#and at this point idc do away with gale too like if youre going to bring new blood in then BRING IN NEW BLOOD!

[ahaura]

scream 6 is not like. objectively a bad movie. that being said i hated it. im just so over the whole meta-film self-referential thing. like how many more movies are they going to eke out of this old raggedy dishrag. how many more ~surprises~ and ~twists~ are they going to *spring* on us before they give up and move on to something else. i just. ive had ENOUGH. it feels like a cardboard cutout of a movie rather than a real movie and i feel like in an original setting with the new cast it could have been something awesome. that might be my inner hater talking but this could have been sent in a email.

that being said. i adore the new cast. they bring fresh good energy to the set and even though the story felt uninspired and lackluster the cast made up for it. i think mindy and chad should have had at least a half hour more of screentime.

[ex-textura]

I have never been into a video game during its hype before bg3, but it showed me it was for a reason. I love the game but hate the way it treats to Gale and its fans. It’s like going back to high school again. This fucking game has love for everyone else but Gale and it fucking shows. We don’t get any closure for his arc, no special scenes, we don’t even know his fucking age. What we got is all the hate, mistreatment and hostility. Tbh, I was in a very bad place when I played this game for the first time and it pulled me off from there, but seeing my fav getting shit treatment not only from fandom but also the game itself was a big revelation for me. Maybe both me and Gale deserve this treatment. And idc if it’s projection or not, like other people don’t put themselves in their favs place.

Exactly! Exactly!!

I usually miss the big game hype too and show up way too late into a fandom so it's been an experience to watch the progression in real time. There's something to be said for joining a dead fandom is all I can say.

To your point about projection, this is exactly what I've been saying. This is the point I'm trying to make with my limited grasp on words. Of course we're projecting a little bit. A well-written, believable character will do that. So many of us see pieces of ourselves in Gale and it's often those pieces that are getting shit on the most. It's the "I know I talk too much, I know I'm over eager, I know I'm a burden I know I know I know!" pieces that endear him to me. The parts of myself that I hate are the parts of him that I love. I could learn to love myself, I think, through loving a character like him. Like me.

Only the other characters, the writers, the fandom remind me again and again that I'm not meant to love those annoying parts. They're meant to be ignored, to be torn away. To be fixed.

He's the annoying guy that redeems himself through his death.

How many times have I thought that about myself?

I always felt like I wanted more insight into Gale, more thoughts from his writer more discussion of the depth of this character but honestly now I'm not so sure lol. Although I'd love to get a word on his age though lmao. (I'm still gonna hc him at least in his late 30s though they can't take that away from me fjshsidjdhsis)

[whipplefilter]

could u do a fic abt storm? idc what it's abt but if u cld thatd b great!

Sure thing, anon! Here’s a fic about how Storm spent the off-season timeskip at the beginning of Cars 3! 

Fic: Motherland

They’re in Gemmayzeh, in a restaurant with a dress code to meet an uncle the American side of Storm’s family is elated to see. His mother cries.

Half an hour ago, winding through Beirut, Storm asked why a hauler couldn’t take them. But Storm’s mother wants the entire city to see her. Normally, Storm doesn’t mind being the center of attention, either, but none of these cars know who he is, and no one cares. Not here. Storm doesn’t like being reminded that his reputation doesn’t always speak for itself.

“At the restaurant, don’t speak,” his mother tells him. Whisper, if he must. She says, “Your Arabic is… ” and she means it’s like a baby’s. His family–well, his mother’s family–is very well-known in Lebanon, and there will be listeners.

If Gale were here, she’d laugh about this. She’d laugh about anyone telling Storm to be quiet, and she’d laugh at Storm being mad about it. She’d tell him his mother’s probably doing him a favor–Storm doesn’t want to talk to any of these cars; really, he’s been given permission to be sullen and silent. It’s a win-win.

She’d be right, but Storm’s still angry.

–

“Are we going to have to pray?” Storm asks. A private jet is launching them over the pole, straight from LAX to Lebanon. “Like, five times a day, facing–”

“We’re Maronites,” says his mother, tersely. Like that explains anything. Storm’s pretty sure he isn’t one.

–

“Do you have any plans for the off-season?” asks Shannon Spoke.

He’s never really understood her mannerisms, can’t tell if she likes him or wished he’d rot. She’s too professional. He tells her he’ll be overseas, training with supercars.

“You go where the competition is,” he says. He sounds self-assured and silky, like usual. When he watches the broadcast, he believes it.

In Lebanon, he tries to make his world as much like Los Angeles as possible. He doesn’t need to be worldly and he doesn’t want to “train” with supercars. In Lebanon, the Internet is the same. The fuel is a little better, to be honest. But those mountains could be the Sierras and the water could be the Pacific; they’re just out of reach, just like in Los Angeles. From Storm’s vantage point, Lebanon is just like Los Angeles.

Storm has never been to the mountains. He’s never touched the sea.

“Don’t people just live on the beach over there?” asks a cousin, in English Storm’s mother called “stylized” and Storm just thinks is bad. But it’s still better than his Arabic.

This cousin lives on the beach.

“Have you ever been to Disneyland?” the cousin asks. “What about Jag-Z’s house?”

When Storm turns one year old, he’s in Lebanon. His mother claims he’s been here before. Obviously, he doesn’t remember. He is one year old, and he has been to twenty-four racetracks. And Lebanon.

–

They are faster. Storm doesn’t need to race them to know. His cousin has diamond-encrusted headlights just because he can. He wears gold instead of chrome. And he can drive 400 kilometers an hour. Storm’s not even sure how fast that is, because kilometers mean nothing to him, but he’s a racecar. He knows speed when he sees it. He knows horsepower when he hears it. And he can feel it through the road, into his tires, into the core of him.

They’d never make it 600 miles, though. Not in the dense muggy heat of North Carolina, no sea breeze. No breaks.

“Why would anyone do that?” asks a different cousin, incredulous.

Storm hates them, because supercars aren’t cars; not really. Not according to him. Putting wheels on something doesn’t make it a car.

Fun fact: Half the cars in the stands in North Carolina think the same of him. All the Next-Gens. “Stock cars,” indeed. The other half probably don’t think even think something like McQueen is a real car. Again, not really.

“He doesn’t really… belong here,” says yet another cousin. She’s a contortion of metal that doesn’t seem like a car at all. She’s the fastest. She looks at him, and it’s a mixture of pity and resignation.

Storm’s an adult. He’s a superstar. And he needs babysitting.

And maybe that’s not what she said at all. She was speaking too fast for Storm to understand, and it’s then Storm realizes why his mother thinks he’s an idiot. She’s always spoken to him like one. It’s really not his fault he hit the road with IGNTR and guess what! Newsflash: Talladega doesn’t have a lot of Arabic speakers. Neither does Daytona. Charlotte. Kansas. Phoenix.

And now he can’t understand what this stupid girl is saying.

“The movie we want to see is in Arabic. Based on a Kahlil Gibran book,” she says. “We don’t think you’d understand it.”

“Oh, Kahlil Gibran,” Storm replies airily, in English. He hasn’t figured out how to be skillfully sarcastic in Arabic. “He’s a legend. Right up there with Dean Koontz.”

There’d been a Koontz novel in the LAX bookstore, discounted 70% and collecting dust.

“Who?” asks the cousin.

Storm mimes haughty shock.

–

There’s a story that everyone in the garage kind of knows, about McQueen and some terrible desert town and whatever it is he’d learned there. Or at least, McQueen seems to assume everyone knows it, and everyone gives a damn. Storm is sure he’s not the only one who doesn’t. At all.

But stranded in Beirut, which is not in a desert and is not a small town, that’s what comes to mind.

If Storm has any stories to bring back, they all end the same way.

He wants to get out of here.

–

His mother cries when they leave. Out and out weeps. Storm’s mother doesn’t cry about anything, ever, but she cries when they leave Beirut. She’s been living in America for thirteen years and Lebanon is the only home she feels she’ll ever have. If it weren’t for Storm’s father, she’d never leave it. Storm’s father is the only thing she loves more than her motherland, and sometimes Storm wonders if even that is true. Maybe she’ll disappear into some casino in Jounieh and he’ll never see her again.

She’s self-conscious about her emptiness, when it’s just the two of them parked in first-class. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says. “You can’t.”

She’s right.

–

“Welcome home,” Gale beams. She meets them on track at Daytona. Qualifying for the Florida 500 is in a week.

When Storm lays down an all-time track record during practice, RSN says he’s marking his territory. He’s the Piston Cup’s youngest, newest champion, and he’s coming home to roost. He’s the king of the superspeedway.

“And also holds track records at multiple intermediate and short tracks on the schedule,” Bob Cutlass clarifies. “Not just superspeedways.”

Darrell Cartrip guffaws. “Heck, put Stormy boy on anything, and he’ll make it a superspeedway!”

When Cartrip talks about Daytona, Storm’s pretty sure his voice breaks. If he had to live an ocean away from Daytona, he’d probably cry too. It’s the home of the Piston Cup, after all. And Cartrip bleeds race fuel.

–

Home. Home home home. It’s all anyone ever talks about.

–

McQueen shows up eventually. When he talks he sounds even more homespun than Storm remembers him, as though he’s spent his off-season buried in a southern swamp somewhere, befriending the Piston Cup’s lowest common denominators. Given the sporty yellow thing and the rusty old truck in tow, this probably isn’t untrue.

–

“You don’t belong– on this track–!” Storm grits out, fender to fender with that sporty yellow thing. He says it because it’s true. He belongs here; she can’t. This is the only place he belongs.

And then, at the finish line, he doesn’t.

–

He doesn’t.

–

He’s never felt like the world was so far away.

–

When he returns to Los Angeles after the race, his mother is in town. She’s discussing business, catching lunch with Storm’s agent, his contracts attorney. That she and Storm cross paths is sheer coincidence. She hadn’t exactly penciled him in.

She’s polished and detailed, immaculately presentable and not at all the woman crying into magazines, weeping streaks across her windshield 41,000 feet above sea level. But Storm thinks maybe, just maybe, that might be their common ground. What he’d felt, he still doesn’t know, he can’t really tell. But she’s his mother, after all. Maybe if she–

Storm narrows his eyes. Maybe she could be useful to him for once in her life.

“Good morning, habibi,” she says absently, still scanning over some papers.

He wants her to look up. To look at him.

He wants her help. He wants her to explain his feelings to him, tell him she understands. She can talk about his stupid uncle if she wants to. Even the cousins. He feels stupid wanting any of that.

When Storm’s mother finally looks up, she takes one glance and says, “Oh, stop. You lost a race, not a country.”

She doesn’t look up again.