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mllenugget · 6 months

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Hello I mcyt fandom-ified la Team du Lundi members and wrote a shit ton of text about it

After exhausting myself on trying to catch up on the current QSMP lore I got a sudden craving for a more familiar and fast paced kind of minecraft content and ended up rewatching all the Team du Lundi's SMP best of's I could find

And while doing so with my brain still hazed in fandom brainrot, I started picking up on minor details or info the players casually dropped, and drew parallels to the French speakers' QSMP counterparts This is going to be a long wordy post I don't even know what I am rambling about and for. Three things you need to be aware of about la Team du Lundi before reading :

Baghera, Antoine and Etoiles are the only QSMP players that are part of la Team du Lundi

As far as I remember the only two elements that suggest that la Team du Lundi's SMP could be canon to QSMP are Antoine being pressured into building another Tower of Shit, and Baghera's infamous fountain being mentioned when she was asked if her character remembers anything from her past before the island

La Team du Lundi's SMP was NOT a roleplaying server, it was just a private survival server for a small circle of friends casually playing together. So whenever I quote someone in this specific post, it is the streamer : there is no character other than the persona the streamer is usually showing on stream, but I just thought it would be fun to interpret certain situations while keeping in mind the QSMP lore. And here goes :

Baghera claims that when she was a kid she strongly believed that she could breathe underwater. The others joke about her having fins

Antoine jokingly tells Baghera he doesn’t need oxygen at all

Antoine claims he will still be alive thousands of years forwards

Antoine’s voice shifts when he wants to appear creepy

Baghera built an aquarium at her place, then helped Antoine build one at his tower, then built a giant swimming pool, then a fountain, then a waterslide- do you see a theme ?

Baghera knows that her skin is actually that of a chick and not a duckling, and calls it so here

Chat said that Baghera has a middle child syndrome, justifying that she bullies Angle Droit because Etoiles bullies her in the first place (Etoiles has also called her « little sister » in a derogatory way)

Etoiles has repeatedly asked people to play Valorant with him at least once

Here's a clip of Etoiles getting languaged in french and owing "a gifted sub in the swear jar"

Unrelated random clip of Etoiles because it creates happy hormones in me brain

Etoiles is regularly refered to as "the warrior"

Etoiles guided the whole group during an expedition to the End and he was literally glowing doing so (enchanted arrows effect) Everyone called him "the guide"

Baghera was the one who gave the final blow to the Enderdragon (and died from magic right after)

Etoiles spent most of his time adventuring in order to bring stuff and gear back to everyone for their builds

Etoiles asked Aypierre for help in order to design a redstone door for his cave which could only open upon solving a puzzle (which was egg & arrow related) (Aypierre was not a member of the server)

Etoiles built a nightclub with the walls and ceiling covered in wardenblocks making it look like a starry sky. He also rehomed Allays holding golden apples inside claiming them to be the souls working for him and that they lived there peacefuly

Etoiles jokingly talks about Antoine acting jealous and violent towards him because Etoiles told him he wanted to go and visit Kameto (who also was not a member of the server)

Baghera (along with Horty) had a rivalry with Joueur du Grenier (host of the server with admin powers) after he decided to build a massive parking lot right next to their house. They countered by covering the whole thing with dirt, followed by JDG building a factory and the two parties went back and forth. Baghera argued that it was stupid because they didnt even have cars to begin with (which is a sentence she reused when talking about Forever's roads) Also she tells JDG that he could've built a seaport instead, which makes JDG contemplate the thought of building an airport (and though he ended up never building it, I am side eyeing the French's plane crash)

At some point JDG wonders about what a roleplaying minecraft server would look like (RPZ 2), to which Baghera replies that she has a hard time picturing the thing "We'd all just build things you see ? I don't think we'd create stories, we would all just be like "I'm a builder, ah you too ? Well awesome, builders, cool"" and I find this to be hilariously ironic (fun fact : Baghera had no idea that QSMP was a roleplaying server when she first joined and often claims she would've taken a different approach with her character had she known right off the gate)

As I was finishing to write this down, these fuckers (/lh) decided to host a closure night for the server as they've never really officially did it, everyone just sort of deserted the server after a while. Baghera, Etoiles and Antoine kept referring to QSMP throughout the night, mostly talking about how weird it felt without mods. Among other meta commentary things

They mentionned Cellbit and Bad multiple times as the group was trying to solve enigmas. Antoine talked about "the cultural sharing" between communities as he taught insults to each others with Mike, Roier and Maximus in their respective languages Multiple more players were namedropped (including eggs) while Antoine was talking about how the server functions

Yes, Baghera and Etoiles kept their QSMP skins. Etoiles with his code corrupted purgatory one, and Baghera with her fading pink disheveled hair (with the addition of her cubito wearing Horty's merch)

Baghera admits that going back to this small familiar vanilla server feels like coming back home to your family during the holidays

Team du Lundi's cameos in QSMP :

Though Pomme has never canonically met JDG (even though most of her parents have talked about him to her at least once), she occasionaly breaks the 4th wall to refer to him. She once compared one of BBH's "vacation" flower shirts with his, and when Foolish and Bad asked her to elaborate (obviously not getting the reference) she proceeded to play JDG's music theme with the flute instead (Also I really feel the need to once more point out how mindblowing it is for your average french speaking viewer to have JDG's intro theme being added to the mod they use in the QSMP because of how anchored it is within french internet pop culture. Like this shit has been existing for 14 fucking years, it's part of the childhood of a lot of us, so to find a clip of British hardcore player Philza peacefuly listening to Mexican egg admin Tallulah play this theme on her flute feels like a multiverse fever dream)

Horty has been on Quesadilla Island through cc!Baghera's account, but neither of them really wanted to justify it RP wise. Baghera just wanted to give her best friend a tour of the island. Horty only got to meet Richarlyson who gave her a tour of Cellbit's castle and made her pick a room (she chose Chaos). She also chatted with Etoiles who tagged along for a bit and (this is obviously justified by it being a one-shot out of roleplay filler episode kind of night) they both already knew each other and were on friendly enough terms to bicker with one another Also she was part of the French speakers Quackity reached out to to invite on the server, but she had to decline because she was very busy at that time (and also not interested) Also also she was Baghera's teammate for that Formula 4 event, and Baghera has discussed it and showed pictures to a couple of islanders, including Richas who was very hyped about it

Another player the viewers were hoping to see on Quackity's server is Mynthos. He exists within the server with the picture of him that hangs in Pomme's art gallery, the cursed animation video that used to play in La France, as well as with Aypierre's health potion factory that bears his name

Angle Droit and Zerator are sometimes namedropped when the French speakers talk with their chat. Angle Droit frequently raids Baghera's and Antoine's streams, and though it has never been confirmed, a lot of viewers theorized that she was the +1 player Baghera and Etoiles wanted to invite on the server had they won the elections.

As for Zera, Etoiles went AFK on QSMP a couple of times in order to test some of Zerator's TrackMania maps (which he later discussed with Pac). I also remember a very trivial conversation Etoiles had with Mouse and Aypierre where he laughed about hurting his back very badly after carrying a fellow streamer during a caritative event, said event was hosted by Zerator (he's also the one judging them with concern from his desk)

I'm done.

Bonus alternative design for Angle Droit because at first I thought she was a fox then it turned out she was a corgi but then she changed it again to a fox and woop

#I wrote down a whole other post just as long as this one to explain my individual thought process behind each designs #Took me weeks to write- had a couple of clips to back up my headcanons #but then I was reading the post again checking for mistakes before realizing #yo just #that is so many words and for what #just let your designs speak for themselves hey trust yourself let there be room for interpretation #if people turn out to be curious well i guess thats what ask box was created for leave it be thats enough #(not) fun fact : I drew those Baghera Etoiles & Antoine designs back in june and the files got corrupted and I lost a week worth of work #if we are mutuals on discord youve mightve heard me whine about this one #mcyt #team du lundi #qsmp #angle droit #hortyunderscore #baghera jones #zerator #etoiles #mynthos #joueur du grenier #antoine daniel #serveur du lundi #my art

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son1c · 7 months

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something about me is i got into sonic in 2020 because my BJF (best job friend) at the time wanted to go see the first movie together. we did, and then we saw it three more times in theaters (before they all shut down because of the pandemic). it was this whole thing, we brought our other friends along for the rewatches and always had a lot of fun.

now, in 2023, i surround myself with people who unironically love it.

i know my experience isn't universal, but overall i've had a very positive experience with sonic. and whenever i see stuff that implies sonic as an interest is "cringe" or whatever, i'm always like "huh?" cuz it's so divorced from the reality i live in.

it makes me sad to think that some people feel ashamed about liking sonic. like, what's there to feel bad about? it's a fun series with tons and tons of content, and i think it's great that it can bring people of all ages together. there's a little something for everyone, even if you don't like EVERYTHING about it.

games, comics, music, books, movies and tv shows, coloring pages and sticker sheets... not to mention all the stuff you can make for yourself, since sonic is a very big open world full of endless possibilities irt fanart and fanfic.

idk what this post is about really. i just think it's pretty cool that when i was at the store earlier today, a kid saw my sonic socks and smiled real wide. cuz that's what sonic is to me. something to share and smile about

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dragonflame36 · 10 months

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I love the CR community but my god y’all take shit way to seriously. The whole Laudna being worried about Imogen thing was clearly just a joke, Laudna wasn’t acting like serious Laudna she was acting like old chaotic Laudna. The amount of people I’ve seen be oh my god this is unhealthy, she doesn’t trust Ashton who’s next. If you rewatch last nights episode you’d see Marisha didn’t know they left and didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing.

To me Marisha was role playing herself missing all that information that’s it. So from Laudna’s POV Ashton and Imogen just disappeared and she doesn’t know where they went or even knew they were leaving. Genuinely it’s not that serious, I’d like to remind all you this is is a game and this is IMPROV not everything is some elaborate scene with tons of subtext some of it is just comedy and stuff they do for fun.

Also Laudna isn’t being any different towards Imogen, she’s always been extremely protective flash back to her threatening Ashton if anything happened to her and flash back again when she said she’d murder literally everyone if something happened to Imogen. Their relationship is really no different at all and some of y’all are just being weird and trying to find weird things where there is none.

There is only so much time and the amount of people going OMG no one’s talking, like yes not everything will be talked about, having a 5 hour session of nothing but 1-1’s would be fun for us the cast not so much. They’ve only been reunited for really like 5 episodes and 3 of those have had 2 hour long combat encounters there has been no time really for insanely long conversations. We’ll get some conversations eventually but y’all got to be fucking patient.

Lastly Marisha didn’t get this relationship sprung on her Matt confirmed on talks that Marisha and Laura have discussed Imogen and Laudna’s relationship. Matt said Marisha was shocked it happened then and there because she didn’t know it was coming but Matt even said Marisha probably knew about Imogen’s feelings so can we please also put that to bed that Marisha has had zero idea about a possible Imogen/Laudna romance.

#imodna #critical role #cr spoilers #imogen temult #laudna #cr discourse

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aemiron-main · 3 months

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do you think the multiple timeline plot is a plot point that’s more introduced in S4/for the HenVecWard TM plot specifically?

Like is there anything from earlier seasons/not related to Henry you would consider as proof that we’ve been seeing multiple timelines the whole time?

I think it would be kinda odd if multiple timelines are so important to the plot but there’s only real proof of it in S4 so that’s why I’m asking

I LIKE COMPLETELY 100% BELIEVE IT BUT IM REWATCHING RN AND I WANNA SEE IF THERES ANYTHING I SHOULD BE LOOKING OUT FOR

OOHOHOHOH SO!! THERE IS A LOTTTTTT OF ALTERNATE TIMELINE STUFF IN PREVIOUS SEASONS!!!

I totally agree that it would be odd if there was only proof of it in S4- thankfully, there’s evidence across all seasons!

So, let’s get into it!

Evidence of Multiple Timelines/Timeline Weirdness Prior To Season 4

So, one of the main things re: multiple timelines pre-S4 is Will’s vanishing. I touched on this in the Edward video too, but I also have a bunch of posts on it!

Basically, we saw two different Wills back in S1, each possibly from a different timeline.

I made this post, this post, and this post about Warm Will versus Cool Will, but TLDR, we see two different Wills on the night he vanished, one with longer, shaggier hair, who looks older & more exhausted & has cooler colour grading (hence why he’s Cool Will) and one with shorter, neater hair who looks younger & less tired & has warmer colour grading (hence why he’s Warm Will):

And there’s also the two different versions of the Byers’ phone- both versions of the Byers’ phone have “AREA CODE 501” written on the white part, but one version has nothing else underneath “AREA CODE 501” whereas the other version has some extra, unreadable line of text under it:

Which, not only is “501” the wrong area code for Hawkins, but “area 501” also connects to NINA (and all of the NINA timeline weirdness as a result), because the NINA coordinates from S4 lead to area 51.

And then there’s also the two different Wills in Castle Byers- the Will that El sees in Castle Byers in the void is different than the Will that the audience saw singing in Castle Byers (see this post and this post).

How are they different? Well, the Will that El sees in the void is more exhausted, barely able to move or speak- whereas the Will that the audience saw singing in Castle Byers has enough energy to sing and shiver.

And each of them also has a different version of Castle Byers- the Will that El sees in the void has drawings on the wall that are a.) in colour and b.) noticeably wet, wheres the Will that was singing and shivering has drawings on the wall that a.) have no colour and b.) are dry:

And one of the BIGGEST pieces of evidence of multiple timelines in the whole show actually comes from the end of S1 & then ties into the beginning of S2- the newspapers.

I talked about this in this post, this post, and this post, but the article we see at the end of S1 about Will’s vanishing has a TON of alternate timeline stuff.

It’s the article that mentions Richard Brenner, who’s likely Martin’s timeline counterpart or something along those lines (ie if Martin was Henry’s Brenner, Richard was likely Edward’s Brenner, especially considering the connections between Eddie Munson and Reefer Rick versus the subtext there re: Edward Creel and Richard Brenner, especially with Reefer Rick being a drug dealer versus Richard Brenner being the head of narcotics at HNL) (see posts like this post and this post and a bunch of other posts LMAO)

Not to mention all of the weirdness with Joyce in this article, and the fact that according to this article, Joyce claims that she found Will as a test subject at HNL, with no mention of the upside down:

Which ties into something I’ve talked about re: how it’s weird that the lab let will go to a normal hopsital- they were ready to straight up KILL HOPPER to prevent any info about the UD/lab getting leaked, and yet, they supposedly just let will go to a normal hospital instead of keeping him at the lab?

Plus, we never actually SAW joyce and jim leave the UD or the lab with Will- if they somehow escaped the lab & got will to a regular hospital after escaping the lab, how did they get through all of those guarded and locked doors that they had to go through to get to the mothergate?

Especially without a keycard and being vastly outnumbered + carrying a dying kid?

So, I wonder if that scene of Will at the hospital might be a different timeline where Will was found in one of the rooms at HNL, rather than in the UD, and if Joyce and Hopper broke in & got a keycard the way Hopper did earlier in S1/were able to get in and out of the lab & to a normal hospital more easily because Will was in one of the upper rooms & not down through all of those extra guarded doors/quaratine rooms that they had to go through to get to the mothergate.

Especially since that newspaper where Joyce seemingly claimed that Will was found as a HNL test subject also says that Will was currently at Hawkins General Hospital- which is where we see him at the end of S1, so it would make sense for those scenes to be the same timeline as that newspaper clipping (and therefore also in the same timeline as Richard Brenner):

And also, that S1 article is also DIFFERENT from the S2 article about Will’s vanishing despite the two of them seemingly being the SAME ARTICLE, with the same title, the same picture, and the same author (Benjamin Buck), but with different content- they seem to be alternate timeline versions of the same article.

There’s also the matter of Will’s poster and eye colour- the S1 poster says that his eyes are brown, but the Will we see in S2 has greenish-greyish eyes. So, yet again, we seem to have two different Wills, especially since they make a point of showing us what Will would look like with brown eyes when flayed, so they arent just calling his green eyes “brown” as a catch-all term.

Which, speaking of Flayed Will’s eyes, why did Will’s eyes turn brown when he was flayed but Billy’s eyes didn’t?

Why did Billy’s eyes stay blue (although sometimes becoming a more saturated shade of blue much like 1979 massacre Henward’s eyes) whereas Will’s turned brown?

I personally wonder if Will’s eyes changing colour is connected to all of the twinner/timeline stuff, especially with the scene in TFS where Alice asks “Henry” where Henry is and “Henry” responds with “he’s right here,” as if he himself isn’t Henry- does flaying somehow combine the two versions of people from alternate timelines?

And as a result, did we get Edward and Henry in the same body/connected mentally somehow/combined (therefore explaining that Alice scene), and were the two Wills combined, therefore explaining the eye colour change if the other Will has brown eyes?

I feel like there’s something here re: flaying & the idea of the hivemind being active across timelines (ie if two people are flayed, but theyre both in different timelines, would they be able to communicate with eachother via the hivemind/would they be connected to the same hivemind?)

Is that why Billy’s eyes didn’t turn brown? Because Billy’s alternate timeline self also has blue eyes? Anyway!

S1 is also the season where Mr Clarke brings up the idea of parallel universes/infinite alternate timelines:

And Connie Frazier from S1 is likely Alice Creel- but not Henry’s sister, Alice- Edward’s mother, Alice (see: this post ), hence how she’s still alive after 1959- she’s not the Alice that we saw laying dead on the floor, this Alice was an adult in 1959 & is Edward’s mother, not his sister, and is Victor’s wife, not his daughter, as according to the Edward paper/Indianapolis Gazette, Edward’s mother was named Alice and his sister was named Virginia, his mother and sister are swapped compared to Henry.

And then, in S2, we have my beloved 8:15gate, which, TLDR, there’s footage on Bob’s JVC on Halloween when Will was using it to record that a.) has timestamps that change when they shouldnt (ie, when Will was supposedly recording the footage, it says 8:04, but when Joyce watches that EXACT same clip back, it suddenly says 8:15) and b.) has footage that shouldnt even exist, because some of the scenes that he supposedly recorded are scenes where he HAD THE CAMERA DOWN AND WAS NOT RECORDING! That footage shouldnt even exist! And yet, it’s there, with a messed up timestamp.

Not to mention all of the stuff in S2 that directly contradicts TFS & reinforces the idea of multiple timelines (for example, in S2, Bob talks about how Joyce didnt even know his name in highschool- whereas in TFS, not only do the two know eachother well in highschool, but Bob also claims to have known Joyce since first grade).

And in S3, there’s a bunch of stuff (including the idea that S3 is its own weird timeline), but one example is what I talked about in this post re: the reference to temporal displacement in S3 and there’s a bunch more in S3/I’m just keeping this relatively brief LMAO!

And that’s not even all of it across the seasons! Not by a LONG shot, these are just a few little examples! The multiple timeline weirdness stretches all across ST, through every season and affects every character- although Henward is more overtly tied to it than the other characters, ALL of them are still tied to it, and there’s evidence of multiple timelines in every season- hell, like I said, some of the best evidence comes from S1, because that’s where we find out about Richard!

#stranger things #theres sm more here but i was slow to teply to this and just wanted to get the reply out #but theres SO MUCH MORE out there across the seasons

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eviltheleon00 · 1 year

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Could you do like 2003 bill headcanons/oneshots for like a him and a girl he has a crush on who's in the band 😭😭 tons of fluffy stuff?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TYSM FOR REQUESTING THIS!! LITERALLY SOO CUTEE. this is my first time writing for tokio hotel so go easy on me bbgs. 😪

please request fics from any fandom <333

words: 305 characters: 1,605

(2003) BILL KAULITZ X GN!READER HC

POV: bill has a crush on you (your in the band and its so obvious)

being an awkward 13 year old this man would be SHY AS HELL around you. like blushing, looking down at his feet, that shy closed lip smile that everyone does. the whole confident act is complete bullshit and all for the camera.

its so painfully obvious that he has a crush on you to literally everyone but he thinks he's being soooo slick about it. the first to realise was obviously tom, being his twin and all, he teased bill relentlessly for months.

would totally rewatch recorded performances and interviews just to stare at your face. man is obsessed in a good way. on that note he would also like to sit next to you in interviews because he likes being close to you.

lets you paint his nails, has too be black though to fit his emoness. he paints your nails as well if your into that kinda thing.

lets you borrow his clothes and accessories all of the time. earrings? fishnet gloves? rings? shirts? literally anything you want take it, he loves seeing you in his clothes no matter what it is.

if you sung with him in the band he would keep you behind to 'practice vocals' and if you played an instrument he would ask you to have private practices with him just so he could 'be in line with the music' (he totally doesn't just want to see you more).

even though the band was still small you both loved preforming.

he wants so bad to ask you out but is scared you will reject him and try leave the band.

eventually tom got tired of him daydreaming about you and pushed him actually to ask you out and when you send yes he was quite literally over the moon, started blushing like mad, went red and all of that.

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explosionshark · 3 months

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love that u are back AND you are posting xena 🫡🫡 respect 🫡🫡🫡

See the thing is of course I watched a ton of Xena as a kid and I liked it and had vague memories of specific episodes and the characters and stuff, right? But then recently I've been rewatching it as an adult with some buds and like. Holy shit. Xena isn't good - Xena is the best show ever made.

Crazy shit happens all the time. We're halfway through s2 and Xena and Gabrielle have already kissed twice on the mouth. I'm fucking obsessed with Callisto's whole deal. Did you remember there was an entire Halloween episode about lesbian vampires? This shit rules. Everyone should stop whatever they're doing right now and go watch Xena.

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waitingtobreatheagain · 21 days

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Something else that is still so wild to me is how folks really just make up stuff when it comes to what we are seeing and have seen on screen.

I saw a post that asked why Pen even likes Colin and then they said at the bottom they don’t want to rewatch season 1 & 2. Then if it’s not apparent or obvious why—or you forgot—don’t speak on what you don’t know. & then so many people in the comments were getting it wrong TOO. Like at this point yall have to be getting it wrong on purpose.

Especially with people saying he was embarrassed to be seen with her…

The same man who would seek her out no matter the event and would drag HER to the dance floor in front of the whole ton was embarrassed to be seen with her. Like the takes are not only bad but incorrect!!!! Y’all don’t know how to interpret what is in your face on screen and that’s worrisome.

#bridgerton #bridgerton season 3 #polin #my faves #real lovers are back #colin x penelope #penelope featherington #colin bridgerton

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bunnygirl678 · 9 months

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AU or HC IDK buttttttttttttttt

-so red and green are dating right and their families are cool with it everyone supports them even the prof

-they've been together for a while like at least a couple years

-green is at the prof's house and they're having a few drinks reminiscing or something and the prof has too much and like admits that he think Red is too good for Green.

-Red isn't there so he doesn't hear it, but Green isn't as drunk so he remembers,

-and it starts to like eat his insides cause it's always been in the back of his head because of the shit the prof said when he lost the championship (like i just rewatched origins, cause my 5 year old is obsessed with red, and the stuff he says to green is horrible)

-and he knows that red loves him and he loves red so he isn't going to break up with him or anything like that

-but he gets obsessed with like proving himself to Red (the whole ch 30 of pokemas-ex)

-and when he isn't trying to prove himself to red he's obsessively trying to make red happy with him because he's so scared that red's gonna wise up and leave him

-red knows somethings wrong with green but he sucks at communication so it's super hard for him to figure it out and fix it

-and maybe after the whole thing of pokemas ch 30 red is like okay we have to figure this out and forces it out of Green

-and obvs he's pissed at prof oak because green is hurting bad, and he like flips out on him or whatever

-then red just spends a ton of time trying to show green that he is good enough and like it helps but i feel like green will always feel like he's not enough for red

#namelessshipping #originalshipping #reguri #red x blue #red x green #these are fun to write #they might end up as stories if i ever have more time lol

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got-ticket-to-ride · 5 months

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When I first got into the Beatles, I had absolutely no clue about them other than that they sang yellow submarine and come together. So I had no pre conceived notions about Paul or John or any of the boys. But when I started watching interviews and the movies and just all together learning more about them, I could literally sense right away that something was between them. So I thought to myself “is it just me ?” , “am I weird for thinking this?” Turns out there is a whole fandom dedicated to them lol. But I do find it interesting that people back then didn’t see or speculate about them, such as the older fans like your mother. Why do you think that is ? Maybe because people didn’t have the ability to rewatch and analyze videos and comments like we do know idk

I knew them as the moptops in the suits who sang "I want to hold your hand" and "Love Me Do" then moved their genre to something more like "Strawberry Fields Forever", they were like these faceless musicians for me. I wasn't that interested in their history, just their music was so innovative and beautiful! Finding out about Mclennon, the drugs and wild orgies was an eye opening experience. Boy, I felt like I missed my whole life not reading about them. I have so much to catch up on.

I definitely think it's how we consume media today. They mostly only had newspaper and the TV (and their neighbour) who were reporting the same stuff. No forums, no room for speculation. Nowadays, everything is more readily available. We can rewatch all their interviews, piece together quotes from different biographies, there's tons of blogs out there dedicated to Mclennon, my mother wouldn't have had access to this goldmine in the 60s. Also of course, the negative aspect of it, you can still see people from that generation denying homosexuality despite blatant evidence today.

Cheerio Anon, what's your thoughts on Mclennon, did they, were they, have they?

#Asks #The Beatles #Mclennon #gttr-beatles

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joelletwo · 2 months

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wrestling with the 4devas bitchslap again to convince myself its fine if graveyard wins the best ep tourney: it's not the other bloggers who are wrong, it's me

not a complete response to but definitely in conversation with and asking some of the same questions again as @reductionisms's 4devas essay, which tries to square gintoki's "life doesn't need to be fun, i just need you to live" being a series-sanctioned message he's given to villains as an arc-concluding moral continuously up until 4devas with it here being an incorrect worldview that needs to be (physically) corrected by shinpachi, the straightman tonal signpost of gintama

a conflict i have been perplexed by ever since i got to this line on my first watch a year or two ago, since i've seen this line before! all over fandom! as part of the general "dont [bottom text] kill yourself" motivational messaging of gintama that i love!

and, briefly, when i hit 4devas i was also in the middle of being really frustrated by the new arc pattern i was seeing crop up: i loved the villains-turned sympathetic-turned someone worth saving by gintoki tune of the first half of gintama, but it fell massively flat for me in Yoshiwara in Flames, where i was never convinced to be on housen's side but had to watch him get a heartwarming redemptive death at the side of the woman he abused anyways.

then shortly after i had the same exact experience in Red Spider with jiraia, and i thought, if this is what gintama is gonna do with its shitty dudes from now on im gonna quit the fucking show. and then shortly after that i met jirochou and saw him cut down otose the woman he loved (under a raining sky!!! the fucking sky motifs!!! the signpost im about to watch a dude be shittily violent to women and be expected to feel sorry for him about it) and saw too much red to really take in the rest of the arc level-headedly or care about anything in it lol.

so it was written off in my mind as the 'otose almost gets fridged' arc until i rewatched it this week. then i had to remember, oh yeah, there's a ton of political maneuvering fakeouts in this arc that i never actually squared back with how the plot presented itself prior to the reveals, so i'd still been thinking about the "fakeout" plot. then i read the manga version with all the "truths" in mind from the start, and finally i felt like i could understand what this arc is doing a little better.

(way) tldr (4.4k words. sorry): do i love this arc? eh. do i still hate it? eh. but it's doing stuff!

first, i was able to see an echo in all the "actually i was planning to betray you the whole time" "actually i was working to help you the whole time" plot beats of what sorachi does with the larger edo/universe story further into the back half of the manga. if i ever sound like i didnt enjoy or wasnt convinced by the execution of these "reveals," it's because i didnt and wasnt, lol. but it's fun that he had fun with them i guess.

the arc starts with pirako ingratiating herself into yorozuya, then having a classic "bump into you and pretend to be injured to extort you" encounter w her dad's gang. to resolve this without escalating into violence, gintoki... does it back to them, which is really funny. but thus the tone is set for the arc of: DISHONEST APPROACHES TO CONFLICT.

pirako isnt honest about her overall intentions the, like, seven different times that she "admits her real ones." kada plays at peacekeeper in the devas while being the ultimate person scheming to get the upper hand over everyone else in the end. (she's also secretly harusame, evil amanto outsider who acts as a unifying force for the kabukicho fighting itself to band together against and expel: sorachi's favorite move! the problem was never internal, it's the shadowy REAL antagonists who infiltrated us)

jirochou and otose are ultimately doing a pantomime of conflict to try to keep temperatures down and escalations from breaking out, so no one they care about has to get hurt. gintoki doesn't know this until the end, but he follows in their footsteps after his encounter with them in the graveyard: he plays at having given up to the rest of yorozuya so they'll leave and escape the coming kabukicho war, the same thing otose was trying with him. it fails both times. i'm really not sure why gintoki and otose thought it would work, honestly. they should know their kids are stubborn as hell.

but gintoki is in a bind because of the things he needs to protect, and all of his actions are primarily in service of that, to the detriment of how he'd prefer to act if he were less restricted. he is unsurprised and unoffended to hear saigou is only willing to warn them, not help them, because her son is in danger if she acts directly. all four devas are, seemingly, being mutually restrained this way, holding back even when blatantly manipulated to do so. the other constant of this arc: everyone is dishonest, and no one wants to risk losing what they have.

gintoki understands that! of course! he's had to make that calculus before, after all :)

and this arc is just one big cliff scene echo: the entire graveyard scene pushing gintoki to emotional regression because he thinks he's losing another parent figure, one he's just seen the Gintoki Figure of the arc cut down, no less (takasugi stolen valor when he goes berserk against him and only ends up uselessly bleeding out on the ground about it, honestly). otose goes into this willingly so gintoki can live. he accepts this decision because he values protecting her values (her kids living on) and is briefly broken by it (the story says, before giving him shinpachi to "put him back on track"). prior to the bitchslap, after saying he just wants them to live, even if it has to be without him, he says:

i dont have a good understanding of when we start getting reveals of gintoki's backstory versus foreshadowing because i went into gintama already knowing most of it, but definitely by the recent red spider where we get our first real look at (or really, first listen to) shouyou. but here we actually get some of what gintoki felt about it, which he keeps closely guarded even when the whole truth comes out: he's done his best to survive having lost, but it was so unbearable he can't face losing again.

(also, honorable mention backstory echo, the person calling him a brother sets his home on fire to drive him and his parent figure out of town. as i liveblogged: this one would really hurt gintoki if gintoki cared about anything oboro ever did!)

but with the shinpachi story-rerouting, they get the good end, keep everyone (otose, yorozuya, all of kabukicho, even pirako and her dad - everyone but kada) safe without having to sacrifice a single thing, even keep gintoki hopeful for this outcome. so, as goose points out, we are left to understand that there could have been a good end on the cliff, that something is different here than there, and, skipping a lot of math, that that is the people around gintoki.

which i do find really funny to imagine as a slam on takasugi and katsura. sorry you kids suck too much, your teacher dies bc u were cringefail. but lets look at it.

everyone is dishonest, no one wants to risk what they have: gintoki rallies himself to keep fighting but is determined to do it alone. kagura and shinpachi fight him on this; they can't leave because they don't want to lose their home, they can't let him fight alone because they don't want to lose him. they're just as restricted by what they have to keep safe, but their only option is to act where everyone else's is inaction. shinpachi says:

if i may skip over the bitchslap itself for now, gintoki does consent to let his allies fight with him after it. yorozuya stands alone against saigou, who's heavily demoralized but resigned, strongarmed into fighting them by the threat to her son. but on seeing their resolve to keep protecting their own precious home and family she says:

and, to skip straight to my thought, i think this is what turns the tides back in their favor. there are more twists and turns to the fight. pirako equates what binds saigou, which she herself equates to what binds the yorozuya, to what binds her:

(with an intentional distinction that she's willing to actively destroy the others', as opposed to their purely self defensive fighting, which is echoed at some point in her distinguishing gintoki from jirochou in the same way, that jirochou not only lives to protect like gintoki but is willing to destroy in the process. i don't find that part as interesting, but it's more fuel to the power of having something to protect as a driving force as an arc theme.)

so now all three stand on the same ground, absolutely unwilling to give up what they hold dear, but all their cards are on the table. they aren't dealing in 12 dimensions of tricksy defensive pre-emptive moves anymore. they know it wouldnt work, anyways, since they all know their drives to protect are the same and no one will be talked into backing down. now they can directly duke it out and let the winner be determined that way, on strength of will. even before the actual circumstances change, the fight somehow feels freer seeing how inevitable it is. and with everything out in the open, yorozuya can now protect each other and saigou's son, taking out one side of the conflict.

(and with everything out in the open, the ultimate 4devas villain can become the single person who continues to betray the others, kada, whose further machinations - with everything out in the open! - saigou (and later yorozuya) can choose to protect pirako from. everyone wins! because everything was out in the open! do you see where i'm going)

and so we come back to the question: gintoki is corrected, the arc is rerailed to the better outcome. so is the correction justified?

what does the correction accomplish outside of its moment? most convincingly to me of goose's presented options, i also think it's done as a thematic shift, a, okay, just live was a strategy that worked before but now doesn't suffice, so we need something more.

as to why this is needed now and not earlier or later...tldr bad planning <3 but like.

we have, prior to this, a consistent thrust of arcs where gintoki teaches people to lose. as well, while we meet the harusame and we visit space and we get the barest glimpses of takasugi's weird shadowy background moves there, largely we're dealing with kabukicho characters and kabukicho stories. we see or only hear about the shogun for short comedic moments only. we've largely dropped the series intro focus on things like the shinsengumi or hasegawa acting as foreign diplomats. it's a local series, a hometown series, a kabukicho and not even an edo at large series, a personal story about gintoki making personal connections with his personal experience as a flawed person with a flawed approach to life that has let him, chronic slacker, get by on the bare minimum.

at this moment, chapter 300, we have a slow trickle of gintoki backstory starting to come out to us. we've recently expanded the story focus to include yoshiwara, which gets a callout in this arc by kada to keep it relevant. we have an arc of sorachi testing out plot beats that he'll use again for the endgame, in all the political maneuvering and alliancing and betraying and shadowy outsider space governmenting, where he's also doing a lot of echoing of that backstory that only becomes clear later. so it's possible he's thinking about shifting gears and setting up for the eventual endgame, which means getting out of the episodic cycle so things can stick.

and after this arc, to my opinion and memory, we stop getting the classic gintama flavor sympathizable'd antagonists. a lot of the bigger arcs don't even have clear Big Shot antagonists anymore, being more about the shouyoucore theme of characters fighting against themselves, or if there is one they're always explicitly part of the Shadow Government now, a unified and more daunting force than someone they can win over with an inspiring gintoki interaction.

so 4devas does act as a turning point at least in some way. and it's not possible to say this definitively, since all gintama arcs are ultimately never going to be about gintoki or his friends Actually losing something instead of beating the odds, but it does feel like theres a different flavor to, say, dekobokko with its direct look at how chars lives could be different and better and they will still choose to keep struggling as themselves. and Kintama arc definitely doesn't feel like an early days arc, like it can only resolve the way it does with a gintoki who is now able to face his past and the possibility of losing again and again and again (now with, natch, his faith that yorozuya will by his side when he does).

why now, after 300 chapters of letting it sit ignored in the back of his brain working out perfectly fine except when it doesn't (the very reminder of shouyou in a fight making him go Demon Mode, which is like regular gintoki but worse at fighting, bc he is so unprepared to think about shouyou)? well i personally am in big favor of the "take a decade off" strategy for facing problems. it worked for me too. realistically watsonianly its nice to let things percolate in the brain and do some of the processing behind the scenes until its less immediately painful. and he's made many bonds over these 300 chapters, shown in this arc when the whole town rallies behind him, that are there to support him when he needs it now and weren't there before.

realistically doylistly eh. bad planning.

and so we come back to the question: gintoki is corrected, the series as a result is rerailed to a writing space where things can start changing (leave the episodic, as you guys say, sazae-san format). it's useful in the future. so is the correction justified in terms of what comes before it? was the correction needed?

thinking about the bitchslap leads to thinking about the cliff scene leads to (sorry kagura and katsura, you guys arent really relevant here) pitting shinpachi and takasugi against each other in how they act with something on the line they can't bear to give up.

i don’t need the lesson of 4devas to apply logistically to the cliff scene. once they were set up on that chessboard, frozen in their assigned places as a backstory, it’s not like takasugi could’ve power of friendship’d his way out of being physically retrained if he decided he wanted to. it’s set up as a forced choice, it has to play out as a forced choice.

but we see that even before it’s asked of him, takasugi is willing, prepared, unbothered to give up his own life for shouyou’s. this is, goose lays out in the sequel, the cardinal sin in gintama - a teacher shouldn’t outlive their student. it would have been especially egregious to shouyou, whose whole desired life’s purpose is to raise students who can outlive him and outgrow him, take his lessons and go out into the world and do their own thing with them. takasugi doesn’t expect to do this and doesn’t seem to see a point in the possibility if shouyou isn’t back with them.

though we can also think of shouyou as a little too quickly willing to give up on the cliff - sorry, gintoki, the suicidal guy has thought about it for .02 seconds and decided the best outcome is for you to kill him even though he could get out of this no problem. maybe its no wonder gintoki gave up too. can we ask katsura what he would’ve done?

and is takasugi different from shinpachi there? he rejects the mentor’s attempt to exchange his own life for his. he’s not willing to consider a life without him.

but shinpachi is convinced no one is going to die. because they’ll be there together. incredibly naive - shinpachi and kagura, restricted to one option by what they need to protect like everyone is in 4devas, have acting as that one option because they are still free in a way gintoki and the other adults aren't. they’ve never actually experienced the impossible choice that forces you to give up, so they can act as if there isn’t one - what else would they do? why would they think to give up?

but gintoki is defined by having lived the impossible choice. its built into the foundation of him as a character and leaks out everywhere. he couldn’t have relied on his friends on the cliff because they were quite forcibly removed from the picture as an option, not by his or their choice. its written as an inevitability, logistics we find out later be damned.

if we refocus to 4devas, we can look at the Gintoki Figure for a different angle. jirochou, after he and gintoki resolve the arc conflict by being able to team up because they - say it with me - put everything out in the open, tells gintoki about his impetus for abandoning his family and coming back to his wayward life in kabukicho, the death of otose's husband.

it's, um, another now really obvious parallel to gintoki, lol. characters talk about how jirochou does everything he does in this arc to try to atone for his failure to both otose and tatsugorou, and i guess thats true bc he was written that way but he has an odd way of showing it, but anyways he resolves that, despite his guilt over this, all he can do now is keep living and keep protecting what they loved together. he's come to the usual gintama message all on his own, reinforcing that this is the correct way to live in this series. he had his own unavoidably shitty situation, and he came to terms with it.

so then where did jirochou go wrong, in the narrative's eyes (other than abandoning one woman and their child to deal drugs in the town of his other woman while ignoring her)? was there a point he could've changed how their trio's story played out? but he loved and trusted tatsugorou, and he was happy to step aside and let him be the one by their otose's side. i doubt he would have been happy stealing her away even if it were possible.

but if we look at the resolution tool of 4devas... he never put everything out in the open!!! everyone knows he loved otose, but in more of an open secret way. in classic romance plot, he never confessed for second male lead rejection closure. indeed, in the closest we ever get to a main character having a romantic plot in gintama, the very ending of the arc flirts with him doing just that now that he's made a little progress with the arc message, with the entire cast of the arc expecting him to (and interrupting before he can).

but if he had when they were young. if he had been honest with his friends. could it have opened up other options that weren't available on his own, that they didnt know to offer? i have a preferred one lol. but u can get creative with all sorts of life paths that avoid tatsugorou dying that way or, at the least, jirochou feeling chained to a shameful life (living in a town he doesn't go out in to protect a woman he doesnt talk to and feeling like he doesnt deserve the family he abandoned for this) because of it.

and then if we take this and rewind back to the cliff... we get to grind my favorite ax, "shouyou shouldve told literally anyone literally anything about his deal." if gintoki knew more about shouyou, they could've faced his horrors together, the whole time. he couldve known that shouyou was being literal calling himself a demon and not internalized his own identity as one for life just because shouyou bonded with him over it. i truly genuinely think the logical conclusion of all of gintama's big messages are that shouyou and gintoki should have been more open with each other.

but i don't think sorachi thinks that. and, you know, by 4devas rules, the unriskable precious things he was protecting by staying silent were his students' humanity, and secondarily his own fragilely newly hopeful heart that literally couldnt stand another 10 millionth round of rejection (killed himself and then went on a 12 year rampage over it. girl i would too).

and takasugi really isn't dishonest about what's going on in his head when he tells us he expects to die for shouyou. that's as cards on the table as i could ask. gintoki is, a little bit, by omission. he does what i'd want him to here - tells takasugi try just not dying - but doesn't give him a reason to, and doesn't tell him he has no plans of letting anyone die for shouyou.

so what goes wrong on the cliff - shouyou is happy, gintoki is happy, oboro's even kind of happy, katsura is irrelevant - is that takasugi is blindsided (whoops) by their silent agreement that betrays the one he thought he and gintoki had. and then ruins everyone's party about it and spends the next ten years doing so for good measure.

which is also, basically, what shinpachi is going through that prompts the bitchslap, too. he thought they were a team, that they had each others backs, not that gintoki is a one-way protector of them. he is blindsided by gintoki lying to and tricking them and hiding things from them. he is hurt by gintoki feeling hopeless all by himself when he could share that with them and be encouraged by their endless child optimism.

and would it need to have changed anything on the cliff? in the moment after the bitchslap, what contributes to gintoki changing his mindset is tama telling him, we trust that you're capable bc youve always shown us that, can you trust us this time? when, later in the arc, gintoki seems to regress by sending kagura and shinpachi away, he asks them to trust that he's still trusting them, relying on them to help shoulder his burden, and in return they know he's staying alive, not self sacrificing. maybe it would've helped just to feel on the same team and not shut out, to be able to trust gintoki like gintoki was trusting shouyou?

so. two paralleled instances of gintoki making a bad situation worse by keeping to himself and being too self sufficient. that feels clear cut that feels fine im okay with that as a takeaway. do i think its exactly what sorachi had in mind while writing this, as opposed to just a good series 'hey lean on your friends' moment to read cool and tug at the heartstrings? eh lol. i think theres definitely room to read takasugi into this arc (i still need to refind the takagin 4devas post...) but its not so baked in that i think he was a PRIORITY in the plotting.

but is the shinpachi SCOLDING necessary is the scolding justified... and yes its in response to life doesnt need to be fun i just want you to live. still a confusing framing i can't immediately square. but/and more immediately its directly responding. to gintoki opening up to them about his insecurities!!

which, as said, he doesnt do!! he doesnt talk about his failures! its basically like, here and to hijikata that one time and otherwise even when we know all the facts about what happened we still never hear gintoki himself talk about it. (so he really DOESNT learn the lesson here either. he stays dissociated and triggered every time utsuro comes up. he tries to solve the altana baby problem on his own. he doesnt talk to his new friends OR his old friends. bwah. gintoki. silver soul.)

so this is like. its just in the wrong order!! its just in a baffling order lol. if you want gintoki to share his burden do you need to punch him when he shares it. does it also need to sound like you're blaming him for not being capable of upholding his promise to protect anyone when thats the insecurity thats got him all discombobulated this arc in the first place (a whole set of notes i took on this that i didnt find a place for in this post)?? its so weeeeiiiiiirddd lol i dont liiikeee itttttt. theres plenty of things shinpachi can validly punch gintoki for but this is such a weird one.

so i guess. having a clearer understanding of this arc do i hate it less? YES honestly. i hate fakeout plots generally they irritate me but everything... more or less makes sense by gintama standards now that i have the whole plot in mind.

do i hate jirochou less SORT OF? i enjoy him. in his individual relationships. i like his shitty dad deal i love shitty dads. i like him pining for otose who genuinely likes him but also brings up her husband every sentence she says to him just to keep him down. i like his parallels with gintoki that they both explicitly acknowledge and find macho comfort in. hes still not theeeeeeeee most well-developed gintama antagonist but you know? i at least think otose and pirako would want to be around him after this.

do i feel like i have a clearer understanding of the bitchslap moment. NOT CONVINCED I DO. i feel like its going to be one of those things that slips in and out of my understanding like sand in cupped hands. i have a tentative understanding of it that i dont think sorachi actually had in mind. so i dont think ive solved it lol.

will i be cursed to think about 4devas forever? god i hope not. am i okay with it beating farewell shins in the polls. god i fucking hope it does. in the horrible timeline where i have to see 305 make it all the way and then lose i guess id rather it be to this one than to hijigin. consider this poll propaganda?

#sopping wet gintoki posting

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