#what do you mean i have 0 big commitments for the next year and a half? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

backmarkerr · 5 months ago

Note

please....can u speak on the conspiracy

So the conspiracy (more like a theory, really) is that Kimi was pushed out of the team starting in 2008 to make way for Fernando, who was more appealing to the big sponsor coming in. Before you click out thinking "Max, that's stupid, no team would throw a championship for a sponsor." I agree! But keep in mind that they didn't throw the championship, they fully expected to win the WDC with Felipe (and almost did) and did in fact win the WCC in 2008 with Felipe and Kimi despite everything. But there were really suspicious things going on. So with that in mind...

It's 2008. Kimi has just won Malaysia, the second race of the season. Three days after his win, there's this:

Ok, kinda weird, but whatever. F1 runs on rumours, right? Suggesting that Kimi might retire when he's doing so well is silly. And in the article they seem to be pretty ambivalent over whether it would be Felipe or Kimi to leave.

Fast forward to Spain two races later. Kimi scores his second win of the season and takes the championship lead. The season is shaping up pretty well for the defence of the title, you’d think this would be a good time for him, but again, the story du jour is Ferrari wanting Alonso in Kimi’s seat for 2009.

[x] I guess now we know at least Massa's seat is secure...?

If you’re like me, that sounds stupid. The reigning champion just won the last GP and his contract runs until the end of 2010, so this media narrative makes no sense. Something pretty catastrophic would have to happen for that to ever come to fruition, right?

So anyway, he gets a first row start in Monaco. Great, that's almost a surefire win/points, right? Wrong, he got a drive-through penalty due to the team not fitting the wheels to the car on time before the race start. Not a great race and he ends up outside of the points. Lewis is now ahead in the WDC by 3 points. Not really a disaster, but...

[x] what on earth...

[x] again the talk of retirement.... I mean, it's weird, right?

Zero points in Canada due to being rear-ended in the pitlane, which the team can’t control. Then he’s back to being neck to neck with his teammate and Lewis by the time the British GP is done in early July, with all three drivers on 48 points. Good news, right? Just gotta stay on track and not fuck it up somehow.

[x] sigh... (this one's a little harder to source as it was printed media, but I've seen this exact interview quoted in different pages)

So anyway, they change his front suspension for the next race in Germany. Kimi has always been very sensitive to changes in the car, so he knew something was wrong. Ferrari (via Michael, who was then head of development) say he's just not adapting well to the upgrades. Maybe, sure, but why aren't you bringing upgrades that are geared towards your world champion?

(an interesting remark from Mark Hughes here if you scroll down to the comments, which adds weight to Kimi not being listened to when it came to car development in 2008)

Bar a podium in Hungary, Kimi scores 0 points in 4 out of the next 5 races. It takes until either Monza or Singapore (hello crashgate!) for Ferrari to put his suspension back as it was.

He proceeds to get 3 podiums in the remaining 3 races but it’s not enough to catch up. By Singapore he was already 27 points behind his teammate (reminder this is the old points system) and very much expected to play the supporting role. In the penultimate race in China he very obviously gave up P2 to his teammate:

"I know what the team expects." [x] / [x]

Yet the narrative in the media and from Ferrari themselves is that his motivation is bad and he's not assertive. It was so pervasive that to this day people still parrot it and say he just didn’t care after 2007, despite Kimi always stating he was fully committed and clearly getting annoyed whenever journalists asked about his motivation even years later.

Montezemolo at the end of 2008 even 'joked' that "Kimi in the recent races was replaced two or three times by a friend, but next year he'll be back." Basically saying that Kimi wasn't really present, you know? An interesting thing to say when this absent driver scored 18 points in the last 3 races (three consecutive P3s), while the one who was amazing and had the team's full backing scored 20 (P7, P2, P1).

A whole 2 points' difference, maybe someone should hire that "friend"...

So why did they do this?

Well, the theory is that Santander (I promise this isn’t like the dumb Sainztander takes) wanted a Spanish-Brazilian lineup due to financial interests (Spanish bank, big market in South America with a looming IPO in Brazil), so Kimi was basically being pressured out of the team from early 2008 onwards. Like I said at the start, the team weren’t really throwing away 2008, as they expected to win the WCC with both drivers (they did) and Massa to be able to win the WDC, which would of course be beneficial for their new sponsor. And he almost did. Almost.

[x] they're not in charge of driver selection but this specific driver line-up would good for them. (this archived copy of the article is from 2010, but the text makes it clear it's from 2009)

Of course at this point we have to wonder if a team like Ferrari would bow down to a sponsor's demands. I can't tell you what the internal considerations were or how much money was on the line, but it's also not like Santander were telling them to get rid of Kimi for a bad driver, you know? Fernando is a great driver, so from Ferrari's perspective they were just trading a great driver for another great driver who also appealed to this huge sponsor, and an Alonso-Massa line-up would be solid. And with the previous talk that Ferrari and Alonso had already inked a deal in 2008... It's just difficult to believe there isn't a grain of truth here.

So the alleged initial plan of having Alonso in 2009 was foiled when Kimi activated the renewal option in his contract. It was then that he was bought out of his last year (apparently paid for by Santander).

[from the book The Unknown Kimi Raikkonen]

As we can see, by the end Kimi was also fed up with what was going on, especially people pointing the finger at him and at his motivation, and his frustration is very clear in interviews like here at 2.35 and here:

Publicly, Ferrari said they wanted someone more in line with how Michael used to be (ironic since Montezemolo allegedly didn’t like how Michael made the team his), who could communicate with the team and give better feedback (ironic when Todt, Dyer, Stella and others said Kimi was very clear and precise.) Kimi himself has always stated that he wasn’t the issue, that his motivation was never lacking and that the real reason he was pushed out was politics and money.

[x]

If it had only been the mechanical stuff, I’d be willing to chalk it up to just bad luck and incompetence. Shit happens. But with all the rumours around it even before things went bad on the track and Kimi stating that his work and performance weren't the reason he was let go it becomes impossible for me to think there wasn’t an actual push going on to replace him.

Hell, even famed Ferrari fanboy Sebastian Vettel didn't think it was realistic for Kimi to return to Ferrary in 2014 precisely because Kimi isn't one for "bullshit" and "politics". Why would he choose to say that specifically? And according to Finnish media Kimi’s 2014 Ferrari negotiations included Montezemolo personally apologising to him. Now why would he apologise if they hadn’t done something wrong?

Personally I think Kimi's "certain people did certain things" refers to this. He never trashed anyone and always said he had no ill-feelings. And I believe him. But it doesn't mean nothing happened, lest we forget how well he handled Lotus not paying him.

The thing that really bothers me is that Kimi got the reputation for having low motivation and not caring about what he was doing (I heard that take just last month from an F1 youtuber, how Fernando was hired in 2010 because Kimi had mentally checked out 🙄), when obviously someone who wasn’t motivated and didn’t care would have simply called it quits under these circumstances. Instead he got P3 in the standings in 2008 (I know he’s talented, but he must have been trying at least a little), trained hard to lose enough weight to use KERS in 2009 (why would he do that if he didn’t care) and took the team’s only win that year despite the car being shit. Interestingly, pundits acknowledged his good performance complicated things when it came to Ferrari’s rumoured hiring of Alonso. So imagine how much more complicated things would have been had Kimi done better in 2008?

Anyway, this is long, but if you want something longer then I definitely recommend this post here. You might not agree completely with the original authors (there are parts where I wish there was more info), but I think they offer a lot of good research and information regarding the overall situation back in 2008/2009, and it's a good jump-off point for your own research.

But yeah. 2008 could have been everything. Or at least better.

#asks #i rambled and still didn't talk about a lot of stuff like michael favouring massa with development (the video shows it though)#or the Todt(Schumi-Brawn-Byrne)-Montezemolo power struggle #but you know that's just a theory. a film theo--- jk jk #if i missed out any links i'll add them as soon as i can. i have 70 tabs open :') some printed media can only be sourced second hand...#and ofc some claims will never have non-fan/rumour sources. otherwise it would be fact and not a conspiracy theory ;)#i tried to keep it to just some examples and screenshots. if you google you'll find plenty of more examples and info #every time i edit this it pushes the Read More cut further down what the hell....#posted and just found the first mistake. it was a front row start in monaco08 sorry! look i'm tired.... wall text lol #and i also realise i didn't post any examples of nando fanning the flames but he did lol... look it's late.....#reminder i love michael and kimi and nando #133th edit: typos lol

54 notes · View notes

tigergirltail · 10 months ago

Text

TIGER HRT CHAPTER 2 - MONTH 0 - EXPECTATIONS

FIRST/PREV - NEXT

---

It's been six months. Six months since that weird doctor and his inane little test to prove I'm ready, or at least, ready enough. Six months since I signed a stack of liability waivers forfeiting my right to pursue legal action for any reason up to and including untimely death. Only DAYS left before I can finally claim the entire reason I was there in the first place.

I came home today to find an information package in the mail - things I need to know before making my final commitment to the treatment. It's somewhat reassuring, really. By the sounds of it, this guy has to deal with all kinds of odd requests - I heard a rumour that someone went to him for a chimera treatment at one point - which means that he has to do all this research into side effects personally. …Although there's no telling how much of this is speculation. Concerning.

The information package is divided into different headings, roughly organized by risk factor and how outwardly noticeable they are, as if he's right here with me, trying to scare me off from it.

I decided before I even went to him that I wasn't going to let myself be scared again. Let's see what I'm in for. I sit down and start reading…

SKELETAL STRUCTURE

"Subject's height will noticeably increase. Increase of six inches is expected, increase of one foot is possible."

Huh. I guess I wouldn't mind being taller, but that's definitely going to affect what kinds of clothes I can wear. And I guess I might also get a bit wider proportionally? I'm already plus-size, maybe it'll just level it out.

"Subject may experience a conversion from plantigrade (walking on soles) to digitigrade (walking on toes)."

That makes me stop and think. I'd basically have to re-learn how to walk, and no doubt there's going to be an awkward intermediate period. Will my feet get bigger as well? They're big enough to make me dysphoric as it is. I wonder if I can get custom footwear made… I wonder how much that will cost…

"Subject will experience a reconfiguration of fingers to allow for retractable claws. Persistent soreness is to be expected."

Bluh. I've bitten my nails too close enough times to know how much it sucks not to be able to put pressure on my fingers without pain. I wonder how long that particular effect will last. Due to the lack of timeframe, I can only guess. Months, maybe. Years, I doubt it, but possibly.

"Subject's cranial and facial structure will experience long-term reformation. The effect this will have on brain function is unknown.

And here we get into "you signed a waiver" territory. I had accepted at the outset that death was a possibility, but I'm not sure how to feel about the risk of permanent brain damage. None of the other accounts of therian HRT I've heard seem to mention this, though, so maybe it's just speculation? I move on to the next heading.

DIET

"Tigers, like all felines, are obligate carnivores. Subject will be required to eat real meat (no substitutions) at every meal, or risk symptoms of starvation."

This had already occurred to me, to be honest. Part of the reason a white tiger is my fursona in the first place is because I am an unrepentant meat enjoyer. Heck, maybe a feline body will make meat taste even better.

"Lingering human characteristics may make it possible to digest other food, but the nutritional benefit to subject will be negligible."

…Ah. This was less expected. Does this mean I'll have to start thinking of things like bread and fruit as basically candy? Worse, will I have to avoid it? I love me a good grilled cheese, and poutine is basically an addictive substance, am I going to have to swear off some of my longtime favourites? Out of all of the effects so far, this is the one to give me the most hesitation. Yes, I love food, I'm not afraid to admit it.

"Subject is likely to lose cravings for non-meat food entirely."

I have to sit back and process this one. Back when I started human HRT, one of the things that gave me pause was the idea of decreased libido. That was one of the few things about my body that didn't make me dysphoric, unlike a lot of trans people whose stories I'd read. In the first few months, though, I found it settled into a pleasant sort of medium, where I could have it if I wanted, but it wouldn't show up out of nowhere. Maybe this will be the same way? Maybe poutine can still be a sometimes food? Cats eat weird stuff that's not healthy for them sometimes, but it's fine, right?

Some part of me considers holding a funeral for the abstract concept of poutine.

On to the final heading…

SENSORY EFFECTS

"Subject will gain heightened night vision and hearing. This will cause sleep to become significantly more difficult."

Trust a doctor to find the one downside to one of the coolest effects of the treatment… Do you even know how much I want to hear every beat of the world around me? Do you even understand how useful it would be to be able to see in the dark effortlessly? Having a tiger's eyes and ears would be almost worth every single downside by itself.

Besides, I'm a very heavy sleeper.

"Subject's hearing frequency range will become significantly more broad than a human's. High-pitched noises such as dog whistles will be audible and painful."

Well, I'm sure that's going to suck sometimes, but I don't think I'm exposed to such noises on the regular. Although… I suppose I wouldn't know, with my feeble human frequency range. It's something that might be fine or might suck, I guess.

"Subject's sense of touch will be strongly affected by fur growth."

Sure, that tracks, but I'm kind of looking forward to it. Maybe it's comparable to wearing a full-body fursuit? I've actually missed having opportunities to fullsuit, and I've thought about commissioning a new one if I saved up enough money, but I suppose that won't be necessary now.

Much of the rest of the document is a reminder that everything listed is Permanent and Irreversible short of Major Surgery, with some reminders of the various rights to litigate that I've waived. Ultimately, it sounds like I've got some big changes ahead, but nothing I've seen here is a dealbreaker.

It's slightly terrifying, but I'm excited.

I can't wait to hear the rain through a tiger's ears.

#tiger hrt #therian hrt #animal hrt #trans #transgender #furry hrt

42 notes · View notes

xf-cases-solved · 6 months ago

Text

S1E3: Squeeze

Case: People in Baltimore are being killed in rooms with locked doors and no windows. How is it happening?? Oh, also, their corpses all had their livers ripped out of their guts with someone's bare hands. Old 90s computer technology is used to stretch out fingerprints. An old man compares the murders to genocide (it is not as bad as genocide). There is more bile in this episode than any television episode ever should have. Scully's old douchey friend Colton is on the case! Or, well, at least he was, until Mr. and Mrs. Spooky swooped in...

Does someone die in the cold open: Yes. Our first cold open victim—Baltimore office man who should have just gone home after his lackluster presentation.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: No, but he does reference an old X-File and cites his sources.

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Not only does the evidence survive, but they have evidence for it from 100 years ago.

Whodunit: Eugene Victor Tooms. I am certain he will never come up again.

Convictions: He got put behind some bars. I am certain this will prevent him from committing crimes forever.

Did they solve it: Yes. Even tho they picked Tooms up for assaulting Scully and not murdering and cannibalizing people, they can have this one. I'm feeling generous, and also I know what happens later, so I'll let them enjoy it while it lasts lmfao.

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: Traumatized retired cops in wheelchairs. Have you ever needed to spice up your plot line because you're not quite able to make the audience understand how high the stakes are since, in the larger scheme of the show, five murders every sixty years, especially in Baltimore, doesn't really feel like that big of a deal? Try randomly introducing a traumatized retired cop in a wheelchair!*

*Please note: Traumatized retired cops in wheelchairs are not for all plot lines, and may result in slightly cringe references to the Holocaust. Intended for external use only.

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 1!!! They did it, gang!

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, it's me": 1

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 1

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 0

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 1

Total Number of Sexually Charged and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 3 (necklace scene)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed: 1

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 2

Total Number of Nosebleeds: 4

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 2

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 0 :(

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 1 (b/c i heard someone say Baltimore in the beginning and i wrote it down so i wouldn't forget lol)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 0 (but the next episode is "conduit," so i anticipate this stat changing...)

#txf cases solved #s1e3: squeeze #msr #txf #the x-files

7 notes · View notes

shiny-miltank · 1 year ago

Text

A leche hobbies update:

Update on knitting adventures: almost done with a scarf I started 🤔 dropped stitches everywhere but it really helps with my adhd to have something in my hands to play with while feeling like I’m working towards something! Don’t think I’ll show it off though LMAO, it’s ugly as a scarf but I like it as a “baby’s first scarf” to look back on when I get better. And it’s warm :)!

Other thing: picked up a sewing machine from the good will and still in really great shape and working! Its old and has character and I love it HAH. I’m learning from my abuelita on her own machine. It’d be great to combine this and knitting to make essentials and to repair clothes that really need it.

Drawing/not really a hobby it’s my “Jobby”: sorry for being a lil slow on updates! I got a little bit of burnout and I really want to finish summers commissions so I can clear my schedule more. I’m just about done so I’m no longer chipping on three projects at a time between my full time job oof-but do know they are being worked on. I’ve got adoptables on the way and sketching the next ask-n update! I’ve also been keeping an eye on other places to post like insta and bluesky but I feel like I need to like…observe? Some more? Before committing and learning whole new platforms and posting schedules bleh.

I got other projects in the pipeline, one including a pmd thing, more Paldea headcanons and what not and some certain purple psychic cat things returning. But all in due time! Can’t overwhelm myself : 0

And a little bit of a rant or ramble about perhaps dropping a longtime hobby I’ve had and feeling sad about it beneath the cut ;( but if you’ve read this far thanks! Love ya’ll for supporting me!

I think a handful of you? Know I roleplay on this platform and have for a good seven? Eight? Years. It’s fun, a lot of my ideas and headcanons and art I’m known for were actually jump started by some random thread or idea from between my rp partners and what not. The Mewtwo blog, ask-n, scarlet turo and etc etc were old muses or ideas that turned into their own thing. It’s always been so easy to write and collaborate your ideas with the rp community you’re in and it becomes it’s whole big thing!

But I know it hasn’t always been the healthiest hobby for me after awhile but esp when I want to focus on content creation as a job that I’m really into. I no longer have the time to maintain plots and characters despite being so determined to stick to it. It’s becoming more of a distraction of just scrolling down the rp dashboard out of FOMO more then anything and heck I can’t even see most of it as a lot of events and verses and etc I blacklist to attempt to curb anxiety and distractions which haven’t been working lately 🤔 I still get lots of anxiety.

That and the community’s changed really. I know every old rper has typed their piece on “back in the good old days-“, leaves their blog and doesn’t give any useful advice or attempt to change the narrative lol. I don’t want to do that.

And it’s not the communities fault either. It’s natural for spaces to change to help new ideas and new people come in. It just means maybe it’s no longer meant for me and that’s okay. If anything it’s more how my friends I’ve been with for all my time there have left or are leaving. There’s a disconnect I can’t seem to get over no matter what new muse or idea I promote esp when I’m no longer comfortable in the space I enjoyed for so long. I never had to block so many things before and again not the communities fault and none of the things I’m blocking are unsavory, it’s more like my tastes and likes and dislikes and what I have spoons for have just become different over so long. It’s totally a me thing.

It’s in my mind that maybe it’s okay to let it go since I’m getting so hyped for my newer hobbies and the ideas I have for my art/comics. I don’t have the time anymore to dedicate so much energy on it like I use to esp when even over all my work Im still figuring out my adhd after getting diagnosed officially, new meds, the other mental diagnosis that makes the mental soup in my head alongside other life stuff.

I owe rp in general for helping me get that creative spark and through a lot of tough, long dark times. It’s provided me with the escapism and outlet since like, forever. I started rping in ye old Neopet neomail days and haven’t stopped since besides the occasional period that didn’t last long. Who knows maybe this is just a rut and I’ll feel better tomorrow or next week or something. Could be the change of seasons where my seasonal depression kicks in but I’m not quitting yet but it’s somewhere in the funky mind palace as I navigate this weird patch.

Thanks if you’ve read my ramblings this far! I wish there was a way to reward peeps who read through my long jargon? It just feels good to know I can scream into the void and sometimes I’ll have one or two people nod at me in understanding. Idk, I’ll think of something—

#leche text

15 notes · View notes

thommi-tomate · 1 year ago

Text

Holger Badstuber column

Hello football fans!

The first title of the new season has already been awarded - and the winner is not FC Bayern München. In the 3-0 Super Cup defeat against RB Leipzig, everyone saw that FCB are still missing elements. It was not only a setback before the start of the Bundesliga next Friday, but an alarming setback.

When you concede such a clear defeat in your own stadium, you must - as bitter as this realization is for coach Thomas Tuchel - go back to the basics first. And that means: defend, defend, defend and all together! For a long time now, Bayern's defensive work has looked increasingly sloppy, not carried out with the utmost consistency, and even sloppy at times. That includes the whole team, everyone has to do their part! After a rather disappointing season, FC Bayern are under even more pressure.

That's why I would advise them not to set the treble as their goal for the season. Winning the Champions League would be free skating, the focus should be on domestic titles.

Harry Kane as FC Bayern's ace?

With Harry Kane, FC Bayern has a real asset. He is an asset for the Bundesliga, which has to fight against the reputation of becoming a training league for England and Spain - and of course for the club itself. An undisputed number nine like Kane has been missing since the departure of Robert Lewandowski.

There is no doubt about his quality. He knows how to set up, score goals, of course, and he will fit in well because he is world class. When I think that Bayern are going to pay Tottenham over €100 million for a 30-year-old, I can only shake my head, it's crazy, but when I look at the current transfer market, the sums have shot up all over the place.

Kane is now the big hit, the king of signings, and I am also convinced that it will pay off. However, I also raise my finger in warning, remind them of the vacuum after Lewy and call on those in charge not to let the opportunity slip this time to find a suitable successor in time. It must be ready in three to four years: preparatory work must begin now.

Defensive midfield needs strengthening

Kane is important, but the biggest construction site in the Bayern squad still exists. The width is definitely high quality. But: The six-man position in the defensive midfield is not defined clearly enough.

A true six-man is physically strong, tall, plays simply, wins duels, wins balls and is there when things are on fire. He takes "dirty" runs that others would be too shy for. I don't see Kimmich, Laimer, Goretzka or Gravenberch in this role. I'm thinking more of a player type like Casemiro, Rodri or a Busquets in top form. Or even someone like Javi Martinez in 2012/13 at Bayern. If this building site is not closed, there could be further problems. Even if Benjamin Pavard leaves or if there really is uncertainty at the goalkeeper position, reinforcements will be needed.

What I would also like to see in terms of commitment is that ALL the values that FC Bayern have always stood for with their irrepressible winning mentality are also lived with conviction, that they embody them outwardly.

That would not only increase the chances of winning titles, but would also have the nice side effect of making the whole club a little more united again.

With this in mind: See you soon!

Source

#holger badstuber #fc bayern münchen #holger badstuber columm

6 notes · View notes

jungshookz · 4 years ago

Text

the one where yoongi hates his therapist but kind of likes her receptionist; lveb!verse

➺ pairing; min yoongi x reader

➺ genre; lveb!universe equal parts emotionally constipated and cheeky yoongi!! the man of our dreams!! i don’t really know what to categorize this drabble as but it’s cute and it’s sfw <3

➺ wordcount: 5k

➺ summary; yoongi hates going to therapy - but you and your dumb little hershey kisses make it a tiny bit better, he supposes.

➺ what to expect; “you like a man who’s unable to form emotional bonds with people, baby?”

➺ optional reading: not necessary but feel free to read la vie en bonsai just to get a feel for what yoongi’s like and why we’re all falling hopelessly in love with him!!

»»————-　♡　————-««

“see you next week, yoongi!”

“uh-huh, yep.” the smile on yoongi’s face drops as soon as he shuts the door behind him and he immediately rolls his eyes

well

that was an hour and a half of his life that could’ve gone towards something more productive

watching paint dry probably would’ve been more productive than whatever the hell that was

dr. i-don’t-have-chairs-but-i-have-beanbags basically spent the entire session asking him to list out things that he loved which he thought was going to be an easy task because he liked a lot of things!

and everything was easy peasy lemon squeezy until dr. glittery-purple-nameplate pointed out that yoongi kept saying that he ‘liked’ this and he ‘liked’ that and he’d never actually said he ‘loved’ anything once and then she went into the whole ‘why do you think you’re so scared of love?’ thing and his eyes rolled so far back into his skull that he actually saw his pink, wrinkly brain

he knows that she’s just doing her job but he’d really appreciate if one of his sessions with her just consisted of the two of them sitting in silence while scrolling through their phones

he even asked her one time if it’d be alright if they did that just so he could tell his friend (the one that sent him here) that he willingly sat through an entire session of therapy

obviously she said no and yoongi resisted the urge to use that as an excuse to give her 1/5 stars on google reviews (unfortunately the option to give 0 stars isn’t available)

it’s just really hard to believe that dr. are-you-more-comfortable-opening-up-to-my-homemade-handpuppet-rory-the-lion has 5/5 shining gold stars on basically every single one of her google reviews

yoongi should be happy that he’s going to one of the best therapists in the city but he’s noT because: he doesn’t even need therapy!

he doesn’t even know why he’s here!

he shouldn’t be in therapy!

he’s min frickin yoongi!!

what the hell does he need a therapist for??

what the hell does he need therapy for?!

he can literally solve his own problems

if he’s sad he just plays video games all day and also eats an entire pint of ice cream

if he’s mad he just plays violent video games all day and aggressively shoves an entire pint of ice cream into his mouth

he’s spent his entire life coming up with different coping mechanisms for himself and he thinks that he has a pretty good grip on his emotions

the only one that he’s a little iffy about is obviously <3 love <3 but-

that’s not a big deal, is it?

yes, technically speaking, he’s “emotionally unavailable” or whatever, but he really doesn’t know why that’s such an issue

yes, the thought of committing to someone in a long-term relationship and the thought of saying “i love you” to someone makes him want to rip his skin off but again, he really doesn’t know why that’s such a big iSSUE

besides

emotional unavailability is sexy

whenever he tells someone that he’s incapable of loving and the sex we’re going to have in three seconds will be animalistic and primal and will also mean nothing to me whatsoever their underwear basically flies off their legs and out the window

so, again: what! is! the! big! problem!

the only reason why he’s here is because, as mentioned earlier, one of his friends set up an appointment for him because god knows he’s not here of his own accord

(also, she did it without asking him first, so he’s still a little upset with her, but she made him a whole batch of brownies as a form of an apology so now he’s a little less upset with her. just a little, though.)

he knows she means well and only wants the best for him but he’s starting to think that maybe she sent him here to torture him and not to help him

his original plan was to go for like one or two sessions and then end it there buT there’s just a teeny little detail he has yet to mention

there is one (1) thing that keeps him coming back every week

he’d even go as far as to say that this thing is the only thing that motivates him to continue to waste his hard-earned money on these weekly appointments

and that thing is-

“yoongi!” your eyes light up and yoongi can’t help but smile at how excited you are to see him even though you literally saw him when he was checking in an hour and a half ago, “how was your session?”

“it was-”

“oh, wait!” you gasp before pressing a finger up against your lips, “i don’t know if i’m legally allowed to ask you that. pretend i didn’t said anything.”

“my session was fine-” yoongi ignores you as he folds his arms up on the counter and leans forward, “i’m still dead on the inside and the concept of love remains ever so terrifying, so… yeah! everything’s pretty much the same.”

“ah, yes.” you lean forward as well, “that’s exactly what every girl wants to hear.”

“oh yeah?” the corner of yoongi’s mouth twitches in a smirk, “you like a man who’s unable to form emotional bonds with people, baby?” he asks in a particularly sultry tone and you grin in response

“you gotta stop calling me that before i fully fall in love with you, yoongi-” you sigh dramatically before flittering your lashes at him and yoongi laughs lightly, “well, it is what it is. one day at a time, right?”

“baby steps.” yoongi hums and you nod in agreement before suddenly perking up

“hey- you want a kiss?”

another reason why yoongi enjoys your company is because you keep a little gumball machine on your desk

except you despise gumballs (you told him that on his very first day here when he asked you why there were no gumballs in what was obviously a mini gumball machine) so you filled it up with hershey’s chocolate kisses instead (you change the flavour of them every week! last week they were the milk chocolate almond ones)

“a kiss? from you?” yoongi digs his hands into his pockets, “at least let me put some chapstick on first, darling.”

“you know what i mean, yoongi.” you roll your eyes playfully before plopping the machine down in front of him, “they’re the cookies and creme ones this week!”

"mhm. whatever helps you sleep at night, y/n.”

♡

“see you next week, yoongi!”

“you got it, chief.” yoongi forces a smile before promptly shutting the door behind him

he lets out a huff before shaking his hair out of his eyes

somehow the hour and a half in there felt more like four hours and a half

he kept looking at the clock and whenever he thought that at least a good twenty minutes had gone by, it’d turn out that only like two and a half minutes had gone by!

he feels like maybe once the door is shut that time just ceases to exist

today he was forced to talk about all of the romantic relationships he’s ever had and that’s something that he’s never really discussed with… anyone, really.

not even his closest friends!

yoongi’s had a multitude of flings but he’s been in three serious-ish relationships (yes, he knows that’s a huge surprise) - obviously none of them worked out because he’s now in therapy for his intimacy issues, but still

needless to say, they messed him up pretty bad

see, his problem was (and you probably wouldn’t be able to guess it after looking at him) the fact that he… fell in love too hard and way too fast.

his first one was in high school - he was pretty much ready to marry this girl and even gave her a promise ring to which she freaked out and broke up with him on the spot

(she said she felt that it would be better if they broke up since they were both going off to different universities and long distance relationships were tough)

(on the same day they broke up she immediately changed her facebook status back to single which yoongi thought was a pretty icy thing to do)

his second one was in his first year of university (not very long after the high school breakup because that’s how desperate he was to fall in love again) and he wasn’t super sure if he loved this person or if he just wanted to fill the empty void inside of him bUT after two months of dating yoongi asked them if they wanted to move into the same dorm together for the second semester of first year - they said no.

and then they broke up with him.

and yoongi ended up with a single-person dorm, which was great!

:D because it meant no one could hear him crying himself to sleep at night worrying that he would never find true love and that no one would ever love him :D

and finally, with his last relationship, he told [unnamed person because yoongi would like to keep that private, thank you very much] that he loved them, like, two weeks after they’d started properly dating (they’d known each other for a year before getting together so yoongi didn’t think it was that weird. it’s not that weird, right??)

long story short, they didn’t say it back, and instead responded with: “oh! thank… you?” and that was a pretty devastating (and humiliating) blow for yoongi and it was after that breakup that he decided that things just had to change

he couldn’t be this person for the rest of his life!

this pathetic wimpy shrimPY little ‘<3 i love you <3’ weak-ass PUNK

eventually he figured that if he just turned all his emotions off, he wouldn’t run into anymore issues

it’s like that saying mo’ money mo’ problems except in this case it would be less emotions less problems

and he thinks it’s been working out pretty well for him so far!

he’s never gotten attached to any of his one-night stands (although he can’t say the same for them, because c’mon - he’s an absolute catch)

and he kind of takes pleasure knowing that they want to have something more with him when he doesn’t want anything at all

he likes playing with feelings

it’s like dangling a piece of candy over a little baby

it’s fun!

…does that make him a twisted individual?

is he going to go to hell for being a little emotionally manipulative?

also he always finds himself snickering whenever one of his friends started talking about how much they love (gags) their significant others

even the one who sent him here - she just started dating someone in her apartment building - is fully in love with her significant other (he might even go as far to say it was love at first sight for the both of them (double gag)) and sometimes yoongi has to shove a croissant into her mouth just to get her to stop blabbing about how fond she is of her boyfriend

after all this time, yoongi has finally figured out that love is merely a concept

it’s not real!

it’s an idea.

love is not real.

so, again - yoongi genuinely doesn’t see the issue with being emotionally unavailable.

this isn’t just him being stubborn or anything - he literally cannot come up with one single reason as to why being emotionally constipated is such a bad thing

real life constipation is pretty bad but emotional constipation is totally fine!

emotions make everything that much more difficult and he doesn’t have the time nor the energy to deal with it

being emotionally unavailable makes life easy, breezy AND beautiful!

...

of course, there is the one slight issue that sometimes pops into his mind

is he okay with being like this for the rest of his life?

because if he is, he’s… literally going to die alone.

sure, his friends will be there (unless they die before him, in which case he’s actually going to be alone), but even yoongi has to admit that platonic companionship and romantic companionship are two entirely different things

is he truly incapable of falling in love with someone?

he... doesn’t like thinking about that

he prefers to keep those gloomy thoughts tucked away in the dusty basement of his brain

he’d much rather think about-

“yoongi!” you greet as enthusiastically as always as yoongi rounds the corner, “have fun today?”

fun?

in therapy?

that’s hilarious.

“fun? oh, yeah.” yoongi snorts as he folds his arms up on the countertop, “i even got to talk to rory today.”

the two of you exchange knowing glances and you snort before quickly reaching up to clap a hand over your mouth

hey!

you’re supposed to be supportive of rory’s role in therapy!

he has a very important job

one might say that his job of providing emotional support is far more important that yours, you measly little receptionist

you make appointments all day but rory saves lives

“well, i’m… glad that rory is helping you during these trying times.” you clear your throat as you straighten up in your seat

if you get caught making fun of rory you’re dead meat

“mhm.” yoongi nods before leaning over a little, “now gimme a kiss, babe.”

your heart skips a beat in your chest and you can’t help but grin when yoongi turns his head and points to his cheek, “well?”

“milk chocolate caramel this week, babe.” you hum as you place the little gumball machine in front of him

“ooh, yummy-“ yoongi’s eyes widen in excitement as he cranks the metal knob, “so, you got any plans tonight?”

a single kiss plops out and he opens up the little metal flap to take it out

“eh, i mean i guess i do?” you shift in your seat before shrugging, “sort of.”

yoongi raises a brow as he unwraps the tin foil, “what’s that supposed to mean? you got a hot date or something?”

“...yep!”

wait what

yoongi pauses right as he’s about to pop the chocolate into his mouth

because he was… just kidding about that

that was supposed to be a joke

“oh!” yoongi clears his throat, “well, who- who are you… who are you going out with? tell me about them.”

“oh, you don’t wanna-” you shake your head, “the details are boring, i promise it’s nothing to geek out over-”

“no, c’mon! tell me.” yoongi shoves the wrapping into his mouth as the chocolate melts over his tongue, “give me the deets.”

“alright, well…” you reach up to push your glasses up, “i actually met him at the club that he works at! he’s a bartender. we’ve gone out on a couple of dates and he’s really nice! he’s super nice, i just- i don’t know. i guess i just- there’s not much of a spark, you know? he’s taken me out four times and he kissed me on the last one and it was nice but… i don’t know. i’m not sure i even know where i’m going with this story- b-but he’s nice!”

yoongi nods slowly as he pokes his tongue against the inside of his cheek

well

good for you!

whatever

you’re going on a date and it’s whatever

it’s not like he cares

because if he cared it would imply that he has feelings for you

and in case it wasn’t already clear, yoongi is incapable of having any feelings at all because that’s just who he is

he’s spent years building his status as an emotionless android and he’s not going to let a stinky girl like you ruin it (you are not stinky. you smell like pears and it’s very pleasing to his nostrils. and he hates that he spent thirty minutes at the drugstore sniffing multiple shampoos until he found the one that he’s pretty sure is the one you use. and now his pillows smell like you.)

“nice, nice…” yoongi mutters under his breath, “anyways, i should, um, probably go! i’m like, two minutes away from getting a parking ticket-” he laughs nervously before reaching up to scratch the back of his head

“oh! okay, yeah-” you take the gumball machine down and set it back down next to your monitor, “are you- is everything okay?”

yoongi’s no longer looking at you and you’re usually the first one to break eye contact so this is… odd

“yeah, i just- i remembered i had a thing, so-” yoongi coughs into his fist, “yeah, i gotta go.”

“should i- should i put you down for next week, or-” you get up from your seat quickly when yoongi basically sprints towards the elevators

“yeah!” he flicks his wrist at you, “um, yeah- go for it. i’m just gonna-”

ding!

the elevator doors slide open and yoongi rushes in at the speed of light

“s-same time, or-”

the door glide shut before you get a chance to finish asking your question and you can’t help but feel a little… rejected?

even though you’re not entirely sure what it is you’re being rejected by

that was weird

that was weird, right?

it’s not just your imagination?

you frown to yourself as you plop back down on your squeaky chair

maybe your chocolates tasted funky or something?

you unwrap one for yourself before popping it into your mouth

…

no, the chocolates are fine!

what went wrong?

you chew on the inside of your cheek anxiously as you quickly go through what just happened

everything was fine

everything was normal up until the point you said you were going out on a date…

oOh, maybe you shouldn’t have brought up dates or anything like that

you don’t know too much about yoongi’s sessions besides the fact that he has intimacy issues but maybe the subject of dating was triggering for him?

damnit

you idiot!

this is why you could never be a therapist because you’d probably end up traumatizing your patients instead of helping them

you should’ve just told yoongi that your plans tonight involved NO dating and it was just going to be you going to town on a pizza at home

it’s too bad

you were kind of hoping the reason why he started acting so weirdly was because he didn’t want you to go out on a date

here’s the thing:

you… you sort of… have a little crush on yoongi. at least, you think you do.

you can’t help it!

he’s surprisingly very sweet and he has that boyish charm that you’re really into anD he’s also super goofy AND hello!!!! even when you’re not wearing your glasses you can see that he’s really attractive!!!

sometimes you find yourself daydreaming about that smirk of his

it just makes you feel tingly

...

what were you talking about again?

right!

you’re pretty sure the two of you use the same shampoo and you don’t want to be that person but...

match made in heaven?

you’d like to think so.

you just don’t want to ruin this super fun and bantery and also kind of flirty relationship you have with him (though, now that you’re thinking about it, you can’t help but wonder if it’s actual flirting or if yoongi’s just doing his thing) and you knoW he’s definitely going to freak out if you’re suddenly like hey,.,. do u,.,. maybe wanna go out on a date or something.,,. because i think i have a teeny crush on you because even though you’re dead on the inside you are OBSCENELY charming and witty and attractive and everything i want in a significant other,.,.

yoongi would run for the hills if he ever found out you felt that way about him!

“good going, y/n.” you grumble to yourself as you lean back against your chair

well

you can worry about your yoongi-related issues later

you have a date with a cute bartender to get to

a cute, very nice bartender

♡

yoongi’s jealous.

at least, he thinks he’s jealous

this is weird, right?

because yoongi doesn’t get jealous!

he doesn’t get jealous over anything so whY does he not like the idea of you going out with someone who isn’t him?

yoongi squeezes his fingers tighter around his steering wheel as he stares ahead with knitted brows

he left the office like half an hour ago and now he’s just been sitting in his car in silence

and before you ask, yes, there was a parking ticket tucked behind his windshield wiper when he came down here

“jealous, jealous…” yoongi mutters to himself before shaking his head and letting out a huff, “no. i’m not jealous. i’m not!”

he’s not jealous because he doesn’t like you!

he doesn’t!

he likes flirting with you, it doesn’t mean that he likes you

of course, if he didn’t like you… he wouldn’t be grinning like an idiot every time you greet him

if he didn’t like you, he would’ve called you out on your lame ‘you want a kiss?’ joke a long, lonG time ago - instead he just lets you keep saying it because he knows you like making the same joke over and over again

if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t be coming back to therapy every week, for crying out loud

if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t have bought pear-scented shampoo for himself

he should be buying manly shampoos!

like… winter breeze!

or… musky oak??

or diRTy monster truck??!? (he’s not sure if that’s an actual shampoo scent for men, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was)

you know, those kinds of scents!

not frickin pear

yoongi pauses when he realises that he actually doesn’t mind the thought of waking up next to you

he feels his heart skip a beat and he gasps in surprise before quickly slapping his hand up against his chest

oh god

it’s happening!

“…son of a bitch!” yoongi groans as he slams his head back against the headrest, “are you kidding me?!”

he’s feeling!

NO!!!!

that, or he’s having a heart attack

(he’d rather have the heart attack.)

yoongi turns his head right as you exit the building and he doesn’t know where these emotions are coming from but all of a sudden he’s being flooded with what can only be describe as…

pure, blinding rage

“what the hell did you put in those damn chocolates?!” yoongi slams the car door behind him and you practically leap ten feet into the air

“i have no money in my wallet i only have a starbucks gift card and it has like three dollars left on- oh.” you immediately relax when you realize that you’re not about to be robbed

it’s just yoongi

your eyes widen in slight fear when you see him storm his way over to you with his fists clenched at his sides looking like he wants to skin you alive

“you are unbelievable.”

“me??” you shake your head in confusion, “yoongi, what are you-” you pause to glance down at your watch, “why are you still here? you left, like, forty minutes ago-”

“answer the question, y/n!“ yoongi crosses his arms, “you did something to those chocolates! that’s the only reason why i’m feeling like this-”

“what- i don’t- is it your stomach or something?? maybe you’re lactose intolerant-”

“nO, i don’t mean i physically feel something-“ yoongi looks around before leaning in, “i’m feeling something.”

you frown

“yoongi, the chocolates aren’t special chocolates, if that’s what you’re implying. there are kids that come to the office, i can’t go around giving out marijuana infused hershey kisses-”

“i don’t want you to go out with your nice bartender guy!” yoongi blurts out, “because i… i want you to go out with me instead.”

you pull back in surprise before tilting your head curiously

…what?

“what do you- what are- what?” you ask incredulously before narrowing your eyes at him

did he just... ask you out?

yoongi swallows nervously

his pure rage has now been replaced by pure anxiety

“i’m saying that i-” yoongi shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, “i’m- i wanna be the one to take you out. o-on a date. or whatever they’re called.”

“you wanna take me out on a date?” you ask dumbly and yoongi rolls his eyes

“a.. i mean i guess it’s technically a da..ate...” yoongi’s mouth goes dry and you can see the panic quickly filling his pretty brown eyes

“we don’t- we don’t have to call it a date!” you perk up, “we can just... we can call it a... flirty hangout!”

“a flirty hangout?”

“a flangout.”

yoongi takes a second to think it over

a flangout

yeah!

he can do a flangout because a flangout is noT a date

“i’m sorry, i just-” you wave a hand in front of yourself, “i thought your whole schtick was that you didn’t believe in dates- flangouts- and ooey-gooey holding hands related situations, so why would you wanna-”

“because i like you!” yoongi groans before looking away from you and running a hand through his hair, “i think? i don’t know, okay? i know that i’m definitely attracted to- i just- you make me- i like talking to you after my sessions are over, and i like that you keep a gumball machine on your desk even though it still doesn’t make sense to me that you’ve filled it with kisses and not with actual gumballs, and i like that even though you know i, professionally speaking, have very intense intimacy issues, i-i like that you don’t judge me for it...” he trails off before letting out a breath and turning back to face you, “you can say no, obviously, but… i just think you’re really pretty and i think you know exactly what you’re doing whenever you ask me if i want a kiss.”

you blink owlishly at yoongi and he immediately feels like he’s about to projectile vomit everywhere

see??

this is exactly what he means when he says that feelings make literally everything ten times more complicated

he just told you that he likes you and now he just made things awkward!

which means noW he has to go find a new therapist-

wait, no

nope! he’s not going to find another therapist - he’s just going to noT go to therapy

why?

because min frickin’ yoongi doesn’t need therapy-

“i do.” yoongi looks at you with wide eyes when you suddenly speak up

you do

did… did he PROPOSE to you?!

great!!

of course he did!!

his feelings are back and they’re even worse than before-

“i do know exactly what i’m doing whenever i ask you if you wanna kiss-“ you hold up a finger to correct yourself, “if you want a kiss.”

“i’m happy with either one of those options-“

“there is one minor issue, though.” you turn your phone around to show yoongi, “what am i supposed to tell sweet tae?”

“who the hell is tae- ohhhh, bartender guy.” yoongi winces as he glances at your texts briefly, “i forgot about him.”

“nice bartender guy!!” you push your bottom lip out in a pout as you scroll through your texts with taehyung

:-(

his last message to you was ‘excited for tonight!! see you soon :-)’

:-(((((((

“do you… do you genuinely like him?” yoongi asks cautiously

“i mean, i- i don’t noT like him, you know?” you sigh and reach up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, “it’s just that… he’s so nice-”

“okay, i think we’ve got that part covered-”

“i don’t wanna break his heart!!” you whine, “what do i do?!”

“alright, here’s what you’re going to do-” yoongi clears his throat, “you go out with him tonight-”

“but i don’t want to lead him o-”

“you go out with nice bartender tae tonight to tell him that it’s over. and you tell him that you’ve really enjoying spending time with him, but you feel like the two of you would be better off as friends. it’s simple, it’s clean, it’s straight to the point! no harm, no foul.” yoongi dusts his hands off before smiling proudly, “and then i’ll take you to the mcdonalds drive-thru for dessert.”

“i mean, i guess so…” you purse your lips in thought, “should i, like… if he kisses me or something, should i kiss him back?”

“you’re going to pity-kiss him?” yoongi gasps dramatically before tutting at you, “wow. and i’m the one in therapy.”

“wha-”

“now, c’mon-” yoongi places his hand on the small of your back as he leads you towards his car, “let me drive you to your gross date so that we can go on our cool flangout afterwards-”

“you know, they’re doing a limited edition chips ahoy mcflurry right now-“ you grin excitedly as yoongi opens the door for you, “you wanna split one with me?”

“split one?” yoongi scoffs and bends down a little so he can look you directly in the eye, the corner of his mouth curling upwards in a teasing smirk, “baby, i’ll get you your very own mcflurry-”

(it turns out that taehyung actually planned to end things tonight, too - he said if you ever made your way back to his bar he’d give you a cocktail on the house! so, it looks like you can have your cake and eat it too.)

help me help you make your wishes come tru (aka send me a request)

requested drabbles masterlist

807 notes · View notes

writingquestionsanswered · 4 years ago

Note

Hi! So I'm writing this story where a cold, calculating Serial Killer-Killer adopts the baby of his last victim (who was a single father). But I'm kind of stuck on what difficulties my main character could face (he's VERY inexperienced when it comes to taking care of kids and he's trying to still do his "job" of hunting killers). Do you have any advice on what problems I could throw his way?

Serial Killer Becomes Adoptive Parent

There's a lot to unpack here...

1) Why does this man decide to adopt the baby? If he's "cold and calculating" it's not likely to be out of affection for the child, a desire to experience the joy of parenting, or a moral concern for the child's welfare. Pretty much all that leaves is self-serving reasons, and someone who becomes a parent entirely for self-serving reasons is going to face different challenges than someone who becomes a parent at least partly for selfless reasons.

2) People can't just point at an orphaned child and say "I adopt you," and off they go on their merry way together. The only way that could happen is if he kidnaps the baby after committing the crime, and takes it home to raise it in secret. Otherwise, the baby would presumably be found by whoever discovers the crime scene, taken into police custody and then custody of Child Protective Services. CPS would look for the victim's next of kin to find someone to take the baby. If no one could be found, the baby would go into the foster care system and eventually be adopted by certified parents who are already working with the system and are waiting to adopt a baby.

3) That said, the only way he could officially adopt the baby would be if none of the victim's family or friends came forward and the serial killer was able to successfully falsify records and pretend to be a close relative of the victim. In that case, if CPS evaluated him and felt that he was a safe and qualified person to take the child in, then they'd probably release the baby to him and put him on the path to adopting it (which is a lengthy and involved legal process.) So, at that point, I think you'd need to consider whether or not this "cold and calculating" serial killer could appear to be a loving, responsible, and capable parent with the means to adequately provide for the child financially.

4) Assuming that the serial killer kidnaps the child from the crime scene, before it's discovered by anyone else, the challenges he'd face in raising this child would be much greater than simply being inexperienced...

Does this man have friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, or service people that he interacts with even occasionally? If so, how will he explain the sudden appearance of this child?

The discovery of a murdered man whose baby has gone missing is going to be big news, and that baby's photo and details will be splayed across television screens, billboards, and social media feeds probably nationwide. That will make things mighty difficult for the serial killer when he suddenly has a baby in his care, especially when that baby's face is currently big news. How is that going to work?

Required immunizations, doctor and hospital visits, daycare, and school are just some of the things that will be tricky for the man to obtain for the baby without a birth certificate or other official government documents. These can be faked, certainly, but every use of fake documents puts the man at risk of being found out. And if he's found to be in possession of a child who was kidnapped from his parent's murder scene, it's a short leap for the police to realize the man is actually the killer.

5) Assuming you can figure out a way around all of that, or if you simply want the child in his care for some amount of time before he's discovered, here are some general "inexperienced parent" issues he might come up against:

Sleep Disruption - babies and small children rarely sleep through the night and to a decent hour of morning. They tend to wake up (babies will cry) multiple times throughout the night, and are often awake for the day as early as four or five a.m. This can be challenging for anyone who suddenly finds themselves taking care of a child.

Feeding Issues - babies and small children require a lot of nutrition, but sometimes feeding them properly can be a struggle. They may not want to eat or may not eat the amount they're supposed to. They can be picky, entirely refusing some foods. They can also be very messy eaters, requiring clothing changes, baths, and massive clean-up efforts after some meals.

Crankiness & Tantrums - Sometimes babies and small children scream and cry incessantly. They might be tired (but unwilling or unable to sleep), hungry, gassy, in pain, frustrated, need a diaper change, or not feeling well. Sometimes, even if you try everything you can to address and relieve potential issues, they just want to scream. This can be very frustrating, even for experienced parents.

Parental Exhaustion - Babies and small children are a lot of effort. Not only are you probably beginning your day on a sleep deficit, you're going to spend your day changing diapers (8-12 changes per day for 0-1 year olds), preparing and feeding meals (several times per day), bathing/cleaning up, soothing when crying or tantruming, playing with them/interacting with them (making sure baby gets "tummy time" and crawling/walking practice), taking them outside/going for walks, cleaning up after them... It may be rewarding for people who want a child, but it's still mentally and physically exhausting, especially without help. And, given this man's situation (and all the things addressed in #4), is it likely he would have any help?

Aging - This is a long-term one, but something to consider depending on the timeline of your story. Babies grow up, and eventually they need companions, need to go to school, require medical care, and start asking hard questions like "who is my mom" or "why don't I look like you?" What will the man do when this happens?

Hopefully that gets the ball rolling in the right direction for you! Good luck with your story!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

Visit my FAQ

See my Master List of Top Posts

Go to ko-fi.com/wqa to buy me coffee or see my commissions!

#tw death #tw murder #tw serial killers #tw kidnapping #tw adoption #tw crime #wqaadvice

40 notes · View notes

sadachmesarthim · 4 years ago

Photo

yes this is a rewrite, feel free to fry my ass on anon about it.

content: starker being mean to each other, peter parker has Supportive Friends™, tony has daddy and mommy issues, quentin beck is a Mean Boss™, smoking, secondhand smoke.

word count: 3.0k

square filled: coffee shop au -> link to playlist here

part two is here!

a little vocab lesson before continuing: mobster = really high up in the chain of command for this group of coffee shops. they go around training new hirees, and often decide who gets to move up the line of command. they get to travel on company money, and are very well respected in the workplace. mobsters usually come in groups - siblings, hires from the same groups, etc.

Tony didn't like Richland.

Sure, okay, it was a serious step up from Federal Way. He was free from his parents, he could do whatever he wanted in a house all to himself, no one knew who he was - it was a refreshing change, one he definitely needed now that he was graduated, all grown up.

He'd moved back east about two months ago. He'd wanted to get as far away from home as possible, stretch his legs - he went under the guise of missing his grandma, wanting to go to school. He wasn't a terrible liar, either. Howard and Maria'd eaten it up, encouraging him to go as soon as he could.

"If you go now, you could get there in time for summer classes. Maybe even get a job before they stop hiring seasonally. You never know, but you might as well try!"

So here he was. Still jobless, still not yet enrolled in school. Enjoying his time in the (now autumn) sunshine, biding his time before he ran out of money. He'd planned well - he had enough cash to keep him covered for a while, as long as he didn't go blowing it.

He'd blown it.

He was a sucker for good coffee, though, and he missed Outback. He'd worked at one back home for almost a year before he left, and now... now, it was like an itch he couldn't scratch - he needed the interaction, needed to go make friends. He was too much of a social butterfly.

Yet again, he found himself in his truck, on the way to the nearest stand. He was pathetic, really. Here he was, wasting more money on coffee, when he could be out hiking or climbing or... literally doing anything else.

He knew it was worth it the second he pulled in. The cutest kid was running lines that day - shorts hugging his tight ass deliciously, in a way Tony knew his operator would get in trouble for if a Mobster or Coach saw. Christ, they lettin' just anyone work here now, that it?

He had to keep his thoughts to himself, though - the kid had just finished the cars in front of him, and was headed straight for Tony, iPad in hand. He took a breath, putting on his best poker face. He needed a fucking cigarette.

"Hey handsome! Welcome to Outback, what're we drinkin' today?" Shit, he's cute. All bright and cheery - it might be fake, sure, customer service voice and all - but boy, did he play the part well. All big eyes and wide smile. He looked up at Tony expectantly, right hand hovering over the screen of the runner iPad. Shit, he still has to order something.

"Hi, just a small iced white vanilla breve please." Tony watched as the kid pressed a few spaces on the tablet, shocked at how fluidly he moved. Tony'd never seen him at this location before, but he obviously knew what he was doing. Location transfer, maybe? Mobster? He wasn't sure.

"Perfect! I've got you in - anything else, love?" God, he was too much. There's no way this was just the sickly facade Outback enforced - no, this was all him. "Nah, I'm okay. I'm paying card today, too." He reached his hand out for the tablet, wanting to tip this kid specifically.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, this card reader's broken. The one up at the window's working though! My girl Maia'll be up there waiting for you!" He turned with a smile, skipping off to the next car.

Jesus, who was this kid? And what did Tony have to do to see him again?

•|||•

Return an application, apparently.

Maia, the girl at the window, had let him know that they were hiring. He didn't have to feign interest - he had relevant experience, could work his way up if he needed to - and he'd get to see the mystery boy again. She'd ran and grabbed a small stack of papers for him, which he dutifully filled out and brought back a couple of hours later.

The closing shift lead had briefly interviewed him, practically giving him the job on the spot. Apparently she'd met his sister on a Mob trip, before - it paid to have connections, but damn... someone in town already knew who he was. Oh well. Not a big deal. These were still new people, fresh faces - he could make a clean reputation for himself, a fresh start...

It was exactly what he needed. And if he needed to use a bit of his influence with his sister to get it... so be it.

•|||•

"Emma, please, just... don't be a dick when he calls you. I need this job, it'll be good for m-"

"Save it, Tony. I don't want your excuses. If I say I'll do it, will you leave me alone?" She was being unusually short with him. Fuck. She and Rhodey were fighting again.

"Yes, yes, anything. Thank you so much." He was met with a bored sigh.

"Whatever, dude. I'll put in a good word. Talk to you later." She hung up before he could say anything else. Whatever - it wasn't the worst conversation he'd had with his sister, but it left a lot to be desired.

They hadn't been doing well since she & Rhodey got together. It was on-again-off-again... and they were honestly both to blame. Neither one of them was good at commitment, and it showed.

It put strain on both of their relationships with Tony, and didn't do much to help keep him in Federal Way. He sought comfort in the isolation of a new town, but it didn't seem to be helping anything.

Leaving never did, but it was really all he knew how to do.

•|||•

Peter hadn’t been at Outback long, but he’d enjoyed every minute of it.

He’d gotten hired almost immediately after graduation, not wanting to waste a second of his summer not making money. It was a bit of a difficult transition - he wasn’t a big fan of Beck, his boss, and training was really overwhelming. But after he’d hit that twelve week mark... it’s like something just clicked.

He was a whiz on bar, he was making friends right and left. He and Maia’d even gone to get tattoos together a couple weeks ago during a flash sale. He was getting faster and faster at running cars, he knew almost all of his regular customers. He genuinely felt like part of the family.

That didn’t really change when Beck hired a new group, either. There weren’t too many of them, helping keep their group small. They’d been spending a bit of time in the stand here and there, going over the rules, the ins and outs of making coffee, taking their menu test.

The three he was introducing today seemed okay enough. He just barely caught the tail end of Beck's “congrats on becoming a full employee” monologue before the man set the fresh meat loose. Not that they could really go far - it was maybe a good spit's distance from corner to corner. But, if it helped them get their bearings...

He was pulled from his thoughts before they could take off too far. “Hey, Parker! Come say hi to the green beans!”

•|||•

The red haired girl was nice enough. They'd introduced themselves, exchanged snap usernames, gushed over Peter's tattoos, and bonded over the typical new job anxiety. He'd forged a sweet new friendship with Bri, and was hopeful she'd stick around. He'd seen people like her get chewed up and spit out in this industry, and he liked her.

The tall guy... was pretty boring, actually. He stayed on his phone for the majority of the introduction, opting to ignore Peter entirely. It was fine - he'd probably be gone by the end of the month. Not like they’d miss him - he barely passed his menu test, from what Peter’d overheard.

Then came Mr. Short, Dark, and Brooding - Tony, apparently - Peter remembered him from a few weeks ago. He’d given Peter a poorly concealed once-over, tried to take the runner iPad from right out of his hands... if he wasn’t so attractive, Peter’d pin him for a fuckboy.

Despite how much he looked like he’d wanted to back then, when given the opportunity, he didn’t really engage with Peter. He apparently wasn’t the type to keep eye contact, go in for a hug, make small talk. 0 for 2. Disappointing. Oh well. That’s fine - Peter was perfectly content as the only guy at this location (sans Beck, of couse). Too much testosterone didn’t foster a healthy working environment, and they all knew it.

The girls, especially. They all gushed over Peter - apparently being the token gay guy in the stand somehow made him exempt from the targetted harassment. Nearly every guy they’d hired had left within 9 months - coffee was definitely a female-dominated field.

Peter was excited to see how these two fared.

•|||•

The tall guy was gone within a week. Didn’t even leave notice, just up and stopped showing up to his shifts. Not that it was the end of the world - he was still in his probationary period, so he wasn’t even making tips. No sweat off Peter’s back.

Bri did really well, in comparison. Beck was unusually strict with her - lashing out during her initial first shifts, generally being a hardass. It was unnecessary, and everyone knew it - Peter often found himself having fridge or bathroom meetings with her to help calm her down. But she kept showing up, kept trying, and after a few weeks she was doing just as well as Peter and the rest of them.

Tony was even better. Peter’d heard through the grapevine that he’d worked at a different location when he was still in school. Why he had to go through training again was lost on Peter - Beck tended to be thorough when it came to these kinds of things, but Tony was arguably more experienced than some of Peter’s coworkers...

Apparently, it’s because he wasn’t one to play nice.

•|||•

It took them quite a while to work together. Peter’d found himself getting the shit end of the schedule, working 7-1s religiously. It was by far his least favorite shift - dealing with the morning and lunch rushes were nothing, if not exhausting. But he pushed through, and finally got a say in what he worked - a very comfortable 5 - close.

Tony seemed to fill the between-shift gap - 2-8 was his jam. He liked working later, but still getting home before dark. Apparently being a newbie meant drawing the short straw sometimes -

And the short straw just so happened to be barring with the twink from a few weeks ago.

He hadn’t been... avoiding him. Tony just... didn’t like the way he worked. Peter was flighty, always moving. It irked him... he was just so much, it made Tony’s head hurt. If he wasn’t so engaging he might actually piss Tony off - but he knew the kid had nothing but good intentions, and that made it bearable.

It didn’t translate to the bar, though.

It seemed nearly impossible for them to work well together. Tony’d been assigned the milk station for the last three hours of his shift - a long stretch, but nothing he hadn’t done before. Peter was on shots almost the entire time. Poor kid.

Tony’s sympathy ran dry when they actually began working. They were almost always on top of each other - Peter crowding his space and trying to do too much. It grated on Tony’s every nerve, made it difficult to function. Peter didn’t seem to notice at all - or if he did, he didn’t care.

It came to a head when Peter went for the fridge.

It was a pretty well-known rule that the person on shots doesn’t reach for the fridge. Not only was it too far away from their position on machine, it requires them to go behind their bar partner, which is dangerous in a shop this small. Hot liquids, ice, sugar... they can cause spills, burns, falls...

So of course this dumbass goes for the fridge. Opens the door. Grabs a can of cold brew with his bare hands before turning back around.

And running into Tony face first.

This would have been fine if it were literally anything other than a cold brew. This would have been fine if Tony wasn’t holding a fresh drink! But no - the universe lined things up just right, laid out the most well-planned disaster.

As they made contact, Peter’s hands flew up in shock, dropping the very pressurized can. It exploded as it hit the concrete, spraying nitrogen and foam-y coffee all over them. This caused Tony to let go of the drink in his hand, coating both of their lower halves in hot, sticky milk.

It was picturesque, the mess they made.

Tony looked up at Peter in absolute shock. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Why were you in the fridge?!”

“I was just trying to help! You were busy, I figured I could-” Tony cut him off before he filled the stand with more hot air. Not in the mood for his bullshit excuses.

“I don’t care how busy you think I am - you ask before doing something outside of your station. Do you understand me?” The look in his eye was one Peter’d never seen before - it probably should have scared him, but frankly, it just made him angrier.

“Who do you think you are to be giving me orders?” He was huffy, he could feel his cheeks burning red. He was an angry crier, and knew he was struggling to control his face.

“My sister’s a Mobster. I think I know what I’m doing.” Oh. That explained it - his experience, his proficiency on bar... why he was such a dick. Peter’d never met a Mobster he liked, and if this guy was related to one... shit just made sense.

•|||•

He spent the remaining few hours of Tony’s shift hiding in the back. They were better off separated, and neither complained. Tony could handle himself up front, and Peter was productive enough. He had chores to do, dishes to finish, the closing list to start... Getting an early start benefitted everyone.

By the time 8 rolled around, the atmosphere in the stand had relaxed. They’d both had a chance to clean up, the girls on window had helped ease the tension with casual conversation. Bri had been running, and Peter spent plenty of time in the back with her, hushed enough to avoid the ears a few feet away.

“I don’t see why he gets to walk all over us. You’ve been here longer, and the attitude isn’t necessary.” She was sitting on the edge of the sink, goldfish making their way to her mouth between words. “You know I don’t like him. I don’t see why you keep trying to be nice.”

Peter sighed. He knew she was right. “I just... I don’t want anyone here to feel left out, or like I did at the beginning. Beck can be mean... I want all of you to feel welcome.” It wasn’t a lie, either - he’d made a point to make everyone feel at home, to make this stand a family. Until Tony showed up, he’d been doing a great job.

“I know buttercup. Just... don’t go bending over backward for someone that won’t even look you in the eye.” With that she hopped down, ready to clock out.

Tony shuffled past them both, excited to do the same. Maia’d taken over the bar for him, alleviating him just before the four minute window was up. He didn’t even excuse himself, just inserting himself in their personal space without concern.

Bri shot Peter a look before she left. Talk to him!

He opted for bravery. He deserved an apology for Tony’s harsh words earlier today, and he was going to get it.

He checked the cameras before walking back, making sure Maia wasn’t gonna wind up swamped if this took longer than necessary. Tony was collecting his things - he had to do this fast.

“Hey, listen.” Tony looked up, unamused. “I know we didn’t exactly have a good shift, and yeah I’m partly to blame for that... but Beck doesn’t really vibe with hostility, and the girls...”

Tony cut him off halfway through. “What, it makes them uncomfortable? They don’t like it when a man takes charge, has a little outburst? Sheesh, y’all really are a mess.” What the fuck?

“Okay, seriously. I tried to be nice. You owe me, and the rest of us, a serious apology for today, or I’m going to Quentin about it. It’s not that hard to say you’re sorry, Tony.” Good job Parker, firm boundaries.

“I’m sorry? Sorry for what, doing my job? Fuck that, man. I’m out of here.” He opened the door and left, skipping past an oncoming car and heading toward his own.

Peter followed him. It was stupid, sure - but he needed to assert himself here. This was his stand, his home - and he was damned if he was going to let some... some asshole trample all over his home like this.

He caught up to Tony quickly, stopping him before he could open the driver’s door. “Why are you such an asshole? The girls are obsessed with you, you clearly have a leg up against everyone else in your group. There’s no reason for you to be acting like this, dude. You’ve been here all of what, a month?”

Tony took a long drag from his cigarette before answering. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Now be a good little closer, and run inside. Finish your shift.” He exhaled the smoke into Peter’s face, getting into his car and driving away without another word.

What a douchebag.

#sorry i just flat out didn't like this #sfsummerbingo21 #starkerfestivalsevents #starker #peter parker/tony stark #peter parker x tony stark #coffee shop au #.mine #i'm so sorry mads #i know i'm a pain in the ass

49 notes · View notes

theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

Note

ohh i saw your answer about the sequels of star wars. id love to read you tear through the whole trilogy

Well, I’ve avoided this ask long enough. Part of the reason is this is really a huge topic, far too much for one ask, so I’m going to have to do this at a very high level.

In short, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is what one gets when you slap together the goal of selling merchandise and making tons of money, being as risk averse as humanly possible, adding a handful of warring directors with incredibly different visions, and having virtually no imagination when it comes to the imagining and writing of characters.

And we get this beautiful, awful, franchise that for reasons beyond me people seem to actually like (though interestingly, no one seems to like all of it, they may actually like one or two of the films, but no one says all three are actually in any realm of good).

With that, let’s begin.

The Force Awakens

For me this is easily the most tolerable of the sequel trilogy: it’s not great, it’s not terrible. It’s thoroughly watchable, you can be taken along for the movie’s journey and not raise your eyebrows too much at the action and leave the theater feeling this maybe wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

There’s a good reason for that. That reason is called the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen in cinema in my life.

“The Force Awakens” is just “A New Hope” wearing a mustache. Only, it’s one of those cheap mustaches you get from a party store that, if you stare at it too long, just looks like the most false and awful thing you’ve ever seen. The mustache actively makes it worse. “The Force Awakens” is “A New Hope”, but worse.

Seriously, every major character, every major plot point, every major scene I can go directly back to “A New Hope”.

Our story begins when the Resistance, at great cost to our valiant heroes including torture at the hands of the Emperor’s second in command, sends a file out into the wilderness to be received by his people. This file contains plans for the Death Star.

The film then focuses on Luke, er Rey, getting involved in the Resistance, boarding the Death Star, and successfully destroying at the same time even at the lost of a beloved mentor that she just met (trading in Obi-Wan for Han Solo).

Our evil empire is run by an evil emperor who is so evil he sits in a chair, is served by very Moth Tarkin-esque human storm troopers, and has a second in command who revels in the Darth Vader get up (for no other reason that it makes him feel cool but we’ll get into this).

It’s “A New Hope”. Rey is Luke, Han Solo is Obi-Wan, Poe is a kind of Han Solo, Kylo Ren is Vader, Snoke is Palpatine, Hux is Tarkin, BB-8 is R2-D2, etc.

“But that’s not terrible,” you say, “I liked A New Hope?”

First, it is terrible, it gives a very bad sign of where the sequel trilogy is headed and is just lazy writing. It means that those who produced this franchise were so terrified of taking risks, of possibly ending up mocked as the prequels were, that they will deliver exactly what the original trilogy was. And what’s that? Uh, evil empires, scrappy desert kids, AND MORE DEATH STARS!

That brings us to point number two, the world of Star Wars after the events of the original trilogy shouldn’t support such things. And, if it does, my god what a bleak existence this place has turned into.

The First Order being able to rise easily from the Empire’s remains means that Luke accomplished nothing. Anakin sacrificed himself and had his moment of redemption for nothing. There was no happy ending to the Original Trilogy, our heroes failed miserably, and there is no indication that our new band of heroes can possibly succeed in their place. (More on this as the movies progress).

We now are in a galaxy where this new Republic is so pathetic that Leia doesn’t even give it the time of day and builds her own private army to battle the Empire. The First Order is able to not only rebuild a massive army by raiding villages on many different worlds and stealing children and do so successfully for at least ten years but is able to build a Death Star bigger than any we’ve ever seen before.

And the movie tries to convince us these are completely new problems, that Luke Skywalker is a hero (remember this is TFA, not TLJ yet), and that somehow these things just sprung up out of nowhere. BUT YEAH, RESISTANCE, WOO!

As for Rey, she’s like... a worse version of Luke. Her only motivation through the entire series is her trauma at being abandoned by her parents. That’s it, there’s nothing else to her, nothing else she ever wants or feels conflicted by. She struggles with the dark side because... the dark side? Genetics? Unclear? She’s absurdly, ridiculously, powerful in a way that’s acknowledged but never that acknowledged (we’ll get into this) and the movies just fail to sell me on her in any way.

Honestly, an easy fix for me would have just been making Rey a much younger character. I could believe a fourteen-year-old having stayed in the desert, scrounging for scraps, believing her parents are coming back every day now. As a twenty-something year old... It starts getting hard to believe she never left. (Also, this gets the benefit of getting rid of Reylo, which is always a plus for me).

As for Kylo Ren, I legitimately walked out of TFA thinking he was supposed to be comic relief. He’s what happens when someone desperately wants a likable, redeemable, villain and we get... Well, as a reminder his opening scene is one of genocide: he pillages and destroys a town with no regret and brutally tortures a man for information. We’re told he’s like this “because evil evil Snoke” and that may well be but throughout the film (and the series) it becomes clear that Kylo Ren’s main motivation is he deseprately wants to be cool. He wants to be a badass like Vader, he dresses in Vader cosplay (either ignoring or not knowing that Vader only dressed like that because his body was completely destroyed), he has these huge temper tantrums and nobody respects him because he’s a toddler in a Vader suit.

He murders his own father, his parents who (at least in the films themselves) show every willingness to take him back and forgive him what he’s done, so that he can fully embrace his own “evilness”. In other words, he commits patricide to feel cool about himself, then it doesn’t work.

And the movie series really banks on me feeling conflicted about Kylo Ren or at least wanting him to be redeemed. Granted, the wider internet seems to love him, I just can’t.

Oh, before I forget, the other thing I love about Kylo Ren is that the movies insist he’s a) strong in the Force b) is equal to Rey. Rey consistently beats the shit out of him with 0 training. Kylo Ren has been training in the Force for years. Guys, they are not a Dyad, Rey is far far far stronger than he is and for whatever reason the films never want to admit it. Because I guess we like things coming in pairs now.

But yes, “The Force Awakens”, at a distance not great nor terrible, but a rip off of a movie we’ve already seen that left me going “Welp, the next one’s probably The Empire Strikes Back then I guess we’re getting Ewoks”. I was sort of right on that and sort of wrong.

The Last Jedi

So, JJ Abrams clearly had a vision of where he wanted this sequel trilogy to go. He set up these big questions such as what’s up with Finn, who are Rey’s parents and why was she left on this nowhere planet, will Kylo Ren be redeemed and how, who is Snoke, etc.

Now, I’m not saying these aren’t stupid questions. To be frank, they kind of are. Finn being Force Sensitive was the most inconsequential thing I’ve ever heard of, Rey’s parents should not have been used to drive the plot the way it was, as spoken above I’m clearly team gut Kylo Ren, and that Snoke was actually just Palpatine being the world’s largest cockroach is a beautiful but hilarious answer.

That said, what Johnson did was he decided, “You know what, I’m going to take every trope of Star Wars and completely flip it on its head and absolutely doom the sequel to this movie.”

And by god, he did.

We get a weirdly pointless movie in which Poe, SINGLEHANDEDLY, completely obliterates the Resistance. He first obliterates their bombers by failing to follow command, then goes and bitches about how he’s not put in command when he clearly shows no ability to understand how a military works, actively subverts orders which in turn obliterates the entire Resistance fleet until the only survivors can fit on the Millenium Falcon. They have no ships, no weapons, barely any people, and are ultimately doomed doomed doomed.

We have Finn’s weird subplot with a suddenly introduced character Rose in which the pair aid in Poe’s blowing up the resistance (they send sensitive information using the communication equipment of a guy they do not know, who fully admits to being shady and out for his own skin, and are flabergasted when he betrays them).

Rose herself is this weirdly sweet person who seems forced into the plot to a) provide a love triangle for Finn and Rey b) provide this forced sunny outlook that I didn’t really need in the film.

We get Rey never really being trained, going into the Cave of Wonders for a few seconds, falling in love with Kylo Ren over weird Force Skype calls (where I did not need to see him shirtless, thank you film) and being horrifically betrayed when Kylo Ren turns out not to be a great guy. Never saw that coming, Rey.

As for Kylo Ren, well... God, we get Emperor Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, the Emperor. I’m not even that upset about the anticlimactic murder of Snoke (that was kind of funny, especially in the context of Palpatine going, “Bitch, please, you’re in my chair” immediately in the next film) but just Kylo Ren being emperor. And also that the Resistance only escapes at all because he’s so dumb he made their dumb plans seem smart (i.e. concentrates all his firepower on an illusion for ten minutes while Hux goes, “Emperor, sir, we could actually destroy the Resistance right now.”

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t complain about Luke. A lot of people are upset he became a grumpy, miserable, old hermit who sits around waiting for death. Frankly though, in this universe, that’s exactly where he is. He left “Return of the Jedi” thinking he’d saved the world, he’s resurrected the Jedi Order, and all is well. Only a decade later, his students are all murdered by his nephew, the Empire’s back, and he accomplished nothing. He’s an utter failure as a Jedi (though Luke never realizes he knew jack shit about the Jedi Order and was in way over his head but I guess that’s beyond him). Why shouldn’t he go sit on a rock and wait to die?

Now, did he have to drink that blue dinosaur milk? Well, I guess it was funny, gross but funny so... Sure, I guess he did. But I do like that he gave Rey 0 training, they had one meditation session and then he whined about how Obi-Wan was such a stupid asshole. And then Rey ran off to be with her boyfriend, who then told her that her parents were gutter trash (which again, was funny, but I don’t think that was supposed to be funny).

Of the characters introduced in the movie, the only one I really liked was the hacker, and it was for the actor/the beautiful way in which he gracefully exited stage left with zero shame going, “You all knew I was going to betray you!” You beautiful man, you.

Rise of the Skywalker

First, when something is called “Rise of the Skywalker” you know you’re in for a rough time.

But anyways, TLJ was filled with a controversy Disney didn’t want (half their audience hated it, half loved it, but at least they sold those penguin dolls) so they desperately get Abrams back. Only, what he clearly wanted from his series has been shot to hell, and now he’s left with Emperor Kylo Ren, a completely obliterated Resistance, a dead Luke, a love interest he never planned to introduce for Finn, Rey’s parental crisis being solved with trash people, Snoke just suddenly dead, Hux planning revenge, and then some.

And so, Abrams goes the brave and hilarious route of shouting “PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED”

We open to a fully functioning Resistance (their bomber fleet is back, their fleet period is back, they have all their fully trained personnel). We have Rey getting the Jedi training she needed this time from Leia, who is now a Jedi, because yay feminism rammed down my throat to make the audience feel better. Rose says “It’s cool guys, I don’t want to join the adventure this film, I’m going to stay here and work on robots” so that she can gracefully exit the entire plot. Kylo Ren is demoted from Emperor in two seconds when we discover that a) Snoke was apparently Palpatine b) for unexplained reasons Palpatine’s alive (and I am now convinced that man will never die). Kylo Ren tells Rey at the first opportunity that he lied about her trash parents AND REALLY SHE’S A PALPATINE! THIS WHOLE TIME, REY! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I’M SUPER SERIAL THIS TIME, REY.

Basically, in the course of an overly long movie, Abrams desperately shoves in everything he was trying to get out of the series, while sobbing, and sobbing even harder when things like Finn being Force Sensitive or Lando having a secret daughter get caught. I actually agree with the Producers on this, by the way, the Finn trying to tell Rey something scenes were weird and indicative of a love triangle but him being Force Sensitive instead... It says a lot that the movies did not change when it was removed, at all. And Lando was just this strange cameo who was in the film to make us feel nostalgic.

And this isn’t even getting to the ridiculous 24 hour time limit (which made me think there should have been some video game style clock in the corner letting us know when Dawn of the Third Day is coming), Palpatine’s other secret army on a secret Sith planet that can be easily taken down by taking out one navigation tower, Rey’s hilarious struggle with the dark side in which she has a vision of herself in a cape hissing, Kylo Ren’s hilarious redemption in which the movie in the form of Leia and Han Solo says, “Alright, Ben, it’s time to stop being evil” and he says “okay”, the fight with Palpatine in which I’m supposed to believe he dies for reals because... I have no idea why I’m supposed to believe he’s dead. The Reylo, god the Reylo, and Kylo Ren’s tragic, hilarious, death.

And then, of course, the ending where Rey decides she’s a Skywalker now.

I actually did laugh all the way through “Rise of the Skywalker”, you can’t not, I mean it’s a hilariously awful movie. The only thing that might have made it more hilarious was if we actually did get those Ewoks.

TL;DR

They’re all bad movies, if you want more specifics than this, you’re just going to have to ask me questions.

#ask #anon #anti star wars sequels #anti rey #anti kylo ren #anti reylo #ah what beautiful awful movies #i look foward to the characters being shocked and appalled when yet another evil empire arises in five years #i look forward to them being even more shocked when palpatine's still not dead #that man will never die

112 notes · View notes

fishmongeringstudies · 4 years ago

Text

six: wandering the city while waiting for a train that'll never come, you stop to wave at a dog on the street only to realize you have mistaken a crumpled bag of mcdonald's for a chihuahua

i almost slipped and died in the shower today. luckily i didn't, because i read somewhere that slipping and dying in the shower makes it a little hard for you to finish writing a manuscript for a novel fictionalizing the events of your freshman spring semester that's definitely going to become a new york times bestseller in about four years' time, but i came pretty close. for a moment i had my hand on the wall and my legs splayed like a barbie doll stuck to a stripper pole and the matchbox world behind the shower curtain was slipping steadily south and heading lower still. and then i caught myself.

several minutes later i heard scuffling beyond the pale, soapy shower curtain and thought there might be someone creeping on me. if someone was creeping on me i had an idea of who it might be, which made the prospect all the more likely and infinitely more convincing inside the grapefruit-sized thing i called my brain. then i heard the clap of god's hands in an ashen sky, and i knew. this was no man made disaster-in-waiting. it had begun to rain.

it didn't rain for long. five minutes at best, two if my grasp on the spatial-temporal continuum is worse than i'd imagined (this is very likely; the stars pass me by faster than i can count them these days), but long enough that anyone who happened to be outside when that first teardrop fell from the sky got a little wet. a little fucked up, if you will, which, hey. good for him. he deserves to get a little fucked up.

but i get carried away. please excuse my personal grievances. this is not a lament, it is a swimming pool. full of tiny colorful fish which flit around at its bottom, chasing strands of sunlight like children on a playground.

the weather forecast says it'll rain again tomorrow, and maybe the day after, too, if the world stays sad enough to let it happen. it makes me nostalgic. when i left in february monsoon season was in full swing, tearing trees from their roots with big meaty hands and making every fleeting boring moment into the kind of gray sunday afternoon on which i imagine the directors of romantic dramas like to shoot break-ups. rain in singapore looks different. it's not a bucket full of water, it's a room. a blue room against a silver sky. your socks stuck to your ankles with the kind of grim determination that makes you almost a little sad to peel them off, to toss them in the washing machine behind the kitchen. there's a little balcony behind the kitchen in the house you left in february, with a washing machine and a ledge for sitting on and a dryer that doesn't work. you used to go there when you wanted to check on the restaurant across the street. from here you can make out the round, blue-rimmed tables that attract students, biking enthusiasts, three am brawls between red-faced european men and their red-faced european friends. if there's noise on this side of the street, it's probably coming from there.

summer. summer reminds me of home. so far i've been telling people that the association is a bad one, and it certainly isn't a lie, but it's not a whole truth either, if one believes in the matter of whole truths to begin with. i'm starting to think maybe there are only skim-milk truths, clotted cream truths, 0% fat yogurt truths. truths that change shape when you aren't looking. we aren't looking most of the time, after all. we're very busy people. all of us. we're trying to change the world.

and for what? who are we trying to save? do you want to live forever? that's the goal, isn't it. i mean it's definitely mine. i won't blame you if the concept of death sits on your shoulder like a fourth generation ipod touch with a broken home button, whispering really fucked up shit into your ear when you're alone. i mean it definitely does for me.

puzzle-girl is in new york now, last i checked. good for her. i hear new york is full of lights and electricity and car exhaust. maybe one day she will learn that friendship isn't an emergency help-line. probably not. my friend thinks she will, thinks we'll come back around in our junior year and everyone will see us stuck to each other again like two grotesque modern art pieces drilled back-to-back into a museum exhibit wall only with a firm mutual understanding of what boundaries are, but i have my doubts.

once someone told me with the kind of half-fake half-genuine smile that makes you wonder if AI technology has advanced far enough to mimic the complexities of stupid hormonal teenagers with really bad interpersonal issues after all that i was blooming. coincidentally all the flowers on campus had suddenly decided to poke their heads out of the dirt like babies busting their way out of refrigerators, guns blazing, hearts shot to pieces, so it's not like he was completely bullshitting me. he was only ninety-eight percent bullshitting me. the two percent is why he comes up in my writing as often as he does, all this time later. like i think he was ninety-eight percent clown but two percent circus, two percent red-nosed reindeer trying to unionize behind a striped curtain, two percent something real. or at least i like to think that way. i'm a writer. we have to pretend there's something to write about. or else what will we write about?

so yeah. one time someone told me i was blooming. at the time i was embarrassed. and then after the story put an abrupt end to itself i was madly obsessed with the idea of flowers jutting out of cracks in the earth, gold pouring forth from blood-wounds, poinsettia eyes, whatever, whatever, and then the flowers started wilting. standing on the path outside my dorm i was like what the fuck? why the hell is everything dying? it's been like three days, god, what are you guys made of, tissue paper?

i was talking to the flowers. which died in spite of my indignation, so that's one for nature, zero for me. good for them. see you next spring, when things will, hopefully, be different. i don't have a plan as much as i have a dream i'd like to see walk into reality on three legs and a pitchfork. but it's a good dream. i promise.

the sky's clear as glass now. it's so bright i could probably stick my hand up there and stir vigorously and then an angel would emerge from the ether, rubbing her eye sleepily with the back of her hand. that's the kind of clarity i'm talking about. making metaphors about christianity-clarity. i am lonely and my dreams are full of beautiful people-clarity.

that's a lie-clarity. loneliness is, as mentioned in a previous installment of the meandering car accident i call this blog, a choice, and i'm too lazy and full of my own slew of interpersonal issues to commit to something like that. but summer is new, and it's like i'm getting used to the body in my basement all over again. how do i step around it, how do i make sure i don't look at its face? and its eyes, oh, those eyes. how terrible. how full of absence.

there will be exactly two hundred students on campus when summer move-ins are finished next week. this school has a population of nearly sixteen hundred. what are we doing?

research. academia. learning a new language. road trips. plane trips. horse riding lessons. research. academia. learning a new language. relationships. spaceships. building a ladder to the moon.

it feels like the sun never sets sometimes. the hours slide into one another like tectonic plates beneath the surface of the world and yet the sky remains just as it looked this afternoon, milk-white and pale as death. a hot summer wind blows and sends the clouds careening sideways into each other, and yet from this distance nothing changes. drop a body in a bathtub and nothing changes. beat someone up and nothing changes. survive thirteen weeks of bad mistakes and then worse ones, midnight mistakes, thursday evening mistakes, the kind of mistake you don't think you'll ever be able to write about, and still nothing changes.

they say there's always a silver lining but what if i want fur instead? let's say i want a fur-lined sky with fur-lined clouds and a little heart-shaped toy that makes a sound when you step on it. let's say i want to be fifteen again. the sky doesn't care. it still looks like a damn sky. the sky doesn't do things out of sentimentality.

it's just kind of there. today i'm just kind of here. today we're all alive. good for you. good for me. good thing my hand was on the wall when i slipped in the shower, so i could get out and dry my hair and then sit down in this shitty weird-smelling lounge with my laptop with the cracked touchpad and my cool elmo slippers, and tell you about this solitary life on mars.

05.26.2021

#i just realized i put my mask on inside out. luckily i have been alone in this lounge for thirty minutes and it is a new mask #so minimal damage has been done but shame on me anyway. i will go reflect in the shame corner now

26 notes · View notes

maryniss · 4 years ago

Text

The Match Is Still Going

Fandom: Bungou Stray Dogs

Summary: 2 times Chuuya dyed Dazai's hair and one time he didn't.

Relationships: Dazai Osamu/Chuuya Nakahara

Characters: Dazai Osamu, Chuuya Nakahara

Tags: Fluff; Kinda?; idk - Freeform; 5 Times; its actually three times; 2 times + one bonus cause i had no idea; Hair Dyeing

Notes: this. i wanted to finish this for so long. but now the fic is here and im not really proud of it. but it s ok cause yeah. idk. enjoy anyway byebye i.

Chuuya decided to dye Dazai the second that insufferable man dared to make fun of Chuuya’s hair color. That meaning Chuuya decided to dye Dazai thirty minutes after meeting him.

Knowing him now, he was surprised that he didn’t say anything earlier. But, as fifteen year-old Chuuya was sneaking into his new partner’s apartment -soundlessly, not that it mattered, ‘cause Dazai was sleeping like he was dead (some people’ wishes just can’t come true)

Chuuya snickered under his breath as he tip-toed into Dazai’s bedroom. The brown-haired man (not for long, though) was snoring loudly and the only thing Chuuya could think about was that ad he had seen on TV, about how to stop your husband from snoring excessively, or something like that. It was probably an ad for nose spray.

Verixil! And all the problems are gone! Sleep tight!

Chuuya shook his head and he looked at the objects in his hands. A tube of red hair dye, a brush and a towel. Did he know what to do with those?

No.

Did that stop him?

Also no.

Chuuya opened the lid of the tube and he poured some substance into his gloved hands (plastic hands, of course, he would never ruin his gloves only for that) and as he squeezed hard, the tube made a sound like a fart and Chuuya stopped. Dazai didn’t even react, but the redhead was tense and his didn’t breathe, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did, so he just poured some more and then he took a wavy strand of Dazai’s hair and scrubbed the dye onto it until it was slick. He did two more strands and then he got bored and just put the whole thing onto Dazai’s scalp, not caring what the dyes was going to stain.

He then left and closed the door behind him, going to bed in his own apartment.

He slept well and he woke up even better. Dazai was screaming and he was trying to wash his hair, to make the ugly, neon orange color go away. Chuuya rolled on the floor with laughter and his sides started to hurt. The dye was spread uneven and parts of Dazai’s hair had now the color of poop.

He won this time.

1-0 for Chuuya.

***

Actually, let’s make that 1-1 because Dazai also dyed Chuuya’s hair purple the very next night and there were no words to describe how ugly it looked. Even if there were none, Dazai still found some and Chuuya also found words to describe how ugly Dazai looked.

Koyo took a photo, even neither of them wanted to.

They still keep the phot in their drawer. None of them admits it.

***

ii.

Chuuya was walking down the street and he was in a bad mood. No particular reason. He just felt down and he didn’t have any plans to even try to make himself look happy. What was the point? There was no one who cared anyways. It had been like that since he was little. And then there was a period when there really was someone who asked if he was ok; if he said he was not, then that someone would just nod and walk away. But, it was something…

Chuuya stopped and he looked at the barber on the other side of the road. A slim and tall silhouette disappeared inside right before Chuuya could actually tell that it was Dazai. The redhead rolled his eyes (out of habit) and he tucked his hands in his pockets and continued to walk. He wanted that coffee right now or he felt he would die. A common feeling that Chuuya was sick of. The coffee was going to solve everything…

His feet did not take him to the closest café, instead he entered the barber shop. The bell rang, but Dazai didn’t even bat an eye.

“So only a quick cut, right?” asked the barber, a small man wearing thick glasses, their lenses yellow. He was smiling and the air around him was cheer-full.

“Yeah, only a quick cut, and if you could show me how to make a hole through my skull painlessly while you are there, it would be great.

A French melody started playing and Chuuya rolled his eyes and smiled. The room was quiet but Dazai was practically radiating and the barber looked at him with an uncertain look.

“Uhm, I guess I could? But not painlessly, though.” Dazai sighed and closed his eyes.

“No, it’s ok. I’ll try elsewhere.” Both of them seemed to forget that Chuuya was there. But, suddenly, the hairdresser looked up and he was probably on his way to say “Can I help you?”, but Chuuya quickly put a finger to his lips and the man shut his mouth.

The people that just entered were dangerous; he could feel it. So, he just did what everyone would do: “I am going to bring my scissors and we can start.” Dazai didn’t say anything.

The man run to another room and closed the door. Chuuya lifted himself up a little bit and floated where Dazai was, looking in the mirror in front of him

He could now recognize the melody that was playing? How could he not? It was `La vie en rose` by Edith Piaf. Koyo was obsessed with this one some time ago when she was dumped by a cute barista from the coffee shop across the Port Mafia’s office.

Dazai’s eyes were closed and he seemed to be sleeping. Chuuya looked around and then he saw it: a botte full of a light-green hair dye, looking very much like wasabi. He didn’t hesitate and he took a spoonful of it.

Dazai snored. Chuuya put the substance gently onto Dazai’s scalp and spread it with his fingers. The brown-haired man (whose hair color was once red and also poop-like) opened his eyes and looked up at Chuuya.

They both stared into each other’s eyes for twenty-three seconds. Chuuya had counted it. He then smiled and left, Dazai looking dumfounded. He then looked into the mirror and saw the mess on his hair or that his hair was. He sat up quickly and went after Chuuya.

But the redhead was gone. And “La vie en rose” was pouring on the street and in the hot summer day and it seemed somewhat romantic.

Dazai would kill Chuuya the next time he would see him. There was no other chance now for the small man; he was obliged to commit a double suicide with Dazai.

2-1 for Chuuya.

iii.

Because Chuuya knew Dazai. That’s why he didn’t respond all of his messages that begged him to come over. Because he knew that Dazai was probably drunk.

What he didn’t expect was for Dazai to actually come to his apartment, knocking insistently at his door and shouting some nonsense. Chuuya tried to ignore him, but he forgot one crucial detail: he did give Dazai a copy of his keys, so, when Dazai entered in the bathroom where Chuuya was soaking in the tub, drinking some wine, the only thing the small man could do was to curse at his foolishness.

He shouted and cursed and almost spilled the wine, but Dazai didn’t move: he only sat there with a big smile plastered onto his doll face, and Chuuya was creeped out of his mind. He could only ignore him and that’s what he did.

It had been a hard day in the Port Mafia, ok? That’s why he fell asleep in the bath tub, with Dazai watching him intently.

He let his guard down and when he woke up, the apartment was empty. But his hair was a wonderful, delicate, simply beautiful, what more could we say, tone of blue, only strands of it still being that red Chuuya was so proud of.

***

Only later did he find the photo of them when they were smaller, glued to his bathroom mirror. He smiled and he when he flipped it over, he saw only saw a ‘2-2’.

If you look at it from another point, it could mean something else; Chuuya knew and his heart let itself sink in that sensation for a bit.

2-2 and match is still going.

They are still chasing after each other, trying to always be the best. Both of them know that they are unstoppable when they are together. They knew and they didn’t care because in their world, that is smaller than it seems, the arbiter hadn’t blown in the whistle yet.

Notes: Cause they love each other duh please stop being so dumb

#bungou stray dogs #soukoku #Dazai Osamu #chuuya nakara #dazai x chuuya #skk fic #bsd fic #AO3 fic #fluff #bsd fluff

22 notes · View notes

initiumseries · 4 years ago

Note

Hey! I love your thoughts on bad tv and I’d love to hear a series wrap up on CAOS if you want to make a post about it. If not no worries and thanks for posting your thoughts on the show over the last year. Loved them and love your blog too!

Thank you!! Sure I can totally do a series wrap up, pretty much right now, in response to this ask.

So, if I had to distill my issues with this series into a few bullet points it would be:

-plot -world building/continuity -characters

Plot

CAOS struggles with plot, and I think the biggest reason why, is they just seemed to completely lose track of what the hell they were doing lol. Season 1, ends up being the tightest season because the plot was simple: Sabrina’s dark baptism and her leaving her mortal life behind to become one with witchkind. They beat us to death with the Satan stuff, and they cram as much corny imagery as possible in, even if it doesn’t really make sense.

why are they having class in a hallway? Do witches not use technology? Why is that blackboard so small? Why isn’t this just a normal classroom setting?

Sabrina’s Season 1 character arc is also clear: she decides, fuck the rules, she’s going to straddle both worlds and everyone’s just gonna have to accept it. It’s not good, but it’s clear. S2, 3, 4 get completely lost in all this other weird stuff. Sabrina is actually not her father’s daughter, but Satan’s, and that plotline goes absolutely nowhere when Sabrina conveniently doubles herself (and experiences 0 consequences for it) and rules hell while also staying in Greendale as herself (seriously, it’s not like satan was dying or anything, he was perfectly fine. For what reason did Sabrina need to become Queen? There’s no answer or explanation for that, she just...did. Ok :/). Father Blackwood goes apeshit and pulls a Jonestown, for no real reason, CAOS starts leaning heavily into this white feminism stuff (for godsake, the coven kills a DEMON, with the fucking pain of childbirth?! Are you SERIOUS??) Then, s3, it’s about losing their powers because Satan is childish and petty, and a new group of spellcasters are out to kill the witches, and Prudence and Ambrose hunting Blackwood. S4, the eldritch terrors, which honestly, make so little sense, I couldn’t even be bothered. Each season, CAOs falls deeper into the trap of trying to up the ante, make the danger BIGGER, WILDER, more insurmountable, while being completely unprepared to stay consistent with their characters/motivations and undercutting their own BIG ideas with stupid, nonsensical solutions (let me trap this all powerful eldritch terror by taking it to a party, proposing and luring it into a magicked dollhouse...wtf?).

Worldbuilding/Continuity

What I hate most about these writers for Riverdale and CAOS is that they just don’t feel beholden to being consistent in their worldbuilding and continuity. I don’t find anything cool about kids living in houses with old tvs and rotary phones, but then having a cell phones or wearing modern clothes. Historical anachronisms like that should serve a purpose.

It COULD be interesting if the conceit is that Zelda and Hilda are OLD, so they take comfort in old things like that, but then that should be specific to the Spellman house, and it should be weird. People should take note of it when they’re there, Sabrina should be conscious of it because she grew up in a time where TVs didn’t look like they were stuck in the 50s. But instead, it’s just...a stupid mess of aesthetic anachronisms for no reason other than they can do it and I just find that to be lazier than utilizing those details in an interesting way.

In season 1, we get a relatively clear idea that the witches have a certain way of life, that bleeds into season 2. It’s still very sloppy; the anti-pope, using satan where we’d use “god”, introducing the feast and other dangerous parts of being a witch, and essentially just doing the opposite of christianity (except for the racism/sexism ofc. That would require too much thinking I guess). But by season 3, essentially the witches’ way of life have been completely turned upside down. And we never...unpack that. There’s no mourning for literal millennia of supposed tradition, there’s no real floundering or struggling. There are apparently no other adults AT ALL in this magical world outside of Blackwood, Zelda and Hilda, so there’s no real way to get a sense of the REALITY of losing their way of life for these witches, or this world. Is it even a world? Or just a handful of people? Lol. What it means to have to choose a new god to pray to, and is there an divisiveness over who? In Harry Potter, the kids’ parents are tangentially involved when they start pulling their kids out of Hogwarts. Do any of these kids’ parents pull them out of the school when they start praying to Lilith and then Hecate? Do any of the boys have issues with moving from a male god to a female one? Where did all these kids come from if they didn’t have parents and families? Is this witch world just...the school? Why? It would have been interesting watching the witches struggle and scramble to regain their powers while also being hunted by this new, threatening group whose magic seems to be much older, much darker. But instead, they just pivot, and have a fucking picnic before the full moon.

There’s nothing interesting about characters just constantly pivoting around obstacles without having any real emotional reaction, any real struggles. Obstacles like losing their powers, should be an actual obstacle. They should struggle, there should be emotional weight, and consequences. Instead, Sabrina continues to break rules to suit her agenda, put her friends and family and risk and everyone just...rolls with it. No one is angry at Sabrina for the loss of their powers? Her choice to not become Queen of hell is why they lost their powers right? No one has feelings about that? Sabrina isn’t ostracized? We never see the way these choices, or the overarching plot obstacles impact the characters emotionally. Instead, they’re doing this stuff:

Which is completely ridiculous to me. It all just...HAPPENS. Which is this entire series. Stuff happens, and the characters just, do stuff in reaction to it. Harvey, Theo and Roz are ostensibly human, living human lives. They end up getting pulled into Sabrina’s world, and no one has any strong feelings about that? Harvey’s brother is killed, Roz is turned to stone and Theo talks to his dead great aunt and none of them are haunted by any of that? No? They just decide to create a faux scooby club to fight demons? Ok. And that cheerleading things is over as quickly as we see it. Stuff like this is insanely frustrating to watch because it makes the show a nonsensical slog to sit through. There’s nothing interesting or engaging to latch onto because they just hammer through it all and make up stupid solutions to get themselves out of the impossible stakes they threw the characters in in the first place. They introduce ideas and discard them just as quickly. An ex:angels show up, start killing people, Sabrina channels satan and kills them, and then that’s the last of those guys. Metatron (jfc even the name is stupid) shows up and is killed just as quickly. Why bother introducing them then? Why bother do any of the things you’re currently doing in this show if you have no intention of seeing it through?

Characters

No one on this show gels, at all. I don’t believe Theo/Roz/Harvey/Sabrina have been friends for ages. I don’t believe Sabrina and Nick are “end game” (why the hell do we keep saying this riverdale? It’s stupid and senseless). I don’t believe any of these relationships at all. Part of this is because the cast have no chemistry with each other:

they do not look like a friend group or couples at all, these are a bunch of people paired together.

But also because they weren’t consistent at all.

Father Blackwood went from a witch/warlock purist, to a raging sexist, to a cult leader who killed his followers, to a raging maniac bent on hitler-esque destruction in 4 seasons...for nothing. It served no purpose. He didn’t even DO anything. He was nice to the Eldritch Terrors, and became immortal...for nothing. He killed the coven, for nothing. He killed his wife in childbirth, for nothing. Zelda stole the baby, for nothing. None of that amounted to anything worth while in the entire series. So what was the point? Zelda marrying Faustus also made no sense and only happened to show JUST how sexist he was! But why? WHY? We don’t receive explanations for character behaviour, and when we do, it still makes no sense.

Sabrina breaks all these rules and experiences ZERO consequences. At all times, and it makes her a terrible main character. Everyone else abides by the rules but she doesn’t and doesn’t have to pay for that? Why? She straddles both worlds instead of committing to one, and that was the closest we got to seeing consequences for her. Everyone rushes in to help Sabrina break rules instead of holding her accountable for feeling above them. Sabrina creates 2 versions of herself, and they sloppily tie in that all the realms are converging in on each other because of what she did. Except she and Sabrina Morningstar had been hanging out...ostensibly for days/weeks/months (who knows? Not this show!) before we saw any potential issues, and then we end up finding out that this is about the next eldritch terror, not about Sabrina existing as a double in 1 universe. People get upset for a second and then move on to help her. So why have rules in this world at all if it means nothing to break them?

Nick goes through literal hell, and immediately cheats on Sabrina because of how a man made of clay looked at her. That’s laughable to me. It makes no narrative sense. Their relationship doesn’t even make sense.

Roz and Harvey spend 90% of their time almost fucking. It’s bizarre. Their getting together was random and every single scene with them alone in it is like a precursor to fucking and I don’t get why. This show does not grasp how to build up relationships. Also do these kids not have parents? Theo and Harvey stay having constant sleepovers with their respective partners, in their parents’ houses? Really? At seventeen? Lol k.

I feel like, if CAOS were better thought out, it could have actually been interesting. But it was just a smorgasbord of stuff happening, and characters doing stuff, and none of that following in any real narrative way. Storytelling has structure for a reason, and a show with a good story structure usually yields an enjoyable watching experience. CAOS is a pretty strong example of how throwing that out and relying so heavily on aesthetics and still taking the show so seriously it’s not even fun terrible, gets you nowhere. Ultimately I’m glad it’s over.

#caos #caos netflix #the chilling adventures of sabrina

74 notes · View notes

luminous-shifting-vibes · 4 years ago

Text

*sequel* to actual fucking quotes from the shiftblr coffeehouse discord server

once again, it's out of context because x1000 funnier

also x1000 longer than previous post

"ur satan is gnc af"

"Bestie I’m already having gender envy over a fucking demon please"

"O_O ODEPIJHFbavevisdpvfhzdcnjawedsidjksjdkoeirjfmkdsoeirujdksodifjndmksoidfjdksidfj ITS" NOT IN MY FRAFTS IS SPEDNT 1 hour PN THAT SHIT"

"AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"ohoho sexy"

"I am very proud of myself"

"himbo x edgy fuck"

"YOU COULD SQUISH HES CHEECKS"

"he has teefs"

"SQUASH"

"good for biting 📷"

"he's a himbo basically"

"B͂̒̄iͫ̍̈tͧ̓ͯè̄̇"

"bifth"

"i havent watched blue exorcist in years but mr okumura my beloved </3"

"MY LIFE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED"

"is it important information to mention that the person i put up for my turn is the son of satan" "I know like 1 thing about everyone who isnt ranboo lmfao"

"crimes"

"tumblr sexyman"

"idk why but my first thought was cowboy onceler"

"I vibe with him but he is very long and twisty"

"steampunk e-girl"

"steampunk tumblr sexyman"

"Canonically bi crimelord I agree!!"

"OOO FRIEND SHAPED"

"ARTIST SIGHTED"

"they look like someone i would want to be friends with but is way cooler than me so i'd never actually talk to them"

"babby..... would die for him"

"honestly i probably kin him"

"i'm sure he's lovely but he looks way too much like my ex i'm sorry-"

"i'd be down for another rotation! i have another twink to show y'all"

"Also :00 blonde friend"

"Let us all infodhmo"

"Hsjagdvbs shhh im on phone"

"Nix woukd you like to joon?

"skitters away"

"I have two braincells and they both drink dumb bitch juice"

"oof wait whats the order again i have 0 memory"

"i want to bond with him over cosplay-"

"Awkwardly watches in band kid"

"One day I'm gonna a broadway star"

"which isnt to say they were bad. they were just fortnite dancing during rehersals"

"I threw it so hard my glasses flew off and slid under the stage right divider"

"anyway heres my boi"

"emo"

"haha emo"

"virgil sanders kinnie"

"he looks like he listens to my chemical panic at the fallout boy"

"Bro I bet he'd kick my ass with his deck"

"bird man my beloved"

"fuck i had so much to say and then i forgot it all"

"Birds!!"

"guiguhuh"

"crabrave"

"She sounds like someone I would end up stealing her personality"

"yess name collector gang"

"alias glass aiden haven absinthe fish brick rice"

"But I have Cypress, Remure, Genesis, Lemres, and Comet"

"And she's named after a mars candy bar bc alien"

"Hey, if plato went by plato, you can be king thief"

"im not dissing my gramma like that shfojd"

"My dad has seven legal names" "bitches be like *looks at fictional character* *steals their name* it's us we're bithces"

"coraline lowkey traumatized me but i adore it regardless"

"mmmmmm magic man :]"

"°0° green man"

"criminal (affectionate)"

"he would shoplift a candy bar from walmart and then brag to all of his friends about the sick stealing he did"

"despite the fact he's canonically been capable of overpowering a minor deity"

"i would commit so many crimes for him"

"Very babey"

"Yes please tell green man he is very pog"

"he also keeps a lot of dumb secrets"

"but I will sorely miss the chaos and energy of this here chat until I wake again" (by request XD)

"i just say words and if they're funny then they're funny"

"* or extremly chaotic either works"

"at this point we are just taking turns rambling"

"oH--"

"bc my brain has a schedule"

"Hopefully they have gyoza there or I will lose my mind"

"hehe yes spooky man"

"my ghost glucose guardian"

"the head of the undead group that lives there, and we end up dating. (yes I date a ghost, no I will not be taking constructive criticism /lh)"

"ghosts r just inherently sexy"

"i mean im becoming a squid thing so"

"Raven quirk raven quirk!!"

"ł â m p"

"łæmp"

"mothman: ooh lamp you look very nice today! do you come here often? mothman: wait shit no"

"I'd date a ghost"

"mine is still accurate, i am still sobbing (/j)"

"p e e p e e"

""@nick wilde is a tumblr sexyman" is the best thing i have ever seen"

"im sorry im cackling like a dying hyena"

"you're all 12 year olds"

"PEENIE"

"He once caused global warming on accident so he could get a tan"

"god, what a himbo. i love him"

"that reminds me of my friends kin assigned me jesus"

"Man outside of battle be like: princely crying but then in battle hes like: "CATACLYSM! DISASTER! DEVASTATION!" Chill out man"

"Every time I talk about satan it never fails to shock people it's my favorite thing to do"

"im kin assigning him roman sanders" ""Oh yeah he caused global warming because he wanted to get girls" "he what""

"oh damn i forgot satan was straight"

"twink appreciation club"

"give us the twinks"

"my first thought was bottom-"

"so many people to try and get his dad to love him"

"daddy issued"

"OH MY GOD ITS WILBUR"

"Big boy but"

"anyways janus is swagggg"

"........................."

"gib twink"

"give twink then i will share"

"holds him gentle like hamburger"

"This dumb bitch opened a book that said "do not open" and got possessed by a little bastard"

"he is. fragile creachur"

"klug is beauty klug is grace i would let him step on my face"

"If I'm playing swap and I have to hear one more "Pwanet Powew" Im gonna lose it"

"Who is to blame? Pandora or the box?"

"Bakugo isnt my type but I respect the drip"

"i say like my type isnt long-haired pretty boys and girls that look so gnc that people have a history of confusing them for men"

"hes a gremlin and i can appreciate a pretty gremlin"

"that is to say i am attracted to VFlower vocaloid. This is a confession."

"note i am a lesbian"

"You may like Schezo wegey"

"why does he have one single expression"

"soul soul eater passes the vibe check"

"magic wand"

"I Want To Hold His Hand"

"i would commit a war crime for him any war crime idc which one"

"my favorite one is when he sounded rlly gay because he said "Muscular bodies keep me satisfied""

"p e a n u t"

"Klug is a homophobic homosexual its just facts"

"grug from the croods is peak male performance"

"jaw drops to floor, eyes pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, heart beats out of chest, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of mouth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens tie, combs hair Ahem, you look very lovely."

"tag yourself im the fireworks shooting from the top of the head"

"i like essays"

"central time gang"

"11:11 pog-" (wait... is that a suprise angel number?? yes it is lovelies just for you <3)

"Then again im also a dumbass bitch who wonders what the souls in soul eater taste like. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. THEY LOOK TASTY AS HELL!!!! LIKE GODDAMN BRO YOU'RE MAKING ME FUCKING HUNGRY. Like. that shit- it's Bone Apple motherfucking Teeth. hell yea my guy. Im hongy now.... shlorp I'm seriously considering this. Like. They seem kinda like a liquid? But a solid? Are they like jello? The fuck they taste like my guy???? I keep imagining they're like sour, like sour candy maybe? Or do they taste salty? Sweet? Maybe some combo of two? Do they even have a taste or is it about the texture? The sensation? God my mouth is watering what the hell. I am starving. I think I need to go get a cookie. I'm gonna go get a cookie. Brb. I'm better. I'm still craving souls though. Which is a weird-ass cringey thing to say but I'm being dead-ass rn. They just.... look tasty???? And I wanna eat one. Thus. I am shifting to Soul Eater for the express purpose of satisfying my fucking cravings. enjoy"

"points were made"

"jello? more like helloooo schloooAHFJDSDAIDWNALDHSJKDAIDANDM"

"WAIT I THINK I HAVE AN ANIME GIRL BITING VIDEO TOO"

"anime girl voice: mmm! mm... ahhhhmp!! mmm, mmm... aaahmp!"

"i think it sounds great i'm going to start eating like that"

"several people are typing"

"do these look edible to you"

"forbidden gummies"

"when I was on lsd I couldn't eat my fruit gummies because I thought they were alive because they had little faces on them"

"oh shit yeah don't do drugs"

"anyways general consensus is puyos are edible, ty for your input everyone"

"everypony is a word so powerful it can bring nations to its knees"

"pls the self control it's taking me not to say "hewwo everypony" in gen chat when someone new joins-"

"hewwo evewrypony uwu deaw cewestia i hopwe it doewsnt wain owo"

"ive cooked up a sowution wiwth the knowwege ive acwued. they say a kitcwen time saves niwne, but im just savwing two. Ive gathewwed the inwedients to make a time sowbet. Thewe's hawdly woom fow seconds when the seconds mewt away."

"I had a ten year old sister... you know what happened to her??? very sad, very tragic... she turned eleven....."

"NIIICE"

"Guts dont say the secks word :( /j"

"watch your fucking language in front of the president"

"im so sorry lumi"

"i think you're like ehhhh 8/10 funny"

"now me???? 10/10. Hilarious"

"sometimes i have to take a step back and remember that this is the same guts i follow on tumblr /lh"

""ok every here's some good shifting advice!!! uwu have a good day" "yeah i did lsd and ate fruit gummies""

"i have one setting and it's whatever this is"

"my bitch ass cat just pushed the door open with his fuzzy face and now my sleeping dad is being lulled into dreams by Cosmo Sheldrake's 'Pliocine'."

"me on discord: nick wilde"

"me on tumblr: shifting water! haha funne! me on here: my hermit crabs are cannibals also i want to eat souls."

"im sorry yOUR VIBESA RE JUST SO DIFFERNT"

"u give off older cousin ive never spoken to but always admire at the family gatherings vibes"

"what the fuck"

"BC I HAVE LIBERTU"

"If you adopt me then yes"

"am I qualified for dad jokes???"

"we're all a lot smarter on tumblr"

"I'm like "awww... sweet... sweet little shiftlings... posting such sweet shiftling content... so pure, so wholesome... does not even know abcs....""

"can't think before you speak if you never think B)"

"I'm not responsible enough to be a mom"

"cat pet"

"show us pictures of the cat or i will do Crime"

"maybe thats me being a coward tho"

"MOTH!!!! MOTH MY BELOVED"

if y'all want I can make this a series bc shiftblr keeps giving me more content

#tw drugs #tw swearing #tw cannibalism #tw crime #tw food #tw homophobia #shitpost #out of context #out of context quotes #lumi's quotes

34 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 4 years ago

Note

JJ Abrams Superman Movie officially announced, with Ta-Nahisi Coates writing

Anonymous said: Just a few days after you said you were happy with DC taking a break from Superman movies and just focusing on him being on tv again, they go and announce a new Superman movie. How do you feel? Coates is an exciting choice, I think

Caught me red-handed! But to be fair a couple times I said that I left a caveat of ‘barring extraordinary circumstances’, which I’d say this qualifies as.

There’s only so much to go off of at this point, but even these tidbits open up a lot to think about.

* As out of left field as Coates feels at first blush - he’s a Marvel man! - it’s not entirely shocking that he’d be on WB’s shortlist to be their ‘how to fix Superman’ guy: he got a MacArthur Genius Grant the same year as his #1 bestselling book about what the American Way actually means, after which he got into superhero writing with a run that ended up having elements incorporated into a cultural moment in Black Panther, and then Between The World And Me was cited as the inspiration for the Watchmen show that substantially drew on Superman iconography and won 11 Emmys. People are already talking about him admittedly not being a DC or Superman guy (though in that same interview he notes his love for the DCAU, specifically including STAS), but if he’s here he’s got something to say and, y’know, probably read a decent amount of Superman stuff either since then/prior to this or to get ready for the gig, so can’t say I’m worried.

* Related note: I’m seeing folks concerned about how much control he’ll really have over the project, which is fair. But that it’s his involvement that’s being touted over JJ Abrams’ (the guy who, like him or not, rebirthed Star Wars as a going concern to the tune of over $2 billion), and that they’re formally announcing and hyping it up as TA-NEHISI COATES’ SUPERMAN MOVIE™, COMING 202X before even having a director or lead actor attached, says to me that whatever his vision is it’s one WB’s going all-in on for the time being.

* I’ve seen plenty of discussion already about the appropriateness of this potentially starring a black Superman given both the dynamics/thematics of Superman as a character, and more significantly the implications of Coates maybe only being brought onboard to do ‘the black version’. That is a conversation I have precisely zero qualifications to wade in on with my own takes, but given that he is a dude with enough options that he could probably even turn down an opportunity on this scale, and the aforementioned weight being given to his role in this, I think it’s safe to say whatever we’re going to get is something he’s onboard with.

* Also seen concerns re: his pedigree as a fiction writer - another one I’m not that qualified to weigh in on, I’ve only read the first year or so of his Black Panther and Captain America runs (though I got the rest of his BP on Comixology while it was free, gotta check it out sometime), which were solid if a bit more workmanlike than you’d hope, along with the (other category altogether) Between The World And Me some time ago, which was...considerably more than solid. I know however his fiction novel debut in The Water Dancer was well-received, his Marvel work rather than staying ‘grounded’ hasn’t shied away from the sort of outré high concepts you’d want to see in a Superman movie, and the main criticism of his runs of ‘they’re too slow’ wouldn’t likely have the space to apply in a 2-3 hour Hollywood blockbuster, so again, not too concerned.

* Perhaps time will make me eat my words, but hot take: there is a basically 0% chance this is about Calvin Ellis or Val-Zod. Yes, yes, the DC movies are reportedly embracing the multiverse an excuse to do standalone stuff, but the two examples of that thus far in Joker and The Batman are still broadly rooted in the conventional trappings of those characters even if they’re separated from the ‘main universe’. Maybe someday the options might go further afield, but right now, when Superman hasn’t had an unambiguous silver screen hit in over 40 years? They’re not going to pour a quarter-billion dollars into a movie with the premise of “last son of the doomed planet Krypton, imbued beneath Earth’s yellow sun with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and raised with the noblest ideals of truth and justice, Some Other Guy Most Of You Don’t Know protects the world...as Superman!” Not even getting into Val-Zod being just one member of an ensemble cast from a largely overlooked book and having the baggage of being Zod’s kid, and the EVERYTHING of making a four-quadrant tentpole film about Super-Obama (when you haven’t even been able to make your regular Super work) - this is either going to be Clark, or if they do make Superman black or brown but still want some distance it’ll be a Jon movie so it’s still got the direct connection to the original and the ‘son of Superman’ pitch in its corner too.

* Abrams is an interesting partner. He’s Hollywood’s big nostalgia guy, and that’s...probably not what Coates is going to be going for here. I assume he’s basically there to keep things familiar enough for WB’s tastes, which itself raises questions about the nature of Coates’ pitch and how it was internally received even if they’re clearly very publicly committed to it.

* Michael B. Jordan probably won’t really be the guy - he apparently talked about it, reasonably concluded he didn’t want to face that inevitable scale of backlash after what he already went through just playing the Human Torch, and the tradition is to cast an unknown in the part - but I guess never say never. Heck, while I sure wouldn’t bet on it I don’t think Ryan Coogler ending up involved is out of the question either; Coates’ previous screenwriting experience was working on a project with Coogler and Jordan that evidently didn’t come to fruition (Wrong Answer, a drama about a 2006 Atlanta public school cheating scandal), and they seem to have maintained a relationship as they had a public discussion regarding The Water Dancer in 2019.

* Ok I know making fun of Snyder people is passé at this point and usually more “NO SUPERMAN MOVIES MAY BE PERMITTED UNTIL THE CIVILIZATION-REDEFINING FIVE-FILM SAGA IS COMPLETE” howling into the void is barely worth notice, and “this is solely WB retaliating against us for bending them to our will!” in response to a Superman reboot would normally be just an amusing side-note too. But trying to get #HenryCavillSuperman/#HenryCavillIsOurSuperman trending in response to the possibility of a black Superman...I mean obviously so fucking many of them are fully aware they’re just not saying the quiet part loud, but what’re the percentages here?

So that’s what I’ve got so far. How do I feel about it all? It’s odd; given that there are basically no actual details beyond a name attached I’d never thought about in this context, and that this came with no forewarning just as the prospect of Superman in movies for the next long while seemed as dead as it ever had been, it’s so ill-defined and seems so unreal that I don’t feel much of anything about it yet? Plus I’m no longer driven on a day-by-day basis by a savage, all-consuming desire to slake a thirst for quality Superman stuff long left unquenched the way I was even a couple years ago, which likely also plays its part. But objectively? This is a guy formally, nationally recognized for being smart who’s also a journalist and comics fan being given Superman, with what sure feels like a lot of leeway and presumably a blank slate, which is basically the abstract concept of a perfect pick. So yes: I formally rescind my “please no Superman movies in the 2020s” plea.

#Superman #Ta Nehisi Coates #JJ Abrams #Calvin Ellis #Val Zod #Jon Kent #Michael B. Jordan #Ryan Coogler #DCEU #Worlds of DC #Opinion

20 notes · View notes