#whose brother has been doing fucked up ghost stuff for 10 years??

[pumpkajelly]

Oh things are heating up

[nellie-elizabeth]

Grey's Anatomy: All Tomorrow's Parties/The Center Won't Hold (17x01/02)

Scout is indeed a cute name but it was weird that they just looped around to the original name that we'd all already heard! But whatever. Adorable. As for the rest of the episode(s)? Let's take a look!

Cons:

I a not a fan of Owen, I never really have been, so I especially resent being in a position where I feel like I need to be on his side. But Teddy? God, Teddy sucks, y'all. It's such a bummer. I loved her character once upon a time, but I don't really see a way forward from this where I can ever root for her again. Not only did she cheat on Owen, often, but when Owen gave her every opportunity to open up, when he tried to salvage something of their trust by giving her chance after chance to come clean, she still maintained her silence. Like, honestly, screw her for that. She gives Jo a whole speech about how she sabotaged her happiness because it was so unfamiliar to her, but no, I'm sorry, give me a break... remember that backstory where she was having an affair with her roommate's girlfriend who then died? And then all of this with Tom? She's a serial adulterer and not a good person.

Speaking of relationship woes... I maintain that Catherine Fox sucks. Without broader context, within this episode, it seems like it's a story about two people who hurt each other but love each other deeply, and I did like that Catherine actually used her words and apologized. But with the broader context? I just honestly don't get the affection between them. I don't believe in their love for one another. Stubborn pride is one thing, but the level of malice behind Catherine's actions? Not acceptable. Also, yes, Richard was wrong to hang out with a woman who was clearly interested in him, but this was during a time when he and Catherine were hardly speaking and basically separated, and I honestly think Catherine's behavior was way worse, over all! But even setting aside my dislike for Catherine... I just don't care about their romance!

I hope Levi gets a nice boyfriend right the fuck now, I'm sick of Nico haunting him. I want real resolution here. On the other hand, I'm glad to see that Levi still gets little subplots of his own. He's become an unexpected fave for me.

Gonna throw this out there right now: I hope Jackson and Jo are just friends and they don't do anything awkward with it from here. Please. Also, I thought Jackson and his girlfriend had already broken up, but then this episode showed a flash of them re-breaking up? Did I miss something?

While I appreciated the idea of jumping around in time to pre-Covid, through to the current situation, I also found moments of it a bit confusing, so I wanted to make a note of that as well.

Pros:

Amelia and Link are super cute! Fingers crossed this is the end of relationship drama for the both of them, because Scout is the perfect name for Atticus Lincoln's son, and they are the best Auntie and Uncle to Meredith's kids, and they're just genuinely sweet and seem happy together. While Amelia bothered me with a lot of her drama stuff with Owen, I think what we're seeing here is that her drama was feeding off of Owen's, and with a different partner the stress and pain and angst all just flow away! I'm on board the Amelia fan train at the moment! I loved how she did what she could to make up for missing Link's birthday.

Another formerly annoying character who becomes completely tolerable when in a happy relationship? Maggie! So cute! I love the long-distance thing, and I'm sure that'll cause problems, but for the moment it's absolutely adorable and I am all about it. Maggie deserves happiness. I even liked the scene with her and Catherine screaming out their frustrations, even though, as stated above, Catherine can fuck off.

I love the journey we're seeing with DeLuca. The intervention scene, with Carina so devastated and wanting to be there for her brother, and Meredith's words, asking him to fight for himself as hard as he fights for everyone else... that was all seriously so freakin' beautiful. And the girl that was being trafficked managed to get away, and was reunited with her family! Talk about a heartwarming development! Where we see Andrew now, he's doing better, he and Meredith are friendly if nothing else, and it's looking like he might be able to move past what happened and continue his successful career and a potential happy life.

While I don't want Jackson/Jo to be an actual thing, I loved the awkwardness of their little subplot here, it honestly made me so happy. Hilarious, truly. Jo is the funniest character on the show sometimes, so her crying into Jackson's mouth was honestly the most laugh-out-loud moment for me!

And the tear-jerker moment? Well, obviously when the two dads hugged in the hospital after one of them lost their son. They'd gotten into a knock-down-drag-out fight, but in that moment they were just two men in total solidarity. The fact that the kid died was so tragic, and I also thought it was a good moment of humanizing the Covid situation beyond just the basics of "wear a mask or else you're a dick." Those kids were STUPID to go to a party given the situation, but Covid didn't kill anyone, it was a fire that did that. And they were kids. At the end of the day, they should have been given the opportunity to grow up and do better. When the one dad was talking about how furious he was at his son for wasting his new kidney by going to a party, I really felt that. I have family members who are behaving irresponsibly during all of this, but that doesn't mean I think they deserve to die.

I liked Richard's plot, separate from the romance thing with Catherine, where he makes improvements at the hospital, comes into his own and regains authority after his medical issues from last year, and in the end gets to have Tom Koracick's job of Chief of Chiefs while Tom is demoted to just head of cardio!

I'm sure I'm missing someone, but I'm going to go ahead and turn to Meredith, now. Because wow! I really liked how Ellen Pompeo played this, the way she was cold and collected as she lost patient after patient to Covid, and had to tell family member after family member to come say goodbye. She has a breakdown in a supply closet (a Grey's Anatomy staple), and DeLuca helps her out. Throughout the episode, we see her really frazzled and rundown, but still trucking on, the way Meredith Grey does. And then... at the end of the episode, Dr. Hayes (dreamboat Irish doctor whose name I still had to look up), finds Meredith unconscious in the parking lot.

And Mer's on a beach. There's a figure in the distance, calling her name. It's... DEREK SHEPHERD! I don't care if this makes no sense and is ridiculous. If Izzy could have dream-sex with Ghost!Denny, let Meredith talk to her dead husband. Bring it on, I'm really excited to see what's next!

8/10

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Dad Fluff: Bad Day

CW: Chronic pain, referenced past torture, Mina is sickeningly cute, and all of the things she does in here are things I have personally witnessed a four year old doing. (I was actually the four year old who did one of the things in this piece - guess which one!)

Danny is busy pitying himself when he hears Mina wake up down the hall. He’d had this idea of what parenting would be like, and lying in bed with agonizing pain ripping up and down his back isn’t it.

Instead, as he’d waited and waited for them to be matched with a birthmom, Danny had pictured waking his daughter (or son - they hadn’t known which the baby would be, yet) with homemade breakfast.

He’d seen himself as being already on his second cup of coffee, settling down at the kitchen table to watch tiny legs swing on chairs too tall. 

Danny had pictured asking his child what they had dreamed about the night before, and lying about his own nightmares with ease by then. Never letting on that when his baby needed a nightlight, he still did, too.

Some days - most days, even, he tries to be honest with at least himself - he is exactly the father he wanted to be. But then there are days like today, where his four year old daughter starts singing to herself in her room down the hall and Danny can’t get up to greet her.

“Hosanna, hey-sanna, sanna superstar,” Mina sings brightly in the joyful off-key caterwauling of very young children, and Danny finds a smile. It’s faint and faded and it doesn’t last, as a new spike of pain rips up the right side of his back where a knife once broke off inside him, but he decides to count that one single smile as his first victory for the day.

He should have told Nate to call off class, he really should have, but… the thing was, Nate’s been working on this lecture he’s really excited about - something something World War I and horror in popular culture, there’s a book, something something there’s always a book - forever and his students are all hyped up for it and Danny having a bad back doesn’t seem like a reason to ruin everyone else’s day, too.

It felt like doing the right thing then - pretending to be peacefully asleep while Nate quietly got ready and let himself out the front door after putting Toto out in the fenced-in yard - but in the moment it means Danny lying in bed, in the dark he tells himself he no longer fears because he’s in too much pain to turn on the light, waiting for his daughter to give up waiting on him to come to her room and come looking for him herself.

“Hey-sanna, hosanna, sanna superstar,” Mina sings, and then there’s a pause. Danny closes his eyes against the angry tears, tries to tell himself to stand, but when he moves his legs his back screams at him to stay still and he gives up, letting out a soft, half-broken sob.

“Daddy?” Mina calls. He can hear the sound of her turning the doorknob, the soft sound of the door opening up. “Daddy? Do you hear me singing?”

“Yes, baby,” He manages, his deep voice hoarse and a little cracked. “I’m… I’m in my room, Mina, honey. Can… can you, um, come here?”

Silence, and then the padding of tiny footsteps down the hall, until his own bedroom door slowly opens. He can close his eyes and picture her going up on her toes to turn on the light, and the sudden brightness soothes something that is always jagged in Danny in the dark.

Grown man, afraid of the dark, Abraham whispers in the back of his mind, never quite gone, the ghost that left a parting gift of pain. My fingers never leave your mind.

Around the side of the little dresser his daughter peeps at him and Abraham’s voice is gone as quickly as it came. Mina chases all his ghosts away. 

She’s wearing her matching unicorn pajamas that are probably too small by now, but he can’t bear to make her give them up. Her hair is a halo of textured black curls around her head - Danny is supposed to give her back her braids, today, the ladies down at the salon they go to showed Danny and Nate how to take care of hair so very different than their own

He can’t braid her hair if he can’t fucking sit up.

Mina takes him in with wide brown eyes, the largest feature in her tiny round face. She’s starting to lose the toddler babyfat but only just, and the resemblance to his own younger brother in the first days Danny was adopted is… uncanny, sometimes.

Like now, when Mina looks at him and knows what she is looking at.

“You didn’t turn on the light,” She says, softly. “You don’t have your light on the wall. Are you sick?”

“I’m… I’ll be okay, honey. I just have, um, my back hurts… pretty bad today. I thought I’d handle it, but…” He groans without meaning to, it feels like so much energy just to talk. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m not… not gonna be much of a daddy today.”

Mina frowns at him, her big brown eyes locked on his.

It isn’t supposed to be like this.

Abraham found a way to leave him one last goddamn gift, a present he never unwrapped or asked for and would do anything to give back. 

“I’ll get your phone,” Mina says seriously, and comes further in, dragging RiffRaff behind her, the stuffed giraffe with a neck long enough to approach pure absurdity. A gift from Ryan, one among many. 

She moves quickly across the floor with her little bare feet padding, a flash of brown stomach showing as her too-small shirt rides up. She has to stretch up again to pull Danny’s cell phone down from the bookshelf, and he watches her, thinking, by next year you won’t have to go on your toes, by two years you won’t want me to be the first thing you see any longer, by thirteen you’ll be slamming doors in my face, will I still be lying here with my back refusing to let me be the parent I wanted to be for you?

“Sad Daddy face,” Mina says, slapping the cell phone down next to him. “Dad would poke your nose.”

“He would,” Danny says, and manages a small smile. “Honey, I’m trying, but I think we have to call Dad back home from work. I can’t… I can’t get out of the bed. I’m sorry, Mina, but it’s not… it’s not gonna work today.”

“Yes it can,” Mina says, with a stubborn set to her jaw she gets from Nate, not that Nate has ever noticed he does it. Danny finds a small smile, at the sight. Adopted or not, Mina is Nate Vandrum’s daughter through and through - already reading some words, already curling up with a book to turn the pages and make up stories about the pictures she sees on the page. Already a serious little girl, a tiny adult.

“I don’t see how,” Danny replies, shifting minutely in the bed, just trying to move onto his side, hissing when his back protests once again.

“We do like when I get sick,” Mina says, softly. “I can open the fridge all by myself and my stuffies and my loveys can sit with us and we can do like when I’m sick.” She considers, and he sees a sudden gleam of mischief in her. “I can have my screen?” She asks, sidling a little closer to the bed.

Danny swallows, and looks down at his cell phone. It’s 7:30 in the morning. The lecture Nate has been planning for happens for his 10 AM class, and he can move his office hours maybe if Danny gives him enough notice to put up a sign…

Hey Nate, he texts, keeping his eyes on Mina, who watches his texting with interest and a clearly increasing certainty that she is going to get exactly what she wants out of this. Bad back day. Fine rn but cn you come home after lecture plz?

“Gonna get to watch princesses,” Mina says, with evident delight. “And eat Lunchables.”

“Sssshhhh,” Danny says, but he can’t quite hold back his own smile in response to his daughter’s. “Daddy being sick isn’t supposed to be something you look forward to, baby.”

His phone vibrates in his hand and he glances down.

Danny, please use full words, that drives me up the wall when you type like that.

“I can’t believe you took the time to write that out,” Danny mutters to himself, but his smile widens even more. He can feel the stretch of scar tissue along his nose and jaw, even this long after Abraham’s death the marks are there, fading but never gone. “Mina, only your Dad uses correct punctuation in his f-... his text messages.”

“Writing is important,” Mina recites in her best impersonation of Nate, pitching her voice hilariously low. Danny laughs out loud despite the way the motion seems to stab whole new little daggers up and down his spine. He’ll be damned if he’ll let a little agony stop him from appreciating his daughter.

Another message comes in and he glances down.

I’ll be home by 12:30. Bringing ramen from the place you like and gyoza for Mina. Do you want me to just cancel and come home now?

No, fine. Just after lunch is good.

Whether Nate believes him or not, he doesn’t know, but he drops back to lay his head down on the pillow, watching Mina watch him right back. “Okay, honey. Dad will be home after lunch. So we just have to… to make this work for a few hours, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll be right back.” With that, Mina throws RiffRaff onto the bed next to Danny and goes running back out. All he can do is lay there, feeling spectacularly useless, while he listens and hopes that she isn’t taking this moment to color on all the walls or break a bunch of things or learn how to set the house on fire.

When she finally returns, she is dragging her small travel suitcase - the one with some kind of cartoon character whose name he can’t remember - behind her like an overworked flight attendant at the end of a long day. “Okay… Daddy…” Mina says, comically out of breath. “I brought… everything.”

He realizes she never actually zipped the suitcase when she simply overturns the whole thing and Danny stares, trapped on the bed, as it opens up and dumps a chaotic mixture of toys and food and her favorite blankets onto his bedroom floor.

“Jesus Christ, Mina,” Danny whispers, eyes wide.

“Jesus Christ, Superstar,” Mina sings happily in response. Not a single note is on key, and Danny thinks maybe adoption doesn’t matter and Mina is his child too. “Do you think you’re what they say you are? Okay, Daddy, I got… I got us stuff for sick. Can I get up on the bed with you?”

Danny looks at the roughly mound-shaped pile of things on the floor, then slowly up at his daughter. “Can we… can we do something about all your stuff first?”

“It’s your stuff, too. Look!” Mina digs into the pile with enthusiasm, and the first thing she pulls out is Danny’s bottle of pain medication.

Hi, I’m Daniel Michaelson, and my baby brings me my fucking pain meds. Pin the medal on the father of the fucking year.

“Oh my God,” Danny whispers. Someone is going to psychically know this happened and he’ll lose her, and he can’t lose her, not because of his stupid back, not because of goddamn Abraham fucking Denner-

“I pushed a chair up to the counter and climbed up and got in the special cupboard,” Mina says seriously, giving him the bottle. He takes it with shaking fingers, his heart so gripped with guilt it’s like it has to work harder to beat. “Where you keep medicine. I can open the lock now and I put my feet in the sink!”

Danny is going to hell for being a bad father, he knows it. He knows it, and he knows your four-year-old stood in your sink to dig out your fucking pills, you fucking whiner is going to be the first thing the Devil says to him.

Maybe he’ll get to suffer right next to Abraham.

Maybe Abraham’s the demon set to make him sorry for everything all over again.

“Daddy, stop,” Mina says, looking a little nervous at the look on Danny’s face. “Dad always gets you medicine when your back is bad. Am I in time-out?”

“Um. Uh… no, honey. Just… just don’t do that, um, again. And don’t ever, ever tell Dad you know how to get into the medicine cabinet. Okay?”

“Okay.” Mina drops back down to the pile, and brings up a small bottle of the cold brew they buy in a pack of six at the store. She hands that to Danny, too, taking to her work with perfect seriousness. All he can do is watch her as he swallows two pills dry and then washes them down with the coffee.

There. 

An hour, and he’ll be able to move around in the bed, at least, even if he’ll still hurt too badly to get all the way up. His back is like that - on bad days you can’t get rid of the pain, only make it a little less debilitating. Most bad days he can keep himself moving through sheer momentum, and everyone tells him he must be feeling better and he doesn’t know how to tell them that his baseline changed, back when Abraham first held him captive - he and Nate in the woods in Canada.

Long before the blade broke off in his back, there were days of bruises, battering, and beating. He starved and never slept and hurt like hell.

People think pain ebbs and flows, but the tide is never fully out for Danny. There is always a whisper of oceanwater promising a later tsunami.

While he lays there watching her, Mina picks out her stuffies and loveys, one by one, and begins to lay them throughout the bed. In the backyard, distantly, Danny hears Toto barking - the high-pitched bark that means he’s treed something again. At least somebody is having fun, Danny thinks.

“Okay, Daddy,” Mina says, laying a series of stuffed animals carefully around his head and lightly against his shoulders as he forces himself to shift onto his back on the bed, closing his eyes against the way the pain drains all the blood from his face and his fingers, leaving everything cold and numb as it’s his spine where the nerves light up in fire. “You can have RiffRaff today, and Mister Bones, and Zombie Monkey, and She-Ra, and Ugly, and Bo. I’m going to keep the rest.”

Danny takes a deep breath. “Honey, did you leave any of your animals in your room?”

“No,” Mina answers with a shrug. She clambers back down and comes back with her tablet, which she smacks down a little too hard on Danny’s stomach. He winces and hisses, and her eyes go wide. “Oh, your tummy is sick? I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“N-No, baby, it’s okay. It’s… yikes. I’ll pull a, um, a movie up for you, okay?”

“Princess movie!”

“Can we… watch literally anything else, baby?”

Mina juts her lower lip out and sets her jaw. “Princess movie, Daddy.” She says, stubbornly. When Danny responds with silence and a raised eyebrow, she lets the pout go and gives him a disarming, charming smile instead. “I mean, Daddy-can-I-please-watch-princesses?” She asks, batting her eyelashes and everything, the words all run together the way she always does when she has to ask nicely.

Danny sighs, but it’s with a smile on his face. “Yeah, okay, honey. What else do you have on the floor?”

“Um, some toys, and… this!” Mina holds up two matching Lunchables in the air like she’s declaring victory.

Honestly, she probably is.

“Lunchables for breakfast, huh?” Well, there are worse things in the world, Danny thinks to himself. At least it’s not drugs, right? Yeah, there’s a good bar for good parenting, whether or not your four year old prefers Lunchables or… cocaine or something.

“I need these fucking pills to kick in,” Danny mutters, not realizing he’s speaking out loud until Mina turns to look at him, wide-eyed.

“Daddy,” She says, sounding absolutely scandalized. “You’re not supposed to say that word anymore, Dad said-”

“I know what Dad said,” Danny says, gesturing carefully with one arm, moving as few of his back muscles as possible to do it. “Climb on up here, honey. Let’s do Lunchables. I’ll put a dollar in the jar when I can stand up, okay?”

She nods and climbs up with him. Danny carefully opens the Lunchables for her with his teeth gritted. There’s another thing they didn’t tell him, before it was his life - that sometimes even doing tiny things like tearing the perforated opening off the side of a cardboard Lunchables box could hurt so badly. People think they know what a backache is.

They don’t know.

But then Mina takes the Capri Sun and puts it aside and makes herself a tiny ham-and-cheese sandwich using the little cracker in the box, and some of Danny’s stubborn self-pity starts to slide away, eroded by her cheerful smile. “Elsa with the water horse?” She asks. “Can we do that princess movie?”

“Frozen 2,” Danny corrects absently, scanning through the Disney movies on the tablet with casual swipes of his finger. She never asks for the new princess movies, only the ones from before she was born. Once the movie starts, the sound small and tinny coming from the tablet, Danny settles himself back against the pillows and hands her the screen. She pulls out his arm - he holds back the sounds of pain at the stretch of muscle - and then snuggles in against his side, pulling RiffRaff back into her own lap, her fuzzy black hair brushing softly against the roughened scar tissue on Danny’s neck.

He manages to turn his head and kiss her, on the top of her head. “Just a few hours until Dad gets home,” Danny whispers. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’ll be a better Daddy tomorrow.”

He hopes.

Mina is watching the opening previews and doesn’t look at him or even seem to hear what he said.

By ten, Danny’s been able to get up and use the bathroom, at least, and brush his teeth. That’s his second victory, he decides, in a day where they don’t come easy. 

Around eleven, right in the middle of Nate giving the lecture he’s been working so hard on, Danny and Mina fall asleep listening to The Princess and the Frog, a firefly singing to the evening star.

Nate comes home at half past noon with the ramen in hand. He sets it down on the kitchen table and lets Toto back in, the scruffy shelter dog all wagging tails and half-wild jumps. Nate gets him slowly calmed down, and listens. “D-Danny? You around?”

Nothing.

“Mina? Baby? Where are you and D-Daddy?”

Still nothing. Nate frowns - Danny hadn’t answered his text asking what kind of ramen he wanted, and he’d thought maybe Danny was playing with Mina in the toyroom and hadn’t heard - but when he checks, they aren’t in there either.

Finally, he heads upstairs, and halfway up he realizes he can hear the tinny sounds of music coming from their bedroom. He stops in the doorway to stare down at a small, scattered pile of plastic horses, a tiny baby doll, dollhouse furniture, and at least one Pegasus next to his daughter’s suitcase for when they travel to see Danny’s parents.

There’s a soft exhalation, and he turns to look at his husband and daughter asleep on the bed.

The tablet has been discarded, off to the empty side of the king-sized bed. It’s still playing the menu for one of the Disney movies, although Nate can’t remember which one this menu screen is for.

Danny is on his side, with his knees curled, some of the age fallen off of his face His hair is a mess of bright red with hints of silver over his eyes - he’s had silvery strands in his hair since Alberta, the first time Abraham held him - and spread out across the pillows. His hands aren’t up to cover his head - he hasn’t done that in a few years now. 

Instead, he has one hand curled up against himself, and the other arm flung over his sleeping daughter. Mina has her head under his chin, on her side as well, and her face is buried against his neck and his collarbone. The two of them breathe nearly in unison, and they are absolutely suffocating in Mina’s favorite stuffed animals and the remains of empty Lunchables packages.

Next to the bed, on the side table, is a half-drunk bottle of iced coffee and Danny’s pain medication. Nate swallows - Danny never takes pills until it’s so bad he can’t move or Nate forces him to. Too afraid, even now, that taking a few pills would lead him right back to relying on fuzzying up his mind to shake away the memories that still threaten when the room is dark.

Nate considers just closing the door and heading back downstairs to eat alone, but Toto comes barreling past his legs and runs into the room, taking a bodily leap onto the bed, all forty pounds of him trying to wriggle between Danny and Mina to try and lick both their faces at once.

Danny jerks awake, eyes fluttering and blinking rapidly, pushing instinctively back Mina groans and rolls over, scooting away, trying to slip right back to sleep the way kids sometimes do.

“H-Hey, Toto,” Danny slurs, getting his hands on the excited dog and gently moving him back. “Hey, bud, how did you get inside…”

“I let him in,” Nate says softly, and Danny turns to look at him. His face is pale and drawn, but the smile when he greets Nate is real.

“Oh, hey,” Danny says, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Sorry to call you home early, I just-... it’s just not a good day for my back. Mina and I decided to… to just take a break in here-”

“Danny, you’ve been in here all day, haven’t you?” Nate sighs. “Don’t l-lie to me.”

“It’s fine,” Danny says, shaking his head. Mina groans again, but her eyes are open now, and she rolls back over. “It’s fine, I’ll do better tomorrow, I’ll… I’ll try harder-”

“Danny,” Nate says, firmly, and it’s only then that Danny seems to realize what he just said. His face pales a little more, making the healing muzzle scars stand out in a ring around his face. “You don’t h-have to. I don’t m-m-mind coming home.”

“Hello, Dad,” Mina says blearily, scooting back to Danny now that Toto is safely sitting far enough back to give her spot back to her, snuggling right back into him. “Did you bring food?”

“I d-did, honey. Have you and Daddy had fun this morning?”

Danny winces, guilt written clearly across his face. “I’ll be better tomorrow, I’ll do better, I can... can try harder-”

“Danny, stop it,” Nate says, a little more edged this time. 

“We had so much fun, Dad,” Mina says cheerfully, and Danny turns to look at her, surprised. “We ate Lunchables for breakfast. I always want to and you never let me! And Daddy said a bad word so he has to put money in the jar again-”

“Hey, you said you wouldn’t tell,” Danny says with fake anger, and Mina makes a face at him until he smiles.

“And I got to have all my friends in your bed even though I’m not supposed to and we watched princess movies and I got to pick the movies and Daddy played Stuffy Fight with me!”

“So you d-did have fun,” Nate says gently, and Mina nods.

Danny sits back, closing his eyes briefly, and Nate watches the way his face stills, and knows he’s holding back emotion that wants to write itself there that he doesn’t want to show. Nate sits down, lightly resting on the side of the bed, and slides a hand behind Danny’s head, leaning in to give him a kiss.

“Don’t s-sell yourself short,” Nate says gently. “You’re a g-g-good dad, Daniel Michaelson. Even on b-bad days. But… call me n-next time. Listen to me. You’re a good dad.”

There’s a pause.

Then Mina leans slowly over and says, “I got Daddy’s pills down from the cabinet for him.”

Nate turns to look at her, blinking, as Danny groans and puts his hands up over his eyes. “Oh my God, Mina, I did not ask you and you promised not to tell-”

“Okay,” Nate says, with exaggerated patience. “I am going to pr-pretend I did not h-h-hear either of the things either of y-you just said, and go g-g-get the trays and our r-r-ramen and gyoza. Please n-n-never explain it to me. Ever.”

Danny nods without taking his hands down.

Nate gets all the way downstairs, gets the food settled on the TV trays, and Danny has slurped up his first bite of noodles when Nate finally sighs and says, “You know wh-what, I lied - I need to know exactly how you explain-”

“I didn’t tell Daddy until after I did it,” Mina says brightly, picking up the little fried dumpling with her fingers.

“... and there it is. Let’s eat b-b-before I panic, at l-least.”

“I know how to open the special lock! I can open under the sink now, too!”

“... okay, too l-late, I’m panicking now.”

[popculturebuffet]

Scooby Doo (2002) Review: The Most Punchable Fred Jones of All Time

It’s one last hurrah for Halloween as I take a look at the often derided 2002 Scooby Doo Movie! See what happens when you combine future superstar director James Gunn with .. the guy who thought directing the Smurf’s movie and Big’s Mama’s House were good ideas. Oh and with a splash of the guy who wrote the loveable family film Cheaper by the Dozen and the utterly loathed Percy Jackson film. It’s as messy as you’d expect with that.. but is it BAD? good, so bad it’s good, just sorta okay? Come with me as I try to find out under the cut with a full review. 

I’ve always loved Scooby Doo. I grew up with the guy, watching reruns of the non-scrappy classic series from Where Are You to the Scooby Doo Movies, the three Superstar 10 movies (Boo Brothers, Ghoul School and Reluctant Werewolf), or the at the time brand new What’s New Scooby Doo. And later in life i’d absolutely adore Mystery Incorporated.. minus the whole Shaggy, Scooby Velma love triangle, but i’ll likely cover that at some point or sooner, you can comission reviews from me for 5 bucks each, 5 dollars off group orders if you really want to make me suffer through that that bad. But getting off self promotion point is I loved and still love the franchise. While I”ve yet to see “Scooby Doo and Guess Who”, though given there’s Weird Al, Kristan Schaal and Urkel episodes you can be sure i’m going to eventually, and Scoob was VERY ehhh even if Dick Dastardly was awesome. But despite my history with the great dane much like with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, despite my rich history with the franchise I haven’t dove in yet and with a friend who could use a nice halloween suprise and loves scooby doo, I figured now was the time to take a look at it.  And since i’d been wanting to take a look at it again anyway, and decided going big wasn’t a bad way to start, i’m taking a look at the 2002 Scooby Doo movie. I saw this flim first run in a drive in, and saw the sequel the same way and loved it as a kid, and fondly remember checking out the Sountrack Preview page back before youtube existed to make checking out soundtracks easier. It was a simplier time. And even rewatching it later with my nieces, I found myself liking it.  And the thing was almost every time this film comes up it’s with a turned up nose. The CGI, the confused audience, the deciding to cast Freddy Prinze Junior.. all terrible decisions that overshadow the film, when it’s not that bad. It’s not GREAT, but it’s not TERRIBLE either. So what is it then? Well i’ll tells ya. Let’s start with

PRODUCTION: Wait James Gunn Wrote This?

At the turn of the millneium Scooby Doo was back on top. After waning popularity during the Scrappy era, the advent of the warner affilated Cartoon Network meant a whole new generation of kids (raises hand) got to experince Scooby Doo for the first time. This new audeince lead to Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, the first of the franchises 80 or so DTV movies that will continue on long after the earth dies, and brought back the franchise after it’s long slumber. Scooby Doo went from dead to as popular as he was in his hey day again. Naturally Warner wanted to cash in and thus this movie was born.  Originally the film was supposed to be a more adult project, a send up of the franchise with more sex jokes and what not than made the final cut according to writer James Gunn. Yes, the same James Gunn who wrote and directed the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and whose currently saving the suicide squad. It was one of Gunn’s earlier films but just from when he’s talked about it, you can tell he genuinely cared about the project.  Along for the ride with our future Guardian was his co-writer, Craig Titely,  who i’m convinced only came in to do punch ups as the guy has only written three other movies. One of them was being one of MANY writers on Cheaper by the Dozen and thus likely not doing much of note with that, and the other.. is being the only writer on Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief’s movie adaptation.. aka the movie the fanbase and general audiences rejected in droves yet SOMEHOW got a sequel. Which is somehow still worse than his other film, one that asks “was the moon landing a hoax?” Spoilers, it wasn’t. Point is this isn’t a resume that screams co creator and more screams “Guy brought in to kid freindly this up”. More on that in a minute.  The director is another less than reassuring face: Raja Gosnell, whose credits BEFORE this film were Home Alone 3, Never Been Kissed and Big Momma’s house.. so already he dosen’t have the best track record but somehow got worse because AFTER this film and it’s sequel he directed both live action Smurfs Movies and the universally hated Show Dogs, aka the film  that thought dog rape was funny. The fact this film isn’t out and out terrible is a miracle. 

Even more so because naturally, as Studios tend to do they interfered: The film was supposed to be more adult, cracking jokes about common things fans of the series growing up thought like Velma is Gay or Shaggy’s a stoner, and having both be fully true. But wanting to appeal to kids, Warner gradually lightned it, hence Craig, and Raja clearly having no shame gladly took it instead of you know.. standing his ground.  So Velma has a love intrest thrown in and her kiss with Daphne is gone, while Shaggy’s toke smoking was lowered to subtext.. because either of those things is bad apparently? I dunno the 2000′s were fucked. 

Point is THAT’S why these films are so tonally confused and why I don’t hold it agains the film now I know: It wasn’t James Gunn or even, as dumb as he is, Raja Gosnell’s fault that the film had some tones clashing when the studio was demanding it, instead of you know, thinking this through at all and realizing more kids cared about Scooby Doo than they would’ve josie and the pussy cats instead of bringing it up DURING production, when most of the adult stuff was in there. It’s also why the sequel has no real adult stuff, though it’s STILL damn good, but i’ll get to that some other day. 

The film was also shot at an actual theme park in australia. Neat. 

So yeah the film’s humor kind of ping pongs between knowing adult winks and kids stuff. We get Scooby dressing like a grandma in the same film shaggy enhales his demon possed love intrests breath like weed. The jokes themselves on average are pretty good: Some of my faviorites include the grandma scene, everything rowan atkinson does, Velma getting drunk off her ass, and the instructional video bit which is easily my favorite bit of the episode and one of my faviorite scooby doo jokes period:

This is even FUNNIER to me on rewatch, as we now know this is an instructional video for demons.. and that Scrappy clearly had enough problems with his demon horde to have to pay for this thing. It tis glorious.  However there also are also a few that HAVE NOT aged well, are very creepy at best and disgusting sexual assault at worst with Daphne getting her ass grabbed by the Luna Ghost at the start being treated as a joke and Fred oggling Daphne’s body when he’s in it being treated as a ha ha and not...

So yeah the humor’s USUALLY good, but the slipups are noticable and do bring things down a bit when they come by. So the humor is decent if mixed and the production’s a nightmare, how’s the plot? The Plot: Scoob, We’re Getting the Band Back Together!

I won’t be as through as usual because this is a 90 minute movie, I’m running behind as is and it’s 20 years old, 

We start with your standard mystery inc case with the Luna Goose, aka Old Man Incel who resented Pamela Anderson for not boning him. But Fred hogging the glory during the resulting News Cast leads the gang to start fighting over lingering tensions: Velma is tired of Fred hogging all the credit when she does most of the legwork solving things, Daphne is tired of being kidnapped and being mistreated by Velma and Freddy who laugh at the idea of her doing more, and Fred..

We’ll get to him later. Shaggy is the only one wanting to stick together, but no one’s having it and the group breaks apart and Matthew LIllard REALLY sells Shaggy’s heartbreak over his friends all abandoning him well. 

Two years later though, with Shaggy and Scooby naturally getting stoned and eating large quantities of food on the beach, have made peace with retirement, and have apparently had to duck tons of people coming to them to solve mysteries since they aren’t about that. The latest in that line is a man representing Emile Mondovarius, the owner of Spooky Island, a vast island resort and theme park. Naturally since it has spooky in the name the boys want nothing but Mondovarius does what honestly every previous guy coming to them should’ve done: offers them an all you can eat buffet.  Since they’ve done more traumatizing for Dog Treats, they agree and it soon turns out the entire gang was invited, though none of them but Shaggy and Scooby are happy to see each other. I will say one of my complaints about the film is it never tackles the emotions behind the breakup: while the teams slowly repairs there are never any outright apologizes or scenes of them recociling or scenes of Shaggy chewing them out for abandoning him due to their spat. It just skips over the emotional bits to either wave a joke for the kiddies around or scream 

Really the jokes aren’t bad, the film just has trouble with actual emotion or depth that could’ve been there and tries for it once in a while, but dosen’t really do anything with it. The gang splitting up’s a good concept, and at this point on Scooby Doo on Zombie Island had really used it, and that was one where they were clearly still close friends and were still in touch they just quit mystery solving for a while till Zombie Island happened. Mystery Incorpreated would finally give this story justice later: Instead of over a petty ego squabble, the gang broke up over underlying tensions: The revelations about Fred’s dad caused him to go try and find himself, Velma alienated herself by hiding things from them, and Shaggy was shipped off to Military School and Scooby doggy prison camp... thankfully the last two didn’t last and Scooby rescued Shaggy with a tank but the tension DIDN’T go away: While the gang mostly reunited, Velma took time to forgive them and also tried bringing in the friend/girlfriend she’d made in the meantime only for her friends to isolate her and throw her out while Daphne took her time to return due to being hurt by fred. It’s complex and good stuff versus here where it’s just “WE’RE APART BECAUSE WE HATES EACH OTHER. And now we’re NOT”. It’s just a waste of a good concept and i’ m glad the franchise got around to doing it right. 

But my gripes aside our heroes head to the resort and meet Mondevarious, who admits outright to having tricked then and with confronted with the gang being broken up, makes it clear he knews.  “That’s the thing about broken things.. you can put them back together.”

And so he did. He needs the Gang’s help as he’s worried about the island and something going wrong there: The teens are leaving polite, well behaved. and clearly not themselves as one reacts to an old friend by neck lifting him and tossing him aside. Something’s deeply wrong here and the gang’s intrest is piqued enough to stay though everyone but Shaggy is determined to solve it themselves out of ego. Mondvarius is played by Rowan Atkinson and while I watched the bean movie as a kid this is where I fell in love with the guy, with later watches of Blackadder confirming that in my college years. Rowan just brings a fun dorky energy to the character and a nice earnestness too but when he later takes a turn for the bad, he does that well too. Atkinson is HIGHLY underated in my opinon and easily the MVP of this film’s supporting cast.   So the investigation begins, and we get our supsects: The first we met on the plane, Mary Jane, a kind blonde played by Isla Fisher who got the job becasue Gosnel, in a rare good decision, saw how talented she was and while still picking Sara Michele Gellar for Daphne, made sure she had  a part. She’s a nice sweet girl who Shaggy falls for and Scooby’s annoyed by it.. though unlike earlier the film beats mystery inc easily here as it’s a more understandable conflict and dosen’t act like Dog Issues is a thing people says. Again i’ll get to that clusterfuck of an arc some day. The other two are N’Goo Tuna, a shady worker at the park who spouts off the legends of the island. In a nice twist, he’s NOT the vilian, as is obvious but is his right hand man. He also has his own right hand and muscle in Zarkos a cool looking Luchador and N’Goo’s muscle. Also N’Goo may be one of the worst names in Scooby Doo History, and that includes Dabba Doo. But the legend claims the island was once owned by demons who want revenge since the resort took the island from him. 

The other is probably my faviorite non Rowan Atkinson character, Voodoo Maestro, played by Miguel Nunez. He’s basically just a guy who lives on the fringes of the island and also hates the resort and tries using voodoo curses. He’s honestly a delight from his attempt to sacrifice a chicken (An already dead one at that), to his general hammy and annoyed at dealing with these teenagers demeanor. NAturally he has nothing to do with this but he’s still a fun addition and I wish he was in more scnenes than the two he gets.  But with what they’ve gathered the gang all end up at a spooky castle attraction, with Scooby and Shaggy of course being bribed by daphne while Velma and Fred show up indpeendntly and end  up finding the weird training video from earlier but all get caught when the traps are activiated> There’s also a farting contest which.. eh not funny to me but i’ve seen so much worse i’m not even remotely upset. But then the traps trigger though during the chaos Fred and Velma are forced to work together and finally start doing so, and Daphne finds a clue: A mysterious pyramid known as the damon righus and finally gets some, if not nearly enough, credit.  So the gang is back together.. even if it’s a tenative peace, the high from solving this and relay to their boss the suspects, including him, though Fred assures Mondovarius it’s just because he’s spooky and rowan’s character’s delight over that is fucking glorious.  So the gang enjoys some down time at the local bar, with Fred and Daphne doing their own look ins, Scooby and Shaggy eating and encountring mary again and Velma getting hit on by a dude while looking over the ritus, revealing it’s some sort of soul sucking aparatus, and going into their history... which is really just an excuse to bring Scrappy in who in this universe, is a horny egotistical little shit whose abandoned as a result. ANd before anyone boos he’s not a puppy here, he’s got.. dog dwarfisim.. which while .. how does that even work... means he’s a grown ass man and deserved this. We also get drunk velma and Linda Caredenlli is a delight

The night gets interupted by terrible cgi monsters, the aformentioned emon who soul suck most of the college kids present and also get fred and velma who both find out these are very much real. We also get the best song on the soundtrack, man with a hex. It slaps. But it makes good chase music as with Mondvarious, Fred and Velma captured, the rest of the gang and mary escape.  The next morning we get a surreal as hell scene as everyone’s partying, Fred’s talking in slang and Velma with clevage, thank you, is chatting up.. Sugar Ray? For those younger of you they were a band at the time. They were a big thing. Not half bad but faded away. They looked as 2000′s as hell though. WHy Smash Mouth gets all the memes and not them is beyond me. Look at lead singer Mark McGrath!It’s like the early 2000′s gained sentience and took a human form. But the gang is quickly forced to run from sugar ray, though they get Daphne in a deleted scene. Why it was deleted I dunno. Point is Shaggy, Scooby and Mary are all alone.. oh and Mary’s possessed. Shaggy and Scooby argue over it because Shaggy just thinks Scooby is jealous and while he is .. why would he lie about this? He’s as cowardly as you are. But Scooby falls through the floor, and Shaggy is now going solo but luckily finds his friends souls, and eveyrone elses in a massive cool looking vat and frees them all.  Velma, when the demon leaves her and confronts her, finds out sunlight kills the demons and saves Daphne from hers... only to find Fred in her body. Daphne is naturally horrified and we do get a great bodyswapping scene.

Our heroes reconvince on the beach where htey find the Maestro who explains what’s going on to a point, with the gang’s clues filling in the blanks: The ritus, which they stole back earlier, is used for a ritual that will allow the Demons to rule over the earth for “a thousand years of darkness” but it requires a pure soul to work. Cue our big bad talking Scooby into being their willing sacrifice since Scooby dooes not understand what a sacrifice is.  Shaggy naturally rallies the group to go save him after their understandably worried since they usually dealt with weirdos in costumes and not the apocalypse.. well okay Velma and Fred aren’t, Daphne dealt with this kind of thing once a week back in Sunnydale. So they set up a plan to destroy all the demons at once by unleashing the soul bath, setting them all loose and then using a spooky disco ball from one of the attractions rigged up over the ritual area to shine the light in. It’s classic scooby doo. 

Things naturally go wrong as while Shaggy goes to rescue scooby and makes up with him, he’s caught, so are fred and velma and they have to scramble, while Daphne looses a fight with the luchador up top while trying to let the light in to finish the trap. Meanwhile Shaggy saves Scooby’s soul just as Mondovarious sucks it out by shoving the guy.. revealing him to be a robot! DUN DUN DUN. And inside is Scrappy.. which you all probably knew already but try to act suprise who wanted to conquer the world as revenge for the gang abandoning him and because again, in this universe he’s kind of an asshole. He absorbs the souls gathered so far and merges with the damon ritus, because we’re operating on video game rules now apparently, so final boss time.  But we get a great climax as Scrappy chases scooby, Daphne goes buffy on Zarkos ass , and as a result he shatters the glass and lets the light in releasing the disco ball the kill the demons.. man I love that I get to type things like that. Scooby removes the ritus and defeats his nephew and the day is saved. Velma hooks up with random guy, Daphne and Fred get together, I die inside a little and Shaggy and Mary Jane bond. At the press Fred does his good deed for the movie by letting Velma explain things and get the spotlight and the group have firmly reunited. THE END. Overall it’s a solid plot, that works well, comes together in the end and was well put together, it’s more the filling that causes it to tilt back and forth a bit, but overlal outside of the issue I mentioned it’s a good scooby doo plot. While some have pointed out it is similar to zombie island, a case reuniting the gang, the person who brought them there wanting to sacrifice them, or just scooby here, monsters being real, it works because everything else is so different. But since there’s more to break down and it’s easier to give it it’s own section let’s look at...

THE CHARACTERS: NOT HALF BAD, FRED CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF. 

So we’re down to character.. and since there’s a blonde, preeening, selfish, arrogant, sleazy, sexist, obnoxious, loud mouthed, useless elephant in the room, let’s start with Fred. And to quote it’s always sunny....

Yeah so that fury of a thousand crashing waves (Cracks Knuckles): Fred is the worst part of this movie, the worst version of the character across the entire franchise that i’ve seen with the sincre doubt that there is ANY version worse than this. Everything I said above is true and THEN some. He is one of the most unlikable characters i’ve seen in a film that wasn’t INTENDED to be. There’s just NOTHING to like about him. Nothing. He treats his “Friends” like garbage, all four of them: He basically ignores shaggy and scooby at best and treats them as if they were nothing. For Velma he’s your classic power abusing douche who pushes her to the side and often steals the credit for things she did. He’s still a good mystery solver, but he acts like he does all the work to the press and takes all the credit when Velma works as hard as he does if not harder. And worst of all is Daphne, who he basically either treats like some moron who gets kidnapped due to incompetence and not because creepy old dudes want to feel her up, which given the intro is VERY likely the reason she’s the resident victim of the group, and not like a person, or like a pair of boobs and legs he wants to bang or feel up creepily while he’s in her body. For fuck’s sake his reaction to finding out he’s in her body is a creepy and smug “I can see myself naaaakeddd” If that dosen’t make you want to smack him get off my blog. And they get together in the end! 

Who who wanted that. I genuinely want the presumibly original ending where Daphne and Velma hook up and Fred falls off a pier and is never seen again. The acting does not help. While the other four gang members are expertly cast Fred was given to Freddy Prinze Junior, who made a career out of playing arrogant dicks who are somehow the main character so I can’t fault the casting but I can fault that he can’t delver any line without that smug air of trying to be cool douche and it’s at it’s worst with Fred since Fred’s already written as the biggest creepiest douche in the world and Freddy somehow makes it WORSE. He also has zero chemstiry with Daphne, which would be weird given he and Sarah Michelle Gellar had dated for 2 years at this point and as of this writing have been together for 20 overall and have two wonderful kids together... but given how badly written Fred is here, I can’t blame either of them. And i’m sure FPJ is a swell guy, loves his kids loves his wife seems like a really plesant guy, nothing against him as a person, but at least at this point in his career he wasn’t very good. And I am actually planning on trying to seek out one of his later works in his career to see if he’s gotten better in recent years, and willing to give him the benifit of a doubt that he probably has. I just don’t like him here, and while the script does most of the work he only makes it worse.And works before this (Pup Named Scooby Doo) and after this (Mystery Incorperated) would prove you can give fred a personality that’s not dick tip, so fuck this character, fuck the writing.. and I hope Freddy is having a happy halloween with his loving wife and children, seriously I meant it I have nothing against him as a person. A terrible actor can still be a WONDERFUL guy. 

Now that’s thankfully put to bed, let’s pivot over to Shaggy, whose easily the best of the cast. Matthew Lillard looks the part pefectly, has the right combination of heart and goofus and has some great comedic timing. Granted Scream had already proven the guy’s got genuine talent, but still he’s great here and is currently playing Shaggy in most films and productions, except Scoob which.. was far from it’s only mistake but easily the biggest. There’s not much else to say: the guy IS Shaggy and is the only person whose taken up the roll to equal Kasey Casem in it. As for how he’s written.. he’s basically the same and apart from one line of him wanting to leave everyone to their deaths, which feels like it was added later, he’s written really well and is easily the most likeable of the group. 

Scooby is alright. Not the best version but funny and charming enough when he needs to be and while I hated the CGI at one point.. it’s honestly not that bad. It’s not GREAT, but time has actually been very good to it both in how it’s held up and in the fact we’ve gotten SO MUCH WORSE with so much better techlogies. I mean.. Cats exists.. Marmaduke Exists.. the Bill Murray Garfield exists. This was offputting at the time but now it’s just okay. But character wise he’s good and again not much diffrent. 

Velma is the second best casting of the movie. Played by Linda Cardenelli, who i’ve harbored a crush on for a good few decades now and admire mostly for her talent and charm, Linda kills the roll and easily slips into it as easily as Matt did, and while not picking it up full time like he did, still did it a few times afterword and played hot dog water in mystery incorperated, so she did finally get to play a Lesbian Velma it just took a while. And while Velma being gay is kind of sterotyping, it would’ve been nice to have been kept in instead of edited out for bullshit reasons. But overal her character is decent: While she ALSO bullies and belittles daphne like fred, unlike fred it comes less from just being a douche and more from insecurity. As her scene at the bar makes clear she feels undervalued like the other, like the nerd who the cool kids LET hang out with them instead of part of the team. While it dosen’t make her treatment of Daphne OKAY, it makes Velma understandable. We also get Velma Clevage which.. okay not sure if the world needed that but whatever. Point is it’s throughly likeable portryal that I wish got some character growth.  Finally out of the main 5 there’s Daphne, whose alright. Not as good as the other two, as it feels they lean a bit too heavily on her having taken self defense and wanting ot be tougher, but Sarah Michelle Gellar gives her a ton of charm and likeablity that her husband’s character sadly lacks. There’s just a fun, adorable energy to daph that ends up coupling with her buffy style badassery at the end and Sarah plays both beautifully. The script didn’t give her a ton to work with, though that’s the same for all four of htem, but Sarah really made the character work and made her somewhat memorable despite not being as good as Linda or Matthew. Basically not the best, but still a comfortable third ahead of scooby doo and jackass jones. 

As for the rest of the cast, Rowan Attkinson i’ve covered and is utterly fantastic as is the Voodoo Maestro, and both should get hteir own hbo max spinoff together. The minons.. stupid name and luchadoor are decent enough, nothign special but they have presence and do the job of goon well. And Mary Jane is alright.. the joke is WAY too on the nose to be funny and she’s mostly just there to be sweet, but she’s harmless. Not good but not bad.  So finally we have our big bad, Scrappy. And i’m.. mixed about this. On one hand, Scott Innes, who it turns out is also from Missouri good on you dude!, does a terrific job and I couldn’t tell it wasn’t don messick as Scrappy and he plays him as evil great. On the other.. it’s just kinda goofy. Out of all the tips of hte hat to scooby stuff this feels the most over the top. Scrappy was hated, including by james gunn.. so he’s the bad guy. It’s just a bit on the nose, and the twist is pretty easily teligraphed since Scrappy suspciously is mentioned in one scene so him showing up at all is pretty easy to see coming. It’s not terible but it’s not great. His demon minons also just suck.. the designs are wonky and their cgi, unlike scooby and scrappy’s, is just REALLY bad and dated, and even as a kid I never liked them. 

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Scooby Doo is a decent but messy movie. The clashing tones, dated humor and godawful version of fred drag it down at times, and it’s very clear this had a lot of hands in the pot. But.. I still enjoy it. It’s not the best scooby ever, tha’ts mystery incorpeated, but it has great atmosphere, some good ideas, an utterly spectacular with one exception cast, and some really funny jokes. I genuinely feel the film is overhated when it’s a unique, weird and wonderful slice of Scooby. For better or worse there’s no other Scooby doo property quite like it, and that’s what makes it so fun. And it has enough good performances and jokes to smooth out the edges. It’s not the best, it’s a mess.. but sometimes a mess is fun and I like this flim for being a fun mess I can enjoy with my nieces and talk about to all of you. And sometimes that’s all you need.  Thank you for reading this. If you like this you can comission your own review: 5 bucks for a tv episode, 15 for a movie, 10 for an hour long special, and 5 dollars off when you order more than one episode of a show at a time. Just send me a direct message or ask on here and we’ll get started. Until then you can check out my backlog of reviews, check this space every monday for ducktales reviews, and VOTE DAMMIT VOTE. Until we meet again it’s been a pleasure. Play us out Atomic Fireballs, it’s been a wonderful halloween. 

[binkysteebnpewter]

All of them 😤

Ehehe 😂💗

1. What’s your middle name, and do you like it?

Grace is actually my middle name, and somewhat. I just don’t like it when my family calls me by first and middle together.

2. are you artistic?

Somewhat?

3. Have you had your first kiss?

Yes

4. What is your life goal?

It’s cheesy and a little cliche, but I want to find Home.

5. Do you have any experiences with a famous person?

Nope

6. Do you play any sports?

Not anymore but I used to play football and I was on the wrestling team in HS

7. What’s your worst fear?

I have two that are sort of equal with another but I’m afraid of losing the people I care about and people seeing me the way I see myself.

8. Who’s your biggest inspiration?

My late Nana, Gloria.

9. Do you have any cool talents?

Answered in previous ask

10. are you a morning person?

Not at all

11. How do you feel about pet names?

I love them

12. Do you like to read?

Absolutely

13. Name a list of shows that have changed your life.

NCIS, Criminal Minds, and any marvel movie

14. Do you care about your follower count?

Not really, I’ll celebrate milestones but that’s just to show everyone I appreciate them following my trash pile. I didn’t start writing to have a high following, I started writing to better my skill and also make people happy.

15. What’s the best dream you’ve had?

I don’t remember most of my happy dreams

16. Have you ever kissed someone of your same gender?

Yep!

17. Do you have any pets?

I have three dogs 🥺💗

18. Are you religious?

No. They only thing I actually believe in is ghosts.

19. Are you a people person?

Not really

20. Are you considered popular?

Nope, and I don’t care to be

21. What is one of your bad habits?

Overthinking

22. What’s something that makes you feel vulnerable?

Opening up my emotions to other people

23. What would you name your children?

No clue

24. Who’s your celebrity crush?

There’s a bunch ig

25. What’s your best subject?

Science and history

26. Dogs or cats?

Dogs, I love cats but I’m super allergic

27. most used social media besides tumblr?

I don’t use a lot of social media tbh, so tumblr is probably my most used unless you count youtube

28. best friends name

Duke

29. who does your main family consist of

My friends and my brother. Family isn’t just blood

30. Chocolate or sugar

Both

31. have you ever been on a date?

Yep

32. Do you like rollercosters?

Absolutely love them

33. Can you swim?

Yes 💗

34. What would you do in the event of an apocolypse?

Clearly, I’d do what everyone else does. Panic and try to survive.

35. Have you struggled with any kind of mental disorder?

Yes, I struggle with anxiety and depression

36. Are your parents together?

Nope.

37. What’s your favourite colour?

Dark green and Dark Blue

38. What country are you from/do you live in?

Unfortunately, the U.S

39. Favourite singer?

Uh... there’s too many to list? But my favorite people to listen to is The Oh Hellos

40. Do you see yourself being famous some day?

Nope, I run from being the center of attention.

41. Do you like dresses?

Not really

42. Favourite song right now?

Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra

43. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable?

Sort of.

44. How old were you when you first got your period?

No clue, I don’t remember

45. Have you ever shot a gun?

Yep

46. Have you ever done yoga?

No

47. Are you a horror girl?

YES 😈

48. Are you good at giving advice?

I suppose I am?

49. Tell us a story about your childhood.

I don’t have a lot of happy memories but one that sticks out is: I used to go to a private Christian academy and I was in first grade when this boy in eighth grade (the entire school was k-12) came over to me during my lunch. I was super scared and shy as a kid so my schedule was tailored so I was able to eat lunch with my brother whose nine years older than me. Our mom forgot to pack our lunches so we were gonna just get some stuff from the vending machine, well my brother gave me my money to get something and this boy came over to me before I could put it in the vending machine. He hit me and took my money, buying himself something with it. My brother seen it and got into a fight with him.

50. How are you doing today?

Eh

51. Were you a cute kid?

I looked like Shirley Temple when I was a kid

52. Can you dance?

I can swing dance and slow dance, but that’s it.

53. Is there anything you do that you can’t remember ever not doing?

I always look for exits and bathrooms when I go somewhere, I’ve always done it 🤷🏻‍♀️

54. Have you ever dyed your hair?

No because I’m a ginger. I can’t just dye it back if I end up not liking the color I dyed it to.

55. What colour are your eyes?

Brown

56. What’s your favourite animal?

Answered in previous ask

57. Have you ever made a huge fool of yourself?

Multiple times

58. Do you have a good relationship with your parents?

My relationship with my dad is rocky but my relationship with my mother went up in flames a few yeaes ago 🤷🏻‍♀️

59. Do you have good friends?

I have some amazing friends🥺💗

60. Are you close with anyone of the lgbtq+ group?

Yep!

61. What’s your favourite class?

My favorite class was Psychology

62. List all the tv shows you are watching.

I’m rewatching Criminal Minds right now.

63. Are you organized?

Somewhat?

64. What was the last movie you saw? Opinion?

I don’t know if it counts as a movie but I just finished a Ted Bundy Tapes Documentary. I think Bundy was a little bit of an idiot.

67. Which tv character do you relate to most?

Spencer Reid

68. What are some things that stand between you and complete happiness?

Anxiety, Depression, overthinking

69. If you received enough money to never need to work again, what would you spend your time doing?

I would probably still work, I’m not a fan of sitting around and doing nothing for large amounts of time.

70. What would you change about your life if you knew you would never die?

Find a way to die, I don’t want to live forever. That’s just torture 👀

71. What would you do differently if you knew that no one was judging you?

Nothing. I’ll act the same as I always have because I am who I am, there’s no reason to change yourself from when someone is watching and when someone isn’t.

72. If you could start over, what would you do differently?

A lot 😂

73. Would you break the law to save a loved one?

Yep

74. When was the last time you travelled somewhere new?

I went to Disney with my Chorus Class in Junior Year of HS, it was my first time to Disney.

75. When you think of your home, what immediately comes to mind?

Nothing, I’m looking for Home. Home will be someone I feel safe with, someone I can be completely myself with— someone I love wholly.

76. What have you done to pursue your dreams lately? How about today?

I— idk?

77. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

I wanted to be a nurse 🤦🏻‍♀️

78. If you dropped everything to pursue your dreams, what would you be risking?

Im not sure

79. When did you not speak up, when you know you really should have?

Ooh... uh, something happened to me all through 7th, 8th, and 9th grade that I should’ve spoken up about but was too scared.

80. Describe the next five years of your life, and your plans, in a single sentence.

I will work hard to love myself and pursue my dream job.

81. What would happen if you never wasted another minute of your life, what would that look like?

No clue tbh

82. If you could live forever, how would you spend eternity?

I don’t want to live forever but I guess I’d find a way to take away my immortality or find someone else who is immortal to love

83. How would you spend a billion dollars?

Id put a lot into important causes and then save some with interest.

84. If you could time travel, would you go to the past or the future?

I’m not sure, I think I wouldn’t go anywhere because I want to live in the moment. Except 2020, fuck 2020.

85. What motivates you to succeed?

Failure motivates me to succeed.

86. What dream that you’ve had has resonated with you the most?

I don’t remember most of my happy dream, I usually can only remember the nightmares 🤷🏻‍♀️

87. Would you rather live in the city or the woods? Why?

Woods, its peaceful.

88. Do you believe in life after death?

I don’t really believe in anything 🤷🏻‍♀️

89. What teacher inspired you the most? How did they?

I had a teacher named Ms Eagan and she inspired me to always be myself.

90. What’s your fondest childhood memory?

Meeting Lily

91. If you could have dinner with any one person, living or dead, who would they be and why?

Lily, because I really miss her.

92. What would you have to see to cry tears of joy?

Anyone being nice to me makes me cry—

93. What is the hardest lesson you had to learn in life?

Sometimes the people you call family don’t truly love you.

94. What do you think happens after we die?

Idk and idrc either tbh

95. What would you do if you would be invisible?

I’d probably scare some people

96. What’s something you can’t do no matter how hard you try?

Speak in public or ask for something at restaurants

97. Would you want to choose the sex and appearance of your offspring?

Eh

98. How did your first crush develop?

They were nice to me when no one else was

99. Is there a feeling you are trying to ignore? What is it?

Yes, I’m trying to ignore how upset some people can really make me.

100. Do you live or do you just exist?

I think I’m somewhere in between, where sometimes I’m just existing and sometimes I’m living.

[jupiterjunebug]

heyyyyyy you said to ask you bout them hcs about the councils war crimes.... and this is me..... asking away.... blease give me the hcs.... blease...

i was going to write like 200 words but here I am. here i am with a 1.5k word fuckin. Essay with multiple citations. Under cut because I Apologize For Being Like This.

Alright buckle in motherfuckers it’s time for my long andprobably fuckin’ stupid waxing poetic abt the political ramifications ofsylvains current…everything.

“But the worse that things got in Sylvain, because of thehumans, the stricter their laws got. And today they got some pretty draconianlaws in effect governing who can and can’t live there. And the outcasts, wellthey don’t really got anywhere to go.” That’s Mama, in the third episode ofAmnesty, talking about how sylphs ended up at Amnesty in the first place.

We never get an answer as to what EXACTLY “draconian” means. @transagentstern theorizes it’s in the form of a one child policy (hence whydani’s on earth, she has a brother), someone else said it might be a form ofsubspecies racism, my person hc both joking and serious is everyone got ousted forshit like jaywalking and littering. Either way, we’re first introduced to thelaws of sylvain as “they’ll take any opportunity to throw someone off the boatif it means it sinks slower.”

Then we meet Janelle and Vincent, who are NICE, and we meetwoodbridge who’s an ass, and we meet Alexandra who thinks Aubrey should go die.Woodbridge and Alexandra both Don’t Like Humans, but Woodbridge is so goddamnforgettable I deadass forgot he was a character until I started reading ficwhere he got brought up, and Alexandra’s the “im eleven so shut the fuck up”meme and also never onscreen.

The ones onscreen are Janelle and Vincent! Who are nice!Janelle mentor-figures Aubrey despite not having time, and Vincent asks forDVDs of human shut cuz he likes them, and it’s all good. It’s all jokes.

They’ve got some pretty draconian laws in effect.

It would be easy to blame all those laws on Woodbridge, whohates humans, and whose title as “Minister of Preservation” could be taken as“guy in charge of this awful triage situation.” You could blame it on Alexandraor the past Interpreters, and say that whatever they’re interpreting boileddown to “tell all the people that snowboard without a license that they have toleave.” You could say that “today” doesn’t mean they passed the WORST of thelaws recently, but that 200 years ago the laws were shit and they just got MOREshit recently (I do say this, actually, more on that later). That would meanit’s not even the current ministers faults! I mean, except maybeeee Woodbridge cuzhe’s a ghost and his “business” to finish before passing on might deadass besitting at sylvains sickbed until it dies or a miracle cure comes in.

Even if they didn’t make all the laws, even if they didn’tmake ANY of the laws, they still enforce them. Vincent might have a good funconvo with Aubrey about Shrek, but he and Woodbridge and the Interpreter andHell probably Indrid when he was around to some degree, and Janelle who isn’tblameless even if she was too busy reading her books to really pay attention atthe trials. They all still enforce them.

Like I said, this is an awful triage situation. It’s hard,living on a planet that’s in its death throes. They have to do something to keep people alive as longas possible, even if they AND all of the people on sylvain KNOW that it’sfutile you can’t just give up. But, you know, establishing a dictatorship whereyou can get exiled for reasons Mama considers “draconian,” well that’s. That’skinda. It’s not QUITE a war crime, and I’m not sure how else they would’vesolved the issue, but that’s the backdrop of this situation. Sure, Janelle andVincent are nice, but they or one of vincent’s subordinates were probablypersonally responsible for jake coolice getting ousted from sylvain, or atleast they didn’t stop woodbridge from doing it.

OK so step one is “we’re kicking half of our population out,we need to do this, this is the lesser of two evils.” Step two is “where do wesend them?”

The only option other than Earth or execution that I canthink of would be The Corrupted Lands. Now, kneejerk reaction is Earth soundscomparatively awesome for the exiles, yeah? Death is death, and The CorruptedLands would be WORSE than death cuz you end up infected with the Quell and allthat junk. At least on Earth you don’t end up, like, losing your entirepersonality and goi-

Barclay: Anotherday or so and we’re gonna start losing the stuff that we know and love aboutour friends Dani and Jake and Moira and the whole team here. So, as quick aspossible would be better.

Ned: What do youmean “losing stuff”? Are they gonna start dyin’!?

Barclay:Eventually, but before that happens they’re gonna start going a little bit…well, I guess, feral is the word.

Wow thanks for that reminder, this convo from Amnesty ep. 10that just started playing in the room all by itself. That’s right! Sylphs thatdon’t have crystals (like Indrid does, and Barclay is shown holding in thefirst ep, and we know do SOMETHING bc Indrid’s fine and Barclay doesn’t includehimself when talking about ppl going feral. So either that or somethingsomething Indrid and Barclay aren’t sylphs that’d be a whole ‘nother hc post imstopping that here) spend days slowly losing their will to live, then becomeuncontrollably violent, and then die!

But that won’t happen and the council knows that becauseAmnesty Lodge exi-

“-And the outcasts, well they don’t really got anywhere togo.” Thanks Mama. The Lodge wasn’t built on Sylvain’s orders. Every gateprobably DOESN’T have a convenient hotspring that prevents people from losingtheir goddamn minds, because look at that phrasing. They don’t have anywhere togo. The Council had no PLAN for where the exiles would end up, and in Kepler itjust so happens somebody else decided to MAKE a plan.

Techniiiically, before Kepler all the sylphs that weren’tgiven crystals could’ve been executed or sent to the CL. But I don’t think so.And the reasons why the councilmight’ve chosen to send people to earth instead of the other two optionsdepends on your interpretation.

It could be that they didn’t like the idea of having toactually square up and kill people like big kids, so they decided to exilethem. It could be that, while the thought of someone going feral on earth mightSUCK, there’s a CHANCE exiles might stumble on someplace like Amnesty, whereasthe CL WILL make you bonkers, and not the Dr. Harris kind, 100% of the time.More pragmatically, they might’ve been worried about executed people turning upas ghosts, and people in the CL coming to attack the wall.

Or it could be, yanno. War crimes.

Woodbridge hates humans. Granted, it seems like he hateseveryone. But his introduction to the show is literally him looking at the PGand saying “Hi, yes. I ensure the survival of our kind in the wake of yourworld’s countless ruthless assaults.” Alexandra’s not fond either, as herthoughts say: “I wish [Aubrey] would stop coming here. It’s her world’s faultthat Sylvain is dying in the first place.”

How recently did they start exiling people? Was it less thanthirty years? More than thirty years? I like to think it was more. In episode6, Dani says that her type of sylph gets a bad rap because some of her kind hasdrunk peoples’ blood to get more energy. The perception that vampires drinkblood has been around……….a long time.

Sure, that idea could’ve been around during/before theassault on sylvain when some dipshit sylphs just left of their own accord andthen decided to drink people for yolos. Or it could mean that people have beenexiled for a WHILE, and the fact that the laws got more “draconian” just meansMORE people have been exiled now.

A lot of non-violent cryptid sightings happening a long timeago could be chalked down to sylph that WEREN’T exiled goin’ and doin’ stuff,but killing someone to feed smacks of desperation OR being the sort of personthat hated humans so much that the first solution to “im hungry” was “im goingto eat a person.”

Either way. Picture this. Thirty-five years ago, the gate toKepler isn’t open. The gate to NYC is open.A sylph gets pushed out of it. There’s no springs, or if there is there’s noMama to guide them there. No Mama to help them fit in. They go feral in the middle of New York, or in the middleof where the gate before New York was, or the gate before that, or the gatebefore-

You get stories about monsters like the Jersey Devil,monsters that kill midwives and children. La Llorona, who drowns little kids,might look like Dani up close.

Sylvain is dying, and they’re at the rationing stage. TheCouncil has to know what happens tosylphs that don’t eat. The Councilhas to know they’re pushing people that might try to murder and eat humans intoa populated space. The Council has to know that they’re pushing people thatmight try to murder and eat humans into a space populated by a race thatdestroyed their planet.

Killing two birds with one stone.

[masslessobtrusion]

Metamucil

Note: I wrote this over a day and I sometimes write several things at the same time, lose track. I didn’t feel like editing this and pasted what was in the text document. I started taking Metamucil. I’ve never shit better in my life. So smooth, one push, and I feel so clean. I warmed up a piece of pizza. My Dad was mumbling something and I heard my Mom say “we’ve had a good night so far”. My Dad was angry and cussing at something and when my Mom asked him what I said because of her hearing. He barked “I don’t know what the FUCK he said!”.  It’s just like, yup.  Oh, I mentioned satellites were flying over at 7pm this week and my Dad barked “aint gonna see shit!”, interrupting me.  I tried telling my Dad about a YouTube video I saw of people making coolers out of totes and insulation. But the Puggle started screeching so loud at the cat and my Dad started screaming “STFU! Fucking god damn cat!”. The puggle screeches at everything. Not just the cat. But yeah. Usually he threatens to kill the cat but he didn’t say it this time. It still makes me want to cry. It’s so loud. My Dad doesn’t listen to what I say and interrupts me most of the time with some random ignorant shit. But I still have an urge to have conversations with humans.  I want to talk to people. Arielle isn’t talking to me because I made comments about how she works for her dad’s company.  When I said that to Arielle, I was high on benzos. I went through 15mg of clonazepam in 2 days. I have zero tolerance to benzos and last time I did drugs was alcohol on New Years by myself. I think the point I was trying to make was about how she made comments about how I’m always a victim and make excuses. But she has never suffered like I have. I have no safety net. She has multiple safety nets. What would she be doing right now if she didn’t? Who tf knows.  I alluded to her not being able to see the scope of my struggle because she’s an attractive female whose parents supplied her education, multiple shelters, vehicles. As well as her current and future career. She will inherit the business too. Her life so far seems like a vacation because she can always work for her Dad and gets the benefits of having a family business. It’s fucking awesome. Can even live in apartments at the shop if you need. So, she has been able to pursue things that make her happy. Because her basic needs are supplied. She lives a fairly frugal lifestyle.  I think that’s awesome. Her siblings are friends with each other. It’s great.  It wasn’t an insult. She used to be super into eco-feminist stuff and she’s quick to judge people as being bad people. So, I’ve often felt that she has me listed in that bad people department. But I wonder if my carbon footprint is smaller, since I don’t consume much or go anywhere.  Kind of shows how flawed that type of thinking is.  I can’t make thousands on OnlyFans right now. She could if she wanted. She even said she supports people who do. I don’t have an issue with it either.  This angered her for some reason. But instead of talking about it. She shut down the conversation. Put me in time out. Blocked me. That pissed me off. Now, she’s going to act like she’s the victim.  She will barely talk to me or respond.  This is my only “friend”. How fucking pathetic is that? Compared to me. Surrounded by piss with a mouth breathing racist berating me multiple times a day.   I started talking to Arielle after Lauren passed away. I literally had no one to talk to. I dated Arielle briefly in 2011, 2013, and kind of remained friends as I became friends with her brother. Last time I talked to Arielle before Lauren passed was a year prior, when she said she would talk to me regularly for now on in a friendly manner. She asked for my address to write to me. I felt like the only reason she asked for the address was to make sure I wasn’t living in her state still, lol. I was excited and I remember that conversation going well.  I never heard from her until I googled Lauren’s name and saw that her funeral was last week. Arielle knew, but didn’t inform me. Her brother knew too. No one told me. Yeah. That pisses me off. I wrote her brother and I texted Arielle. She said I could keep texting her. I’ve told her about this blog, I’ve sent her many of the same stories.  I guess she has a busy work and social life. She barely responds to me. Barely tells me about her life.  She tells me to get a job and get out of this place. I tell her it’s not that easy. I could use some help, a friend. I need money of course but I’ve never asked for it or received anything from anyone yet. I don’t know what I’d do with money. I’d like to have a van or something where I could just get away from all of the craziness in this house. She became triggered when I mentioned that she has a nice life. I acquired 30 .5mg clonazepam the night before. I took 15mg over 2 days and drank whiskey. When Arielle ghosted me, I started feeling suicidal, took more and more. I was in a loop of anger. In the past, fear of abandonment has been a huge issue in my life. I’ve explained this to Arielle and there have been similar situations before. She was just like. “It’s called respect. I’m not talking to you anymore.”. I don’t know what I sent her. I called her a trust fund kid and told her it’s okay, that’s what parents should do for their kids.  Maybe she’s embarrassed of her families wealth and privilege because the way she presents herself is sort of eco-feminist. I started conversing with her last winter. She has mentioned being concerned about the environment several times. That struck me as such a privileged thing for someone to say. I agree with the sentiment. It’s like saying, “I don’t even look at the cost of things, I just buy it.” around poor people.  But it’s like, hey. Remember me, the guy you’ve been known for 10 years who is a half step away from homelessness, institution, and death? But shows glimpses of the fun loving person you know they’re capable of being?  Arielle was a big reason for why I ended up in the hospital in 2019. I had it in my head that she was going to come visit me. It was my first summer back home. Things weren’t going well with my family. I was drinking. Then, I started doing benzos. Arielle gave me an ultimatum to stop doing drugs or she won’t visit. I never told her I was doing benzos. I don’t know what happened first.  But I tried making plans with so many people for them to flake out and I was feeling betrayed and angry that I moved back here, now I’m stuck.  That’s the darkest couple weeks of my life. I was taking massive doses of benzos. Equivalents of 50mg of xanax/day. Who tf knows. I had hundreds of pills. I was popping a pill every couple of hours. Snapping a bar in half. Arielle cancelled whatever intentions of visiting me. I thought if I sent crazy shit to everyone I knew. Surely, someone would recognize that I’m having a mental breakdown and be nice to me, right? Nope. I ended up with a broken jaw and no treatment for 10 days because I’m a bad poor druggy who deserves to suffer. It’s a long story. I’ll write about it soon. I did tell Arielle I was going to kill myself, I said a lot of mean things to her. I’m lucky she hasn’t filed a restraining order for real. But, the reason she hasn’t is because she has said nice things to me about caring about me. Which is why I talk to her. Because she has said she wants to help and stuff. But she’s either not good at it or just said it due to some sort of pressure to say the right thing.  The hospital was a traumatic and painful experience. I suffered severe injuries due to neglect. I was humiliated, mocked, insulted. That’s the help everyone was telling me to get. Holy shit. It was worse than I feared. The medical system is a fucking joke. Especially if you’re uninsured. I was pretty much tortured and put in jail for 10 days, because I tried to kill myself with a drug overdose. I was charged $50,000+ for it too. Probably more. I don’t know. I never talk to debt collectors. I’ll write about the hospital experience. I said really mean things to Arielle in the week I attempted suicide. I’m embarrassed and it saddens me that I have that much anger and sadness inside of me. But it’s a projection of the abuse I have suffered my entire life at the hands of my parents and others. I still get abused. I don’t want to be here. I didn’t want to move back. But I’m here. But I see her as being of a noble family. While, I am a peasant. Her brother is the same.  She doesn’t understand the suffering I have gone through because she has been so sheltered. Hi, I would like 1 living wage job. I would like to live in one of your properties too. They never offered me help or friendship when I needed it. They knew I was struggling. I told both of them in person when I lived near them.  “The thing that would help me the most. Is just having a friend. Someone to do things with, hang out with. Text me every other week or something”. I’ve said that to both of them in person and in text. I’ve said that to my brothers and all kinds of people. I remember telling that to her brother at the apartment in their Dad’s machine shop. I told him the story about how Lauren overdosed and I almost cried. I told him how messing with heroin was a huge mistake that I regret and I told him that it’s seriously something that you shouldn’t mess around with because it messes with your brain and body in an extreme manner. I remember her brother offered Lauren a job part time. I remember being like, I’ll work there part time. I actually have some experience on a lathe/mill. I always got the vibe that he was attracted to Lauren. He bought adderall from her and paid double what it was worth as a way to help her out. Flex or kindness?  Sent her “I miss you” texts.  This was all in my head leading up to the suicide attempt. I tried talking to Lauren too. It didn’t go well. That was pretty much the last time I talked to her. I actually have the suicide attempt on video. I made a voice recording too. It’s not graphic. You just see me convulse and the TV almost falls over from my body flopping around but I eventually lose consciousness and laid on the floor for about an hour. Then slept on the couch for a little bit more. Wake up and I’m like, oh shit. I need to go to a hospital. Then, my brother wouldn’t take me to the hospital because his friend was coming over, lol.   In a previous entry. I wrote about the piercing high frequency noise I heard and how my jaw clenched down uncontrollably. I said to myself “don’t fight it, just let go” and that’s the last thing I remember. So, yeah. Maybe Arielle shouldn’t ghost me. Maybe I shouldn’t even talk to her. I mean. It was mostly out of desperation and she seemed to kind of be nice but yeah. 

How fucking pathetic is it that this is the only human who will talk to me. I should be grateful to this person. Because I would have nothing without them

I want someone who is going to be nice to me. Tell me things. Talk about things with me. Tell me a joke, an idea. Hey, check this out, want to join me? I’ve spent a lot of time with Arielle. Days together, camping and trips. But I never felt open with her like I did with Lauren. With Arielle, it’s walking on eggshells a lot of the time. Given, we were both much younger when we met. I still feel like she’s pretty similar to how she was when I met her. 

I spent over 3 years with Lauren. We worked together, lived together. I feel like when I talked to Lauren she actually liked me.  If the roles were reversed Holy shit. I would do whatever I could to help her. I would’ve done the same for Lauren. If Lauren or Arielle told me stories of how people abuse her, like I share on here. Holy shit. I would do whatever I could to help in any way possible.  Arielle and her brother could do a lot to help me. It just takes hitting some buttons on a phone. Send me a message or something. But they won’t, because they’re of such a higher status than me. They are willing to let me suffer and die.  Do I deserve this because I am a man or something? Why is there such a huge double standard when it comes to being complacent with the abuse I suffer?

[gameridernews]

Ex-Aid review: Month 6 (Episodes 21-24)

Alright, the review I posted for month 5 was a joke, as you know. I don't really intend to change how I do these reviews, and the only pictures you'll see (presumably) are screencaps from the episodes I'm talking about, not goofy reaction images. With that said, let's ACTUALLY go into what March gave us! It’s a big month of plot, and I also end this review by going into predictions.

For starters, a real interesting Bugster based on Giri Giri Chambara plagues a detective that investigates the Bugster Virus, as well as Genm Corp's previous CEO who's now in prison - been a little while since we saw Kuroto's papa, in fact... the last time was when another person was investigating the Bugster Virus. So you can see why this detective is in trouble.

The detective stuff was pretty fun. I like the idea of someone getting involved like this without being a Rider - it's a small way of making the world of this series feel a bit bigger, with characters who simply have no relation to the Riders and are on their own journey.

Oh, this is also the episode where Brave uses Drago Knight Hunter Z to use the Full Dragon formation. Pretty cool of them to do that even though the toy isn't made to do it. I think once Ex-Aid is over I might need to have a paragraph of text dedicated to the figure line...

Meanwhile, back in 2000 when Kamen Rider was making its return to television, a little Kuroto discovered the Bugster Virus within Genm Corp. This is only the start of what we learn about little Kuroto. It was an interesting tidbit to have a real specific year for when this all started. Things start to get more interesting once we hit the second episode of the month...

... Because Kuroto is busteeed! After all this hiding in the shadows, the ministry of health barges into his secret hideout and takes away all of his plans. Not only that, but he's also been infected with the Shakariki Sports' Bugster Virus, which seems like some form of karmatic justice! Nice to finally get some kind of representation for that game, by the way.

And on top of all this, Kuroto has been reduced to a sobbing mess as his plans have seemingly fallen apart, he confesses how he was jealous of Emu's creativity as a child, and infected him with the Bugster Virus using a demo of Mighty Action C (no doubt spawning fan Gashats). It seems like Kuroto's on the road to redemption now that Emu vows to cure him despite his sins--

Or, you know, fuck you.

In a twist that, admittedly, I was almost convinced wasn't about to happen, Kuroto returns to his god complex and tells Emu how naive he is and how he's been Kuroto's personal puppet all these years because of it.

As someone who has only seen a few episodes of JoJo, he's gone full Dio - he's metaphorically burned Emu's dog and is now as much of a monster as any Bugster. He then uses his zombie Bugster army to take over the Genm Corp building with the most shining pride. He also destroys Emu's Gamer Driver, meaning that our protagonist - and by extension, his allies - are powerless. He’s won.

But I know my tropes, so I knew what was about to go down. There's other things to talk about first, though.

Just wanna say as an aside, the suspicious Gashat that we're basically aware of the purpose of has some nice story revolving around it. I like that we're once again bringing back Mr. Burger (as I've decided to call him now) because Taiga is paying him to make a new Gashat to counteract Genm's cheating Zombie Gamer form.

The Monks Of Tera/Terror idea is hilarious, but I'm gonna be honest... I expected this to actually be a tie-in to the Snipe spinoff before we got to see it go any further, since he has a Bang Bang Tank Gashat there that we've yet to learn the context of. But I guess they could still make that happen.

There's also a nice bit of character interaction as Hiro wants to go fight Kuroto, then Taiga just slaps the silver Gashat into his hand to give him some better equipment than the Gashat Gear Dual B. Whether this is his way of saying Hiro is more skilled, or he's totally screwing with him since it didn't work in his own belt, I like that moment. Especially if it's the latter.

It doesn't end there, as the episode makes me realize something kind of important: Kiriya, our first Rider death of the series... has not been forgotten. In fact, compared to Kurokage in Gaim, whose death was important and only came up a couple times after, Kiriya's involvement really does matter. So I can't feel sorry he's gone, because he's leaving one hell of a mark. Especially with the realization Hiro then makes after reading his old notes about the Bugster Virus research.

It's during the first fight with Genm that Brave does something that's surprising, even after his solid development so far: He, the biggest doubter of Emu, gives a "You're the only one who can do this" speech to him. He's now aware that the Bugster Virus in him is the origin of all Bugsters, as well as all Gashats - if anyone will be able to make use of this silver Gashat and defeat Genm, it's the person who created Mighty Brothers XX.

As if that weren’t enough, he took one hell of a shot for Emu while he was overcome with the pressure of his role as the chosen one, so BAM that’s two characters who go through some good development. I appreciate, especially after Ghost, that Emu isn’t just naturally falling into that role - he’s lived a life feeling like someone who’s just trying to get by, and now Hiro is telling him he’s basically their savior. He’s understandably nervous.

But yes, after Brave's fall, Emu finally unleashes a giant metal can of whoopass on Genm, using the only thing that could overpower him: Something that's 10 x 10! 99, to be exact. Maximum Mighty X's mech suit was a thing I knew would be pretty divisive once I saw it in toy catalog scans, but it surprised me in a few different ways.

For one, they went with an actual suit instead of having it be CGI, which immediately makes it a lot cooler when it's a practical effects. That's a show of confidence, I'd say. But also, lining up with its intended purpose, it apparently has the ability to reprogram... a power that hopefully will not be part of Ex-Aid's final form because this already makes him pretty powerful.

Because of this, Maximum Mighty X is literally the only thing that can stop Genm now. "I reprogrammed your immortality," as Ex-Aid said. What a line. You can’t get this stuff anywhere else, folks.

But defeat doesn't come easy. Emu wants to be the one who saves Kuroto from himself. He chooses not to kill him, but to instead give him a beating that simultaneously removes his compatibility to the Gashats, leaving him unable to transform and thus take away everything that made him mad with power.

In Emu's mind, this is how Kuroto can finally be put on the road to redemption, despite his sins--

Or, you know, fuck him.

I've seen the "GAME OVER" dialogue over Kuroto's death numerous times, and just based on tropes, I knew he'd die in this episode even though people have made sure to say to me “Maybe he’ll just lose the ability to transform”. But I kinda wasn't expecting Parado to be the one to kill him - it makes sense. I figured it was a little out of character for Emu to be the one to deal the finishing blow, and Parado has had this long-standing problem with Kuroto ever since he killed one of the Bugsters out of pure spite. You know you’re a terrible person when your death makes the viewer feel happy for one of the bad guys.

As my joke review says, this is a cathartic episode, seeing Kuroto finally get what's coming to him after manipulating and backstabbing his enemies as well as his allies. With the previous episode, they made sure that Kuroto was far from redemption and the only thing that could take him down was a new form. Ex-Aid gained. And so, the day is... saved?

I made a post about this since I knew this was happening, but I’ll say it here: He made a great villain. His actor properly portrayed a gentleman who'd been dragged to hell by his own hubris. He was a character you could hate because that was his role. He received the death only he could receive. His story is over, finished.

Naturally, I have to address the thing people bring up a lot: When an actor leaves a Kamen Rider show, we see a photo of them on set holding a bouquet of flowers, a congratulatory gift from the staff to let them know they did a great job and they'll be missed. It's become a thing fans recognize as a definitive sign that a character won't be returning.

The reason this gets brought up here is, some are convinced Kuroto will make a return because no photo exists of the actor receiving said flowers. On the one hand, maybe that’ll happen once he’s done filming for Lazer’s spinoff, but on the other hand... maybe we put too much faith into such a random thing, you know? Graphite's actor got his, and he's coming back in the next episode. And let's not forget all of what Kiriya's got in terms of movie/spinoff appearances. We should take that to mean the flowers aren’t that literal.

Personally, I’m gonna take the scene of Kuroto screaming and turning into pixels while we hear “GAME OVERRR” as a sign that he’s dead for good. Plus, as said, he’s kinda done all he needs to do. Bringing him back would be like... when Gaim had a final episode that was “Let’s bring back the movie villain for a revenge plot just because”. And who besides me was cheering for that?

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Let's talk about crossovers! Starting with Gaim, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai have had crossovers to promote the spring movie, no matter how little screentime Sentai gets! Let's... let’s get this one over with.

First up is episode 7 of Uchu Sentai Kyuranger! 97% of the episode is just a Kyuranger episode. A monster is stealing the birthdays from children, and eventually steals the birthday of the gold Ranger, Balance. This causes any attempt to celebrate birthdays to disappear, making everyone profoundly depressed.

Does this sound like an Ex-Aid crossover yet? Well, as the image will show you, a Kamen Rider villain appears - it's... not Ikadevil, but rather SPACE Ikadevil! This isn't a random redesign made for the crossover, but rather a random redesign from a previous movie where Fourze's space theme got randomly leaked into the Shocker villains as they rebrand themselves as Space Shocker. It's a cute idea for Kyuranger, which is based in this Star Wars/Trek setting where we have galaxy-dominating aliens.I can dig the idea of Shocker still persisting.

Space Ikadevil randomly appears to delay the Lucky/Shishi Red (the lead red Ranger), so the Kyuranger commander beams down a Kyutama (their collectibles/transformation items) that he figures is perfect for the fight - it's an Ex-Aid Kyutama which summons Ex-Aid in his Level 1 form, and he delivers a beatdown.

Shishi Red also demonstrates his plot convenience luck by accidentally flipping Ex-Aid's Gamer Driver cover open to level him up, so that was fun. Gets a bit weird as he lets his suit dematerialize and he's just Emu, then suddenly disappears into pixels as the Kyutama disappears with him.

I THINK the implication of this cameo is that Emu was warped to the Kyuranger setting thanks to... space magic? I would like to think it’s a simulation, but that doesn’t make as much sense when you see Ex-Aid’s episode. If you don’t think too hard about it, it’s a decent way to explain how the past and future could meet.

Sure would be nice if the Ex-Aid episode cared about giving a reason for the crossover action. SHOTS FIRED.

Episode 24 of Ex-Aid starts off with three punk rockers who are all infected with the Bugster Virus. As they leave the hospital and reveal themselves to be stronger versions of reused monsters who inexplicably have no visual cues to show that they're stronger, Lucky appears! No particular reason, he just happens to be in the area-- which I guess is in-character for his plot convenient luck. I'm not making jokes by the way, I wish I was - that’s his entire gimmick. He’s my one complaint about Kyuranger so far.

Lucky wants to help, and because I guess Ex-Aid's cameo in Kyuranger is kinda-canon, Emu just assumes Lucky is a fellow hero and they transform together. Shishi Red helps Ex-Aid take on the monsters very quickly, and once they return to their hosts' bodies... Lucky kindly fucks off after very randomly planting the seed for this episode's message.

I had a lengthier thing to say here but I'll sum up why I think this cameo is terrible: It's lazy. Kyuranger’s is worse since it feels like an repisode they just edited Ex-Aid into, at least with this one I can see Ex-Aid clearly made a filler episode just for the whole minute of a crossover. Gaim and Drive handled their Sentai crossovers in the form of an hour long special which had more time to tell an actual story that connects the shows. Say what you will about those crossovers, at least they tried.

Worth mentioning this might not even have any relevance to the spring movie these are presumably made for. Like Drive and Ninninger had a crossover TV special, but the movie ignores that it even happened since Drive has no idea who they are. If the Ex-Aid/Kyuranger episodes literally have nothing to do with the movie then this was even more of a waste. 

Right, I was reviewing an episode or something.

Okay, so Lucky randomly mentions that he has friends to rely on, and Emu says he has three friends he can rely on as well. Asuna asks what he means, and he tells her it's Hiro, Taiga, and Kiriya - ouch, poor Asuna. See how well that bike corpse protects you when Poppy starts kicking your ass next month, jackass.

Turns out Emu thinks too highly of himself here, as Hiro doesn't really recall ever regarding him as a friend and Taiga is kind of like the guy who's closer to your video game collection than he is to you. With three Bugsters running around, they decide to see who can destroy them first - or at least, Taiga decides that's the bet.And in true Taiga fashion, you lose all your Gashats if you lose, but he apparently doesn’t.

I should say this after that rant about the crossovers... This episode was a lot of fun. It's undeniably made because of the Sentai cameo, due to its message of teamwork, a major part of Sentai. When they aren't focusing on the red Ranger. Having previous monsters return with new levels is fun too. Even if they have no alterations. Gotta keep them untouched for Kamen Rider Chronicle.

They end the teamwork message on a good note. While they're all kind of selfish and immature on their own ways, as doctors these three are on point. Emu's learned a lot about how to deal with patients, Hiro and Taiga are willing to admit that about him, and Taiga even shows some kind of compassion for a patient by calling for an ambulance in the "I care but I don't want to show it" kind of way I expect from him. It's a nicely executed scene.

If I'm right about this being some obligated Sentai cameo thing, they handled it with grace by this point in the episode. I had forgotten that Shishi Red never made a second appearance until now because it was all so good on its own.

The episode does have some interesting developments too! We see the new CEO of Genm Corp, who's just... kind of a joy to watch. Now, admittedly, I got spoiled on the fact that he was a Bugster thanks to the latest monthly scans showing up before I watched this episode. But I'm glad that they kinda got to the point about it once he talked to Poppy about her singing the theme to their latest game: Toki Meki Crisis Kamen Rider Chronicle!

Then we end on the most surprising twist of the episode: Parado has realized Kuroto's dream of finishing Kamen Rider Chronicle... for himself! He summons Graphite, and reveals to us that Graphite could always be brought back, it was just a matter of time. I guess this also confirms Graphite is in fact supposed to represent Drago Knight Hunter Z, a thing I had doubts on since even his TV Asahi bio doesn't say anything about his origin, just that he’s a Bugster. 

The evil new Genm Corp CEO also appears and brings Poppy Pipopapo with him, apparently having brainwashed her to take part in the new game. I was asked about what I thought about the twist that she's actually evil, but I'm pretty sure the intent is that she was one of the good Bugsters and it just so happened that this guy turned her evil. It makes me less sad to think of it that way.

This scene alone has led to two theories about Kamen Rider Chronos, the Rider who uses Kamen Rider Chronicle to transform. Based solely on the fact that Parado is holding the Gashat, no, I don't think Parado is Chronos. he is Para-DX and you so rarely have someone go from one Rider identity to another like this. In fact, Malus > Jam in Gaim is the only example coming to mind right now.

And based solely on the fact that he has little motivation or personality, I don't think Graphite is Chronos either. But I kinda wanna believe that Graphite theory is born out of a desperation for Graphite to not be a waste of a character, because honestly I don’t think he’s earned the role of “main villain for the rest of the show“.

Anyway, things got pretty heavy this month! Ex-Aid went to Planet Robobot, some asshole died, and a poorly-written hero kicked off a fun episode about teamwork only to leave us with the revelation that Kamen Rider Chronicle lives on - the foreboding premonition of the new beginning...

So a few months ago, when we were only 1/4 of the way through Ex-Aid, I made some predictions. Let’s see how I did.

I think that Kamen Rider Lazer as we knew him is gone. We know that Ex-Aid will use the Bakusou Bike Gashat in his belt to summon the bike, and I think that’s the extent of his return we’ll be seeing, no new character as Lazer and no robotic Rider - as cool as that’d be.

So far, that’s still true, at least for the show. The movies and Televikun spinoff don’t count because that’s a temporary fanservice revival. Yes that’s what I think of as the toku equivalent of fanservice.

When it comes to Genm... I think he’ll still be around for a while. But I’ll be surprised if Ex-Aid’s next power-up (after Double Action Gamer) doesn’t kill him off. We simply haven’t seen anything beyond Zombie Gamer and it’s Level X. Ex-Aid will far surpass that, along with our next Rider.

Someone pick up the phone, because I called it~ But in all seriousness, I didn’t think I would be so accurate with that claim.

Speaking of Para-DX/Parado, I think we’re gonna learn something interesting about him. In particular, maybe he’s NOT a Bugster? There’s just something fishy about how he looks at Emu in battle. Perhaps he’s an old friend who’s become a monster, or if he is still a Bugster maybe he’s one of the first. I expect him to be something more than just some throwaway guy like Graphite.

Parado has certainly been more of a character than Graphite was, but I don’t think we’ve received any history on him beyond being a Bugster. I was right to suspect that his looks at Emu were fishy, but that had more to do with Emu being the first infected with the Bugster Virus. I’m gonna consider that prediction undetermined.

Now then, let’s make some new predictions!

Kamen Rider Chronicle sure is chaotic. I say that knowing the next episode has already aired and people keep asking me my thoughts on it - naturally I've been spoiled on some stuff. But I think that the effects of Chronicle are gonna be temporary, and all of the deaths resulting from it will be undone somehow. I mean if that's not the case, that's the most civilian death I think we've had since Kuuga. Ride-Players will probably all go away after that, meaning Niko's chance to be a Rider will probably be short-lived.

Next up, Kamen Rider Chronos. I really still believe Kuroto's dad is going to be him. Not Parado, not Graphite, just a man we keep seeing in prison. He's got an intimidating visage to him I look forward to seeing in a Rider belt.

We're getting Poppy Pipopapo as Kamen Rider Poppy, and due to the nature of female Riders, people have low expectations for where she'll go. Some think she might even die! But based on the blue-eyed version of her in the opening (as opposed to the red eyes on the physical suit we've seen in the preview), I suspect she'll turn good and still get to fight as a Rider. At worst, she might get the Buggle Driver II taken away from her so that Chronos can use it.

And since Para-Dx is the last big thing to expect this month, let's see if I can get another good death prediction in: I think that Parado will be a major antagonist for the heroes now that he's been boosted to Level 99, which is gonna be a close rival to Ex-Aid's Maximum Gamer form. Maybe he's even immune to the reprogramming powers! But if there's anything to take him down a peg, it'll be Ex-Aid's final form. Let's just hope he gets in some character development/history before then.

A lot of these are admittedly focused on the upcoming month, but I won’t revisit them until we’ve hit month 9. Can you believe we’re at the halfway point already?!

[septmilleneurones]

Hey look, actual "unique" questions

Via @quietandinviting, and apparently this was the original source.

I’m doing this LiveJournal style because I ultimately prefer to take my destiny into my own hands when it comes to answering questions like this! :D 1:Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed? >I actually don't have a closet in my current place! My room used to be the laundry room. I am OK with this because it has a door leading directly outside. 2:Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotel? >No. I'm picky about which shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. I use. 3:Do you sleep with your sheets tucked in or out? >One side in, one side out. 4:Have you ever stolen a street sign before? >No. 5:Do you like to use post-it notes? >I used to love them, but these days I've switched to the Errands app. 6:Do you cut out coupons but then never use them? >I forget about coupons all the time. 7:Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of a bees? >I'd rather not think about either of those things. 8:Do you have freckles? >Some. 9:Do you always smile for pictures? >Yes, although it doesn't always look natural because I get self-conscious. I do want to take more pictures of myself, though. 10:What is your biggest pet peeve? >Self-righteousness, probably. There have been times when I've really wanted to reblog something here but decided against it because of the "if you don't reblog this, you're a terrible person" crap. 11:Do you ever count your steps when you walk? >Not personally, but my current phone has a pedometer and I've been really enjoying using it. 12:Have you ever peed in the woods? >Yes, while hiking. It was gross and I don't want to do it again. 13:What about pooped in the woods? >No. 14:Do you ever dance even if theres no music playing? >FUCK YES. 15:Do you chew your pens and pencils? >Apparently not as much as I used to! 16:How many people have you slept with this week? >None. 17:What size is your bed? >Queen! It came with the room I'm renting. 18:What is your Song of the week? >Most of the songs in the Moana soundtrack. 19:Is it okay for guys to wear pink? >It should be more socially acceptable. 20:Do you still watch cartoons? >A lot of cartoons that are primarily marketed to kids seem to be of higher quality than a lot of adult TV and movies. 21:Whats your least favorite movie? >At the moment, Passengers. I'm just so mad that they had this amazing concept and did something so crappy with it. 22:Where would you bury hidden treasure if you had some? >I'd probably just hire a safe for it. I don't want to risk some other fucker finding it and taking it. 23:If you're a girl, bra size? If you're a guy, pants size? >18D, I think. 24:What do you dip a chicken nugget in? >I tend to eat foods like that at buffet restaurants, so I'd pick whatever sauce looks nicest there. Or maybe in the broth of some of the other foods on my plate. 25:What is your favorite food? Potato chips. 26:What movies could you watch over and over and still love? >Mostly childhood favourites, like Miss Congeniality, Legally Blonde, Teaching Mrs Tingle, Center Stage, Bring It On, etc. 27:Last person you kissed/kissed you? >My mum. 28:Were you ever a boy/girl scout? >No. (Incidentally, it's Pippins, Brownies and Girl Guides for New Zealand girls. Not sure what the boy organisations are called.) 29:Would you ever strip or pose nude in a magazine? >No, and it's almost entirely because of the stigma. I'd love to do comedy nudity like Air New Zealand, though. 30:When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper? >To my grandmother, shortly before she died in 2015. 31:Can you change the oil on a car? >I can't even drive a car. 32:Ever gotten a speeding ticket? >See #31, but my brother did when following my dad home in separate cars, and my dad apparently instructed the cop to make my brother squirm a little. XD 33:Ever ran out of gas? >See #31 34:Favorite kind of sandwich? >The meatball sandwich at Subway, with onion, green pepper, jalapenos, pickles and chipotle sauce. 35:Best thing to eat for breakfast? >The *best* thing is a nice egg, bacon, etc. breakfast when I eat out, but when I eat at home I just eat cereal. I eat it dry and drink milk on the side because I hate the texture cereal gets when it sits in milk for more than a couple of minutes. 36:What is your usual bedtime? >10ish. 37:Are you lazy? >No. 38:When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween? >We didn't really do Halloween all that much. We have a *bit* of trick or treating in New Zealand but it's not celebrated to the same extent as America. 39:What is your Chinese astrological sign? >The Rat. 40:Are you horny? >No. 41:Do you have any magazine subscriptions? >No. 42:Which are better legos or lincoln logs? >We don't have Lincoln Logs in New Zealand. I enjoyed playing with Lego, though. 43:Are you stubborn? >When it comes to personal things (as opposed to activism, where the rights of oppressed groups > the feelings of privileged groups), I tend to want to know *why* you want me to do something differently or see something differently, and I want you to not treat me like I'm defective or otherwise make it about my character when it's not appropriate to do so. If you're good about those things, I'll often consider what you're asking for. I still have some absolute non-negotiables, but I'm often willing to be flexible if I understand the reason and am being treated respectfully. 44:Who is better...Leno or Letterman? >Those are talk shows, right? I don't even know what kinds of talk shows we have in New Zealand (if any), but I do enjoy Jimmy Kimmel's Mean Tweets segments. 45:Ever watch soap operas? >I might watch a New Zealand one like Shortland Street, but it's more because I want to watch more of our own stuff. Local entertainment is vastly outnumbered by overseas entertainment, especially from America, and while I enjoy a lot of that stuff, I want to see my own country in the stuff I'm watching. 46:Are you afraid of heights? >I won't bungee jump but I don't mind just being up high. I like roller coasters and looking straight down from the Skytower, and I have used the words "That was the best turbulence I've had in a while." 47:Do you sing in the car? >If I drove, I totally would. 48:Do you sing in the shower? >If my flatmates aren't home. I also sing while cooking sometimes. 49:Do you dance in the car? >Again, if I drove, I would absolutely do this. 50:Ever used a gun? >I think we might have done rifle shooting at my school camp when I was 10 or so. 51:Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? >When I taught English in Japan and they did yearbook photos. This was almost 10 years ago. 52:Do you think musicals are cheesy? >NO THEY ARE AWESOME. 53:Is Christmas stressful? >It used to be, because I had all the stress of buying presents but didn't actually get to see my family. Last year was my first Christmas after coming back to NZ and when I did my Christmas shopping I was stressed because my mind hadn't adjusted. But then I got together with my family on Christmas and it was great. I don't think it's going to be so stressful next year. Still a little stressful because I have to make time for Christmas shopping during my industry's busy season, but not nearly as much as before. 54:Ever eat a pierogi? >No, but it'd be cool to try one. 55:Favorite type of fruit pie? >Apple or cherry. 56:Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid? >I didn't. I went from not knowing at all, to knowing I wanted to do something with Japanese (confession: when it came to choosing between Japanese and German, I think my choice to go with Japanese was influenced by a crush on the teacher...and it worked out! Like, obviously I didn't end up with her because non-creepy teachers aren't attracted to 17-year-olds, but I ended up in a good career.) Anyway, so I went from no idea to a moment of total clarity with what I wanted to study at university, then I went from no idea to a moment of total clarity when I decided that I wanted to be a translator. 57:Do you believe in ghosts? >Not really. 58:Ever have a Deja-vu feeling? >There have been a couple of minor occasions. 59:Take a vitamin daily? >Yes. 60:Wear slippers? >No, I don't like how they feel on my feet. 61:Wear a bath robe? >Only when I need to cover up in front of my flatmates. 62:What do you wear to bed? >Nightgown in summer, pyjamas in winter. 63:First concert? >A 90s revival concert just a couple of months ago! 64:Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart? >Over here, our main big box store is The Warehouse. It's pretty good, I go there quite often. 65:Nike or Adidas? >Nike's stuff seems to have caught my eye the most often. 66:Cheetos Or Fritos? >CHEETOS. When I used to get my friend to send me American chips, I always asked for Cheetos and Doritos. 67:Peanuts or Sunflower seeds? >They're both yummy. 68:Ever hear of the group Tres Bien? >No! Google isn't bringing up anything definitive either. 69:Ever take dance lessons? >I did yosakoi in Japan. It was alright, but I prefer dancercise, where the moves are very simple. I don't like learning a lot of moves. 70:Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing? >No. I try not to stereotype people based on their profession. 71:Can you curl your tongue? >No. 72:Ever won a spelling bee? >We didn't have those in New Zealand in my day. I heard on the news that a New Zealander qualified for the Scripps one year, but I think it's still not a part of our school culture and I kind of wish it was. I did do foreign language contests when I was in high school, though! I won a bunch of times and placed high a bunch of other times. 73:Have you ever cried because you were so happy? >Mostly when reading reassuring messages. 74:Own any record albums? >No, but my parents do and I own the mp3 versions of some of their stuff. 75:Own a record player? >No, but my parents do. 76:Regularly burn incense? >No. I have a stuffed toy whose smell is comforting to me, and incense would change its smell. Also, my boss's neighbour's house burned down because she lit candles and knocked one over or something. 77:Ever been in love? >No, but I've had a crush and it was fun. 78:Who would you like to see in concert? >Really any of the artists I like, as long as it doesn't take a lot of effort for me to go. Like, if the tickets sell out in an hour, no. If I have to queue for a long time, no. This revival concert had assigned seating and didn't sell out too quickly. 79:What was the last concert you saw? >The revival concert. 80:Hot tea or cold tea? >None. 81:Tea or coffee? >I will sometimes drink a very milky/chocolatey coffee, like mochaccino or latte, but I mostly prefer water.   82: Sugar or snickerdoodles? >Both sound really good! 83:Can you swim well? >No. 84:Can you hold your breath without holding your nose? >You mean underwater? No. 85:Are you patient? >Moderately. I can generally turn it on if I need to when I'm dealing with people, but if my computer's running slow, then to quote The Wolf of Wall Street, it's "fuck" this, "shit" that, "cunt", "cock", "asshole". 86:DJ or band, at a wedding? >Probably DJ, but unless it's my wedding, I don't really care. 87:Ever won a contest? >Multiple foreign language contests in high school, multiple colouring contests in my early to mid teens, including a PlayStation that my brother was ecstatic about (I liked colouring before it was cool!) and I also won a huge hamper of beauty products a few years ago. I ended up donating most of the beauty products to a DV shelter, though, because I didn't use them. I still use the towel and placemats that came with it, though. 88:Ever have plastic surgery? >No. 89:Which are better black or green olives? >I don't think I've tried green olives. The black ones are alright, but I'm not a huge fan. 90:Can you knit or crochet? >No. 91:Best room for a fireplace? >The lounge...of a house that somebody else is responsible for. Like, if my live-in landlady or one of my family or friends got one, I'd think it was cool, but I don't want to be solely responsible for one because I'd be scared of setting the house on fire. 92:Do you want to get married? >Probably; it seems to carry certain legal benefits that I'd want to have in a long-term relationship. 93:If married, how long have you been married? >Not married. 94:Who was your HS crush? >My Japanese teacher, who was younger then than I am now. 95:Do you cry and throw a fit until you get your own way? >No, but I cry over things that seem inconsequential because there's deeper stuff going on below the surface. For example, last weekend I tried to go to the gym but my key didn't work. I cried when I got home, not because I couldn't handle waiting until Monday to speak to the staff about it, but because I felt like I'd somehow done something wrong that I needed to be embarrassed about. I used some anxiety techniques to deal with that, then had a reasoned conversation about it during their staffed hours. 96:Do you have kids? >No. 97:Do you want kids? >No. 98:Whats your favorite color? >Pink. 99:Do you miss anyone right now? >Nope!

[supaliaxpress]

Episode 12 Goblin Review: An absolute fate that is beyond human beings’ eternities

OMG!! Episode 12 was such a wild ride... I don’t even know where to begin! DAMN, GR made me fall in love with him 12 times over in this episode! Warning: This review is gonna be super long. 

So that bastard Joong Won wasn’t dead after all and had the audacity to approach Eun-tak with his disgusting hands. Idk... her ghosts friends were being awfully weird. Thank goodness she didn’t touch his hand and told them to leave. After experiencing a frightening sight, Eun-tak ensures that she has a lighter in each and every one of her jackets (fuck, I’d do the same too and even put a back up lighter just incase). Then we see a depressed Sunny as she tries to make up her mind about GR, but it didn’t matter anyways cause Sunny knew she would finish in 7 shots and started with “I want to date him.” As for GR, he discusses with a grim reaper friend that he wants to have his memories back despite the painful longing and the consequences that come with remembering them. Shin notices that GR hasn’t been well lately and tries to find out the reason for GR’s behavior, but Eun-tak comes looking for GR’s help to translate Shin’s journal. She finally finds out that the journal wasn’t a love letter, but instead the words she was told by DH were Shin’s personal thoughts. This causes a domino effect causing Shin, GR, and Eun-tak to finally realize the many “mysterious” things that DH has done and said. 

The conversation between DH and Samshin was finally revealed - showing a very different DH from what we know. Samshin questions this his motives and why he brought them together, while he answers back, “It was fate.” This mysterious DH speaks with a presence of almighty and knowing... which suggests that God has always been listening and watching. The most interesting thing was when God said, “All God does is ask questions.” This means that God asks questions because he already knows the answers, but it’s up to ourselves to discover them, to think through them, and to make our own choices based on what we believe. With the scene of the butterflies flying out from DH’s body, it suggests that God has been inhabiting DH’s body to watch over Shin and GR. The look on their faces was priceless as they couldn’t believe that God was in front of them all this time, such as the saying, “God is closer than you think.”

Though Sunny knows GR’s identity of being a grim reaper, the first thing that concerned her was if there were any female ghosts who approached him. This shows that Sunny is quite strong-minded for accepting GR’s position as a grim reaper and just how amazing her attention and consideration to people’s situation (To both Eun-tak and the grim reapers who came to eat at her restaurant). Joong Won stirred trouble by approaching the female grim reaper, who was a maidservant during Goryeo, to discover her past by touching Sunny; apparently she committed a huge crime but we don’t know what she may have done exactly to put her in that situation (Maybe she was conspiring with Joong Won? Or maybe she did something to pit Wang Yeo against Kim Sun?). From the earlier confrontation with God, GR contemplated over about what God meant when he said, “I’ve never erased your memories. You made the choice to erase them.” He probably felt conflicted after learning that it was HIM who chose to erase his memories... not God - therefore this suggests that people who become grim reapers choose their own fate to erase their memories. 

I wasn’t prepared for it... our loving Grandpa passed away due to a heart attack. It was heart-wrenching to watch GR informed Shin of Grandpa’s death and how Shin asked GR to take care of him because, “I don’t want him feeling sorry toward me, even in his last moments... he mustn’t be tethered down to anyone in his next life, but live freely.” The way how DH looked when he realized what had happened and watching Shin cry as he mourned for Grandpa’s death killed my soul, “A man who was good-hearted every moment of every day rests here.” Eun-tak provided the best form of comfort: a hug in silence. During times of pain and sorrow, sometimes a silent hug is what people need the most because they just need to know that there’s someone there for them. With Eun-tak’s childhood, she gave the best advice, “That’s why the people left behind have to live their lives to the fullest,” because she is trying to do that herself for her mother. DH showed so much growth with the passing of his Grandpa and it was touching how GR, Shin, and Eun-tak tried their best to cheer him up with their own gifts (I loved how GR cut the apples into bunnies, Shin made his special dish, and Eun-tak was willing to give her camera to him, lol). Despite DH’s feelings of regret, it was very mature and thoughtful of him when he went to dust the candelabras/silverware, “I’m worried that Grandpa might be fretting over this.” He even acknowledged Secretary Kim as the CEO and how he has much to learn from the bottom up before becoming the man his Grandpa was, “I’ll learn everything well, from the bottom up.... how to play baduk, too. And I’ll become a good older brother, father, and grandfather to you.” 

Firstly, I’m so glad that Secretary Kim is not Joong Won! And secondly, we see that Grandpa leaves behind two letters with one for DH (his credit card T.T) and the other for him (his name is Kim Do Young). His letter said, “If someone whose last name is Kim and first name is Shin, meaning “belief” comes and says “I’ve come to claim what is mine,” give him everything. Everything I’ve left behind is his. He will walk through the rain and disappear with a blue spark. If he does that, know that that man is truly Kim Shin.” From what Grandpa wrote, it almost sounds like he knows Shin’s fate and this might be how he “returns to nothingness” - or how the drama might end for Shin. First, it’s important to note how he took the time to explain Shin’s name meaning “belief” and I think this suggests that Shin must believe in himself, the people he loves, and maybe God (regain his faith in the gods) to attain peace. And once he “walks through the rain” which symbolizes spiritual rebirth (or overcoming an obstacle) after he claims what is his, Shin will “disappear with a blue spark” which might be him “returning to nothingness.” Disappear with a blue spark could mean that 1) Shin will be reborn as a human after the sword is removed or 2) he will go to heaven. Why? Blue symbolizes stability (truth) and, also, heaven. Sparks symbolize a new source for a flame which can possibly be interpreted as a “new life” for Shin; thus the future of Eun-tak calling out to the “President” could actually be SHIN!! :O DH and Samshin walked pass each other again as the same in ep 1, but this time DH being himself. We learn that he is the “child who has nothing but kindness. And because of that, you brighten the world,” which is the DH that we all know. 

GR expressed his feelings of jealousy towards Shin for being an uncle and, for a split second, Shin saw Wang Yeo’s face in GR which surprised him. We then learn that Shin’s solider friend, Kim Woo Shik, was reborn and had applied to work for his company. Shin sees Eun-tak off on her first day of college and he presents her the necklace he bought in Canada, “It means “a fate decided by the heavens” in French.” This necklace is significant because it represents how their relationship was fated by God, but at the same time Shin took action into his own hands to ensure that he was the one who bought the necklace from 10 years into the future. Also, gifting a necklace usually symbolizes a strong connection between the giver and the receiver. Just saying, but what a perfect use and advertisement of SNOW when Eun-tak sent him a picture showing off her new necklace and to assure him that she’s safe, but I’ve also noticed how the word “death” is used often as a pun in this drama. I cried when Shin reunited with his friend, hired him, and how CEO Kim spoke to him with respect while presenting the gifts to Shin’s friend, “Because you saved the country in your past life.” T.T 

Ah, I love how Eun-tak is not ashamed to do cute stuff with Shin! But most of all, I love how she’s always thinking of what she can do for him such as giving him the money to repay Sunny so that he can see his sister. And I love it even more that she initiated the kiss and left Shin flustered, “Small and tiny mean the same thing. I want to come here every day.” But damn, that Joong Won just had to ruin my mood by showing up and revealing to Eun-tak that GR is Wang Yeo. But most of all, he’s causing trouble because he “wishes for their demise.” This obviously left Eun-tak conflicted, especially when GR came to talk with Eun-tak about him, Sunny, and Shin being connected in the past and about his true identity. With this conversation, GR resolved to confront Sunny, return her memories so that she could remember Shin, confirm if he was apart of her past, and erase her “sad and difficult memories” along with him so that she can live a normal life. It was so sad how GR decided to let Sunny go as his answer to the question as to why he chose to erase his own memories, “I, who gives you nothing but wrong answers hope that this, at the very least, is the right answer.” OMG!! Their kiss was so deep filled with longing for each other, but at the same time with sadness because they can’t be together. But it made me so happy to see Sunny greet her brother with her memories back and the joy on Shin’s face realizing that his sister remembers him. 

However a shocking revelation, Eun-tak cannot see ghosts anymore! :O Why? I’m not exactly sure but it may be connected to Joong Won’s appearance or it may be God’s doing? Or it may also be due to her becoming an adult and no longer considered a child because only children can see ghosts? But I was so glad that she at least told Shin about Joong Won - I was beginning to wonder when she was going to tell him. Finally Shin and Joong Won met again after 900 years - it seemed like Joong Won was “hunting,” which gangshi do hunt for life source during nighttime. BUT WHY CAN’T SHIN KILL THAT MOTHERFUCKER DAMNIT, “You can’t slice away the 900 years of history we have together.” Essentially, what he meant was that something stronger and meaningful can only kill him because you can’t change what happened between them no matter how much you try to cut it away. Also, if Joong Won really is a gangshi... they can’t be killed by swords. He revealed to Shin that Wang Yeo has been beside him all along and Shin realized it was the truth when he confronted Sunny. It hurt my heart when Shin said to Sunny that she insists on protecting that idiot even in this lifetime... Shin must have felt betrayed, but knew it was inevitable. GR finally confirms to himself that he’s Wang Yeo when he went to the temple and understood why he erased his memories, “It seems that I was the source of the worst memories, after all.” Shin can hear GR’s thoughts and approached him while walking up the stairs just as he did 900 years ago, but this time Shin finally reached the king and was able to deliver the message that he couldn’t relay before he died, “Your Commanding General Kim Shin... is here to see you, Your Majesty.” 

But if you watched towards the end, we get a scene of the King holding the robes of Kim Sun and he asks, “These beautiful clothes have no owner... are you searching for them, perchance?... you may take them.” This may mean that he regretted killing her and, despite even holding onto her clothes after death, she wasn’t coming back to him. Therefore, he burnt her clothes so that maybe she may finally rest in peace (finally letting her go). 

So in conclusion, all the players are in place and the climax of the series will happen in the next episodes: the Goblin, the Bride, the King/GR, the Queen/sister, and the evil Eunuch. Now that we know Shin can’t simply kill Joong Won at any convenient time and Shin and the King finally meet again, perhaps Shin will be able to “save” Wang Yeo this time and they may be able to defeat Joong Won together. However, despite all of these answers - new questions were created. Why can’t Eun-tak see the ghosts? What will Shin do next? Did Sunny really forget GR? How do you kill that bastard Joong Won? Was this God’s plan? Personally, I think Sunny didn’t forget GR/Wang Yeo because, despite she had a tragic ending, I believe she cherished every moment with Wang Yeo/GR and that’s how Shin was able to confirm that Wang Yeo was indeed GR. Therefore, even if GR erased her sad memories, she has the happy memories of him and she died as “the woman who loves him who is the sister of a traitor.” In the next episodes, we’ll definitely learn more about Wang Yeo and how he lived his life after killing Shin’s family. We finally learn that God has been watching all this time and was the reason for how things happened the way it did. Also, there was another death card announcement for Eun-tak and I think it might be related to Joong Won? Ugh.. I just want Shin and GR to make up so that they can kill that bastard and then run to their woman and never let them go in this lifetime. T.T 

Other Reviews:

Episode 1-4 Review: Our Homegirl Eun-tak

Episode 5 Review: 10 years into the future, You’re still beautiful and bright as ever, but I’m not the one beside you

Episode 3-6 Review: I can’t help but stare at your smile (Grim Reaper x Sunny Relationship Review)

Episode 6 Review: If you had really been a bad person, he only would’ve created a Goblin, and not the Goblin’s Bride

Episode 7-8 Review: It couldn’t be helped that this was the beginning of this tragic love story (Grim Reaper x Sunny Relationship Review)

Episode 7 Review: Is the thing that I’m trying to steal one more glimpse of… my own immortal life? Or, is it your face?

Episode 8 Review: I beseech the heavens and ask that, on a certain day, after 100 years, on an adequate day… I can finally tell her she was my first love

Episode 9-10 Review: I was thinking about whether or not I should hold your hand one more time (Grim Reaper x Sunny)

Episode 9 Review: I’d like it if I could use that as an excuse to continue on living on… together, with you

Episode 10 Review: Your magic doesn’t work on me.. you can never escape me

Episode 11 Review: So you did come and go for a moment in my life

Episode 13 Review: My Life must have been a reward because I met you

Episode 14 Review: Please, someone save me from this curse

Episode 15 & 16 Review: The Person left behind must go on living life

Deok Hwa and Grandpa Theory Review: From this moment on, this child will serve you, your Lordship

Important Anon Question regarding Pedophilia

[littledonkeyburrito]

Another

1. What do you want for your birthday? I don’t even know what I want for christmas. Wait, yes I do. Money, I want money

2. What’s your favorite flavor of tea? I like peach iced tea, and I like japanese cold milk tea

3. What’s your favorite fall drink? I don’t really have one.

4. What’re you going to be for Halloween? Home alone. Not like the movie, just the state of being.. y’know.. at home on my own.

5. Are you satisfied with how you’ve spent your year? Fuck yes I am

6. What’s something you’ve learned lately? That Anna’s birthday is January 23rd

7. Do you have a lot of friends? I have about half a dozen good friends.

8. Do you own a yellow scarf? I do not own any scarves because I find them extremely uncomfortable. When I was younger I had a very sensitive/ticklish neck to the point where nobody could touch it, which was interesting during self defence practice at karate for choking stuff. But now it’s just regular sensitive which is probably the reason I like being kissed on the neck so much.

9. Do you own brown shoes? I don’t.

10. Do you own anything leopard print? Good lord no

11. Will you buy a cake for your next birthday? No

12. Are you counting down the days until your birthday right now? No

13. Are you excited for something currently? I guess I’m mildly interested (not quite excited) to see if I get a call back about any of the resumes I’ve sent out

14. If you could change just one thing about your life right now, what would it be? I would have a lot more money and I would book a flight for this week to go somewhere in europe.

15. What’s your favorite color? Purple

16. Have you ever been to a school dance? Just my grade 11 formal. My school didn’t really do a lot of dances

17. Are you artistic? When I was a kid I enjoyed writing. As a teenager I was very musical. But not so much anymore.

18. Is there a tree right outside your bedroom window? No

19. Is it raining? No 

20. What’s something about you that makes you different from everyone else? I’m not different from everyone else. I am just an average person

21. Do you dress the same way as your peers? I guess?

22. Do you talk the same way as your peers? I tend to swear a bit more than them

23. Do you have the same life goals as your friends? I don’t know what mine or my friends’ life goals are

24. Are you having a good day? It has been uneventful

25. Is your hair red? No, but half my family are redheads

26. Do you like brownies? Yes, a lot.

27. Have you ever dressed up as a witch on Halloween? I think I have dressed up for halloween maybe twice in my life? Never as a witch

28. What’s one color that you never wear because it doesn’t look good on you? I hate wearing salmon colours. Like in between pink and orange. I don’t know if it looks okay on me but I just really don’t like the colour

29. Do you eat vegetables? Yes, I make an effort to vegetables most days so I can stay healthy. Hardly ever eat fruit anymore though so at least I eat a carrot every now and then

30. Do you wear leggings? Not usually, but I am wearing some today

31. Is there anybody you think is hot over the age of 40? There’s some attractive 40+ celebrities but nobody I know personally

32. Who is the most inappropriate person you know? Uhh no idea

33. Did anything bad happen to you in August? Not that I can think of

34. Who in your phone has a heart after their name? Nobody, I don’t do that

35. What was the last movie you watched? With who? I watched Thor 2 the other night. Alone.

36. Anything you’re avoiding? Not really?

37. If your parents searched your room, would they be angry at what they’d find? No. I don’t own anything interesting.

38. Do you think your last ex deserves to die? No, of course not. He’s a sweet guy. We only ended it because I was moving to Europe

39. Do any girls like the last guy you kissed? I don’t know

40. Honestly, are things going the way you planned? I had no plans

41. Have you done anything sexual today? No

42. Honestly, do you hate the last boy you were talking to? Why would I be talking to them if I hate them?

43. Describe your most recent purchase: Milk and a bottle of coke

44. Did you enjoy the last movie you watched in theatres? I believe it was Spiderman Homecoming and yes I did enjoy it a lot

45. Do you take the subway train often (if your city has one)? Whenever I have to go somewhere that’s outside the inner city 46. What shoes did you wear today? I did not wear any

47. Who was the last person to leave you a comment on Facebook? On one of my posts? One of my Dad’s friends

48. Does your sibling have a significant other? I thought no but Mum told me the other day that he had a date. We don’t share much with each other and I don’t think either of us usually share details of our romantic lives with out parents

49. Have you ever cried at a real wedding? I don’t think so, but my Grandma is notorious for balling at family weddings

50. How would you feel if a girl asked your boyfriend out for a drink? I don’t have a boyfriend

51. Do you use Skype? No

52. What do your flipflops look like? They are black and were like $2 from Big W about 4 years ago. I prefer closed in shoes.

53. Describe a poster on your wall. I haven’t had a poster on my wall in years

54. Are there any gadgets of yours that need charging right now? I need to fix the strap on my fitbit and charge it. The strap broke like a month ago in Colombia

55. What do you use to remove makeup? I don’t wear makeup

56. Tilt your head up and look straight ahead. Describe what you see. This is my ceiling: 

57. Any idea what time you’ll be going to bed tonight? Probably around midnight

58. Do you think George Clooney is hot? He is an attractive man but he doesn’t exactly get my juices flowing

59. Have you ever bought a lottery ticket (and even better: won?) I have never bought a lotto ticket

60. What colour is your keyboard? Black

61. Do you keep the plastic/paper/whatever bags after you buy stuff? Yeah I have a little stash of plastic bags

62. Do you own any high waisted pants? I can’t stand high waisted pants but I have a couple of midrise which are high for me

63. What’s the craziest thing you’ll ever do to your hair? I went purple once

64. Do you know anyone who has two different coloured eyes? There was a kid called Jason that went to my primary school and he had one blue eye and one green eye

65. Do you wanna be a pirate or an elf? I’m fine as just me thanks

66. Have you ever purchased anything online? Of course I have. I’m not 80.

67. What’s your favourite classic Disney movie? I don’t really have a favourite. I was never hooked on all those disney princess movies

68. Gold or silver accessories? Gold, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because my dad used to be a jeweller and he kind of ingrained in my head that silver is shit.

69. Would you have minded living in the 18th century? Netflix and air travel didn’t exist. So I’ll stick with the 21st thanks

70. Have you ever been called a skank/slut because of the way you dress? No

71. Name all your friends whose name starts with the 4th letter of your first name. Um... I have a friend called David

72. What websites do you absolutely have to visit daily (or at least, every time you get to go online)? Facebook I guess

73. Have you ever ridden an elephant? I have.

74. Where did you get that outfit you’re wearing now? The shirt was bought from redbubble.com and I got the leggings in a store in Japan because I was cold

75. How old were you when you got your first cellphone? Thirteen

76. Weren’t you just tingling with excitement? No

77. How many belts do you own? One

78. If you had to live with one pair of shoes, what would they be? Ideally they’d be my maroon converse but they are kind of dying now and I should probably throw them out soon tbh

79. What do you use your cellphone for, aside texting and calls? My simcard actually won’t let me send texts for some reason and in 9 months I haven’t needed to so I never went back to the shop to fix it. I hardly ever make calls. I basically just use it for internet.

80. Did you ever ride a limo? A couple of times when I was a kid my dad would splurge on a limo and it was always such fun

81. Do you use a lot of hair products? Just one. It smells like Lemon Myrtle

82. Do you ever wonder what your life looks like to someone else’s eyes? It probably looks really fun. And they’d be right.

83. Did you ever stay up all night? Yeah

84. Do you like cracking your knuckles? I do it a lot but it’s not necessarily because I actively enjoy it

85. What colour is your car? I don’t have a car anymore but back in Aus I had a silver car

86. Did you ever do something you promised yourself not to? As a 14yo I probably told myself I’d never try drugs

87. Do you like paranormal stuff? I’m not interested in it although it has apparently been established that my apartment is haunted by pirate ghosts who just want to party with me

88. Did you accomplish your New Years Resolutions last year?
 I don’t make new years resolutions. If I’m going to change something, I’ll change it. Don’t need a specific date to occur for that to happen.

89. What are you passionate about? Travel

90. Are you guilty of internet slang? I suppose so

91. Is your life balanced right now? It could do with some income and a reason to get out of my apartment (ie. I need a job)

92. What’s your favorite scent? I don’t think I have a favourite but I am a big fan of the smell of coles brand lemon washing powder back in aus

93. Do you over-analyze things? Sometimes

94. Do you have a good sense of direction? It’s not too bad actually. 

95. Are you excited for what the future holds for you? I’m curious

96. Is your bathroom fairly clean or quite untidy? I prefer to keep my whole apartment tidy. I don’t like deep clean every day but nothing gets left out on the floor or tables or whatever. 

97. Do you think you have a “black sheep” in your family and who? My brother. But he has some pretty wicked social anxiety so he doesn’t enjoy family gatherings at all and that’s why he seems like the odd one out.

98. Do you think weed should be legal and why or why not? It is legal here and it doesn’t cause any problems

99. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to live in a tent for a year, would you? $10k is not enough money for a year. I’d rather live in a nice apartment and be on a salary of $55k like I used to be 

100. Who are some of your favorite bands? Foo Fighters, Green Day, Genitallica, Maroon 5. Not bands but also Ricky Martin, Alvaro Soler and Enrique Iglesias

[popculturebuffet]

Top 10 Regular Show Episodes

Close Enough is Close! 2 more days and a show i’ve waited without hyperbole years for will finally land offically. While i’ve seen three episodes preelease, one because of a french film festival the other two because HBO made an oopsie, and it’s more than likely i’ll be seeing those episodes again thursday, it dosen’t make it any less special, as with an offical release comes the fandom finally becoming a thing and the ablility to watch the episodes over and over again.. on computer till HBO gets it’s shit together but still. IT’s a great time.  And my hype for the show made me revisit it’s big brother: Regular Show. Created by what would happen if you condesned california into a person, JG Quintel, Regular Show, as you all damn well know but I like doing anyway so as rigby would say, STOP TALKING, was about two slackers and best bros: Laidback hipster and hurricane when it came to talking to women, Mordecai and Rigby a high strung, idiotic, impulsive, and frequently angry racoon who worked, when they absolutley had to, at a park. Joining them at the park were their coworkers and later closest friends: Benson, their constnatly angry boss who constnatly belts out empty threats to fire them and has a rather sad personal life, Skips, a centuries old yeti whose literally seen it all and despenses advice for the duo and is voiced by everyone’s faviorite grandpa/jedi/murder clown Mark Hamill, Muscle Man, a grotesque blob of a man who likes  “My mom” jokes and breaking things, Hi Five Ghost, Muscle Man’s sidekick who got like.. one episode focusing on him alone over 8 seasons moving on, and Pops, an odd but unfailingly sweet and kind vicotrian era gentleman whose also basically immortal and is Bensons’ boss in name only.  The Park Crew spend their days working, or in our main duo’s case trying to get out of work to do anything else,  while dealing with every day issues that would quickly ballon into insanity. Getting pops a birthday present of Fuzzy Dice from a local pizza place ended up with the crew having to fight a bunch of anamatonic animals that were stashing diamonds in there. Trying to get concert tickets involved getting caffine from the nipples of a giant sentient coffee bean in order to stay awake long enough to do the extra work. And Mordecai trying to delete an embrarassing message off his crush Margret’s voice mail lead to him and rigby getting hauled in front of a bunch of a message guardians, one of which is a sentient smoke signal that wanted to burn them while the other replied with “we’ree not going to burn them when have we ever burned anybody”... I love and miss those guys. Oh and it’s resolved by having to playt he embarassing song he sang while said message beings groove to it then ask him to colaberate with them on their album. THis show was on all the drugs and I am all the hear for it. I could go all day obviously but this section is long enough as is, let’s move on. 

Regular Show came at JUST the right time for Cartoon Netowork: Similar to how the 80s doom patrol comic started off really bland and cookie cutter and not at all doom patrol and then grant morrison came in, had hte previous writer kill almost everything, then rebuilt it from scratch with crazy, CN had few shows left and was coming off a really terrible attempt at competeing with NIck and Disney Channel’s live action dommance with a bunch of dude broy reality shows and other ill conceved ideas. The network had a few shows, Total Drama, The Clone Wars which got better and I need to watch those better seasons at some point, but they weren’t enough to make the network thrive again.  SO enter adventure time and regular show: BOth were creative, funny , a bit rough around the ages, and kind of nuts, but both were massive hits: The shows hit almost every demographics sweet spots: Kids like the bright colors, fun designs, and insanity, teens loved the edgy bits of the humor and also the insanity and 20 somethings and older both found refrences they got and loved, and well.. insanity. I mean being fucking nuts but also wonderful is kind of the watchword for most animation nowadays. While in the past in my own head i’ve played down Regular Show’s part in things, after all it came second and had a rough patch I told myself.. but I was wrong. Both shows had a lot of the same elements; insane stuff, great voice acting and good humor especially as they evolved.. but both also evolved in largely the same way and that way helped change animation for the next decade: Both, despite being comeidies, regular show keeping to it a bit more than adventure time did as they evolved, had the characters grow, something a lot of animated comedies didn’t do as much ast the time, even the good ones. THey had season long arcs, things that are now standard features in most cartoons for good reason were MADE standard by these shows. It’s just regular show’s legacy got diluted by shows that TRIED to copy it but both failed to see that it grew past season one or that it’s being okay for kids but really based in adult life and problems meant copycats like fanboy and chum chum, sanjay and craig and breadwinners, all thankfully long dead, eventually sputtered out and died. That and Nick is REALLY shitty at maintaing shows or treating creators with anything resembling respect. Somehow Teen Titans Go is still alive despite having similar failings but you can’t win everything. It didn’t help gravity falls came along right after and proceded to be even more influentail than both of these shows. Hmmm I just realized I haven’t done any gravity falls reviews here.. I gotta get on that. But while the show got eclipsed in quality and popularity I do still think it holds up for the most part as funny, charming and with , for the most part, good character arcs, it’s just that a bit of incosntientcy, some abrubtly done actions and a REALLY fucking terrible arc in season 6 dull the show a bit in comparison to what came after, but I do realize now it’s still worht watching, remembering and laughing at. It may of not been the greatest, but damn it was good.  So with my nostaliga for the show popping up, my faith in it restored, and it’s sucessor showing up in a few days, I decided to do a little something for the ocassion. I WAS going to do a full on review, but had troulbe finding an episode as some of my faviorites are part of a larger arc that was hurt by a later arc, and the show ping ponged between slice of life and utter insanity enought hat it was hard to peg down to jus tone or two episodes. So while I WILL review the show eventually, it has both good and bad episodes needing it, I decided instead to dig out something I hadn’t done in far too long: a top whatver lists! Now while I do get these things are clickbaity, because they are, I.. honestly just love making them. Even if i’ts not for any specific purpose I just love ranking, the stress, even if I normally hate stress given my anxiety, of trying to narrow them down, and the satisfaction of taking a ton of episodes and melting htem down into the best of them. And with a show as long and varied as regular show, If igured this was the best way to show it off before I dived into it eventually. I’ll obviously be doing more top, and bottom lists in the future, but for now this seemd like a godo place to get back to it. As  Now a few more things before we finally get started. Yes I know i’ve gone on for a few years now but i’m almost done. This list is obviously, my opinon. If you disagree fine, and feel free to comment or shoot me an ask about it but I stand by my list and what I choose. I had to boil down over 60 episodes I picked to possibly  be on the list and even after it was down to 40 cuts were really difficult, .. Also just as a quick note there are no episodes from seasons 1, 6, 7 and 8, and that’s not on purpose, as the last two seasons are really good, it just fell out that way and i’m sorry about it. So with that out of the way grabs some sodas and wings, get out your maxi gloves, and bring out your best sentient earworms wearing sunglassses, after the cut I count down the top 10 Regular Show episodes. OOOOOOOOO!

10. I Like You, Hi (Season 5, Episode 26) As you’ll be able to tell by the rest of this list Season 5 is my faviorite, and it’s where I feel the series hit it’s peak before next season lead to it’s valley. It’s got a ton of great episodes, as this list will attest, some great character development, and was still really damn funny.  But what put it over the top for me was the Mordecai and CJ arc. At the end of the last season as you probably know the show wrote out Margret, having her finally get into college like she’d wanted since she got an actual character back in “Camping Be Cool” instead of just being “that hot girl mordecai really likes but is too scared to persue”, and another fantastic episode we’ll be getting to, Mordecai was in position to move on.  Re-Enter CJ. CJ was introduced earlier in the season 3 ep “Yes Dude Yes” which itself is really good, where Mordecai thought margret was engaged and with Rigby’s encouragment, ended up meeting CJ, stands for Cloudy Jay if your curious, a sentient cloud voiced by the wonderful LInda Cardenelli, aka wendy from gravity falls and currently co star of the equally wonderful show Dead to Me. Seriously go check it out on netflix, it’s really good. It naturally went pearshaped since Margret wasn’t engaged, he tried going out with both, she turned into a thunderstorm out of rage... as you do.. it’s like the season 6 plot but less infurating and more understandable.  But the two remeet, and had a kiss on new years while not knowing it’s the other person under am ask.. and then CJ ran and both thought the other was upset: MOrdecai for him being MOrdecai, and CJ for running out on him and agreed to be friends. That didn’t last, though it did give us another classic on this list, as while exes can be friends and all, the two still had something between them. Thus came this one. And it was a hard one as it barely inched out the finale of their relationship arc, Real Date, which had the ceo of a dating company try to break them up and be really damny funny but it’s ulitmatley this one being just as hilarious while being a great character piece that gets it the rub.  As the episode opens Mordecai and CJ have been spending a LOT of time together and i’ts clear there’s a spark there.. but Mordecai insists it’s platonic. And yes there is a bad habit of animation being unable to accept females and males who are into the oppistie sex can’t be friends without being attracted to each other. It’s being cleared up more lately, but as Star Vs showed it still happens sometimes. But it works here: The two STARTED with dating, made out on new years, and are attracted to each other it’s just clear both were in denial about it. It’s not saying “well they have chemstiry so fuck their partners’ like star vs or “if you loved someone once those feelings will return and destroy yoru current relationship” like next season.... season 6′s arc is a tirefire burn it.  But the issue is forced when, while texting about an extreme baking show together while CJ’s at her job at a sports bar, it autocrrects from Yuji, the show’s host, to you hi, sending the title message “I like you, hi”. Mordecai, being even less adept with his feelings and anxiety towards women than me and trust me that’s saying something, spirals and we do get the episodes best scene, narrowly beating out it’s climax, where Mordecai summons a war council.. aka the rest of the main cast minus benson but plus Thomas, the intern who I wish stuck around longer even after he turned out to be a russian spy because they ran out of ideas for him, voiced by Roger Craig Smith and distractingly using his future sonic voice. 

I just.. love everything about the scnee. From the term pulling a mordecai, to Rigby joining in, deservedly as he’s had front row seats for a lot of this bollocks, to everyone’s suggestions especially Muscle Man’s half assed one that somehow, but unsuprisngly, works for him and Starla.  Naturally Mordecai comes up with what Rigby HIMSELF admits is a Rigby level half assed scheme to get an actual photo with Yuji rather than just admit the truth. Yuji himself is an utter delight, having had his star not rise as fast as he’d like thanks to autocorrect and being entirely on board, and when it backfires as MOrdecai ends up autocorrected and sends the message thrice and gets sucked into the phone again, admits i’ts “pretty extreme’. I love the guy and i’m prety sure he showed up again, to my delight. 

In the phone Mordecai meets some old friends, the message guardians who I mentioned in the “insane shit this show has done” bit earlier: old forms of messaging who police texting, all voiced by Rich Fulcher of the Mighty Boosh and Snuffbox Fame. 

I love Rich and wish these guys could show up in close enough. Maybe they can, I don’t know how rights issues with turner properties work when it comes to two diffrent audiences entirely. Anyways what really makes the episode, besides the great callbacks in this scene, is when confronted with everything going on, Mordecai.. tries to run into the void, with Rigby, The Message Recorder and the Smoke Signal all encouraging him to come back. “There’s nothing out there for you, literally it’s just a blank void”. With the leading tape recorder pointing out from their text history not only how great CJ is but how much he seems to like her with Mordecai finally coming back and admitting the obvious: He does like her.. he’s just scared of beefing it again. Which he does but that’s not the point. Rigby, who as part of his character development helps Mordecai quite a bit with this stuff by being a neutral party, though he also likes CJ better than Margret which is a mood even though I don’t care which one you ship mordecai with frankly, you do you, I have my prefrences. And with that Mordecai finally texts her and asks her out, with her accepting via winky face.. with an added text to clarify it for his neuotic ass.. which is also a mood as my neuortic ass could use that a lot. Overall just a wonderful , hilarious and good bit of character growth.. that season 6 throws in the oven, but that’s a long rant for another day. On it’s own, “I LIke you, hi” is a good character piece for mordecai whlie still being really damn funny. 

9. Thanksgiving Special (Season 5, Episode 15)

Regular Show was really damn great at holliday specials. Their terror tales from the park every halloween were always a nice treat and a good replacement for Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” which still exists, it’s just no one cares at this point, and their christmas and new years episodes are both really damn good, the first Christmas Episode being in contention for this list even. But to me the best of the best was easily Season 5′s  thanksgiving episode. 

The premise is simple: Mordecai and Rigby accidnetly destroy thanksgiving dinner, which the park crew is having for everyone and their famllies and, refusing to take Benson trying to dismiss their attempts to help fix their mistake, end up joining a songwriting contest to try and win a Turducken.. a natural one that’s born every 1000 Years because this is regular show. To do this they have to beat a parody of everyone’s least faviorite president Donald Trump, Rich Buckner.  The fact that trump was basically the main villian of a holliday special a year before he became president is not lost on me and  is one of the most accurate depections of the man i’ve ever seen. The fact Rich steals the prize despite our boys winning from his blimp with a grappling hook is peak trump. The fact Trump has’nt stolen more things with a grappling hook in real life is only because his hands are too small to use one. 

Getting past our president for my own sanity, the episode also has really great subplots: Muscle Man and Fives go to  a sports bar to get sides and end up pissing off a former football player and getting into a touchdown dance comppetition, sadly not set to the super bowl shuffle, while Benson, Pops and Skips go to get a turkey and end up fighting over it with men dressed up like a piligrim, a first thanksgiving era native american and a turkey, to which they don’t even really give an explination for.. granted most explinatoins on this show are insane but even by regular show standards, this gets none. And I love it for it.  While as you can tell the episode is really damn funny, what really sells it is the emotional core: For once while they do fear for their jobs a bit Mordecai and Rigby’s main motivation in this messup is genuine guilt and wanting to fix their mistake, and they work hard at it, even giving a genuine and awesome heartfelt song that notches itself up with other thanksgiving classics “That thankstiginv themed soul sketch on snl” and adam sandler’s turkey song also from snl. Not a high bar but it’s really good regardless

The episodes’ real strength though is it’s emotional core: For once instead of saving their own asses or understadnably wanting to get one over on the cranky and in the worse written episodes obnoxiously overbearing benson, they simply feel terrible about possibly runing the meal for their arriving parents and everyone elses parents and families and their friends and work to right the wrong. It’s not the first time they worked to do something genuinely good with no benefit to themselves, but it’s probably the best and Benson’s I forgive you, while hilarious is also really sweet. And speaking of sweet

It ends on a really sweet and touching note, as Mordecai and Rigby, after escaping a blimp via a wish on a golden wishbone because of course, make it home to find the various weirdos the park crew met have brought them thanksgiving, and their parents will be there and we get a nice touching ending as the main duo get a well earned toast from Benson. Just an out and out amazing thanksgiving special and a good reminder of what the holiday means.

8. Trucker Hall of Fame (Season 3, Episode 37)

Moving on from Season 5 for a second, Season 3 was where the show really started to hit it’s stride to me. While Season 2 was a nice increase in quality from the sometimes choppy and heavy on “everyone is an asshole” comedy season 1, Season 3 was where the increased focus on the rest of the cast outside of our main duo balloned and what seeds of character were planted in season 2 beautifully bloomed. And this episode is one of the best examples of that.  This one focuses on Muscle Man, who earlier on was basically the main duo’s rival alongside his buddy high five ghost, and kind of a dick. While “Kind of a dick” never left any discription of Mitch Sorenstein, this and previous episode muscle woman showed there was more to the goblin man than we thought. It’s also one of regular show’s few early mostly serious episodes and unlike the benson ones, again this list was tough don’t come at me with a machete, and realy showed why muscle man is the human tire fire he is. The episode introduces, and quickly kills off, muscle dad, mitch’s dad who gave him a love of pranks and was a truck driver who died as he live: mistaking a fake bear for a real one during a prank. Muscle Man being not the most stable person on a GOOD day, spirals, as seen above, and Benson tasks mordecai and rigby, since Fives isn’t good with death ironically and isn’t holding up much better, and as a much later episode shows the two became besties in high school so he probably knew muscle dad for a good ten years so he’s probably not in a great place either, nice stuff, to go with him to put his dad’s ashes in the trucker hall of fame.  What follows is a sweet and damn sad episode. While Mitch’s frequent breakkdowns can be hilarous their also really sad and having lost my grandpa since this episode aired, I can relate to being fine one minute and a total shrieking wreck the next over the smallest thing. But it also shows that Mitch genuinely thinks of our main duo as his friends, and that beneath his testorrone positned exterior he’s a decent guy, being genuinely greatful. Of course being regular show the 3 end up squaring off with some truckers, while Mitch also grappels with the revelation his dad wasn’t one but a forklift opperator who faked being a trucker for his son’s benifit and dleft a tender note in his picture, figuring correctly his son would break it open when he found out... oh and because this show is still nuts his ghost ends up saving them at the end which is really sweet , as mitch decides trucker or no his ashes deserve to be there. Also his ghost shows up again at thanksgiving so apparently he can just come back once in a while, which is nice but dosen’t demnish the bittersweet feeling of this ep. And as I said the show has a good grasp on continuity as this ep marked a turning point for our main duo and muscle man: while the’yve bonded before after this, aside from mitch’s habit of christmas pranks and his faking his death, they really don’t nearly get as annoyed by him ever again. i’ts a sweet touching ride tha’ts uncharacristic of the show’s usual chaos but really works. 

7. A Bunch of Full Grown Geese (Season 4, Episode 19) After a few episodes that were more sentimental on this list, it’s good to get back to some good old regular show madness for this one, which was also the series 100th in production order and is a worthy milestone episode. Season 4 was really good building on the good will from Season 3 and FINALLY having payoff to the margret and mordecai thing, more on that in a bit. Not as much to say as seasons 3 or 5, but it was still spectacular.  The sequel to another ep, fittingly given it’s #100, full grown geese has our duo tasked with removing a bunch of obnoxious geese, with Benson in dick mode refusing to give the two more help, though it does lead to one of the show’s best scenes when he gives his usual your fried threat.. and fitting a milestone episode, Rigby calls him on never going through with it and the threat being as empty as my dreams. Benson responds by going nuts and angrishing them out of his office.. really funny. But yeah with the geese attacking them and , in their first attacking, poor pops, and no way to combat them, the two turn to the baby ducks, a bunch of baby ducks from the episode titled that who show up to help.. and this being the 100th episode of an already grant morrison level nuts show, it turns out the geese seek to conquer earth, voiced by david warner of course and have laser eyes.. and can combine. And the ducks do so again, mecha style, and add in our heroes and a bunch of call backs in one of the series best and most batshit sequences> The ending is also throughly satisfying as while our heroes win, Benson chews them out for tearing up the park in the process.. only for the ducks mom to call him out for not only yelling at the ducks, who are just kids, but at mordecai and rigby after they just saved the park from being a smoldering crater and not just trashed and he backs off. Just a fun episode where the crew just went nuts and the results speak for themselves. 

6. This is My Jam (Season 2, Episode 13)

Now this one I couldn’t NOT include. This is one of the series best even after it’s immense growth, and a beloved classic for a reason. And like the above it’s a good classic case of regular show hyjinks while also being relatable this time: Rigby gets a brainless but catchy pop song from the 90′s stuck in his head and despite growing to hate it, and Mordecai hating it because this episode establishes him as a hipster, and seemingly exercises it.. only for it to manifest as a GIANT CASETTE WEARING SUNGLASSES THAT PLAYS THE SONG JUST BY EXISTING AND DANCES CONSTANTLY. it’s utterly glorious and used to great effect, also annoying benson because he’s constnatly annoyed. To beat it the main duo get the rest of the park’s help at Skips suggestion to form a band and craft an even BIGGER earworm to cast it out. Oh and there’s a great scene where Pops is forced to awkwardly dance with the incarnation of the 90′s “But I won’t use my best moves”.  The climax also has one of Benson’s best moments as, after he’s irritated all episode, he comes in hot, with both the cast and audience expecting him to chew out mordecai and rigby.. only he’s mad because they forgot drums are key to an earworm and saves the day with his drumwork. It’s a great subversion and one of the first times Benson was more than just the angry but understandable, at times, dickhead boss. Just an utter standout and one of the show’s most memorable episodes for a reason. Also the line “you can’t touch music but music can touch you’ is great. 

5. Meteor Moves ( Season 4, Episode 28)

This one was a long time coming and to me is a great example of writers taking their own shortcomings and making something awesome out of them. I prefer that: instead of just retconning away bad writing use it as a tool.. I try to do that myself when possible. See early in the show as you all probably know, Mordecai’s crush on Margret was just a plot device: he had a crush on the cute waitress at the coffee shop so they used it to get him to do things. A gratioutis shot of her in bike shorts got him to bet all computer rights for life that sort of thing. The show.. wasn’t great with female characters till season 3 and even as it grew, as season 6 and just.. forgetting to give CJ a proper ending as a character shows, still grappled with it. It took writer Kat Morris saying “no no stop go to jail” to them wanting ot make CJ a difficult woman type, whatever horrifying thing that is. I don’t want to know, let’s move on. The point is it wasn’t till season 3 that Margret and her best friends, and Rigby’s future wife, Eileen got fleshed out a bit: Eileen got smarter and turned out to be good at wilderness stuff while Margret was chill, nice, if annoyed by the chaos around mordecai, and funloving, while also having a clear goal in stark contrast to her future boyfriend: going to college. Even after coming back it was botha fter finsihing college and to start a career. It wasn’t incredibly deep, but it made me not be ehhh to her mere existance like before. The show also started developing her and Mordecai’s relationship seriously with the two bonding and the previously shown Butt Dial showing for the first time, after previously having a terrible taste in men and then just not noticing his crush, that she was receptive to how mordecai felt. And the two had several moments and two dates even, it just.. never went anywhere for some reason.

And this was INFURATING to me: See back then shows had a tendency to just pop in love intrests SOLEY for plot fuel like margret with no intention of following through with things either through rejection or a relationsihp upgrade and by then I was sick of it. The whole spike and rarity thing in MLP (which to be clear I wanted her to just reject him but nope, even after I stopped watching she never did. ), Isabella and Phineas. I was fed up so I went from being “eh” about it to annoyed supremely.. but the thing is the writers realized this.. and course corrected. The first step was picking up Margret, where Mordecai agrees to pick her up to get her to the airport for a college interview and we get a nice deconstruction of things as Margret is anticpatiing things going wrong, and wrongly blames Mordecai for it.. I mean it is his fault sometimes but half the time weird shit just follows him. However she’s won over by him working past it, getting her there in time and kisses him.  That blew me away and made me think well it’s finally here.. and it was.. ALMOST. However the creators wisely, if frustratingly to past me, took one more episode to iron it out: Metor Moves has the two growing closer, and semi-going out, but Rigby pops mordecai’s bubble pointing out he never actually made a boyfriend girlfriend move and her move could’ve gone either way. So Mordecai , after seasons of being wishy washy and awkward, finally decides to go for it as he, rigby, eileen and margret go to a metor shower.  Being Regular Show it dosen’t go as planned as his attempted kiss is blocked by the guardians of the friend zone.. which is a real, phantom zone esque place here and that’s just fantastic. And it’s also clearly mocking the hell out of the concept, which is dumb. if you want to ask someone out just do it, I learned that the hard way. And if you really are friends, if she says no then you’ll accept it and keep a friend anyway as I have. But it’s clearly parodying it and Mordecai get sreplayed all the times he ALMOST made a move but didn’t but refuses to accept this clusterfuck, realizes he was a screwup when it came to this.. and kisses her.. and this time the two enter a relationship> Granted it barely lasted but still, it was nice while it did and this ep is just great for it. While not the funniest, it’s up this high because it took somethign the show did wrong.. and turned it on it’s head and into a character flaw and had mordecai grow past it, with a genuinely romantic moment on top as well as an utterly funny and batshit concept. It also had some Rigleen, as by this point rigby stopped being a hateful wastebasket to her and warmed up to her, and I regret there’s no reigleen episodes on this list. Their the shows best couple and utterly adorable. Just wanted to mention that at least once this list. 

4. Laundry Woes (Season 5, Episode 1) From the begining to the end. While sadly Morderet didn’t last too long in canon, which blows, it did give us some great episodes while it lasted, as with the above entry and their breakup in Steak Me Amedeus. As mentioned before Margret left for college, which while abrupt feeling did pave the way for great stories: The Mordejay arc mentioned above and that will pop up again very soon, This was one of them: the ep while lacking on laughs is a good emotional rollercoaster and starts with an amazing montage that catches us up from the end of season 4: Mordecai is miserable, as you’d expect and wallowing in it with Benson, of all people, letting him. And given Benson seems to have a heart attack any time Mordecai and Rigby aren’t working, that’s huge. But eventually his friends refuse to let it go on and in a really touching montage help him through it, taking him out places, giving him good times and eventually.. the fog starts to lift and he starts to enjoy himself and by the end.. he’s himself again. It’s one of the series best sequences, told with no dialouge and showing just how far the rest of the cast had come: Benson actually wants to comfort mordecai but is encouraged not to at first, underfstandably as it probably woudlnt’ help, and a crew that were once, aside from Pops who much like Krillin is everyone’s friend, just coworkers who barely tolerated each other, and are now close as family and help their own in need.  But Grief isn’t a straight line and just as Mordecai’s recovering he’s sent spiraling when he finds Margret’s sweater and uses ita s a flimsy excuse to go return it. It’s here I also get to talk about Rigby, who grew from an impatient idiot who hated Mordecai’s romantic endevors and actively sabtoaged them at times, to an understandting wing man who, while understandably frustrated with his best friend’s own idiocy with women, turned out to know more and be the wise council he needed, triggering both is relationships and only bailing out during the season 6 clusterfuck and even then was there to comfort him after it was all over and go to his aid to pull him out of another misery hole. And here he gives Mordecai the hard truth: He shoudln’t do this, it’s just going to tear both him and margret up again and he just put himself back together. He’s not going to let his best friend do this to himself. And while there is a supernatural elment, the sweater comes to life and tries to get Mordecai to force margret back with him and give up college, likely voicing his darkest wants that he hates himself for wanting, but it feels more like a manfiestation of Mordecai’s own issues than the usual madness. Like “Trucker hall of Fame”, a rare senntence, it’s a less funny packed more grounded episode. And in the end it’s mordecai himself, after rejecting the ghost sweater and seeing his ex truly happy , that gets him to NOT talk to her and just.. let it go. IT’s a good emotional episode and SHOULD HAVE BEEN the end of their relationship... but i’ve ranted about the cheating storyarc enough here, moving right along. 

3. Portable Toilet (Season 5, Episode 16) Back to the Mordejay arc. And yes this arc is my faviorite and while I didn’t make it clear at the time I really shipped the two, even before it became canon. I had nothing against morderet, these two simply had more chemistry and these episodes built CJ up as more of a character than Margret was at the time. It’s why that later arc sucks so much to me: it destroys a perfectly good relationship and story arc for dumb reasons and never really did enough with it to justify doing so. I’ll get to it some day, or if someone comissions it soone rthan some day, but as you can tell i’m still sore over it and great eps like this are part of the reason why. It’s the same reason i’m sore on how Tom was handled on star vs. But as you can also tell as bitter and lemon scented as I am.. these eps are still objectivley great and thus took up a third of the list basically.  Case in point Portable Toilet, which zooms back a bit to when neither would admit they were into each other but were now friends at least. Also Eileen was CJ”s friend now because plot convience. I mean they worked, and it bothers me a lot that the creators claim cj washed her hands of her even though she’s not the one who made out with margret... which come to think of it adding her to rigleen.. not a bad idea. I mean Rigby didn’t really like margret true, but they did almost go out before mordecai killed him and then reset time because Mordecai’s always kinda sucked. I’ll file that away for later. But my new OTP aside, I did like the two bonding and what not.  Anyways with their outside park friend/RIgby’s future girlfriend now friends with Mordeai’s future girlfriend the four have apparently been hanging out which, while i’ve bemoaned off screen stuff at times, works here and regular show uses it better than most shows. While Rigby can clearly see Mordecai and CJ are into each other Mordecai is as we covered in denial and while that dosen’t really progress here, it does lead to one of teh shows finest hours. When talking would you rathers, CJ semi-flirtly dares Mordecai to eat his lunch sandwitch in a portable toilet, which he agrees to and drags a reluctant rigby along for. This being regular show, it goes south fast as the two get stuck, with Rigby’s clautrophiba kicking in leading to an amazing exchange Mordecai; Dude that makes no sense! Rigby: You’s makes no sense! While our dynamic duo try to get mordecai and rigby out the two are carted away and repalced with a new portable toilet, a deluxe one. Also we get another great bit when our dynamic duo find Muscle man, in a robe with choclate’s claming “Eileen, other girl, this isn’t weird” before screaming “This isn’t weird”. Turns out old portable toilets are taken to be blown up by the miltary and we get one of the shows best one off characters in the general, who not only explains it as “toilets being about the same size as the enmy” but when told he should call the president says “the preseident is not my father i’ll blow up as many toilets as I want.”. Spectacular. So now it’s a scramble for one twosome to rescue the other, Rigby lets out a cathartic “THANK YOUUU MORDECAI” over the flirty toilet dare, and the day is saved> This one is another pure comedy one, even if it ties into a plot I really like, and i’ts gold for obvious reasons and manages to take blowing up porta poties, a premise that dosen’t seem that funny, and make it utter comedic gold. Speaking of pure comic episodes that are utterly insane...

2. Cool Bikes (Season 3, Episode 7)

This one feels like regular show boiled down to it’s core: semi-relabtale hyjinks dovetalling into pure madness. And the premise sounds like a shit post i’d make: Mordecai and Rigby want benson to admit their cool and get into progressively weird outfits and tricks to their bycycles to do so, eventually becoming so cool their put on trial by the council of cool , ending up having to make a runner when Benson finally breaks down and admits it.  The premise is utterly stupid in the best way possible, with the conflict being the kind of petty bullshit we all get into from time to time with our aquantinces: not wanting to admit something and loose the argument withthings escalating. And in regular show terms it escalate sperfectly into the entire unvierse being threatned adn our heros being on trial for their lives. There’s not much to say here, it’s just pure comedic gold with a premise that just works. It also has good moments for Benson with his finally admitting they are cool and saving the duo’s lives whne he realized he just gave them a death sentence. Utter fun. And now we come to the finale, my faviorite episode...

1. Dodge This (Season 5, Episode 15) 

Yup this arc again. But this one has more than my ship going for it, and it’s why it soared to the top: It takes the excellent character work of other episodes and weaves it with excellent comedy to create an utter delight and the episode I remember most fondly and most often. It’s just great. The second part of the Mordeijay arc, not counting yes dude yes, the episode is half that and half sports movie: The Park Guys have been taking part in dodgeball as a team bulding thing and it shows how far Benson’s come as he not only praises mordecai, and launches the mordecai and benson ship in the process, but gives his team full wings and his full support, a far cry from his usual self. It’s also the first big instance of him getting hammered on wings and it’s glorious to see drunk flirty benson.  Benson is also genuinely congratulatory to the team’s ace mordecai, and most of them realy for b eing valuable and hopes to win this year.  IN their way are two things: The magical elements, aka the floating baby heads that gave skips his immortality, his friend with sparkly eyes who works for them and death himself whose a recurring character and fucking great and who were their bowling rivals too. The other is CJ is back, and Benson in another good moment actually talks mordecai through it and his nerves over it assuring him. So we get a great sports piece as our heroes work through various callbacks and even beat the magical elements iwth Rigby’s hilarious and rediculous rignado manuver, which is as dumb as it sounds and winged a guy hilaroiusly before with Benson scolding him like a toddler.  Of course it ends up with Mordecai and CJ against each other, both incredibly awkard over things as mentioned before, and both ending up in a stalmate that magical dodgeball guardians have to resolve because, let’s do this one last time. IT’S REGULAR SHOW. We do get a good moment though as the two work through their awkwardness: both thinking the other is rightfully mad: Mordecai for his two timer date with her and Margret and CJ for running out without talking to mordecai after they had a moment on new years. The both work past it, the park strikers loose,benson likely gets hammered again off screen.. it’s a good one and I have no shame in putting it at number one. It’s got heart, really great jokes, and some good charcter stuff, not to the level of other episodes on this list, but it wasn’t a full episode of that like those were and still works to move the plot forward and is still a classic. Just a fun, breezy, well done epsidoe fully rooted in the cast’s characters and getting laughs out of that.. mostly benson.  And with that this giangantic list comes to a close> I hope you enjoyed it, if you liked it follow me for more. I’ll be doing close enough coverage every week, as well as amphibia and owl house among other reviews. Until we meet again, later days.