#which sucks cause its a important part of the universe of the comics and i will have to read soon or later

[pyechmushy]

Unfortunately, my frivolous side wins sometimes and I refuse to read certain sagas because I think the design is fucking bad

[wazzappp]

dandandan au but it's robbie and lisa

Do you have any idea what you've done. I have literally been thinking about this for a week now and you've given me an excuse to talk about it. I am in your walls now you cant get rid of me you did this to yourself.

ANYWAY. LETS GET STARTED.

Lisa is fairly easy to just slot in as Momo tbh. She's popular, stylish and actively looking for a boyfriend that fits a very specific criteria. Also idk WHY but it is INCREDIBLY easy for me to see her being raised by Sekio. She doesn't really have a canon family and I think the most important part of her family life is that she grows up fairly well taken care of and loved, which Sekio does! You know. In her own way.

Sekio raising her also makes it very plausible for her to be the kind of girl who carries a brick in her purse and roundhouse kicks scumbags trying to pressure her into sex in the throat. Just maybe a little nicer than Momo is sometimes lol. Being raised by Sekio also means she keeps the attribute of being well educated about ghosts.

I can see her adapting to her psychokinesis pretty quickly, just like Momo does. I do like her emotions influencing her powers just a little more than they seem to effect Momo in canon. Just because I'm such a sucker for her keeping that mask of a smile on her face while unintentionally making cracks in the wall with her powers.

Lisa is also... mildly jealous I think. We can see that in the comic where Robbie and Ms.Marvel have a crossover hangout. She is VISIBLY relieved when they decide they're 'Crossover Besties for Life' so her being a little possessive of Robbie when Aira comes into the picture also stays making sense (smacking the pink bitch on the head with a pan for daring to make fun of her man my beloved).

I cant talk about Robbie and Gabe without first talking about Eli, unfortunately. Eli sucks ass in every universe so yeah he's still working for the Russian mob. Bad news though, he's been getting too much attention for killing the wrong people. He's been visiting Alejandro and Julianna Reyes (who is very pregnant with Robbie) frequently enough that his enemies are aware of them, which means they're actively in danger. So Ivanov uses this as an excuse to send Eli to Japan so he can oversee some drug deals they've been doing with the Yakuza. He has to give his businessmen some scary dog privileges and all that yk. His caution does not last very long at all and he starts making a habit of taking his victims to an old abandoned tunnel on the edge of town for killing and disposal.

He manages to last a whole 5 years in Japan but it's not really voluntary. Ivanov has realized he has a great way to pawn off this liability and he's milking it to the extreme. Eventually the Yakuza decide 'This guy is actually so fucking shitty its worth it to kill him and potentially jeopardize our relationship with the Russians'. So they kill him, and his family, which leaves Robbie and a very small Gabe in Japan.

Because of all the people he killed in that tunnel, Eli's spirit goes to rest there. Rumors had spread of a Mexican guy, high as balls on coke, killing people in there so he earns the name 'Turbo Tío'. Cause 'Turbo Granny' is a INSANE name and I could not resist the dangling chain of alliteration I mean it's RIGHT THERE.

Robbie and Gabe's story stays mostly the same. Robbie is still working on cars but I think it would be reasonable for him to start looking at apprentice work on Trains once he's out of high school. Eli still had his tantrum and threw Julianna down the stairs while pregnant with Gabe, so he's still working to provide for his brother.

Robbie as Okarun changes a few things but surprisingly not as many as I would expect. Okarun is awkward, insecure, lonely and bullied. It's why he attaches to Momo so quickly. Robbie is ALSO awkward and lonely but he's got a lethal murderface and a 'dont fuck with me' attitude so he doesn't have the same problems with bullies. He DOES have the same problems with friendlessness though.

Gabe. The most specialest boy ever. He is an entirely NEW part of the equation and as a result I'm giving him Specialest Boy powers. Gabe is very spiritually sensitive. He can see things most people cant. He pretty quickly learned to Not Talk About It very much and expresses what he sees by drawing. Robbie just thinks he's very imaginative, and he is but this isn't because of that.

Because of this, Gabe has an interest in aliens and supernatural phenomena (the cryptid 'Ninja Wolf' is an obvious favorite). Robbie likes to check any books out in the library that he might like.

This changes things for Robbie once he's cursed because now he has MULTIPLE reasons for wanting to get rid of it.

The obvious. He would appreciate having his balls back, thank you very much (unsubstantiated, based off my research, but rumors spread that because he was with the Russian mob he castrated people in the tunnel so like it or not its part of his lore now.)

Having this curse is putting a target on his back and therefore putting Gabe in danger.

He REALLY does not have time to be fighting all these ghosts and aliens while holding down a job and going to school.

Please for the love of god he wants to incinerate that little cat Eli is being stored in.

BUT theres also a bit of a conundrum there. Lisa can defend herself 100% but with all the shit getting thrown at them its really helpful to have Robbie around (he would. very much prefer for her to not get hurt). And the really big problem: being spiritually sensitive could put Gabe in danger in the future, and if Robbie cant defend him whats the point of all this anyway?

SO. Considering all of this, Lisa and Robbies first meeting and subsequent dare goes a little different. Heres what I'm thinking.

Lisa is super in her head while walking down the hallway because she broke up with her shithead boyfriend. Robbie doesn't see her because there was a new shipment of books to the library and he's carrying as many as he can that he thinks Gabe will like. Naturally they run into each other.

Lisa is pissed at first, saying he 'needs to watch where he's going'. But feels bad mid stomp off and turns around to help. Comments on the subject material. Something like,

'Aliens, huh? I've seen you around school I didn't take you for the type to be into that. At least you've got a little stuff about ghosts here too, thats more reasonable.'

Robbie takes offense on his brothers behalf, 'What the hell makes ghosts more reasonable than aliens?'

Their fight escalates, Lisa makes him a deal. He goes to the most haunted place she can find, she goes to a place with lots of reports of alien activity. First person to back out owes the other 50 bucks (which is like. 7487 yen. Damn). For Robbie thats an entire meal and he's confident he wont fail. Lisa just thinks he's sorta cute and she likes proving people wrong.

I'm willing to bet you can guess what happens from there.

Also, because it's me, they get some fun physical side effects to their curses. Robbie has a portion of his hair that stays white after his transformation. He tries to dye it at first to stay under the radar but eventually its just to annoying to keep up with. I think he should keep black fingernails too. As a treat.

I!! WANT!! SIDE EFFECTS!! FOR TELEKENESIS!! So fuck it I'm giving Lisa funky green face marks she covers with makeup. They can be funky together.

Alright thank you for coming to my ted talk bye

[jadelotusflower]

It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.  

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014.  But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen?  Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?  

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak).  And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination.  How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

[aeondeug]

"kubo just really seems to hate Japanese nationalism?" This is the first time I have heard this, would you mind elaborating on how Bleach criticizes Japanese nationalism?

I'm not surprised to hear this as I don't really see it come up much. I have seen a few times critique of Japanese conservatism through Bleach come up, but never quite as fully as I feel the comic deserves. Anyway...The thing to note with Japanese nationalism is that it is highly militaristic and that it is based around forming a very particular narrative about Japan. Namely, one of Japan as a uniquely wonderful and gifted nation full of one joined ethnicity. A joined ethnicity that doesn't vary. Part of this has been managed by the attempt to homogenize Japanese culture as a whole. So Shinto, for example, only became a single religion fairly recently. And in the 40's following the war, attempts were made to standardize it. Since Shinto's more like several religions in a trench coat than a single religion. These attempts have involved creating fake rituals in places like Abashiri, a historically Ainu area, which have the air of an imperial procession. This ritual is claimed to be "local". It's not. It had nothing to do with the local culture until it became convenient to claim it did. So what in the hell does this have to do with Bleach. So Soul Society is the primary method through which criticism of Japanese conservative culture occurs in the comic. Right from the get go we can see like...The kind of mythic identity that nationalists really like. It's a traditional Japan. Everyone is dressed in traditional clothing, though the clothing is fanciful and not actually 100% accurate to any one era. The culture is split up in a form resembling Japanese feudalism, where the militarily powerful are given a great deal of power over those who cannot fight. The Soul Reapers basically being ghost pacifying/hunting samurai? And they are as callously cruel to those beneath them as samurai could be to real people. Complete with killing people for funsies seemingly and getting the hell away with it. Yet Soul Reapers occupy this space of respect. Soul Reapers also have a very Buddhist aesthetic. They dress in black, the color of Japanese priests, and perform things like sword meditation. Now this is not just any Buddhism that they seem to be based off. It's Zen Buddhism, the favored Buddhism of samurai. The Soul Reapers also do have strong ties to noble lines as samurai did. This is most striking to me in that an entire branch of the military is essentially owned by the Shihouin family and that moves were being made on expanding that to the Court Guard as well. An expansion that Soifon seemingly completes, as by the time we meet the Court Guard there is basically no difference between Second Division and the Secret Mobile Unit. This is important as samurai were a kind of warrior nobility. Now this allusion to samurai is important as samurai are a key part of Japanese nationalism as it exists now. Perhaps the most famous nationalist overseas is Yukio Mishima, an author. Mishima is famous for his writing but also for an attempted coup. He and a small militia stormed a military base in Tokyo, captured the commandant, and attempted to get the soldiers stationed there inspired to overthrow the Japanese constitution and reinstate imperial rule. When it became clear this was not going to work out, Mishima committed seppuku after shouting "Long live the Emperor!" And Mishima is just one example. Probably the most famous due to his failed coup and committing of seppuku while spouting nationalist horseshit. But like the point I wish to make here with Mishima is that Japanese nationalism is focused on a "traditional" Japan and has a love of the military and samurai in specific. So we look back at Soul Society. And we see that Soul Society kind of. Sucks? Actually. Rukia tells us it is peaceful there but like most people are living in the Rukongai. Many people's only chance at getting a less shit life is to attempt to get into a military position. And that military is extremely powerful and they make that known. They also have a very particular story about Soul Society that they wish to have maintained and a very particular order that they wish to have maintained. One that involves things like war crimes denial, glorification of the state and its military, and the fabrication of a false history built to instill a sense of pride. People don't know the Soul King is a dismembered corpse of a murdered god. They just know he's the Soul King and he is the highest of the high. And they know that Soul Reapers' work is vital to the continued functioning of the entire universe and is thus just and good. Because that's the story that gets told. And it gets told because if people knew the actual story they'd be pissed. And like all the big problems in the series fall back to this system. All of them. Rukia's execution order, the war with Aizen, the war with Yhwach. All of it falls back to things that Soul Society's god awful hell state have caused. With the two big ones being the false narrative that is perpetuated to control the people and the genocide of the Quincies. Aizen and Yhwach are beaten, yes, but at no point does the comic ever go "The Soul Reapers and Soul Society as it is under them is good actually". If anything, there is a strong point made that Soul Society under them fucking sucks and that these people have a point. And there is that part during Fullbring when Rukia stops and realizes that like. The seeming unchanging mass that is the Soul Society's history may crumble because of the change Ichigo has inspired. It's not the death or removal of power of one particular person she is thinking of. But the change of an entire system. An entire society. Also a cool fun note. Our good boy Ichigo who is the hero? He's mixed. He's not part of the mythic homogeneous Japanese people. He necessarily exists outside of it. Chad's also mixed and, hell, he comes from Mexico even. Chad was also born in Okinawa, which was forcibly annexed by Japan in 1879. Ishida? A Quincy! The victims of one of Soul Society's crimes. The group going against Soul Society and the bullshit its caused is largely comprised of elements that Japanese nationalism would have you believe either do not exist or which should not exist. I do have more thoughts on this subject, but this I think hits most of the bigger thoughts. And it is a bit thrown together on the spot. I do hope it explains why when I look at the comic I go "Wow, Japanese nationalism does suck doesn't it?"

[veiledsilver]

Top five moments you've felt like the universe was messing with you.

Oh boy everyone get ready this is a long list. In descending order, from mildly funny looking back on it to "oh god oh shit oh fuck":

5. Catfishing: College Edition

In 6th grade, I decided to apply to colleges early to see how they were like. I was scared that if they knew I was too young, they'd arrest me. So I created a gmail account as my persona, a white 12th grader named Emilie Alexander. Emilie was planning to go into nursing, dating a high school linebacker named Kyle Kenderson, and deathly allergic to bee stings. If she even came near a bee, she would die.

This part was of the utmost importance.

See, I was constantly paranoid that one day, the jig would be up- I might forget that my fake last name was Alexander. Or the college dean might come knocking at my door and tear up my home in his mad search for Emilie. If that happened I would fake her tragic death, presumably caused by one big fucking bee.

I secretly collected my information. What nearby states were the prettiest to visit. Which colleges were the safest and most affordable. How often they held courses that I liked. In my emails with colleges I tried to sound as mature and professional as possible.

Then, one day, a college member asked me what high school I was in, so they could check my records.

My blood froze.

It was time to bring out the bee.

In response to their question, I sent an email that was like this:

"Dear Mr. McLaughlin, I was a proud graduate of- ugh! Ah! Kyaaaa! Uwaa! W-w-what's this... huge goddamn bee doing here?! Eek, pardon my foul language! It's just that, as I told you earlier, being stung by a bee would kill me.... and now it's stung me thrice (three times)!!

What do I do?! I can't die... I've always wanted to attend your beautiful college...

But this is... the end...

Mr. McLaughlin...

*looks at you sadly*

Tell... my mother... I loved her...

*dies*"

He never responded, probably because he was rendered speechless, but I never touched that account again.

My private gmail for fun stuff like tumblr still has "Alexander" as a surname, though.

4. Wild and Authentic

Alright. Alright. So. My art teacher in middle school.

Right off the bat, they endeared themselves to the tumblr art kids- they proudly used they/them pronouns, dyed their hair vibrant colors, deeply encouraged OC creation, and was chill with any art style even if it was anime. Mx. Mason was very cool, except for one thing.

We had complete artistic freedom when it came to their assignments, EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.

Drumroll, please.

Take a deep breath if you must.

Ready?

...

Cats had to have extremely distinct whisker pores.

YES, they believed that modern depictions of cats were too streamlined. Too... idealized. As a cat owner themselves, they were convinced that society's vision of cats did not do their feral feline ancestors justice. In making their faces flawlessly smooth-furred, we were stripping the cat of its true nature.

I found this out the hard way, when I was drawing warrior cats fanart for class (it was of Firestar cuddled in the arms of an orange haired anime catgirl who was his reincarnation in my first ever comic series, Warriors Neko Desu! ♡ Heart Academy Dokidoki).

Mx. Mason came over to look at my magnum opus, and I expected them to have their socks knocked off at my artistic talent. They lifted up my drawing for all to see, and I smugly leaned back in my seat.

Only for them to launch into a passionate lecture about how, in neglecting to draw whisker pores on cats, I was DENYING THIS FICTIONAL CAT OF ITS WILD AUTHENTIC SELF.

My friends absolutely lost it when I told them this story, and there was a period of time when all our discord nicknames were wild and authentic too.

As for Firestar and his counterpart Hoshineko Orenji-chan, I never did give them wild authentic whisker holes, but that's to be expected of a kittypet, I guess.

3. Stan Jungkook Or Whatever

A couple years ago, my family and I flew to Seoul, South Korea, to visit our relatives and teach me more about my heritage. It was very nice! I got to visit shrines and festivals and palaces, and I was in awe that this was what my ancestors had once seen in their daily lives.

Then, when we went to the modern side of Korea, I realized just how much I didn't fit in.

It was clear that I didn't know how to act, or how to speak Korean, and I spent my days fumbling around and getting scammed multiple times by salesmen. But I clowned myself the most... during an interactive event with kpop stars.

They had this experimental event where holograms of the boys would sing onstage and dance in place of the actual idols. Before the show began, girls could stand in booths that scanned their appearances, and holograms of THEM could dance onstage with the hologram boys.

I didn't know this.

When Cousin Ae-cha told me to step inside one of the machines, I thought I'd be hilarious and stand backwards, so it would scan the back of me instead of my front. As I walked out, I saw other girls putting on their best makeup, cutest clothes, and most expensive accessories, and I slowly realized that I was in danger.

But the danger didn't come until halfway through the concert, where the boys looked eagerly off-stage and a holy staircase appeared and all the hologram girls descended from heaven. There were cherry blossoms. There were roses. There was me, among the crowd of beautiful airbrushed girls, walking backwards.

I felt the judgemental gazes of twenty girls and their mothers.

Each boy danced with a girl, who got a cute animated moment with special effects, and sang about how they found a dream girl to have a true love romance with. Finally, all the girls vanished except one, and it was me.

One of the boys didn't dance with any girls, and now he was all alone in the rain, feeling dejected that HE did not find his true love girl to have a dream romance with. Then the rain stopped, the sun came out, and I emerged. Still backwards.

He was thrilled and sang about how my face (that he didn't see) stole his heart, and now everyone in the audience was giggling, and he slowly brought me very close to kiss me... but because I was backwards, his nose was cutely nuzzling my hair.

The audience members- at least the adults- were now laughing their asses off. His lips met the back of my head, and together we vanished into the wind.

I'd say I couldn't show my face there ever again, but I never did show my face, so... hm...

2. Horrid Little Temptress

If I wasn't a minor, I'd need a drink before starting this story. Sadly, I cannot drown my sorrows- and neither should you after you hear this, because it's only fair.

Mrs. Appleby was my Spanish teacher in like, 9th grade. Even the wild and authentic art teacher thought she was insane. Appleby forced kids to brew tea for her and yelled at them when they didn't get it right, and I thought she had a chronic squint until I realised she just did that to mock me and my Asian eye-folds. She forced us to watch Dora the Explorer to "absorb knowledge." Everyone fucking hated Mrs. Appleby.

But the worst thing she ever did... was during the school festival.

See, whenever she's angry, she zooms right into kids' faces to scream at them. Her wrinkled flesh would blot out the goddamn sun and all you see are her bloodshot yellow eyeballs so victims just stayed rooted to the spot like cornered animals or something similar. This is important.

Because when she was sampling her own brownies (read: hoarding them so no one else could eat them), one parent foolishly decided to grab one and she thought it was a student and she grabbed his wrist so hard she could've nearly snapped it and... and... zoomed into his face.

Except she underestimated his height and kissed him by accident, but it was more like her mouth was sucking in his face like a vacuum.

His wife was shrieking like an ape. His kid, my classmate, saw his social life flash before his eyes.

In her defense, she did not mouth to mouth with him on purpose and afterwards she cried in the bathroom and when I foolishly followed her in to comfort her, because I am a teacher's pet through and through, she snatched the paper towels I got for her and wailed that she was a-

A-

HORRID LITTLE TEMPTRESS.

If I had decided to not be kind, I never would've heard that string of fucking words. But I did. And I paid for it dearly. The end.

1. Violence IS The Answer, Sometimes

Thomas, my dearly detested.

Back in sixth grade, I used to have a crush on him because he had the surfer boy look with nicely tanned skin and pale blond hair and the clearest aquamarine eyes I've ever seen. He also liked surfing and swimming. He seemed like the perfect little trophy waifu except for one absolute dealbreaker.

He and his parents were extremely conservative and so, when I told him I liked him, his response was basically "haha no you're a [slur] and would probably eat my dog."

I was horrified and ran away to cry. But then, by the next day, I decided I needed to punish him. Thomas walked in before class started and I was waiting for him with these hands. I kicked him so he doubled over, slammed his face into his chair's seat, and quickly clambered on top of him to SIT ON THE BACK OF HIS HEAD. He started shaking and twitching and trying to pry me off, but eventually he went limp and stopped moving.

I thought he fell asleep, but Mohammed, another classmate who was bullied by Thomas, told me that Thomas might never wake up again (not that he was very sad about this. I didn't know until later, but Thomas said slurs at him too).

While I was sitting on the guy, he'd straight up passed out from the lack of oxygen.

Screaming and crying, I told our homeroom teacher that Thomas suddenly fainted, and she was the type of Caucasian that thought all little Asian kids were sweet and innocent, so it didn't even cross her mind that? It might've been me? Who sat on his head when she walked in?

He was sent home early that day. I had to go to a different school next year because Thomas's mom threatened legal action. The only reason I didn't get punished further was because my rich cousins out-Karen'd her and donated a huge amount of money to the school to keep them quiet.

Anyway, I never did anything that insane ever again, because something like that is enough for a lifetime. My cousins made it clear they would never back me up again. I was sure this whole event would be put behind me, too.

But last fall, during my first day of online learning... who did I see in my zoom meeting... BUT THOMAS! I had my mic and camera off, but the moment he saw my name, his face went pale. His soul would've left his body, but then it would've gone to hell, so it wisely decided to stay inside.

Still, out of shame and embarrassment, I never turned my camera on for the rest of the school year.

[olivedoesmagic]

Journal 22: Another Lectures Notes

Journal 22: Another Lectures Notes

Source: Steller.Chaos: Army of Wax Discord Lecture on Reality Shifting.

Forgive these notes if they are hard to follow. It was fast paced and as fast as I am at typing without looking at the keyboard it was still an awful lot to type out about 3 pages worth and it was fast, but I did my best to type it up for you. Likewise these papers are all based on Steller’s knowledge based on his studies and first hand experience these are less academically sourced and more witchly sourced. Anyways I hope you can enjoy.

Realities bump into each other all the time. Mandela effect. Mandela effect is when people see into other realities unknowingly. It’s kind of like a collective falsehood unknowingly. It’s when realities collectively cross like that. There are places where relatives are permanently cross. One of these places are in brazile. There are multiple accounts of people in Brazil looking over a certain spot and seeing an apocalyptic wasteland and seeing this reality in the physical via stepping into it accidently. Realities can manifest in the physical like that. Theres tons of em. Theres a place in Florida or a state like there where realities are permanently crossed

Click for full lecture’s notes

Conscious shifting causes the most side effect and that is because you are attempting to be in two places at once. It effects not just you but the places around you when you shift in your room and so on. Theres also a way to shift that’s kept in the room. It’s an easier way to fully shift, and that’s kind of visualizing a tunnel, which will be explained in a minute. Also another thing that we’re gona touch on is alternate selves. They are alternate selves but the way people normally explain them is kind of inaccurate. The way that is often portraying this correctly is fictional universes like dc comics. Such as that kernel sanders comic with kernel sanders. It was a whole crossover comic, into the spiderverse like thing. Speaking of into the spider verse is also a great example.

The way reality shifting actually is, it’s a lot cooler then the way people “make it seem”. When it comes to alternate selves why they are you and you are able to understand them on a level others aren’t, you are not your alternate self, they have lived a completely different life to you, so theres going to be differences. They are different from you while they are you in a lot of ways and whatever they still lived a different life and they are still a person and you have to respect that. 

Another thing about reality shifting, all realities are intertwined and or connected in some way shape or from and all have relation. That’s how we are able to travel to them. Their are other multiverses, that unfortunately is impossible for us to travel to that’s some god level shiz. Have you ever thought about how you would of turned out if x, y, or z actions turned out a different way? That’s basically looking into a different reality already, whatever you’re thinking of that reality exists where that went differently and you turned out accordingly. That being said theirs no way to escape the multiverse point blank.

Time travel, the way people think time travel works is impossible. But you can go to another reality where it’s back in time because if you were to time travel you are creating a new dimension and a new reality. Time works differently in the multiverse. The thing about going to a universe you created, is that your going to a world you now no longer control. The important thing when it comes to different realities is that these things exist outside of this alternate reality, here they are fictional there they are real. So you have to understand while it’s very cool to go visit them that is an alternate world that is very different from your fictional one.

Another thing people saying can they create their own realities? Technically that would be a pocket dimension. 

Reality shifting is when you are taking your conciseness somewhere, its more of a scientific thing compared to astral projection which is a separation of self from fleshy meat suit. Your soul doesn’t come with you when you reality shift. There is a method of reality shifting while you astral project but Steller mentioned in the lecture he and I quote “WONT BE TEACHING ANY OF YOU” so that’s his stance on it. Theres another thing that’s weird, but it’s called merging, and it’s where you go to another reality and you merge with your alternate self. This can happen, it’s basically when you’re anexing, and when you’re first shifting it can happen alot especially if you don’t do anything to prevent it. It’s happening a lot with communities on amino and tick tock right now. But because their doing it and it’s so unexpected and there was no warning, when the alternate self doesn’t know whats going on they can’t really stop you, so it’s a very rude process.

Basically if you’re merging with an alternate self, you can prow easily and your other self won’t really know what’s happening, but if they do realize what’s happening, it can lead to shit. But it can lead to deep shit quite easily. You don’t always merge with your alternate self but for beginners merging with your alternate self is normal. The more you shift with intent and resisting the urge is how you stop this. It’s all about intent. If you don’t realize it’s happening like a lot of people on ticktock it will keep happening. Reminder that you’re alternate self is you.

When it comes down to the reality and how its runs it’s set in stone. It’s like a distant type memory thing when you go there. You won’t fuck anything up when you go to shifting realites, even with the warnings in place. Another good question somebody had are universes set in stone or are they changing? They are constantly changing all the time. If you shift respectfully and visit that universe you can explain and ask “do I have permission to vibe” basically and then you just “go”. You ask you just have to be polite.

Regarding shifting theirs a couple different methods. Conscious shifting is when your anexious with your other self. Theirs a couple of methods. Phony shifting where you project yourself into that other reality, it works like a glitch, where you have a physical form in this other reality and your body is seen here, you “glitch” one body there, and one body here. It’s very much you not an alternate self there. There’s that kind of fully shifting that is going separate from your alternate self. That is when you can speak and commune with others there, and kind of have repour for yourself. That’s a type of fully shifting. 

Then theirs another type of fully shifting where you don’t separate yourself. You sort of stitch realities together. Instead of seeing your room you see that other reality. Your physical self will be there, like you could be standing up or sitting down and you’ll be there essentially. Basically lets say your standing up in your room, you won’t be able to walk around and go and do and shit because you will be confined to the space of your room. When Steller first did this instead of walking around he would jump to different parts of the universe of the reality.

There are tons of different methods to achieve either of these. One of the ones Steller uses for conscious methods that can be used for fully shifting if you really want to that I use as well is the “Space Ship” method. Where you turn your room into a spaceship and bring it to this other reality and bring that reality forward as well. The way you do this method is preferably your sitting down like your controlling a spaceship, basically tw for derealization and unreality. The rest of your house does not exist, it is gone, your room is floating in space, you have to say this to yourself so your room feels like its floating up in the air. By itself up in the air separated.  You will still be able to see your room but in your minds eye you will be able to see your other reality. As you keep thinking about this the walls will look squigly or wavy or vibrating cus your hopping the whole room into another reality. A fair warning that reality shifting can make derealization issues work. Also the spaceship method is a nonsleep method. Since a lot of these methods involve going to sleep to working.

The next method is the tunnel shift. So I would suggest you sit or lay down, it comes easier conscious wise, it acts like its sucking your consciousness into another reality. It’s recommended to do it while sleeping to fully sleep. Imagine a net in the shape of tunnel or a tube pulling you through as it gets smaller. Imagine paper traps but net like and glowing. Basically it as bright blue to help, and basically this will stretch up above you and leap right above you and before you sleep get some binaural beats and imagine it above you sleep with the intent and your consciousness will go through said tunnel and to the other reality. Not just your consciousness this would also be like splitting yourself it’s weird, it can be awake or sleeping but the sleeping method is an example here. So you imagine the tunnel and think about it as you go to sleep and the vibrations raise and the tunnel acts like its pulling you through it, and that sort of deal.

Lastly eleven has some promising shit, and alice in wonderland. White noise is not just static, there can be some lofi and beat in the background or talking. Alice in wonderland is basically you imagine your falling down a rabbit hole as you go to sleep. I mean you could also imagine the feeling of falling down a rabbit hole. Imagination isn’t only visual. It can also be about feeling. Eleven is blindfolding yourself in a blackroom while listening to lofi or white noise anything like that. Technically you can use any of these methods while your awake. The elven method is great for fully shifting and being awake. Reality shifting can happen unintentionally mind you.

Theirs lots of ways to come back. One big one, is the conscious one, and mind that you can become coconsious when you fully shift, you can have something like an anchor like a heavy object or a large object, that you hold while your shifting that you know while your shifting that you feel while your shifting drop it, on the floor next to you while your shifting, and this acts as your anchor when you do this the metaphysical chain or line will connect you to this thing, when your shifting you latch on to this thing to pull you back. Anchors won’t be effective while your sleeping. When you want to come back pull on your imaginary line that is the anchor, to pull yourself back to this reality.

Safewords can also work if you put enough intent into the word. Regarding conscious shifting an anchor is recommended by Steller over a safeword, but safewords do work. Here’s the thing that when it comes to shifting, a lot of people don’t know the difference between reality shifting and astral projecting. If you want to go to France, you don’t need to shift to do that. Just astral project to France.

So how to make pocket dimensions. Take your hand, hands out. It’s gona be as big as a beach ball. Focus on, creating a sort of ball of energy. Like an electrical type current. Colors of purple, blue, and it will kind of like -plasma ball- with like electrical currents and shiz, and turn your hands to further this feeling. It will feel staticky, you may even feel shit. So, it will feel really weird, and also if you move your hands really closer to each other you will feel currents. Begin to make this and sculpt it, it might feel heavy some of them are heavy. After a certain amount of time put stuff in it, a lake, a building, just don’t do it to fast, take your time, sculpt it, whatever. It will get easier and easier as you keep making it. Now you’ll have an energy ball. Think of a place, any place. It can be any place you want even a copy of hogwarts if you want. Just kind of put it in this pocket dimension. Put it there. There, you have the pocket dimension. YOu know why its called a pocket dimension? Because its small. Now get a bag, think of a container, any container you want, a dresser, filecabinet, a box. Put it down in it, put it in the pocket. Just make sure you put it in the pocket. By the way your pocket dimension will be summoned whenever you need them because you have to take care of them. You have to take care of them. You can bring other people into them. You can bring other people in to them, you can shrink them and put them into your shoulder if you want. You can put it in a drawer, just make sure your taking care of it, you know it’s your little dimensions. They are like babies so you do have to check up on them.

So how you enter these dimensions is kind of a similar way. You can enter them in your dreams. You can mental project into your pocket dimensions. You can kind of put it on like a fuking space helmet. When you put it on, and you can kind of see it in your minds eye you’ll be able to see it in your minds eye and see its energy.  But those are pocket dimensions little tiny pocket dimensions you have to understand that they are small (insert plankton meme) you can only put so much in them, think of like a town or a farm, a mile and a half. If you want more you make it bigger.

That’s the end of the notes. Sorry again for the incoherency. It was again from another lecture. There are no sources for this other than Stellers experience and information as a reality shifter so take that as you will but he is a good source of information and pretty knowledgeable on this subject matter. Anyways it’s getting late and I’m getting tired so goodnight.

-Olive Brimstone

10:44 PM

10/9/2020

[wesavegotham]

Talia, Damian and choosing between good and evil

Before Grant Morrison created Damian in 2006 Talia was seen as one of Bruce's greatest loves for a long time. She was the first love interest of Bruce that showed him from a more passionate side:

Bruce and Talia loved each other, but Talia could never really choose between her loyalty to her father and her love for Bruce, even though in most stories she would end up helping Bruce against Ra's.

While she was morally gray, Talia was originally a kind character, who fought against child rapists, murderes and other villains, patched Bruce up when he was hurt or down and even threw herself between Bruce and bullets that were about to hit him. In the 1987 graphic novel "Son of the demon" the two even married and Talia got pregnant. Bruce went pretty much overboard trying to keep Talia and their unborn child safe and almost got himself killed in the process. Which is why Talia lied to him about suffering from a miscarriage and asked him to leave her. Later she gave birth to their unnamed son and gave him to an orphanage:

The graphic novel was later taken out of continuity because DC didn't like the implication of Bruce having sex and not knowing that he had a child when he's supposed to be the world's greatest detective.

The reason I'm mentioning this story is because it would later serve as the base for Damian's creation in 2006. While the idea of Bruce and Talia having a child came up in Elseworld stories before (Ibn in "Kingdom Come" and Tallant Wayne in "Batman: League of the Batmen") the introduction of Damian marked the first time their son became canon in the main DC universe.

When Grant Morrison started his run on Batman he decided to bring "Son of the demon" back into continuity, but didn't bother to read the graphic novel he only vaguely remembered. His vague memory ended up basically destroying Talia's original character, something she hasn't recovered from since 2006.

In his memory they didn't have a consensual relationship and Talia raped Bruce to have a child. Morrison reduced her to the "Asian Babymama" trope and turned her into a mustache twirling villain, a worse version of Ra's basically, who turned evil because Bruce rejected her. Suddenly she was willing to sacrifice both Bruce and Damian to reach her goal of ruling the world. I have a lot of issues with this premise, most importantly its racist and sexist undertones, but this post wouldn't end if I started ranting and there are fans who are more knowledgeable about Talia and better at explaining why this sucks so much.

Grant Morrison later admitted that he remembered the story wrong and tried to explain that Talia went evil because of the continuity changes Superboy Prime punching the universe caused (Don't ask, comics are weird) and that when Bruce accused Talia of drugging him Bruce was actually lying about getting drugged, because he didn't want to admit to himself that he had loved her and slept with her out of his own volition.

If you don't believe me, here is the link to the interview: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/hotb/2016/11/15/064-the-zorro-of-arkham--an-interview-with-grant-morrison

Think what you will about that explanation. Fact is, the last time Bruce commented on Damian's conception he said this:

So to all the people who love to yell that Talia is a rapist and Damian a rape-baby, kindly shut up. Morrison's mistake got retconned years ago.

Anyway, Damian inherited Talia's struggle to choose between Ra's and Bruce, only that they turned Talia into a second Ra's and gave all her previous conflicts to her son, which is probably one of the reasons DC is unwilling to return her to her former character.

Some writers like Patrick Gleason have tried to give her some redemption, like when he wrote that Talia had been posessed during Morrison's run and cleansed during her resurrection, but the rest of DC pretty much ignored his attempt.

I'm not a fan of DC's extremely black and white, good and evil narrative they have created for Damian and the execution is pretty lackluster.

First of all, it's pretty racist that the Al-Ghuls lost a lot of their complexity over the years to serve as Damian's dark and evil side of the family, while the batfamily (which is pretty white) is presented as the light and good side. It gives me major "white saviour" vibes and has lots of unfortunate implications, especially because DC likes to pretend that Damian is white and only touches his arab/chinese roots when they write him in a more negative light. DC does the same thing with Talia, where they draw her as white when she's more sympathetic and give her brown skin when she's evil.

Second of all, DC loves to label Bruce as a man of high morality, but I think he's actually a pretty bad hero and parent. Some part of me is convinced Talia isn't allowed to be a better mother because it would make Bruce look bad in comparison.

I talked enough about why I don't think of modern Batman as a good person and a hero in my previous post, so I'm going to focus on Talia and Ra's Al-Ghul.

Making Talia evil robs her of her character and history, erases one of Bruce's most important romantic relationships and after a while it just lacks story potential. If the Al-Ghuls have no redeeming qualities then writing Damian struggling so much between the two sides becomes baffling after a going through this character arc several times.

You can argue that Damian got gaslighted for years and that he was still an impressionable child, but if the Al-Ghuls are really as evil, brutal and selfish as DC writes them nowadays it makes it really hard to sympathize with anyone who thinks about joining them (which happens a lot with the batfamily).

Another fact that DC loves to forget is that originally Ra's used to be an eco-terrorist. He planned to wipe out some part of the human population to save plants and animals from extinction, which is extremely relevant today. Ra's is a villain, we don't have to argue about that, but he used to have more depth that made him interesting as a character and made it more plausible why someone might join him. He also loved his daughter, which explained why Talia struggled to leave him in her old stories.

The way they are written now it makes little sense why Bruce should have so much respect for Ra's, something that made their relationship special, there is no reason why Bruce ever loved Talia and decided to sleep with her and there's no reason why Damian should ever return to the League.

Establishing a more loving relationship, both between Bruce and Talia, even if it's in the past, and a better relationship between Damian and Talia has a lot more story potential for Damian's seemingly never ending storyline where he can't decide if he wants to follow Bruce's methods (whatever that means for modern Batman) or the way of his mother. Because as it stands his character developement is stuck in a loop where he just looks like a boy who is unable to learn and can't see how one of the possible options has nothing going for it.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-7th Place

>Insert long exaggerated sigh here<

It’s here that I really, really, REALLY hope nobody that I know personally is reading these.

(Also, sorry that this was a day late)

#7-My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010-2019)

The Plot: In the land of Equestria, a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle moves to a happy little town called Ponyville to learn about the magic of friendship. There, she meets her best friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. Together they’ll do what most friends do. Which is to sing songs, defeat creatures who seek to destroy everything, and learn that friendship truly is magic.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Hell, I knew what you were thinking before I even explained the plot: “Isn’t this just a show for little girls that twenty-year-old losers fell in love with? How is this in the top 10?!” Now I’ll be the first to admit, there was a time when I didn’t get it either. When I heard that a fanbase grew around a My Little Pony reboot, I thought people were losing their minds. But, on one fateful day in 2014, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to watch ONE episode that seemed interesting to me. Unfortunately, it was the first episode in season two, and I had no idea what was going on within the first few minutes. So then I decided to watch the entirety of season one and then ONLY watch that episode in season two. And the episode after that because apparently, it was a two-parter. And then I watched the next episode after THAT because it also seemed interesting to me, plus the episode after that, for no reason other than I just wanted to. And then I watched all the rest of the series until the season four finale. And the two spin-off movies called Equestria Girls and Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks. Soon, I found myself reading fan-fiction, writing fan-fiction, looking at fanart, and even reading these spin-off comics that aren’t even canon, but I just couldn’t leave this magical world because it TOOK ALMOST A WHOLE YEAR FOR THE FIFTH SEASON TO PREMIER! ALL BECAUSE I JUST WANTED TO WATCH AN EPISODE WHERE A CHAOS CREATURE MENTALLY BROKE OUR MANE CHARACTERS! AND YES! I DID WRITE MANE INSTEAD OF MAIN BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS SHOW DOES TO YOU! IT MAKES YOU SO ACCUSTOMED TO THE WRITING AND LINGO, THAT’S WITHIN BOTH THE SHOW AND IT’S INSANE FANDOM, THAT YOU’LL END UP CATCHING YOURSELF FROM SAYING MANEHATTAN INSTEAD OF MANHATTAN!

>SCREAMS WITH INSANITY<

…

So as you can tell, this show is surprisingly good once you get infested.

The biggest hook it has is the animation. While it doesn’t beat The Amazing World of Gumball’s quality, it is pretty impressive when considering that it’s all done in flash animation. Most flash animated cartoons tend to look cheap and slow, and Friendship is Magic is thankfully one of the rare exceptions. The movements are insanely smooth, and the facial expressions are pretty comical to look at. Even in the background of scenes, viewers will notice a lot of little jokes the animators put in. Seriously, the biggest reason why I kept watching the series for so long was that it was nice to look at (which is the case for most people, from what I’ve heard). And the best part? The animation somehow gets better with each passing season. And only 0.1% of the time does it show it’s cheapness, which isn’t that big of a deal considering there are two hundred and thirty-two episodes with a twenty-two-minute runtime. That’s nearly five thousand, one hundred, and four hours of animation that’s good for 99.9% of the time. While you could argue that it’s not the best, it is still pretty good animation quality.

Another thing that drew me in was the comedy. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean Friendship is Magic is the funniest show on the list (that also goes to Gumball). Humor is subjective, and just because I found myself laughing with this series, that doesn’t mean everyone will be on the same page. That being said, I was surprised by the fact that I found the show funny in the first place. It’s hard to pinpoint what type of humor the show relies on (for me, at least). For some cases, Friendship is Magic has dialogue-based jokes that use smart or random lines to get a laugh out of audiences. Other times it's visual humor that requires slapstick or comical facial expressions that will make people laugh. But while its comedy falls between two different spectrums, that doesn’t change the fact that I find myself losing it every once in a while. Even during some of the worst episodes of Friendship is Magic, there’s at least one line or gag that got me to chuckle at least once.

However, both the animation and the comedy cannot top the main selling point of this series: The characters. Friendship is Magic might just have one of the biggest cast of characters out of any show on this list. Most of them manage to be funny, relatable, and are downright likable to watch. What’s even more astonishing is how well this show handles character growth. To be fair, there can be certain characters whose development is slow, but for the most part, everybody grows significantly with each new lesson they’ve learned. There are even moments when the characters say something along the lines of “I’m no longer that pony I used to be anymore because I finally learned how to change.” However, this doesn’t mean that every pony in the show is worth the time. There are a few unlikeable characters, but they’re either meant to be unlikable, forgotten after an episode’s end, or are redeemed after a triumphant return.

This is good because it’s the characters that make the stories in the show work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is split into two different storytelling genres: Slice of life comedy and adventure fantasy. And unlike Steven Universe, it’s Friendship is Magic that mixes both these genres together perfectly. I’m not joking when I say that an episode where Twilight rekindles an old friendship can be just as intriguing as an episode where Twilight fights this soul-sucking centaur made to look like the devil. Hell, some fans even argue that the slice of life episodes are even better than the adventurous episodes. Because while the adventure episodes are cool and action-packed, it’s the slice of life episodes where the characters are allowed to grow the most and are actually given time to be themselves. As for the grand adventures, while their fun to see, the cast is forced to stick to their central personality traits to move the plot forward.

Unfortunately, as fun as this show can be, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. Not because there are elements that I think are bad, but because there are elements that might turn people away from watching. And the most significant repulse this show has is also the most important hook.

Yes, the characters in this show are great, but there’s also a lot of them. Some might even say too many. By season nine alone, there are a total of twenty-seven different characters that have the possibility of taking/sharing the spotlight in an episode. And that’s not even counting important figures, recurring antagonists, supporting characters, and even recognizable background ponies (yes, that’s a thing). Because if you want to add those to the mix, you’ve got yourself a total of one hundred and twenty-seven characters (give or take). That is one hundred and twenty-seven different names, faces, and personalities to try to keep track of. Luckily the personalities are easy enough to remember, and it’s mostly the most (in)famous figures that make a return. Even for some of the obscure characters, the show is kind enough to give a brief recap so the audience can get caught up. However, this is reasonably a lot to take in for a casual viewer. Case in point, in season eight, the show decided to add six new characters to the main cast, and it only took me a season and a half to learn their names correctly. It’s even worse since these “new” characters can sometimes feel like carbon copies of the Mane Six (Yes, that’s how the main six characters in the show are referred to as. Deal with it).

And the excessive amount of unnecessary characters are just one issue to deal with. The lessons that the show teaches are another. Before I say anything, I want to clarify that this show has fantastic lessons it teaches kids. In fact, there are even great lessons that are perfect for adults and only adults (know your audience, I guess). However, here’s the thing about morals: Not everyone will share the same view on what’s good and bad to teach children. Every person on this planet has their own life experiences, and with those experiences come different ideas of how the world works. One person can believe that a lesson is good, where others view it as awful and potentially dangerous. Things get especially bad when specific morals are misinterpreted or taken too literally. The best example is the episode “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep.” I believe that there are two possible lessons within the episode. One is that to truly be forgiven, a person must seek forgiveness from themselves and others. The other conceivable moral is that the cure for self-destruction is to get over it and move on without any professional help whatsoever. Now, take a wild guess on which lesson gets talked about more. And in all honesty, I blame poor/rushed writing that causes specific morals to be muddled, as well as a person’s own life experience in whether or not you find an episode’s lesson to be intriguing or insulting.

Another thing that depends on one’s own personality is (kinda spoilers ahead) how this show handles reformations. I may have commented on how Steven Universe uses redemption poorly, but it’s even worse in Friendship is Magic. This show seems to have the idea that the transition from bad to good is as simple as flipping a light switch. Now, on the one hand, this is not something I should be mad about. The show’s title is Friendship is Magic. So, of course, the series would push that making friends will lead to peace and prosperity. Where making enemies will lead to war and violence. The problem is that from a storytelling standpoint, it isn’t that entertaining. Or, at the very least, not as much as it should be. The art of a good reformation is taking the time for the transition to be believable. Characters suddenly deciding to become good seemingly out of nowhere will do nothing but have audiences rip their hair out of frustration. It doesn’t help that most of the villain’s reasoning and backstories are pretty pathetic when they actually should be sympathetic. However, while the reformation itself can be frustrating, I personally think some characters are made more intriguing post redemption. Don’t get me wrong, these villains were great as they were, being the perfect mix of both funny and terrifying. But when the show actually allows characters to grow and deserve the hand-er-hoof of friendship, they begin to have more fascinating personalities to dissect. Now, not everyone is going to feel this way. And if you genuinely believe these villains were better as villains, I can absolutely see why. But for me, I’ve come to enjoy how far these ex-cons have come from their more evil days. 

But none of this compares to the final controversial element that this show has to offer, where there is a fifty/fifty chance that you’re either going to love it or hate it. I, of course, am talking about...the songs. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has four different types of songs. Depending on the episode, these musical numbers have many purposes. They can move the story forward, only work within the episode’s context, try to one-up Disney, and reveal everything you need to know about a character. Now here’s the thing about the music: I don’t hate it. I’ll admit that the lyrics are pretty lackluster most of the time, but at least most of them sound pleasing to my ears. But I have heard how some people seem to hate these little numbers, and I’m willing to put money on that fans even skip them. Everybody has their own tastes in music, and there’s nothing I can do to convince them otherwise. Only respect their opinions and hope they do the same to mine.

In the end, your enjoyment of this series, once again, depends on who you are. Some of you might think this is a dumb kid's show that should only be viewed by children. Some of you will understand that this show has great characters, comedy, and animation, but you just don’t think it’s for you. And some of you might be like me. A person overwhelmed with curiosity over the weirdest phenomenon in the last eleven years and ended up being pleasantly surprised with how magical the show turned out to be.

(And just a heads up, you don’t have to watch the Equestria Girls spin off series or movies in order to enjoy Friendship is Magic. EG isn’t technically canon, and the only noteworthy thing that makes it worthwhile is Sunset Shimmer. And while I personally don’t hate it, I completely understand how others will. But you do need to see My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), though. It surprisingly plays a big part in season 8 and beyond.)

[avatarconner]

About Kindred and The Order

With seeing my last post to you, with seeing how things are, with how Kindred and the Order are presented,do you still believe that it’s actually the holy grail as you abd webweilding try to claim it is? I mean, throughout the series, Kindred never even did much before his reveal. Beside a few of the things you’ve mentioned last time, Nick Spencer never bothered to make Kindres anything interesting. Nothing involving his character, his traits, his psychological issues,nothing that made the guy anything interesting. Nothing that could’ve expanded his story a bit before the reveal. All throughout he history kept saying how he’s gonna plan on something big and how he’s gonna do his things to Peter. But, he never did. Both you and webweilding say that he’s the best mystery since Hobgoblin but, he really isn’t. He never did anything that put him as interesting or mysterious as he should be. In fact, he wasn’t even subtle about his mystery the moment the absolute Carnage tie in happened. And after Kindred’s reveal, Nick Spencer revealed that he actually gave up on trying to put in a mystery the moment people guessed who he was. And with that, with how it’s presented, that’s just a Really unprofessional thing to do. And with how the latest issue turned out, it just played that we all don’t know who he is for some reason. 

I also like to talk about the Order Of The Web. Since their appearance, they claim to serve some importance to Peter. But, the thing is, they never did anything interesting. I mean, Miles, Gwen, and Julia are fine. But, the rest never did anything. Nothing that would serve any importance throughout. The best way this would’ve turned out better for them was if they brought in Kaine and Ben into this. But, for some reason, despite sharing the same issues as Peter and The Order,they never appeared. Not one appearance they made. I mean,you would think the two important Spiders of whok Norman caused trouble with would appear. But, they didn’t. Abd with them around, the dynamics between the Order would’ve been a lot more interested had Ben and Kaine argue with their morality and just delve into their psychology. Throughout, the story never gave us a reason for their absence in this. And throughout they should given us an explanation or something with them. 

For all the Stuff you said about Nick Spencer as well as other previous writers, you guys sure don’t seem to find anything here with Kindredabd the other two Spiders. 

Honestly? yes. 

Look I won’t pretend that the mystery is perfect, it’s not even the best mystery in fiction I’ve seen for Spider-Man (Spectacular’s Goblin twists are top for me) but I still think it has a good buildup. 

First thing we know is that Kindred knows Peter’s secret identity, meaning that only a few people alive could be him. In fact when Charlee Cooper appeared she was a suspect since she knew that Peter was Spidey and possibly could use tech like mysterio to simulate powers. Not to mention that her re-introduction is a parallel to Kindred’s introduction with his first words being off pannel, and her meeting MJ are shown off pannel.

It also works since, because it’s a comic, for the longest time Kindred could have been a SHE. 

Moving along we see that Kindred has a certain view of Peter when he reconciles with Felicia. He’s angry because Peter’s pulled another person into the insane life that peter leads, endangering someone else (that comes into play later). I also want to point out a little something here, when we see all the photos of Kindred’ targets in his tomb, Superior Spider-Man is there....clearly Spencer was either uninformed, or Gage just didn’t bother to tell anyone, that Superior Spider-Man would be wrapped up in his own book (Thank god). 

After this the next big appearance is in Hunted, while Peter has a feaver dream of someone killing MJ, Kindred is in her home watching over her. Peter senses something is wrong and rushes home to find MJ fine, Kindred tells him that he’ll never hurt MJ or the people he loves, because Peter will do that himself. 

This is where Kindred’s motivation and dislike for Spider-Man becomes clear, he believes that Peter endangers those around him by being Spider-Man and needs to be stopped.

The next thing we learn is huge since its from Mysterio, a character who Died (not in Spider-Man but Guadian Devil by Kevin Smith) and came back to life in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man by Peter David when Pete’s ID was out and the second Mysterio (surprisingly another Kevin Smith creation) targeted the school he worked at. He’s asked the big question that no one ever bothered to answer. How did Mysterio come back to life?

Beck explains that he went to hell and there he was tutored by a Demon and eventually brought back to life to do as the demon said. This is the biggest clue since this means that Kindred is someone who is dead, knows who Peter is, and cares about the people around him. This narrows the pool of suspects down considerably.

Then we get to absolute Carnage tie in, which for a moment I want to just praise spencer for making a fucking Tie in to an event that he had no writing control in both engaging for that event and tie into his own story in Spider-Man. Tie ins suck for the most part and he managed to make his relate to the story he was telling, that’s clever.

Anyway in Absolute Carnage, we learn that kindred has ties to Norman Osborn based on the talk they have with each other, and Norman knows who knidred is. We also learn that both Kindred and Peter were present at a welcome home party for Harry Osborn which had a bunch of old Spidey friends in attendance including Gwen, Flash, Randy, and others.

And then we get to Sins Rising, where he summons Sin Eater back from the dead so that he can set things in motion while Peter is at a low point with MJ being gone.

We later larnthat the goal of Sin Eater was to gather the Sins of Spider-Man’s villains and use them to turn the Order of the Web into monsters, which Peter feels resposnible for and offers up his own life in exchange for theirs, because of course he would. And Kindred knows this.

Kindred is thoughtful, minipulative, and knows Peter. So it absolutely makes sense why it’s Harry.

Before Harry died in SPSM 200, he made Peter’s life hell because he thought he was responsible for all the suffering in their lives, his dad dying, Gwen, her dad, and he just dogged Peter as much as he could. Your considering that Kindred is a brand new character when he’s the evolution of another character we know, Harry Osborn. That’s his History, there’s all his psychological issues. That’s the mystery, which character could Kindred Be? You figure out everything once you figure that out.

He kept saying he had a plan and he does! We’re in the middle of it! The endgame is still unclear but you can’t say you hate a story until it’s finished. 

What made Harry’s reveal so shocking was that....well, Harry’s alive! He has been since OMD. And he’s been a good guy! I’ll be honest I thought Kindred was going to be Flash Thompson since he ticks off a lot of boxes except for going to hell, he was hero but I figured that maybe someone (mehpesto) wanted to screw with him? But no, Harry Makes complete and total sense.

As for the Order of the Web, I’M ACTUALLY TOTALLY WITH YOU ON THAT!!!! 

Anya, Jessica, and Julia have nothing to do with Spider-Man, and all they really do is dilute the brand. Gwen should honestly stay in her own universe where she came from but Marvel took the wrong lesson from Spiderverse and such again so now she’s going to college at ESU......on earth 616....despite having an entire world of her own which SHE FUCKING LIVES ON. She’s trying to be like Miles is now, but can’t be because Gwen being dead is one of those things you don’t touch.

Silk also.......I feel bad, people like her but fucking Slott made her just so Peter could have no strings attached sex with an attractive young woman. I’m glad she’s getting her own series again and focusing on her heritage from what I understand. 

Ben and Kaine have way more right to be here than any of them, hell I’d love to see Kaine again. Ben i understand since last time Peter saw him, Dan Slott made him the Jackal for no fucking reason and completely ruined his character. 

And I think maybe tonally it might not work, Sins Rising is ultimately a prelude for Last Remains, and that kicks off with all the people Peter feels he’s inspired (Which admittedly is true) become monsters, Kaine’s entire series is him dealing with the fact that he sees himself as a Monster, and Ben’s is......actually I didn’t read his unfortunately, but he was more like Kaine than Peter. So they’ve already dealt with the idea of their own sins, Peter hasn’t, at least not recently I think.

But I honestly thing this Order of the Web should be torn down. Peter, Miles, Jessica (whose doing her own thing and doesn’t even have a passing relation to Spider-Man outside her name), Ben, Kaine, and MAYBE Madam Webb. Gwen should just stay in her own dimension and Silk I think is actually moving to china or something? 

I really hope we get something with Ben and Kaine soon, if Pete and MJ get married I’d love to see the three of them patch things up and Have Ben be Peter’s best man since....you know Flash is dead and Harry’s an asshole.

[reallyfamilyfriendlypgclean]

happy birthday, hyunnie~ jaeyong smut

taeyong would be lying if he said he wasn’t mad that his boyfriend, jung jaehyun, went back home to see his parents for his birthday. he understands that they’re his parents and all and they gave him life and whatever but it just so happens that jaehyun’s birthday is the same day as valentine’s day. and taeyong being taeyong, he would have done something big for this event. something that would no doubt give his dear old parents heart attacks if they heard about it. but seeing as jaehyun had left for a week for this momentus occasion, taeyong had to find a way around this little problem.

taeyong and jaehyun had been going out for 3 months after being in the same classes in college but, in all honesty, they hadn’t had anything more than heated make out sessions. this is only because jaehyun is shy, which taeyong finds both cute and mildly aggravating; taeyong has been more than ready for 2 months.

the double trouble of valentine’s day AND jaehyun’s birthday is the perfect excuse to finally show jaehyun who he really is: a kinky little bitch - but the universe must be against him finally fucking jaehyun. well...jaehyun’s parents must be against him finally fucking jaehyun. that’s not gonna stop taeyong.

they had been facetiming each other every night since jaehyun went to his parents house, talking about their day and saying how much they miss each other but seeing as this night was jaehyun’s birthday, taeyong knew he had to make it special. and jaehyun could tell something was up when he answered the call to find taeyong sitting on his knees in front of the camera.

usually, taeyong would have his laptop on his lap as he sat in his bed. or he would be lying down on his stomach with his laptop tilted down toward his face. what was he planning?

"hello." taeyong breathed. even his voice sounded different.

"hello?" jaehyun replied, confusion laced in his voice.

"how’s your birthday going? did you get any nice presents?" taeyong asked. his voice was still more gentle than usual and even if the conversation sounded normal, jaehyun could tell something was weird. still, he brushed past it and played along with the conversation.

"I didn’t really get anything too special. it was just nice to see my parents after a year of being away, you know? still, I missed you a lot."

"I missed you too. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I should be with you for valentine’s day." taeyong’s face dropped a little but his breathy voice never faltered.

"oh yeah it’s valentine’s day! how could I forget?" jaehyun chuckled slightly at himself and looked down at his laptop’s keyboard, thinking about how he forgot such and important date. he was brought back to his senses as he looked up at the screen to see taeyong smirking. he couldn’t look past this any longer.

"you’re acting weird. is everything okay?" jaehyun questioned, slightly worried. but taeyong ignored his question.

"are your parents at home?" taeyong asked. he mentally laughed at himself for sounding like a teenage boy trying to get laid for the first time.

"um...no they went out for dinner. why?" jaehyun’s face was adorably quizzical.

"and they left you alone on your birthday?" taeyong ignored jaehyun’s question again and pouted, though he was more than pleased to hear that they were all alone.

"taeyong. what’s going on?" jaehyun said a little more sternly, almost annoyed that taeyong was ignoring his questions. in response, taeyong smirked and took a deep breath in.

"so, when you come back, I can give you your real present but, for now, this will have to do." taeyong breathed. with that, he reached his hands to the hem of his white shirt and lifted it, tantalisingly slow. his smirk remained plastered to his lips and he could see jaehyun’s confused demeanour shatter as his eyes widened comically and his lips parted ever so slightly. taeyong finally removed his shirt completely and tossed it to the side and jaehyun was speechless. he had only seen taeyong shirtless a few times but there was something new and very noticeable.

taeyong had nipple piercings.

it was impossible not to notice the distinctive metal bars poking horizontally through both of the pink buds, making them permanently erect. taeyong chuckled at jaehyun’s awestruck face, evidently staring directly at taeyong’s chest and even with the low resolution of the call, he could see the beautifully pink blush beneath both of jaehyun’s cheeks. how endearing.

"do you like them?" taeyong questioned, voice slightly smaller than before, slightly worried that jaehyun didn’t like them.

"i-....wow." was all jaehyun could say before quickly snapping his mouth shut and moving his gaze anywhere but the screen in front of him. taeyong giggles and the sound made the blush on jaehyun’s cheeks creep up to the tips of his ears.

"this isn’t all of your present, you know." as taeyong says this, he slowly and carefully reaches down to his belt buckle, almost afraid of scaring jaehyun away as if he’s a baby animal. he carefully unloops the belt and reaches down to the button of his jeans, swiftly undoing it. he doesn’t break eye contact with his webcam as he tugs at the zip between his fingers and he swears he hears jaehyun whimper. he smoothly tugs down his jeans and watches for jaehyun’s reaction to the pink lace panties he's wearing that match his hair.

he definitely heard him whimper that time.

he kicks away his jeans and giggles a little, rubbing over the clothed outline of his cock, sucking air in through his teeth at the contact. jaehyun can only stare. he feels a bit creepy for watching like this -- like he’s invading someone’s privacy -- but he reminds himself that this is his boyfriend. his boyfriend. only his.

he zones back into the current situation as taeyong begins to peel off the panties. jaehyun's eyes flash down to meet taeyong’s semi-hard but wonderfully thick member and immediately retracts his eyes down to his bedsheets.

"look at me jaehyunnie" taeyong breathes. cautiously, jaehyun's eyes lift to find taeyong slowly stroking his member. jaehyun groans before quickly covering his mouth.

"don’t cover your mouth jaehyunnie. i wanna hear you". jaehyun’s hand lowers, resting on his belt buckle. taeyong smirks as he sees jaehyun’s hand twitching and inching towards the prominent bulge in his jeans.

"please touch yourself, daddy" taeyong whines.

at that, jaehyun snaps. he grunts and growls a low "fuck this" as he races to remove his belt, unzip his jeans and tug down his underwear in record time. he firmly grabs his solid length and releases a deep, drawn out moan as he slowly rubs it from the base to the tip, thumbing at it harshly.

taeyong whines at the sight of jaehyun’s large length, sticking three fingers from his free hand into his mouth, licking and sucking whilst wishing it was jaehyun's cock that was resting so nicely against his tongue. jaehyun's hand picks up its pace as he stares at the three digits disappearing in and out of the cherry boy’s wet lips.

taeyong releases his fingers from his mouth with a pop and breathily whines "what do you want me to do now?".

jaehyun’s blush returns as he’s reminded that this situation isn’t a dream and, after thinking about it way too hard, he replies "...f-finger yourself for me". taeyong smirks at how small jaehyun's voice sounds and he swiftly turns around and positions himself on his hands and knees so the camera can see his whole ass and the side of his face.

"is this okay, jaehyunnie?" jaehyun grunts as he replies with a breathless "yes" before spreading the precum that gathered at the top of his dick down along the sides. taeyong’s smile is only just visible in the darkness of his webcam’s view but his finger sliding between his thighs and reaching up to circle his rim is definitely visible and causes jaehyun to clench his eyes shut and squeeze his now throbbing cock tighter in his palm.

"daddy watch me"

taeyong whines as one of his digits disappears straight into the red rim. jaehyun releases a loud moan as he watches the muscle expand and shrink around taeyong’s finger. oh how he wishes he was there.

and just like taeyong read his mind, he says "i bet you wanna fuck my tight hole, don’t you daddy?" and jaehyun’s eyes clench shut as he growls a low "y-yes baby" and begins to thrust up into his fist.

when he opens his eyes after just appreciating the wet sounds coming from his shitty laptop speakers, taeyong has already added two more fingers and the new pressure against his hole causes him to let out a string of moans even louder than before. involuntarily, jaehyun lets out a low "fuck" as he adds more pressure to his own dick, imagining himself sliding in and out of taeyong’s tight hole. he knows he could bring so much more pleasure than those fingers. feeling a little bit courageous, jaehyun says "add another finger, baby" and hearing him say that, taeyong arches his back and whimpers.

he does as he’s told and his moans almost turn to screams as he reaches deeper, turning his head to watch jaehyun’s cock disappearing in his fist. taeyong knows that jaehyun’s length could reach further than his fingers ever could. "I wish you were here, daddy. I wish it was you who was filling me up so well. I wish you would fill me up with your cum until it drips out of me. I wish you would fuck me so hard ‘til I can’t walk for days. daddy- I want you so so bad." as taeyong reaches the last sentence, he finds his prostate and releases a short scream, followed by a series of loud moans and whines. jaehyun’s other hand has reached up under his shirt by now and has started pinching his nipples, making him moan out taeyong’s name repeatedly as he imagines him biting them. his hand’s pace picks up as his breathing gets heavier and he gets closer and closer to his release. "maybe I can make your wishes come true, cumslut." jaehyun growls.

that’s what pushes taeyong over the edge. his fingers hit his prostate once more before he screams and strings of white paint his sheets beneath him. his fingers keep up their brutal pace to bring jaehyun to his climax which arrives shortly after with moans of taeyong’s name.

they both slow their pace until taeyong collapses into the river of cum beneath him but he’s too tired to care. jaehyun catches his breath before he looks up to see taeyong collapsed and barely moving on his bed. "taeyong...are you dead?" jaehyun jokes. he could just about see the smile appear on taeyong’s face as he lightly chuckles with his cheek pressed against his sheets. he struggles to push himself up to a sitting position in front of the camera and jaehyun almost gets hard again at the sight of taeyong with cum streaked across his torso, some even smudge over his nipple piercings.

"you look good like that, baby." jaehyun smirks. "wow where did this confidence come from?" taeyong giggles as he leans forward onto his stomach and rests his chin in his hands. jaehyun stares in wonder at how this being in front of him could be so cute even after what just happened. "you should sleep, yongie." jaehyun says, concern laced in his voice. "so should you, hyunnie." taeyong replies, mocking jaehyun’s use of taeyong’s pet name.

"trust me, I will. I have to see my grandparents tomorrow and you’ve worn me out!" jaehyun’s face appears fake-annoyed. taeyong lets out his signature high-pitched giggle and stares at his beautiful boyfriend.

"happy birthday, jaehyunnie." taeyong smiles.

"thank you for the best present I’ve ever received," jaehyun replies with a smirk. now it was taeyong’s turn to blush, "and believe me when I say that your wishes will come true."

"but shouldn’t you be the one making wishes? It’s your birthday after all." taeyong pouts slightly.

"maybe my wish has already come true." jaehyun replies. his dimples deepen as his smile spreads across his cheeks.

"you’re so cheesy. but I love you." taeyong giggles.

"only for you, baby." jaehyun laughs. taeyong blushes furiously as he looks into his boyfriend’s crystal eyes. what a perfect birthday.

[alanaswriting]

Reminiscing

Carl Grimes x Reader

Summary: You and Carl reminisce old memories one night 

masterlist

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: none

A/N: here’s that cute carl imagine i talked about forever ago!

Please don’t steal, plagiarize or repost my writing. I work really hard on my writing as I imagine all writers do and it would suck to find out someone else is trying to claim it as theirs

ー

Your barely illuminated eyes were focused on the bright stars lingering in the night sky. There was so many of them. The small flickers of lights themselves could’ve filled the whole night sky if they were just a little closer. It would’ve been overwhelming brightness. They were probably dead and gone by now though, dim bodies of what they once used to be, the brightest objects in the sky floating around space endlessly with no responsibilities or such to hold it in an orbit, drifting all on its own. You were only getting to see what they used to be due to the logic of everything. You were seeing what they once were.

“I think that’s Venus.” His voice is soft and silky, it floods your eardrums as his index finger comes into view pointing at a bright light in the sky.

“No way, definitely Saturn, see how that one is brighter? That ones Venus.” You explain trying to educate the older boy only for him to go quiet.

He thinks about it as his deep blue eyes shoot between the two lights, not being able to pick just one to focus on. He was completely infatuated with them both. They were mesmerizing. It was something you thought they had in common with him.

“You think so?”

“Know so.”

The two of you continue to stare at the stars and other planets with wide eyes and open minds. Carl was thinking questions like what was out there? How far did the universe go? Did it ever end? Who was trapped out there? Were there people in space when the apocalypse started? While you were thinking questions more like, what was the purpose? Were there other universes where this wasn’t happening? Were there other universes where you and Carl had never met to begin with? The possibilities were endless.

Carl’s breathing was echoing through your ears and surprisingly it was comforting. Carl was alive and the shallow breathing beside you proved it. His heart was beating and his mind was probably racing with thoughts. The idea of his brain firing little bolts of electricity to power his thoughts brought back memories from in the beginning.

You were always intrigued by science, thinking of how your brain worked and the way you could even think the thoughts you were pondering right now was amazing. You were so self aware of your body and mind, it amazed you. Almost as much as the night sky did.

You’re mind flashes to the presentation of the human brain at the C.D.C and you almost wonder if anyone else remembers that. Certainly Carl did, right? You would talk about it for months on end afterwards. He had to have remembered it.

“Do you remember the C.D.C?” Your voice is quiet and you can hear Carl’s breathing pause, he was caught off guard by your question clearly not expecting it.

“Barely.” He mumbles, his voice was full of confusion.

Why would you bring that up?

Your lips turn into a small smile as distant memories flood through you brain, flashing in red for importance. The memories were bookmarked in your brain in a file that was cherished, full of smiles that couldn’t be forgotten. During your time at the C.D.C was when Carl and you tried wine for the first time. He hated it, as did you. You read comic books together, you played board games and ate a real dinner. It was one of your last memories of humanity being normal.

You remembered the way Jenner showed all of your group at the time that video, what happened to someone’s brain after they died of the infection. You remembered how lifeless it looked and how infected it appeared when the brainstem sparked up again. There was hardly anything left of the human brain, it was dead practically. According to Jenner it was.

Everything was different for you after that. The reality of your situation finally sank in and despite only being about 9 you knew that this was the start of something horrible and the end of something wonderful.

“You remember the way the brain looked when he showed us that video?” You ask only for Carl to slowly yet hesitantly nod.

“I almost forgot about that.” Carl responded as you turn your head to look away from the starry night sky.

Your gaze was now focused on Carl, the freckles covering his cheeks looked like dirt in the dim lighting and slightly messy strands of hair was covering his forehead. His hat was nowhere to be seen so the sight of him without it was different but comforting regardless. He looked so peaceful, so normal.

He almost looked like someone you’d see from before. He needed a haircut maybe and more t-shirts and less flannels. It was nice to picture Carl as an average teenage boy but you knew it wasn’t realistic. The two of you felt anything but average. Regardless, the idea was amusing to toy with in your thoughts.

“Do you remember getting shot?” You ask which causes Carl to scoff before a genuine chuckle falls from his lips.

“Which time?” He questions which causes the both of you to laugh a little too hard.

Carl getting shot wasn’t funny at the time. In fact, it scared the shit out of you both times. You thought you lost him the first time and although you were young and not fully aware of what death truly meant you were horrified. You had already lost one of your best friends Sophia and you’d be damned if you were losing Carl too.

The second time around was worse. God, it was so much worse. You really thought you lost the boy who’d meant more than anything to you. You sat there beside him in that small suffocating room holding onto his hand and scolding him the days afterward. You really didn’t know what you were scolding him for because getting shot wasn’t exactly his fault but you were. You told him to be more careful in his sleepy haze, he didn’t catch it though until you told him multiple more times when he was conscious. You were so distressed.

“The first time.” You grin and Carl sighs almost remembering the pain he felt back then.

“Yeah, I remember everything. It hurt like hell.” Carl says in a truthful tone.

“Yeah, but you were a toughie. You jumped back with even more angst than before.” You tease leaning your head against Carl’s shoulder and grabbing onto his hand.

Your fingertips graze his and you notice they’re coarse and rough beneath your touch. He always had rougher hands and despite the amount of mini lotions you’d scavenged for him he never used them. Regardless you intertwine your fingers with his and hold onto his hand gently. It felt comforting knowing he was right here. After everything you’d both been through you never got sick of touching each other. It reminded you both that the other was alive and still here.

It was comforting.

“Do you remember the prison, when we used to watch the fences together?” Carl questions and you roll your eyes at the thought.

Rarely did you guys ever actually watch the fences, you had your eye on them, sure, but it was mostly fucking around and throwing pebbles at each other or reading comics. It was a stretch to say you actually watched them, because honestly, you didn’t. You’d never admit that to Rick though.

“Yeah, that was fun.” You admit, looking up at the sky again.

It was silent for awhile and the two of you were thinking the same thing on a loop in your young minds.

Would you live long enough to reminisce moments like these?

“Do you think we’ll live long enough to reminisce this?” You ask the boy beside you, not taking your eyes off the stars this time.

He pauses and you can almost hear the gears turning inside that pretty little head of his. He takes a deep breath continuing to think before eventually he comes up with the answer he was looking for. He wasn’t sure, he couldn’t be. But he knew he had to put on a confident exterior, he had to act like he was certain at least.

“We will.” Carl says, confidence flooding his tone of voice.

And you would. You would live until you were old and grey. You’d start a family one day and be an active part in building the new world. You had so much to look forward to and Carl knew that much. You would make it.

Carl, on the other hand. Carl would be the boy you’d never forget. Carl would be the person you’d look back on with regret and grief. You would live your life to the fullest, not only for you but for him too. You’d experience all the things you wished he could and savor it. You’d tell him all about it every night, talking to the stars in a similar position to what you were in right now. Except he wouldn’t be beside you then. You’d be on your own.

You would carry him in your heart forever.

But as of right now both of you were unaware of the painfully cruel future that awaited you. You were both happy and satisfied. You had hope and Carl had faith, the both of you made up for what the other lacked and you were certain things would be okay in the end.

So you continued to sit under the stars reminiscing with the boy you loved. You’d reminisce again in the future surely, you just didn’t realize you’d be reminiscing about him.

[wolgrahas]

tagged by: @falkreathh thank you!!  sorry for doing this so much later u_u’ tagging: whoever wants to!! (◡‿◡✿) 1. favourite game in the series ok... i don’t know if you already figured it out but my total fave is dao. why? maybe is the nostalgic feelings this game gives me or... i played it so many mcfucking times that i just get this hollow feeling inside my chest when i haven’t played it for weeks... idk. the trespasser dlc was spectacular too and gave my lavellan a lot of personality (what i thought the dai base game lacked, bc it made me feel like my inquisitor was an empty shell with no personality, solas’ romance save the dai base game to me tbqh). but... you can create such complex personalities in dao for your warden, and the relationships are so so realistic. i think (dao) is neat lmao. 

2. how did you discover dragon age? before being a dragon age fan i was a dark souls fan; i breath dark souls, i read dark souls, i ate dark souls, i was quite obsessed with dark souls, and before dark souls i was an obsessed skyrim fan (oNLY SKYRIM, not the previous games ashdgjasdgh) and with skyrim that was the first time i made video game oc's, like... they had such complex personalities and i cannot make complex character now... aNYWAY i'm getting carried away: i knew dragon age bc dai was being lunched and ALL the people i followed reblogged stuff about dai, and then i bought dao and loved it!! 

3. how many times have you played the games? hfgsdjfhsjfshd fffUCKKKK SHITT... alright... many mANY TIMES, but how many times i haven't finished my game?? countless times!! i think i finished fINISHED dao maybe... pls don't laugh at me... 10+ times. yes they are so so so many times, shame on me! shame on my cow! blah blah, but i lOVE dao. da2 maybe.... 3-4 times? and dai 6 times?? it's funny bc i played dao and da2 in many different ways but dai... m8, always the same, fuck you solas sdhfjdshjsdf 4. favourite race to play? qUNARIIIII!!! i lOVE tieflings so.. i obviously love the qunari too, but in the dai the first race i chose was qunari but then i talked to solas and i was like... bITCHHHHH i'm gonna create an elf to romance this egg, and then... my canon inky became an elf lol. and last favourite race are humans... ok don't hate me, it's not bc they are """boring""" or shit like that, it's bc they are the upper-class of thedas and i LOVE the "from zero to hero" trope... so... yeah agfshsdfhj 5. favourite class? mages!! bc i love the lore behind this class, it's fantastic, precisely blood magic. but if i didn't care about this, i would choose archer, tho in the first games it sucked but in dai is pretty cool :^) 6. do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time? as i've said before i have made many different decisions in dao and da2 but in dai are always the same lol 7. go-to adventuring group? origins: alistair/sten, morrigan, zev/leliana da2: aveline, anders, isabela/varric dai: solas, cassandra, cole/sera 8. which of your characters did you put the most thought into? i think prim/anika??(they're the same but one is a human and the other an elf lmaoo), she was my first da oc, and obviously the one i put most thought into bc i uSED to have a lot of creativity some years ago, what a pity my brain is useless now lmao 9. favourite romance? pfffff... solas, alistair, leli and cass!! i think?? idk i gotta play again dai bc i'm not sure :/ 10. have you read any of the comics/books? i've read aLL the books but not the comics :/, i want to read the comics but idk where i could read them online and free (sorry i'm poor lol), so... mi gozo en un pozo lmao 11. if you read them, which was your favourite book? my fav book was "the masked empire"!! patrick weekes is a good writer and i loved the orlesian politics, and i adored seeing these characters in dai! (tho briala was whitewashed lmao) 12. favourite DLCs? obviously: awakening and trespasser. these two dlc's were mcfUCKING AMAZING. i mean, with dao i expected the same quality of the base game, but trespasser was such an excelent and good experience, it gave a lot of insight to our inquisitors and also: sOOULASSSSS, so yep! i mainly lOVED trespasser and i hope weekes guides the team to make a game at least as good as this dlc! (tho, if ea is a greedy bintch this time [as always lol] it doesn't matter how many times the bioware time tries, ea will force them to do a shitty game :/) 13. things that annoy you how viv, anders and sera are written, i mean, i loved anders the first time i played da2 but his personality is obviously written to annoy the fuck outta you, tho i loved how he expressed his ideals freely (tho sometimes he even seemed too traidtional to me about topics like blood magic :/), but sera and viv were a lil harder to befriend and like, and i still don't like much viv, but i love her as a character, y'kno 14. orlais or ferelden? tbh, if i gotta live in one of those two places i would choose ferelden by fAR. but, now, if we're talking about which is more interesting; orlais. 15. templars or mages? like @/blckwall said: all templars are bastards :). i would love if thedas had independent magic schools, that there were no higher representatives or charges, that every village or city had its own magic school, and the crown would be the responsable of manage its needs. i haven't thought much about this so my thoughts are quite vague :/ 16. if you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one? they're from different universes, tho i'd love the idea of all of them being in the same universe, but some worlds states are incompatible with others. 17. what did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc) in dao: barkspawn (i'm extremelly predictable, sorry u_u') 18. have you installed any mods? all my dragon age games are modded as fUCK. i mean, i think dao is the most heavy modded game i have?? (mainly bc i cannot install many mods in skyrim lol) but when i have my gaming computer again i will mod the shit out of dai >:) 19. did your warden want to become a grey warden? prim had been working in the circle her entire live to be in the higher ranks, and then she saw how all her work was lost made her really conflicted: she didn't wanted to leave bc she yearned to be more powerful and make the circle a better place for mages (yep, she's deeply anti-circle bc of her traumatic past), and she was going to die if she refused duncan's offer. even so, she was never sorry for supporting jowan. and, she became the king of ferelden's mistress; she loved him obv, but she could also take some advantage of his power to make the mages and marginalize people's situation better, and gain fortune by that; alistair was well aware about her plans by prim's words herself, but he never objected. altho the main cause prim made alistair king is bc she wanted him to have a good life and not waste it as a grey warden, so... anyway, i got acrried away... this is long af ghdjsdgf 20. hawke’s personality? red mostly, tho he used to be purple/red in the first and begining of the second act :/ 21. did you make matching armor for your companions in inquisition? yes i did!! i lOVED to be fashionable in dragon age instyle!! 22. if your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change? prim : she would have tried to convince jowan and wait some months until she could convince him. also: sometimes she wishes she didn't make alistair king, mostly bc of her daughter (her daughter is the only heir to the throne of ferelden, and basically she doesn't even know that prim is her real mother, mostly bc anora adopted her bc alistair and she couldn't have children), sometimes, in her alone saddest times, thinks how things would have been if alistair was still a grey warden, they would have a happy family and wouldn't even had to hide inofensive stuff like a cheek kiss. but anyway, her duties as a grey warden are more important and doesn't have time to think about it. garrett hawke: he regrets not defending carver, he would have prefered to sacrifice himself instead of any of his siblings. he also regrets going to the deep roads with bethany, letting the grey wardens make her one of them (obv he doesn't know that if he didn't she would have joined the circle lmao). and obv her mother's death... if he had been there, with her mother, he could have done something... :'/ maia: she regrets not being strong enough when that shem tried to hurt her when she was a litte girl, that made her mother kill him to save her bc she was too defenseless, she should have been stronger, that caused her mother and she part ways, because now maia's mother was a criminal and she had more proabilities of getting caught, so maia should go on her way and find the next village, but she found the lavellan clan. she deeply regrets not going after her mother. she also think she was too stupid to not found out the true identity of solas and try to convince him that this world has meaning :'/ 23. do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon? mmmm... no? :/, i like my decisions to have consequences?? 24. are any of your characters based on someone? sahgdashsd pls don't make fun of me but in the first stage of prim's/anika's 'personality creation' was inspired by mother gothel, then she was inspired by...... mikasa ackerman dsfgdjsdf, i'm still inspired by that character tHO i know that shingeki no kyojin is nazi propaganda and i no longer watch that anime lmao. maia is inspired by... a mix of me and rapunzel (from tangled)?? she's basically a shy rapunzel :') 25. who did you leave in the fade? some of you will hate me bc i had to choose between hawke and stroud but i still chose hawke dsfgsdf. m8, hawke is just a 'figure' who isn't widely recognized in thedas, while the grey warden are 394789x more useful, idk i always put myself in the shoes of my characters even if their decisions hurt me (tho, tbqh, i'm not tHAT attached to hawke so this choice was easy lol) 26. favourite mount? royal sixteen!! she's so pretty!! ♡♡♡ thanks for tagging me!! ♡♡

[jasecomplex]

Death By Astonishment

The following is a real story about psychedelic drug use, if the subject matter bothers you please refrain from continuing. It’s important that the reader be at least somewhat familiar with what DMT is in order for any of this to make any kind of sense, I realize that in order to have found this report you're likely well acquainted with the subject, but I want for everyone to be able to appreciate this. Dimethyltryptamine, (DMT) is the most powerful class of psychadelics we are currently aware of. It also happens to be endogenously produced, meaning our bodies actually produce the compound, so from the moment you’re born to the moment you die you have the most powerful psychedelic drug in your brain, so do all mammals as far as I know. It is thought to be the cause of dreams, near death experiences and some alien abduction stories. The typical "smoked" freebase DMT trip is very fast in onset and very short lasting, usually around 15 minutes in total. The molecule is destroyed by the monoamine oxidase in your stomach before it's able to pass your blood brain barrier and have the desired effect. Combining DMT with an MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitor) allows it to be ingested orally, this is known as ayahuasca, which I'm led to believe has become quite popular among the yuppie class who like to travel to South America to exploit the last remaining vestages of an ancient land, ritual and people before they're all bulldozed over for that sweet sweet palm oil. (I kid, I kid.) My only experience is with DMT freebase. The MAOI in ayahuasca typically leads to severe gastrointestinal distress, pain, diarrhea, and vomiting are typical of the experience, and I'm not all that interested in shitting and puking my brains out as they are simultaneously sucked into the interstellar vacuum. There are multiple “levels” of the DMT trip, the most intense being what’s known as a “breakthough” dose, which is said to be the most powerful experience a person can have, after having been through it, I’m inclined to agree.

I want to note that I did not undertake this experience as a rank amateur. At this point in my psychedelic journey I was smoking DMT at least once a week and had well over dozen trips under my belt, as well as several acid trips, mushroom trips, mdma, and 2cb. You could say I fancied myself a psychonaut who could handle his shit. I have since been humbled.

Like many people who have tried getting into DMT, I was having no luck actually breaking through, I would get close, but never actually to the point of a full breakthrough experience. I thought that maybe I had broken through a couple of times, but one thing I’ve since come to realize is that there is no “maybe” to a breakthrough experience, if you have to ask upon exiting a DMT trip, “Did I break through?” the answer is no. You did not.

One thing that I feel obligated to get out of the way now is that this effort of mine, to describe my experience will be a colossal failure. I will do my best, but I will fall short, language is simply insufficient to convey a breakthrough experience to someone who hasn’t had the experience. I like to think of describing a breakthrough as trying to describe a 3 dimensional object you’ve never seen by a memory of its shadow. That being said, there will be no hyperbole in the following paragraphs, everything will be described to the best of my abilities. The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated, this is an experience that changed me at my core, an experience that shattered my perceptions of the universe and scattered the powdered remnants into the cosmic wind. The report will be split into two parts, the first will entail the experience as I remember it, not necessarily in the exact chronological order in which they occurred, time is a bit strange in the DMT world, and I've pieced what I can remember into a series of events that to me makes sense. The second part will be about how I have processed this experience over the past couple of years (yes, it has taken me that long to finally feel comfortable writing up a report), and how it has changed my core beliefs involving religion, consciousness, and indeed existence itself.

Part One: The Experience

It was a hot summer Saturday, my wife was at work and I was home alone with nothing to do, so I decided dropping some acid would be a good way to spend the day. I had recently gotten some 120μg tabs and I decided 2 would be a good dose, as one never seems to do all that much to me. One thing I love doing while on acid is listening to Terence McKenna, his way of speaking, the lateral thinking he displays and the novel ideas he puts forth are always more entertaining and inspiring to me while on acid. On this fateful day I happened to come across a video in which he describes smoking DMT while peaking on acid, and it seemed to make breaking through much easier, and I happened to have a stash of DMT and was nearing the 4 hour mark of my trip. In hindsight the hubris that follows is almost comical. I nonchalantly got my bong out, spread a layer of cannabis in the bowl, measured out 50mg of DMT, and put another layer of cannabis over the DMT. For any not in the know, the purpose of the cannabis was less to add to the high and more to protect and absorb the DMT, DMT is destroyed by open flames and becomes liquid when heated, so the bottom layer absorbs the liquid and stops it from just running into the water while the top layer keeps the flame from directly contacting your expensive DMT. When you "smoke" DMT you're actually vaporizing it, combustion destroys it.

I looked at the clock on my stove, which I can see from the living room, 4:32. I flicked my bic, placed the flame to the bowl and inhaled as deeply as I could. One hit. One hit is all I was ABLE to do, as before I even remember exhaling I was gone, I don't know if I coughed, I don't know how long I was able to hold it in. Fast is an entirely insufficient adjective to describe how fast freebase DMT hits you, especially when you're already peaking on LSD. It doesn't seem physically possible how fast it hits you, it's as if your brain starts dumping it endogenously in preparation for the freebase that's about to hit it, it's the closest thing to an instantaneous effect I've ever felt. I just messed up, bad. This is something entirely different from the experiences I've known to this point, this was somehow REAL, this combination had done something to alter the very fabric of reality, and I knew immediately that I had made a huge mistake. I remember looking at the purple and orange, sun and moon tie-dye tapestry we have hanging on our wall (yes we're hippies, get over it) and having the colors and spiral shape spread across the entire room, with every piece of furniture taking on orange and purple colors, and then distorting and spiraling upwards as if I were about to receive a visit from the Cat in the Hat. The visitor I actually received was far less pedestrian than a talking cat from a Dr. Seuss story. This orange and purple spiraling was the only open eye visual I managed to see, as immediately after taking the hit I fell back on our old futon and was no longer able to hold my eyes open. Eyes closed, mind opened.

Everything was black and eerily silent at first as I felt myself begin to be pulled/pushed upwards, away from my body. Looking up I saw blackness, with a pinprick of white, this white was what I was floating towards, slowly, and inexorably. I looked down, I could see… myself, my body, the crappy futon that had long outstayed its welcome, there was a hole in my ceiling through which I could see myself getting smaller as I moved upwards towards the waiting unknown. That’s when the real terror began. I knew I was never coming back, that my wife was going to come home and find me comatose, and that old futon that I hated so much would be where I died. I was going to leave my wife alone, forcing her to find me in that condition, scarring her for life because I had thought myself capable of concomitant psychedelic use when nothing was further from the truth. I felt powerless, stupid, selfish, I hated myself in that moment. This was terrifying, because I knew it was real, there was no doubt in my mind. As I continued being pulled from above and pushed from below, getting further and further from my body the layers of myself began peeling away. Slowly, every aspect of me that I could call “me” was being discarded, the last part of myself that I desperately clung to was my wife, the memories of her, both of loving tenderness and bitter arguments, I didn’t want to lose her, she had to be forcibly torn from my grasp, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. This was ego death, this was me dying, and from this point on I didn’t really consider myself to be myself, there was no ego attached to me with which perceive the event. I will continue to use “I” and “my" but that’s only because that’s how our memory works, I wasn’t me anymore, I understand the confusing, and unintuitive nature of this perspective, of being conscious, of witnessing, participating, thinking, reacting, and feeling without an "I" to be. With the fading of my ego came the fading of my resolve to cling to myself, and with much fear and trepidation of what was to follow, I finally let go of myself completely, I allowed myself to die. Once I let go, and accepted my dying, an overwhelming calm swept across me and the pervasive blackness all around began teeming with activity, light, and voices. These voices, singular in tone and pitch and yet innumerable in repetition and seeming sources were feminine in energy, maternal, and loving. The love I felt from those voices, the care, the worry for me, I’ll forever hold onto that feeling, there was a genuine, unabashedly accepting quality that left no doubt in my mind that the amount of love they felt for me was complete. The voices kept repeating the same mantras “We just don’t know, we don’t know, we just don’t know.” And though the words were vague, the meaning was crystal clear and unambiguous to me. They didn’t know what was on the other side, and they were sending me to find out, they were worried about me, they loved me and didn’t want any harm to befall me, but they were grateful that I was going to find out, that I had volunteered. For some reason I have always attached the name "Gaia" to these voices, they seemed to belong to the earth itself somehow.

As I looked down again I could no longer see myself, instead what presented was ethereal, green, verdant energy in wafting tendrils like a kelp forest composed of light, swaying gently in calm sea. There were spots of light in all colors, photons slowed to crawl so that I could examine them, appreciate them, name them individually. I then turned my attention upwards and the pinprick of white light had grown exponentially and was now a shimmering white wall, pulling me towards it, beckoning me to enter it and behold the majesty within. There was a voice on the other side, masculine, less kind and loving than the one that had ushered me to this point, but far from malicious.

As I came to the wall the light that had surrounded me again faded to blackness and the loving voices stopped. What I could hear now from the wall was a continuous, low humming sound that didn’t grow louder as I neared it, but somehow fuller, more complete, as if it were a frequency that had begun resonating inside of my mind. As I neared the wall I began to feel a tingling sensation from being near it, as if it were composed of a static electric charge. I entered the wall, it didn't open for me, but I was able to pass through with no resistance. As I did there was a crinkling, crackling noise, reminiscent of a potato chip bag crumpling. My vision was entirely white, I passed through it.

The sight I was confronted with directly on the other side should have left me mortified, but it didn’t. There, suspended in space was my own decapitated head, but it wasn’t macabre or gruesome in any sense. My head was being used as a projector, images beaming out of my eyes showing my life playing out, the stresses, pains, and pleasures I’ve enjoyed and endured. Then the voice spoke up, there was no body to this voice, it was a calm, masculine, objective sounding voice, no love, but no malice either, it said to me “This is what it took” and a set of images played out that he seemed to control. These images were my own memories, of times I’ve displayed curiosity in the face of adversity, how I’ve shown courage, made sacrifices and refused to believe what I was told, choosing to find out for myself. Simply in getting here I had to make myself an enemy of the culture in which I live, a criminal, ostracized and having to keep who I truly am under wraps from family and coworkers. I am brave, perhaps a bit foolhardy at times, but I have shown a sense of courage that most are unwilling to match. It should be known that I have severe depression, and don’t often think positively about myself. I considered myself a coward, weak, and deserving of the ostracism I fear. Being shown all of these things that are undeniably true, and also positive, filled me with a heretofore unknown sense of satisfaction with myself, who I am, who I am becoming, how I think, and how I think about my thoughts. I’ve never had myself shown to me in such an objective light. He wasn’t trying to make me feel good, he was simply showing me who I am, who I was in life. Indeed if I were a different person, with a different set of experiences, if I were an abusive, Machiavellian, greedy, and all around shitty person, being shown my life’s actions without the filter of my ego would have been hell. Bad people aren’t bad in their minds, they have justifications for their actions that allows them to hold onto the myth that they are decent people. This entity’s purpose seemed to be to show those who come to him who they are, objectively, without emotion, without justification.

When he was finished there was a loud, echoing snap noise, someone snapping their fingers in a cave. At this sound, I dissolved. Each and every molecule and atom of my being separated and dispersed throughout the universe, I was nothing, I was everything. “I am God.” Just like that, with three tiny, prodigious words, everything I knew as a devout secular atheist vanished. How can I say there is no God when I AM God? What is God? God is existence, God is consciousness, and I am God. Before my eyes was laid infinity, the scope, the scale, the grandeur of the universe, it was too much to handle but I had no choice, it was there and so was I. This is the part of the trip that sadly has lost the most detail, I’m left with more of an absolute impression than the individual details. I recall traveling vast distances, visiting distant worlds and observing alien life. I saw the Mandelbrot of existence in its entirety all at once, viewing every individual fractal spire in intimate, individual detail while simultaneously marveling at the beauty and immensity of the image as a whole. I was pervasive throughout the Universe and could travel wherever I wanted at a whim, instantly. I knew everything, I watched stars go from disparate gas clouds to supernovae, seeing every second of their lives in an instant. This was pure happiness, knowledge on a scale impossible to contain in a human mind. I then began falling, slowly at first, accelerating constantly.

I didn’t pass through any of the “levels” I had crossed when coming, instead I fell into blackness, but I was falling from every direction, the atoms composing my being returning from their cosmic diaspora, coalescing back into myself, and as I fell I became myself again. Piece by piece I began to remember who and what I was, I looked down and I was falling towards the Earth, I could again see my body through a hole in my roof, I was falling towards it with the acceleration of gravity. I passed through my roof, then my ceiling, I landed back inside of myself and immediately opened my eyes and inhaled deeply, awake, aware. I looked around the room, everything was tinted green, the walls were covered in impossible constantly transforming opalescent geometric patterns, I looked at one of my dogs, Spicy, a short, squat bulldog/pitbull mix, someone had clearly been having fun in photoshop with her, colors and contrast altered unnaturally, her brindle pattern fuzzing into the air itself, she was a spectrum of matter fading into nothing at the edges, and I said out loud “Thank God, everything is back to normal.” Compared to where I just was this was normal, this was the reality I know, just altered somewhat. I looked at the clock, 4:37. 5 minutes. All of that happened in the course of 5 minutes, coming out it felt like literal weeks, while I was there time seemed not to exist at all, or at least not in the linear way we know it. But I was back, after knowing for sure that I wouldn’t be, and I was happy, I couldn’t wait for my wife to get home, to hug her, to know for sure that I came back and everything was the same. But nothing has been the same, how could it be after what I’ve experienced? I truly see the world differently, my core beliefs, altered irreparably by a 5 minute experience. This was by far the most terrifying event in my life, I died, that’s not hyperbole, I lost who I was and thought I would never get it back. Scary though it may have been, it was also by far and away the most powerful experience I’ve ever had, this is an experience that redefined the words “power” and “awe” for me, I didn’t know what those words meant, the true definitions aren’t to be found in a dictionary, they must be experienced to be  comprehended. Do I regret my irresponsible actions, putting myself into a situation I wasn’t ready for? Absolutely not, I can’t say this experience was one I necessarily enjoyed in the moment, but I haven’t regretted doing it for even one second. Would I have done it if I had known what I was in for? Absolutely not, I haven’t repeated this combination because every time I think about doing it I’m viciously aware of what I’m likely to go through, that kills the desire outright, it’s scary as hell now that I know. Do I recommend anyone else combine LSD and DMT? Absolutely not, I only say this because of how immensely terrifying the experience was, I’m not going to stop anyone from going down the road I went down. but I cannot in good conscience recommend someone else repeat my actions, this is a decision to be made by mature adults, for themselves, you are the master of your own destiny and will reap what you sow. Will I do it again? I’d like to think yes, but not anytime soon I’m honestly scared of DMT now, it was my favorite drug from the moment I got my first good hit (despite the taste) I’ve now done it 3 times in the past two years, despite it being right there, beckoning. Was this an overall positive experience? Absolutely, no single experience has changed my thought processes and opened my mind more than this one, I really think I learned more about this universe in that single trip than in all my years of school.

If you are thinking of trying this combination, it’s imperative that you have ample experience with both LSD and DMT separately, and remember that it’s not LSD *plus* DMT, it’s LSD *times* DMT. One piece of advice for anyone embarking on this journey, just let go, you will come back, don’t cling to yourself, your loved ones, or anything in this world that you deem important, you’re leaving all of that behind when you agree to take these molecules into your body, it’s not a decision to make lightly.

Part 2: Processing

It’s now been 2 full years since this experience, and I’m not sure if I’ve gone 8 full hours without thinking about it at least once. This was a legitimate religious experience. I didn’t think religious experiences were actually possible until I had one. The term had the same significance to me as the term “fairy tale”. Now it carries more significance than I'm sure it does to 90% of devout Christians, a truly religious experience is far more profound to the individual than anything that can be found in the Bible.

Now, on being God. This whole “I am God” thing really threw me for a loop and I had to think a long, long time about what that meant. Do I think I’m the Christian God? No, I don’t believe in the Christian God, I don’t believe I’m anymore God than anyone else, but I think everyone else is also God. God is existence, consciousness. It’s not some separate entity to be worshipped, because everything is God. I believe Our brains do not generate consciousness, rather consciousness is a dimension and our brains tune into it like radios of sorts. All matter is conscious on some level, everything that exists knows on some level that it exists, what it is, and how it should behave. That "level" is dependent on the level of complexity, a giant boulder is far less complex than the inch worm crawling across its surface, and as a result the inch worm, despite being far smaller, and containing far fewer atoms is on a higher level of consciousness. The reason we are “more” conscious than other animals is that we are more complex than other animals, specifically in our brains. Were we to create a machine or program (or more likely a combination) that is as complex as the human body, with the complexity of our neural network it would be as conscious as we are.

This experience, coupled with the knowledge that DMT is endogenously produced, and there can indeed be endogenous DMT trips, has led me to a rather left field theory concerning religion in general. All religions have their base in endogenous DMT trips. At least all religions concerning religious experiences. Essentially my charge is that religions are just perverse, high stakes versions of the telephone game we played as children. One person had an endogenous DMT trip, told people about it as best they were able, those people then relayed the experience to others, minus or plus certain details, and thus a belief is born and subsequently spread. Then some people gathered many different experiences and beliefs and wove them into a single story, a religion. This of course would require the original stories to be extensively bastardized and warped to fit a specific intent. However genuine the origin, religion seems to draw the very worst type of people to lead them, and within a few generations the true story is lost to a strict set of rules and limitations. I’m not a fan of religion. So many people killed, tortured, persecuted, immolated, exiled and all other manners of brutality and humiliation, for nothing. Since this experience I’ve done more open minded research on religion than I had in my life up to this point, and I’ve come to a pretty unsurprising conclusion; all religions are wrong. Some are less wrong than others, Buddhism, in my opinion (and at my current knowledge level) is the closest to being correct, and much can be learned from the teachings of Buddha, specifically on the psychological implications of his beliefs on happiness and suffering. Regardless of your personal religious beliefs you would benefit from studying Buddhism and incorporating many of the philosophies into your own personal grand unified theory. In fact, based on the reading I've done, I 8think that there are more truths to be found in general with religions based on philosophy moreso than religious experience, wonder why? Now I could be entirely wrong here, and I go through life knowing that at any moment a piece of information could come along that would require a complete rethinking, beliefs should be transient and subject to information. Base the beliefs you accept on the information you have, don’t base the information you accept on the beliefs you have.

One thing that I cannot shake is the similarity between my experience and some stories I’ve heard in some religions. Most notably the entity who showed me my life, if other people have met this entity before, I could very well see him being the origin of the “Peter at the gates of Heaven” story (and every other similar myth, of which there are several) judging your life, determining whether you get into Heaven or Hell. Like I said, if I had been an awful person, this experience would have been hell, and were I the most virtuous, least flawed person on the planet it would have been Heaven. As it is I’m a decent person, I’ve done things I regret, but overall I am a good, kind, just, and honest person, and while I wouldn’t exactly call it Heaven, it was closer to Heaven than Hell.

Could this have just been a drug induced hallucination with no significance beyond that? Certainly, and I never allow myself to forget that possibility. However, anyone who thinks there is no significance to these experiences beyond interesting, purely chemical alterations of brain chemistry and neural pathways is someone I can almost guarantee hasn't had an experience on this level. You can’t see what I’ve seen and felt what I’ve felt and say it’s just the drugs, you can’t have traveled distances and beheld scales which dwarf everything you thought possible and think “I was just high.” I had no idea that a person could endure an experience so powerful, but I have, I know they exist, and I’m somewhat saddened by how few ever get to see and experience an event so intense so utterly astonishing. Falling in love, marriage, the birth of a child, losing the one most cherished to you, these are are all experiences that are bound to be powerful and have profound effects on a person, none of these hold a candle to a breakthrough. I’m not trying to offend any parents or people who have lost loved ones in saying this, but I’m convinced that there is nothing that can happen in a normal human life that’s as intense, strange, and indescribable as a breakthrough. If there is an experience more powerful, I don’t think I’m interested in having it.

I no longer fear death. Before this experience, being a secular, naturalist atheist, my biggest fear was death, but now that I’ve been on the other side, seen what there is, I no longer fear it. I do think there is more to this universe than we can see before us, and I don’t think oblivion follows this life. If you’re reading this, congratulations, you’re alive, try to enjoy it, and don’t reduce the joy of others. Just try not to live in fear of the end, you’ll be amazed at what’s on the other side, it’s more than you could ever imagine.

@JaseComplex

[gotgifsandmusings]

Full musings on Infinity War

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I'm just waiting for your thoughts on Thanos. I know there will be thoughts.

Ha, there are thoughts indeed. I was thinking of recording a video about it, but my mic seems to be messed up from the journey, and Griffin’s mic picks up everything...

Alright, fuck it, I’ll just write everything I was thinking about Infinity War, because overall I’d call it a frustrating viewing experience.

FULL MOVIE SPOILERS are below the cut, so you have been warned.

Very warned.

Okay then, let’s get into it.

I want to be able to have a neatly packaged thesis statement of “I did/didn’t like it,” but I do think my dissatisfaction with it is a bit more nuanced? Like, I was viscerally annoyed sitting through Ragnarok, and a lot of that were thanks to the expectations I had going into it. Here, I kind of didn’t care that much and didn’t read spoilers for that reason. Griffin was super hype to see it, I knew Lindsay Ellis didn’t react favorably to it on Twitter, and those two things alone were my only basis for any expectations.

I tend to have my mind wander think, “am I liking this?” during a movie screening. Had I been asked during this one, I couldn’t have clearly answered at all, at least not until the very end. There were some jokes and dialogue I laughed at, the action pieces always felt earned by the context, though not necessarily incredibly engaging. It was a mixed bag, maybe, but it was more just me kind of nodding along at the direction. Not in a “cool” way, but more a, “okay here’s what they’re doing now.” It became very obvious Thanos was going to get the all stones this movie, and equally obvious that it was not going to be fully resolved, so it was really the question of how and where the final action piece would fall.

Gamora’s death was some bullshit. I sort of felt like it sucked out the emotional tension, since this is just big purple dude from space beaming in with stones who doesn’t have any direct connection to 98% of the characters. But even more than that, I was having trouble understanding what they were going for there at all.

I didn’t see GOTG2, though I want to. However, I do know about the familial dynamics with Gamora and Nebula and Thanos. I think Gamora giving up the soul stone location to save her was seeded, at least from what I understand went down. And frankly, I can even track Gamora kissing Peter given the stakes, given she asked him to kill her, and so on. What loses me was why they painted her death as a sacrifice of Thanos’s, because it’s 100% clear this guy is an abuser to her and Nebula, and then even backing out of this, he’s 100% incapable of empathy, which is why his solution to ~famine~ is a glove that can literally do anything (like...you know...make resources more plentiful or increase education about birth control or something), and his solution is still “equal opportunity genocide.”

So that Gamora was explicitly shown to us to be someone he loved to get the soul stone sends all kinds of really dangerous messages, and also does it banking on the believability of his philosophical commitment to thinning the herd. Except that philosophy itself falls apart with minor scrutiny. His planet fell apart because of thin resources, so he can extrapolate that to the universe? And he really believes just arbitrarily murdering half the population would do anything, without addressing birth rates, or power structions, or anything at all?

It was just so, so, so weak as a motivation for him. And I’m absolutely flabbergasted critics are seriously comparing Thanos to Killmonger as two villains with “understandable” motivations. These are two massively different scales of understandability, right?? How is there any basis for comparison other than to say, “wow Thanos is a shitty villain after Killmonger.”?

The problem is, Thanos was the closest thing we had to a movie protagonist, since it was his journey. But there’s nothing remotely sympathetic about what he’s trying to accomplish, or particularly logical, and to have him be the one to “sacrifice” to get there was like...for what? Otherwise we wouldn’t have believed how hardcore he was?

I think how much this movie lands for someone is going to fall entirely on their view of Thanos. I wasn’t impressed and I don’t understand why this is the guy they built towards, and specifically him and the infinity gauntlet.

Because yeah, that damned gauntlet. I really can’t stand unclear power scaling like that. The gauntlet can do anything with all the stones in it, but minus two of them, Dr. Strange can go toe-to-toe with Thanos? It’s just...the fights became increasingly irrelevant because Stones of Random Power so things happen that need to happen just because. They are one of the most profoundly uninteresting plot devices I can think of.

Oh also? Hands down the worst moment was when Starlord was so full of Manpain about Gamora that he ruined Peter Parker and Tony Stark almost getting the gauntlet off Thanos. Just utter horseshit there. Not to mention even going with the mapain, he could have just shot him in the face or slit his throat instead of punching him, and then boom, movie over.

Idk, that moment, along with Gamora’s death earned heavy eyerolls. There are so many more inventive ways to have those guys lose a fight to him, or to have Thanos obtain the soul stone, and I don’t see her dead body being the necessity for any of them. Especially with the soul stone. Maybe Thanos creates some kind of illusion using the reality stone where Gamora thinks she has to get the soul stone in her possession to save Nebula, and then Thanos is able to take it. Idfk. Just...why this?

(Also the Guardians felt super off to me. I know stuff happened in GOTG2, but it seemed obvious they weren’t being penned by their usual writer.)

I do want to address the darkness of this movie. I got one ask saying it was acedia at its finest, and another saying that no, the thesis of the movie was that every life is important (Steve says this to Vision) and we fight for something saving or whatever. I lean more with the acedia anon.

If anyone is reading this and doesn’t know the spoilers, the movie ends with Thanos, having assembled all of the stones, snapping his fingers and killing half of the universe. The finger snap itself is mentioned as the threat and how easy it’d be fore him to do it at least 5 times, so it was certainly seeded. Then, we get a lovely sequence where we watch half the Wakandaans turn to dust, T’Challa among them, along with half the Avengers: bye bye Sam, Bucky, Elizabeth Olsen, every Guardian of the Galaxy except Rocket, Dr. Strange, and Peter Parker. That’s after already watching Vision, Gamora, Loki, and Heimdall get killed by Thanos.

Like yes, everyone knows this is not going to stand. We are shown about two minutes before this charming sequences Thanos going back in time because he has the time infinity plot device, and we also know Avengers 4, GOTG 3, Black Panther 2, the next Spiderman follow-up, and so on are in the works.

Oh except children in the audience. There was a BAWLING 7-year-old outside the theater, and what do you tell them? “Don’t worry, it’s just the Russo brothers doing it because they can, and they want to seem edgy and bold”? It’s not bold. It’s kind of the biggest cop-out possible, because we know nothing is permanent now, it’s probable everyone who died in this is brought back (...maybe Loki or Heimdall or all of the Asgardians are exceptions? maybe?), and it was basically just an exercise in the limitations of the movie medium for comic narratives.

But thank god we got to watch all of our heroes horrifically die with everyone reacting to them. Like good god, the very young Peter Parker had to be given time to freak out about how he feels sick and doesn’t want to go? What was the point of that? Or was that the reserved take, and in the full cut there was actually a death scene for Princess Shuri too or something.

Speaking of Shuri and Wakanda, I do want to say that I think there’s an element of this that’s in poor taste. Black Panther is *still* airing in theaters, and there have been how many pieces coming out about the importance of representation and what Wakanda meant to so many viewers. So the fact that it was in Wakanda when we see half the population dying... Like, I do like that Wakandans were given an instrumental role in end-of-the-world stakes. But then that meant that yeah, you’d watch half of them crumble to dust in that sequence. Yes, you know that half of San Diego is also crumbling to dust, but it’s a little more viscerally upsetting to see it.

And honestly, why couldn’t T’Challa have been a living Avenger in this? Why was his death particularly necessary? The body count of black characters was kind of high across the board when you take into account Heimdall and Sam (and out-of-universe Zoe Saldana as Gamora. Oh and then Nick Fury in the post-credits. Also is Valkyrie implied to have been with the half of the Asgardians that lived, or did she die off-screen? Cause I’m not sure I imagine her *not* fighting back.). I’m not sure if this is a point of contention with viewers for the most part, but there was just something about T’Challa’s unceremonious death alongside half his country where you’re like, “seriously, why is this what they’re showing now?”

Because guess what? It wasn’t an effective ending! We KNOW it’s being turned back, especially given the utterly ridiculous volume of deaths with key characters who we know have movies. You know what would have been a better ending for this? Just...Thanos snapping. That’s it. “You should have aimed for my head. *Snap*.” Cut to black.

There was no reason I can think of to have been this explicit about everyone’s deaths when they’re just temporary anyway. “Hey kids, enjoy your horror-free entertainment!” Especially Peter Parker’s death. That really, really felt like acedia at its finest.

Because part of the thing with acedia, as Gretchen has so eloquently explained, is that it’s a dark kind of writing where nothing really matters, bad shit just happens. And boy if *that* wasn’t the actual thesis statement of the movie.

Steve said that no, you save every life because that’s what you fight for. But that point was heavily undercut multiple times in the film. There seemed to be countless situations where a character had to either kill or consider killing someone they loved for the greater good (or not saving someone they loved, or giving Thanos keys to something really bad). It was utilitarianism vs. the power of emotional connection, and it was constant. Frankly, it was pretty cohesive.

Except magic man got magic gauntlet and did magic thing, so choice was rendered completely useless.

All told, once this movie is put together with Avengers 4, it’s possible there is some message that works to this end. But right now we essentially got half a movie based around an incredibly weak motivation that we know is all going to be back-dialed anyway. But thank god we got to traumatize kids in the name of ~boldness~ in the process.   

Loki gave over the Tesseract but tried to kill Thanos, and got punished for it. Peter pulled the trigger to kill Gamora like she asked and got punished for it. Gamora tried to stab herself and got punished for it. Gamora tried to save Nebula at the cost of an infinity stone and got punished for it. Trying to save Vision didn’t work. Trying to not save Vision didn’t work. 

Nothing mattered. Except apparently Thanos “sacrificing” Gamora. Wow, what commitment to bullshit philosophy and a laughable “solution” to a problem that is at best, temporary in nature.

This was a downer of a film, and not in a way that made me interested to see the resolution. I just want this out of Marvel’s system. It was event comics writing at its worst, and using an event that never could have really worked for this medium with this schedule of releases.

So okay, fine, my thesis statement is: I really didn’t like it. The longer I think about it the more annoyed I am. Had it ended five minutes earlier, I would have had major issues with it, but it would have been more of an “...okay then” kind of thing. Gamora got the shortest end of the stick, from what I can see. But nothing really came together, and the climax with the RANDOM EVIL ARMY was just going through the motions.

Honestly? If I had to sit through this or Dark World again, I’d choose the latter in a heartbeat. That was a mess and often boring in places, but at least the climax was inventive and fun, and there was lip-service to character development. This was just...an event. Can’t wait for it to not matter at all!

[k-l-neidecker]

One Person’s Take on what the Infinity War Pitch Room Conversation was Like — K. L. Neidecker

One Person’s Take on what the Infinity War Pitch Room Conversation was Like

A week or so back, I finally broke down and watched Avengers: Infinity War.

It took me a long time to get around to it. I’m not sure, but I think, perhaps, I’ve seen the requisite number of superhero movies one must watch to be considered a happy and productive human in modern society. Check that box, one piece of being an American consumer fully in place, now on to the next strange trend…

Not that I hate comic book movies. In fact, I enjoy them. Just, hey, a few dozen a year is more than enough, thanks! And let’s not even mention that we are stuck with Marvel movies as DC seems to be having…trouble…making movies that don’t suck since the third movie of the Nolan Batman series.

So, considering the spoilers about Infinity War which assaulted my eyes for months, and the fact I knew what was going to happen…the supposed “big moment”…I simply felt no great rush to see it. Sure, I’d see it sooner or later, but it was way down on the the list of things to do—somewhere below a visit to the proctologist and spraying out the inside of the garbage cans.

But, hey, I figured it would be fine for a movie night.

And from minute one, I knew I made a terrible mistake, one which proves karma is a bitch and in a past life I must have been a terrible person. Maybe Attila the Hun’s third cousin twice removed, Bob the Hunnish.

I’d like to present to you my imaginings if what the pitching and brainstorming room must have been like as they planned Infinity War out.

Neon lights flicker and highlight nicotine stained drop ceiling panels. The energy is high, the air buzzing with electricity, though that could always just be the faulty wiring buried in walls which have been privy to so many great ideas in better days…

“Ok, so me and the boys have been talking,” Jim said, gesturing to a pile of sock puppets discarded in a dingy corner, button-eyes staring blankly into the distance, “and we got some ideas for the next Avengers movie.”

The writer’s room hushed in anticipation. A head writer for Iron Man 2, an artichoke heart pickled in brine, wetly rolled from its perch.

“Ok, so we open with a battle! Action is good, right? People love that stuff.”

A cricket farted in the distance, the mating call falling on dead ears.

“I mean, just some fighting, on a space ship. In space! Bunch of stuff happens. Sure, it will be confusing, and maybe some viewers will wonder, hey, did I miss an entire movie or something, because this scene feels like it’s part of some larger whole…

“And then we kill off some important characters! Yeah, baby, yeah! That will get people invested.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the room, taking the form of various belches and the whisper quiet rustle of a nostril mined for ore by a probing digit.

“Ok, and then the Hulk enters the picture, a being so powerful he’s been sent into space because of how dangerous he is to have around…but Thanos mops the floor with him. And guess what? That’s the last time we see the Hulk for the rest of the movie!” Jim leaned back and placed dirty boots on the table, grinning.

He continued, “So, no Hulk, because hell, who needs him anyway, and it fixes the plot hole where he would simply own Thanos early on, end of movie.

“Then, we add in every Marvel hero we have into the mix. So many, in fact, that they all only get five minute snippets on screen, and we just keep cutting between everyone fast enough to send a third of our viewers into epileptic fits. Thank goodness for CGI because we need a half-thousand sets to marionette these characters over.

“Thor, even though he’s been around multiple earthlings over a bunch of movies, will act dumb as hell and confused about words like ‘moron’”

Moron twitched in his sleep, the sound of his name nearly pulling him out of his comfortable dreamland.

“Also, some of the best characters in our universe, the space cadets from Gargantuans of the Galaxy or whatever it was we made a few years back, will run into Thor at random in the almost infinite reaches of the unfathomable soul sucking emptiness that is the ever expanding universe. Good timing!

“Let’s see…ah, right, Thanos just keeps winning non stop, and our heroes simply throw the same tactics at him over and over to no avail. You know, like punches and missiles and some Kung fu or some shit. Hey, the dude owned Hulk, so why wouldn’t Captain America try punching him in the gob?”

Tim, the newest writer, one not yet broken in by Marvel and not yet fitted out for his Marvel Brand Gimp Suit™, broke his silence when he could take no more. “Hey, uh, this all sounds great and all, but don’t you think—“

“No, I try not to, Tim. Thinking is the direct cause of migraines and bed wetting. Ok, so, we have wizards doing the circle things with their palms, some space folk bopping around almost disconnected from the rest of the story, Avengers not calling other Avengers even though fifty percent of the life of the entire universe hangs in the balance…damn, what else was I going to say,” Jim grasped a bong like an infant would a bottle and ripped on it before smashing it on his own head in victory.

“Right. The love story. Every great tale needs a love story: Romeo and Juliet, Ren and Stimpy, all the greats. So, we have a budding relationship between Vision and whatsherface. Let’s make the viewer care, get them invested.”

Tim nodded, “Right, that’s a solid idea man, sounds—“

Jim cut him off, “Of course, with fifty main characters and a two hour runtime, we won’t actually see any of this love or whatever. We’ll just hint at it a bit, you know. Gotta save screen time for purple ballsack, er, I mean Thanos, to wax laconically about how nice a bro he really is on the inside.”

“Hey, no, I don’t think—“ Tim stuttered.

“Good, my man, good. I think you’ll fit in here with that attitude. So, then let’s kill of all the fun characters. Let’s start with the people of color. First scene to last scene, let’s off some green folk, dissolve some Wakanda heroes, let’s go for broke.

“Again, no Hulk. Just Bruce in a CGI suit, so it’s kinda like the Hulk but suckier. You know, we wouldn’t want that actor to actually be in the movie or anything. Just CGI his ass at all times. Note to self, can we just completely CGI his likeness and not have to have an actor at all?

“Let’s have Dr. Strangelove or whatever his name is willingly hand over the one item his entire order was formed to protect… You know, stay true to the characters.”

The sounds of shattering glass echoed from wall to wall as two writers leapt naked through the windows, fist-bumping one another and shouting, “Brooooooooo!”

“See, Tim,” Jim said, “that’s the kind of energy we need here. Get your shit together. Ok, and lastly, let’s dissolve all the interesting characters we have left. Black Panther for one! Oh, and did I bring up the White Wolf? No? Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have an arc in the movie anyway. Hell, no one needs a character arc here. It’s only half a story, after all, and doesn’t need to stand alone or anything.”

Joseph the Randy Donkey brayed a lonely song at the water cooler before defecating a sad pile on the floor.

“Damn, I love that donkey,” Jim said while cleaning his left ear with his right big toe. “So, you see where I’m going here, right? For year people have complained we are formulaic, but look at us being all badass and breaking the mold! We will take a decade worth of characters and squash them together, making half a movie that means nothing on it’s own, simply designed to set up our next million dollar movie in a year, needlessly kill off dozens of the best characters in a way that means nothing and will be reversed within the first quarter of the next movie, dabble in romance sorta, and wipe out half the life in the universe to save everyone from running out of food and stuff!”

The room erupted in cheers and whoops. Three men dueled to the death in celebration, Moron awoke from his long slumber in time to vote in the midterms and drive without using his blinkers, seven Hollywood executives took time away from sexually harassing the donkey the stamp and squeal in delight, a motley mob of slatterns boxed with a dusty group of heroin addicts in a mock Walmart, and the seventh seal was opened in the distance.

But a hush fell on the room like a smothering pillow as Tim cleared his throat.

“Hey, um, if Thanos can control time and matter with a mere thought, wielding enough power to kill fifty percent of all living things at the blink of an eye…why doesn’t he simply will infinite resources into being instead of killing untold trillions due to limited resources?”

The silence in the room laid so thick in the air that a large housefly, fat and well fed on over-ripe Hollywood movie drech, collapsed like a crumpled piece of tinfoil from the mere pressure in the room.

Lucky for the brave writers of Infinity War, there was a handy and already broken window to defenestrate Tim from before calling the seventy-five actors and warming up the computers for modern CGI magic.

https://klneidecker.com/2018/10/22/one-persons-take-on-what-the-infinity-war-pitch-room-conversation-was-like/

[prancis-film-reviews]

Birds Of Prey (2020) Review:

IT'S A HARLEY QUINN MOVIE BUT IT'S CALLED 'BIRDS OF PREY' SMH...🤦

written by: Prancis

I have absolutely no major background knowledge about the DC universe and its characters—I'm a Marveltard—So it was kinda hard for me to invest myself in watching. It was hard for me to understand what the heck is going on while watching it. But guess what? I watched it maybe because I want to know everything about Harley Quinn 'cause I really find her an interesting fictional character. Believe me, I haven't watched Suicide Squad yet so I still don't know anything about her aside from being a bitch and a murderer psychopath. Basically, I just watched the movie because of her. 

I had fun watching it. The best part of it is obviously Margot Robbie's performance as the Harley Quinn. Goodness gracious I FUCKIN' love her now. She's so bad-ass, she's a bitch and every inch of her is driving me crazy. Her acting exceeded my expectations and one thing that truly blew my mind was of course, her action scenes; I never knew she's capable of doing high-level stunts and actions. Those actions literally blew my mind. Most of all, she's the only character in the movie that has a character development. None of the essential ones have and it suck. She's this broken-hearted woman after breaking up with the Joker, living her life alone now and basically learning how to stand by herself as an independent woman now that she lost the love of her life. In the end, people hated her, betrayed her and she doesn't have anyone to call a friend. That story of her alone is only one of the things that made me invest myself in enjoying the film—I felt her pain. But nonetheless, the ending gave her what she needs, a companion which is Cassandra Cain—A filthy little thief. Well they're both great and I love how they didn't end up being the 'Birds of Prey' with all the others characters; The two of them can stand alone and do a great job.

"One of my favorite moment of her was when she haven't had breakfast yet, she ordered her favorite food, her one and only Egg Sandwich, but then, shit happened and she couldn't eat it. That scene where she's pushed then dropped the sandwich was so fuckin' hilarious that I couldn't stop laughing while feeling sorry for her."😂

I had a hard time investing myself to the other characters tho: Black Canary, Huntress, and Reene were good in the film but I don't feel anything special about them. Maybe because I just have no background about their comic story or character and the movie didn't gave them that either. Maybe except Huntress 'cause her story was told—But ugh, I was even surprised that Black Canary has super powers and that made sense—I truly don't anything about them. And the Villain himself, Black Mask, I only even saw him wearing that black mask in the film once so, what the heck? He's done a good performance but then again, I don't know him, nor his story and his real motives throughout the film. I just know he's a dick and he's done a lot of disgusting stuff in the film that made me uncomfortable. Well, he wanted that Gem so badly maybe to get more power but um, I'm still not convinced...

Oh, let's talk about the plot.

Well obviously this movie is so plot-driven than a character-driven one. It's basically a movie being told in Harley Quinn's perspective or point-of-view while introducing new characters after one flashback to another and it goes on like that 'till the climax which is kinda confusing but, in a good way to tell a story; I had difficulties in having an insight about the plot honestly because of that and of course, Harley keeps grabbing my attention. 

Oh, don't make me start talking about the action scenes in the movie—It's fuckin' bad-ass. Every action scenes are surprisingly good and well choreographed. I came across a YouTube comment that said, the action scenes in the film was choreographed by the same people who did it for the John Wick films. Oh yeah, that made sense. 

I would rate Birds of Prey an 8 / 10 👍

It bothers me how the title is like that when the movie is actually Harley Quinn-centered and not the actual 'Birds of Prey' (Canary, Huntress & Reene) and them forming that squad only happened in the ending.

One of the only things that made me rate this movie high is obviously because of Harley Quinn and the outstanding action scenes. The plot is not that special 'cause we've seen a lot of similar plots like this where a villain chases an important artifact. So yeah, that's pretty much all of my insights of the film. Thank you for reading! 😉

Movie info:

Rating: R

Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime

Directed by: Cathy Yan

Release Date: February 07, 2020

Watch the trailer here!