#I didn't feel like actually coloring so now it's a fun tv girl reference

[uselesspasserby]

[iwillpretenddontknow]

Describe your dream girl

I had to think about this one for a while. I think had this been asked to me a few years ago, I would have a different answer.

Physically, I don't think that I have specific things in mind like hair color or eye color or height. Realistically the first thing I notice about a girl is her eyes and/or smile. I have a weakness for a nice smile and pretty eyes. I also tend to notice tattoos or a nice butt, I promise I wasn't looking.

Interest wise, I used to think I'd already need to have alot in common with someone. I don't think that now. I think that may have come from trust issues and like needing a lot of common ground for me to trust. I actually really like hearing about new things and I really enjoy the excitement someone has when they talk about an interest or hobby. It could be something I may not be into or maybe not know about. But I really appreciate someone introducing me to new things or the thought of here this thing I like and I think you may like it too.

Personality wise, I tend to like girls with a corny sense of humor, makes puns, who also doesn't mind poking fun at me. I'm someone who tends to come off as dry at times. And truthfully I can be, I've been told that my first impression is very different from how I am once you get to know me. I feel like eventually I become a lot more outgoing but usually somewhere more in the middle of dry and very chatty outgoing and very jokey? I feel from experience, I always tend to work better or be myself more around people who are less serious, despite me coming off as more serious at first? Does that make sense?

I am/was an emo kid so I think my dream girl would at least have to know the music to be able to sit through me still liking 90% of the music I used to like. My chem, TBS and Brand new if you absolutely don't want to listen to all of the other bands, those 3 are heavily still played by me.. and if you will do either the Adam or Fred parts to Taking back Sunday song with me, I'd fall head over heels.

But if she also dresses in mostly black or band shirts that's a plus. (I literally said like a paragraph ago that she didn't have to like the same bizarro crap I do and now I'm typing things I like that I hope she likes)

Yes that was a reference to a movie. I do that from time to time, so I hope that she can please put up with me recognizing an actor that was in that one show or quoting a line from a TV show. I also just ask that she be open to watching x-files.

I think that's it...

Wait she to like Pizza. Actually we can talk it. It's not the deal breaker it used it. I'm kidding it was never a deal breaker. I just used to eat it a lot more. This is trying to be funny and probably failing.

I feel like I've wrote a lot and probably said very little.. I'm very curious who asked this. I also feel like disappointed who ever did. Lol should I been more specific about physical traits?

I feel like this is long enough already. Feel free to ask on anon or off.

[angel-lyah]

🎀.°Grace Lovelace; Lore”

“I always wanted to be on TV, being a star would be a childhood dream come true. So you can imagine how happy I was to receive a colorful envelope?„

- Mary Bel Martinez

• Grace Lovelace; The beginning

Grace Lovelace is a character with a focus on feelings, her goal in the series is to teach children and their neighbors how to express their feelings and how healthy it is to be honest with yourself.

Grace is a kind and lively girl, she loves to play with her friends and help them with literature. In some episodes it is mentioned that she lived in the big city with her parents, but moved to seek adventures and self-knowledge.

It was believed that she would be a romantic match for Wally, as she made romantic poems for him in several episodes broadcast on TV. However, the Show stopped being broadcast before a romantic event occurred between them.

• Mary Bel Martinez; The journey

Mary was a dreamy girl, smiling girl and loved theater. Her biggest dream was to appear on TV and be a Hollywood star. She persisted in her dream and never changed her mind. She spent sleepless nights dreaming and praying for a company to hire her.

Her family was normal but they never gave her the support she needed. Everything she could do she did alone.

Then the happiest day of her life came, she was finally hired.

“Working with Welcome Home was a very important step in my life, every day was full of fun... full of fun„

That's what she thought before things drastically change. Gradually, her identity was erased, she no longer heard her own name come out of the mouths of the directors. It was common for her arms to get purple spots because someone from the studio decided to take her somewhere that she didn't want to go. Her privacy was also erased, and although such actions were not sexually oriented, taking her clothes without her permission is still horrible. It was frightening, and in that fear she realized something...

“They...call me Grace all the time, control me all the time, use me all the time...all the time I feel like a puppet„

This went on for months, years... and then something happened, and we all know what: Welcome Home stopped streaming and everything disappeared.

What happened between the scenes? We don't know, we just know that a beautiful girl with brown hair was found abandoned in the forest. Her bones were fractured and deep cuts lied on her wrists and ankles. Whatever happened caused her to partially lose her vision too.

“Mary Bel Martinez was still alive, but something died with her„

Her parents didn't recognize her, her friends didn't recognize her: “Where is my daughter...my daughter has green eyes and a kind smile, that thing is not my daughter!„ - that's what they said, and then they left and cut contact

She was completely alone now.

She was referred to a psychiatric hospital for professional help. It helped. After that, she was able to return to society, as someone completely unknown.

"How is she now?"

—She is "fine" now. I heard that she started to work as a teacher at a kindergarten. Even though she's gotten cold, quiet, and a little mean, she still loves kids.

"What do you mean Partially Blind?"

—She doesn't talk about it much, she says she sees everything red and black and so dark it's impossible to walk down the street without her Green Cane (Ps: Green canes means the person has low vision, White means completely blind and Red means blind and mute).

"Black Glasses?"

—They don't help at all, actually make her completely blind, but she prefers it that way, it's more comfortable, she says.

.°Thank you so much for reading!!💜

[flufffysocks]

let's talk about andi mack's worldbuilding

sorry this took forever to make! i've been pretty busy with school stuff and i kind of lost my inspiration for a bit, but i ultimately really enjoyed writing it! i wish i could've included more pics (tumblr has a max of 10 per post), and it kinda turned from less of a mini analysis to more of an extremely long rant... but i hope it's still a fun read!

i've been rewatching the show over the past few weeks (thanks again to @disneymack for the link!), and i’ve been noticing a lot that i never did the first time around. this is really the first time i’ve watched the show from start to finish since it aired, and it honestly feels so different this time - probably a combination of the fact that i’m not as focused on plot and can appreciate the show as a whole, and also that the fandom is much, much smaller now, so there’s a lot less noise. so the way i’m consuming this show feels super different than it did the first time, but the show itself doesn’t - it’s just as warm and comforting to me as it was the first time around, if not more so.

i think a lot of that can be attributed to andi mack’s “worldbuilding”. i’m not quite sure that this is the right word in this context, to be honest, because i mostly see it used in reference to fantasy and sci-fi universes, but it just sort of feels right to me for andi mack, because you can really tell how much love and care went into constructing this universe. for clarity, worldbuilding is “the process of creating an imaginary world” in its simplest sense. there’s two main types: hard worldbuilding, which involves inventing entire universes, languages, people, cultures, places, foods, etc. from scratch (think “lord of the rings” or “dune”), and soft worldbuilding, in which the creators don’t explicitly state or explain much about the fictional universe, but rather let it’s nature reveal itself as the story progresses (think studio ghibli films). andi mack to me falls in the soft worldbuilding category. even though it takes place in a realistic fiction universe, there’s a lot of aspects to it that are inexplicably novel in really subtle ways.

so watching the show now, i’ve noticed that the worldbuilding comes primarily from two things - setting and props, and oftentimes the both of them in tandem (because a big part of setting in filmmaking does depend on the props placed in it!).

one of the most obvious examples is the spoon. it really is a sort of quintessential, tropic setting in that it's the main gang's "spot", which automatically gives it a warm and homey feel to it. and its set design only amplifies this:

the choice to make it a very traditional 50s-style diner creates a very nostalgic, retro feel to it, which is something that's really consistent throughout the show, as you'll see. from the round stools at the bar, to the booths, to the staff uniforms, this is very obvious. the thing that i found especially interesting about it though is the choice of color. the typical 50s diner is outfitted with metallic surfaces and red accented furnishings, but the spoon is very distinctly not this.

instead, it's dressed in vibrant teal and orange, giving it a very fresh and modern take on a classic look. so it still maintains that feeling of being funky and retro, but that doesn't retract from the fact that the show is set distinctly in modern times.

of course, this could just be a one-off quirky set piece, but this idea of modernizing and novelizing "retro" things is a really common motif throughout the show. take red rooster records. i mean, it's a record shop - need i say more? it's obviously a very prominent store in shadyside, at least for the main characters, but there's no apparent reason why it is (until season 2 when bowie starts working there, and jonah starts performing there). a lot of the time, though, it functions solely as a record shop. vinyl obviously isn't the most practical or convenient way of listening to music, but it's had its resurgence in pop culture even in the real world, mostly due to its aesthetic value, so it's safe to say that it serves the same purpose in the andi mack universe.

the fringe seems to be nostalgic of a different era, specifically the Y2K/early 2000s period (because it's meant to be bex's territory and symbolic of who she used to be, and its later transformation into cloud 10 is representative of her character arc, but that's beside the point). to be honest, exactly what this store was supposed to be always confused me. it was kind of a combination party store/clothing store/makeup store/beauty parlor? i think that's sort of the point of it though, it's supposed to feel very grunge-y and chaotic (within the confines of a relatively mellow-toned show, of course), and it's supposed to act as a sort of treasure chest of little curios that both make the place interesting and allow the characters to interact with it.

and, of course, there's andi shack. this is really the cherry on top of all of andi mack's sets, just because it's so distinctly andi. it serves such amazing narrative purpose for her (ex. the storyline where cece and ham were going to move - i really loved this because it highlights its place in the andi mack universe so well, and i'm a sucker for the paper cranes shot + i'm still salty that sadie's cranes didn't make it into the finale) and it's the perfect reflection of andi's character development because of how dynamic it is (the crafts and art supplies can get moved around or switched out, and there's always new creations visible).

going back to the nostalgia motif though, the "shack" aspect of it always struck me as very treehouse-like. personally, whenever i think of treehouses, there's this very golden sheen of childhood about it, if that makes sense. i've always seen treehouses in media as a sort of shelter for characters' youthful innocence and idealistic memories. for example, the episode "up a tree" from good luck charlie, the episode "treehouse" from modern family, and "to all the boys 2" all use a treehouse setting as a device to explore the character's desire to hold onto their perfect image of their childhood (side note: this exact theme is actually explored in andi mack in the episode "perfect day 2.0"!). andi shack is no exception to this, but it harnesses this childhood idealism in the same way that it captures the nostalgia of the 50s in the spoon, or the early 2000s in the fringe. it's not some image of a distant past being reflected through that setting; it's very present, and very alive, because it reflects andi as she is in the given moment.

some honorable mentions of more one-off settings include the ferris wheel (from "the snorpion"), the alley art gallery (from "a walker to remember"), SAVA, the color factory (from "it's a dilemna"), and my personal favorite, the cake shop (from "that syncing feeling").

[every time i watch this episode i want to eat those cakes so bad]

these settings have less of a distinctly nostalgic feel (especially the color factory, which is a very late 2010s, instagram era setting), but they all definitely have an aura of perfection about them. andi mack is all about bright, colorful visuals, and these settings really play to that, making the andi mack universe seem really fun and inviting, and frankly very instagrammable (literally so, when it comes to the color factory!).

props, on the other hand, are probably a much less obvious tool of worldbuilding. they definitely take up less space in the frame and are generally not as noticeable (i'm sure i'll have missed a bunch that will be great examples, but i'm kind of coming up with all of this off the top of my head), but they really tie everything together.

for example, bex's box, bex's polaroid, and the old tv at the mack apartment (the tv is usually only visible in the periphery of some shots, so you might not catch it at first glance) all complement that very retro aesthetic established through the settings (especially the polaroid and the tv, because there's really no good reason that the characters would otherwise be using these).

besides this, andi's artistic nature provides the perfect excuse for plenty of colorful, crafty props to amplify the visuals and the tone. obviously, as i discussed before, andi shack is the best example of this because it's filled with interesting props. but you also see bits of andi's (and other people's) crafts popping up throughout the show (ex. the tape on the fridge in the mack apartment, andi's and libby's headbands in "the new girls", walker's shoes, andi's phone case, and of course, the bracelet). not only does doing this really solidify this talent as an essential tenet of andi's character, but it also just makes the entirety of shadyside feel like an extension of andi shack. the whole town is a canvas for her crafts (or art, depending on how you want to look at it. i say it's both), and it immensely adds to shadyside's idealism. because who wouldn't want to live in a world made of andi mack's creations?

and, while it's not exactly a prop, the characters' wardrobe is undoubtedly a major influence on the show's worldbuilding. true to it's nature as a disney channel show, all of the characters are always dressed in exceptionally curated outfits of whatever the current trends are, making the show that much more visually appealing. i won't elaborate too much on this, because i could honestly write a whole other analysis on andi mack's fashion (my favorites are andi's and bex's outfits! and kudos to the costume designer(s) for creating such wonderful and in-character wardrobes!). but, i think it's a really really important aspect of how the show's universe is perceived, so it had to be touched upon.

[^ some of my favorite outfits from the show! i am so obsessed with andi's jacket in the finale, and i aspire to be at bex's level of being a leather jacket bisexual]

and lastly, phones. this is a bit of an interesting case (pun intended), because the way they're used fluctuates a bit throughout the show, but i definitely noticed that at least in the first season terri minsky tried to avoid using them altogether. these efforts at distancing from modern tech really grounds the show in it's idealist, nostalgia-heavy roots, so even when the characters start using their phones more later in the show, they don't alter the viewer's impression of the andi mack universe very much.

so, what does all of this have to do with worldbuilding? in andi mack's case, because it's set in a realistic universe and not a fantasy one, a lot of what sets it apart from the real world comes down to tone. because, as much as this world is based on our own, it really does feel separate from it, like an alternate reality that's just slightly more perfect than ours, which makes all the difference. it's the idealism in color and composition in andi mack's settings that makes it so unmistakably andi mack. even the weather is always sunny and perfect (which is incredibly ironic because the town is called shadyside - yes, i am very proud of that observation).

the andi mack universe resides somewhere in this perfect medium that makes it feel like a small town in the middle of nowhere (almost like hill valley in 1955 from "back to the future"), but at the same time like an enclave within a big city (because of its proximity to so many modern, unique, and honestly very classy looking establishments). it is, essentially, an unattainable dream land that tricks you into believing it is attainable because it's just real enough.

all this to say, andi mack does an amazing job of creating of polished, perfect world for its characters. this is pretty common among disney channel and nickelodeon shows, but because most other shows tend to be filmed in a studio with three-wall sets, andi mack is really set apart from them in that it automatically feels more real and tangible. it has its quintessential recurring locations, but it has far more of them (most disney/nick shows usually only have 3-4 recurring settings), and it has a lot more one-off locations. it's also a lot more considerate when it comes to its props, so rather than the show just looking garish and aggressively trendy, it has a distinctive style that's actually appropriate to the characters and the story. overall this creates the effect of expanding the universe, making shadyside feel like it really is a part of a wider world, rather than an artificial bubble. it's idealism is, first and foremost, grounded in reality, and that provides a basis for its brilliant, creative, and relatable storytelling.

tl;dr: andi mack's sets and props give it a very retro and nostalgic tone which makes its whole universe seem super perfect and i want to live there so bad!!