#cause they deserve more attention

[girlbob-boypants]

Dorian: Welcome to Tevinter! As I told you, it's beautiful and amazing and cultured and also has indoor plumbing. Basically the best place ever!

The giant floating castle that kills people with fireballs if they break the law:

[bet-on-me-13]

Steph's Year of Recovery

So! Danny noticed that a new face had made it's way into town. Two new faces actually, an older lady known as Dr Leslie, and a girl about his age called Steph.

He first met them when he was at the hospital for one of his parents. They had stood too close to an explosion again, and he met them while he was in the waiting Area.

Dr Leslie was a strict but obviously caring older woman, who seemed to be the one taking care of Steph as a kind of maternal figure, or maybe more like an Aunt. She greeted him simply and then walked away to talk with the Secretary, leaving him to talk to Steph.

Steph was a blond girl in a Wheelchair, and he could see bandages piking out of her clothes as he talked to her. She explained that she had been in an Accident a few weeks ago that left her wheelchair bound for a while, and that she had come to Amity for their surprisingly good Medical Centers.

He and Steph got along really well, and by the end of it he asked her for her Number so they could continue talking later. They stayed in touch, and when she was finally permitted to leave the Hospital, he introduced her to his friends. They all got along like a House on Fire, both figuratively and in one memorable case very literally (Vlad had pissed them off okay!)

Eventually Steph recovered enough that she moved from a Wheelchair to Crutches, and their shenanigans got even more chaotic (Vlad hadn't even pissed them off, this time was just for fun)

The only thing Danny could complain about was the fact that Steph was hiding something from them.

She said that she had been in an Accident a while ago, which was why they had come to Amity in the first place. But Danny knew it was more than that.

He could sense lingering traces of Death coming from her after all.

...

Steph honestly loved her current life.

Sure she had lost everything, her home, her health, her friends, her life, but she had gained new things too! Like Danny and the Gang! They were honestly some of the best friends she had ever had, and for some reason they just clicked with her instantly.

Danny was interesting and funny, Sam was vegan and a badass, Tucker was smart and witty, they all fit with her personality perfectly! It almost felt like she bad been friends with them for years. (She ignored the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw them)

But she still couldn't shake the sense that they were hiding something from her.

She knew it had something to do with the Ghost Problem in the town. And wasn't that a kicker, there was a whole Supernatural Ghost Outbreak in this Town and nobody knew about it. Dr Leslie had said that Amity was off the map enough to hide from Bruce, but she hadn't mentioned it was hidden from the Justice League itself!

Danny, Sam, and Tucker definitely knew more about it than they let on however. Whenever a Ghost Attack would happen, at least one of them would rush off with some practiced excuse and return after the Ghost Attack was over all dirty. She could guess what was going on, and she really didn't like it.

(This had killed her, she had died doing what they were doing, she didn't want to lose them)

Eventually she had to confront them, coincidentally on the same day they decided to confront her.

"Are you Vigilantes?" / "Did you die?"

"..."

"What?" / "What?"

[chronicowboy]

we as a collective do Not talk about this line delivery nearly enough and for good fucking reason, i'll kill bradley james for this one line alone. he's just a little boy :'((

[just-null]

Fr bro I love your energy! Noritoshi is so pretty and so criminally underrated. Keep up the good work in making more of us lusting publicly for him. You've done amazing job! That boy well-deserved it :)

tysm!! I try to open the eyes of the public to his qualities. join my cult yall, Noritoshi is so good listen to me.

but on the topic of energy, whether you're high or low energy, Noritoshi loves it. the only difference is how he reacts to it.

Let's say you're low energy or prefer subtlety in your affection..

Noritoshi will initiate first! ..after a while... in his own way.... He needs to gather enough courage and collect his thoughts properly, then hes good to go! He prefers more subtle displays of affection too, but if needed he'll be blunt about it. He'll learn to adapt to slightly teasing remarks, going as far as to banter and tease back, moreover he's just very loving. So loving it can be embarrassing from time to time because of how intense the atmosphere can get.. the best way he can be described here is princely.

A small smile forms on Noritoshi's lips when he feels you're around. He turns to you, already memorizing each and every quirk you have so that he doesn't waste any time setting his sights on you again. His hands reach out to tug on your sleeve as he looks at you with a gaze so needy you can practically tell what he's about to ask. "May i hold your hand?" His voice comes so smooth that if you didn't know him, you would've missed the twinge of desperation it carried. You couldn't help yourself, you shook your head, a mischievous grin slowly creeping onto your lips at the sight of Noritoshi's pouted lip. Of course he'd do as you say even if it was clearly unfair, but not without some complaints. He clicks his tongue, a quiet mutter of "cheeky.." escapes under his breath. He knows you do this on purpose to mess with him, he was tempted to beg a little, but decided against it. it was an embarrassing thought to begin with. Seriously, how mean can someone be to make a guy think like this? ..Extremely, if the guy's pouting is cute enough! Noritoshi lifts his hand to his chin, thinking of the many ways he can try to get around this obstacle you cruelly placed in front of him. He leans in close, hovering next to you as he usually does when he thinks. He faces you as who knows what goes on in his head, his closed eyes not even giving you a hint as to what he could be thinking. "Ah, pardon me, I got lost in thought. I suppose i can keep my distance, so long as you keep looking at me with that charming gaze of yours." Ah, so he was just winding up for a pick up line. How lame, but.. get used to it. He's going to shadow behind you the entire day with more one liners like that unless you shut him up yourself. Wait.. was that his plan? The faint sly smirk tugging on the corner of Noritoshi's lips and the warm hue on the apple his of cheeks are all you need to figure out the rest.

If you're high energy or prefer more blunt methods of affection..

Noritoshi gets overwhelmed and flustered from such raw approaches from you that he comes off as a bit rude. It's only because you make his heart so full that he needs to shut you down or else he'll do something embarrassing!! He wants to impress you, of course he enjoys your advances very much, but it's not very slightly to see someone like him act like a crushing school girl!! or so he thinks.

Noritoshi yelps in surprise as you snake your hands around his waist from behind. He doesn't push you away or even move for that matter, he's frozen stiff. Is he still alive? Like any good lover would, you benevolently press your ear against his back to listen for a heart beat. ..You didn't hear anything until the sound of Noritoshi sharp inhale came through. That was unexpected, but it works. He squirmed a little, seemingly trying to shrug you off but quickly giving up, accepting the fact that you've got him trapped. "You imbecile, e-enough of this!" he scolded, though he made no actual effort to stop you. Noritoshi remains stiff for the most part, but looking at the back of his increasingly flushing neck reassures you that he is, indeed, alive. He's just being stubborn! Not turning or even a greeting, just rude name calling again! You raise one hand and place it over his heart to hold him tighter in your embrace. As expected, its practically pounding against his chest. He swats your hand away and finally turns back to you with those cute furrowed brows and rosy cheeks. "You're such a bully, you know that?" he huffs out, any semblance of sternness failing to take effect as his jutted bottom lip quivers. Mercifully, you finally let go and spare him by not pointing out the quiet whine he let out. He stumbles forward and turns around to face you fully, trying to keep an eye out for any more of your stunts while he catches his breath. He felt so dizzy from being in your arms, if he were held for a moment longer, he surely would've melted right then and there. Noritoshi's hands trembled as he smoothed out his clothes, his mouth opening and closing as any and all words died in his throat. He wanted to yell at you for being so forward, for giving him no chance to prepare, for letting go of him, for a lot of things..! Yet he just pouted as he tried to calm the flush on his face. His hands instantly whipped up in front of him when he noticed you took a step towards him. He can't handle another display of affection right now, he'll go weak at the knees! But how can you hold back when he's just so damn cute?

The most likely outcome is a mixture of both with a heavy leaning towards one. Either way, you're very right!! He's extremely pretty.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

redid an old ref of an important Guy of mine!! i imagine they're very jingly when moving

extra:

and the cringe 2022 ref. looking at it makes me nauseous <3

[arthurtaylorlester]

so like do you ever think about john doe

[supercantaloupe]

The Rent Post™

aka, a lengthy screed on how rent the musical goes about adapting la boheme, where it fails, and what can be done about it

so i’m admittedly a reformed Theater Kid™. and tbh i still very much am a Theater Person, even a Musical Theater Person, i’m just in my 20s now and my taste has shifted away from what’s mainstream on broadway right now and closer to the world of opera. but there absolutely was a time in my early teens when i was Really Into Rent, as many Theater Kids™ were…and there was also a time in my later teens when i thought about it and realized that rent was not only just not my thing, but that there were some significant Problems with it, as its own work and as an adaptation. now, having finally seen boheme for myself, i feel like i’m really in a place to piece together how the two works compare to one another, and why/how i think rent falls short of success (as a piece of theater anyway. obviously rent is not lacking in commercial and popular audience success, for better or worse).

i knew years ago that rent is a direct adaptation of la boheme, but wow, only after seeing the opera did i come to realize just how closely rent follows boheme: in plot beats, in character names, even borrowing a couple of lyrics and musical motifs here and there. 

but it also changes things from the original opera -- namely, it adds things -- and i think this is the first place where rent runs into trouble. now i am by no means such a purist that i think no work should ever be adapted unchanged (more on this later...what’s the point of adaptation if not to change things to make the work resonate with a new audience anyway?). however, any and every change made to an existing work in adaptation should be thoughtfully made and motivated, because every single change has an effect on the whole product in some way, and many small changes can add up to create a rather different final product than a creator might realize. 

(and this goes both ways, i think -- both in a work where a more flawed source material is adapted into something new and better, and when a superior original work is adapted into a worse new creation.)

definitely some of the changes made in rent while adapting la boheme are due to the change in medium. opera and musicals are both theater, sure, and more similar in many ways to each other than either is to straight play or film perhaps, but it’s still like a spanish speaker and an italian speaker trying to have a conversation with one another. the languages are similar and there might even be a bit of crossover in mutual intelligibility but they are still ultimately two different languages with different grammars and vocabulary. opera in general tends to have slower pacing than book musicals, fewer plot threads of equal importance. that rent is specifically a musical adaptation of la boheme, rather than a true rock opera, demonstrates this well. the mimi/rodolfo relationship is still front and center (americanized of course as mimi and roger), with marcello and musetta close behind (though expanded in rent as more of a love triangle among mark, maureen, and joanne, the latter being an invented character for the musical who i think embodies the original marcello as much as mark does). but rent adds a lot of stage time and focus to a new couple, collins and angel, who are directly lifted from colline and schaunard, who are essentially secondary comic relief characters, whereas collins/angel are arguably as important plot wise to mimi/roger and mark/maureen/joanne. 

(and i’m not gonna get into the level of #problematic there is to the depiction of maureen as an overly promiscuous bisexual or discuss why colline and schaunard can’t have been a gay couple the whole time or whatever because. wow i do not care. there are more important things to complain about here c’mon)

first big addition to rent that wasn’t original to boheme is that increased stage presence/focus for collins and angel. it's not inherently a bad addition, and for its time the open depiction of multiple queer romances onstage was still kind of groundbreaking. and yes, rent having a longer runtime than boheme should give it the opportunity to flesh this relationship out more as well as the other two to make sure they all have an equal chance to develop and end in a satisfying way. hell, they don’t even all have to be equal in stage presence/focus/importance to be a positive addition to the show (and how can it be when angel dies halfway through act ii? then again, the character dying doesn’t exactly mean the relationship loses its importance in the plot…) but despite the extra runtime and faster storytelling pace, rent doesn’t actually develop angel and collins all that much, especially not before angel dies. this isn’t an issue with colline and schaunard, of course, cause it’s obvious they’re not important characters in boheme. but collins and angel are arguably more important in rent than even mark/maureen/joanne. and angel dies halfway through act ii…meanwhile, mimi survives the end of rent, when she very pointedly does not in boheme.

and…oh, mimi. she is probably the biggest and most problematic adaptational change in rent as compared to la boheme. on the surface she (and roger/rodolfo) seems the least changed of all the opera’s characters, her name not even undergoing the same americanization treatment as the others. but there are just so many small details that add up and up until she’s a fundamentally different character in rent. i don’t even begrudge the change in occupation: her becoming a stripper/exotic dancer/possible sex worker(?) rather than a seamstress does bring with it some cultural baggage, but i am not personally interested in reading any morality into her choice of occupation, and i choose not to read her line of work as having any implications for her “innocence” or moral value as a character. nor will i read her addiction or disease as being moral qualities either. however: there is a big difference between tuberculosis in the 1840s and both AIDS and drug addiction in the 1980s. neither boheme’s mimi nor rent’s are morally responsible for their illnesses. but there is absolutely nothing mimi could do about her tuberculosis in boheme except die, because it was france in the 1840s and nobody knew what an antibiotic was. in new york in 1989, there were rehab clinics and there were medications for HIV. these things were expensive and hard to access, yes, but rent really goes out of its way to show us that mimi had the resources to access these things -- she is able to afford AZT in act i on her own (and the fact that she’s on AZT is used as shorthand for her HIV+ status, as opposed to other characters about whom we are told outright)...

… and her relationship with benny (the much-expanded counterpart to boheme’s benoit the landlord character) in act ii, who verbally offers to pay for her admittance to a rehab program.

yet the next time we see or hear anything of her, her loving mother is calling to ask where she is as she’s presumably gone missing…

…and then discover she has been living on the street, dying from exposure/disease/addiction. 

did she do this willingly? did benny refuse to continue supporting her? we don’t really get an answer to any of this; rent isn’t really concerned with why mimi is in the position she’s in, but is rather entirely preoccupied with staying true to boheme -- up until mimi’s death, anyway. because mimi doesn’t die in rent, she is saved, and says that angel told her to keep on living (as though it were a choice). why? we can only speculate. really, if any character embodies the same “dying tragically in a world too cruel for them to survive” theme as mimi in boheme does, it’s angel. and her death is honestly used as a tool throughout the rest of the show: a purpose for kindness, community, life.

is this a bad “bury your gays” kind of thing? i don’t really know, i’m inclined to believe not. but i do think angel’s death is more thematically akin to mimi’s death in boheme than the actual (near-)death of mimi in rent. 

and this is the biggest difference between rent and boheme: boheme is not about hope. boheme is a tragic romance about how important relationships are among people in disadvantaged communities/situations, but it does not say that love will transcend or materially improve those conditions. rent, by contrast, does. rent suggests that the love of partners and community (even if filled with complications and tensions) is lifesaving. 

(and i know rent’s stated thesis is “no day but today,” i.e. live and enjoy every day as though it could be your last, but i think thematically all the characters and their interactions overall suggest a theme of community just as if not more strongly, whereas “no day but today” is more limited to the HIV+ characters and has little to do with the mark/maureen/joanne subplot. mimi's outlook on "no day but today" changes when she chooses to stay alive on the urging of angel from the other side.) 

now i don’t think this is altogether a bad moral to have in your theater piece. especially in one of the first major pieces of theater centered on marginalized queer characters. i will not deny how important and cathartic it can be, both now and especially thirty years ago when rent premiered, to end on a hopeful note rather than a tragic one. but i have a couple of issues with how rent goes about making this its central theme. for one thing, mimi has frankly too many Things affecting her health in the end for her survival to be realistic, and absolutely nothing up to this point in the show has suggested a setting of magical realism or pseudofantasy; everything has been as grounded in real life as possible, until finale b, when mimi suddenly and near-inexplicably survives. it feels like it comes out of nowhere tonally and thus isn’t very satisfying an ending when put to scrutiny. for another, angel has already died, and angel is, compared to mimi, a much more beloved and uncomplicatedly positive force in their community and relationships. angel’s entire stage presence (while she’s alive and when her character is invoked or referenced after her death) is a positive one: caring for collins when he’s injured, providing food and funds to the group, placating arguments, etc.

and the fact that angel has no concerned parents leaving her voicemails, unlike mark, roger, and mimi, underscores that she has no one else to lean on for support except her community of bohemians. and we’re not given a reason to believe one way or the other about her home life or financial stability outside of today 4 u when she got a sudden windfall for killing a dog (whatever; schaunard did the same thing to the parrot in boheme). in contrast to mimi, roger, and especially mark, who are clearly shown to have family who care about them and want to support them, yet they choose to live in romanticized poverty anyway. mark even gets a good job in filming and still finds a way to complain about it.

really, except for angel (and arguably collins, too), it’s difficult to totally sympathize with the characters in rent and care fully about their plight because they’re just…not depicted as particularly likable people. maureen is an unfaithful and kind of manipulative partner, and her approach to “protest” is really just bad self-absorbed performance art. roger just kind of sucks at songwriting (how is your eyes the song that he’s spent the whole show writing? it’s the worst number in the musical lol), and he’s quick to anger…his decision to leave mimi makes even less sense here than rodolfo’s decision to leave her in boheme, where at least he did so out of genuine concern for her health (also why does he leave mark? rodolfo embraces marcello as a friend still after mimi leaves in boheme...act iii of boheme is the least closely adapted in rent by far.). wheras in rent roger seems to be both genuinely jealous of mimi interacting with other men and upset by her continued drug use. although this last one i don’t begrudge him for, since it’s made clear he’s a recovering addict himself…although it does make mimi’s relationship with him all the worse, considering that mimi’s take on the whole “no day but today” theme is to throw caution to the wind with her actions and not worry about the future at all, and her interacting with roger is directly tempting him back into addiction which he clearly does not want. (and roger’s rejection of her in another day is framed as him being in the wrong with mimi being backed up by the life support chorus…)

while mimi as we’ve seen is reckless and throws her life away even when people try to help her (very very different from boheme’s mimi, who makes no particularly reckless choices, and accepts help when it's offered). and mark is entitled and uses his film as an excuse to disengage with the real world, even exploit it (see: the way he films the life support meeting without permission, or the homeless woman, which is never really confronted elsewhere in the show…)

the inclusion of a homelessness subplot in rent is particularly strange to me. it shows up a lot, especially in act i: the threat of homelessness for the main characters should they not pay their rent or come to some kind of agreement with their landlord; the vague future threat of benny’s “cyberarts studio” getting built which is implied would evict those living in tents on the lot; mimi being found living on the street in the finale; and the chorus/ensemble who show up periodically, as above. homelessness is an ever present element of set dressing/conflict in rent but it’s never really addressed, no points are ever made about it, which is in my opinion kind of wild and very unsatisfying. the above scene especially, considering how direct of a callout it is towards the show’s own characters and writing, yet it is never addressed afterwards, and this conflict is never really resolved. 

one could take similar issue with the choice to swap tuberculosis in boheme with AIDS in rent. though in my opinion i think addiction is as much as if not more rent’s analogue to boheme’s TB, since that is a much more acutely seen disease for mimi and only mimi while there are multiple characters (main and chorus) living with HIV…then again, angel is the character who gets the real tragic death analogous to mimi’s in boheme, and angel dies of complications from AIDS, so i suppose it’s open to debate. regardless, there’s a significant contextual difference between TB in the 1840s and HIV and addiction in the 1980s: there was no system, political, social, or medical, that could truly heal someone of tuberculosis in boheme’s setting. but there very much was a medical and social system in place to help people with HIV and addiction in the 1980s; systems which were aggressively denied to those who were suffering by the political system. and for as much as the characters in rent like to sing about revolution, protest, and activism, not a single one actually challenges the powers that be or call out by name those responsible for the systematic denial of healthcare to the marginalized. activism and artistic revolution is hollow and meaningless in rent, they never name a real enemy, just a vague sense of “the man.” but it’s a story set in a real and still recent historical time period, the effects of which we still deal with today (and i’m sure even more acutely so back in 1996); it just feels disrespectful to me to use those crises as such important set dressing for your musical which positions itself as a “fuck the man” revolutionary kind of piece of theater and yet do or say absolutely nothing about the real world issues it is appropriating. for more information i highly recommend checking out lindsay ellis’ video on the topic. 

so is all this to say i think rent is an irredeemable, fundamentally broken work? actually, no; i think it has a decent foundation and some solid music. i understand the reasoning behind and appeal of updating an old work to a new time period/setting for a new audience, and i think trading 1840s paris for 1980s nyc is an interesting and workable substitution. but when i look at rent as it is now, i just do not see a finished product. 

and i think this is the most frustrating and disappointing thing about rent to me: rent is, quite literally, an unfinished show. its composer and librettist, jonathan larson, died suddenly the day of its first preview performance. and for so many developing (off-)broadway shows, previews are when the actual finished product is crafted, as the show is revised based on audience reactions. of course audience and critical reception to rent from the very beginning was positive, but i can’t help but speculate how much of that is influenced by the mere fact of its creator’s untimely death. and i wonder what changes larson would have made to his show if he had lived, and been able to hear the audience’s reactions, and revise the show accordingly. i wonder if he would have thought it worked. i wonder if he would have seen the same cracks that i see in it. i don’t think rent is inherently unsalvageable, but it is so far unsalvaged. 

and frankly i don’t know that it ever will be salvaged; not for many years, at least. not until copyright and licensing in musical theater changes, and not until broadway audiences get more comfortable with the idea of altering beloved and familiar classics (the 2019 revival of oklahoma! was, in my opinion, a work of genius, but i’m well aware my opinion is not universal, and especially during its national tour the show’s entire concept has been extremely controversial). do to rent what bartlett sher and aaron sorkin are doing to camelot right now: keep the heart and soul of the piece intact, but rewrite what doesn’t work. or do something even more drastic, cut subplots and change character traits, i don’t know. maybe mimi should die; maybe it really is important that she survive! maybe rent shouldn’t have been based on boheme at all; hell, what would rent look like if it was based on la traviata instead? (well the answer to this one is “a different show entirely,” most likely, but if you want to write a poignant and tragic love story based on a romantic opera and set in 1980s nyc featuring queer and/or HIV+ characters, well…it could work and i’ll leave it there.) maybe that’s going too far, i don’t know, but the point is, i want to see directors and writers have the freedom to try that stuff out. because i don’t think rent is unsalvageable; i think it’s unfinished. 

but rent is far too popular and beloved for anyone to dare touch its libretto with new ink. the memory of jonathan larson is held far too preciously for anyone to allow such debasement of his work. when searching online for libretti to reference when writing this essay, i found one transcribed script with this at its heading:

and i think that about sums it up for me. “may he be friggen worshiped!” him and all his creations, holy and untouchable.  it’d be tantamount to theater sacrilege at this point to try and change it. how dare you sully larson’s good name by thinking you could “fix” his masterpiece…the masterpiece no one wants to admit he never got to actually finish. well, i don’t know, maybe it’s me being jewish and sentimental here, but if i have enough respect for a piece of work i want to be able to engage with it and question it and interpret it as i think it best ought to be. (jonathan larson was also jewish. would he agree with me? i don’t know. but i think he’d want to see the best of his work, just like i do.) live theater is inherently participatory and dialectical. and it ought to be alive, not carved into stone. neither immovable nor under threat of utter annihilation should someone come too close with a chisel. rent has potential. la boheme is still as affecting today as it was a hundred thirty years ago (did you know rent premiered almost exactly a hundred years after la boheme?). rent could be the same. and it does have emotionality behind it as it is now, credit where credit’s due. but it could be more than just that. if we could just let someone finish the thing already, even if larson himself couldn’t.

[lieutenant-amuel]

Elena of Avalor is genuinely such a good show.

[socksandbuttons]

Socksandbuttons

This is not a simp ask

Just wanna say on behalf of everyone

Sorry for stressin U out 😭

fdbdskj its all good, it was more asks than i expected but i tried tackling mosttt but thank yall for the fun time and funny flirts

[ovaryacted]

I need old man Chris Redfield carnally. Like, just, GOOD GOD. He was attractive enough, but somehow him being older (and an adopted dad to baby Rose!) just makes him even HOTTER to me, somehow. I need to ride his face- but also suck his cock and treat him Gently, because he's been through so much 🥺 Just. Please.

Me getting a Chris Redfield ask after all of this time omg?? This is so crazy and real, but I'm digging it. Thank you for your thoughts anon, I gotta say I was very surprised when I saw this message flow through, but I am certainly not upset by it.

Yeah, even though I don't talk about Resident Evil anymore and am just enjoying that interest on a personal level, I have a huge huge soft spot for Chris Redfield, particularly his RE8 model. A couple of months ago when I stopped giving a shit about Leon Kennedy tbh, I legit fell in love with Chris, it happened out of nowhere. (I technically liked Chris before I liked Leon but shhh). I was putting him in situations, making him the softest guy around despite being 6 ft of pure muscle. I loved him, adored him so bad and I still do.

I just love male characters that look physically big as a result of trauma or what they do and they still hold a particular softness towards those that they're meant to protect. Like even though we didn't get explicit content about this, I wholeheartedly believe that Chris raised baby Rose and took care of her the best way he knew how, keeping his promise to Ethan that he will look out for her. He looks out for everyone else without caring what happens to him, shit like that makes you just want to take care of him and give him the soft life.

He's just such a man, a real fucking provider that gets shit done, and not to mention a leader. He literally goes by the codename Alpha, like yeah he's the big dog. And sure, he's seen as this funny silly guy from when he was younger in the first game, but he's been through some shit. The version I really love from him is his RE8 model, and I'd still fuck him in a heartbeat. He's not even that old either, like late 40s ain't so bad, I need to see him gray a bit more with a full beard. Then we're talking.

[falsesecuritysketches]

The hate posts about Connor and Bryan just because they are popular is really starting to make me sad.

[lildoodlenoodle]

For the Hobie Brown fans here’s some black alt./punk music to try! I’m also gonna list 1-2 songs I’d start with since it can be overwhelming to pick a song sometimes!(with links for your convenience)

DE’WAYNE - Simple(ft.IDKHBTFM) or GOOD MOOD(ft.Grandson)

Dude’s got a lot of variety in his music. You’ll like at least one of his songs I promise. SIMPLE is more of a softball, I think it’s still alt. but leans more indie rather than punk. And it still amps up a bit at the end. Point is, I think it’s a really good song to start with, especially if you don’t listen to more punk/alt. music. GOOD MOOD I just think is a lot of fun, and does give spider people/vigilante vibes. In general dude also has a lot of collabs with artists most of you know: IDKHBTFM, Grandson, Sophie Powers, Chase Atlantic, Good Charlotte, etc.

Nova Twins - K.M.B(kill my boyfriend)

Ahh love them(and so does Elton John apparently lol)! Literally had such a hard time deciding what song to pick for this. I haven’t heard one of their songs that I didn’t like. They have a more electronic(?) sound in some songs, but their songs are wicked catchy and will live in your head if you listen to them more than once. I almost put Athena, Bassline Bitch, Wave, Twitch, or Cleopatra.

H09909 - Punk Police(ft.N8NOFACE)

They have a lot of good punk music, but this song screams Hobie Brown. If you like Hobie Brown pls listen to this song, you’ll understand what I’m talking about when you listen. Even if punk music isn’t your thing I’d still give this one a listen. I’ve also been listening to the album United States of Horror on repeat and it’s so good.

POORSTACY - Hills Have Eyes

Love these guys! They also got a fair amount of variety in their discography. Even got a collab with DE’WAYNE called Die Out Here. Honestly couldn’t even decide what song to put! I almost put Party At The Cemetery or Jump.

Rico Nasty - Black Punk

I guarantee you’ve heard a Rico Nasty song before. She combines rap and punk in a really cool way and has a very unique sound! I figured this song was the best one for this list, but I promise we’ve all heard ‘Smack A Bitch’ at this point, I also like OHFR and Rage. She’s got a bunch of collabs with artists like Flo milli and Doja Cat.

LustSickPuppy - Goatmeal

I only recently started listening to these guys but it’s a good vibe. The music videos are very chaotic and very creative! Goatmeal is their most known song rn and it has a very fun and fast sound. Again a little more electronic(which I don’t normally like) but it is very much a song you wanna bounce to. They got a collab with Bonnie Baxter called Bothered that I also really like.

Note: most of these are pretty basic/well known. I know nothing about music terminology or music theory, I also haven’t seen or looked very hard for anything problematic these artists have done so don’t come for me.

[oldfashionedmorphine]

Listen. I haven’t watched Ted Lasso. I do not plan on watching Ted Lasso (just not my thing). However last night I was dreaming and who should walk into my dreams but ROY KENT AND JAMIE TARTT. This is YOUR FAULT. I have ABSORBED YOUR BLORBOS THROUGH OSMOSIS

my bad

[em-b-sides]

I think about that tiktok trend where you like paint your partners eye color on your nails or make a bracelet or something with the color a lot actually

[inkyminx]

OG Post ~ https://twitter.com/JiswaPROJECT/status/1636828823407738881

[aerticent]

I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way shape or form saying that any of this is excusing Elara and the shit she did to Maven. I think she's a pos who deserved what she got. That being said her and Maven's relationship is so interesting to me!!

I hate when people paint Elara as hateful towards Maven and like she viewed him as inadequate because I just don't think that's true. I think she understood Maven's position as the second born and as her son specifically. I think she understood that despite him being innocent regarding everything that happened to Coriane, he would always be antagonized by their family and he would always be othered by his father. I think because of this she conflated every "flaw" as something major even if it's as small as him learning to walk later than everyone else. Those "flaws" would always follow him, he wasn't given the same leeway as Cal. Obviously this doesn't excuse what she did to him, nothing will, but I do think it's interesting to think about how she reached the conclusion that what she was doing to him was okay.

I also like how there are instances in the books themselves of her being caring towards Maven in a very motherly way. There are two instances that come to mind of this happening. After the Sun Shooting Mare sees her clinging onto him. I think it's because she finds comfort in him and she was also worried for him, because even though the shooting was planned it was still something that could've killed him. There was also when Mare mentioned Thomas during the betrayal scene. Mare brings Thomas up and even though Maven brushes her off she can see she hurt him. Elara immediately reached towards Maven and told him to say goodbye. I don't see this as her being scared of Mare getting through to him, but instead her being worried because she knows more than anyone how much Thomas still effected him. I've always interpreted her taking his ability to dream away as a desperate attempt to help her son who was grieving. She was likely the only person to ever see Maven's grief and how much it was hurting him and the only thing she could do was try to remove any trace of Thomas from Maven. Even though it didn't fully work, if anything it left him worse off, I do think it was her trying to help her child in any way she could.

Elara, more than anyone, was aware of the way everyone in that court viewed Maven. Even though she knew Cal loved him, I wouldn't blame her if she had the fear that Cal would turn on him given that all of Cal's family openly showed their disdain for Maven. I also think that the treatment Cal received compared to Maven reaffirmed her belief that any "flaw" Maven had would follow him always. For example, Cal was never very good at politics and, despite politics being something he would need to be competent at, he was always given leeway when it came to it. It was understood that even though Cal struggled with politics he would receive help from his council. Compare this to Maven. Maven struggled heavily with combat, he was competent enough with it to defend himself but he was by no means great. It felt like there was a sense a shame that surrounded the fact that Maven needed protection. That even if he wanted to, he couldn't fight in a battle the way Cal could. Maven's strengths were always cast aside because of his weaknesses, whereas Cal's were accepted and he was given the resources he needed without any sense of any major insult.

I wonder what an average day was like for Maven when he was growing up and what his relationship with his mother was like day to day. I don't think Elara was in his head making changes everyday, so I wonder what their day to day interactions entailed. I wonder if she was openly motherly to him or if she restricted it private interactions only. I wonder how exactly she felt when Maven would go to Cal for comfort instead of her. I wonder how she felt knowing that everyone (atleast on Tibe's side smh I NEED more on the Merandus') outside of their immediate family at best couldn't care less about Maven and at worst hated him simply for existing. I wonder how she felt watching Tibe emotionally neglect Maven. I think most of all I want to know if she ever did feel bad for what she was doing to him. Did she ever feel guilt or shame for changing things about him? Was there any instances where she didn't want to make the changes but felt she had to for his safety in the court? Did she have limits/changes she would not make no matter what? Were there any changes she regretted?

I think in general the story could've benefited as a whole if there was more insight to Elara and her mentality when it came to Maven simply because it would've fleshed out two of the central antagonists more. I think just getting the conversation where she told Maven the plan regarding his engagement to Mare from her perspective could've added some insight to their relationship and Maven's character as a whole.

I also think Maven's feelings towards his mother are wonderfully written. I love that he understands she's hurt him and he still loves her. He tells Mare about how she forced him to walk and told her that Elara only told him because she felt it proved her love for him. He understands that what she did wasn't love because all it did was hurt him, but he still loves her. He still wants to be buried next to her and he still misses her. It's heartbreaking to know that the only reason he loves her as much as he does is because he feels he has no one else. She hurt him but she was the only one who cared enough to do anything at all.

I would feel wrong not mentioning Cal as he is the only other character who was with Maven through all of this and he certainly did care. Obviously it isn't Cal's fault he wasn't able to help Maven. They were both children, to expect Cal to have been able to do something when they were both children is stupid. But I do see how Maven could rationalize this as him not caring enough. He loved Cal so much and actively sought him out for comfort, so I can understand how Maven would feel betrayed when Cal wasn't able to notice the changes occurring. Once again, it isn't Cal's fault in the slightest but I understand how Maven reached the conclusion he didn't care enough. (not to mention he had his ability to love Cal taken but I have mixed feelings on that whole ordeal)

I want to once again mention, none of this excuses Elara's actions. What she did to Maven is unforgivable even if she did think she was helping him. I think it's interesting to think about why she did everything she did and how she justified it to herself.

I probably missed a few things, it's been a while since I read these books. (I'm rereading them soon so maybe I'll make a follow up afterwards with any new thoughts I have) I've been thinking a lot about the relationship a mother can have with her child and naturally my mind drifted to these two lol.