#I just bingewatched the entire show

[gatanung]

They ended up on an adventure neither one of them expected huh?

[true-blue-sonic]

so all this talk of wanting to see silver in prime has reminded me of that one mocked up 'silver in sonic x' screenshot which has haunted me for years because i think that's the one thing that just made me really want to see him in literally any animation project. i'd even take something like those promo animations they did for team sonic racing and colors ultimate! especially with prime only featuring characters who have already been in sonic x and these animations i just think it's such a shame

I can't find those pictures on the internet so quickly (I believe there were two; one with Silver facing the camera, and one with him and Blaze), but I know which ones you mean! It's indeed a shame that Silver is just, like... not in any animation project (and also not in TMOSTH :( ). He's far from the only character who suffers from that, since other 'common' characters like Blaze, Cream, and the Chaotix have not been in such animations either iirc. At least for Sonic X, he and Blaze did not exist yet, so that is a decent enough excuse for them not being in the show. Still, I'd love it if more attention was paid to the 'extended' extended cast! Boom had the same issue: iirc, only Vector was introduced as a new character aside from the main six characters plus Shadow and Metal Sonic. But on the other hand, there is no reason to put characters in a promo animation if they also are not in the game that animation is tied to, basically. As for Prime, I think I myself would have preferred a show that focused more on said 'extended' extended cast than the same group of (I believe) five characters in different settings. But we don't know what the future holds; I myself am very curious about that Sonic & Friends thing SoJ allegedly trademarked. For the rest of the cast, that sounds promising!

[moaserendipity]

My Top 10 BL's of 2023

I am back with my personal top 10 of 2023. I know I've been super quiet these days but making a top 10 is always fun to do. The #1 has been decided early this past year but for the rest... It was a crazy year for BL but only a few were really top tier...🔥🔥

10. My Personal Weatherman (Taikan Yoho)

One of the Japanese BL's I really enjoyed watching. It was more grown up then the ones I've seen and that was very welcome. I love the dynamics between the main characters a lot. It was a bit of a slow one, with the lack in communication between the two but I forgive that because the chemistry was really good.

09. Wedding Plan

Oh how i looked forward to this one, the second I saw the trailer. I loved the storyline but I thought it was very short, which made them rush through it at times, which was a shame because it was actually really good and I just wanted to see more. I loved the chemistry between Sailom and Namnuea, So I really enjoyed watching them. They are very new if I'm correct but I didn't notice it at all, so hopefully they will get another BL together but a longer one. Also I love the GL in this BL, it was very natural and I in the end hoped they would be the ones that got to marry. Not to forget about the cameo;s of my babies Payu and Rain and of course Prapai and Sky.

08. Moonlight Chicken

This one I've waited for so so long and it was kind of a surprise because I love EarthMix, Like Mix is my man but my attention got taken away from them and got attached to GemFourth who played Li Ming and Heart. I just loved everything about them! I loved how they incorporated Sign language because Heart was deaf and just the overall chemistry between them, was everything. They made me smile so much. Jim and Wen, you know were amazing as well but I sometimes felt frustrated by their interaction. The close moments they had were amazing of course but it was not what I expected from EarthMix but overall this drama was definitely worth the wait!

07. Kiseki: Dear to Me

I absolutely loved this one. I couldn't get enough of it. I am a sucker for the Hate to Love trope and this had exactly that and in a gangster way. Like I loved it. ZeRui and Bangyi were made for each other and you can't tell me otherwise how he went to prison for ZeRui and even got hurt but he still decided to dedicate his bakery to him with his Strawberry cakes, ugh too cute. The second couple made me want even more. The sassiness of Ai Di and the coldness of Chen Yi, they were really something. The way Chen Yi didn't realize that Ai Di loved him until he went to prison or that one hot night made me slap my forehead because nothing was more obvious, so I can not explain how happy I was they finally got together in the end!!

06. My School President

This really was a GemFourth year because this was their first leading BL and boy how they won us over with their cuteness. The OST was also seriously top tier. I think I loved all the songs. This entire Cast was amazing! To think I almost skipped this one...That would've been a mistake for sure, so I'm happy that I decided to give it another try because I fell in love with them and bingewatched it in one go. I can't wait to see the next project from them.!

5. Our Dating Sim

this Korean BL was a welcome one. I loved the office setting of this BL and the fact that the episodes were short as usual, didn't disturb me that much. Their chemistry made up for that! I will never forget how my heart sank when Ki Tae thought Wan had disappeared again, this poor man but I loved how Wan immediately comforted him the second he saw him. I should really rewatch this again.

4. Last Twilight

I know it's still running but I can not leave it out of my top10 for 2023. I am impressed with Jimmy and Sea. These two are everything to me at this moment. Their chemistry is crazy and I am happy they have this BL to show their talents again. I am impatiently waiting every week for the next episode and so far no episode has disappointed me, which is rare tbh.

3. Sing my Crush

Sing my crush was not even on my radar but the second I came across it, I bingewatched it. I am a sucker for music BL's, where the actors can ACTUALLY sing and play instruments.. I loved it so much. from start to finish. I really think this BL was very underrated. I did not hear a lot of people about it but it definitely deserves more!

2. I feel you linger in the Air

Ever since I saw the trailer, I wanted to see this one badly and boy did it not disappoint! I was in awe every episode. I don't think I've ever seen a Thai Bl that was staged in the past. Also this way of time traveling is one I actually like. As long as no bodies get switched I am loving it. Their chemistry was top notch and those intimate scenes. That kiss in the rain, Art I am telling you and that massage scene, HELLO!! I literally forgot to breathe at that point and my face was almost stuck to the screen, crazy!! So yeah this was a true masterpiece!

01. The Eighth Sense

Let's all act surprised by this one...... what can I say? This one touched my intire being. It touched my soul, My heart everything. I cried, laughed and even cursed at 2 people in particular.. This is the biggest masterpiece of 2023 and nothing can change my mind about this. The way I anticipated every week and felt sad when it ended, ugh!! I just want to praise Oh Jun Taek for the way he acted, because if I'm correct this was his first acting job or at least he is very new but he pulled it of perfectly and Ji sub, I am applauding him for the way he portrayed Jae Won. All I need now is a season 2 or an special episode where we see them do the things Jihyun wanted... like just please!! In al seriousness everything was amazing about this one and that's why it's my number 1

I really do think that the Korean BL's won this round. I feel like they are finally stepping up their game. It's still not as Explicit as Thai or Taiwanese but that's not what I am expecting. I don't always have to have NC scenes because without a story, it's not worth a lot. Overal the Bl's were powerful this year and Top tier. Hopefully next year will bring us even better ones!! <3

[universallydestinytaco]

💖 >:3

(For the askbox game)

@sometimes-sleeby-octopus

Now I would list off my favorite episode in this particular answer BUT I wanna wait until I have seen ever S2 episode before that because I have a hunch that either one of the last three episodes to go is gonna wind up being my favorite of the entire series because this already-impressive and addictive show has vastly improved since it came back....with that said, I can list off my favorite S1 episode, or at least three contenders for the title.

While the "Whodunnit" plot is a tale as old as time and has been in numerous animated works for decades, I can safely say that "Who Violently Murdered Simon S. Salty?" might be my favorite take on this trope because not only does it avoid playing this plot straight like others, there's a couple of fun twists so the payoff/punchline to the mystery is legitimately hilarious, also I love how the episode showcases Pim and Charlie's dynamic so well here with how they approach the situation and how well they bounce off of each other with Pim being the sensitive and caring one while Charlie is the trying to present himself as the more gruff and business-like of the two while also coming across as a bit of a goofball, also that cute bit at the end satisfied this obvious Charpim shipper. But what happens when you get an episode where it's one without the other and will it work as well as the boys bouncing off of each other? Well...

"A Silly Halloween Episode" is a spooky fun romp where Pim being the wholesome and lighthearted character stars by himself in the dark side of the forest on a dark and stormy night while being targeted by a mysterious force. Why this works so well is that even though Pim is not playing off of Charlie's cynical disposition, instead he is juxtaposed to this uncanny Silent Hill/Blair Witch aesthetic and is clearly terrified while trying to keep it upbeat. I like how it feels like a Courage the Cowardly Dog episode or that Mickey Mouse short with the Mad Scientist. The beginning setting up the episode's ending is also a clever punchline. Now that we covered a SF episode with Pim as the focus and Charlie out of the picture, the last episode of S1 I will cover is the opposite.

"Charlie Dies And Doesn't Come Back" is actually the first episode of this show I watched from beginning to end. Long story short: Believe it or not, there was a time before 2022 where I hated Smiling Friends, because I tried to watch the pilot and initially wasn't impressed for reasons I'll get into when I feel like expressing in another in-depth editorial, another reason for my bias was because at that period I was just more invested in serious adult cartoons like Final Space and Primal. But then I considered giving the show another chance once I saw thumbnails on YouTube of nothing but glowing reviews for this show so I figured I'd give it a second chance in the future...coincidentally I did give it a chance when I was lucky enough to catch the [AS] 2022 April Fools Day broadcast on YouTube and I was not only impressed I was grinning like a fool the entire time and I was still chuckling about it the next day, I just had to bingewatch the rest of the show. What makes this episode work is like the last ep I covered: instead of Pim having a solo episode with a dark tone, Charlie stars in an episode bouncing off a more comedic-toned episode instead of bouncing off of Pim and the episode is even better after seeing the rest of the show because after witnessing Charlie trying to look more stoic than he really is for most of this chaotic show his pokerface is dropped once he makes it clear how freaked out by his unhinged violent environment. The climax-leading-to-the-ending is also incredibly sweet not just for Pim and Charlie's reunion but in retrospect this is because it would turn out to be one of the last voice performances of comedy legend Gilbert Gottfried before his passing in mere days after I saw the episode it made the climax when the character he voices even more of a pleasant surprise, what a way to cap off a carrier...

I know, big shocker I used to hate this show before it came out when it ended up becoming my biggest non-Anime obsession at the moment, but it's not the only shocking opinion I have regarding this show as I have two yellow hearts to answer with a bombshell to reveal for each.

[menlove]

finally put my finger on what I disliked abt the writing in 13's seasons. and it's the same problem I had w like. discovery and picard. and it's that they take themselves soooo seriously. like dw is a silly goofy show that has a lot of heartfelt moments and heartbreak and love but also like. farting aliens and lil fat buddies and sonic sunglasses. and torchwood was fine being so serious bc it Wasn't doctor who and it was its own thing w its own vibe but I just really dislike chibnall's Serious Sci-fi Writing for the entire run :/

(and ik there's Moments of it not taking itself so seriously but overall the vibe is just so odd compared to the rest of the show. esp when I just bingewatched the other 10 seasons lol)

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

good news - we are getting s2!

bad news - i am going to murder netflix for the existence of these two paragraphs

it was watched for seventy million hours in the first week it came out??? and double that for the second week??? to put this into perspective, if every single fan was watching sandman 24/7 with no breaks for the entire week, you'd still need over 400,000 fans to hit that first week's number, and over 800,000 fans for the second week

now consider that's a biological impossibility, so that means literal millions of people bingewatched this show in the first week it came out

in fact, if we assume everyone only watched the show from start to finish once, more than the entire population of my country bingewatched in the first week

and they still held it over our heads for this long???? they wanted to hold it even longer - the only reason we got this was a leaked tweet????? like i'm not even just mad bc i like sandman, i'm mad because nothing has more succinctly illustrated the fucking death of art in our current society

[magentagalaxies]

hi @liliana-von-k, thanks for the follow! i have answered this question before but i love talking about kids in the hall and my "origin story" with them so i'm happy to tell it again (jsyk it will be a long post bc i always have to tell the full story bc i love it so much)

basically my parents have both been kith fans since the 90s, so even before i had seen any of the show itself there were certain kith quotes that were just part of my family's vocabulary. the first sketch i watched was "these are the daves i know" when i was like 8 years old and i became obsessed with that song. i watched a few other sketches/the first few episodes from season one but i didn't truly get into kith until after their documentary "comedy punks" was released

see, my mom is a big documentary person so she was like "oh hey there's a new kids in the hall documentary! do you want to watch it?" and i just kind of shrugged and was like sure i'll be in the room while it's on, probably working on my own stuff or scrolling on my phone. but like not even five minutes in i was hooked. while i'd always enjoyed kids in the hall's comedy, something about hearing the very personal histories of how the troupe came together and survived for all these years was so affecting. i think it was scott specifically that really signaled to me that this show was something special, and the part where bruce talked about comforting scott while he had cancer by telling him how the rest of the troupe would die first was so powerful. honestly no individual movie has changed my life more than comedy punks did specifically bc it gave me that push to get into kith and approached it from such a human perspective, which definitely informed my approach to the rest of their work and them as people. i remember watching comedy punks for the first time and getting this strange feeling i couldn't pin down yet that was like this is important, not just referring to the show or the troupe, but like this feeling that i had just crossed a turning point in my life, and i remember feeling this pull towards toronto which seemed frivolous at the time but has been so heavily solidified as i'm now planning to move there in just over a year.

so i bingewatched all of the kids in the hall tv show in summer 2022, as well as brain candy, death comes to town, the amazon season, etc. basically as much kith stuff as i could find. but i needed more. so i started getting into side projects, which brought me to "mouth congress" (a queer-punk band scott thompson and paul bellini had in the early 80s that they've recently started putting out new music with again). i found a youtube channel with a bunch of recent live performance clips of the band and each video had like less than 10 views. so since i didn't have anyone to infodump about kith with irl (aside from my very patient mother lol) i started commenting on every video, complimenting the performances and pretending i was talking to a friend, confident no one would actually see it

after 2 weeks of this, turns out someone did see it. PAUL BELLINI HIMSELF. this led to a whole back-and-forth which eventually ended up with him emailing me a copy of the unreleased mouth congress documentary, i emailed back asking if he'd be interested in meeting on zoom (since i am a queer comedy writer myself so both he and scott are my biggest comedy inspirations), and yeah bellini is a delightful person to talk to and we very quickly became friends. i ended up offering to run mouth congress's social media, which can be found on both tumblr and instagram as @mouthcongress and posts both vintage videos from the 80s/90s and recent live clips. they're currently working on an album of entirely new material written in the past 2 years which is going to be released soon (we don't have a specific release date but the recording is completed and they've started filming music videos for it!! but i'm getting ahead of myself lmao)

a few months pass and mouth congress is set to perform at a new year's eve show at a local club in toronto. i'd never been to toronto before, never even left the united states, but paul says it would be so great to have me there and by some miracle my parents say yes to making the trip (they still can't believe this is happening either, since they were kith fans first!). the trip is wonderful, i immediately fall in love with the city, i get lunch with paul irl for the first time and get to have my very first face-to-face conversation with my number one comedy inspiration scott thompson. it's honestly a little awkward but in an adorable funny way. i also have my first legal drink at that show (bc canadian drinking age is lower than the us), specifically saying i want to have my first drink with buddy cole, which both scott and paul are very into

it's actually only a couple weeks until i'm in toronto again, because scott is debuting a new buddy cole show consisting of monologues that were all censored by amazon that he pitched during the revival season. this is my first time traveling a long distance without my family which my mom is anxious about so paul bellini lets me have him as my emergency contact. the show is amazing, i get to stay for the afterparty, and while i'm there i casually mention that i'm surprised no one has made a buddy cole documentary yet. like, this character has such a rich history even beyond the kids in the hall (which i can infodump about all day lmao) and is such an important staple of queer comedy that doesn't get the attention he deserves. the kith documentary is great, but where's my buddy cole documentary? paul accepts my pitch (that i didn't even realize i was pitching), passes along the idea to scott, and yeah now i'm legit directing a film with my number one comedy heroes and i haven't even graduated college yet. what the fuck. i expected this to be the type of thing i accomplish over 20 years into my career, not at twenty!! so yeah that's how the buddy cole documentary started. i'm still in preproduction on it but we're launching an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it in the next 2 weeks bc this has evolved into a full feature-length film with some incredible celebrity interviewees, both kith and otherwise.

anyway a few months later it's announced bruce mcculloch is bringing his one-man-show to the city i go to school in. not only that, but his theater is literally 2 blocks from campus. i ask paul if he'd give me bruce's contact so i can set up an interview for my school's newspaper, paul gives me bruce's assistant's email, and i set up a 30-minute zoom two weeks before bruce will be in town. the conversation honestly goes bizarrely well. like it's honestly surreal how close bruce and i got after only knowing each other for a half hour? he's such an easy person to talk to and literally by the end of that conversation he was already calling himself my mentor, asking about my comedy, and offering to let me meet him backstage after his show. which is exactly what i did, launching yet another incredible friendship-slash-mentorship with one of the kids in the hall.

bruce eventually signed on to executive produce the buddy cole documentary (alongside paul bellini), i've been up to toronto in january, april, june, august, and october this year (so essentially every 2 months, though it was slightly offset by going twice in january) and i'm planning on going up in december, every time not only do i find time to meet up with scott, paul, and bruce but they all deliberately try to reserve as much "jess time" as they can because i have a unique and powerful friendship with each of them, every time i finish a new creative project paul has to see it bc he loves how ambitious i am, i repeatedly wake up to texts scott sends me at 3am about the documentary and how excited he is to have me on tour with him to film it next year, bruce thinks it's hilarious he used to think i was "shy" bc i've gotten so comfortable going on infodumps and tangents about things i'm passionate about, and the three of them all feel like extended family. best of all, i actually have plans to graduate from college a semester early so that i can use the money (and time) i've saved to find a place in toronto and start making even more connections with the comedy community up there (also for the record: no i have not met mark, kevin, or dave yet. i know kevin is aware of my existence from bruce giving me a shoutout at a show they both did but that's about it. but i know i will interview all of them for my documentary)

so anyway that's how i got into kids in the hall. i know only the first 2 paragraphs answer your question, but at this point my love for this show has become so so intertwined with my relationships to bruce and scott and paul as humans that i don't really consider getting into kids in the hall and getting to know the kids in the hall as separate things in my life.

(also if you have any follow-up questions on anything mentioned feel free to reply or dm me, this goes for everyone else too!)

[the-habbit-reviewer]

Artificial Intolerance | In over its head.

This is a series I bingewatched today. Like almost every New Gen series, I didn't like!

It does all of the tropes you'd expect. Hell, it even has a HABIT/Patrick ripoff. It takes a lot from MLAndersen0 actually. I'd describe the series as an overbloated MLAndersen0 clone.

The videos are overly long, where nothing happens for most of the runtime. Ted is vlogging, that could be used to show how the characters interact with each other, watching them do whacky stuff. But nope. It's just stretches of silence while Ted walks around doing nothing, or it's Ted talking to the camera for 10 minutes. If a series is JUST gonna be talking, or have entire videos where it's just blocks of text, then it shouldn't be a Vlog. Just make a blog. Which AI also has, but it's useless.

It doesn't feel like it has an end goal. Nothing in the series feels like it's leading to anything. It doesn't feel like the people working on AI have any passion for the series.

1: The Pacing

Obnoxiously poor. Every video is just a snoozefest.

2: The Characters

Flat pieces of cardboard. You never get a sense on who they are or how they feel about each other. None of them have any personality.

3: The Story

It has no plot. I struggled to understand what exactly was happening. I just kept thinking, "Oh that's like MLAndersen0" or "Oh, that's just like Marble Hornets"

Final Thoughts:

1/10. Yet another series that does nothing interesting. If you've watched this, you've watched 96% of the modern Slenderverse.

[comicaurora]

Got told by a friend who also reads the tumblr that my ramblings about Doctor Who are the same as you with ReBoot: "endlessly trying to get people to watch a show just so you can have someone to talk to about it" as they said. and I wanted to ask how you managed to get people into a show they are put off from due to being told about it a lot? also what are your thoughts on Doctor Who and it's 60 year history?

In my experience convincing someone to try a show is like 20% your actual pitch and 80% them. Your pitch can help them decide if they might like the show, but it's up to them to decide if and when they'll actually watch it. They need to be in the right headspace, have the right kind of schedule, nothing else eating their attention, etc. Some people just don't do bingewatching, or they only do bingewatching and need to block out a long weekend to power through. And since I know a lot of artists, sometimes they react to media in unpredictable ways - an episode will hit them just right and suddenly they're off on a tangent and can't even think about watching TV.

It can be a bit frustrating if you really want to talk to them about it right this minute, but honestly I've had some very nice discussions about media with people who haven't tried it, and I've been on the other side of that dynamic as well. I first got into Leverage because my dad used it as an offhand example when describing a frustration he had with longform media (that characters wouldn't be allowed to overcome their personal issues because they made good drama) and it intrigued me at exactly the right time to make me want to check it out. Hell, the entire point of the Detail Diatribe format is one of us rambling an explanation of what makes a piece of media so cool or so annoying to an audience surrogate who hasn't seen it.

I have had luck offering to watch shows with people before - I sat through the first three episodes of The Owl House with a friend recently and she really liked it, though last I checked she hadn't watched more since. I got another one into Transformers Prime by just showing the Starscream episodes which I knew would hit just right. The downside is sometimes I'll be told that they haven't watched more since because they like watching it with me specifically, which is both very sweet and mildly frustrating.

But when it comes to the actual pitch, in my experience it's good to zero in on the parts you personally really liked and the parts you think they specifically would really like. For Doctor Who, I loved the RTD portrayal of 9 and 10 as "lonely gods," and I really liked the angsty character drama, but to get someone into the show I'd probably show something like Blink, which stands on its own with a very simple yet scary monster premise, or Vincent and the Doctor, which highlights the historical angle, is incredibly emotionally impactful and also stands on its own without needing much overarching context or understanding of the show. Neither of these episodes show the parts of the overarching story that I liked, but they work well to communicate the general vibes without needing too much outside context, and they're about as good as the show gets.

As for Doctor Who specifically, I was watching New Who as soon as it started because my parents were so into it (which meant I had nightmares for months about that fucking gas mask zombie two-parter jesus christ) and I really liked the 9 and 10 runs, with a slight preference for 10 because he was a little less grumpy. I stuck through the whole 11 era even though I kinda stopped liking it after Amy and Rory left, and I finally tapped out with 12. The problem was I was watching Sherlock around the same time and was starting to notice Moffat's habit of rewriting all his heroes into deeply unlikable turbochad megageniuses and then turning directly to camera and saying "isn't he wonderful? if you don't agree you're shallow." Because it's a really good sign when you kick off your season by guilt-tripping your audience into watching!

Even that didn't fully wreck it for me, but I remember the exact episode that made me go "yep, think I'm good" - series 8, episode 5, "time heist." The Doctor and friends wake up in a weird room with some strangers and no memory of how they got there, a hooded figure on a screen tells them they all agreed to get their memories wiped to rob a bank and that they all have doohickeys that will instantly "shred them to atoms" that they're supposed to use to avoid capture by the telepathic minotaur thing that'll melt their brains if it catches them. Now, rule number one of character deaths is "if it doesn't leave a body, they're not actually dead," so I figured the doohickeys were teleporters, and the hooded "architect" pulling the strings from a TV screen was probably a recording of one of the memory-wiped characters pulling the strings - most likely The Doctor, what with him being the genius master planner type. These twists aren't particularly complicated. I cannot stress enough how simple "The Doctor orchestrated a mildly clever way to break into a secure vault without the telepathic minotaur thing finding out" is. The part where I tapped out is when The Doctor went off on a long-winded, very impressed monologue about how ingenious this whole scheme was, culminating in the big reveal that the brilliant architect who orchestrated this entire scenario was in fact……… The Doctor. Obviously.

My tolerance for authorial wanking is very low, and while a lengthy monologue by the hero about how smart the hero's plan was is tolerable when the hero is an egotistical genius about to be taken down a few pegs by the narrative, a lengthy monologue by the hero about how smart the writer was for writing the hero's plan is another animal entirely, and it circles around to being frankly insulting when the plan is that basic. "I put on a hood, recorded a video, wiped my own memory and then watched the video. Truly my genius is unparalleled on this or any other world."

So yea, that's about when I called it off, and why I wasn't particularly surprised when Sherlock season 4 turned into an unmitigated tire fire. I watched a few episodes after The Doctor regenerated into 13, but I kinda fell off the wagon after it started looking like none of the characters were getting arcs I was interested in following.

Historically, Doctor Who hasn't been good, it's been fun. I've watched some snippets of Old Who and found them difficult to stick with. It's had an astoundingly widespread cultural impact, but it's one of those things I don't really get, and because the show changes so much from season to season and Doctor to Doctor I think it makes sense that most fans are really only fans of very specific eras and doctors. If the whole show changes out from under you, it makes sense you might not be as invested afterwards - that's just the nature of the game when the franchise has been running since 1963.

[catmomjudy]

You know, after the twists and turns in 7x06, I have absolutely no idea what’s coming next.

And that’s just peachy keen.

I haven’t tuned into a weekly TV show since NCIS jumped the shark and HIMYM ended. So, catching up to 9-1-1 (read that: bingewatching over winter 2023 semester break, having already been reading fanfic since 2021) and tuning in every week has been fun. Tim M. is coming up with some crazy and interesting stuff, and it’s edge-of-your-seat must-see-TV exciting.

So, whatever comes in the show will come. Que sera sera. If I really want my fix of a certain story or certain ship or certain trope (SEAL!Buck 😻), there is an entire menu of fanfic out there, waiting to be explored.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

How do I watch two different shows in the span of one week that have nothing to do with each and somehow both have Bob Evans in it?

First I watched The Offer, about the production of The Godfather. Mid-level production, no A-list which only meant it got even more sidelined in the mix of thousends of shows available. But, entertaining enough, I didn't know that much of the behind the scenes (or maybe I did and I forgot). Some unusual casting. I know Coppola had this mop of hair and a black beard, but the guy was tall. And to see Alex from Grey's Anatomy play Marlon Brando was just shocking. Anyway, it was fine for a weekend bingewatch.

Yes, Bob Evans. I started my post with him. I'll admit that Hollywood and especially its 20th century history has only become an interest of mine recently and much, much later after my student days when I used to think it was so uninteresting. Gained some wisdom in the meantime and while I was catching up on some 90s erotic thrillers, his name came up and I remember checking Evans' name on google cause I really wanted to see who the sleazy guy is. For context, I think he was producing one of those 90s movies and said/did shitty things. Now with The Offer, I got some more information. Head of production at Paramount, he did Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown. Big titles, good Paramount years and I think I might want to investigate that lane a bit more. And he was married to Ally McGraw who then cheated on him with Steve McQueen. Just another Hollywood story.

So, I finish that series and then I remember that season 2 of Minx is already out. I think it's vaguely inspired by Bob Guccione's Viva magazine that started in the 70s. Who could be better at launching an erotic-feminist magazine while also being at the helm of Penthouse? (I'm currently listening to Stiffed, which is a podcast about this entire story).

Back to Minx, the story has the same premise. In S2E2, by the time the magazine is succesful, the team also gets their fame and money and somehow they are in charge of the premiere of Deep Throat. How is Bob Evans connected to this? Well, in this story, they somehow don't have the rolls of film ready and they're told that Evans has been keeping a copy at his mansion for quite some time, apparently for jerking off. There was no actual Evans in the episode, only mentioned, but hey, from The Godfather to Deep Throat via Minx. Now, that's a journey. Oh, and lastly, Joan Didion shows up that same episode at the premiere and they did some great casting for her. Just perfect.

An all over the place post which is actually more of a tv series recommendation, if nothing else.

[dreamwritesimagines]

It’s CMA-

Lmao the entire bridgerton crew is getting married in a matter of a few years lol

I feel like clover will offer to chaperone Eloise and her suitors so that Eloise can threaten them without getting in trouble lmao. After the first few guys go running from the house in tears tho everyone else learns their lesson

In terms of what I’ve been watching lately, the spiderverse stuff is really good! I also like some of the older marvel and Star Wars tv shows, but those have always been a favorite. Some of the new Star Wars ones are good too though!

I’ve also been watching a fair amount of ttrpg stuff and comedy, mostly on dropout.tv which is pretty fun.

But I totally get what you mean when you say you’ve just been rewatching old faves; I’ve definitely been in that place too so it’s nice that you have a few reliable favorites.

How have you been doing besides all that?

Lolll oh yeah, one after the other 😂 Their mother will be so happy 😂

I feel like Eloise and Clover together will make a very badass team😁 You're right, they would definitely send some suitors go running 😂

Oooh that sounds interesting! ❤️ I saw some episodes of Game Changer, that's from dropout right? They are hilarious! 😁

I'm like adamantly ignoring everything I'm supposed to do and like, not doing any of them 😂 I have like a bunch of stuff I need to do by December, and I'm over here bingewatching series loll😂 But other than that I'm doing fine! ❤️

How about you? Any interesting plants you came across recently? 🥰

[fazedlight]

re: weird trauma reversal and also being late to the fandom

i was also quite late to the fandom and one of the things i’ve noticed is that i think in some ways you can tell when someone bingewatched the series after it was complete, or close to when it was complete, and especially in terms of the relationships people have with the characters.

i think one of the biggest examples of this is james - i kind of feel like a lot of the people who are more open to the fact that guardiancorp happened or felt there was ‘potential there’ etc are people who would have watched seasons 1 & 2 in particular play out in real time over the course of 2 years, so they had time to form more of an acquaintance and acceptance of what his character was intended to be, whereas i think if you watched all of the seasons back to back to back over a matter of weeks james’ behaviour is so erratic across the course of seasons 1 - 4 that he just seems kind of like a manipulative jerk because suddenly the kara -> lucy -> kara -> guardian -> luthors are evil -> lena is hot comes right on the heels of each other in a way that it wouldn’t have if you were watching the series in weekly episodes.

but in specific relation to what you were saying about cheapening kara’s traumas, i think bingewatching makes that cheapening effect even worse and that it also has an impact on how people see kara and lena actually, because - similar to how it’s hard to see james as the character the showrunners intended when you binge watch - when you speedrun through s3 - s4 the inconsistency with kara’s character and her traumas makes some of her flaws, like the self-righteousness and the hypocrisy, seem even worse in a way because it’s so much more compressed? it’s a lot easier to see how it must have seemed to lena when she looked back in retrospect and revisited their friendship after the trauma of lex because the flipflopping in one episode to the next isn’t over the course of a week or a season.

(i thought the lex trauma comment in one of your earlier posts was really astute and it resonated with me so much - while there’s plenty of balanced fiction and also fiction that completely ignores that lena did Bad Things, on the other side of it I really don’t think a lot of lena’s antis really account for the fact that yeah, she completely went haywire and yeah, it was pretty ooc, but at the same time the writers did try to set the stage for it - she lived through making a morally grey decision involving a once beloved family member and then having the rug pulled out from under her immediately after, and right on the heels of some very erratic behaviour by kara. lena sitting in her office feeling used that kara only wanted her to use her as a source always gets me, like her doubts of their friendship weren’t just seeded by supergirl/kara being two people alone.)

sorry for the long comment! i try so hard to be a normal person but some of the things you say just really resonate with me, and then… this happens. congrats on completing diat as well and excited for your wips!!!

Yeah!! That makes sense. Having started the show in early 2022 and binging it, I have no sense of the pacing at all. Someone (maybe you?) brought up in another ask that the stuff with Kara’s DNA in S6 came up during covid era, when talk about DNA replication was pretty common on the news, which made it especially odd in the show that they treated it like a single-opportunity thing. I would never have thought of the covid context, since I wasn't watching then.

It makes sense that bingewatching would make that trauma reversal aspect even worse! I hadn’t thought of that. Also, ouch, the rift buildup being worse tears my heart out - it was already pretty heartwrenching from my point of view, speed running through the series!

... also, god, waiting an entire summer between S4 and S5 would’ve killed me 🤣

I feel pretty lucky in that I haven’t come across too many anti-Lena or anti-Kara folks (yet?). I just really don’t understand it… they’re just both such compelling characters. They’re both flawed, and they’re both trying to do the right thing, and they’re both trying to deal with their traumas, and I can’t imagine reading stuff for this ship without loving them both.

(Thank you for the comment, please never apologize!! I love reading these! It’s not like I’m normal either 🤣)

[inpursuitofnunchi]

I just finished king the land and it was so fkn cute i loved it!!! Really needed this light, fun, uncomplicated kdrama to lift my spirits!

Yoona and Junho have such fantastic chemistry, it's a delight to watch them sparkle on screen. Both of their eye smiles kill me. Yoona actually reminds me so much of Son Ye Jin, especially in the scenes where she is childishly pouting or getting mock-angry. So so adorable!

The OST is also so good! Well deserved hype, very happy to have bingewatched this entire show in three days. Very proud of myself right now. XD

[dbssh]

i say do the whole series if you can it'd be very sobering. never watched past stronger than you (bingewatched it with my aunt and her roommate, very fun actually) but like. seeing the entire show just keel over and die when i wasn't looking feels very unreal

YEAH. i stuck with it almost entirely until the end. the last episode i watched live was the one with the off colors? and then i tuned back in for the finale. im honestly a little worried because i know ill fall in love with it early on again and im kind of sad seeing all the potential and knowing where it all goes

[supercantaloupe]

hello! would you be willing to talk about the flaws in d20? what did you mean by structural/cultural flaws?

sure. disclaimer up front that these are just my own opinions and that i don't want them being taken as fact or being taken up with the creators of d20 directly by anyone on my behalf.

i found that the longer d20 went on/the more seasons they produce that the structure and (some of) the content get less and less appealing to me. content wise this is really very subjective; for example i'm not interested in dating sim-type stories, so Shriek Week was never going to be my thing. but even seasons with premises/gimmicks that i like on paper (like anthro characters in Mice & Murder and space sci fi in Starstruck Odyssey) i found to lose my attention as they went on. love the concepts, but the execution was lacking a little bit for me.

but i think my issues with the show structurally are my larger criticisms, and i don't think my personal taste issues with the content are entirely divorced from the structural elements. anyway, what initially hooked me to d20 with fantasy high is the fact that, unlike any other actual play show i'd come across at that point, it had several structural elements in place that grabbed my attention and held it: 1. the episodes were relatively short (between 1-2 hours); 2. the seasons were relatively short (18 episodes or fewer); and 3. the visual aspects of sets and minis were engaging and helped sort out the action but were not NECESSARY to following along. i don't have the free time or attention span to get invested in an audio-only 100-episode campaign where every episode is like 4 hours long; d20's earliest seasons were very attractive to me for this reason (plus the inventive-for-the-actual-play-genre settings and plots, but this is one thing at least that i do not think d20 has faltered in with its later seasons. the creativity and originality is still great in this regard).

so it became an issue for me, starting around Crown of Candy, when episodes started creeping longer and longer. and then seasons crept longer and longer, like The Seven (sidequests used to be an easily digestible 6 episodes and i liked that). even worse than episodes consistently being over 2.5 hours long i think was that episodes were not a consistent length: the last two episodes of Starstruck Odyssey are under 1.5 and over 3 hours respectively. i understand that a lot of this has to do with the loose and unscripted nature of the storytelling medium, and the cast/editors don't want to break up the flow of the show in inconvenient places. but from my perspective as a viewer, it's kind of exhausting not knowing week to week how much time and energy in advance i'm going to need to dedicate to a new episode of my favorite dnd show to relax and rewind. i'm someone who just does not have the patience to dedicate to anything that long without forewarning, nor do i have the schedule to accommodate that without advanced budgeting of my time and workload. and since one of d20's existing strengths imo is its serialized weekly episode release (increasingly rare in this age of streaming and bingewatching), part of the fun of d20 is watching the brand new episode when it drops every week and reacting to it with everyone else doing the same thing at the same time. when a 3 hour episode drops on a wedesnday night and i have too much shit to do to watch it, and thus i have to wait til the weekend or later to catch up, i can see exactly what i'm missing out on when i watch all my friends on discord or tumblr or whatever watching and reacting to it without me.

i also really miss the structure of the rp-battle-rp-battle episode format, particularly for the mainquest seasons. i think this was an even bigger loss for the show due to covid than the physical minis and sets (which i missed, certainly, during the pandemic seasons, but i think they worked around their absence well enough that it didn't bother me). i'm sure also the more freeform nature of Sophomore Year contributed to this change too but since that was the only full season thus far that was ACTUALLY improvised live to an audience as opposed to being completely shot and edited prior to release, i don't hold it to the same standards of scrutiny as i do the other seasons. anyway, i once again think it comes down largely to a predictability thing for me: you knew, when there was such a pattern to the episodes, exactly what you were getting into in any given week, whether it'd be battle or roleplay. moreover, you knew that each episode was going to wrap itself up in a satisfying way (not necessarily a complete way, but in a satisfying way) that prepped for the next week's episode, which also promised to have a different tone and goal. that variety was important to me, and the predictability. battles and roleplay both get exhausting and difficult to follow (or worse, boring) after too long without the other to break it up. i miss the structure of this pattern (i think started to depart from this format with TUC2 iirc, which is also the first season i watched as it was airing and got the feeling that it was becoming a bit of a slog to watch all the way through).

all of this is criticism, of course, pretty ironic considering that Sophomore Year is still probably my favorite season. but again, livestreamed. they still (mostly) kept their episode length consistent around 2-2.5 hours (finales notwithstanding lol), there was more internal variety within episodes (one 2.5 hour episode wasn't necessarily 2.5 hours straight of just rp or just battle), the gang got split up a lot more which allowed for more variety in storytelling within an episode or an arc, etc. and on top of it, i think that plotwise, they followed up Fantasy High extremely well, introducing/continuing/expanding lore without it feeling out-of-place or retcon-y. i think it having been made still mostly pre-pandemic before a lot of these changes i've been complaining about were fully implemented does link it more closely still with the style of the early seasons i liked so much, but regardless i think Sophomore Year does demonstrate that some of these traits that i don't like about newer seasons, on their own, are not bad. i just don't think they're implemented very well in recent seasons, or at least not well enough to hold my attention and excitement anymore. long episodes aren't inherently bad, but inconsistently long episodes are hard to work around in my life. a lack of a regular rp-battle episode pattern isn't inherently bad, but there needs to be more internal variety to each episode and a satisfying wrap-up to each episode (which may mean simply wrapping up each episode sooner, or it may not).

none of this is even to get into the execution of content in each season. obviously ymmv with personal taste for whether you like any given season's premise or plot beats or whatever, but i remember the many (valid) criticisms emerging surrounding unbalanced character focus and especially racial insensitivity (from the show and from the fans) with certain seasons like TUC2 and Misfits & Magic. not even to mention my own problems with the inclusion of judaism (or lack thereof)/antisemitism in the show, but i have to get to class soon, and don't have time to elaborate on that right now. this post is long enough already, and my issues with the structural elements of the show are just as strong as my criticisms of its representation issues or whatever, plus i think structural elements are easier to understand if you haven't watched every single season because they apply broadly to many seasons, while issues of representation or bad plot/character balance or whatever are only relevant to specific seasons.