalism which seeks to turn all energy and light into labour to grind under the machine of profit. but that's a "i woke up at 6:30 am to listen to some bullshit"!mouse problem.)

(so sorry this is late, my semester started and i am attempting to claw myself out from a pile of academic shit)

"trying to not roll my eyes audibly" is the most hysterical and relatable thing i've ever read omg yeah i feel you. but aaaaaa THANK YOU for jumpin into my inbox :''')))) it's always an immense pleasure to see you :D

also, agreed. fuck capitalism, let us enjoy our silly little things without pushing to make money. enjoyment should not always lead to enrichment, just like things to like em!

i'll trade you, mousey. your turn to share what your Thing(s) are >:D

okay sO

i am such a history nerd, more specifically middle eastern/asian history and historical revolutions (french and haitian are my favorites). even more specific (for asian history) i love the MONGOLS SO MUCH.

first learned about the Mongols in AP World History and i haven't looked back since, i absolutely love them. yeah they were absolute shit people! like the worst! BUT! BUT! THEY WERE SO BADASS.

And they were such good rulers? Like there was no forced conversion to islam, they would basically just conquer and leave the place alone except the people would have to pay a religion tax among other things but thATS IT. like sure they killed over half the population (and uh... do other heinous acts) but other than that the Mongols would sometimes pick up more cultural practices from the place they took over and then brought it elsewhere! which is super cool because the spread and blending of culture is interesting in of itself.

(fun fact: the mongols were also a big part of the spread of the Black Plague lmfao)

AND AND they were the only ones to go into russia IN THE WINTER and come out on top. which is fucking??? AMAZING??

literally had about 100,000 members of their "military" and they basically ruled asia. people heard they were coming and either surrendered right there or well.. uh threw themselves from the windows.

AND AND one thing that made them so successful was their horseback riding. they would ride horses into battle and fuckin trample the enemy (along with utterly slaughter them bc they were RUTHLESS and horrible people)

also wholly enamored with space and literally everything about it. THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING MOUSEY. EXPANDING. LIKE?? and wormholes and folding space/time and HOW TIME STOPS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT? that is literally insane.

like i can't do any of the math for this shit but i will sit there and listen to Neil Tyson and other profs talk about it ALL DAY. like the concept of it all and just everything is so fucking cool to me aaaaaa

dont get me started on aliens because they're out there, there is NO WAY we're the only living beings in this entire universe fuck no. like space is HUGE and we're just this little dot in it!!!!! and that is mind boggling to me like WTF??

and and!!!!! how a star in the sky, that we can see, could have died like years ago and we just?? wouldn't know?? because we're so far away? so basically we might be looking at a graveyard of stars and what's left of their corpses. which is SO FUCKING COOL.

(also thank you for allowing me to go bonkers over this stuff LOL my friends have heard it all countless times and are Bored)

[misterbitches]

I ship muren and li cheng bc i only saw it through gifs then i watched this episode cos i was like im only starting this show if they kiss im waiting and they did and it was nice and i got so anxious that i was about to fucking vomit. I really like them together. The top/bottom shit is dumb and i hope if they must mention it they all build a bridge and get over it so they can switch cos who gives a shit. I didnt realize how large they all are like most “tall” men on tv are lying. But bc that kid is so thin and tall and the other one (idk the stepbrother) is huge too. Li cheng is shorter than them both but more ~manly~ but still short so why doesnt he take a DICK UP HIS BUTT XD since that’s all that fucking matters and there’s only 2 genders and 2 eays to have sex lmao so nothing else otherwise ur screwed

Hd a terrible past couple of weeks personally and because i keep seeing my peopl eget murdered and things ripped from us ^_____^ anyway here’s Some libertatrian communist dumb bitch discoars so i’ll tag it:

keep in mind these are my opinions’”” when i engage in discourse. I am not the end all be all and I don’t need you to agree. There’s some shit I am non-negotiable on but thsi is just exchanging of information. Any authoratative tone I take on comes from my beliefs, my life, my experiences, and what I choose to cultivate as a person and an artist. I dont have control over your feelings, you do. If it hurts you then either tell me the issue and be PRECISE about it, understand that context matters which is why i type so much in engagement, and do not fucking lie or misconstrue my words. Do not call me western ever in your life either. I am a black-american. I have adhd and bc i am a black woman if ur automatically thinking im brolic i am accepting money in my paypal for ur wellbeing to get me to shut the fuck up.Thanks.

The stepbrothers storyline is stupid and lazy writing. I really want to counter people that say it’s written well and that it’s interesting because it isn’t. Even if it was illicit and fucked we can write a story out about this. Let’s rethink what they could have done shall we:

- become stepbrothers at about 16 and their parents mismanage the relationship and they fail in trying to get an integrated family together (this is what happened in the #iconic transit girls and that was fuckin’ weird but hey dude guess what we watched it and it was weird but not unethical and we know one is like 19 and the other is 21 and a girl so it’s like wow you avoided so much and handled their stepsister story very…….um lightly given the end lmao but it was there and people had AGENCY)

-OR you realize that freak is obsessed with him and then he realizes it and is like “bitch i swear to god” and in typical shtity trope BL fashion they can find a way from obsession, to loss and independence when you lose your obsession, to “love” if they choose

- have the fucked up shit but make it clear what the issues are and you literally cannot write your way out of it so do not try

But why can’t fucked up things be shown? Also this is realistic.

0. Well according to you but no one said that they can’t. So that’s on your interpretation of critique (that is, again, not bullying or harassment.) They can, i just gave plenty of scenarios in which it is affective and not just annoying to witness, trope-y, and frankly ridiculous and offensive. Sorry! They don’t do it well. You can come up with alternatives too. See #2 btw.

1. No it isn’t doing a good job of reflecting life because life has consequences. The exaggeration in drama doesn’t mean the arc shouldn’t be there. Almost always things that aren’t heavy with the message or meant to be sobering in a deep way are COMPELLING. The realism is the basis for art because we are human. This is not the way real humans act.

Someone said Tharn Type was mature and I had to laugh because no, no one acts that way and is “in love” if they act that way that means they fucking hate each other and they’re immature and frankly it’s just not that interesting for many of us to watch because the dramatization of the “realism” is fucking bonkers. That was such poor writing it is unbelievable and someone has the audacityt o say it’s how real adults act. Fucking murder me if I’m with someone for 7 years and we break up over a miscommunication and for some reason I am not as horny as my always horny boyfriend. The fuck? What kind of lives do you lead? Either you are not an adult or you are an adult who needs therapy.

I also hear the “realistic” argument but then people try and temper it with “but also it’s fiction.” What do you think fiction is? Why do you think filmmaking exists? Number one, it’s propaganda in the sense that you want others to buy into your presentation and see what you see. That means that the creators are telling people and influencing them WITH ART BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT IS about their feelings around a situation. That’s why it is imperative to be responsible as a filmmaker and artist and underline the deepness of creepiness if that’s what they want. If they want to relay that rape sometimes ok and psychos are crazy so they get boy (??!?!?!? BITCH?) then they achieved it with no innovative information. We know people get raped bc we are human beings and many of us live with that fear. You know, being the target demo and all. And bc BL loves that trope it’s rape fantasy peddled to young people and women. Just like shitty wattpad fics or NYT best sellers. Hooray, what now? Or are you trying to purport that this isn’t glorified fanfiction? Which it literally is

2. This is the issue with these shows. No one is saying that fucked up shit cannot be shown. There’s a film about a woman who is raped and she falls in love with her rapist (because he was masked but i think we find out later that she knows. Binoche is in it.) I have no desire for that film—i think it’s by a man and i extra dont care—but I hear it’s sort of powerful for many. I heard it was a good film. But the act itself is always eschewed and the conflict comes from how fucking ridiculous it is especially finding out that she knows. The power imbalance adn the possibility. They may not have handled it in a way I would have cared for but it was there.

There’s simply no imagination because these people do not care that much and aren’t great writers and filmmakers because they simply do not have to be. Sorry.

The industry doesn’t rely on the best they rely on efficiency (this is everywhere.) You can tell by the camera angles, the editing, the camera itself (idk if it is multicam but the flatness is typical soap flatness without the glowboxes to soften their faces.) Simple constant lighting. Now the surroundings are mostly beautiful. But even to some of the costumes. And those edits are abysmal, some of that camera work.

So with all that said even with the couple I extremely enjoy I see its (H4) faults. Add into that a lazily thrown together “shocking” love and if they are trying to get us to feel a type of way about its sexiness they fail. This is why movies like 50sog, 365 days, etc aren’t enjoyable to people because it’s fucking strange situations that they dont want to entangle or make enjoyable to viewers across the board. They know what people will take. It’s just that bitch what are we here for if even the sexiness isn’t there for ur stupid story.

At least with that teenager and 30 yr old man in MODC (which i do not love but i like them in theory if it wasnt totally repulsive to me and also if it was developed in a way that was good TO ME) they had their, er, “sex appeal” i talk about this as well the main couple in MODC to me, visually, was a miss. Not bc whatshisface was small and stuff but bc he was so sickly and they needed that to propel the story but it was just not appealing given how the story progressed. A missed opportunity in tying the two together besides making him look waif-y and sickly only to have the “did ur mom die in a car crash? No, cancer” type of move in not another teen movie. But the opposite. And not funny. Wayne tho????? GORL. Eggs. Cracked.

fandoms have a very warped sense of harrassment and discourse.

Most fandoms have harassers who are “protecting” the cast and crew who don’t need their protection (or maybe the crew does since they probably dont get paid well but why the fuck would anyone care about that lol) but very few have the people who have concerns or massive critique about the show are not going to be “bullying.”

If people are saying “if you like xyz, u suck” then sure it may suck for you to see but who fucking cares. Either talk to the person or don’t be friends with them. That is not bullying or harrassment. Things that are shitty get criticized. Fuck, things that aren’t shitty don’t. Get away from this idea of cancel culture and people misunderstanding the story. We have the ability to.

Think beyond your noses of personal preference. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them.

And guess what? You won’t like everybody. Many people can’t stand me i’m sure. Oh well. I mean frankly I don’t like that and I feel very unsettled when I don’t feel understood. That’s ok! I have to temper it. Sometimes calm myself down. I won’t get anything and everything I want. And you won’t like every opinion and sometimes it’s like “man am i a dummy?” But the part of growing up is fucking maanging that and beng honest about “bashing and harrassment” and “bullying” and growing up. Yuo can like what you want the “let people like what they want thing” is so fucking juvenile and THAT is not the real world. Which is probably why so many people feel that way, they dont want to live in the real world. Unfortunately, you do.

Think beyond our noses of personal preference and what we feel emotionally in conjunction with others. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. And you can say things that you believe to be true but it doesn’t make them so or maybe it isn’t received that way to people. And many times we learn new things in the discussions “oh shit i didn’t see it that way” right? Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them. Usually the “opposition” in these situations aren’t the popular beliefs that permeate through society. Trust me lmao

Antiblackness

Antiblackness is a thing. It permeates everywhere. It permeates in this genre and it permeates in fandom. Get it the fuck together. Also do not conflate cultural relativism with being repsectful. They are not barbarians, they are smart human beings either making work or deciding to. We all have diff cultures but we have fucking sense in what is respectful and not. And if we don’t we fucking learn. You cannot excuse things and say “oh culture” when you have 0 idea of that culture or actual people who are radical etc and are fighting against it. Additionally the word westerner is an ignorant term when referring to people in the US or UK who are black. Because we are not. We extend sympathy to other groups and empathy since we know so there is no inherent power imbalance between a black viewer and their subject. Don’t suggest that because it’s wrong and ahistorical and contextless.

FIRST the fallacy of representation as freedom makes people fucking complacent, individualistic, and doesn’t let them think critically. Consumption and discourse around consumption is not helping material conditions of the marginalized communities in your home, the black ones who are ignored, those intersectionalized in these communities. Groups talk about art and what it means for them outside of just what we see and because we also don’t have access to a bunch of Thai reviews or what movements or going on we are less likely to know if we don’t FUCKING SEARCH for it. Because art is constant...which leads me to....

Representation is difficult. It matters and it doesn’t.

Tthese shows are not meant to overturn the LGBTQ+ community.

There are queer filmmakers and artists in these countries. Deep illustrious film careers or even TV that is moving and deliberate. We can even see it with the dude from “your name engraved” in their short series he was in beforehand. BL is no wa pejorative because it is simply not “qu**r” storytelling whatever that means. But know it has always existed everywhere and there are also out artists or radical artists in all these countries who do no respect mediums that are cash-grabs and poorly made.

ex: As much as “Like in the Movies” sort of isnt for me and is a bit hamfisted you can tell how much love goes into that. Love of the characters, acting, and message. Yes it’s cringey to see some of the lines (like very tbh subtlety wasnt exactly their strong suit) and yea naming them after lenin and marx is just 0ihgoaudgijposkagjihou BUT GUESS WHAT? THEY FUCKING DID IT. THEY TRIED. And class was a large component as well bc u cant fuckin ignore it. The show is aware of the machinations in its world as a show but also in the philippines and for a fuckin reason. And duatarte? Loooooooool so like yea not so sure bl makes him love his ppl but the show isnt trying to do that

It’s not a transgressive genre and it has no reason to be. No ethical anything under the way we live it’s just trying your fucking best to be. That’s it. They serve societal ills and capital’s purposes. Which is fine but it is not revolutionary.

These countries in SEA or even SA do not have as big budget for even mainstream dramas—though things are changing and that’s bc REVENUE like revenue from kpop is fucking huge for SK and again so much about that is bc of what happened in their history from japanese imperialism to WWII to the US—so for “queer” stuff it is sort of now important to make that an export and it sure is one. Not only globally or to the west but a lot of these places make their money within asia (duh!) outside of their countries. OBVIOUSLY. so BL is a way to output and gain money. The thing is, it doesnt seem to be put back into the industry at all. For people in all these countries to make works that aren’t for mainstream or wont reach as many people there’s a difference between trying and just shoving shit in your face and going here it’s gay you like it right? But dont antagonize the inherent patriarchal nature of BL.

Another thing: did you guys know thailand was never colonized? You should look it up. There’s little hints of things in ITSAY to represent french influence still. Isnt that fascinating? Find out why. It’s certainly interesting that the representation, though damaging and dubious many times and also incorrect like any media, is huge in asia and this isnt a commodity here (the US) exactly. A lot of that has to do with colonial ideas of gender of which I am sure. But listen………lmao

Sometimes people dont give a shit. And it very much shows. Here is the thing once again. GOOD TRANSGRESSIVE WORK exists.

Een within the capitalist Bs paradigm or you can see people trying (I can sort of applaud parts of lovely writer) also queer media has always existed everywhere the reason you don’t know about it is because it gets takena nd commodified into a mainstream product. We hvae little incentive, particularly if we are not fans of cinema or art in gen, to search fror others when the output is right here. Being dictated by others and the state and who will give you money. No longer an effort of a cast and crew who want to convey things. But google [any country] independent cinema, radical cinema, queer radical cinema, or even retrospectives on the cinema and rethinking what is queer and radical in film. What if we took that, diluted it, got rid of the creators who put themselves through all the work, ignroe al the nuances and do……………….two actors who are conventionally attractive with no chemistry making out.

It’s the same here lets say daniel kaluuya winning the oscar for the film about the BPP. I heard it was okay and not too offensive but it still isnt’ enough. It still isn’t like hwood isn’t trash, nnati black, misogynistic towards BW and women, and all that other shit. It was pushy but it can’t be enough where we are. Black KKKlansmen i think won an oscar, by circumstance i fuckin hate these award shows they mean nothing, and i like the film a lot but he has his misogynoir still resting in his films even if it is poignant. And it was a film that honestly wasn’t really made for black people. And should all art be a response to direct trauma or trying to make ourselves palatable when we’re just human?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and it’s importance (capitalism) but also sorta individual responsibility

Considering a lot of these actors are rich and then just dip that’s another problem. Mainstream isn’t what sustains marginalized art ever. It doesn’t change in the vast ways we think it does. What changes is the people of these groups pushing, fighting, forcing and then capitalism trying to make it work under capitalism. It will not. It cannot.

This is why artists and labels often don’t mix or you see people like Sonic Youth doing whatever they want and pissing off their label but making them give them money. Same with Nirvana. Vince Staples. The thing is they can fight and make good shit but what capitalism helps people….not care? They don’t respect the audience? We’re getting those returns on poor executed product placement, lighting, editing, framing, fucking acting. And you surewon’t see mixed black asians in these shows. WHY R U is the oNLY one i have seen it in and he just disappears (but that was pretty cool.) so who the fuck is this representing? And before you start: asian countries are not homogenous the way we believe them to be. There are marginalized communities outside of even mixed people that are harmed. So you can skrrt cause on that one: you’re wrong buddy. But it gives us the IDEA of a paradise which is what they NEED.With representation and visibility comes consequence and responsibility as artists. What it allows them to do is coast and not think complexly because why should they; it’s mostly the fantasies of some older woman who probably has money and much less interaction with the world. It’s bonkers. And what that allows even further is for them to say YOU ARE THE THING THAT YOU CONSUME and the THING THAT YOU CONSUME IS YOURS. It is not, it is not your identity, form a close bond but figure it the fuck out. Especially for adults who are hellbent on twisting their minds into pretzels and can’t acknowledge what’s just laziness in art and not giving a fucking shit. Truly.

There’s damage that has been done from Parasite as he was supported by CJE&M and the bullshit obsession america had and eveyrone’s poor interpretation of it if they are rich. BJH is a socialist and he is a filmmaker. He has made films that are outstanding and cost a lot of money. But now a fear for indie filmmakers is just not being able to raise that much or have that much attention. Getting funding that helps them instead of expecting the Next Big Thing that is a fad because capitalism is trash. Yes this funneling of money is absolutely harmful to us artists. Even buying in is strategic. Additionally, that film is probs one of the most radical films to have that wide release and accolade (unlike “Sorry to Bother You” which i have a lot of thoughts about. One being that asian exports are acceptable but black ones are not. This is an overall art critique and global media critique. Blackness is removed, not respected.) However, filmmaking isn’t green, it can’t be socialist, and it’s a lot of work. They used tons and tons and TONS of water to do a huge beautiful feat but we still know there is a cost. We have to figure that out because it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t go back into the crew’s pockets the way it should and the work becomes that of the director’s and actors solely. It’s fucking hard. We have to do our part but it doesn’t mean we are doing it perfectly. We just have to try to do better. So does BJH cos he needs to not be a misogynist but anyways i digress.

additionally and this is something some users fail to understand: people in the media sphere generally have fucking money. I went to film school that was international with super fucking rich kids. Taiwanese kids, kids from south asia, china, thailand. They had money. No not upper middle class money, not “rich” money, not some paltry 1m that’s chump change. Fucking money. Fucking RICH-RICH. MILLIONAIRES. BILLIONAIRES. WHICH IS DISGUSTING MIGHT I ADD. The domestic people didn’t have the money for school (in the UK) and i am in a massive amount of debt like every other black student that went there. You do not understand how much money is needed to survive so people who turn to these crew positions even casting etc need this fucking money usually. OKAY. A lot of the people that do well in these dumb shows or even on a larger scale HAVE MONEY. The reason these industries are small and struggling is because of lack of people and lack of resources to independent shit because oh gee it takes money to make things.

Why should I try? Well you don’t have to really if you have money or a name. Yet...

We can tell when like those Tik Tok shows or DCOMs dont give a shit (anymore.) You know how frustrated we get when content for young people is garbage? Well, see, BL is literally that under that system. Occasionally we will get something good now but there is virtually no need in any sector in the world at this point to truly figure out how to make it better and what to do to enhance artistic literacy, outreach, teaching people new things, getting people from these communities there and having true realistic says. Art and culture is IMPERATIVE TO WORLD LIBERATION but not when it is so stiffly trying to bend to capital’s idea of progressiveness. No. Neoliberalism. No.

That’s why in a way ITSAY is a huge feat; it takes from films etc and they clearly had money (the actors rae rich too which….lmaooooo j’aime pas) but it was a respected fucking script, acting was important, blocking, framing. There’s very little to critique as a visual medium for that because I understand what they are trying to do, their market is going to be mostly young girls, but they RESPECT THE FUCKING AUDIENCE. And guess what guys? You can make money from it!!!! WOAH! Since that may be the only goal which is disgusting and repulsive.

HOWEVER AND THIS IS WHAT IS SAD: itsay is an ex of a great show however knowing the actors backgrounds and the pseudo trouble it stirred when they weren’t supporting people protesting against the coup in the summer it really put a damper on my enjoyment. And this is how we can see that:

a) it’s honestly just a show and a good one but b) now what?

These kids (actors, who are like idk 19? 20?) are rich and not saying anything while countless actors, who were filming, did. Even tul who has $$$$ and the thing is the protesting against the coup legitimately attacks the rich. As it should. The protests going on were cries for help, against a dictatorship and fucking coup, asking people to get fucking help for covid, having kids be able to live. There’s a mini on VICE about this and it probably doesnt go too in depth but there’s a kid in there who talks about his friends getting into drugs and how he just wants to make music, have fun, skateboard. And it’s harrowing to see. This is a direct example of what these things do and don’t do. Yea we know a good show is here, we know growing up and slice of life, we know this is a bit of escapism and idealism but the idealism is reflected in the way these actors also choose to live their lives. So what progress? To who? For who? How is this helping me? What purpose does it serve? I say ITSAY serves its purpose as a piece and a glimpse into possibility of growing up but i do not say it antagonizes a broader issue that needs to be relevant in some sense but simply is not. It’s very singleminded and, well, it’s sort of like “besides my sexuality, what do i have to worry about?” But for real humans like....a lot. I do not respect their decision at all.

Why can’t we do our jobs and make something decent and respect our audience? No time, gotta make that sweet sweet sweet cash baybee. Look how progressive we are! Don’t look at history and material conditions. Thanks in advance, management.

History 4 does not have that respect. Many of these shows do not. Sometimes we hit good, sometimes we don’t. But in the end we cannot settle. And I won’t. If I am critiquing something I will not be shy and if I am meant to enjoy something as escapism then these shows NEED to highlight that and it’s rare sometimes (the best twins is a good reminder like that show is bad but man do i Brain Empty when i turn it on and i like that and there’s not much in it that makes me want to kill myself from annoyance but there are transphobic jokes i dont love however the whole show is a comedy about this dude’s crazy homophobic sister and she is constantly positioned as wrong and they talk about the aforementioned trans women as the actor was in drag. Interesting that they can manage that, huh?)

Oh btw.....taiwan has a very complicated history but ignore all the bad stuff it’s good now you can kinda sorta get married and stuff. KMT? You know how i learned that? I care about human beings and read about it lmao. I am not Taiwanese and look at that. So now I have historical and DIALECTICAL~**~*~****~*~*~ context so i can judge it as an artist, a black woman from america, and from the knowledge i have to pick up on their history to see if this fits into a broader picture besides the micro-one of sexuality on an individualized level. And this is kinda where it comes full circle: these shows are not you, you are not them, they do not exist in a vacuum because nothing does. The failure to critique now means continuing on as it has and it will still do so. History and time are not linear in the sense we think it is. Someitmes things are better, sometimes things feel more austere. We are not living under liberation though and these shows are not going to do so. So they are not US nor are they for a nebulous “us” of which the groups are all fractured and have diff opinions anyway (my opinion as a black american is going to vary from an asian woman’s say and that could really clash and i do not feel solidarity with all those in every community i am for several reasons.)

Final thots that have taken up my time and the only thing i actually wanted to write but got distracted:

Anyway my dissertation is that I ilke Muren and LiCheng a lot a lot and i like how cute they are and how truly dumb li cheng is. This is an example of mostly good writing, decent actors, nice chemistry, and sort of a calmness to them. And I super enjoy how Muren is pretty forward with LC in the sense that being together is like very important to truly be together. When he was like “no i didnt forget!” Or when LC asked him something in the office I forget it was 6 am and again i almost threw up and muren nodded and then LC leaned on him. Very cute. I want more of them tho i may have to skip that othre couple (the cameo the ones from MODC) but omfg the younger one HIS HAIR GREW SO MUCH HE LOOKS SO MATURE AND CUTE OMFGIJ0HUG9SAOGIJPKOAGJSIOHUAGIJP hahhaha the one good thing i will say about THEM.idk how old the actor is i figure he was young idk it makes me happy to see him he’s very cute. I hope he’s in something i can watch and not gag at. Is he hot? Who knows but he is a cutie!!

Anyway muren and lc have a good thing going it’s nice to watch ho\pe they dont fuck it up but im truly a sucker for some true finds 2 luvas i think some user on her\e was like i’m not a fan of friends ot lovers bc it doesn’t seem like they’re actually friends and maybe they were referring to this show idk. But it made me think and it was a very good observation. So i think they are friends and also luvrs <3

[chattegeorgiana]

I mean, it’s common knowledge that any fandom out of narusaku are bonkers, even among the ones who deny it. Mostly cause the ns fandom is not as huge as the rest.

NS fandom yes, it’s smaller than it used to be. Back in the day when the manga ran, it was pretty large on itself. We always used to have these fights with the other fandoms.

But then, as the ending happened, most of the fans just felt really disappointed and downright disrespected by Kishimoto and his choice and just left. They didn’t want to deal with the hate of the NaruHina and SasuSaku fandoms. For what?

We used to do it back in the day because we respected the old man and his work. But then all he showed back in return was disrespect. So then it was like... why bother?

NaruSaku used to be huge as well. But it was never loud. That’s the difference. And that’s the difference nowadays.

NaruSakus, the ones that remained anyway, are minding their own thing on their own spaces. However, as you saw already on my post, we are downright persecuted. And I know it’s a hard word, but it’s the hard truth.

Take my last case for example. I tagged my things properly so I can avoid any NaruHina/SasuSaku fans. Because while I don’t care about what they say, I have this respect I like to give to certain situations. 

And one of them was to always try and tag my stuff properly.

I used to be young and stupid and ‘try to bring peace’ to the fandoms. Those days were long gone after I saw how the fandoms responded. That was back when I was a neutral/like all ships fan. Guess which fandom was the more welcoming one? But anyway that’s not the point.

The point I am trying to make here is that these people, for them is not enough to give you an actual attention warning and move on to their life. No!

For them it’s still a battle, still a war, although they presumably won. Was it that they never really won though, and deep down they know it and that’s why they still search NaruSaku? That’s something for them to reply in their own hearts.

However, if they would’ve been content with their win and what they got, there would be no actual need to persecute NaruSaku fandom.

And when I say persecute I mean. Because as I was saying, take my example. A warning wasn’t enough. They had to take my links, share it to an actual ANTI NaruSaku fans group. Let that sink in for a minute. It’s an ANTI PEOPLE group. Not an anti ship, anti idea. Anti ACTUAL LIVING PEOPLE.

Share it with others like minded people and have them come after me. 

So you see, with them is never enough. Because they still act the way they acted almost 10 years ago.

Still hate on actual people for a ship, still target those people, still create groups against those people, still persecute with other like minded people other actual living beings. Still, still, still.

And it’s sad, in a way. Because I am okay, I’m an adult. I could care less about their childish games and tricks. 

But what about other youngsters/teens? Who have yet to learn about the twisted world we live in. Who have yet to learn about the power within themselves and how that power is only yours and no one else’s? 

Think about those consequences.

And it’s sad for them as well, because... How hollow do you have to be to actually occupy your time with such petty things? How blinded by hate does your heart have to be to actually spread even more hate?

Because it’s true when others say you give what you have.

It’s like... ironically, they still seek some form of validation. Although they supposedly got it. In a weird, skewed way, they still seek the NaruSaku’s validation.

That it’s an awful ship, that its fandom are awful people and whatnot.

But that validation they only receive it from like minded people. And that’s not validation. That’s confirmation bias.

Validation, TRUE validation comes from unbiased people who also have some experience on the matter. From people who don’t agree with you. Because that’s where the truth always lie - in the middle.

Which brings me to my next point. Are there crazy NaruSaku fans out there? Yes there are. 

We had our own problems within the fandom. I’m not saying this fandom is perfect or anything. It’s flawed as well, because after all perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a mirage. A construct.

I remember the times when we used to scold newcomers who would start shit between both fandoms. How we would always advise them to shut it because that’s not what our fandom was about.

How we would stand up for NaruHina or SasuSaku fandom when it came to their art theft. Because we knew how it felt when other people stole your hard work.

Yes, we had our own bad apples. We used to call them not real NaruSaku fans because they didn’t understand the essence of this fandom and the pairing and what this pairing stood for.

How we would scold them that this is not a fighting game, it’s all about having a good time. Because we weren’t in a war. We were (and still are, some of us) in for the love and for what this pairing stands for - appreciation, devotion, selflessness, you name it. All those positive examples and messages this pairing gave us.

But you’ll never see them talking about this aspect. Because as I said, for them is still a war and validation game. To prove how bad NaruSaku and its fandom is.

But compared to their fandom (and this brings me to your point in regards to numbers), our fandom had less incidents like those, because we instantly discarded those who would not abide by these principles. 

We very much functioned like the basis of any society from the beginning of times. And there are lectures on that. How the tendency at large is to push away the bad apples, in order for the greater good so to speak, to thrive.

That is why at the end of the day no matter what, we can still keep our head held high.

Because we know who we are at the core. We know what we stand for. We are not here to prove anything. 

We don’t need anyone’s validation because we have enough proof and enough development to show to any other person out there who isn’t blinded by their views, what we mean. 

The pairing talks for itself, we don’t even need to do much talking.

So much, that it was seen by others right from the beginning.

And this wasn’t written by what you’d call ‘biased’ NaruSaku fan or anything. This was written by an actual critic in the field.

We didn’t become fans of the pairings because we were in a game, we became fans of the pairing because the story built it this way.

That’s something they will never be able to understand, as long as for them this was a war on who ‘wins’.

But anyway, I think I rambled enough about this subject. I should stop here or else I might just turn this into a whole meta, lol.

[tinyhoovequius]

Bonkers Bananaville

Quick PSA edit:

Actively and intentionally harming another person because they inadvertently hurt you is the behavior of a narcissist. If you find yourself doing this, I recommend getting in touch with a therapist. Online bullies who target people for “problematic behavior” are often narcissists who are trying to get away with satisfying their need to punish and harm others who have unintentionally caused them distress while simultaneously satisfying their need for applause. There are other ways to resolve problems. The fact that they choose to wage sustained bullying campaigns is because of their personality disorder, not because it’s an effective or just tool for solving social problems.

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So recently, a good friend of mine, mx, has been getting bullied and harassed by some folks in the DC fandom. The circumstances are complicated and stupid and basically amount to a bunch of emotionally fragile morons deciding that because my friend argued that a character is asexual because they grew up under messed up circumstances and didn’t develop into a fully realized social being, my friend mx must be acephobic. Now I will fully admit that the phrasing mx used, when taken out of context, sounds really horrible! They used the expression “barely a person” to describe the character. This is an expression that we use among our friends group in a joking way to describe a character (never a real person) who has not been fully realized as a social individual within whatever fictional world they exist. It’s not so much an attempt to deny the character’s humanity as it is describing what has happened to the person as a result of their life circumstances.  Personally, I disagree with the idea that social circumstances would affect a person’s sexuality. Maybe it would affect their ability to relate to people so that if the person was demi or greysexual to begin with, it would push them away from the possibility of sexual relationships altogether? I can certainly see it contributing to a person being aromantic. And if I had been a part of that conversation that’s what I would have argued to mx.  I myself am asexual. It took me a long time to come out as ace and I had to deal with a lot of shit from random people, family and friends. But you know who never gave me any trouble? You know who always listened to me and supported me? It was mx. They were 100% wonderful about it. They never ever made me feel uncomfortable. They never made any weird advances or comments to me, even before I came out, which other close friends have done. They never pressured me to be anything different than what I am. Never made even the slightest suggestion that there was anything odd about my identity. And they tried to tell me why I am the way I am or dissect it. They let me speak for myself. And the reason they did this is because I am a real living breathing human being and not a fictional character. You see, mx and I are the type of people who make a distinction between how we talk about imaginary constructs and real people. We differentiate in how we treat fictional representations and actual humans (and I guess furries too. I know a lot of furries. I don’t want to exclude them.) 

So these assholes have been sending mx nasty messages, harassing them on multiple platforms, gotten them kicked out of a ton of Discord servers and are approaching anyone they come in contact with telling them that mx is a dangerous person because.... I don’t know, I don’t really understand their argument? Because mx phrased something in a way that reminded them of something fucked up other people have said to them? Nevermind that mx did not remotely mean it in the way that originally hurt them did. They can’t target the original person and mx presents an easy target so here we go into the land of scapegoats. I guess some people just want to find reasons to be upset about something so they can have an excuse to bully and harass others. Because if this was really about them getting hurt, as they claim, then why go to all the trouble of destroying the life of someone who doesn’t believe the things they claim? And it’s pretty clear they don’t based on how they treat the other people in their life who are ace.  Now these folks have known mx for maybe half a year and in that time have had very shallow conversations with them about comic book characters. It’s hard to make any sort of real assessment of a person based on that. However, they’re now going around telling people that mx has now for 10, 15, 20 years, some of whom have known mx IRL for that whole time, some of whom know mx’s family, some of whom have lived with mx, in other words, people who are very close to mx and know them extremely well.... these asshats online are telling them, “Oh, mx isn’t who they say they are.”

Right.  Because after having some disagreements about comic books in an online chat group, you have the full measure of a person. Because you can definitely tell everything about a person based on how they’ve analyzed a character and not based on how they actually treat real people that they know for twenty years. I think, given that I have heard every intimate detail of mx’s thoughts, feelings and life for the past twenty years because I am the kind of person they confide things in, even the fucked up things, I have a much better sense of who this person is than a bunch of whiny little bullies who take pleasure in harming as many people as they possibly can while looking justified in their abhorrent and despicable behavior by throwing up some fake front of social justice.

Oh, and one of these people deserves special mention. They’re a white person who claims to be a POC. They do so in order to call other white people racist and so that they can get lots of accolades and sympathy from others. As someone who has had to deal with the effects of systemic racism, this makes me furious. You don’t have to deal with the fear of family members being killed or imprisoned, you don’t have to deal with harsher treatment from the police or judicial authorities, you don’t have to deal with being treated as the brown friend, you don’t have to deal with the fact that there is not a single country in the world where you won’t be under increased surveillance or probable persecution or the threat of rape. So you do not get to claim some kind of moral authority that you think gives you permission to go around acting like a twisted, manipulative, toxic, abusive, sadistic fuck, while everyone lauds you for your imaginary struggle. Acknowledge your privilege and be an ally. Support people. Lift them up. Don’t claim an identity so that you can injure others. That’s seriously deranged. 

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Fated to Love You here reaffirming my long held conviction that no pure romance drama should be 20+ episodes.

This show is... really something. It is, in the fullest possible sense, A Lot. It starts out as an all-out screwball comedy wrapped around a troperiffic romance fluff plot. Wall to wall clichés, but not in a bad way; in a meta, self-aware, peak performance, finest Velveeta way. And if you’re not familiar with screwball comedy, think ‘light-hearted crack fic with slapstick and farce’. There is nothing believable or grounded about any aspect of it, it starts at Bonkers Level: Platinum and it only climbs higher as it goes on.

(On a side note, this results in the leading man being possibly the most memorable love interest in romcom history. His introduction scene is nothing short of batshit insane and you can't reliably predict how he will respond to anything. I have never seen a main character like this, he is all over the shop and utterly singular. Your first reaction to him is ‘wtf?’, your second and third reactions are ‘really?! this guy??’, your fourth reaction is ‘okay he do be mad hot tho’, your fifth and final reaction is ‘I cannot believe this performance exists, I have no idea what he is doing, but it is amazing.’

Appropriately(?) the actor who plays him is an uncanny Korean doppelgänger of Johnny Depp and- between the resemblance, the mannerisms, and the fearless total commitment to a bold as fuck acting choice with the very serious chops to back it up- I’m not convinced they aren’t half brothers separated at birth.

They do sabotage my happiness several times by starting to randomly style his (long, beautiful) hair very weird, fixing it right when the plot is rapidly circling the drain so he looks his hottest just as the show becomes briefly unwatchable, and then ruining him for the entire second half of the series by shearing it all off. WHY, my anguished cry goes up. Why do you do this?! Why does he have like seven hairstyles over the course of the show? Much later they even briefly give him that ubiquitous Kdrama Second Lead haircut with weirdly forward combed fringe in a solid straight line across the brow all the way back from the crown. It looks terrible on everyone and I hate it so much. This version was less bad than most but it is still bad. Anyway.)

So it’s an incredibly fun time to start but there are some problems with the tone and plot even in the first 9 episodes, including when the lovers start getting along really well right away and they’re both thoroughly decent people so there’s nothing keeping them from having a lovely time together making the best of the circumstances (forced/fake marriage). And, instead of introducing new conflict or advancing one of the dozen conflicts previously established and actually moving forward, there is a painfully contrived rehash of something they already dealt with which is then just never resolved. They make the hero leap to a conclusion his wife is nefarious after he’d already decided once that she isn’t (though it was completely reasonable for him to think she was- the fact that he decided to trust her so quickly just speaks to what kind of person he is), never try to find out more or talk to anyone about it, start pushing her away because of it, and have all this come to absolutely nothing. It only exists so he’ll stop being so incredibly nice to her and they won’t fall in love too fast.

You’d think they would have to eventually clear the air before the romance advances right? No. It wasn’t a real plot point, it was just a reset button to get them estranged and hostile again after they connect over their kindred spirits and we’ve spent a bunch of time showing how profoundly supportive and honourable our hero is. He’s being beautifully mature and selfless because he’s a really good dude (unusual for a romcom drama, right? for the main guy to be nice and considerate? to accept responsibility even if he doesn’t have to? Gun’s weird but he’s wonderful), but the writers need him to be cold and standoffish, so they just make him act like an unreasonable idiot for a while. He’s been thus far hugely proactive and direct and honest about everything, it’s one of his most prominent character traits, but suddenly he’s going to avoid confrontation in favour of being super passive aggressive?? Then the writers never solve it. Never! It just goes away. He got over it, I guess? He decided he doesn’t care if she’s a gold digger who deliberately trapped him? God forbid we have motivations that make sense and organic character drama, right? It's not like he didn't have totally valid reasons to be suspicious that could have led to legitimate conflict our heroine would struggle to vindicate herself from.

But anyway, apart from that kind of lazy bullshit, it’s a fine romance plot with extremely endearing characters who have great chemistry. They are fun and well-rounded and incredibly human despite all the silliness and OTT antics. Their relationship is hugely, hugely engaging and the dynamic is perfect, they really complement each other as characters and organically drive each other's arcs. There's the genuine depth and warmth and quiet pathos so often lacking from this kind of show. Things progress at a semi-reasonable pace. They work up to confessing their mutual feelings and get into some cute shenanigans before making out. It happens soon enough that you are not frustrated, but there's still plenty of build-up. Then- uh oh! We’re only 9 eps in and we have another 11 hours to fill with this fluffy plot!

Time for a bunch of absolute fucking nonsense. Time for our show, which has been so goofy and removed from reality it occasionally resembles a Monty Python skit, which has been so light it asks you to ignore the frankly incredibly fucked up implications of its premise for the sake of comedy (they were both drugged and proxy raped resulting in a pregnancy- the FL was a virgin prior to this and Gun had a girlfriend he wanted to propose to- and it was the FL’s family who did this to them: SUPER FUCKED UP), so farcical that it makes Some Like it Hot look like a gritty crime drama, that show to cover a bunch of serious heavy shit.

First, the rankest of melodrama. The families and the world all turn on our couple, but their love is true and will conquer all- UNTIL, he randomly collapses and gets convenient Soap Opera Amnesia. He’s forgotten their entire relationship and a series of coincidental pieces of misconstrued evidence, the machinations of his scheming ex girlfriend, the Soap Opera Doctor’s advice, and his closest confidants all going along with this conspire to make him believe (AGAIN) that his wife just wants his money.

This whole terrible episode is mercifully brief, but it just gets worse after his memory returns. This is where we get into the Noble Idiocy. The ‘pretend you don’t love them to “save them” from getting hurt by hurting them and making their important life decisions for them as if they don’t have a basic fucking right to decide that themselves’ kind. Which goes on for three FUCK years in the show. He wastes three years of their lives they could have spent together because he’s worried he might die young (in a terrible way) and doesn’t want to put her through that. And, of course, they inevitably get together later, so all he did was make it infinitely worse for her either way. To say nothing of how he thus couldn’t be there for her through the loss of their child. Possibly my most hated fucking trope of all time when done this way.

And, yep, you read that right. This show that has the single most batshit bonkers over the top slapstick I have ever seen in a kdrama, this show has a storyline where the fluffy romcom trope accidental pregnancy ends in massive trauma. Because she was standing around in the street after realising he does remember her (he continued to pretend he had amnesia after his memories came back, it’s all part of the stupid noble idiocy so I glossed over it) and gets hit by a car in the middle of their angst staring.

It is nearly Meet Joe Black levels of hilariously abrupt and incongruous.

so, blah blah, they lose their baby (there’s a very stupid whole thing about her telling everyone to save the baby instead of her- the baby is not far enough along for this to have been remotely viable. She is like 3 months pregnant. They all act like there’s a choice to be made between them and she’s mad at her husband for choosing to save her, but there was NO CHOICE. Either she lives or they both die! ffs I’m so irritated about this) and then he dumps her ~for her own good~~ because he loves her too much to make her go through losing him? So she loses him sooner?? right after their baby died???

Why do people in these stories always think being betrayed and abandoned for no reason and being incredibly angry at someone you love while also not getting to be with them is somehow less painful than making the best of your life together and then losing them against their will? ‘I will make her hate me and then she won’t be sad we broke up/I died!!!!’ is such a fucking galaxy brain take and I despise it with the heat of ten thousand suns. Fuck you, Spider-Man. You aren’t protecting anyone, the villains still know you love MJ and will still use her against you, you clod. Emotionally torturing the person you love is not going to make them not a target because the villains are not as fucking stupid as you two. Anyway.

Amnesia was right where I started fast-forwarding and skipping around (because I couldn’t bear it), but it only goes downhill from there. Maybe I would have toughed out more of the wretched middle part plot twist if they hadn’t cut all the hot guy’s hair off. If I’m going to watch total nonsense tedious melodrama, I need it to at least be pretty. I understand it was a Symbolic Haircut but damnit! Let me have this!

And it ultimately does the thing that kdramas seem obsessed with and which makes me want to claw out my own eyeballs with frustration. There’s a giant time skip, the female lead gets a personality transplant, all narrative momentum is lost, and the characters who eventually (at ENORMOUS length) get together permanently are essentially completely different characters with a completely different dynamic than the couple you were shipping for 90% of the story. It is so FUCKING unsatisfying and it is EVERYWHERE.

Not so much with this one because this one still had a lot of very romantic scenes late in the game, but most that do this, it’s also like all the romance is sucked out of the post-time skip episodes and the ending is a consolation prize instead of a triumphant culmination. Inevitably, the heroine abruptly cools off and is suddenly wary of the hero and wants this Important New Career she never mentioned until the penultimate episode but is now her one true life’s dream. What the apparently irresistible appeal is of these contrived separations and demure conclusions is I CANNOT FATHOM. I’m here for the fucking romance guys, you have not made Citizen Kane, please just indulge me with a big schmoopy finale.

And if not that, it’s frequently that there’s been so many random mood swings and so much shitty behaviour by the end that the relationship doesn’t make sense and you don’t know why they even bother to get back together.

I’m not inherently against all misunderstandings (they are the bread and butter of low stakes romance let’s be real) or attempts at noble idiocy from misguided characters, but the duration and seriousness of the drama these generate needs to be in proportion to how ridiculous they are. If your entire plot can be solved by a thirty second conversation there is NO REASON not to have and the continuation of the misunderstanding is a result of someone just NOT SPEAKING UP when any functional human being would have spoken up seven times by now IT’S BAD.

Do little cliff-hangers, whatever, but don’t draaaaagg out silly misconceptions into Shakespearean tragedy, it’s just wearying. It makes me hate the characters for acting like emotionally constipated toddlers with terminal stupidity. If there is so little trust, so little understanding, and so little basic patience between these people, they probably shouldn’t be dating, so try fucking harder, writers. And noble idiocy that is more than an impulse they fairly quickly see the error of is just insulting. You are not helping the other person, you are being domineering and selfish. I have a whole complex about wasting time and seeing endless parades of characters flushing years down the toilet for literally no reason gives me hives. Especially when the whole issue is about time!

(And, btw, so much of the plot is about how desperately the family needs an heir and everyone still wanting them to have kids the second time they get together- while the ~dilemma used to keep them apart is a GENETIC DISEASE which could STRIKE AT ANY TIME. Do you SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WRITERS????? NO, I KNOW YOU DON’T. ommmmmmmmggggg that’s awful! So they’re just dooming more kids to Soap Opera Brain Disease? And maybe growing up without a father just as Gun did? And no one even considers suggesting adoption??? He never considers that he shouldn’t have biological children despite thinking he shouldn’t have a wife?)

ANYWAY. Please do watch the first nine episodes and the last three, it’s bananas. They are cute as fuck, Gun is The Best, and the tropey romance scenes are top quality. You don't get those things executed so well, it doesn't happen, so you need this in your life. The acting is of a calibre you never usually see in modern romcoms; these are people at the top of their game committing utterly and taking these characters completely seriously. In that way it is pure wish fulfilment for me as someone who loves romance and is almost always disappointed by popular romance media, and thus the show is incalculably special. But skip the middle. Just skip it. It's not worth the suffering. I find the tone whiplash honestly just this side of crass.

I’ve been thinking about it for over a week and I truly love the main characters so it did plenty right, but I just cannot with wedding the two things this show is trying to be together, especially when it goes so hard in two mutually exclusive directions. but also the Meet Joe Black sudden car accident device is not redeemable under any circumstances. Can we never do that again, please.

[bloopbyoop]

weep woop

ayo. ive read my scheduled email and its time for freewriting shit again. lmao. I want this post to be like a small light from a lit match stick inside a very hollow, icy, and numbing cave. (sounds cartoonish right? I know. Im obsessed with Adventure Time.) I want all people to be genuinely happy.  Spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Upon reaching my 24th anniversary in this world, I finally learned how to truly embrace all my emotions. Some are more overwhelming than the other, but we have to heed in our treacherous yet perplexing minds that everything is fleeting and we are in control. The feeling of extreme sadness fades, but so does joyful states. Everything can change in a matter of minutes or years. You are in control of all your emotions. You are in control of all your life choices. Your actions. Your words. Your perspective. It feels weird to actually write about it. I've wanted to talk about it. I never wanted help from anyone as I firmly believed that I was alone. Sure, I have a family and friends, but it is hard to see that when your head is clouded with negativity. I've even come to the point where I was too overwhelmed, I found being physically hurt less painful. The pain I felt distracted me from what I was thinking. My mind tended to go bonkers. lmao. But bro, I was so good at concealing my bonkers mind. It's easy to fake any emotion that you have. Slap anything sunshine-y or happy to anything and people would believe you. It went on for years. Long story short, thousands of bracelets collected, it became worse. The physical pain could no longer withhold the emotional pain. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't stop thinking. And voila! I found a good amount of self help books (from tumblr) and novels. Novels that brought me to different places. Self-help books that made me understand what I feel and what to do. I've read that taking the easy way out will leave everyone sad. AND IN THE FIRST PLACEEEEEE, I NEVER WANT THATTTTTTT. I want everyone to be happy. I would act foolish and do dumb shit to make everyone happy in a heartbeat. So, that idea made me push a few more years. Later on, the crippling shit came crawling back again to my head, sooooooo I needed new shit to keep me distracted again. Films, series, music, and short clips from YouTube helped me out a lot. Every single time that my mind is going to think like anything that can think of, even to the point that I was just going to think that I might be hungry, I'd watch something. There's just something about silence for me. Because of this new habit of mine, I've learned more about myself. I love different types of things. I like horror. I like thriller. I like comedy. I like romance. I love all types of films, but there is something about the horror genre that interests me. I still can't point out what, but I love watching horror films. With regards to music, I've learned that I love Indie, Punk Rock, Rap, and Pop. We all can't like a specific genre. It's stupid to ask "what genre of music do you like?". It's not actually stupid-stupid, it's just stupid. Ya know? Anyway, passing this phase, I needed to find something again because it's not doing the shit that it was supposed to, I tried investing more time on video games. By investing more, I mean a whole shit lot. I love video games since I was young cuz.... u know.... they keep u... try to guess it! oh yeah. you got that right! distracted! I love the aggressive plays and trashtalks that my friends and I make. The short stories we tell one another. The rants. The lame jokes. The late night we sound drunk but we are not drunk jokes. The roleplays. The lame jokes. The memes. And once again, The lame jokes. Something about lame jokes and the laughs and curses after that always gets me every single time. Oh shoot. Yup Yup. Few years later, I finally noticed the pattern that my sadness is temporary. I got over it one way or the other (or another. depends on how you wanna read it. i dont wanna say another cause i might write about one direction like what im doing now so-). Happiness is temporary as well. But, we are the ones who are actually in control of our emotions. If you wanna feel sad, be sad for a while. You're getting too sad? Try hanging out with your funny friends. Can't do that? Find an alternative. Watch a movie, knit a sweater. Anything your mind could think of as long as it will keep you mentally distracted from being physically and mentally hurt. I do have a few notes though. We cannot and should never assume what people are going through. It may be petty for you, but it may be very crucial to them. So never everrrr say things like: -Some people have it worse than you -At least you have ..... These sheetsss are annoying as heckkk and could really down someone. I know it is not your intention to annoy but people react differently. alsooooooo, it is not okay or normal to hate on things for bandwagon. that is just plainly crazy and stupid. let people enjoy things. anddddddd never suppress your emotions. admit what you feel inside and try to think of a way to resolve ittttt. keeping it to yourself will just make it worseeeeee. find your own outlettttttttt. hihihi ️ alsooooo. being more spiritually full with God's words and ideas really help me to be spiritually happy. ps. im christian but i dont discredit other religion and even applaud other religion's ideas and beliefs. this is a really long, selfish post so i might as well recommend some things I like : Songs with their lyrics that made me go through life. “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” -All These Things That I've Done, The Killers “It's not too late, I'm still right here” -Breaking Your Own Heart, Kelly Clarkson "And the salt in my wounds / Isn't burning any more than it used to / It's not that I don't feel the pain / It's just I'm not afraid of hurting anymore / And the blood in these veins / Isn't pumping any less than it ever has / And that's the hope I have / The only thing I know that's keeping me alive" -Last Hope, Paramore “There is not a single word in the whole world / That could describe the hurt / The dullest knife just sawing back and forth / And ripping through the softest skin there ever was / How were you to know?” -Hate to See Your Heartbreak, Paramore "It's holding on, though the road's long / And seeing light in the darkest things And when you stare at your reflection / Finally knowing who it is / I know that you'll thank God you did" -1800, Logic "Did some things you can't speak of / But at night you live it all again / You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now / If only you had seen what you know now then" -Innocent, Taylor Swift (My bb) "10 months sober, I must admit / Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it / 10 months older, I won't give in / Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it // Rain came pouring down when I was drowning / That's when I could finally breathe / And by morning gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean" -Clean, Taylor Swift “I guess I always knew / That I had all the strength to make it through.” -Believe in Me, Demi Lovato "I'm addicted to the madness / I'm a daughter of the sadness / I've been here too many times before / Been abandoned and I'm scared now / I can't handle another fallout / I am fragile, just washed upon the shore / They forget me, don't see me / When they love me, they leave me" -I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, Demi Lovato “I'm overwhelmed / I need a voice to echo / I need a light to take me home / I need a star to follow / I don't know” -Nightingale, Demi Lovato "I'm a walking travesty / But I'm smiling at everything. // Arrogant boy, Love yourself so no one has to." -Therapy, All Time Low "I tried it once before but I didn't get too far / I felt a lot of pain but it didn't stop my heart. / But maybe I'm alive 'cause I didn't really wanna die / But nothing very special ever happens in my life / Take the blade away from me I am a freak, I am afraid that / All the blood escaping me won't end the pain / And I'll be haunting all the lives that cared for me / I died to be the white ghost / Of the man that I was meant to be" -Ghost, Badflower "Are the pieces of you / In the pieces of me? / I'm just so scared / You're who I'll be / When I erupt / Just like you do / They look at me / Like I look at you" -DNA, Lia Marie Johnson Movies and series to try : -The Perks of Being a Wallflower (The book is bomb af. if yall havent tried, ur missing out) -The Kings of Summer -Never Let Me Go -The Art of Getting By -Silver Linings Playbook -Winter’s Bone -The Lovely Bones (The script. The words) -Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -American Horror Story -Black Swan

pps. remember that every one has their own pace and point of view. don’t push yourself too hard, and don’t overthink. give yourself time, and respect all your emotions. analyze them but not more than like 5 minutes as anything beyond that might cause you to overthink and be sadder. and sad is not rad. hehe. you got this. you got you. self love is the best even though it can be tricky to do. nobody else is like you. you’re the only one of you (i just remembered me.......... i might have hummed it while typing it mid sentence). consider other people’s opinion but do not let it cloud your own judgement as you know yourself best. dont let other comment’s define you. spread love. vibe people you vibe with. ayeeee lets go!!! 

ppps this is my last post bc im happier now and know myself better. i no longer limit myself on the age that I want. I want to live as long as how God wants me to be. hehe. 

x :D

[five-wow]

I WATCHED 10.22. HERE ARE SOME THOUGHTS UNDER THE CUT. i promise they won’t all be in full caps, but i feel i should also warn you that this was not proofread.

the episode is starting! it has started. the start has started.

lots of flashbacks from 10.21 with VERY dramatic music in the background and it’s very much working on me. EMOTIONS.

oh my gosh we’re now getting a flashback (a new one, not “previously on”) to wo fat and victor hesse planning some evil shit with daiyu mei serving them tea and it is EVEN MORE DRAMATIC than the previously on was. i am IMPRESSED. also maybe laughing a little bit, but in a way where i’m genuinely enjoying the extreme “LOOK, THIS IS BAD” of it, gosh.

fun way to remind us of how it all started, with these two planning anton’s extraction! they get to show us bits and pieces from the pilot while we still get something new.

wo fat: “blood. is blood.” hmmm, the show seems to want us to think he has a point but i’m mostly amused this is coming from the ultimate bad guy because yes, that seems about right. (hashtag you don’t owe people anything just because you’re related to them, shuddup.)

daiyu mei looks all shy and awkward when wo fat asks for her input but i’ve decided that’s an act to keep victor underestimating her.

steve and cole are in a car and fjdkfdjk wait catherine is a super code breaker now? idk, she may have displayed some skills that leaned that way in the past, but now she’s suddenly well-known as one of the best in that field even though that’s not even her field as far as we know? i. i don’t mind catherine getting brought up in conversation but this is such an odd way to do it.

“we were together for a buncha years” hahaha, fandom never really knows how to define the start and end of their relationship and it seems steve doesn’t, either.

“she was the one that got away. what’re you gonna do?” well, look sad and frowny while this guy you barely know throws you a somewhat awkward look because you’re suddenly baring your heart to him, apparently! (for real though, i get that people will be upset at this phrasing and i’m sort of thinking this is a lead in to things i won’t like at the end of the episode and that’s bad but for what it’s worth, i don’t mind this at all! she did slip away from him at a time where he thought they were going somewhere else and he’s talking in past tense now.)

cole is worried he ruined steve’s day by bringing up catherine and that’s sweet, actually! seals emotionally supporting seals.

OOF it is TIME for danny to get ABDUCTED. also: i love that steve immediately drops everything, including the very important super secret difficult to arrange meeting to maybe finally get some insight into this cipher that doris left him, to race to wherever danny is in his car. i feel like alerting hpd (or anyone else in five-0 who might be closer) would be a good idea, but it makes a lot of sense for steve to need to Be There himself.

ohhhhh steve continually nearly crashing his truck while yelling for danny but only hearing gunshots over the line is 👌👌👌. THE ANGST. THE TENSION. very good, very good.

the camaro is BURNING. well that’s one way to smack us in the face with the end of an era, damn.

steve is ALSO BURNING because he obviously tried to get inside the car ahhhh.

fjdkf steve calls tani with instruction about cameras and tani asks if everything is okay because he sounds upset and all he says is “danny’s been taken” and that’s how tani an junior find out, poor dears.

steve, instructing hpd: “we’re looking for detective danny williams. you know who he is, my partner, right? we’re looking for him.” YOU KNOW WHO HE IS. MY PARTNER.

steve is already out of breath from sheer stress and he’s just standing around the tech table with the team, my gosh. (I LOVE THIS.)

danny, bloody and chained up and facing his captor, a woman he already knows is very, very dangerous: [makes a joke about exchanging insurance information because they burned his car] (LOVE HIM TOO.)

OOF though, daiyu mei lets danny know she knows he has two kids and the jokes are over because that’s definitely the line with danny, god.

here’s the scene from the one preview clip i watched! i’m really enjoying daiyu mei, by the way. she’s still a totally bonkers way to bring the threat of wo fat back even after he’s dead, but she is genuinely threatening.

“i have the person you care about most in the world” hello yes i’m still yelling about that one and might not stop soon

daiyu mei telling steve not to make the same mistake he did with his father and “allow a loved one to die” is so mean but so good and narratively pretty darn cool.

we’re not even eleven minutes in and we’re already at “come alone, commander, or your friend dies”. [insert that escalated quickly meme]

steve thinks he has zero options except give in to exactly what daiyu mei wants and it’s very unsteve of him but also fits perfectly with the mindset they’ve maneouvred him into over the past few episodes and with DANNY BEING GONE so i like it. i like that steve is very obviously freaking the fuck out.

never though i would say this, but... steve, you should listen to adam. it’s shocking, especially this season, but he is making an actual good judgment.

steve alone in the elevator on the verge of either a panic attack or breaking down crying and curling up into a ball is A LOT.

steve goes to the meeting alone, gets a location and confirmation that danny is alive and then hands over the cipher, and that’s good but also... i mean, for real, if he had just printed some random symbols on a similar piece of paper (maybe even the same symbols but in a different order!) how on earth would daiyu mei have known?

OH. OHHHH. danny does the badass steve-ish thing where he pulls himself up by his shackles to somehow get himself free, holy fuck, yes man.

IT WORKS. knocked out the guard, got the keys, got a gun - damn son. not only do we get worried out of his mind steve, we ALSO get bamf danny, ahhhh.

AND THEN HE GETS SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, which is where all those promo pictures came from obviously, and also means we’re about to tick off the hurt part of h/c in an even bolder font than we already had.

fdjkfdjkfd steve’s litany of comforting little nonsense lines while he’s dragging danny to the car and getting him into it and NOT GETTING BEHIND THE WHEEL BUT STAYING WITH DANNY IN THE BACK is killing me slowly.

fdjkfd steve hugging danny’s bloody face in his lap oh my god

apparently that wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH YET because then they’re at the hospital and steve tells the doctor’s what’s up and they’re about to roll danny away and danny, half dead and according to steve in and out of consciousness, somehow finds the time to try to grAB AT STEVE’S ARM BLINDLY. steve: “hey, i’m with you buddy, it’s okay.” DEAD. NOT DANNY, ME. I AM VERY DEAD.

the entire team is stressed and worried and just dead quiet, watching danny and steve. ohhhh boy.

oh fuck oh fuck steve is praying and red-eyed and furious and telling god “you wanna take somebody? take me. not him, you take me.” and i have a very big massive weak spot for exactly this.

cole comes to find steve to offer to figure out the cipher thing and steve has a very hard time giving a single flying shit and then HANDS COLE HIS GUN. welllll. just letting go of stuff they never would have normally left and right, here. i was kind of expecting steve’s badge to follow.

tani has a lot of good worried moments and i love that.

danny is out of surgery!!! steve gets to see him!!!

oh GOD we get a sad version of all for one while steve is in danny’s hospital room and grabs danny’s hand and i am. oh. oh. not okay.

STILL ONLY JUST PAST THE HALFWAY POINT OF THE EPISODE.

it’s honestly kind of weird that cole has this much screentime (i know he was supposed to be back for the season 11 that will never happen, but with the way things turned out that’s not very relevant anymore in story), but i mind it less than i thought i would have. i like him, and i’m glad he has quinn with him now, because i always want more of her.

danny wakes up and his slightly loopy conversation with steve has me fjdkfdjkfd. d: [says you’re supposed to be happy when a patient wakes up] s, like he might still be about to cry: “i’m happy.” d: “yeah? yeah, me too.”

steve is hurting and blaming himself for everything (very in character) and danny tells him he’s already annoying and that if he had a dollar for every time steve saved his life he’d have like twenty bucks (also very in character) and i’m glad for that bit of comic relief and they need it, too, but somebody also needs to give steve a good shake until the thought that this is on him leaves his head. if anyone except daiyu mei is responsible here, it’s doris. blame doris, jfc.

danny, after nearly dying and only just waking up in the hospital, while he still has trouble speaking: “put [the call steve is getting] on speaker, would you, i’m bored.” more jokes! but it also makes me go fjdkfdjk because you will not convince me that this is not danny, extremely injured, still trying to take care of steve by distracting him from all the misery they’re in.

fjdkfd OKAY SO. plot stuff: the cipher translates to coordinates that apparently lead to the place where the mcgarretts thought doris was buried. steve says he knows the place because his dad used to take him there and ? because i always thought john sent his kids away pretty soon after doris died so he can’t have had much time to visit her grave a lot with them, but also just, the drama of it, wow, doris. send your son an encrypted message that sends him to your fake grave, why don’t you.

jfkdsjlfksljfds the mcgarretts have a family mausoleum now, apparently, omfg. and there was still a space with doris’s name on it? even though they’ve known for how many years by now that she was still alive oh my gosh

cole is along for the ride to doris’s fake grave and steve keeps dropping these little nuggets from his family history and cole keeps (rightfully!) looking a little confused and/or alarmed, poor guy, hahaha.

daiyu mei is running full tilt and doing some mad parcour shit in a suit and what looks like high heels and there is a whole action scene here with lots of players and constant shooting and some one-on-one fighting, but i am fully distracted by the shoewear.

oh, false alarm, probably! not quite high heels, just something ballarina like with a very tiny heel. that’s better.

fjdkfjdkfd OOF daiyu mei nearly kills steve, steve gets the upper hand, daiyu mei says some things and we’re given another flashback to wo fat and victor hesse and this time also john when he was held hostage, and suddenly we’re told he’s not surprised that doris had a secret son (wo fat) and that he suspected her death was staged.

OH MY GU==fdj

okay so those were typos but i’m LEAVING THEM because “whatever happens next, don’t tell my son. it would be too hard on him.” HELLO JOHN, FUCK YOU JOHN. he wanted??? to keep this secret??? from steve??? and also he doesn’t even acknowledge that he maybe has more than just a son. maybe there is a person called mary out there somewhere? might ring a bell, if you think about it long and hard.

wo fat: “you’re a good man, john mcgarrett.” i really don’t know if we’re supposed to agree with things wo fat says but he’s mostly voicing the opposite of what i feel this episode.

daiyu mei to steve: “you are your father.” oh gosh. oh no.

ahh, here’s a point where cole’s presence really starts to take away from other characters. he shows up to steve and daiyu mei’s confrontation to back steve up, and that obviously should have been any other character that we’ve known for way longer and have way more attachment to (junior! that would have been so good, or maybe lou, who’s also been here for seven years, or tani, who keeps worrying), especially, very very much especially when steve goes “book her, cole”. that’s just confusing, too. so far the cole and steve parallels have been thrown at us and now he’s suddenly in danny’s place.

32 minutes out of 42 and we’re at “one week later” and steve hopping through his garden to get to the beach chairs where danny is sitting. this is good but worrying for how early it comes.

danny says he misses the very nice nurse who brought him jello and steve tells him not to confuse a caregiver for someone who cares and danny goes “yeah? you know jealousy is not uh, pretty on you.” and then they’re both awkwardly quiet for a moment. dear lord.

AND THEN THINGS WENT PEARSHAPED. danny: “you all packed?” my heart is sinking fast. maybe i should just quit here and leave it at danny telling steve jealousy is not pretty on him (which implies other things are pretty on steve - let’s get back to that).

steve to danny, who is talking up hawaii (which is of course very good): “who are you?” i am having FLASHBACKS to junior asking tani that exact same thing just a few episodes ago.

danny seriously questions steve’s decision to just up and leave hawaii a bunch of times and yes, danny, good, grill him. this is a stupid plan.

danny: “you know, it don’t feel like it’s gonna be okay. it feels like- my main dude is leaving me.” HI STEVE. MAYBE DON’T. MAYBE DON’T GO. MAYBE DON’T HURT DANNY.

“you got a phone, right?” we’re seriously at that point. we are. seriously at that point. wow.

steve forces danny to get up to give him the frigging tenderest, dopily smiliest hug and it is so very sweet yet so very wrong.

“I LOVE YOU, MAN.” / “I LOVE YOU TOO.” THEY DID NOT YELL THAT BUT I AM BECAUSE THIS IS ALL I’VE WANTED FOR TWO YEARS and now it’s under these circumstances which ugh BUT I AM STILL HYPED. THEY GOT TO SAY IT AGAIN. GOOD. FUCKING GOOD.

“don’t make me come looking for you” danny says after he sits back down and without another word steve starts walking away and then he stops and looks back and catches danny looking over his shoulder but quickly looking away again and holy fucking damn if this isn’t how stories go when they try to tell us that two characters shouldn’t be parting because they don’t want to. turn around, steve. it’s so easy.

EDDIE. my gosh, ANOTHER blond guy who loves steve to pieces and who steve Should Not Just Leave, wtf.

eddie gets an i love you too and then a kiss and my heart! is having a hard time today!

oh LORD there’s a knock at the door and it’s the whole entire team and lou!!! is making me cry!!! and everyone whispers how much steve means to them at him while they’re hugging him and fjdkfd what. why is he leaving! it’s starting to sound like a worse decision by the second.

i could cry at all of these goodbyes seperately but right now i am also crying at tani immediately hugging noelani when she joins the pile of people who have said goodbye. ohhhh.

EVERYONE IS CRYING. not cool. VERY UNCOOL. also, honestly, i love that danny got to say goodbye seperately and it’s fitting that he just can’t watch steve actually walk out the door but also... he should have been here, gdi. now there’s this huge emotional team moment and he’s absent and it’s weird.

steve boards a plane and sits down and his phone beeps and it’s danny texting him “miss you already” and i cannot believe this is actual canon and had to pause to kind of laugh/gasp for air for a little bit.

and catherine shows up! i’ve been braced for this so i’m not surprised and it’s less bad than i thought in many ways but also. they talk about cath driving danny’s car and steve says they can’t have danny williams driving his own car and if that’s true, then why the hell are you leaving, steve. what are you doing to danny? (also. uh. danny’s car kind of went up in flames? he has a new one already? i. what.)

cath asks if steve is ready and they hold hands and steve turns to look out the plane window and smiles and that’s very suddenly it.

you know what? you know what, for the most part, i absolutely loved this. i was prepared for VERY BAD THINGS and i don’t enjoy steve leaving at the end at all and i have MANY NOTES on how things could have maybe ended even better but i. i am okay with this. i am okay with this! that is honestly more than i thought i would be able to say and i’m just VERY RELIEVED right now.

as for the show ending with steve and cath... that was weird, but... he also held danny’s hand this episode and that was supposedly platonic, and steve and cath did not suddenly have a big romantic kiss or get engaged, so i am choosing to take this as a platonic reunion with a person from steve’s past he still cares about, someone who travels a lot and was in hawaii to break that code and therefore this makes sense. he leaves with cath, and then, in a few weeks’ time, he comes back to danny (the person he cares about most in the world), and canon just, y’know, forgot to mention that little tidbit. it happens.

anyway, i had EMOTIONS and i still need to let all of this sink in and i hope you’re all doing okay after this whirlwind of a thing and ahhhh, it is so very weird that it’s over now. 💖

[horrorlad]

Horrorlad Reviews: The Dentist (1996)

Or at least, like, talks about it a bunch. 

Boy was I overthinking my first real Horror Lad post! It was going to be Grave Encounters, but that will have to wait, because I got insomnia and decided to rewatch a movie I hadn’t seen seen since I was 14, which wound up being the perfect opportunity to write out a post!

Let’s talk about The Dentist!

So, The Dentist is a 1996 movie starring Corbin Bernsen. It was directed by Brian Yuzna (one of the producers of Re-Animator, he also directed the 1989 body horror film Society which I haven’t seen, though a cursory image search tells me I need to add to my watch list immediately).

Anyway, The Dentist is about a teethsman who catches his wife giving some other guy a BJ and gets so grossed out about it that he has a nervous breakdown about, uh, how dirty mouths are, I guess? He loses his absolute shit (though he didn’t seem to have it all that together to begin with; this guy’s Jack Torrance is way more Kubrick than King), and we the audience get to tag along for all the wacky fun.

Full disclosure: I can’t give an unbiased review of this movie. I watched it several times in high school, then completely forgot about it for ten years, until tonight. There’s too much nostalgia wrapped up in it.

That said, upon rewatching it, I am in LOVE with the structure of it as a film. You know how, some movies, you can tell that the people behind the scenes are having a blast? This is one of those movies. The structure of the shots vary wildly, and I suspect that there was not one tripod or stabilizer on that set. The makeup and effects are fun, every actor has an opportunity to shine at least once, and the pacing is totally bonkers. I will note, however, that for a slasher movie the confirmed death count is pretty low, AND most of the murders are less dentistry-related than you might expect. Still, it’s a good time, and right now it’s available to watch for free (with commercials) on Tubi, which is pretty sweet!

Read on for the content warnings and spoilers. In the meantime, I give The Dentist 3.5 tanks of nitrous oxide (use with caution).

Content warnings and plot synopsis below the cut.

Content Warnings

Also, I don’t really know what to classify this one as, but there is a lot of “ick” factor to this movie — rotting teeth, sludge, etc. If you’re easily squicked out by that sort of stuff, I’d proceed with caution.

Dental torture (and how!) – it’s basically the whole movie, folks.

Sexual assault – multiple instances, including a character having their head forced down while giving oral sex (in a daydream), and another character being assaulted while on nitrous oxide.

Spousal abuse (physical and emotional) – again, there’s a lot of this.

Child abuse – A young child has their gums stabbed by the dentist.

Animal abuse – a dog is shot offscreen.

--------------------------------------

Okay, spoiler time!

Whoo boy, here we go!

I have no idea why I watched this movie so much as a teen. Probably because it was free on FearNet (remember FearNet?) and I would watch just about anything.

Watching it as an adult, my first thought is… man this is weirdly paced. My second thought is that there’s a lot more non-dental-related murders than I would have expected, but we’ll come back to that.

So, our hero(?) is a dentist, and we meet him at the beginning of a framing device, miming dentistry and offering to tell us about his story. The bulk of the movie is then a flashback about how he got to where he is, interspersed with his monologuing or whatever. We meet him and his wife (who are a straight couple in a movie and thus required to completely hate one another) on their anniversary, a fact which becomes clear while he’s in the middle of throwing a fit about his laundry.

Pictured: a totally hinged man. Nothing unhinged going on here, no sir.

At any rate, he gets all suspicious after an interaction with the pool guy, and catches his wife having an affair with the guy. He continues framing-device-monologuing about decay and the world being filthy and all that, daydreams about assaulting his wife and murdering the pool boy, etc. He follows the pool guy to the neighbor’s house, acts all weird, shoots a dog — your basic Tuesday.

Eventually, he winds up at the office, starts hallucinating, assaults a couple of patients, and finally calls an early end to the day (self care is important). We get this delightful (in a heavy-handed sort of way) scene that keeps cutting back and forth between him setting out spooky dental tools and his wife getting dressed for the big anniversary surprise he’s has planned, and that’s when things really start to go haywire.

Okay.

So like.

I get that he’s a dentist.

I get that he’s a dentist whose whole shtick is having the themed exam rooms (though why we have aaaalll these rooms for a bunch of hygienists and one dentist is a little beyond me).

But you mean to tell me that this dude’s special anniversary surprise for his wife was to show her his new, opera-themed dental exam room?

“Oh, honey… you really, really shouldn’t have…”

Like, I know he’s settled on a revenge plot by this point, but I still definitely believe that this guy was legitimately planning the entire time to show his wife his fancy new dental suite as an anniversary surprise. Not to be that guy, but no wonder she was having an affair.

Honestly though, I love this scene. I love the camera PoV shots as he shows off the dental suite, I love the excessive gesturing with his left hand. I love how the scene starts off with his point-of-view of her, and then transitions into her point-of-view of him, cut with those big beautiful teeth-yanking shots. It’s ridiculous.

And then, they get home, he has some monologuing about the pool, etc.

Next scene, it’s the next day, some cops come to ask questions about the murdered dog, his wife is out back on a pool chair with her giant sunhat covering her face (the way normal, totally-not-drugged people hang out by the pool) while the pool guy does his pool guy stuff. Eventually the cops leave, yadda yadda yadda, the pool guy scoops the wife’s tongue out of the pool, he sees how fucked up she is, the dentist murders the shit out of him. It’s beautiful.

Don’t you love it when you finish your to-do list first thing in the morning?

The end.

Wait, no, that’s not right.

Somehow, there’s still almost half a movie left.

This movie starts with this dude fighting with his wife, catching his wife cheating with the pool guy, hallucinating his wife’s nasty mouth on everyone, etc. You’d think that, with his wife tortured all to shit and the pool guy dead, the movie would have wrapped up.

I mentioned before that the pacing of the movie is weird, which it is. I mean, he has his “oop guess I’m evil now” scene on his way to work the next day, which basically means that just over half of this movie is the origin story. It could be longer, with the big climactic nonsense taking up the last quarter or so. It could be shorter, with him freaking out about his wife, losing his shit, and having a proper dental rampage. Instead, The Dentist flies in the face of conventional story structure.

But this man is a busy man. He’s a dentist, damn it.

He has to get back to work!

Things are happening fast now, let’s get condensed.

We go back to work, he pulls some malpractice shit on that lady whose dog he shot yesterday, then strangles Jessica-the-hygienist (I think that’s her job) when she calls him on it. Later, a man from the IRS comes in and uses the dentist’s shady tax junk to get free dental work which is, uh, inadvisable. IRS man, Marvin Goldblum, starts talking about our dentist’s wife (and about how unhinged shiksas are in bed, in case we somehow we didn’t piece together that he’s an awful Jewish caricature), and I’m sure the rest of his appointment goes totally normally.

Get a guy who looks at you like this.

Meanwhile, the cops are definitely onto him regarding the murder of that dog (after all, murdering dogs is THEIR turf). They go to his house, where he left the body of the pool guy he murdered just laying around outside for anyone to find (which they do). Then they go upstairs and find his wife, who is alive but so fucked up.

Back at the office, Karen-the-other-hygienist, looking for her coworker who got murdered earlier, stumbles upon the very fucked up IRS dude. We get to listen to the dentist give a little monologue about how grossed out he is that his wife put some dude’s “dirty, rotten… in her mouth!” before he injects air into a vein in Karen-the-other-hygienist’s neck to kill her.

Next up, this girl who has been waiting for two days to get her braces off gets called back. She’s adorable and chipper, so this, of course, can only go well. When’s the last time you had your dentist pull a gun on you?

Our scrappy youngster runs off, and he gives chase (we find that Mr. Goldblum’s jaw elongation procedure is going well by the way), before eventually letting her go after she promises to take very, very good care of her teeth.

After all, he’s got his next job to get to.

Let’s go teach dental students the importance of pulling out everyone’s teeth!

Yeeep, he’s a teacher! And after he shoots one of his students while hallucinating, the cops show up, resulting in the slowest chase scene any movie has ever had (I mean the dude is literally just briskly walking down the hall and he still gets away from them). Anyway, the dentist winds up in an auditorium where a woman is practicing her opera singing. The dentist is entranced by this (we know he loves opera from that scene with his wife earlier) and reaches out to the singer, but he hallucinates his wife’s hecked up face on her and drops to his knees, presumably to have the rest of his nervous breakdown. The cops… uh… well, they just kinda stand around looking disapprovingly at him while he sits on the floor. And that’s… that’s it, I guess?

“Nah, let him rest, he’s had a big day.” 

 In our final scene, we have some orderlies at his new mental institution drag him down for his regular appointment, where his wife (who I guess is a dentist now) starts drilling at his teeth. This may or may not be a hallucination. It probably doesn’t matter.

Wow. That certainly was a film.

Alright, so, I’ve been typing up my thoughts as I watch, and I think I’ve figured out what I like about this movie, that had me coming back to it over and over as a youngster. There are some movies that just look fun to film, and this is one of them. A number of the shots are really charming, for lack of a better word. There’s the anniversary scene with his wife I mentioned before, but so many others — this movie plays around with point of view, extreme close-ups, some very fun effects used to indicate the hallucinations… there’s even a sideways shot of one of the cops coming down the stairs. I seem to have a real fondness for that sort-of manic, anything-goes approach to filming. Related side note: is there a single steady shot on this whole film? I’m beginning to doubt it.

Corbin Bernsen does a great job. I mean, all the actors do, really, but he is something else. Like, I can’t think offhand of many actors who could successfully take the character “dentist in bad marriage has a nervous breakdown because his wife gives someone else a blow job and it grosses him out; goes on torturemurder spree” without overacting to the point of distraction. “What are you talking about, this dude’s hammier than Easter dinner,” you say. Now, I get the urge here, but I have to disagree; Bernsen plays a fantastic Emasculated White Guy Throwing A Fit.

That picture I posted up there, after the bit about the laundry argument? A dude who makes that face over the idea of wearing the wrong cuff links to work is at most twelve seconds away from completely losing his shit at any given moment. And the dude’s anniversary surprise for his wife was to show off his new, opera-themed dental exam room; none of this behavior seems too off the wall for that character. Granted, I haven’t seen the sequel yet, and the image searches do suggest that our dear dentist is about to use his well-cared-for teeth to chew the hell out of some scenery in The Dentist 2, but in this movie? I’m just saying it’s not an unbelievable portrayal.

Disgruntled white dudes aside, the rest of the cast seems to have a fun time too. Shout out to the receptionist literally sobbing over what a great dentist this guy is (stunning work). If nothing else, stop by for wee baby Mark Ruffalo before he was famous. It’s adorable.

LOOK AT HIM.

ALL THAT SAID, I have to state again how surprised I am by the sheer number of not-dental-related murders! Like, by my count, this guy commits a hefty amount of malpractice, but for a guy on a torturemurder spree, he sure does seem to keep his torture and his murder fairly separate. Let’s tally it:

I’m tired, let’s wrap this up. The Dentist is a fun movie about a dude who loses his shit, does some dental torture, does some murder, does ZERO dental torturemurders, and then just kinda tuckers himself out and sits down. It’s a big silly mess, and I love it.

Tortures: six

The kid at the beginning, the lady he sexually assaults (it counts), his wife (not dead), that lady whose dog he shot, Marvin the IRS guy (alive when last we see him), and the person at the dental school near the end.

Murders: three people, one dog.

The dog (shot), the pool guy (knifed), Jessica-the-hygienist (strangled), Karen-the-other-hygienist (air injected into artery), and that’s… it..? He does shoot that person at the dental school, but it doesn’t appear to be a fatal wound, and Marvin the IRS guy was alive when we saw him last.

Torturemurders: HECKIN’ ZERO.

Zero! None of the tortures are murdered, and nobody he murders is tortured! What the heck kind of slasher dentist doesn’t even kill people via dentistry? No wonder everyone looks down on him at the end.

Alright, first post written. I’m going to bed.