#to be clear it’s my fave film of the year but i had hoped i’d never have to see it again

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

i know i know i know awards are bullshit and meaningless but. dolly de leon deserved the best supporting actress nom spot that jamie lee curtis got.

[autumnsup]

The Velvet Goldmine Soundtrack Imagined As a Flight or Tasting Menu

Arranged According to Flavor and Style

To preface my latest nonsense: I will always appreciate the OST. I even went and bought the vinyl edition (see previous reblog), which makes skipping the less beloved tracks more difficult. Nevertheless, over the years I have done some curating based on the tracks I love most, including adding in a few bonus tracks that didn’t make it onto the OST album.

Back in the early 2000s, it was quite the undertaking to create what I considered to be the “complete” soundtrack to Velvet Goldmine. To collect more tracks, I combed through used CD stores, ripped from CDs found at libraries, and “borrowed” from my dad’s music downloading service pre-iTunes, to make a mix of my own.

I won’t be including that exact mix here, nor will I be mentioning every single song on the OST, but I’ve compiled a few Top 5 lists with flavorful ramblings about each track and why I love it. I’m also realizing as I write that much of what I appreciate about each song is wrapped up with the scene it underscores in the film, making it hard for me to take a step back and judge them on their musical merits alone. Just be warned that some may be more incoherent than others. 🫠

Top 5 Faves

Hot One ✨ Shudder to Think

Flavor profile: smoky-sweet with a dollop of strange

Honestly, this song makes me so happy and nostalgic every time I hear it. If I were to pick one song to play on repeat, this would probably be the one I’d choose. There’s something infectious about the leisurely pace of the piano and bass together, and the nonsensical, somewhat dark lyrics overlaying them, lightly tinged with the rasp of the singer's voice. I could almost imagine Oscar Wilde composing the words, without the references to outer space (unless he was actually – gasp – FROM outer space?).

Bitter-Sweet ✨ Roxy Music

as performed by Thom Yorke and The Venus in Furs

Flavor profile: a swirl of bitters and spice with an undercurrent of salt tears

I love this song because it encompasses so many different sounds and moods, and Thom Yorke’s vocal range is incredible. Plus the lyrics are extremely evocative and spot-on for the scene they cover. It’s not entirely clear to me if we actually hear the Flaming Creatures perform parts of it as well, or if they are just lip-synching for the sake of flow between scenes, but in any case, it was very well chosen.

Satellite of Love ✨ Lou Reed (with David Bowie)

Flavor profile: fluffy-sweet layers with a little crunch on top

Another happy-making song for me, although I can eventually get tired of listening to it (doesn’t help that I have it on Lou Reed’s Transformer too). I love that Bowie collaborated on the background vocals and enjoy singing along while I imagine Curt and Brian in the honeymoon phase of their relationship.

Gimme Danger ✨Iggy Pop

as sung by Ewan McGregor

Flavor profile: this may mangle your jaw and sear off your tastebuds but you will still crave it 😵

Seriously, why didn’t they include this on the OST album??? it is my opinion that if they had to pick one Iggy Pop song, they should’ve gone with Gimme Danger instead of T.V. Eye. The Iggy Pop original is good too but it doesn’t have quite the same feeling of angst and emotional oomph that Ewan’s does. I guess it doesn’t have the same level of shock value as T.V. Eye, but melodically and thematically I think it’s a much better song.  It is a crying shame that this performance was overlooked and I still hold hope in my heart that the Ewan recording is in storage somewhere, eventually to be released into the world. (Todd Haynes, take note).

Ballad of Maxwell Demon ✨ Shudder to Think 

as sung by Jonathan Rhys Meyers / Craig Wedren

Flavor profile: a tall glass of rainbow dusted in glitter and charcoal

I have mixed feelings about this track because I can’t decide which version I like better. In general, I’m not a huge fan of JRM’s voice, but for this particular song, it fits the off-kilter he-might-kill-you-in-an-instant tone of the music video so well, it might actually be the better version. I don’t know… feel free to fight me on this, I might just change my mind. Again. But as for the song itself, the lyrics are so nonsensical they're borderline iconic. I mean, "the slap on my ass by a lipstick-kissed elbow glove"?

Top 5 for Sheer Vibes

Velvet Spacetime ✨ Carter Burwell (both versions)

Flavor profile: a smorgasbord of far-out sounds

Speaking of vacillating, I am pretty certain that there are two versions of this track, one of which we hear only briefly during the film. I like the OST version just fine because of how melodic and relaxing it is, but I wish they’d included the film version, which sounds more ominous and gritty. I think it appears during one of the “Arthur hot on the trail” scenes, when he’s walking to the subway or something? Anyway, FANTASTIC vibes from a film composer I’ve learned to love over the years.

2HB ✨ Roxy Music

as performed by Thom Yorke and The Venus in Furs

Flavor profile: a fizzy Bellini-style cocktail made with passionfruit and the finest champagne

This is such an interesting song from start to finish, and is used to beautiful effect in the film. My favorite version of course is the one with Jack Fairy at the end, during the Death of Glitter concert. “Your cigarette traces a ladder” is probably one of my favorite lyrics from the entire film – SO poetic.

20th Century Boy ✨ T.Rex 

as performed by Placebo

Flavor profile: the chunkiest hunk of brittle you’ve ever sunk your teeth into

This song is just so perfect in every way, both in the film and on the OST. I find the melody a bit repetitive and the lyrics boring, which is why I didn’t include in my top faves list, but Placebo’s delivery of it is smashing, right down to the chunky guitar riffs at the very end. Leaves me with chills every time.

The Whole Shebang ✨ Grant Lee Buffalo

Flavor profile: a little bland until the bubbles start popping

A fluffy little song, but I love singing along with the chorus, and it’s a great fit for where it appears in the film. (Note to Todd Haynes and co: can we see the whole music video please? I love JRM’s Elvis-like sneer and head wobbles so much).

Needle in the Camel’s Eye ✨ Brian Eno

Flavor profile: sharp, sweet, sassy lemon

Also an interesting song to me, and one that fits the mood of the opening credits scene like a glove. With repeat listenings I’ve come to believe that even though it comes in hard with those brassy guitar chords, it’s actually not a very heavy song. The sheer joy and simplicity of it really shines through and captures the euphoric feeling of running through the streets with your best mates so well. I’m not even bothered by how repetitive the melody is, because each repetition brings something new with it.

NB: I’d never heard of Eno before and was intrigued to discover that snippets from a couple of his other songs were included in the film (Dead Finks and Fat Lady). They are more curiosities to me than anything I truly love, but I sometimes enjoy listening to them all the way through just for the hell of it.

Top 5 for that Retro Flavor

Do You Want to Touch Me (Oh Yeah!) ✨ Gary Glitter Joan Jett

Flavor profile: velvety-smooth with a little grit and spice sprinkled in

I do like the original version of this track but have a hard time stomaching the thought of supporting the original singer in any way. Thank goodness for Joan Jett’s excellent cover version!

Virginia Plain ✨ Roxy Music

Flavor profile: also smooth as velvet but with no grit to speak of, just bright fruity flavor

This song is pure fun from start to finish and matches the tone of the scene perfectly. I especially love how it ends right at the moment when Shannon is being introduced to the entourage.

Cosmic Dancer ✨  T.Rex

Flavor profile: warm and milky goodness

A delicately winding journey of a song. I love the soft intimacy of Mandy doing Brian’s makeup during it – wish we had one of those scenes for her and Jack or Curt too.

Ladytron ✨ Roxy Music

performed by Thom Yorke and The Venus in Furs

Flavor profile: can I say chocolate? Stoneground, with both sugar and spice of course.

This song grew on me, thanks in part to the distant bewitching intro before the quavering vocals set in. The guitar solos provide fire for the sex scene between Brian and Mandy, and I like how it fades out at the end (unlike the actual ending of their relationship).

Tumbling Down ✨ Steve Harley

as performed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and The Venus in Furs

Flavor profile: whipped syllabub with bombastic notes of cherry and lime

This scene with JRM alone and gussied up as Maxwell Demon is possibly the most dramatic finale for a character I’ve ever seen in film or theatre, and I’ve seen a fair amount of both. His rendition of the song doesn’t quite seize me by the heart like other versions I’ve heard (especially the live Steve Harley version with guitar, harmonica and little else), but the musical backing more than makes up for it, along with the tawdry glamor and sparkle of costume and set. The song feels both retro and timeless somehow, despite (or because of?) the nonsensical lyrics, and I find myself singing them every now and then without quite knowing why. RIP Maxwell Demon.

Honorable Mentions

Sebastian ✨ Steve Harley

as sung by Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Flavor profile: a vanilla bean dipped in confectioner's sugar

This song gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, it has the somber and dirge-like melody that doesn't always sit well with me, but on the other hand, something about JRM’s delivery of it, of Brian’s cool gaze over an audience that doesn’t quite despise him but definitely doesn’t appreciate his unique brand of showmanship, lingers with me. “Your lips ruby blue” – now there’s a line that’s hard to forget.

Diamond Meadows ✨ T.Rex

Flavor profile: huckleberry crumble with blobs of cream

It took me a little while to come around to this song, but I now think it underscores the Brian and Curt doll scene quite well. Childlike, bordering on naughty, and repeating in endearing loops until it abruptly cuts itself short. (That might describe much of Marc Bolan’s opus, come to think of it).

Symphony No. 6 in A Minor ✨ Gustav Mahler

Flavor profile: less of a flavor and more like a whiff of buttery, mouthwatering mystery

I didn’t recognize this as a Mahler piece for a while, but the clip played during Jack’s slow descent down the stairs at the Sombrero, and the following scene of him under intense scrutiny in the restaurant, fits SO well. Carter Burwell or whoever managed to interweave Mahler with 60s soul, glam rock stylings, and the Spacetime theme in the span of just a few minutes was at the top of their game. 💋

@25yearsofvelvetgoldmine

[egg2k16]

40 Fanfic Q’s Answered

the server wants answers, and they want them now!!! from this post

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Smut and pining all the way. Also, falling in love via laughing

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Eh...I don’t think so, I’m always 100% self-indulgent, so what u see is what I want

3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

Anything that has to do w mega sadness, I just Don’t. I can’t write anything sad, and if I do, there’s certainly gonna be A Lot of comfort afterwards

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

I have 91 wips, motherfuckers!!! My latest wip is a daddy month fic!

5. Share one of your strengths.

I think, since I’ve been trying to be sparser in my words, I’ve been able to better emphasize what isn’t being said

6. Share one of your weaknesses.

No action scenes from me are ever good, lmao

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

It was late at night, when he started to cry.

He didn't want to cry, but he did.

It's been years since he's last let himself feel, or was it since he was last allowed to feel?

He choked on his sobs, uncomfortable with his tears. He's forgotten how to properly cry. His entire body is shaking, and the connections between flesh and wire hurts.

He stops crying. He starts crying again.

This continues for another few minutes, until he feels as if he can't possibly have any more tears.

He wipes his face, pulls the covers up to his chin, and falls asleep.

(from Twilight on the Sea) I really like this bcus I don’t think I’ve ever really typed out crying in this way, n I tried to make it feel like it was a lot

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Cass was quiet for a moment. “... you know what? Maybe I’ll just go up there and surprise you.”

“If you do, then you already ruined the surprise, haven’t you?”

“Eh, I dunno about that. Seeing my beautiful face is a shock for many people.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it.”

“Hey, Koda? I don’t know about you, but it’s really late here.”

“Really?” Koda asks, then remembers that time zones exist. “Oh crap, what time is it over there?”

“It’s midnight. What about you?”

“It’s eight o’clock. Only four hours difference?”

“Oh hey, that’s not so bad.”

“It reduces our time,” Koda said, a bit whining.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“What are you going to do? Move here? Send for me?”

“You’ll see.”

(from Together) This was a gift for one my best friends on here, @suncatchr​ , and it’s about his ocs!!! I love this a lot bcus while it’s a soulmate au, it’s not ur average soulmate au, and I tried making it as original as possible! And this blurb, I just wanted them to effuse so much love w/o having to say love...cries

9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?

If this is by posted fics, then I remember writing Look What You’ve Done to Me was very very difficult, bcus, since it’s also a gift, for @daniel-bryan​ , I wanted to write it Good, n since my buddy usually wrote from the love interest’s pov, I felt a weird pressure to write Daniel Bryan’s pov as good as I could

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

2 of my fics in Spanish!!! My oc centric one, Rayos y Centellas, and my shyan one, oye cariño, solo pienso en ti ! Turns out writing in ur native tongue makes everything easier

11. Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

It’s a very passionate hobby!!! I just!!! try to pour all of my love into everything I write!!!

12. Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

I’m not sure!!! I just watch movies n quietly scream to my gay lonesome bcus No One Ever Watches Movies ;-;

13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

To just keep writing n not stop for details or forgotten lore, bcus it’s important to write down what’s firing u up Right Now. Of course, it’s very difficult following that ;;-;;

14. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

“No adverbs!” “No ‘said’!” “It has to make grammatical sense!” sometimes things Need those

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Was gonna say my rewrite of the end of The Rover, but actually, my SPN fic Ube . Shit was peak inspired

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Eridirk (Eridan Ampora/Dirk Strider from Homestuck) all the way. The one otp that’s stayed thru thick n thin <3

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

A little mix of both, and tbh it depends on the fic, but I tend to write chronologically

18. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

I’ve started bullet pointing my ideas out before writing my fics, and so far, it’s been helping me be more streamlined n get my things written out faster n clearer!

19. Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

Is the need for representation in all the niche movies I keep watching a muse?

20. Describe your perfect writing conditions.

In my dark room, w music blasting from my laptop, the TV w a soft hum, I have the perfect playlist to get the mood right, curled up in my blankies, n my plushie Sweet Pea by my side

21. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

Zero, we rely on autocorrect & editing while typing and die like men

22. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).

YOU DON’T SEEM SCARED.

Del Rio shrugs. “Working as a cop, it makes you numb to some things. It’s good, it lets you react to things as you should, and not how you’d want to.”

YOU SOUND SAD ABOUT THAT.

He makes a noncommittal noise. “It is what it is.” He eats another spoonful of his ice cream, then gets a thought.

“Can you show up?”

HOW SO?

“Can you,” he tries, waving his spoon around, “Manifest?”

I DON’T KNOW. I’LL TRY.

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” Del Rio assures, and he can feel the air around him smile. The...world, he thinks, around him shifts just slightly, and there seems to be a chink in the armor for a moment before it goes away, as if someone had wiped the glass clear. He realizes that this is her, trying to show up in a physical form, step out of the phone.

He doesn’t know where to look, but then his confusion wanes when a butterfly shows up, fluttering towards him. It lands near his phone, skitters a bit, flaps its wings.

“Lucy?” he asks, transfixed on the butterfly. Its orange wings are bright under the sunlight.

I THOUGHT I’D TRY SMALL, FOR MY FIRST TRIAL.

“Well, you certainly nailed it.” He smiled warmly at the butterfly, and he had the crazy notion that it smiled back at him.

(adapted from The Policeman , the first fic I posted!)

23. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

Yeah, probably The Policeman lmao, I remember it today n I cringe a little at the very obvious refs to other fandoms I made. Despite that, it continues being one of my best hits!

24. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

Never

25. What do you look for in a beta?

I’m just thankful to have gotten a beta in general in life at all

26. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

I beta’ed once, and since English is my 2nd language, I pointed out syntax confusion, typos, n continuity errors

27. How do you feel about collaborations?

Can be done, it’s just that I am frightened. Tried doing that, it fell thru, n the new thing that came up, I still have to hold up my end of the bargain ;;-;;

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

cries omg ok so!!! Chancy_Lurking ( @lurkerviolin​ ) is one of my faves, n we’ve become friends, n their Felix+ Sense8 series is the reason for it all, and u know it’s good if it managed to make a friendship that’s last its good while, and also they’re so nice, and we vibe so well!!! thegoatz ( @daniel-bryan​ ) is also now one of my bestest friends ever, and I wuv him so much, he is such a good kid, n he’s so enthusiastic about writing, and I hope that spark never goes out!!! And adamwhatareyouevendoing ( @skatingthinandice​ ) bcus she’s doing a rewrite of The Last Kingdom where it’s all gay where it should be and vnjkdfsnvkd God, what a wonderful friend!!!

29. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I actually technically am working on a sequel to @rettaroo​ ‘s A New Kind of Touch ! Another promise I have to hold up eventually ;;;-;;;

30. Do you accept prompts?

Sure!

31. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

I try to follow canon as much as I possibly can!

32. How do you feel about smut?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

33. How do you feel about crack?

Eh, it’s alright. I don’t normally look for it, so I don’t really have a solid opinion on it

34. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

I don’t want to read it, but I have so far encountered it twice very amicably: once here in a ficlet, and another in a longer fic on AO3, and they were both very good

35. Would you ever kill off a canon character?

Probably not, I don’t like sad things!

36. Which is your favorite site to post fic?

AO3! I’m RedLlamas on it!

37. Talk about your current wips.

Lmao which one. The one I’m currently working on is an impregnation kink turned “oh no I actually do wanna have a family” feelings fic!

38. Talk about a review that made your day.

Gonna be real w u, the best comments I’ve gotten have mainly been from my friends, who either write a paragraph or two going into detail of the fic, or just send a one sentence comment that’s just “screams!” I’ve gotten very few paragraphs from other people, n they’re always so!!!

My friends are the realest :’)

39. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

The perks of being a rarepair writer is that the only people who read my fics are the ones actively looking for content!!! And they can’t complain about my work because No One Else Is Writing For It!!!!!!

40. Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

All my fics are masterpieces, so I’ll do a summary change! For don’t you just know (exactly what they’re thinking?)

Dakota finds himself in unexpected heartbreak, and the universe decides to bring him in the direction of a night club with a dancer with stars on his skin.

[takaraphoenix]

Dr who for the ask game

Thanks for playing! This is also a big, fun one! :O (I do love that the majority of these asks hit target on my own biggest obsessions x3 We checked off like all the live action shows at this point, I think, the only things left are anime/animated xDDD)

Again with a cut due to the sheer size. ^^°°°

Top 5 favourite characters: CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, The Doctor, Yasmin Kahn

Other characters you like: Rory Williams Pond, Graham O’Brien, Mickey Smith, Bill Potts, Sarah Jane Smith, Craig Owens

Least favourite characters: Rose Tyler by a landslide

Otps: not realy any actual OTPs but ships I guess I’m fond of would be Vasta/Jenny and Rory/Amy

Notps: every ship involving the Doctor, because I just honestly find it weird and uncomfortable to look at the Doctor as a romantic or even worse yet sexual being, but most of all Doctor/Rose and Doctor/River, also Jack/Ianto

Favourite friendships: I am living for the current team dynamic, 13-Yaz-Graham-Ryan are really good but my forever favorite is the Doctor and Jack, also the best team-up was the Doctor with Donna and Martha, that was perfect

Favourite family: THE FAM! 13′s team

Favourite episodes:oooh mmh, I do have multiple favorites, so let’s do this!

Blink: it is such a good episode, there was a time I just popped that one in when I had 40 minutes to waste

Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords: for me personally, this is where Doctor Who peaked. My absolute favorite storyline and episodes and team-up - my favorite Doctor with BOTH my favorite companions in an episode with my favorite Master as the enemy. Amazing. There was a time when I would regularly rewatch this, just these three

Turn Left/The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End:Suuuch a satisfying conclusion for a four series plotline, all of the companions coming together like that? It was so good

The Lodger & Closing Time: I love Craig and I love how these two episodes switch things up!

Favourite season/book/movie: Rather obviously, series 3 - the return of Jack, the series where Martha is the companion, a series with my favorite Doctor and four of my favorite episodes in it!

Favourite quotes:THE ANGELS HAVE THE PHONE BOX! xD And the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff! I got that one on a necklace even! *laughs*

Best musical moment: uuurgh the soundtrack of this show is actually so good? I listened to it on a loop for years. Series 3 and 4 being my favorites, they make you feel things, man.

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: Just this series when Jack returned. And let me elaborate to just convey how hard I fangirled at that, because it wasn’t just “oh a fave!”.

You see, Jack is... kind of why I’m here? I watched the first series with my mother back when it started airing in Germany. But they kind of... stopped dubbing it and it stopped airing in Germany and eh, I was okay with it because this show seemed weird like they just switched out the actor of the MAIN CHARACTER who does that what the fuck and I really liked Jack but he was gone now too so oh well.

However, then I read online about how Jack was in series 3. So... I went online and Doctor Who is genuinely the first TV show I ever watched in English, because I wanted to see Jack but there was no dub.

Then series 3 ended and both Jack and Martha left and I was very meh because I remembered that this is the show that constantly replaces its whole cast.

You can probably guess what happened next, but Jack was in the finale of series 4. So I went back into Doctor Who, rewatched what there has been so far all the way up to the series 4 finale - and that was when I was sold, because holy shit even with the switching of companions, they just bring them back! They just brought them all back! That was such a good pay-off.

Ironically, that was when I actually stuck around and started watching the show in real time instead of waiting for the next Jack appearance to bring me back from hibernation. Ironically because - well, that was the last we saw of anyone. (Aside from 10 in the 50 year special.)

That hard, hard cut from 10 to 11, no return of any companions...

Needless to say that when 12 came and went with no care for anything pre-11, I kind of... came to accept that this was it. Especially when they announced yet another hard cut - as in Moffat would finally be replaced and with the new era, both a new Doctor and new companions - I was so sure we’d never get to see anyone from the old crew again.

So when, after literally ten years, Jack Harkness returned and was so... so... Jack, I made the loudest, most unholy sound and the excitement of them actually acknowledging that he would be back for more and he would be there when the Doctor needs him? Tears of joy.

(but aso pls #LetMarthaMeet13 okay? Okay)

When it really disappointed you:YOU’RE MAKING A 50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL. YOU HAVE SOOO MANY GOOD COMPANIONS. BUT. BUT YOU BRING NONE OF THEM BACK. ONLY ROSE TYLER’S FACE. OF ALL OF THE FACES. OF EVERYONE I COULD HAVE SEEN AGAIN IN THAT SPECIAL, IT HAD TO BE BILLIE PIPER’S MEDIOCRE ACTING. REALLY? REALLY??

Saddest moment: When 10 regenerated

Most well done character death: Surprisingly enough, this show makes me care even about the one episode characters to the degree that I find their deaths frustrating. It’s pretty good at character deaths overall

Favourite guest star: Does Craig Owens count? Because he only had two appearances in total. And the second one was genuinely a surprise to me; I was sure that The Lodger would be a stand-alone, never to be seen again kind of deal

Favourite cast member: John Barrowman! David Tennant! Freema Agyeman! I love all three of them and seeing them in other things always makes me really happy!

Character you wish was still alive: I mean, Bill. Can you imagine if the lesbian companion had gotten to meet 13?? Death :D

One thing you hope really happens: Martha. I mean, come on. Jack is back, Jack warned the Doctor, promised to be there when needed. There’s no way Jack lost contact with Martha and Mickey, even with those two off in space fighting aliens alone. I’d love for this... very, very big plotline that is currently happening to include the Doctor’s old friends coming back once more to help.

Most shocking twist: I mean... I mean it’s gotta be this series’ Surprise Origin Story. Like, I still can’t quite comprehend that one.

When did you start watching/reading?: As mentioned above, when it first started airing in Germany

Best animal/creature: Does the TARDIS count as a creature? Because then Sexy wins!

Favourite location: THE TARDIS. I wish they’d show it more often just casually. I wanna see the companions hang out in there, I wanna see their rooms, see that indoor pool and stuff

Trope you wish they would stop using: "OH NO THE DALEKS ARE STILL ALIVE AFTER THE LAST TIME I TRIED GENOCIDE ON THEM *gasp*”... Like. The very first time they brought them “back from the dead”, it was really cool because as a newbie you never met them before but you get they are important. Then they were wiped out. And then they returned again. And okay, sure. So they were wiped out again. And miraculously survied again.

Look, I get it. Doctor Who has three recurring entities in the villain gallery who are like... obligatory - the Master, the Daleks and the Cybermen. But for the love of everything, stop trying to show it as a “surprise twist” that the bad guy is a Dalek like we all knew they’re coming they’re the cockroaches of the universe, they ALWAYS surprise, stop acting like we should be shocked that they’re back again.

Every time, the Doctor goes Pikachu meme but with sad eyes and like just... have the Doctor groan, kick a Dalek and go “not you again”, instead of “how did you POSSIBLY survive THIS? :O” because after the sixth miracuous survival of a genocide, it stops being a surprise twist... -_-

One thing this show/book/film does better than others: Clearly something, because it has me come back for more like a masochist despite me being a character-driven viewer - me, abandoning the show after the first series was very in character, because I’m attached to characters and if you routinely replace all the characters, that’s... not really my thing. Somehow, this show defies the odds there

Funniest moments: JACK FLIRTING WITH PEOPLE AND THE DOCTOR GOING “NO STOP THAT!” xDDD

Couple you would like to see: NONE. NO ROMANCE. KEEP THAT SHIT OUT OF MY DW!!! Urgh. Just give me fun found family space adventures. I swear ever since the cast announcement I have had a twitchy eyebrow waiting if they’ll push for Ryan/Yaz and so far I am sooo glad they are NOT. I just... want friendship and space adventures, no fucking romance. At all. Not with the Doctor, not between companions. No drama

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: ...to stay in character, I have to say Dominic Sherwood. Partially because I am obsessed with him, but also because I WANNA HEAR HIS BRITISH ACCENT FOR A WHOLE ASS SERIES PLEASE

I would also like to see the return of James Marsters though. Time Heist teased by showing his face and acknowledging his existence in Doctor Who (it’s not like DW has acknowledged a whole lot of Torchwood canon so far, considering the catastrophic events TW has dealt with without the Doctor...), so that had me kind of hopeful he may at least cameo for an episode...

Favourite outfit: I looove Martha’s red leather jacket and Jack’s coat

Favourite item: The chameleon device

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: *clears throat awkwardly* ...Yes?

a metro card holder thingy with the TARDIS on it,

an I pin I have on my pencil case,

a necklace with a miniature TARDIS,

a necklace with the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey quote in a swirl on it,

a necklace with a Weeping Angel pendant,

a mug with the 10th Doctor as a cat on it,

a lanyard with Police Call Box written all over and a miniature TARDIS dangling on it

a TARDIS dress,

a whoosh-sound making door opening TARDIS with size-fitting figures of the 10th Doctor, Jack, Martha, K9, Idris, 11, Rory and John Hart (it’s James Marsters’ pretty face, okay?),

a Funko Pop 10th Doctor,

another TARDIS but this one is smaller and can’t open,

a larger TARDIS that can open (and is the right size for my Doctor Whooves),

a Doctor Whooves (if that counts since he’s technically My Little Pony but also he’s the Doctor so like...),

a TARDIS-blue stuffed owl with Police Owl written on it,

the first four series on DVD,

a poster from the 50th Anniversary with the War Doctor walking away from an explosion and 10 and 11 on either side of him,

a pocket watch that is the chameleon device

What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: Mmmh I would like to be on the current team the most, I think? Generally speaking, their adventures were less intense than most others and I dig the family vibe

Most boring plotline: Boring, huh? There are always a couple stinkers, at least one in each series, but a really boring plotline was... Clara’s post-Impossible-Girl one. I LOVED her as the Impossible Girl, she was so interesting and I think that after she went into the Doctor’s timeline, the character should have been retired. Have her, I don’t know, dissolve there, since she is spread out through time. But that she stuck around was... not good, for her character? Her love drama with Danny was incredibly boring and not fun to watch (especially when she tried to kill the Doctor :D)

Most laughably bad moment: THAT FUCKING MOON EPISODE. THE FUCKING EPISODE WHERE THE FUCKING MOON TURNED INTO A FUCKING EGG AND AN ALIEN HATCHED TO THEN LAY A NEW MOON EGG IMMEDIATELY AFTER BEING BORN AND HUMANS JUST FUCKING SHRUGGED THAT SHIT OFF. Urgh. There are a lot of cringey things happening on this show, but this takes by far the crown. It was so stupid, so dumb, so ridiculous

Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Every time we learn more about the Doctor’s past *^*

Most layered character: I... I mean the Doctor. So many layers, so many lives, so many years

Most one dimensional character:Mh, this is harder... Among the not one-episode-off characters? I guess Nardole. Like, sure, good guy, but... not really all that deep that one

Scariest moment: Blink with the Weeping Angels. They lost A LOT of their scariness the more they were used - Moffat really overused them, in my opinion; they would have done better only appearing very rarely. But that first episode with them was just daaamn

Grossest moment: Cassandra?? Woman only made of skin?

Best looking male: CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS

Best looking female: MARTHA JONES

Who you’re crushing on (if any): Martha Jones

Favourite cast moment: John and David being cute behind the scenes is always amazing, but the bes moment is definitely the 500 Miles video!

Favourite transportation: The TARDIS, that’s not even a question!

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): Whenever we get to see (not destroyed) Gallifrey? It’s so gorgeous??

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you:SO MANY AFTER THAT LAST SERIES. But also things like: Where did Clara fuck off to in her flying diner? What exactly is Jack doing now that there is no Torchwood anymore? How in the world did Torchwood ever even work like how was the Doctor just never around during these gigantic problems?? WHO WAS THE DOCTOR’S FIRST WIFE? And what was the Doctor’s child like? Because the only one ever even mentioned is the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, but a granddaughter implies one more generation between. WHERE IS JENNY? Since she is also the Doctor’s daughter but also just fucked off into space and like why is she not trying to track her parent down??

Best promo: I mean, it clearly works when they show me Jack’s face so that’d be it for me :D”

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: At the series 4 finale, as above more elaborately explained

IN DEPTH FANDOM QUESTIONS

[kerishaharris]

Why the cool kids (and brands who hope to be perceived as such) are on TikTok

Being what I like to describe as a “tail-end millennial,” I’ve grown up both with and in the digital age. I still remember turning in school assignments completed on a typewriter as well as playing Oregon Trail in computer class on those box-shaped, neon green Macintosh screens (I’m still heartbroken that my wife died of dysentery, btw). I remember pleading with my mom to hang up the phone so I could log onto AOL, and how much thought I’d put into curating the perfect AIM away message. I joined Facebook my senior year of college when it was still “the Facebook” and for college kids only, and remember how big a deal it was to rearrange my MySpace top eight (funny how we were full-on coding and didn’t even realize it). But now, as a mom of three tweens, I can admit that despite digital and social media being both my personal experience and my chosen career, there are media formats out there that I know nothing about, and that my kids’ knowledge far trumps my own. None of these formats feel more foreign to me, yet obviously influential and equally important to the next generation, than TikTok.

What is TikTok and (dancing humanoid dogs aside) who uses it? TikTok is, by and large, the newer, cooler and way more sophisticated version of Vine (RIP to a real one). On its own website, TikTok says its mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” Produced and manufactured by Beijing-based video-sharing service ByteDance, TikTok reportedly boasts 800 million users worldwide, and as of 2019, has surpassed one billion installs (Yeh, 2019). It creates and curates an experience driven by its powerful algorithm, turning all of its users into a connected network of mini-influencers through the use of trending hashtags, leveraging of popular music, and push for engagement with other users through duets and viral dance challenges, making for a meaningful, organized, and dare I say it, super fun experience for users of the app (Herrman, 2019).

In exploring the app, what I found especially interesting was the way TikTok employs a vertical feed experience prompting the user to swipe up, which sets it apart from similar apps like Instagram Stories or Snapchat. This “endless scroll” approach seems, in my opinion, very conducive to creating an almost addictive experience which can lock you in for hours and hours. TikTok appears to cleverly take advantage of the way users normally engage with our vertical screens, filling up the entire real estate of our phones with engaging video content coupled with popular music that’s perhaps a little too easy to get sucked into.

Who is TikTok really for?

As not only a mom of tweens, but also having worked in communications within the education space in various capacities since 2016, TikTok’s popularity among young people comes as no surprise to me. TikTok is primarily used by youth between the ages of 16 and 24 (Brucker, 2020). It is used by about 69 percent of young people in the U.S., and these users spend at least 80 minutes per day on the app (Perez, 2020). This is the same group that, if you ask them, considers Facebook to be that “cringey” old people app that your grandpa thinks is cool, and Twitter to be that thing where journalists and politicians bicker with other journalists and politicians. It’s unsurprising to me that young people would be attracted to TikTok, a space that can feel exclusively like their own.

For me, it is that young people's exclusivity that keeps me away from TikTok. Despite being what many consider to be a subject-matter expert on social media, I am admittedly intimidated by an app I don’t completely understand or feel welcomed on. I feel more comfortable with the apps I’ve come of age with and whose functionality is more native to my own digital experience, most notably Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I worry I may look like I’m “trying too hard” by exploring TikTok, or worse, that my presence there as a 38-year-old mom will render it an uncool place to be. My own kids reacted with horror when they noticed I had TikTok installed on my work phone, it didn’t matter that my job was to manage my then-employer’s institutional presence on social media. “Mom, please don’t make Wesleyan University a TikTok” they begged (too late guys, already secured the username for posterity). It was clear that they viewed TikTok as their safe space, and that my presence, as well as my employer’s presence despite it being an elite, well-known university, was not welcome.

Are any grownups or brands doing TikTok “right?” Interestingly, several marketers have managed to get past this “eww, adults and brands” factor to effectively market to TikTok’s growing audience through clever advertising and engagement campaigns. Capitalizing on the popularity of hashtag challenges on TikTok, Universal Pictures turned to TikTok as a way to promote their 2018 film, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, through a #FindYourMagic campaign which prompted users to film themselves doing their own magic tricks. Leveraging the power of influence, Universal got a group of popular TikTok influencers to post their own DIY magic videos, which naturally prompted others to do the same. As a result of the campaign, Universal received 1.3 million likes on the influencer videos, generated 19,000 pieces of user-generated content, and gained 11,000 new followers (Brucker, 2020). Whether it prompted people to actually go see the film, I’m not really sure.

(Source: TikTok for Business) In my work as a higher education social media manager, I often came across other universities (typically, with bigger teams and even bigger budgets) doing great work on TikTok. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense why a university would want to invest in building an exceptional presence on TikTok. Each year, so much of your energy and efforts are dedicated to marketing to prospective students and their families, convincing them that your school is the school to attend. Based on user demographics alone, TikTok offers a captive audience for the exact age range higher ed marketers are working so hard to reach. I’m proud to say that my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Florida, was one of the first to leverage TikTok and is considered one of the best in the game. With nearly 97,000 followers and more than 1 million likes, it’s clear they’ve figured out what resonates with their audience. Most of their TikTok videos feature the beloved school colors (anyone who went to UF will tell you we bleed orange and blue), Al the Alligator (we obviously weren’t terribly creative on the mascot name), fave spots on campus and the like. 

(Source: University of Florida on YouTube)

Other major schools like Brigham Young University and Florida International University capitalize on TikTok’s penchant for dance trends and employ their mascots, Cosmo the Cougar and Roary the Panther respectively, to jump in on these trends.

...this same video on BYU’s Cosmo the Cougar TikTok has a staggering 28 million plays, 4.8 million likes, and more than 24,000 comments.

Is TikTok here to stay?

As a perpetual student of digital and social media, I see TikTok as the wave of the future for digital and social communications and marketing. The question for me, however, is whether or not I’m going to ride that wave as a communications professional. While digital marketing is still somewhat new on TikTok, my constant fear is that the moment brands step in and try to inject themselves onto a platform, mimicking and profiting off of the way it is organically used, its core users become disinterested, abandon the platform, and look for the next big thing they can call their own. If I’m lucky, perhaps I’ll get the next big idea and launch that platform myself.

Funny but true story. As I was putting the finishing touches on this blog post, my 12-year-old daughter came up behind me chanting the following.

Her: Racism? Stop it. Bullying? Stop it. Homophobia? Stop it.

Me: Is that from a TikTok?

Her: Yeah.

Me: Figures.

SOURCES:

Brucker, N. (2020, January 6) Who is on TikTok and how can brands reach them? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/01/06/who-is-on-tiktok-and-how-can-brands-reach-them/#1a2fe28343be. 

Herrman, J. (2019, March 10) How TikTok is rewriting the world. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html.

Perez, S. (2020, June 4) Kids now spend nearly as much time watching TikTok as YouTube in the US, UK and Spain. Tech Crunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/04/kids-now-spend-nearly-as-much-time-watching-tiktok-as-youtube-in-u-s-u-k-and-spain/.

Yeh, O. (2019, February 26). TikTok surpasses one billion installs on the App Store and Google Play. Sensor Tower. Retrieved from https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-one-billion.  

[carlisle980]

Just Dance

It’s still Bangtan Day here in the US, and I did something I never imagined I’d do. I wrote Bangtan fic. I haven’t posted it anywhere, because ff.net is where the bulk of my work is but there’s no Bangtan archive there, and while I do all my reading on AO3, I haven’t posted there in years. I can, if the consensus is that it’s a good idea.

Anyway ... here it is. Apologies to the usual crowd. Well, more like, sorry ... not sorry. I love all my old faves. And BTS too.

+++++++

Hey, dance with me dance with me Any kind of bounce is fine, dance with me Where are you from, why are you dancing A natural conversation, say something —J-Hope, “Trivia: Just Dance”

She stands in the center of the cold grey floor feeling small and overwhelmed and old. The studio looks the same as it did twenty years ago, when she spent eight hours a week here. In this very space. Learning. Her horizons expanding. Experiencing a world that made her heart pound with expectation. The sky seemed the limit then. 

It smells the same. That combination of sweat and disinfectant with a hint of central air conditioning that she’ll forever associate with this room, with this craft. She couldn’t believe her luck when the question of using the space was as easily answered as it had been half her life ago. Now, as then, all she had to do was ask the director. Is there a chance I might use the studio sometime, when there are no classes and the company doesn’t need it?

It was easy to come by, but that doesn’t mean she can have the space indeterminately, she reminds herself. There’s no grand objective to her being here; she just wants to see if there’s still the same pull. The fascination, the exhilaration. Why, precisely, is a question she cannot answer. 

She’s thinking too much, and that won’t do. She plugs her phone into the studio’s sound system and turns on a playlist she works out to at home. It’s high-energy, if eclectic. Avicii is on there. OneRepublic, Maroon 5. “Rhythm Nation” by Janet Jackson and a bunch of vintage Art of Noise. Those are there because they were part of her teacher’s playlist back in the day. Her German-born teacher, a former student of Gus Giordano; a geologist-turned-dancer whom she idolized to the extreme. Sigh. Those were the days. 

Knowing it isn’t wise to just start dancing cold, she tries to remember how they used to warm up in class. What a dumb thing not to recall, given that she was advanced by the time she stopped. School loans and weddings don’t pay for themselves, after all, and once she had her degree she could no longer justify the indulgence. Putting off adulthood to linger at the college and take dance classes, to no particular end. So she’d got herself a big girl job out in the real world. One with a salary and health insurance and, in time, a corner office with windows and a door they let her shut so she could concentrate. Pretty sweet gig for a twenty-year-old. Sweet enough that she and her husband had bought their first home —in the overpriced Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area of the early 2000’s, no less�� when she was 24. Sweet enough that by the time she left to have their first child, she was making enough that she could’ve bought a Mercedes. If, you know, that had been her priority over becoming a mother. 

In the absence of any grand recollection, she sidles up to the barre and starts with the basics. Plié, relevé, plié with a push through to relevé. Relevé down into plié. Coupé, frappé, dégagé, rond de jambe. She puts a leg up on the barre and leans sideways towards it: first one, then the other. Wiggles her shoulders a little, rolls out her lats on the foam roller. Back flexibility is a tough thing but she’s working hard. It’s better than it’s ever been, and compared to other people that’s not saying much, but for her it’s the hallmark of progress. 

That’s warm enough, right? You’re really not supposed to stretch before dancing. Cold muscle is shorter and more likely to tear, and all that. The music continues to play and she progresses to chaîné turns. This is where she begins to get frustrated. It’s the same story as it was all those years ago: she can turn to her left well enough (though spotting still doesn’t work the way it should, as evidenced by the room spinning when she stops), but turning to the right is an exercise in futility. She under-rotates and falls out of the turn and no matter how slow she goes, it doesn’t improve. It’s the same with fouettés. Pirouettes in the center go a little better, but she only lands a double once or twice out of several dozen attempts. She practices those turns from modern class that her teacher never had a name for and always referred to by sound effects, like the sound you’d make if you were suddenly punched in the stomach because that’s the mechanism: a core contraction into a spin, propelled by gravity. There was a lot of that, dancing under Lena. Sounds and gestures filling in where words failed. Those turns are still her favorite; they look pretty without the dancer having to do much besides knowing when to work with gravity and when to resist it. That’s why modern was always her preferred style: it doesn’t take a perfect body to finesse the principles of contract and release, of fall and recover. 

Little by little she begins to pull things from memory: a crazy penché-drop-spin from advanced modern class that was easy when she was nineteen and is significantly less so now; bits of the Ailey-inspired choreography they learned one semester. She is struck out of the blue by the same desire that characterized her girlhood. Whenever she would encounter a large swath of open floor, her first instinct was always to leap across it. But she knows that one doesn’t simply grand jeté indiscriminately when one has not done so for the better part of two decades. Despite Kathryn Morgan’s advice to just sling the front leg out there and go for it, she holds back. She’s already come back from a groin tear once; never again, thank you very much!

The music decides for her what will happen next when it begins playing “Black Swan.” She hauls herself to the center of the floor in what she imagines is a comedic fashion and gets herself into position. 

From there it just flows. She feels it, the struggle of which Martha Graham spoke; the one that inspired the song. It’s all too real for her. 

A dancer dies twice; once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful. 

She’s danced this piece a thousand times in the privacy of her bedroom, and she nails every count, trying to make it expansive, to fill the vastness of the studio. 

Killing me now, killing me now. She has felt that. The despair, the slow death of a precious part of her soul when she’d given up her dream in favor of security. She doesn’t speak Korean —not yet, anyhow— but she’s taken every syllable to heart, knows what each one means. 

Sinking slowly like in a trance nah, nah, nah Struggle but it's all ocean floor nah, nah Every moment becomes eternity yeah, yeah, yeah Film it now, film it now Do you hear me, yeah

She’s breathing hard by the end. Tears are streaming down her face and she hadn’t even been aware she was crying. Oh, my God, what was that? That was … like a religious experience. Why did I ever give this up? Why did I let go of me?

It’s as she’s wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, taking gulps from her water bottle like she’s spent the last year in the desert, that she becomes aware she is not alone. 

Her head snaps around sharply when someone clears their throat and she gasps. There, seated on the bench above the cubbies where students stash their bags, is none other than the Jung Hoseok. He is barefoot, sitting with his legs criss crossed, in an orange t-shirt and blue shorts, pushing a hand through his dark hair like she’s seen him do countless times on YouTube. 

Surely, she’s dreaming. Because she has dreamt of situations like this, both literally and metaphorically. Many times. But in dreams, be they the daytime variety or at night, she never sees him blink, or hears him breathing. But nothing about this makes sense. What is Jung Hoseok of BTS, arguably the world’s busiest man, who cannot walk to get coffee in Seoul without being mobbed by stampeding multitudes, doing here? In the States, on the campus of a community college, and, by all appearances, alone?

Even if he is real, it isn’t as if she can ask him. She knows his English is getting better and better as time goes by and BTS’ influence in the West continues to balloon. But where he can speak a bit of her language, she only knows random words in his. 

Still. They’re staring at one another now, and she feels incredibly rude. He can’t be a dream, because he’s infinitely more beautiful in real life than even the best photographs have made him out to be. All angular, with impossibly long lashes, and yes, there’s that adorable mole just above his top lip. 

“You’re very good,” he says suddenly, breaking the silence, and isn’t that just characteristic of him? “Dance was … wow.” His accent is heavy but his meaning is clear. And oh, that smile. He really is the sunshine incarnate. 

She wants to brush off the compliment, to explain to him that maybe she was good, once upon a time, but now she’s just somebody’s mom. But she doubts it would be easy for him to understand. She wrinkles her nose, shakes her head almost imperceptibly. “I …” she stammers. She’s talking to Jung Freaking Hoseok —WHAT?! “First time really dancing in many years.”

He smiles again. “Really good,” he repeats, nodding his head for emphasis. “Serious.”

She’s not sure whether he’s saying that she looked serious while dancing, or that he’s serious about her doing well, but either way. If anyone knows the inner workings of the “Black Swan” choreography, the sentiment behind it, it is this man. 

“Thank you,” she says softly, her cheeks hot. “I love Black Swan.”

There’s so much she wants to ask him. Why are you here? Are you traveling alone? Are there security guards outside the door ready to handcuff me to a lamppost? Because I asked the program director if I could use the studio and she said yes! But the language barrier would make it impossible, and anyway, isn’t there some saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth? She hasn’t taught that one to her kids, but she’s pretty sure her grandmother said it to her at some point. 

He smiles once again in response to what she said about “Black Swan” and makes a short humming sound in the back of his throat. “I’m Hoseok,” he says in perfect English. “Hobi.”

She almost laughs aloud. As if there was any possibility she wouldn’t know who he was. But then, hasn’t that been one of the things she’s loved best about him from the start: his humility. 

So she introduces herself, and he bows from his seat and tries out her name. It’s adorable. And now she knows the answer to one of those questions she just figured she’d ponder for eternity: her name falling from his lips sounds like angels singing. 

“Dance with me?” he asks as he rises from his seat and holds out his hand to her. 

If this is a dream, please don’t wake me up. 

‘You don’t understand,’ she almost says. ‘You’re … you, and I’m old. I don’t pop and lock, unless you wanna talk about my hip joints when I try grand battement. I don’t b-boy. Modern’s all I’ve got.’ But how many times has she said it: My dream is to dance with Hobi for a day. What kind of absolute idiot would she be to pass up an opportunity like this?

So she says, “I would love to.” And means it more than she’s meant anything since she said ‘I do,’ as a twenty-year-old kid. Nineteen years, two houses, three children, countless ups and downs later, and look how that turned out. Sometimes good things just happen. 

She was already warm, but since he isn’t, she stretches when he does, and now it’s safe to stretch hip flexors and hamstrings and they definitely need it. He watches her a little. She watches him a lot. Sometimes he copies what she’s doing, as if there’s anything she could possibly know that he doesn’t. He does these crazy boneless things, dropping to his knees and seemingly floating back up to stand, and she just shakes her head. It looks even more effortless —and even more impossible— in person. 

She whips out the chaîné turns again. Her good side, of course. She can fake spotting well enough to make it from one corner to the opposite pretty quickly. 

“Oh!” he exclaims. “Like Jimin!”

She giggles. “I wish!” she says, and watches as his expression turns to a question mark. 

“Wish?” he asks. 

How to explain? “My style?” It comes out as a question because she wants to be sure he can follow. 

He nods, so she continues. 

“My style, like Jimin’s style. But Jimin … WOW. Me? Just okay.” She makes the hand gesture that means ‘so-so,’ because some things are universal, right?

He laughs, shaking his head. “Aish! No, no, no. Not ‘just okay.’ Very strong. Very …” He thinks for a moment, and there’s another question answered. Pensive Hobi is breathtaking. “Very … grace?”

She is floored. “Graceful?” she asks. He nods emphatically. “Me?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Arms.” He gesticulates wildly with his own. Which, she knows, he would do even in the absence of a language barrier. “Pretty.”

How can she tell him she’s not built like a dancer, that that knowledge has always made her feel heavy and ungainly? That she’s always wanted to be tall and delicate, like him. “My back.” She gestures behind herself. “My spine?” BTS have a song called “Spine Breaker,” even if they call it something else, so maybe it’s a word he knows. 

He nods again, echoing, “Spine.”

She reaches into her bag for a pen and paper and draws a likeness of her spine, double curves and all. “Not straight,” she explains, handing the sketch to him. “Makes dancing hard.” It affects everything. I can’t turn properly; I have no extension. My hips are a mess. Every time I lift my leg it clicks. 

“Hurts?” His eyes are soft, his expression sympathetic. 

“Yeah,” she answers. “Yeah, sometimes. But dance makes it better.” Ironic, right?

“Keep going,” he says with finality. Insistent. Like he’s solved every mystery of her life. 

Perhaps he has. He’s only been witness to a half hour out of her entire existence, but in that short time he’s seen a side of her that few others have. He’s watched her dancing, smiling, throwing herself full-force into something she loves. Maybe she never got to perform. Maybe she gave up on training to become a dance teacher. But if dancing makes her feel this level of satisfaction, how can she afford not to give it a prominent place in her life?

She studies him for a long moment. Does she dare ask anything of him? She answers that question with another: will she ever have an opportunity like this one again?

“Hobi?” she ventures timidly. He nods. “Teach me?”

“Yeah!” He says it like it’s a forgone conclusion. 

“DNA?” She’s never been able to work that one out on her own. 

He grins in answer. 

They spend the next hour speaking the universal language of dancer and choreographer. “Pah! Pah! Pah!” “Five, six, seven, eight!” She gets on the wrong foot a time or two, turns and collides with him once, all of it to gales of laughter from the pair of them. He corrects her body position and he’s hands-on but ever the consummate gentleman, and by the time they stop she knows the entire choreography well enough that she can perfect the rest at home. 

All too soon it’s over. “I have to go,” she explains sadly, pointing to the schedule on the director’s office door. It’s printed in English, but he gets the gist. There’s a class coming in soon; her time is up.

They sling their dance bags over their shoulders at the same time and it results in another shared laugh. 

“Hobi,” she says at the door, “thank you.” There’s so much more she wants to tell him. As long as I live, I’ll never forget this. You’re my favorite dancer. You’re a legend. 

“Don’t stop,” he tells her in a tone of voice that brooks no argument, squeezing her hands in both of his own. “Always dance, friend.”

When she performs “DNA” with the company the following semester, she dedicates it to him. 

[ekkorn]

hi there, just saw in the tags that you didn‘t like endgame. would you like to expand on that? i am curious to know other people‘s perspective. personally, i liked it. it has flaws, yes, but to me it was enjoyable. if you don‘t feel like answering, that is fine :) have a great day!

oh wow. you really wanna know? okay, but on your own head be it. :o

i’m just joking, i’ll go easy, or at least give you the digest (a vicious lie) version. if you want to see the full extent of my derision and vitriol, you can go to @lowkeysebastianstan, which is the blog where i’ve tried to limit this too. but to give you the not at all short and not so sweet of it, here goes. (endgame spoilers obviously).

the first thing that really set me off was the ending, more precisely, what steve did. it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and hit me closer to home than most of my followers here since bucky and steve are my fave characters, and the only ship i really have. now, i never thought stucky would become canon, not even a little, i didn’t even hope for it. sure, the representation would’ve been awesome, but there’s no way marvel could’ve done it justice, so it was just as well it was never gonna happen. what i hadn’t prepared for was to what extreme extent they were terrified of the ship and the effect it would have if they were to let it be even a hint that could be interpreted as some emotional connection between them, for 3 films they’re built bucky up as the most important character in steve’s life, he’s risked his own life to save him, he basically eradicated hydra during wwii fueled by grief for him, he was prepared to die for him in tws, he fought his friends and gave up everything for him in cacw, and then he just? leaves? to be with a woman who died of old age and natural causes after a long fulfilling life with another man and family of her own. who specifically told him to fucking move on in tws? yeah, sure. and do not get me wrong, i adore sam wilson, after bucky, and the real steve rogers, he is by far my fave in the cap verse (saving a few spots for my bp and cm peeps in the mcu, but we’ll get to them), and he is the superior choice to pick up the mantle, no doubt about it. (okay, a little doubt, they teased sebastian with that shield for 8 years, they based bucky on the brubaker storyline where he becomes cap, and so i do feel a little torn bc no matter how happy he must be for his friend, and him and mackie are good friends, he must be a little disappointed? but who knows, maybe they’ll do something with that in the series, which would be stupid af bc that would negate the positive leap in representation, and mackie deserves it too, so who the fuck knows, i’ll probably not be around to keep track anyways, and can you tell im rambling), but for steve’s last words to be to sam? while bucky stands and watch in the background? like??? i could go on in (more excruciating) detail, but that was why i linked the blog, there might be a point or two about this on there.

but that was just the start. all through the movie i felt disconnected and uneasy, they made some really weird choices, but i don’t think it was until nat took the plunge that i knew i had an absolute dud on my hands. 

the mcu has done a lot of things right, but their treatment of women is NOT one of them. and oh boy did they go out with a bang. first is the obvious implication, he got to live bc he had “more to live for”, and she didn’t have a family, and ye gods we know she can’t have kids, so why should she live? 

(see, if the bw movie wasn’t in the books, i’d completely get it, if it was to give scarjo her life back, and she wanted nat to be good and dead, sure. actually, when i first watched it, that’s what i thought tbh, that the bw movie was cancelled, so. but it’s not, so she will return. and since that the case it’s just fucked up that they yeeted her off the roster. and sure, some of the bw movie was always gonna be set in the past, but tbh? i don’t see much point in prequels for dead characters, you know that whatever happens won’t affect the outcome for the character at all, and i usually find them completely void of meaning. that might just be me though). and of course the fact that she died the same way gamora went didn’t help. (gamora’s death was maybe the single worst thing in aiw, she was fridged, not for the advancement of one man, but for two (thanos and quill) and it.just.shouldn’t.have.worked.thanos.cannot.love! again, mcu and women? not a good match.) 

then of course, it comes back to steve and how much he doesn’t give a crap about the people close to him in the present, we never see him care or grieve for anyone but peggy, and he could barely spare two tears for nat before it was all business again. and the rest of the team? i think clint cared a little, and banner threw a chair, but that was it. no memorial, not burial, no nothing, it was like she never existed, and she died saving the world just as much as tony, he couldn’t have done jack shit without the soul stone. 

and speaking of women, shuri and okoye? before the trailer dropped i was sure shuri was in this, that we’d get to see her lead in her brother’s stead. i actually did a short lament on this already, here.

carol was terribly underused, after all the oompf about her being there she was barely a blip. but the haircut was fantastic, and the best part of the movie was when she returned at the end.

then there’s nebula and gamora (again). at first i was actually quite pleased that they sort of found a loophole to bring gamora back, but then i thought about it (yes, sometimes i get seduced by the flashy colours too) and yeah. sure. a gamora is there, but she’s void of all the things that makes her interesting and all her development is just gone, everything “our” gamora achieved and experienced is gone, three films worth of arc is worthless. so what then is the point of getting “her” back? i don’t care about this person, i don’t know her. are we gonna see quill just harass her the next film, bc you know, she’s been with him, so why shouldn’t he expect her to just do that now? tbh i wouldn’t be surprised, but now that gunn is back maybe he can save it? not that i’ll be around to keep track though.

then nebula. nvm that time paradox, that’s a whole other fuckfest i’ll get back to, but we had to get to see her get killed too, didn’t we. by her sister, the only person in the world she loves. fucking fantastic, i cannot control my enthusiasm. 

and no, cool as it was, the a-force surrounding parker is not enough to bring this home. it was a cool sight though. (see? i can see the good.)

then of course it’s peggy. a woman he knew for a few months back during the war. (sure they knew each other longer, but i’d say, even if you’re very generous, they can’t have spent more than a couple of months in each other’s company, and they kissed once). who they stripped of all character development and autonomy so that steve could go back and get his “damce”. everything she achieved, every good thing that happened to her, her husband, her family, her advancement in shield, all gone. bc steve must have his happy ending, no matter that she told him to move the fuck on in tws, who cares. 

and then there’s sharon. yeah, they forgot about her, didn’t they. i mean, i was never really on board with that, the whole aunt/niece thing was a bit too weird for me, and this was way before i shipped stucky, but that doesn’t matter. bc they did that, they had them kiss within days after peggy’s death (oooh, look how he cared for peggy), making it clear that this was the beginning of something. (also marvel and several of the actors treated emily like crap, oh yeah, i remember, doesn’t help either.) 

(gods i said this would be short, didn’t i? imagine if i could’ve spent all the words i’ve spent ranting about endgame on my latest chapter? good grief.)

then there’s their so called lgbt representation. 30 seconds of a character that had a total of 60 sconds of screentime in tws lamenting his dead lover? well. i. they wanted credit for that. i just.

then there’s thor. they negated every ounce of development he had in ragnarok, this also goes for aiw, wasn’t happy about that, and made him completely ooc, he just spends his time drinking ab\nd playing fortnite of all things? bold of them to assume that will still be a thing in 5 years, but also? thor? THOR? neglecting his people? his friends? the world? thor? then they of course made him fat, haha, so they could add fat-shaming to the list while they make light and fun of his drinking problems, his grief and his ptsd. awesome. the funniest. 

then there’s clint. that they just randomly made a killer? just, like a straight up murderer? okay then. and still nat deserved to die. excellent.

then there’s banner. okay, i don’t think they fucked him up as bad as the others, but it’s still strange he would risk his intelligence to become hulk full time, but you do you.  

rocket and rhodey were the best things about this damn disaster, just putting it out there.

then there’s tony. i mean, we knew he was the main protagonist, and im not objecting that, (even if i think it’s really strange he’d be born in 1970) but idk. that was strange’s plan? all that for that? and pepper just went, eh what the hell, just die, i can raise this kid you wanted. (i know, i know, she’s her mom, she cares), but it was just so flat. and idk. i mean, rdj wanted his life back, just as evans, but i’d want to see that switched, that tony get to retire and steve sacrifice himself to save the world. tony could still be the deciding factor in strange’s plan even if steve delivered the coup de grace. at least he cared enough to show an emotion™when peter came back, which was more than steve bothered with. jfc they fucked up steve.

then there’s the time travel. okay, a few things about the 2012 thing. they put him in the elevator, and then, instead of having him just kick the crap out of the agents, they reference hydra!cap? the biggest shitstorm in the comics in the last two decades? like what the actual fuck? then of course there’s the americas ass thing, which, again, that’s steve, cares about his ass but not his friends! (but at least 2012 steve cares about bucky, maybe he’ll save him a couple of years early, back to the future steve will just live out his life knowing bucky is getting tortured somewhere in siberia, good times.) oh! and i guess they have their loophole to get loki back too, great, they’ll probably just forget that he’s not in the main timeline, bc who cares. 

and the fun just keeps coming with the time travel. oh they tried with some crap explanation that no one can make sense of, but here’s the kicker. they can’t either, they don’t even want to try, they don’t even agree with each other. 

+ +

how did they know to meet up in wakanda or wherever, the dustees? did strange send a memo? not just the ppl in the soul realm or wherever they were, but all the others too, like valkyrie and hope. time and place just magically popped into their heads? and what happened when they all came back? or some came back, bc obviously a shit ton of ppl died at the dusting, like the pilot of a 747 gone? plane goes down and such, ppl really dead. and where do they reappear? where they disappeared? aka those passengers that got dusted comes back mid flight? fun! and what about the ones that moved on in their absence? what happens to the ones that come back when their wives and husbands are remarried, when there’s no place for them in their old lives. did all of peter’s classmates get dusted, or did the rest of the class graduate without him, i must assume that all of those in s:ffh did, otherwise some would be in college by now, yeah?

and that’s another reason their watertight time travel is leaky af, there’s no way to get the logistics to work. the only option as such would have been to go back to 2018 and fix it, to reset time, bc otherwise there are just too many holes, it’s just not possible. but they can’t do that bc then they’ll undo all the things that happen in the future that the characters don’t want to lose, like tony’s kid. 

oh, i know, it’s a superhero movie, but im strange like that, i expect a modicum of internal logic in all my movies, the bitch that i am. 

okay, im gonna leave it there, ive run out of steam, and i want to gif a set. there’s a few things more, but i think you’ve gotten the gist, that i’m not a fan of this movie and a short (lol, so sorry, nothing is ever digest with me, i should’ve warned you) list of reasons why. honestly this is the first time i’ve really don’t a more general account, ive pretty much stuck to steve and that crapshute, there’s a lot of other blogs that concentrate on the other characters, i’d list a few, but i don’t have it in me rn, pop me a msg if you’re interested, also if you’re interested in some real meta, this rambling rant isn’t something that people should be exposed to honestly. 

avengers: endgame was a shit movie and no amount of “he’s worthy” and “avengers assemble” is going to fix that, BUT if you enjoyed it, i don’t think less of you, obviously everyone is different, and i envy the hell out of you, i sorely wish i could’ve liked it too. the russos directed what is by far the best movie in the mcu imo, tws, and they had us all fooled, even if we probably should’ve seen it coming after iron man 4: civil war.

hope you’re having a spectacular day, sorry you had to read this if you did, and and thank you for making mine better, i really had a rant in me needing out. (you’d think i’d run out of hate for this by now, but nah.)

thank you for the ask :) 

[jeongfm-blog]

               hello  everyone  !  my  name’s 𝒍𝒖𝒎𝒂 (  pronouns  they  /  them  )  and  i’m  super  excited  to  be  here  !   it’s  been  a  while  since  my  last  city  rp ,  but  since  it’s  one  of  my  fave  kinds  of  rp ,  i  figured  i  would  give  it  a  whirl  once  again  !   some  boring  facts  about  myself  is  that  i’m  a  sucker  for  golden  hour  despite  not  even  having  an  instagram ,  i  spend  too  much  time  watching  youtube  videos  (  i  recently  got  back  into  watching  my  girl  jenn  im  and  now  i  remember  why  i’m  so  obsessed  with  her  ) ,  and  i  have  books  on  my  shelf  that  i  got  for  christmas  and  haven’t  read  a  single  one  !  i’m  super  excited  to  introduce  you  guys  to  my  pride  and  joy  𝒔𝒐𝒇𝒊𝒂  𝒋𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒈  as  well  as  to  plot  and  interact  with  everyone  !

full name : sofia jeong.

nickname(s): sof and posy by her dad only !

birthday : february 9th, 1997.

zodiac : aquarius.

moral alignment : neutral good.

gender : cisfemale.

pronouns: she/her/hers.

sexual orientation : bisexual.

romantic orientation : biromantic.

height : 5′6″ ( five foot, six inches ).

hometown : ascot, brisbane, australia.

nationality : australian.

ethnicity : korean.

language(s) spoken : english, korean, and conversational portuguese.

occupation : social media influencer.

aesthetics : bright computer screens at two am, a pristine instagram theme, morning dew, perfect lighting, clear lip gloss, glass skin, selfies in small circular mirrors, freshly dyed rose gold hair, oversized tees and denim shorts, soft skin on white sheets, foreign languages, bright early mornings, staring in awe into someone’s eyes, honeyed laughter, music playing in the background, late night drives, early morning hikes, iced coffee on cold mornings, vanilla scented body lotion, the sound of pencil on paper, highlighter gleaming in the sunlight, perfectly styled hair, and soft pink on crisp white shirts.

i. background.

taemin jeong was a freshman at the university of queensland, studying computer science, when he met his future girlfriend grace kim, who was studying architecture. he was awkward and bumbling while she was sociable and graceful ( no pun intended ), but somehow the couple was a perfect match from the moment they met in freshman algebra. they made their friends sick with their love and moved through the challenges of college with one another. 

the summer before their senior year, they moved into their own off-campus apartment. this same summer, grace discovered that she was pregnant with their first and only child, who the couple later named sofia. when the couple graduated, sofia was three months old and featured in a lot of their graduation photos. 

after their graduation, though, things for the couple began to fall apart. while taemin wanted to marry grace and have a family, grace was feeling trapped as she wasn’t expecting to have a child so soon. so, one day when taemin took sofia to visit his parents, grace packed her things and one picture of their daughter before leaving a note for taemin.

to put it lightly, taemin was heartbroken upon discovery that grace was gone, but he couldn’t sulk for long as he had a wide eyed seven month old to care for. so from that point on, taemin focused on his career and sofia. he thankfully had the help of his parents while he worked long hours to save money, but after two years they moved into their forever home.

growing up, sofia’s life was pretty normal, despite the fact that her mom wasn’t around. there were times where things were tight in the one parent household, but for the most part sofia has no complaints about her childhood. much like a lot of people, sofia was a kid who liked filming weird videos with her friends and doing absolutely nothing with them other than leaving them on the computer for her dad to find.

the very first beauty youtuber that sofia ever watched ( like a lot of people ) was michelle phan ! she absolutely fell in love with michelle and began wanting to do her own makeup videos as well. she made a really crappy channel when she was like ... twelve and let’s just say that the video she made was horrific ! like most youtubers, her channel’s name was like like sofiaposybeauty60 or something ugly like that.

a few years later, when she was about fifteen, sofia tried her hand at youtube once again. this time she made a twitter and instagram to correspond with it, hoping that she could build something of a platform. her videos were of terrible quality and her makeup was probably really bad, but she did it anyways. she’d post her makeup looks on instagram and when that grew, so did her channel.

skipping along because i talk too damn much, now at twenty two, sofia has five million subscribers on youtube and 1.6 million followers on her instagram. if i were to compare her to an actual youtuber, i’d say she’s a mix between jenn im and sophia chang. she’s very much into staying in her own lane and her videos are pretty ~aesthetic and chill. she has her own online clothing store as well called ( something, idk yet ).

anyways, sofia made the move to barcelona from brisbane about a year and a half ago because she wanted a change of scenery. she came to barcelona previously on a trip with some girlfriends and after a while of planning, she made the move ! she currently lives in a cozy little apartment with her eight month old goldendoodle named rockie !

ii. appearance.

sofia’s appearance is pretty much canon to rosé’s ! her hair is currently strawberry blonde and is always a variety of such. she likes to change her hair color every so often, but this is the one that’s been around for a while. sofia hasn’t had dark hair since she was about thirteen years old, which is when she first dyed her hair from black to brown. since then, she slowly began to lighten it to where it is now.

when it comes to her sense of style, it’s very much inspired by model off duty. it includes a lot of denim, a lot of black, ankle boots, and sneakers. she’s a big fan of tote bags and is usually always seen with one ( since she’s always carrying around a camera, her laptop, and other little things ). it’s no surprise that she has a container in her closet full of them, but she of course, has her more luxury ones in her collection as well.

for the most part though, when she’s just lounging around her apartment, sofia is super casual. it’s fuzzy socks. it’s oversized tees that swallow her physique. there’s no makeup on her face. she has on her glasses and her hair is piled onto her head in the messiest of messy buns. she’s a huge fan of jewelry though and is hardly ever seen without rings on her fingers and her favorite necklace around her neck.

iii. personality.

vociferous, precisian, and beguiling : when it comes to her positive traits, most of it entails from her career on social media. prior to being on youtube, sofia was more on the quiet side and kept to herself, but since then especially with doing vlogs, she’s more comfortable being the one to start a conversation. she’s a big perfectionist, also stemming from her career, but it’s trickled into behind the camera as well. she doesn’t like to half ass anything, no matter what it may be. and finally, sofia is as charming as ever. she can charm the pants off of anything with a little eye glimmer and a hair flip, she’s got them in the bag.

advantageous, negligible, and censorious : as for her negative traits, sofia is advantageous in regard that she knows how to work people into believing that she’s the best choice for them. it’s how she’s gotten most of her sponsorships -- sometimes her manager jokes with her that she doesn’t really need him. sofia is super petty as well, which is actually bad -- she’s the girl who doesn’t let ignorant comments slip on her instagram or twitter, but sometimes all it does is get her into trouble with her public relations team. finally, sofia can be critical of people at times, even if she doesn’t mean it in a malicious way. maybe it stems from being analyzed constantly herself, but she can sometimes immediately regret it after it’s been said unless it’s someone that she doesn’t get along with.

iv. wanted plots.

i’ll have a wanted connections page up every soon with a couple of detailed plots that i’d like to have, but i’m always down for ( but not limited to ) enemies with benefits, ex friends, best friends, flirtationship, failed relationship, best friends, squad, almost relationship, good/bad influence, family friends, someone who appears on her channel, slow burn ( !!! ), workout buddies, neighbors, confidants, and above all else, chemistry !  

[lovedsammy]

All right, ya’ll, I saw Endgame! Major spoilers will be under the cut so if you’re on mobile and it doesn’t work, SCROLL, SCROLL, SCROLL. Also, blacklist ‘a4 spoilers’ and ‘endgame spoilers’! 

Overall? I loved it. There are a few things that REALLY bothered me/disappointed me, which I’ll talk about. As a star rating, I’d say 9/10. 

First for the things that bothered me so I can get that out of the way... 

Complaints: 

- Thor & Loki: It’s no surprise to some of you that Loki is my favorite character (with Tony in 2nd place), and I adore the Thor & Loki bond. So I wasn’t happy at ALL that Loki remained dead, nor the fact that the Loki and Thor bond was completely erased/forgotten. Thor didn’t mention him ONCE, and instead focused only on the bond with his mother, which was, admittedly, beautiful. But the fact that he didn’t think of his deceased brother at all really felt like a disservice. I think it was supposed to be inferred that that what’s Thor’s so depressed about during the film, but it wasn’t TALKED about and instead was played for laughs. Thor’s PAIN was made to be humorous because he let himself go and had a beer belly. And yeah, I can see how at first that can be slightly funny, but it’s really not, if you think about it. Thor was so consumed by depression that all he did was drink himself almost to death. He was a wreck during the whole film and was made to look like a drunken idiot, except for the ending. Making him gain weight just to make him ‘funny’ also rubbed me the wrong way. Being ‘fat’ is nothing to be ashamed of, or funny. Thor’s characterization this movie was a big minus for me, which was disappointing. Him leaving at the end with the GotG made some sense, though, and I’m hoping this will lead him on a path to maybe trying to find Loki, in the past or otherwise. Quill trying to find past!Gamora... maybe it was a hint. 

- Going back to Loki, he showed up in flashbacks from Avengers 2012 which really made my heart swell. Him rolling his eyes at the Avengers, waving ‘bye bye’ to the Hulk sarcastically when he had to take the stairs, taking the opportunity to snatch the Tesseract, not once but twice, and disappearing to God knows where? LOVED IT. It was so nice to see him again, no matter in what capacity. Though I still wish he’d come back for real, ESPECIALLY in that battle at the end. It wouldn’t have taken much more screen time, honestly. They could’ve just shown him arriving with the others at the return, have him fight side by side with Thor, and address Thanos. Maybe hint at some possible control, imprisonment, torture from Thanos? It could’ve paved way for the Loki series. Although, I guess this 2012!Loki disappearing with the Tesseract can achieve that, too, but it would erase all of the development Loki has achieved, and I loved the development. I loved his path to redemption. If they do this, I want a redeemed!Loki, who has a place among the Avengers, not a villain again. 

- Gamora not coming back. I mean, I loved seeing her as her past self, but again... she died by being killed by her abusive father. It leaves a bad taste. 

All right, on to everything else! 

Things that I loved: 

- Nebula and Tony’s friendship! I loved their dynamic a lot. Nebula taking care of Tony, and sitting him upright? My heart. <333

- Tony’s reunion with Steve. Omg their dynamic was FANTASTIC this movie. No leftover resentment from Civil War. It really made me love their friendship that much more. 

- Tony’s reunion with Pepper!

- “I lost the kid. I lost the kid.” The first part I got choked up, of many. 

- omg Scott coming home to see 5 years have passed and his daughter is a teen? omg I couldn’t even handle that. I loved older Cassie, though! 

- THOR GETTING TO KILL THANOS FOR REAL. OMG I CHEERED. It didn’t help his vendetta, though, and once the revenge was complete, he had nothing left, which makes sense. His hate for Thanos was what drove him in Infinity War. He fell into a huge depression once that was taken from him. And why I wish, again, that this hadn’t been used for laughs!

- TONY AND HIS DAUGHTER!!! omg dad!tony was the CUTEST AND SO WAS MORGAN. Tony’s my 2nd fave character in the mcu, so seeing him happy, living life with his wife and daughter? perfection. The “shit” scene was both hilarious and sweet. “Go to bed or I’ll sell or all your toys” and Morgan laughing because she knows he won’t. <3333333333 

- “I love you 3000″

- Clint and his family!

- Natasha saying that her family is the Avengers. 

- the time travel was well utilized, even if it makes my head spin a little. XD 

- LOKI LOKI LOKI 

- “that is america’s ass” lmao

- steve saying ‘hail hydra’ and it WORKING

- tony and steve just KNOWING how each other thinks and using that to formulate the same plan, of going back to grab the tesseract? genius! 

- There was so much foreshadowing in this movie at the beginning and middle of how this was going to end. Tony was unwilling to help at first because he didn’t want to lose what he had gained, and Steve kept saying he was over Peggy but by looking at her in the past, it was clear that he wasn’t, and that was where he wanted to go. I’ll touch on both those things more later.

- Tony getting to talk to his father, and finally come to terms with that relationship, and understanding/loving him... ow my heart. That hug was amazing. 

- Thor getting to talk with his mother, getting that closure as well. This movie centered a lot on family. 

- Clint willing to die to get the soul stone, but Natasha also willing to, and fighting over it, who had the strongest will to sacrifice themselves for everyone else. Their dynamic is also one of my favorites, and even though Clint is happily married with a family, part of me still ships them, and I loved those final moments together. 

-”Let me go. It’s okay.” Natasha’s death was one of the first scenes that got me outright bawling. I adored her, and her death hit me hard because I was NOT expecting it. And for her to die as she did, willingly, with no restraint.... she wiped the red out of her ledger for sure. :( R.I.P Natasha. I’m so sad that they couldn’t even get her body to give her a proper burial. And everyone’s reactions after... devastating. 

- I didn’t think Bruce using the Gauntlet was going to work at first. But once Clint’s phone started ringing, I breathed a sigh of relief and just waited. Then past!Nebula had to ruin everything by getting Thanos to blow up the Avengers HQ.

- Touching on this, btw: Thanos really is the Avengers strongest opponent. He was too clever using the two Nebulas (UGH) as he did, and he almost won again without even breaking a sweat. 

- The. entire. fight. Literally, all of it. Thor using both of his weapons, Tony and Steve giving it their all... omg. 

- The second Steve used Mjolnir, my entire theater screamed, and same, tbh. Thor’s “I KNEW IT!!” was everyone. It was nice continuity with AoU when Thor’s expression hinted that Cap was worthy. YES. 

- It took me a minute to realize that Sam was back, and when it did, I sat there going “IS IT REALLY IS IT REALLY IST THIS HAPPENING OH SHIT”

- AND IT DID!

- Everyone coming out of that portal, focusing on each of them. Omg the theater erupted. 

- “AVENGERS.... assemble.” cHILLS 

- WANDA GETTING BACK AT THANOS’S CRAZY ASS, HELL YES! “I don’t even know who you are.” “You will.” YES, QUEEN. 

- THE WOMEN TEAMING UP!

- Tony and Peter. The hug! The shock from Tony that this boy that he looks at as his own son, the relief that he’s alive, okay.. hi i’m crying again. 

- The second Stephen raised that single finger, and Tony knew what it meant. And we all knew what it meant... 

- “I am inevitable.”  “I am... Iron... man.” 

- Tony’s death hit me like a ton of bricks, and I was sobbing before he’d even collapsed to the floor. Watching the color drain from his face, and his body become so badly damaged.... I knew it was over for him. 

- “We won, Mr. Stark. Come on, you did it, sir, you did. I’m sorry, Tony.” I CANT EVEN HANDLE THIS. PETER DIED IN FRONT OF TONY, AND NOW TONY DIES IN FRONT OF HIM. This surrogate father/son duo hurts me and I feel so much. 

- PEPPER AND TONY. THEY DESERVED BETTER, DAMN IT. THEY DESERVED TO BE HAPPY AND TONY DESERVED TO WATCH HIS DAUGHTER GROW UP. ;A; “We’re going to be okay. You can rest now.” Rip out my heart. Just rip it out. 

- As painful as Tony’s death was, it also felt.... perfect, in ways. He gave up his chance to keep things as they were to save everyone else. He did tHAT. He gave everyone else their families back. He died a hero, a true hero. I feel more at ease with Tony’s death, despite how unfair it was, because unlike Loki, Tony had achieved everything he meant to. He had a little girl who he loved so much and was an amazing father to. He had a son, who he taught to be a hero, too. He had a wife who will go on to keep Stark Enterprises alive. They’re Tony’s legacy. 

- The funeral was SO heartbreaking, I was a crying mess. Happy and Morgan... :( </3

- ok so I’m 50/50 on Steve’s ending. He goes to return the stones to their proper time, and then stays behind to have a life with Peggy. Which, I mean... I’m not opposed to, and I think Steve deserves his happy ending too, but... it also hurt because not only was he leaving Bucky behind, he also left his friends behind. Friends that were already hurting from losing Natasha and Tony. And then to leave them like he did.... it felt... I don’t know, not wrong, but insensitive, considering what had just happened. Everyone had lost enough, and then they had to lose Steve, too. Although, I see his frame of mind. He’d lost so much as well. He wanted to have something for once, something happy, and he took it. I can’t blame him for that. I just wish his timing had been better. 

-Bucky just knew that Steve wasn’t coming back as himself. He knows him so well. And his nod at Sam to let him take up the mantle... I knew it was going to happen, but I thought it’d be different. I’m fine with this, though. Steve’s retired. He can rest now. 

- Tony’s voice over at the end was beautiful and perfect. That is all. 

I loved this movie a lot, and can’t wait to see it again eventually! I had complaints and things I wish they’d done/fixed, but overall, the good outweighed the bad. 

[janiedean]

Ok I need to know your thoughts about this Green Book mess

... pray for me anon XD

anyway, never mind that my general thought is that I’m really sad the mule didn’t compete this round because then it’d have deserved all the awards hands down........

tldr: the fact that people are outraged is the proof that tumblr at large can’t recognize classism when it hits you in the face.

in longer words: 95% of the hot takes I’m reading are Patently False And It Shoes People Haven’t Seen That Movie.

in much longer words: counting that I haven’t seen all the nominees but I did see both blakkk/lansman (which from now will be BKKK) and blackpanther and green book (and borap but that one wasn’t gonna win best movie anyway so) and I guess that is where the crux is, so, in order.

bkkk was obviously the best movie of the lot quality speaking. in an ideal world, it would have one. except that bkkk is a movie that’s heavily political and if y’all think that the oscars would give a prize to the heavily political movie that directly criticizes the administration in power then y’all missed the part where that’s not what happens at the oscars. last time it happened it was 1978 and the deer hunter won and I still don’t know wtf was the jury’s state of grace at that point, but in 1980 they had apocalypse now in the list and kramer vs kramer won. like. guys. if you have APOCALYPSE NOW on the list and anything else wins in the major categories then you’re a joke. and tbh it surprises me that spike l/ee is still hoping he might snag a major win that’s not for screenplay with these parameters - they’re not gonna go there. hasn’t happened since ‘78. come on;

bp was not a best movie flick. like, guys: it’s not even the best mcu film around as far as I’m concerned and while it most likely deserved the technical awards..... seriously? like. if neither GB nor bkkk won then any other movie on the list had better shots than bp. I can’t even think people seriously assume it was best movie material or ON PAR WITH BKKK as in, ‘if bkkk doesn’t win then THAT ONE should have won’. like, no;

now: green book was a *safe* pick in the sense that it wasn’t as heavy-handed as bkkk when it came to be political so it was the perfect choice if they wanted to go like ‘oh hey see we gave the award to the movie about racism without giving it to the one raising the middle finger to donald trump’, but differently from moon/light (which according to me was the most political political win of the last ten years like guys sorry that movie was nowhere near as good as people said back then and I found it incredibly overrated, and before you tell me that it’s because I didn’t understand it: exactly the point. the wire is one of my fave shows ever and it tacked all the things moon/light tried to except that it did it vastly better and I actually got it for how well it was written, moon/light completely failed in that sense and I’m glad if it was a good movie for the people it was directed to but it didn’t engage beyond that target imvho but never mind that) it actually tackled very well a series of issues I never see discussed in US cinema when it comes to *racism-themed* movies and I thought it was a really well-made movie that nailed a lot of things especially when it came to how classism and racism interject themselves in the discourse and how you don’t get out of discarding one of them so easily.

specifically, with SPOILERS FROM THE MOVIE under the cut SO GO AHEAD AT WILL OR NOT:

now: all the posts ‘this is the usual movie about the white guy who gets the black friend’ already are obviously from people who haven’t seen it because they missed the basic point, as in: that the white guy is poor and uneducated and isn’t *racist* because he’s a terrible person, he is out of ignorance and not knowing any better BUT at the same time he’s not so narrow-minded that he doesn’t have fairly forward opinions on other -isms (see THAT REVEAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE after which he goes like ‘I’ve been a bouncer in most of new york’s night clubs do you think I mind that thing’ which is a thing the audience wouldn’t have thought since italian-american men from the 50s/60s notoriously came from a fairly -PHOBIC culture in that specific sense), and that the guy being italian-american ie a *white* category that back then did not have *white privilege* put him in a lower class position than the black guy;

on the other side, it was spelled that the black guy’s issue was the contrary in the sense that he’s rich, he’s cultured, he speaks five languages, he’s not a stereotype and since people want stereotypes or expect them, he can’t seem to please either side and feels alienated from both, which I think is a discourse that should be way more relevant in a website where people talk all the time about people of color not being stereotypes and so on;

like the entire fucking point of that movie is that white guy overcomes his racism unlearning his ignorance and black guy has a few realizations about how classism works and reconnects with his heritage throughout the entire thing;

and the fact that it was the black guy explaining the white guy how to write the poetic love letters without grammar mistakes and got him to appreciate finer things in life while the white guy helped him get down to earth (which he plot-wise definitely needed - he was unhappy af before XD) *and* at the same time the movie never fucking forgot that skin color > money when it comes to systematical racism in the south (ie the scene where they get stopped by the southern policeman and white guy punches him bc he basically told him that being italian-american was being half-the-n-word and black guy tells him ‘yeah well I handled that my entire life you could deal with it once’ was FAIRLY DAMNED OBVIOUS even if it also showed that it’s Not How Things Should Go) was imvo a very good narrative choice/balancing;

also, I was really appreciating that scene where don asks tony (a guy who has no idea who orpheus is and thinks orpheus and eurydice is about orphans) to shorten his name because vallelunga is too difficult to pronounce and tony’s like ‘if the people you play for are so cultured they can learn to pronounce my name properly’ because like guys that’s a thing that happens with all non-anglophone names and seeing it come from someone who hasn’t had an education but doesn’t want to be *made better* because that doesn’t make them unworthy and then only accepts help when he wants it and doesn’t come from a position of ‘you need to look more presentable’ but from ‘I want to make your life better’ was really fucking nice excuse me, because it *did* make a point about how not being formally educated means that people are considered lesser when they shouldn’t have to fight for it, and I thought that the class-switch in there was a really great idea;

anyway nvm my specific opinions about specific scenes, the point is: green book is not heavy-handed and admittedly is a lot more sugary than BKKK and has the feel-good ending that makes it palatable for easy wins, but the content is fucking everything but sugary or devoid of discussing Serious Issues that I almost never see tackled in this kind of US movie and if people actually wanted to watch a movie that sees the subject counting that class relations exist, that some -isms are culturally learned and can be overcome, that money counts when we’re discussing how people are treated in the US, the *earned whiteness* concept (because tony is *white* but hasn’t *earned whiteness* and it’s plenty damned obvious) and that class relations are not automatically clear-cut *especially in the US* then green book is an absolutely valid choice. and like...... it wasn’t white saviorism in the sense that WHITE GUY GETS REDEEMED AND BECOMES UN-RACIST, it’s about two people growing and learning from each other and the fact that tony’s racism is tied to a) upbringing while being poor b) not literally knowing any better but that it doesn’t really take that much for him to see that his opinions are wrong when usually it’s poor black person vs rich white person, and actually that’s why I thought calling it reverse driving miss daisy was reaaaally not getting the point, so if people actually saw the damned movie before deciding it’s terrible that’d be nice;

I also think sp/ike lee was beyond rude in his, er, reactions to GB’s win, but then again... listen guys I love the man’s movies but since that time he went like ‘clint eastwood can’t make movies about charlie parker’ (??) and dismissed the italian partisans’s associations complains about what he did in miracle in st. anna (a movie I did actually really like but they were right about him villainizing the resistence when he could have not) with basically I DON’T CARE THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE ISSUES WITH HOW I, AN AMERICAN, DEPICTED A FAIRLY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ITALIAN HISTORY... like he needs to chill and to realize that there’s a thing called losing with grace and he’s not doing it.

tldr: bkkk imvo deserved to win way more and tbqh if I was spike I’d complain about bp having gotten more awards than his movie when bp really is the safest choice ever if we wanna talk about politics win, and I can agree that GB was a political choice, but it was not a bad political choice nor a racist one and actually it raised a lot of issues that I’d like to see explored more in movies because they usually aren’t. on top of that I thought mahershala ali’s performance in gb was fucking stellar and definitely was miles better than his part in moonlight (but like... bc he was in moonlight for TWENTY MINUTES, he was co-lead here) and I’m honestly baffled that when he won for moonlight there were gifsets everywhere and here there aren’t when this role was WAY better and more nuanced and with more to chew, never mind that again, he deserved it just for the speech under the rain I was discussing before. but like..... of course we’re all ignoring it??

also: I’m really laughing that tumblr as a whole is crying about GB winning when until two days ago bkkk was the worst thing ever because adam dr/iver starred in it and OMG OF COURSE HE WAS CHOSEN TO PLAY THE KKK MEMBER BECAUSE HE REALLY IS RACIST [lmao as if spike l/ee would work with a really racist person] and no one on this website gave a single fuck about it when it came out except for adam dr/iver fan blogs but now everyone is like OMG WHY DIDN’T BKKK WIN???!!!!! like guys you didn’t care about BKKK until a day ago and now I’m supposed to think you were rooting for it all along? when you all hated it because omg how dare they cast ky/lo ren in something where he’s not a bad guy? like we serious? come the fuck on, no one on here cared. and the fact that if blackpanther had won no one would say BKKK not winning = UTTERMOST CRIME just says all about how a film’s quality is judged around here. bye, I said my piece.

[eduardomeneses]

Faves of 2018: Anime contd.

My reflections on the last set of shows I enjoyed from 2018: 

1. Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - To my understanding, this is a remake of the anime that aired in the 80’s - 90’s, and covers the first volume of the original novel, and I’m glad this is how it’s being presented. As to be expected, the show is clean and crisp, none of the animation being disregarded. This space opera is full of politics and intergalactic military strategy. The main characters are quite captivating and the writing is smart all around. The show has a clever way of jumping between the conflicts and politics that happen on both the battlefield and each respective federations territory. The anime is incredibly tight and concise, this first season consisting of just 12 episodes, but it is among the best produced packages to release this year. A highlight of the year that I can’t wait to see more from, and a show I’d recommend to anyone looking for an anime with a little more substance.

2. Megalo Box - an anime that restored that feeling. With just 13 episodes, Megalo Box did an amazing job of showcasing the rise of underdog boxer within a world that refused to recognize him. Very much the typical underdog story, akin to Rocky or any other sports film/anime, the familiarity of Megalo Box does nothing but boost how enjoyable it was in a summer season that didn’t have much going on. The show had an old school vibe, coming through in the plot, the characters, and the art direction. The cast is incredibly charismatic and each episode left me thirsty for more. I have got to say that I’m a sucker for these kinds of shows, and it delivered on all fronts. Like the main character, this show is relentless, but paced well with thoroughly profound writing. Something about the true nature of humans lies in the anime and it is certainly a genuine article as one of my favorites I’ve had the pleasure to watch.

3. Persona 5 The Animation - Unaware of the game that acts as the anime’s source material and the universe the show comes from, I’d have to say I really did enjoy the strangeness in Persona 5. Some of the sequences and animation were a bit offbeat, but in a charming way. At times it felt like watching a cut scene within a game. The anime really delivered with the plot and it pulled me deeper and deeper into its world, which I was fine with, even with not knowing where it would take me. There are plenty of tricks and deceits that are a part of the storyline that makes it a captivating watch. It feels as if the show breaks the fourth wall at times to really mess with the viewer. The art is clean, nothing revolutionary, but the anime continued to turn in on itself which made each week surprising. I have to say that some of the pacing threw me off, especially around the 3/4 mark, in the stretch between episodes 17-20, but it picked up well and I’m very eager to see how the cliffhanger is resolved.

4. Food Wars: Shokugeki No Souma SZN 4 - Continuing its reign as the gold standard for food in anime, Shokugeki no Souma is here again to amaze and flex its mastery of the culinary. There aren’t enough words to be said about how beautifully composed the anime is. It is faithful to the source material and adds dynamism and even more excitement to all the events and dishes served. I won’t keep you for too long, harping on how much I love this anime, but it is among my favorite of all time. It is pure entertainment and the perfect balance of sensuality, beauty, and comedy. Elite.

5. Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - an offshoot of the Sword Art Online universe and arguably the strongest among the other series in the franchise, SAO Alternative: Gun Gale online, is fun, plain and simple. Existing within the SAO universe, GGO is able to surpass its counterparts because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I was unsure of what to expect, with this anime, considering I’m not a fan of the original SAO series at all, but I’m glad I stuck around for all of GGO. It does so much with very little, electing to make the characters and overall story very lean. The motivations and ambitions are clear for everyone we are introduced to and the main focus of the show exists as a tournament between teams looking to win the battle royale. GGO does itself a great service by not trying to muddy the story with deep, complex real world actualities and commits to the virtual game world, making for an exciting sequence of events that unravel over 24 episodes. The anime operates as the most fun and enjoyable stream of FPS gameplay anyone could ask for, with genuinely likable characters, and that places it leagues above its predecessors.

6. Attack on Titan SZN 3 - Attack on Titan takes my vote for most improved thus far. Now airing in smaller, 12 episode seasons, Attack on Titan has figured out how to pace itself in a way that follows the source material and makes the events as interesting as possible. The first season suffered a bit in that it dragged for stretches while trying to build up the overall narrative. The journey has proved to be worth all the trouble because the past two seasons have been exceptional. Season 3 finds us mining much more of the human factor within the Attack on Titan universe, and although the show is addressing much more of the politics and personal dramas, it’s provided in digestible doses. With the 12 episodes, we are given a well-balanced plot that touches on every positive aspect of the show while being concise with the points that feel more laborious. What I also found interesting is the turning point this season proved for several characters, so now there is much more to look forward to in the ways the entire cast will develop as they dive deeper into the murky waters of the titan infested, human manipulated world they inhabit.

7. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind - Most Certainly bizarre and the most cohesive series in the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure universe, Golden Wind delights with its charm and eccentricities and I hope it continues the course it is running. Anyone new to the JoJo universe doesn’t need to go back and watch previous seasons to enjoy Golden Wind, but it may help overcome some of the strange stylistic choices the anime takes. The show, like the previous seasons, is full of character, color, and life, and like previous seasons also a bit grotesque, maybe not the right word, but the first one that comes to mind. The story is interesting and the Italian setting makes it even more captivating. If taken not too seriously, the show is well executed and a carnival for the eye. There are enough interesting characters thus far, and I”m eager to see where the show takes them over the next 20+ episodes.

8. SSSS.Gridman - Another Studio Trigger production, another beauty to debut this year. A modern animated adaptation of the early 90’s live action series, SSSS.Gridman is a super stylized, sophisticated anime about a giant robot that fights of giant monsters, what’s not to like? The anime is the glossiest rendition of the robot vs monster genre that slowly unravels to reveal ambitions to investigate the human condition. What was first something simply fun to watch, has transformed, like the protagonist of the show, into something much more complex. The show has done a good job of taking a seemingly childish setup and adding layers to it. With the show on a few episodes away from the finale, I find it to be one of the most satisfying 12 episode anime to come out of 2018.

9. Banana Fish - Fitting that the heaviest anime of the year is about to end just as the year is wrapping up. Thousands of words would be needed to fully unpack all that Banana Fish has addressed in its 23 episodes thus far, and with one to go, it will continue to build upon the sturdy foundation it started laying out when it premiered at the beginning of July. Banana Fish is a brutal, realist take on crime, drugs, sexuality, and desire. It never pulls any punches and is a winding tale that has turned on itself many times already. There is a coating of sadness that wraps every aspect of the show and succeeds in being able to pull at the audience at every event. I’ll have to revisit this anime after it ends and I’ve had more time to reflect because it truly has an extraordinary amount working for it.

[essayofthoughts]

Y’know, I’d hoped I’d never see this in the Wanda Maximoff Defense Squad tag, but hey look at the world.

This ^^ is gatekeeping. No, I’m not telling you who posted it - the tag knows and the tag has manners, and the person who posted it knows, and thats enough; lets not send bitchy anon hate - just know that it has been posted and that its gatekeeping.

Thing is, I do understand the position the OP probably made it from. After years of the fandom ragging on Wanda, shitting on Wanda and generally being awful to our fave the sudden fandom turn around as of AIW is not just galling but insulting. We, the fans of Wanda, have known all this time that she is worthy of love and a worthy character to love, and yet it is only now, after everyone has spent years bitching about her, dissing her, being massive hateful antis and Marvel’s killed her off within the MCU... that they suddenly turn around and change their minds. Its really hard not to be bitter about that. I get it. There’s something else in the MCU fandom right now that I’m incredibly fucking bitter about.

But you’re not going to see me going into the character’s tags in order to bitch.

Because that is what we in the fandom know like to call a dick move.

There’s three parts to why this post is bullshit, and I’m going to break it down for you.

1. “Appreciate Wanda in the movies before [etc.etc.]”

This is gatekeeping right off the bat. The rest has gatekeeping aspects and are bullshit on multiple levels but this is just straight up gatekeeping. “You aren’t a proper fan unless you liked her before AIW”.

My dudes, I’m gonna tell you a secret.

I’m a fake Wanda fan! I know, I know, I love her and I’ve loved her a while, but I only started to love the character after AOU! I know! Shocking! When she’s existing in comics for decades and been a part of multiple versions and storylines and separate universes! I only became a fan a few years ago! Aren’t a silly faker.

Except... I’m not. Just because I came to like Wanda later on in no way invalidates my like of the character. My love of the character. That I only really paid attention to Wanda after AOU is a credit to AOU because it made me see something in the character that I hadn’t before. Something that made me go back over the cartoons and buy several of the comics and see those things in those versions of Wanda as well. I started liking Wanda because of the whitewashed traumatised experimented-on mutate version before I ever took a proper look at the Jewish Rroma witch of the comics.

But you know what? I love those versions of her as well. I’ve increasingly incorporated those aspects of her in my fanfiction of MCU Wanda. Why? Because AOU made me love one version of Wanda, and I went looking for more.

I’m no more a fake fan that anyone who started loving Wanda thanks to AIW is a fake fan. My love for her is no more or less valid than someone who started to love her because of AIW.

We are all consumers of this fandom and this character. We’ve all spent that money and that time watching that media. And sure, maybe these new fans only like her because of AIW, but that doesn’t mean thats the be-all and end-all forever. That doesn’t mean that those new fans might not, as I did, go back over other older media featuring Wanda, and find the traits they find compelling there as well. It doesn’t mean that those fans might not find more things to love about Wanda than just those things.

Doing this ^^ however? Dismissing and gatekeeping? Is only going to send them away. Make them feel dismissed and unwelcome and hated. 

And given how few fans of Wanda there are, we really don’t need our own side helping the antis.

2. Ship dismissal!

Much as I hate to say it there is no wrong or right way to ship. I personally tend not to ship at all, because I have issues with it, but nonetheless: everyone is entitled to ship what they want, even if you don’t like it. I reserve the right to hate one (1) ship, and thats not even in this fandom and even then I’m not going to go into the tags for one of those characters and express my unabashed hate for a ship including them! That is, to use the same technical term as above a dick fucking move.

Thing is, while I don’t tend to ship, I find WandaVision pretty compelling. I think its interesting to take the girl who’s increasingly moved away from humanity, and the synthezoid slowly moving towards humanity and bounce them off each other. I think their perspectives are interesting and their attitudes mesh well. I think they can work as a ship.

And here’s something else that the OP of that post doesn’t - and of a number of other OPs of various anti-WandaVision posts in the tag don’t - know. Lots of fans of Wanda are actually ok with WandaVision. This isn’t a case of dismissing a secondary minor ship that only has about five fans, this is a relatively big ship with a large number of fans, and this person has gone into multiple tags for one of the characters just in order to dismiss it! This is baiting. This is ship policing.

This is bullshit.

As I said above, I reserve the right to hate one (1) ship, but I’m not going to pull this^^ over it, because it is a dick move. It is rude! It violates fandom etiquette. Because there is no right or wrong way to ship.

Even when you dislike a ship you do not get to tell people that they are wrong to ship what they ship. I don’t get WandaSteve or WandaNatasha but I’m not going to tell people that they’re wrong to ship it, indeed, I’d rather actually discuss with them what it is they find compelling about it and see if I can get behind it as well. I’m not going to go into a tag and bitch about a ship because I don’t like it!

And, even if I were I would not describe it as OP has here, which is a blatant misrepresentation at best and pure lies at worst. Lets look at how they described it, hm?

a Stockholm-d Stepford Wife to the creation of the man who killed her family/the creation that held her hostage & made her hate herself & creeped on her

Part the first: Stockholm Syndrome. I do not. Even know. How this conclusion was reached. While, yes, Vision did hold Wanda prisoner in the Avengers Base she did not sit passively by and just let it happen. She asked him. She made it relatively clear that she was not pleased about this. And when she was offered a chance to get out she took it. And, when Vision tried to stop her, tried to convince her to stay by appealing to her worries that people would fear her, she countered with both words and power to make clear why she was leaving, why her perspective differed from his, and that he would be unable to stop her.

That’s not Stockholm Syndrome. That’s kind of it’s fucking opposite.

Part the second: “the creation of the man who killed her family”. Way to dismiss Vision as a person! Way to dismiss the way in which multiple other people  played a part in Vision’s creation! Ultron is a more direct creation of Tony Stark than Vision is. And, yes, Ultron went on to make Vision, but you know who also worked on both? Bruce! Who is a pretty lovely and all-around decent person. Who else had an impact on both, hmm, I wonder... Oh yes! JARVIS, the natural language UI. Again, yes, made by Tony, but also an entity which has expressed concern and counterpoints to Tony. An entity far more agreeable to many than Tony reliably is. What else had an impact on both hmm I know there’s another, its a pretty big one, really significant...

Oh yes, the fucking MIND STONE. Which was used to help make a basis for Ultron’s consciousness, yes, but was also literally embedded into Vision’s head and is an active part of his mind.

As for others who played a part in Vision’s creation, let us not also forget that it was Wanda herself who set the whole series of events into progress, nor forget Helen Cho, who made Vision’s body and shut off Ultron’s download into it, and Thor, who brought the lightning which woke Vision as his own separate entity.

Made by Tony Stark Vision may be, in part, but we do not see him acting as Tony Stark’s son. Ally, yes, but no more or less than Natasha or Rhodey.

Part the third: “the creation that held her hostage & made her hate herself & creeped on her”

Hoo boy.

a) He didn’t hold her hostage. He kept her from leaving the base at Tony’s suggestion under the belief that her out and about might spark attacks on her person or make her lash out against others. It was wrong, yes, but it wasn’t a hostage situation, besides which, Wanda got herself out of the situation and made it pretty fucking clear to Vision what would happen if he ever tried to do so again.

b) He didn’t make her hate herself. Wanda was doing that pretty effectively on her own:

If you fuckin’ remember. As for creeped on her... what? He walked into her room without knocking and through a wall, but he also makes it clear he thought it was ok because the door was open and Steve was there. Yes its not the greatest behaviour but its not creeping any more than your flatmate wandering into your room when you left the door open is!

I get being unhappy that some people may only like Wanda because now she’s part of a heterosexual ship, sure. I get why after CACW where she ended up locked up in a straitjacket the idea of her dating someone who helped put her there - no matter how apologetic he was - might be galling.

But you don’t get to tell people that they’re wrong to enjoy the ship, or that they’re fake fans because of it.

3. “Challenge”

This is honestly the bit which most pisses me off because its the most subtly gatekeepy of the lot imo. The suggestion that this is a challenge, for people to be fans of Wanda prior to AIW and without liking WandaVision...

Except lots of fans prior to AIW and even prior to the films liked WandaVision. Except that just because someone ships something you don’t or started liking a character after you did in no way invalidates their love of a character.

There’s lots of reasons to love Wanda in AIW! 

What about this?

Or, hmmm, this?

Wanda is strong as all hell. She’s willing to fight for what she believes in. She steps in when she has to - even if that means breaking orders - because she won’t stand by and let people get hurt. She held off a five-stone Thanos with one hand while destroying the other set in the head of one of her only close friends with nothing but her sheer strength and force of will, even when she’d lost so much already.

There’s plenty to find admirable about Wanda in AIW, OP.

Conclusion

The thing is, I get the specific kind of bitterness that likely fuelled OP’s decision to make this post. I do, I really do. But the thing is, this kind of gatekeeping and fandom policing only makes fandom smaller and more insular - it doesn’t welcome in new people or spark open and positive discussion. It makes people feel unwelcome and as though they’re outliers. As though no one wants them there and if no one wants them there, whats the point?

What’s worse is that the Wanda fandom has already experienced this! Pretty strongly! After AOU and especially after CACW fandom hated us, but that never stopped us! We didn’t let that make us this level of bitter! This kind of policing and gatekeepy! So why should we now?

And also... this kind of post - and those which have come before - show a bad trend. Its the same way that the Tony Stark Defense Squad tag has gone - yes the tag that I have to plug my nose and put my diving goggles on before I go anywhere near - because people decide that fandom should be more about hating characters rather than loving them. Because people decide that there are “right” and “wrong” ways to be fans. Because people decide that they’re better than others and everyone else should know this.

I’m not a perfect fan. I can be bitter as fuck and fighty as hell, but I hope that I’m at least willing to listen to other people and that I won’t force people to alter which characters they love and how they love them just because I say so.

Be a fan how you like, but please by all the gods, don’t try to force other people to be fans how you think they should be.

XKCD once made an excellent comic that I think is relevant here. 

If you mock people for not knowing something, or not loving something, then thats not going to make them want to learn about it or love it. Its going to make them feel ashamed and small and turn away from you.

But if you treat it as a chance to learn? You open up a whole new dialogue, and get to help fans learn what it is they love and why it is they love and maybe find more likeminded individuals.

Don’t bitch or shame or hate. Welcome and love.

And if you really really need to vent, do as I do and privately bitch to a friend. Do as a friend of mine does and vagueblog about it. Do as another person does and post it untagged or with / tags so it can’t be found.

Don’t go dumping it into the character tags. That’s just a dick move.

[weasleyimaginewheezes]

Fred x Reader / Sweet as Candy

A/n So no this wasn’t requested but the idea came to me at about midnight last night and I just continued writing and it was too cute not to publish. I’m hoping to write the requests in between studying today because I’m really busy tomorrow and Thursday so I won’t be active. I’m going to try and write some George fic and some other characters which have been requested to the best of my ability 😊. I tried to think of muggle things that wouldn’t necessarily exist in the wizarding world but it’s harder than you think so I just included some of my faves and I truly don’t have a clue about artithmancy. Decided to start using gifs just so I can post more of the phelps twins honestly. Anyway, enjoy some cute fluffiness and I’m sure I got the inspo from a post somewhere but I can’t remember. A/n

Word count: 2k+

Warnings: Just a whole lot of fluff, maybe some swearing.  

After 5 years of being at Hogwarts you had reached the conclusion that being a witch was the greatest thing to be.

Being from a muggle family, you hadn’t been aware of the marvels of actual spellbinding magic until that day 5 years ago on which you got the letter that changed your life. Your parents had wanted you to pursue the career of medicine like your older sister but once you got that letter (and once they checked it wasn’t a hoax of some kind) your plans changed. 

You were going to become an auror. This had been your dream since you had begun research into wizarding jobs in the uk and stumbled across a history of aurors including some of the most famous ones that had ever been. The stories of famous captures were legend and you hoped that one day that would be you. But you still had a while to go, for example passing your O.W.Ls which had currently took over your life at the present. 

Another great thing about Hogwarts was the people that you had met. Some students were muggleborn just like you others were known as ‘purebloods’ and had come from a rich heritage of wizards. Some purebloods like to boost about this whilst to others it was just their life, no big deal. One such example of the latter were the Weasley family.

You had become rather close to the whole family through being friends with the twins whom you had met in first year. You had quite quickly became enthralled with them, the way they used magic to pull pranks around  the school, the way they used their smarts for something else other than academics, not to mention they weren’t bad looking. You had only realised this in third year but couldn’t help the rather quickly developing crush on one twin in particular; Fred. 

Whilst George was a bit more quieter and laidback, Fred was louder and outgoing, always looking for the next adventure or joke. The only problem was that your weren’t the only girl to notice. Several girls vied for his attention after quidditch matches, after a successful prank or even just at dinner. He’d dated a girl for a few months but it hadn’t worked out and so when the news came to you once again that he was single, you gathered up every ounce of courage in you and asked him out.

He admired your boldness and accepted, “I’d been wondering when you were going to ask me.” His smirk made you blush deeply. 

That was 2 years ago. Fred and you had come a long way since then. Although he could still make you blush, it wasn’t as frequent as it used to be and Fred had learnt a few things about being in a serious relationship since then. 

You were currently studying transfiguration in the Gryffindor common room. The crackling of the fire was the only real sound that filled the room. Fred sat across from you making a list of some kind, most likely to do with pranks. George was in detention so he needed something to do. You were amazed at how quiet he was being. 

You smiled at him and he caught your gaze. He smiled sweetly back before resuming his concentration. Just as you were answering a practise question on the spell to reverse a transfiguration gone wrong, Hermione stormed in with a classmate from arithmancy arguing about an assignment.

“I told you it’s 8 8!” Hermione argued defiantly. The girl she was talking to look heavily confused. 

“So 88.” The girl said slowly, Hermione shook her head as if there was no point and then said goodbye. The girl still looked as if she was trying to work with whatever it was out as she walked up to the girls dormitory. 

“Not talking about miles per hour are you?” The text book you were reading from got put to one side as you took a well needed break. Fred perked up at the conversation and at you finally pausing in your studying. But his look became confused at your question. 

Sometimes your forgot that he didn’t have the movies you did growing up. Hermione chuckled a little but sighed in annoyance at the problem. “That’s from Back to the future right?” Hermione inquired and you nodded proudly, glad to have someone who understood your references. “I never really got that film.” Well we cant all be perfect, you guessed as you shrugged at Hermione with an ‘oh-well’ expression.  

Hermione began to list out the problem she had been battling with when your eyes darted to Fred who had quickly got out a small notebook from his robe pocket and began to quickly write in it. Your curiosity peaked but you didn’t ask, if he wanted to tell you he would plus Hermione was still talking, it’d be rude to interrupt. Not that you could help her much anyway, you didn’t know a thing about arthimancy.

When you looked back at Fred, the notebook was gone and he was back to his list. 

The next time it happened, you were discussing with Ginny the joys of a muggle theme park. Fred and George were talking animatedly about something but you could tell Fred was almost trying to listen to your conversation instead. 

“So wait, what’s the point of eating a ball of sugar?” Ginny asked with a disgusted expression as you told her about cotton candy. 

“Well,” You faltered, sometimes muggle culture really was strange. “It tastes good and it comes in loads of different colours, blue is definitely the best! It’s my favourite thing to eat when I go there. My mum always used to buy me and my sister one.” You reminisced at the memory before moving on to discuss famous rollercoasters. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Fred reach again into the same pocket and pull out the notebook. He scribbled two words down quickly and then as he caught your eye he stuffed the book back into his pocket with a nervous smile.

You narrowed your eyes before Ginny caught your attention again. You talked some more before the younger girl retired to bed. You immediately walked over to Fred and practically fell in his lap. He was caught by surprise but it faded quickly as you kissed him. George cleared his throat to let you know of his presence and you smiled over to him out of apology before nuzzling into Fred’s neck.  

“I’m gonna go. Leave you both to it.” And with a wink George left as well, leaving you and Fred in a practically empty common room (a first year had fell asleep at one of the tables at the back of the room). 

You kissed Fred on the neck before looking at him curiously. His eyebrows rose in question at you.

“What’s in that little notebook of yours?” You voice was sweet as you played with the material of Fred’s tie. He hummed innocently in question and you gave him a smile, knowing full well that he knew what you were talking about. 

“C’mon, is it really embarrassing? Oh is it love poems?” You mocked swooning with a hand over your heart and Fred laughed. 

“No.” He drawled out the one-worded answer. You furrowed your brow and sighed. 

“Okay don’t tell me. I’ll find out sooner or later.” You shrugged sweetly and Fred nodded, relived that you had gave up but partially sceptical because he knew what those words meant and they meant you weren’t giving up for long. 

You had a plan. It was a wicked plan but a good one nonetheless. You kissed Fred as he looked at you suspiciously. He sighed into the feel of your lips and kissed back immediately. You moved your hand up to loosen his tie, slowly unbuttoning his shirt. This seemed to stir Fred in just the right way because he immediately parted from the kiss to begin his favourite teasing activity; placing kisses and bites all over your neck and shoulders. 

You sighed into each one, your hand moving slowly down Fred’s side until it reached the height of the mysterious pocket. As Fred was distracted with soothing a rather large bite he had just made on your collarbone, you slipped your hand into the pocket and pulled out the notebook successfully. You hid it behind your back as you pulled away much to Fred’s disappointment. 

That was until he saw you reading from a small notebook as you got up and crossed to the other side of the room. It was strange, the notebook looked exactly like the one he kept. 

An anger flared in him as the realisation hit him. “Oi!! (Y/n) give it back!”

“Cotton candy is a tasty ball of sugar, loves the blue colour.” Your head filled with confusion as you continued to flip the pages. “Loves muggle films especially back to the future and breakfast club.” You knew it was about you but what you didn’t understand was why Fred had a journal log about you. 

He looked away as you read from the pages, he was blushing. A thing you had only witnessed him do when he had introduced you as his girlfriend to his mother. You continued reading about your favourite books and why you liked reading them, about muggle TV shows you raved about and what they entailed. 

You looked at Fred who’s averted gaze finally met yours. He looked guilty like he had been caught out. You closed the notebook and asked him silently what it all meant. 

“I- I like to try and understand what you’re talking about so I can know you better.” Your expression softened as you listened to your boyfriends sweet confession. “Every time you talk about your favourite muggle things I write them down and usually ask Hermione or Harry if I don’t understand them.” Fred’s eyes found a spot on the floor and he absently picked at some fluff on the red sofa cushion. 

“Fred.” He looked impossibly further away. “That’s so sweet.” A hopeful smirk crossed his face and he looked up to meet your large grin. You looked through the notebook again and found a rather scribbled drawing of a love heart with some messy writing in it. Your eyes squinted to try and make it out and Fred, feeling much better about it all, got up to look. 

“What’s this?” You pointed to the love heart and Fred immediately tried to snatch the book from your hands. 

“No! That’s nothing! Just something I did when I was in first year!” He pulled the book out from your hands just as you recognised your initials and then a plus sign pairing you with F.W. “It’s just scribbles.” Fred’s voice was more deflated as he knew you’d understood. He looked deeply embarrassed. 

“Awww!” You couldn’t help it. You had never known Fred to be so- sappy. He shoved the notebook quickly back into his pocket and looked at you with an annoyed expression, his arms folded. You apologised with a smile before getting closer to him and kissing him. His arms fell to his side before moving to your waist. He never could resist your lips and you never could his.

“You are incredibly sweet.” You whispered against his lips as they brushed together with your words after parting for air. 

“As sweet as cotton candy?” Fred’s playful, cocky demeanour returned and you smiled gratefully along with a giggle at his joke.   

“Sweeter.” You pecked his lips again with a large smile that lifted with your eyes. Fred kissed you again and it was a long, drawn out kiss that lasted until you both had to part to yawn from tiredness. 

You slept with a large smile that night at the thought of someone especially Fred wanting to know all there was about you with no detail spared and the fact of course, he’d pictured you together since he was 11. Merlin, your boyfriend was cute. 

[franeridart]

I just found your profile and I love your style so much!

AHHHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!

Anon said:From kami's-hair-is-hard-to-doodle anon from a while back: I finally got it! Thank you so much for your advice - reading and rereading your tips kept me practicing! I'd also like to thank the Academy /orz

I’m glad it could help you at all!!!! :O Kami keeps on being a mystery to me (and Horikoshi himself ???) too so don’t get too down on yourself for it taking time haha

Anon said:Ive sent you a couple of asks before but Im just so in love with the content you produce. Like not only is your art style so cute and stuff, but the plot/story (Idk) of each post is just so original and adorable. Im just so blown away by everything you post. Thank you for sharing your art!!!! Have a good week!!

Anon said:Hi! I’m new to your blog but love your art, I think your very talented which is why I’d like to ask a question. Do you have any advice for posing? I noticed your very good at it and wondered if you have any tips. If you do answer this, Thank you!!

Firstly, thank you so much for the compliments!!! I don’t know how useful exactly any advice I could give you will be, since most of it comes from drawing a lot and watching drawings even more, but in general to pick a pose usually what I do is think of the scene as if in movement? As in, what the characters are doing, and how they’d move if I were looking at them while doing it - keeping in mind the characters personalities helps me with this a lot too. 

Take for example the confessions drawings I’ve posted a couple of days ago: it’s true that there’s no words nor movement anywhere in them, but as I drew them I had a pretty clear idea of what they were saying and how the characters would react in those situations - Jirou’s shy and easily flustered, so she’s averting her eyes, unable to keep eye contact, and closing in on herself a bit, hiding her face and so on; in the concept, Kaminari was the one who confessed, so he’s holding her hand, tentative, because he’s unsure about how she’s gonna answer (it’s all stuff that didn’t actually make it in the drawing, how he reached for her hand, how he’s gonna close his other hand around her knuckles, but in my head it was a complete scene and I just picked one frame of it all to draw). The same goes for Bakugou and Kirishima - they’re rowdier, louder, more assertive and inclined to take everything as a fight, so this time around I went for a scene in which Bakugou straight out yells his feelings at Kirishima and Kirishima answers me too (again, I had the before and after in my head too, I just picked the frame that best coveyed what I was trying to do)

As I said I’m usure about how much this might help you orz it’s just my way of doing things, and it mostly comes from the fact that I was originally a writer honestly, so thinking of a whole scene makes things easier for me #rip

Anon said:Can I say, I really like the colors for your confession pictures! :>

THANK YOU??????? H E C K ;O; 

Anon said:hi~ i just went through literally everything in your sketches tag and i just wanna say i love your art and your comics and stuff. also because i went through everything, i want to bring attention to how cool it is to see how much your style has changed! your lines seem more confident and your characters more dynamic in the last few years :D

HECK THANK YOU SO MUCH it’s always so damn nice to know people can see my stuff getting even just slightly better oh mannnnnnnnnnnnnn *sob*

Anon said:can we repost your art if we give like 100% credit

Nope, sorry, I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that

Anon said:those "confessions" must be the lewdest thing I've ever seen

why would you use that word tho

Anon said:I just wanted to tell you that I love your art and it always makes me a little happier when you post something! No matter if it's your comics or colored pics or "simple" doodles, I love all of them! (Though soft stuff is the best, hehe) I just hope you know that you're very appreciated, and I hope you only have wonderful days!

GODS THANK YOU SO MUCH I’m so so so happy I can make you a lil happier ;0; I hope you’ll have every possible wonderful day too, anon!!

Anon said:I just spent the last few hours of my Sunday going though your entire blog. It’s beautiful and I hope you know that you have ruined my life because of that beauty. God damn it.

That wasn’t the intention but I’m!!!!!!!!! glad you think so???????? sob oh my g od you all are too nice to me ;^;

Anon said:Tododeku?

It sure is a ship, isn’t it - I’ve drawn for it in the past, I most probably will again in the future! :D

Anon said:you're honestly one of my fav artists on here! i love your style it feels so unique and is so pleasing to look at (((:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’M CRYING THANK YOU

Anon said:Your art has this unique quality about it... its really hard to describe but there’s something so dynamic and god damn pretty about your work. It’s fantastic and you inspire me to keep on creating! I hope your day is absolutely wonderful and thank you for blessing us with your art!

I’m!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so glad I can make you want to create stuff, anon!!!!!! that’s the best thing anyone can ever tell me, oh my god ;^; thank you so much !!!

Anon said:I love it when you draw cuddly bakugou!! Its wonderful!!

THAT’S!!!! super great to hear cause I could probably draw only that for the foreseeable future and not mind it one bit holy smoke

Anon said:THE HUG COMICS ARE THE BEST COMICS, I LOVE HUGS AND BAKUGOU BEING PHYSICALLY AFFECTIONATE IS SOMETHING I LOVE, A++++, WOULD RECOMMEND.

HONESTLY BAKUGOU NEEDS ALL THE HUGS AND IF I MUST BE THE ONE TO GIVE THEM ALL TO HIM THEN SO BE IT

Anon said:all ur comics are fucking delightful and make my day everytime. i ve read them all like too many times? i read each multiple times in a row and im still giddy? i love them i love u

I!!!!!!! LOVE YOU TOO???? HOLY SHIT THANK YOU

Anon said:*sigh* soft-phisical contact lover bakugou save my week. And kiri is the most wonderfull sunshine and no one cant discuss that *sit down in the floor and manly crying*

Kiri is the brightest sunshine isn’t he ;^; the sun to Bakugou’s moon, it makes me weak and I cry a lot

Anon said:I never knew I could be so weak for kiribaku omg fran what have you done to me, on that note what little things do you think theyd do to take care of each other? Like kinda lowkey stuff theyd quietly do? Ahh anyway thank you so much for all the wonderful drawings, hope everything is going well for you :)

Well, this is just the feeling I got, but I’d say they do plenty for each other quietly and softly in canon too, don’t they? Bakugou especially, pointing out to Kirishima his strength when he can’t see it for himself and always trying to find a way to cheer him up when he’s down and giving him space when he needs it, training together, studying together, worrying over one another, Kiri making sure to always know what’s up with Bakugou and following him to help him, just generally being there for each other so that if and when they need they’ll know they’ll have someone they can lean on - their relationship is really mutually supportive, isn’t it? I cry so much they make me so happy ;^; *sob*

Anon said:When season 3 comes out wouldnt it be fun if krbk fans filmed their ch.90 being animated reactions?? I think it'd be so cool/cute to see all the emotions! What do you think?

You know, I’m pretty sure that IS gonna happen? People make reaction videos for so many things! It’s nice and fun, honestly, I love it~

Anon said:I really love the way you draw spiky hair! It looks so floofy and soft.

Boi thank you!!!! Spikes are super nice to draw, though admittedly I make them less spiky then they’re probably supposed to be haha

Anon said:As someone who adores Sero Hanta And is a die hard krbk fan can I just say how much I love you? Like I was having a rough-ish day and I can’t stop smiling now because of your latest comic. Seriously, I love you and your art is everything.

I’M SO GLAD YOU LIKED THAT ONE!!!!!!!! I adore Sero if I had any better clue how to draw him I’d draw him all the time always, true story, he’s such a fave ;^;

Anon said:OMG Fran!!! I want Bakugou's name tattooed on all their faces now!! Hahahaha!

You know, one of my first krbk fanarts was Bakugou writing his name on Kirishima’s forehead, actually....................

[cupidsbower]

Let me tell you people that I found a new way

Supernatural 13x06, “Tombstone,” 13x07, “War of the Worlds,” and 13x08, “The Scorpion and the Frog.”

Something very interesting is happening this season, relating to Dean’s position in the narrative. Over the course of 13 seasons, it’s been proven over and over that Dean’s hunches tend to be right. He thinks someone’s a rotter, and they are a rotter. He thinks something’s hinky and it is hinky. He does sometimes make mistakes, but generally speaking, when Dean makes a moral pronouncement, he is right about the morality, even if events don’t play out the way he anticipates.

At the start of season 13, Dean made the moral pronouncement that he thought Jack was evil. He may still prove right about this of course, as the season is still young (for me, I know you are all far ahead), but so far it’s looking like he was wrong, and that Jack is more like a blank slate trying to figure out who he can be rather than intrinsically good or evil.

Does this matter? Does Dean’s hunch about Jack count in the same way it counted when Dean knew Ruby was rotten, but tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because Sam asked? When it comes to Jack, is this just Dean being a jackass due to grief and it’s not really what he thinks?

The tension arising from Dean’s distrust of Jack has so far been used to complicate Jack’s arc, but a larger thematic question arises. What does it mean for the story if Dean’s moral compass is wonky? And what does it mean if it’s not?

Okay, cards on the table. I think Dean is wrong about Jack. I’m sure Jack will do a bunch of stupid shit, because that’s how growing up works, but so far he doesn’t seem to be intrinsically evil. So why was Dean so insistent about it? Was it because Cas’s death had him so turned around his instincts were awry? But if that’s the case, you’d expect his instincts to be back to normal with Cas back... but the text is hinting that they’re not.

I enjoyed Tombstone. Cas is back, Dean plays cowboy, and Jack gets a hug, screws up, and runs away from home. All the drama!

Tombstone is a title with a lot of meanings. The primary meaning is the headstone on a grave, but in a text where cremation is the Hunter’s way, whose tombstone is it referring to? Is it literally just talking about the location of the ghoul’s lair? Or is it talking about Jack’s use of his powers that goes horribly wrong? Then there’s the movie reference. The film is the fictionalised (and often romanticised) story of the West... when “cowboys were the law”! And as we know, Dean is all about cowboys, especially the ones in the rogues gallery up on their hotel room wall. Later he prompts Cas to act like he’s in the movie, and Cas quotes Val Kilmer to assure Dean he’s his Huckleberry, which just about makes Dean tear up. All a boy wants is a partner who fondly goes along with his cosplaying fantasies... looking good in a cowboy hat a definite bonus. And Dean gets it good here -- he wears the boots, fixes Cas’s hat, and does a slo-mo power walk to the song Space Cowboy:

Steve Miller Band - Space Cowboy

I told you 'bout living in the U.S. of A Don't you know that I'm a gangster of love Let me tell you people that I found a new way And I'm tired of all this talk about love And the same old story with a new set of words About the good and the bad and the poor And the times keep on changin' So I'm keepin' on top Of every fat cat who walks through my door

I'm a space cowboy Bet you weren't ready for that I'm a space cowboy I'm sure you know where it's at Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (x)

I mean this is hilariously silly, and Dean is having so much fun, but he’s also completely embarrassing with his whole cowboy nerdgasm and forcing Cas to play along, amirite? This is Jensen Ackles showing off his physical comedy chops like the pro he is. But here’s the thing. The song scratches out the minute they find the law, because the old romantic version of the West does not hold true. In this version of Dodge, the law is not a cowboy, it’s a Native American. What’s more, Dean is not really the Space Cowboy either. Surely, surely, Cas is the space cowboy (but is Cas the gangster of love??? And if so, who’s heart did he steal???).

The frisson of not-quite-right continues throughout the rest of the episode. While the ghoul realises there are Hunters after him and tries to “get out of Dodge” -- the line the lawman Marshall Dillon of the TV show Gunsmoke used to say to interlopers of Dodge City -- it’s Jack who is proved to be the interloper in the end, and it’s the Winchester posse who leaves town. Except for Dean, of course, who ends up Hunting someone wearing the face of one of his cowboy faves.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Thematically, this episode is all about undermining Dean’s moral authority. It does it in several ways, many of them funny, but the intent is quite clear. He even straight up says that he was wrong at the end:

JACK: Good? How is that good? I killed someone. What was his name? The guard? Did he have a family? CASTIEL: Jack, don't do this to yourself. JACK: No, did he? DEAN: Yes, he did. SAM: Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's… it's not easy. And we've all done things we regret. JACK: Just don't. You're afraid of me. CASTIEL: Jack, no. JACK: No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster. DEAN: No, you're not. I thought you were. I did. But… Like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters. JACK: No, you don't… Every time I try and do something good, people get hurt. I thought I was getting better. I'm not… I don't know what I am, but I know I can't make the world a better place, not like this. I can't even do one good thing. And I know that if I stay, I'm gonna hurt you. All of you. And… I can't. You're all I have. SAM: Jack, listen… JACK: I have to go. CASTIEL: No, Jack. JACK: I'm sorry. (x)

Winchester through and through, that boy. Unintended lesson well and truly learned! Oh, the irony.

(My pet theory is that Jack isn’t actually gone, he’s just invisible and lurking around the Bunker. Don’t tell me if I’m wrong, please. I’m going to enjoy thinking about it until canon bursts my bubble.)

Before watching this ep, when I was talking over 13x05 with my viewing buddy, I said, “I wish monsters recognised Hunters more, and especially the Winchesters. It seems dumb after so many years that so few of them do.” And lo, in all three of these eps, people do recognise Hunters and/or the Winchesters. I’m very pleased by this, although as always it isn’t playing out quite the way I hoped. In the case of our ghoul, even though he quickly recognises that Hunters are after him, and makes plans to escape, he fails because he doesn’t take the threat seriously enough. More importantly, it’s not a Hunter(/cowboy) who kills him, it’s the Law(/Native American).

There were a lot of other things to like about this episode, but the other thing I find most notable in terms of meta is something on the meta-textual level. This episode starts upbeat, after five episodes of unrelieved grieving, with Cas back, and Jack finally seeming to be finding his place. That doesn’t even last one episode before the emotional apple-cart is knocked over again. If I were writing this season, this emotional beat in this place in the story arc would mean I’d be aiming for either a happy or ironic climax, rather than a tragic one. I’m leaning towards ironic, and I think Dean’s moral wonkiness will have a part to play in the ironic twist.

Anyway, that was Tombstone. The next two eps put away the myth-arc for a bit, and move on to monster-of-the-week stories full of mirrors for our protagonists. This season they are very much focused on fathers and sons.

War of the Worlds is an interesting title to choose for this episode. It’s obviously referring to H.G. Wells’ book, one of the first stories about aliens invading the Earth and trying to take it from Humanity -- a colonisation narrative in other words. It’s pretty easy to see that Michael in this case is the alien/coloniser.

By the way, I’m now calling alternaEarth “Mordor” because of that fiery eye in the opening credits, and also it’s much easier to type. Interesting, isn’t it, how the Mordor angels managed to screw up the Apocalypse, the implication being that it’s because God, Lucifer, the Winchesters and Castiel were all absent, and so The End wasn’t just a figment of Zachariah’s imagination, but what really happened. And with Lucifer dead in that world, not around to be the antagonist and keep things in check, Michael has basically gone crazy.

Chuck really did a spectacularly bad job as Father to the angels. They only need a bit of spite to energise them and they flower into the most noxious of weeds, smothering everything else around them during their self-absorbed tantrums. What does Michael even want with ParadiseEarth? Does he know, or does he just want it the way a baby wants a toy, and so he thinks it’s his to take? He’s not wearing a Winchester either (not one we know, anyway), so that also brings us right back around to the question of Dean being the Michael Sword. Methinks it’s a really bad time for Dean’s moral compass to be going wonky.

I found Lucifer interesting for the first time in ages in this ep. If I remember correctly, he was always ambivalent about the idea of the Apocalypse, because he liked Earth and having all those Humans to corrupt. But now he also has a son in the world; in other words, a stake in the continued existence of the world. I’m finding that super interesting. How will it change the choices he makes? I’m not expecting a redemption arc or anything like that, but I do think we’re going to see a different set of choices now Lucifer has someone he’s invested in as family. Can even Lucifer learn some humility once he’s the Father rather than the rebelling son?

To go back to the title of the ep, though, my favourite version of War of the Worlds is actually the musical. I see quite a few thematic similarities between some of the tracks and this season of Supernatural. Forever Autumn for instance, reminds me very strongly of Dean at the start of the season. The Spirit of Man I can easily see as a riff on what could happen if Michael actually gets out of Mordor. It does beg the question though, of what the equivalent of the deadly microbes would be. I have this horrible feeling it might be something like “love”, which has a pretty good track record of corrupting angels, but I can’t see many good ways of getting a shot of it inside of Michael. Maybe Rowena sticks some kind of magical bio-weapon in a vessel (Dean) and then they (Dean) says yes to Michael... because TFW does like to re-use strategies, and they never did get to play that one out with Amara in the end.

Why else bring back Ketch and potentially Rowena, reminding us of the whole secret-power-inside-a-body possibility at the same time? I mean, I know resurrection is a theme this season, and I’m always happy to see Rowena back, but UGH. I’d rather NOT end the season with Michael wearing Dean, and Dean wearing a crown of blackberry thorns, if you get my drift.

In other news, Dean’s moral compass seems to be working again this ep, as he spotted that Ketch was sketchy right from the start, and he picked up on Cas being weird on the phone too.  Could it be a fake-out that pays off later? If his moral compass is still on the fritz after all, it means Ketch was probably saying some truth in this bit of dialogue:

KETCH: I believe you're familiar with the witch Rowena MacLeod? She was captured by the British Men of Letters some years back. I discovered she'd sewn a powerful charm into her body that could bring her back should she be killed. I struck a deal wherein she did the same for me in return for allowing her to escape. SAM: So after we dumped your body, you- KETCH: Good as new. Only problem is, one the device is used, it needs to be recharged. DEAN: Which is why you're hunting for Rowena. Well, sorry. Lucifer burned her up. She's dead. KETCH: Is she? DEAN: Why'd you come here? You could've run. KETCH: Did it ever occur to you, Dean, that I might actually be one of the good guys? DEAN: No. Not even once. KETCH: You and I were soldiers in opposing armies who were at war. DEAN: Well, the thing about war is, one side wins. KETCH: I suppose you're right. (x)

So which bit is the potential truthiness? Is Ketch a good guy? *quietly gags, please nooooooo* Or is Rowena alive *yis pls*. Or... can you have a war in which one side doesn’t win?!?! Morder, I’m looking at you.

My foreshadowing senses are tingling. Let me just float this idea now and get it out there where I can poke it with a stick... maybe all three of these things will be true. For a certain value of true. And that would definitely mean Dean’s radar is still wonky.

This ep we have another character who recognises the Winchesters/Hunters. The witch who got away from Ketch fears them, but rightly considers them the lesser of two evils as long as she’s the victim. I’m liking this theme a lot, and I wonder where they’re going with it? I kind of hope that maybe we’ll get some more references to Carver Edlund’s books if this plot thread unspools for more than a few episodes. I’ve never felt that the villains really used that resource enough, you know? I kind of want Michael to get his hands on them, or maybe Kevin.

Which brings me to the final thing about this episode’s title -- the Orson Welles radio play of Wr of the Worlds. It’s famous for causing a panic when it aired, as people thought it was real. Or did they??? Wikipedia tells me:

The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a news bulletin and is often described as having led to outrage and panic by some listeners who had believed the events described in the program were real. However, later critics point out that the supposed panic seems to have been exaggerated by newspapers of the time seeking to discredit radio as a source of information. (x)

Ahhhhh. I did not know that. I’m starting to understand why my story brain is so hung up on the reputation of the Winchesters this season, and why it’s important that other characters have heard of them or of Hunters more generally. Propaganda and misinformation are an important part of any war, and they can play out in unexpected ways. We got a bit of this last season with how woefully wrong the BMoL’s intel was on the Winchesters, and I wanted that to pay off more than it did in the end. But I’m more than happy for it to pay off this season instead, with Michael and his posse. Supernatural’s story-within-the-story could use a good shake-up at this point, and giving us some new insight into the stories people tell about the Winchesters would be a clever way to revisit the Metatron arc without resurrecting him too.

For an ep that focused so much on characters I’m not that fond of (Lucifer, Ketch), I enjoyed it quite a lot for the way it’s opened up the narrative in new directions. It’s actual plot wasn’t that strong, but I was happy to be carried along by the revelations.

The final thing I want to say about this ep is that Dean and I are brain-twins on the Evil Colonel Sanders front -- it’s a perfect name for him.

I like heists if they do something fun, so I found the plot of The Scorpion and the Frog episode enjoyable enough. The way Sam and Dean disarmed the booby-trap made me laugh out loud!  Zoooooooom, zwot, thwop-thwop-thwop. Classic.

As this isn’t a myth-arc ep, the most interesting meta stuff arises from the title and theme. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the parable of The Scorpion and the Frog, so I won’t repeat it here, except for the axiom it ends with: “When the frog asks the scorpion why [it stung him], the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so” (x).

This title pretty directly evokes the show’s current major theme -- nature vs nurture -- and this season’s variation on it -- who’s your daddy?

As you’d expect at this point in the season, the ep raises a lot of questions about the theme: Do people really have an essential nature, or can they change their spots? Who in the episode is the scorpion and who is the frog? Is the scorpion the demon who can’t help but lie and use people? Is it the father who can’t help but try and save his son, and then turns bitter when he fails? Is it the Hunters who can’t help but hunt, even when they don’t intend to? Is it the victim who takes her shot at ending her suffering when offered the means? I could ask a similar set of questions about who is the frog.

Not to mention:

What qualities make for a good father?

Can somone overcome their (or their father’s) nature?

How do stories about the Winchesters affect they way people interact with them?

Hunters gotta hunt?

Can a frog be a scorpion in disguse? And if so, is that how they’ll sting Michael?

Is Dean’s moral compass wonky or not?

The more I think about all these questions, the less sure I get. Must be getting close to the middle of the season. :)

Barthamus the Crossroads Demon is another character who has heard of the Winchesters, and thinks he knows everything he needs to about them in order to get to the other side of the river on their backs.

Much as Evil Colonel Sanders is Lucifer!lite, Bart is Crowley!lite. He saw how Crowley worked with the Winchesters, and decided to take a leaf out of his book, but doesn’t understand the larger consequences of that choice. So far Crowley is the only antagonist who has ever realised that the Winchesters are always more dangerous than their enemies think -- they have taken down Gods and monsters, and even Death cannot stop them for long. It was almost inevitable that they would hunt Bart, no matter what was at stake (does that make them the scorpion?). Add in Smash, an actual victim, who Dean uses his supernatural bonding skills on, and that outcome went to a 100% certainty. This dilemma is prefigured early in the episode:

DEAN: You know, this could be a trap. I mean he could work for Asmodeus. SAM: Yeah, but what if he's telling the truth? DEAN: You know, after Crowley, I told myself, no more demons. SAM: Dean, we don't even know what this guy's deal is. DEAN: Yeah, we do. He's a freakin' demon. SAM: Yeah, but you said it yourself, we need a miracle. And maybe this is it. DEAN: You know what "miracles" are called from demons? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's not "miracles". SAM: How about this? Let's hear the guy out. DEAN: All right, and after that, we kill him.

They enter the Smile Diner.

Did anyone else hear the name of this diner and think of Hamlet and the whole, “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain” speech? It really made me think of Crowley too -- if you go read the speech, you’ll see what I mean: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_66.html.

BARTHAMUS: The famous Winchesters. DEAN: Some random demon. BARTHAMUS: Barthamus. Bart's fine. Please, sit. I ordered cherry pie. DEAN: Well, Bart, don't know what you've heard about us, but… BARTHAMUS: Everything. I've been following your careers a long time. You're a real pain in the pitchfork. And the halo. Natural disrupters. We have that in common, you and I. DEAN: Mm. Yeah, we're twinsies. (x)

Dean was a much better demon than this, and Dean was basically a shitty demon. Dean’s moral compass seems to be working perfectly here, though: some random demon, indeed.

Except... there’s the way the episode ends.

DEAN: You okay? SAM: Yeah, not really. Not exactly the best day, you know? DEAN: Well, it's not the worst. We did save somebody. That felt good. SAM: Yeah. Yeah, it did. But… [Sighs] back to square one with Jack. DEAN: We'll figure something else out. And if that doesn't work, then we'll move on to next, and then whatever's after that. We just keep working, 'cause it's what we do. SAM: It feels really good to hear you talk like that again. DEAN: I'll drink to that.

Sam and Dean clink their beer bottles and take a drink. (x)

So is Dean right here, too?

“It’s what we do,” Dean says about Hunting, as though he and Sam are only and entirely defined by Hunting, and that they do have an essential nature that can’t be changed, despite Dean’s recent bout of feelings.

If that’s really true, it’s an enormous problem, both for themselves and for Jack. Toxic masculinity is part of what they always do. Abusive fathers, the MoL’s sexism, the Angel breeding program, Mary/Dean making a deal, John/Sam sacrificing themselves...

If a person’s nature can’t ever be changed, all of these patterns are what the Winchesters are made up of and will always remain. That isn’t a very hopeful picture, so I kind of hope Dean’s wrong about he and Sam being nothing but their work.

Can people change?  Can they make different choices? Will the Winchesters make the same mistakes all over again at the end of the season -- will they sting the frog and doom themselves? Or will they try out new and better mistakes, and make it safely to the other side of the river along with the frog?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I’m hoping for something new, but I gotta say, I’m starting to think that Castiel and Jack are the frogs.

Previously:

I never opened myself this way (13x01 and 13x02)

You say you've only got one life to live (13x03, 13x04, 13x05)          

[akane171]

So, thought I'd switch here right away instead of writing into your comments again🙈 (Sry if this fails, I barely know anything about tumblr other than the ask box😅):

Ugh, yes, one would assume professional writers would know how to show not tell even with limited time🙄 

And jup about the strong woman thing, but I feel like this is a rather universal problem professional writers seem to have...😑 

Haha, I used to be cynical about the finale, too, but by now I've had so many sad/tragic/painful post-finale scenarios running through my head that I need to fake posivity till I make it cause the paaaaaaiiiinnn😂🙈

Six of Crows 😍😍😍 I love those idiots so much, I'm so glad they are even included in the Netflix Show 😍 But yeah, I haven't even actually read the Shadow&Bone books cause I saw parts of it and the way the story and characters developed and was like "NOPE! Not going through another anger issue trip like I did with The Mortal Instruments, nope nope nope." And oh god, yesss! PLEASE let's erase the love triangle trope from existence (past, present and future!)🤢🤮

Aww, I'm so sorry for you...😞😔 I have to admit that while I've seen Gundam SEED, it's been so long ago that I barely remember anything about it 😅🙈 And aww, the good ol' days of ff.net☺ So sad how dead it feels these days (for ao3 really is better...🙈)

Tbh, I'm afraid of getting my hopes up about the film, esp. after hearing Dylan O., Tyler H. and Arden probably won't be in it and even the rest wasn't clear yet😅 But seeing Parrish again would be awesome😍 Hopefully him and the "adults" (aka Chris, Melissa and the Sheriff, and hopefully Peter) will get their time to shine🙈 

But ohh, you hate Stiles? Don't worry, I'm not gonna sue you (😉), but may I ask why you don't like him? (I'm not really one to talk anyway, I've disliked Scott from very much the get go cause he was so annoyingly focused only on love🙈)

And excuse me? You PREDICTED his name?😱😍 How awe&some ARE you?!?😂😂😂

The Lightbringer is starting to sound better and better... You had me at "alternate version to Mon-El" (Mon's another of my all time faves AND a comfort character, so anyone who is like him? Shut up and take my money😉😂) And ohh, Karris really CAN'T be a coincidence!😅 (Maybe they are another reincarnation of Karamel from Lone Wulffe's PiaD?🤔) ...Now I'm REALLY itching to read the books🙈😅😂

CS was great, esp. very early CS cause they were a chaotic mess too😂 (Tho the shipping war-similarities between Captain Swan/Swan Queen and Karamel/Supercorp still terrify me to bits...🙈) 

And noooo, you gotta read PJO, those books are just too funny 😍 (I feel like no one's too old for those, but that's probably my biased constantly rereading butt talking😂). The SnowPiercer show is really nice! I can only recommend it 😁😍

PS: Well, "A Definite Maybe" IS a masterpiece!😏😌 And haha, yes, I did come by once (Wait, facepalming-since-chernobyl is you too?😂 Lol, I didn't even realize although I do tend to check in once a day or so😂🙈)

Anyway, sorry for the novel-length message and I hope you have an awe&some day!☺

XXX Welcome in hell 🤣 And they had six fucking seasons and I fell Kara from s2 and 2 was stronger than Kara from the last seasons, what is ridiculous 😑 but that's a fact. Can someone tell writers kicking butts and idiotic peptalks, mixed with boss girl trope is not powerful just... dumb? I see the finale made all people super pumped about possible future scenarios,awwwww 😑😑😑 great job, writers! I hope you cherish your collected money 😑😑😑 I'm on the fence with 6 of crows. I like the world but the characters should have been 30 years olds, not teens xD The person who invented the love triangle trope,I hope her she burns in hell. The only love triangle I accept is when they all end together but I guess this world doesn't meet my standards. The only thing about gundam you need to remember is that SEED was awesome and DESTINY sucked balls and we ignore its existence. But well,it was the anime that forceme to write the fics. They could fix marrish... but it's TW, so I'm sure they are goingto fuck it more. On the other hand,melissa and Chris are endgame there xD Predicting Stiles name waseasy when you are Polish. It hadto be long and dumb, so of course they chose Mieczysław. Mieciu for short. I'm still cackling about it. Read it! It's finished and cool. The magic system is awesome and characters are damn good and a lot is happening. Also, in the plot that there are many other universes exist,so why supergirl's world can't be apart of it? 😗 Yeah,I noticed a lot of ex sq are modern sc. I'm glad i was never part of the ouat fandom :,) Ok,I will put them on mynever ending lostof books to read. Maybe I will read them on my retirement... Yeaaaaah, it's me too. I like having blogs, I guess xD You are always welcomed here in the breaks of making LW happy with your sweet anons xD Thanks for coming 🥰