I am a big film and series fan, and also, I love a good story (and love story.) I have a habit to fall in love with the male characters/heroes of the story😊😇 So here's my list (there will be some matches with my European actors-post)
1. Garcia Flynn
He is the 1st,since I just watched Timeless,and I can't let him go. He was the anti-hero than the hero of the story. He was a bit of an emotional wreck in S1,but then found a new purpose and he proved that he can be a gentle,sentivie guy with big heart (and also Sass-King😁)
2. Ser Jorah Mormont
This guy followed her since the dayd they have met, fought for her, protected her, loved her, killed for her, and died for her. If this is not love, then I don’t know what is.
3.Mr.Rochester
Of the many books I have read, Jane Eyre was decisive. The man is full of pain and resentment, but wants absolution and I loved how over time, we could see his softer side. You cannot really be angry with him for a long time ;)
4. Spiros Halikiopoulos
Ah, this man. Charming and smiling from Ep.1., he is a freakin’ ray of sunshine :)
5. Peeta Mellark
Don’t be angry with me please, I liked the Hunger Games. I know, Peeta was not much of a help (phisicly I mean) during the last two episode, but as a sensitive girl like me, I felt related to him. We need sensitive, warm-hearted guys as heroes in the stories!
6. Mr.Knightley
I have wathced 3 movie/series version of Emma, I read the book, and Mr. Knightley, his wisdom, his kindness and humour always got me (I liked the 2020 version, but I prefer the 2009 version of Emma and Knightley:))
7.Ben Solo
I think his redemption story was a bit of rushed, but I loved him as a villain and as a hero too. Adam Driver was fantastic in this role and I couldn’t help rooting for him to find the light :)
8.Gene Hunt
I started watching Ashes to Ashes because of @mindibindi and loved it. Gene Hunt is a badass, tough cop, who deep down (sometimes, reallyDEEP down) a warm-hearted guy. He just likes to hide this side of his :)
9. Mr.Darcy
Do I really have to explain?! (I loved the funny, but not less emotional series, Lost in Austen))
10. Gereon Rath
OK, this guy has serious problems (a wreck sometimes) but he is a badass (and a sofite) as well! Can’t wait for next season!
NOTE: Okay, here goes. I wrote this weeks ago, when I was still processing Season 2 (which, honestly, I’m still doing), and I wrote it in reaction to some of what I was seeing about Kreese in the wake of it. It’s long, so there’s a jump.
To say I was surprised to see the posts about Kreese would be an understatement. I meant and still mean no offense to anyone who expected more than we got, but it truly baffled me, because we got exactly what we were promised. I saw the betrayal coming from the last seconds of Mercy Part II, and I didn’t understand how other people didn’t.
So, this is me trying to explain why I felt and feel the way I do about Kreese. And for better or for worse, since I’m posting it, it’s open for discussion.
Wow. Talk about five words I never in a million years imagined I'd type.
I watched Season 2 of Cobra Kai within fifteen seconds of it dropping. Once I started, I didn't stop. I didn't pause. I was far from the only one. A little over five hours later, I'd seen the entire thing. I was devastated, of course. We all were. I intended to do an immediate rewatch, but I couldn't make myself do it. I was left reeling, numb, and completely emotionally drained for the rest of the day. Again, that's not unique to me. We all were. And even though I have rewatched it since then, more than once, that feeling hasn't really faded. I'm still having a hard time putting my thoughts and feelings into words. I know it's only a television show, but the impact it has had on me – on all of us – cannot really be explained. We're all shocked. We're all stunned. We're all feeling and dealing and still processing it.
If there is one word to sum up Season 2, it is this: brutal.
And no one was half as brutal as the man himself, the creator of Cobra Kai, the puppet master who holds everyone’s strings and pulls them to make them dance, knows every character's buttons and how to push them: John Kreese.
I know a lot of people are upset about Kreese still being bad. And not only is he bad, but he's possibly even more despicable and irredeemable than he was in the movies. I know a lot of people feel that they were lied to, or somehow misled, into believing he'd be a good guy by the end of the season.
I'm going to defend not only the pre-season interviews that may have led fans to believing that, but also the character of John Kreese himself. And those of you who know me and what I have said about this character in the past will understand what an odd thing this is for me to do. But one of the things I love most about this show, and about the movies that spawned it, are the characters and their development. That does include John Kreese, and it always has.
If you think back over what we were told about Kreese pre-season, no one ever said they were going to redeem him. The Big 3TM said they were going to make him human. They did. Martin Kove said he was "a little bit good, and a little bit bad." He is both.
First, to The Big 3TM's statements that either said or implied they were going to make him more human: they did. They made him much more human than he was in the movies; they just didn't make him a good one. Instead, he is devious, manipulative, abusive and cruel. And those are things that only humans can be.
He's always been a kind of caricature, a stock character "baddie" with memorable lines and no discernible motivations for being the way he was. The most human we saw him in the movies was at the beginning of The Karate Kid Part III. We see him walking down the street, alone, dejected. He is a broken man. He has lost everything and everyone, and he knows it. He has hit absolute rock bottom, and he does not know how to climb back up.
That doesn't last very long, of course. He walks into the dojo, glances at his bills, half-listens to his answering machine, picks up a newspaper article about Daniel's victory, and immediately, his dejection turns to anger. His desolation morphs into a singular obsession with destroying the old man who humiliated him and the child who dared to defeat him.
Terry's words to Daniel and Mr. Miyagi in the garden, about karate being Kreese's entire life, about losing his students (mostly Johnny, we now know) breaking his heart - I believe this was entirely true. It's probably one of the few honest things Terry said in the whole movie. It is also probably one of the purest descriptions of John Kreese’s motivation we have ever been given.
There was a glimmer of hope at the beginning, in Kreese's conversation in the car with Terry, when it looked like maybe he wasn't wholly evil. But as we realized later, his protest to Terry that he didn't "need to do this" - didn't "need" to torture Daniel and Mr. Miyagi - was token only. He wanted it to happen. I'd go so far as to say that he played on Terry's love for and protectiveness of him to make it happen. That became obvious later in the movie, when he came up with the "brilliant" idea of making Daniel's knuckles bleed. And now that we have seen just how manipulative and calculating he can be, it fits with who and what he is.
Does he have PTSD? Certainly. He told Johnny as much when he said the psychiatrists wouldn't let him re-enlist. Does it stem from the Vietnam War? Again, there is very little doubt. Is he still fighting a war in his mind that never ended for him because he wasn't allowed to finish it? I don't question that for a second, either. Do any of those things excuse what he did - to children and adults both - after he returned? Absolutely not. Understanding his mind and seeing the world through his eyes gives us insight into why he is the way he is, but it doesn't excuse what he's done. And it doesn’t justify what he may do in the future.
Humans aren't always nice and decent. All people aren't basically good. Daniel learned that when he was sixteen years old. Johnny learned it at fifty-one. John Kreese is 100% human, and that's undeniable. They gave us exactly what they promised us.
As for Martin Kove's assertion that Kreese is "a little bit good, and a little bit bad": he is. This is where understanding his mind becomes vital. Kreese's "bad" qualities are on clear and open display for us to see. His "good" qualities aren't as obvious, and some would say they don't exist at all. That is because his definition of "good" is warped, and it doesn't fit with how we understand that word.
Also, I believe very strongly that John Kreese loves Johnny Lawrence.
No, it doesn't look anything like love to most of us. It looks like control, and domination, and manipulation. It looks like abuse. And that's because it is. It is dysfunctional, and destructive, and based on a power imbalance that Kreese cannot let shift in Johnny's favor for even a second. But in John Kreese's mind, it is love.
Make no mistake about it, Kreese abused both of these men when they were children. He abused Johnny - mentally and emotionally - for five years. Whether the karate training ever rose to the level of physical abuse is debatable, but after what we saw in Season 2, in Johnny's memory of receiving his blue belt, the rest of it is inarguable. The hardest concept to grasp, after watching just that one small memory and the impact it still has on Johnny almost 40 years later, is that Kreese honestly believed, and still does, that he was doing a good thing.
Listen to the things he says. Really listen to him. Even after everything that happens, even after Miguel and Robby, and Tory and Sam, and even after the destruction of everything and everyone Johnny loves, Kreese is still convinced that what he's doing is what's best for Johnny. He truly, honestly believes that he's helping him.
In his mind, he is making Johnny stronger. He is making him better. He is turning him into a good little soldier who will follow orders to the letter, because if he does what Kreese tells him, he will not and cannot lose. He is doing this because he doesn't want Johnny to feel the things he felt. He doesn't want Johnny to ever feel the sting of a defeat he had no choice but to accept. He sees in Johnny his chance to redeem himself for all the losses he himself has suffered, and he will use any means at his disposal to get him there.
His abuse of Daniel is strictly about punishment. He doesn't love him. He didn’t want to make him stronger. He didn’t want to turn him into a winner. His abuse of Daniel was purely for revenge. He smiled about it. He laughed about it. He wanted to see “a lot more” of it. He tortured a child, and he enjoyed it.
As much as John Kreese loves Johnny Lawrence, he hates Daniel LaRusso.
He hates him for forcing defeat on Johnny. He hates him for being a better student, or a better fighter, or a better anything than Johnny. He hates Mr. Miyagi for being a better teacher, or a better fighter, or just a better everything than him. Mr. Miyagi succeeded in turning Daniel into what Kreese failed in getting Johnny to be, and so Daniel - at the ripe old age of sixteen - gets the dubious distinction of being the living embodiment of both Johnny's and Kreese's failures. Kreese will never forgive him for any of that.
And so, Kreese (in conjunction with Terry Silver, of course) brainwashes him. They convince him to torture himself, and they torture Mr. Miyagi through him. They turn him into something he isn't and never has been. They turn him into the opposite of what Mr. Miyagi taught him to be. They send him home every night, bloody and bruised and completely oblivious to the fact that he's a nothing more than a pawn to them. He's a toy. If Johnny is Kreese's good little soldier, Daniel is his cannon fodder.
Kreese loves Johnny, and he hates Daniel, and he destroyed them both. But what has to be understood is that in his mind, everything he’s done have been "good" things.
To redeem Kreese now, to turn him into a "good guy," to have both of his victims forget and forgive him for everything he did, would not only be wholly unbelievable, it would invalidate everything they've been through. It would erase everything that turned the children they were into the men they are. It would cheapen and dismiss everything Kreese did to them.
It wouldn't just "flip the script" on their story. It would rewrite it wholesale.
At its heart, Cobra Kai is Johnny's and Daniel's story. Kreese plays a large part in that story, absolutely. But it’s not his. What they suffered at his hands shaped who and what they are, what they feel about each other, and what they believe about themselves. For better or worse, he is Cobra Kai.
He is their boogeyman.
And if the show is about Johnny and Daniel, then it has to be about them dealing with the impact Cobra Kai - and John Kreese - has had and continues to have on them and the people they love. For that to be possible, Kreese has to remain what he is and has always been.
Summary: A happy family who had exceeded what people thought of us. My dream was true. But it was someone else’s dream I was living.
A/N: The first chapter of Touch the Moon is here! Enjoy this small chapter!
The beauty of the bombs fascinates all of us. A purple ocean coming from the fans, our ARMYs, to show their love and devotion to us. All of them chanting our names as we performed our biggest hits.
It was this time where I stopped being a leader and went back to the boy who achieved his dreams. ARMY is a blessing that I wouldn’t change for the world; we came a long way for this, all seven of us.
“Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, Jeon Jungkook, BTS!”
“We love you BTS!”
A happy family who had exceeded what people thought of us. My dream was true.
But it was someone else’s dream I was living.
“That was amazing! Concerts like these never cease to astonish me. Did you hear the fan chants?” Jungkook exclaimed with a bounce to his step.
The concert had been incredible in more ways than one. ARMY had out did themselves once again. They had created many banners, all blown up images of pictures that Hoseok had uploaded to our twitter. It had made us chuckle through the stress of ending the concert with a bang. Even though it had ended almost two hours ago, I was still feeling the buzz and chill of fans singing a goodbye—for now—song. We had lingered awhile to help the crew clean up before we headed to our hotel for the night.
Jimin was carrying a huge bag full of thrown toys (and some lady panties.) It was probably heavier than himself, but he carried it with a big smile.
“One of these thongs I picked up has a phone number written on it!”
We all groaned, not looking forward to being woken up at ass o’clock to the amount of lewd noises coming from his room. Jimin always managed to sneak a girl into our closed off section of the hotel. How? We might never find out.
“Jimin, we need to rest. This concert was emotionally and physically draining for all of us,” I said while gulping down a water bottle.
“Seokjin, you can be a born-virgin,but I’m calling this number whether you all like it or not.”
Jungkook sighed and rightfully so. He was rooming with Jimin and knew he had to find another room to sleep in.
There are six of us, so we usually decide to room in pairs. I was with Taehyung, Yoongi with Hoseok, and Jimin with Jungkook. Now that Jimin planned on having a fuckfest, Jungkook had to room with one of us, which wouldn’t be so bad if Yoongi and Hoseok weren’t a couple and sometimes woke up having sex. They are proud and clear about it. We may have all groaned about Jimin preparing to keep all of us awake with nonstop moaning, but Yoongi and Hoseok were on another level. I don’t want to go into the descriptions of those horrible nights.
“Seokjin-Hyung, can I room with you and Taehyung?”
I knew it.
Taehyung spoke up, “Sure, Kookie. I’m sure we can fit on my bed together.”
I could practically see the terror release out of Jungkook’s body.
Jungkook smiled, knowing that he would sleep comfortably in the arms of Taehyung,“Jimin, why do you have to be so horny? This is a night to appreciate what we’ve achieved so far. ARMYs mean more to us than to use them as groupies.”
“But they’re willing and I need an emotional fuck right now. I mean, come on, it’s our last concert of the year…”
The room was quiet save for the steady hum of the humidifier. Our last concert of the year. We had decided we needed a break from the constant pressure. Of course, we’d still interact with our fans, just no comeback, no concert, no fan sign, for a year. Some would say it would be the end of us, but we have a strong enough fanbase to not let that happen. One year of a blissful time for us to relax and celebrate being human for once.
Taehyung smiled, “I’m going to try to visit as many restaurants as I can.”
“I’ll come with you,” Jimin and Jungkook said in unison.
Hoseok laughed, getting into his assigned car. Yoongi must have told him the news.
The maknae line all looked at Hoseok as his disappeared into the car.
“Jin, why is he laughing? No one told a joke.”
“Hoseok doesn’t need a joke to laugh.”
“True.”
Yoongi was next to give the young ones a reaction—a mean glare---before getting into the seat beside his love.
Jimin frowned, “Jin, this better not be one of your group building ideas or so fucking help me-”
“You get paid.”
Jimin hopped into his car without another word.
In the hotel, we all divided into our separate rooms. Jimin had already called the poor girl who had left her phone number on her underwear. She had squealed and screamed into the phone when Jimin introduced himself.
“She’ll be coming soon,” he said with a smirk as he entered his room. The innuendo was not unheard.
Taehyung, Jungkook, and I went into our room, falling onto the beds. It was 3 in the morning and we were dead tired.
“I think I’ll shower when I wake up,” Jungkook announced opening his suitcase and pulling out his pajamas.
Taehyung was doing the same as he said, “Same. We don’t have to worry about getting up too early. Our plane leaves at eight at night.”
They both looked at me, waiting for my response. I was busy gawking at the figure in front of me.
A figure they couldn’t see.
A very dead girl clutching a Bangtan bomb in her hand, looking around the room in awe. Her ghastly glow was unmistakable. How had she died and ended up in our room?
“Jinnie? Are you ok?”
“He’s seeing dead people. Leave him alone. Let’s go to bed.”
Piers Morgan: Media and Democrats reaction to Mueller report ‘a disgrace.’
“Mueller was the savior, the man on the white horse riding into town to take down President Trump on collusion with Russia, he would be exposed as a traitor, and this would be the end of his presidency. And then Mueller report comes out, and it turns out it was all nonsense. It was to quote Donald Trump, it was ‘fake…
Honestly I just always want Neville to be happy. I’m all ship and let ship, and I don’t like putting down pairings just because they might not be my bag. So let’s flip this bitch, and go with Neville OTPs
Neville/Harry/Draco - My OT3, I love these boys. I wrote about them in a hilarious fic, but @tryslora wrote my fav one: Everything is All We Want. Go read everything by her that you can.
Neville/Hermione - Just read this and go scream at @shayalonnie for her brilliantness - Shayalonnie, one day I will get up the nerve to tell you how amazing your writing is and how this is my fav fic. Ever. I just love how you connected these two on such a thoughtful level, and it’s made me try and pull that magic into every story I write as well. Fangirling over here.
Neville/Ginny - Honestly, I love Ginny with Luna and Pansy and Blaise, but I also really love her with Nev. They had mad chemistry during the Yule ball, and Neville would make her posters and paint his face whatever colour her team was, and show up to every game, and bring the kids, and that thought just warms my heart.
