#I had a LOT of things to say LMAO

[ryansjane]

axelle judges bl shows >  My School President

/!\ SPOILERS AHEAD

summary: Tinn has been crushing on Gun for over two years, and decides that senior year is the year he needs to make a move. For that, he becomes the school’s student body president in an effort to help Gun’s music club avoid cancellation.

where to watch: youtube

grade: 8,5/10

pros:

- this show manages to take a very basic story that honestly shouldn’t have lasted more than one episode, and develop it in an endearing, quirky and very interesting direction through its writing. the writing of the show gives so much care to the characters and their feelings, and treats them in honestly such a rare way with making tinngun experience a lot of obstacles with maturity but never break up, as well as giving all the side characters a lot more love than usual. this really took the show from what could’ve been extremely forgettable & seen 50 times before plot, to truly one of the best bls in a while!

- similarly, there’s so much care put into the show: the original soundtrack is really great and the fact that the opening credits changed every 3 episodes to indicate changes in the story & characters was SUCH a good idea! you can tell the creators of the show really put so much effort & thought into it & imo it more than paid off!

- the characters are amazing. I gotta talk about my boi tinn bc he has everything of the “perfect & boring bl love interest” which is a trope I’ve criticized where the love interest is handsome, smart, talented, rich, has everything going on for himself except for a personality, which makes half of a ship so fucking boring in bl shows, but here my boi tinn is my literal fucking fave bc we get to see so much of his point of view. we see him freak out about his crush, be shy, be awkward, etc. but we also see that his family life & the pressure put on him is real, which adds layer to his character. as for gun, he’s equally as amazing, and so much of the show allows him to explore his feelings which makes him such a relatable character. sound is also another fave of mine, he has a great character development just like win, tiw is literally an iconic friend & deffo the mvp of this show, yo got a good storyline about insecurity, and por & phat were adorable and completed the team well. I literally fell in love with this group of friends so much & they absolutely carried the show!

- the acting & chemistry, man. so as you might know already, I’m a hater LMAO. I don’t like new pairings easily at all, especially when it contains both new actors I’ve never seen before. but when I say fourth & gemini stunned me, I really mean it. first of all they have an insanely natural chemistry that really puts a lot of more experienced pairings to shame lol, and it’s the same for satang & winny who play winsound and literally stole the show for me! I swear I started by rolling my eyes at the possibility of winsound & then I got converted real quick LMAO. but apart from that, the acting is just so fucking GOOD. fourth shined the most for me, he brings a vulnerability to his character that is very impressive for his age, but gemini also did an amazing job showing the complexities of tinn. satang also impressed me greatly, this boy has amazing heart eyes & also displays a lot of vulnerability, I hope to see more of him! but honestly everyone did a great job & really sold their characters to me <3

- I feel like what makes this show special is that it doesn’t stay surface level at all. when the guys lose hot wave, another show would show them being disappointed & depressed for one episode and move on, but msp went further by having them internalize their feelings & then ultimately fight once they can’t contain it anymore. them blaming each other then crying & apologizing is honestly one of my favorite scenes of the show?? it was such a real scene that was FELT, and also a great display of friendship there. another good example is the fear of coming out & the wish to hide their relationship, as well as the homophobia experienced by tinngun in the last episode. another show would’ve likely completely skipped through that & showed tinngun accepted by all without batting an eye, but instead by showing tinn’s mother’s uneasiness around her son dating a guy, and that asshole teacher being a complete homophobic dick who thinks he’s in the right, or even those teachers who shook their heads at tinngun being cute at prom, it all felt more realistic & added layers to the show and their relationship where it’s not all sunshine & rainbows, yet they still stay strong & support each other. all of these moments really add a lot of depth & importance to the show, and also strengthen the characters & their relationships a whole lot.

- the pace is also perfect to make it a super entertaining show & I never felt bored for even one minute!

cons:

- as quirky & fun & entertaining as this show was, it is still pretty basic in most of its storylines: gun’s mom being sick, the guys losing hot wave, tinngun’s relationship leaking online... and like honestly that doesn’t take any of my enjoyment of the show away so who cares, but it does keep me from grading this show any higher. yes I literally have nothing else to put in the cons LMAO

would I rewatch it: absolutely! it joined my comfort shows list <3

I expected this show to give me sorta love sick vibes (one of my fave comfort shows), but I didn’t expect it to be a more updated version of a just as healthy couple as phunnoh, giving me a just as vibrant & enjoyable high school slice of life that I love so much. I literally fell in love with this show, man. it was entertaining, and endearing, and honestly it became an instant favorite. I couldn’t recommend it more!

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

I'm sorry but the irony of Nico calling Max unprofessional is sending me so bad like sir there's an entire garage full of people, who were literally in the trenches trying to survive the Brocedes fallout while just doing their jobs, who might have a few things to say about your (& Lewis') level of professionalism at that time 😭✋️

[lloydfrontera]

i can't get over how cute javier is when he introduces himself to ppodong. he's so serious about it that lloyd thinks he's about to question his cover story for how ppodong was summoned but no. he was just thinking really hard about how he should call him or if he had a name. and then when lloyd gives him the go ahead to call ppodong however he wants he just. calls him sir ppodong and fucking shakes hands with him. he introduces himself and shakes hands with the hamster like c'mon that's so fucking cute i cannot stop thinking about it just look at him

it's adorable.

and it's also one of the first times in the novel that you get the sense that 'oh. that's a kid.' it's subtle and lowkey but you can kinda feel that javier is actually excited about ppodong, he's curious about him and really gentle when he meets him. like. he's just a kid. a kid that probably never had a pet before and is now in close proximity with a cute and fluffy little hamster and just. wants to know his name.

it's just. it's very cute.

[re-colligere]

Having a childhood ship have a resurgence and making art for them now older and with new skills is honestly what life is all about. This is just a message letting you know you’re winning with drawing disear keep it up and tysm <3

HAHAA YEAH exactly, it truly is something special and I'm definitely having the time of my life over here. Thank you so much!! Glad to hear people are also enjoying my silly stuff for them.

[uncanny-tranny]

You know, I feel like other trans people might get this, but it's honestly kind of refreshing when a cis person has, like, undeniable tboy/tgirl/whatever swag. It's like when you come across somebody who speaks the same language as you and you only find out when they start speaking it, too.

[relaxxattack]

yet another “quadrant understanding” post ten years too late to actually affect how anyone understands quadrants 💔

[tiktowafel]

do you ever think about how all you used to draw when you were 10 was ponies and that you should still know how to do that, then get an idea and proceed to draw something like these in nearly one sitting and it turns out better than any drawing you've done in the entire past month

sooo anyway does anyone have cutie mark or pony name ideas for them?? lol

[dukeofthomas]

"Angry robin" "violent robin" "misbehaving robin" shut up and accept my alternative; spunky Robin. Determined and head strong, can out-stubborn the Batman, has a strong moral-backbone and does what he thinks is right regardless of what anybody else says, Robin. Jason who was sassy and quippy and made crude jokes with a smile on his face. Jason who hid in Bruce's cape and whispered gossip to him. Jason who, if Bruce refused him something, could keep bothering endlessly until Bruce caved. And also dramatic Jason. If Bruce tells him no, it becomes a whole theatrical show; a monologue, a narration, embellishments, and falling onto the floor in his grief upon the fact his cruel father has denied him once again.

(Jason who has suffered through abuse and homelessness and poverty and starvation, who is the Fight out of Fight or Flight, who's built up defenses and walls and when pushed and triggered responds with the thing that's always protected him; anger. He's sweet and kind and funny, and when he sees a pimp hitting a prostitute he gets furious and responds with violence.)

[thesmokinpossum]

The Godfather, Mario Puzo | An Hymn to Childhood, Li-Young Lee | Psalm 139: 14 | The Godfather, Mario Puzo | For your own Good, Leah Horlick | Erou, Maya Phillips | The Godfather, Mario Puzo | Ask Polly | The Hours, Michael Cunningham | FROM THE MAKERS OF "TWO-MOM ENERGY DRINK", IT'S "LET YOUR FATHER DIE" ENERGY DRINK

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[budgiegryphon]

This year's r/place really fucking sucked, terribly run and an obvious(failed) distraction, but we did get some nice stuff done

Another bench! 45 communities! Here's the fully planned piece, Quote sadly got added last minute and wasn't visible before blackout.

Full character list below the cut.

Batter from OFF, Beheaded from Dead Cells, Ori from Ori and the blind forest, Bugs from APICO above Ori, Moon from Outer Wilds next to bugs, Purple guy from FnAF, Mae from Night in the woods, Omori from Omori, Commando from Risk of Rain, Madeline from Celeste above Commando, Engi, Bosco and Lootbug from Deep Rock Galactic, Soul Knight logo below Engi, Tiny Niko on top of Bosco, Sprite Companion from Hyperlight Drifter next to Tiny Niko, Isaac from Binding of Isaac, Chompy from Bug Fables underneath Isaac, Engineer from Factorio, Strabby on Engineer's shoulder, a penguin from Starbound, Junimo from Stardew Valley, Oneshot bulb above Stardew Valley's apple, A router from Mindustry, Keg from sea of thieves, Lamb from Cult of the Lamb sitting on the keg, Monika from DDLC above Lamb, Fishbowl from FSSH, Spooky from Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion, Whiteface and flower from IMSCARED above Spooky, V1 from Ultrakill, The Conductor from Final Station in front of V1's legs, Moth from Sky: Children of the Light above V1, Apollo from Ace Attorney bottom right of V1, Gnome from Everhood, Rivulet on Looks to the Moon from Rain World, Gail from Phoenotopia above Rivulet, Captain Viridian from VVVVVV above Gail, Flowey from Undertale below Looks to the Moon, Grimm from Hollow Knight, Paprika from Them's Fighting Herds above Grimm, Deltarune red heart above Strabby, King Slime in front of Grimm, The Spiral Heart from Grime next to Grimm, Carp from Lisa, Richard Mask from Hotline Miami above The Spiral Heart

[jin-zixun]

i think it's actually very brave to fight for yourself when no one else will, to insist upon your own self worth, if only in your own actions and self-preservation, when everyone around considers you worthless or unworthy.

If no one else cares about you, you will care, if no one else loves you, you will try to show yourself love to the best of your ability, even if you don't know it, if no one else will protect you then you will fight for yourself. Keep yourself alive. No one else will and it's you're no less worthy than who you're being told to put yourself to the side for, to die for, to admit you are nothing for.

It's trauma, it's resilience, it's survival, it's fight, it's advocacy, it's perseverance, it's natural, it's difficult, and it's brave.

[lavenoon]

bh!Eclipse "asked to reach the top shelf" meets "can't reach the lowest cupboards without folding like a paperclip" - @clxckwork-sun-n-moon

Yeah, I mean, there's a reason SI is laughing here after Eclipse "gets on his level" - man's too tall, he'd need to lie down to get close

But shenanigans are so very fun, so:

vs

It's called symbiosis <3

bloodstain fool by naffeclipse and og detective au by sunnys-aesthetic!

[sophfandoms53]

I think one of the weirdest thing to me about Helluva Boss is how they keep proving that Striker is right but at the same time they refuse to let Striker himself be right.

Someone on twitter pointed out that in Oops Striker talks about it being an embarrassment to imp kind that Fizz is a purse-dog to his over-bloated master, and then, while Striker might’ve been referring to Ozzie (although the use of over-bloated makes me wonder if he truly meant Mammon), the entirety of the next episode is all about Fizz saying fuck you to Mammon (his master) and quitting his job because he doesn’t wanna be exploited or abused anymore.

And this just reminded me how in the first season they had Striker say to Blitz “Starting with the one that treats you like a plaything.” about Stolas’ treatment towards him in Harvest Moon and then in Truth Seekers (the next episode) they literally had Stolas say “Who dare threaten my impish little plaything.”

I don’t know if this parallel is on purpose but that’s twice now where in back to back episodes in each season Striker has a made a point about the hierarchy in his episode and then the following episode goes out of its way to prove his point.

I just think it’s odd how they prove that he is right in other character’s storylines but in Striker’s own storyline he’s like not allowed to have a win despite everything around him saying he should.

[moregraceful]

max and i are closing in on launching [redacted sports rpf charity fest] and i am once again pondering how do i write "experience with writing form emails and manipulating google forms in ways no one has dreamed of" in a cover letter without saying "i did it for the rpf grind"...like there's no way unless everyone in this microsoft teams meeting gets really cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. you know

[alluralater]

people will really be like “trans people are ruining our children!” no melinda i think you did that yourself when you forbade them from accepting the nuances of other life experiences and declared hatred as your most loving act. i hope your children grow up to never speak to you again. i hope your children disown you. i hope your children find light and vibrancy in their trans friends. i hope they become such strong allies. i hope they curiously look around online or read books about the trans experience and figure out how disgusting you are for guiding them to ideas of hatred. i hope they grow up understanding that your love for them is conditional upon their identity and whether it conformed to your views, not that you loved them freely, because you’re fucking weird. and if your children are trans, i hope they never feel as though they owe you a damn thing. people like you are ruining children. trans people are so good for children. to be able to see beauty and safety and expression and acceptance of identity— to be able to learn about the wide array of history and experiences and culture and love— oh that’s so fucking good for kids.