#hoping for the best for all-stars

[allaboardthevespa]

Lay It All on Me

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING POST/FANFIC CONTAINS DISVENTURE CAMP SEASON 1 FINALE SPOILERS

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Well, the finale has been out for a few hours now, and after getting past the Five Stages of Grief about it ending and what happened to Ellie...my brain started to cook up this little oneshot. I kinda don't like how down-played Ellie's screentime was after her elimination - I would've loved to see more genuine cuddly comfort between her and Gabby. So I thought "fine I'll do it myself". Here's a oneshot where Gabby gives Ellie some comfort after the finale.

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The evening after the season finale, the Disventure Campers had all been taken to the motel for a party to celebrate Miriam’s victory. Most of the contestants were in the halls of the motel, partying and having a great time. Even after everything that happened, everyone was making the most of the wild events of the season and having fun with their friends.

That is, except for two.

Ellie sat outside the building, ignoring the sound of the blaring music from within the building. She wished she could have fun with everyone else right now – hell, even Fiore was having a good time – but all she could concentrate on right now was her regrets. She’d been through a lot, she’d done some things she wasn’t proud of…and in the end it felt like it was all for nothing. Her eyes stung with tears of pain. She just wanted to escape from a troubled life and start following her dreams…and she’d lost her one shot at it.

“Hey, Ellie?”

The freckled one shot up briefly as she heard those two words, wiping some tears from her face and turning in its direction to notice a certain brown-haired nature-lover. She had a sympathetic expression on her face and appeared to be hiding her hands behind her back. “Hey, Gabby,” Ellie mumbled in greeting, blue eyes dim with sadness and regret. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m here because…I wanted to talk to you,” the brunette admitted. “I’m…so sorry things didn’t go the way they should have.” She approached Ellie, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I know how much you needed this…and I wish there was something I could do to make it better.” “I know,” Ellie responded glumly, “And I’m glad you’re here for me. I’m sure things will get better…” She wiped another tear trickling down her cheeks, “I’m just…not sure when.” “Of course I’m here for you, bestie,” Gabby cooed, “I’m truly sorry things didn’t work out, but I’m gonna support you every step of the way.”

And at this point, the brunette now whipped her hands out from behind her back, revealing she was carrying a bouquet of fresh pink peonies. “By the way,” stammered the Tree Hugger, blushing, “I picked you these…I know there’s no way it’s enough to make up for what happened, but…I guess it’s just my way of letting you know I’m gonna do what I can to get you through this.” Ellie blushed too, but now, a genuine smile had found its way onto her face. “G-Gabby…” she gasped, taking the flowers, “I just…wow…this is really sweet of you.” Gabby sat down next to Ellie and started stroking her hair as she nuzzled her face into the soft petals of the bouquet and deeply inhaled their sweet, fresh scent. For that moment, the feelings of pain and sadness faded from the workaholic’s mind. A glowing warmth formed inside her heart as the sweet scent of peony and the feeling of Gabby’s hand softly petting her hair soothed her to her very core.

Eventually the Minimum Wage Worker pulled back from the bouquet, sighing in pleasure. “Ahhhh…that’s nice,” she purred, “Thank you, Gabby. Thank you so much.” The redhead turned to wrap her arms around her girlfriend, nuzzling her face into the crook of her neck. Gabby returned the hug, keeping one hand on Ellie’s head and putting her other arm around her back. “You’re welcome, bestie,” she responded. “You let me know peonies were your favorite flowers back at camp after all. And even if you’re hurting about how things went…I thought I’d give you these, to show you that I’m thankful that you’d show kindness to someone like me, and that I’m always gonna be here for you.”

Ellie felt tears beginning to mist up in her eyes again, but this time, they were tears of joy. “Gabby…” Ellie tried to think of some way she could express her gratitude for the nature lover’s kindness and affection, but no words could possibly express just how happy she felt to have Gabby by her side.

At the end of the day, there was only one sentence Ellie could possibly come up with to express just…how much she appreciated this wonderful human being.

“Gabby…I love you.”

The moment Gabby’s mind registered those words…a rush of pure joy shot through her body, one quite unlike she’d ever felt. After years of neglect and loneliness, she’d found someone who didn’t just genuinely care about her, but someone who appreciated her presence and wanted her to stay in their lives for a very long time. Before that moment, Gabby didn’t think she’d ever be lucky enough to hear someone tell her that…and yet, here she was. In an instant, she found herself crying tears of joy of her own, and the two girls tightened their warm, comforting hug, as Gabby brought one of her hands to Ellie’s cheek, stroking it gently. She paused for a moment to admire her beautiful face – her breathtaking sapphire eyes, her adorable freckled complexion, her soft ginger hair and her heartmelting smile – then, finally spoke again, pushing her forehead against Ellie’s own, “I love you too.”

And with that, the two girls embraced one another in a deep, warm, loving kiss – a moment they’d been awaiting ever since they’d realized their feelings for one another. Silently they promised one another that no matter what, they’d stick by one another’s side, regardless of what life would throw at them next.

And deep down, Ellie knew that even if she didn’t win, she had found something worth way more than one million dollars.

[inquisitor-apologist]

Thinking about how, at the end of the day, at the fatal moment, the sunset of the Republic, it wasn’t Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or even the Chosen One himself standing in the way of Palpatine. It was Mace Windu.

Mace Windu, the inventor of Vaapad and Master of Form VII, the Jedi's strongest duelist, the only person to ever defeat Palpatine in combat. Mace Windu, Master of the Jedi Council and the youngest Master ever appointed to it, the revered leader of the Order. Mace Windu, who forgave even those who tried to kill him, who risked his life over and over again for his troops, who, after 3 years of desperate war, tried to negotiate with battle droids. Mace Windu, who knew the clones were created by the Sith and chose to trust them, who saw every Shatterpoint in the Republic, and loved it still, and fought for it until his last breath, until he was betrayed by Anakin, who he believed in and trusted despite everything.

Mace Windu, High General and hero of the Republic, the embodiment of the Light, the last and greatest champion of the Order, the best Jedi to ever live.

[a-kajillionz]

teenagers of the rebellion!!

ohhh why did luke have to join the rebellion so late,, we could've had luke being rescued from the imperial flight academy with wedge and then ahsoka connecting the dots when some random new kid goes by luke SKYWALKER and is from tatooine.

[barely-getting-bi]

spock with his hair that looks like a lego piece taking in a child with really curly hair and having to figure out how to properly take care of her curls and then having to figure out how to get saavik to be still long enough for him to actually take care of them

[accirax]

Could you please draw Ally and Tess sitting on Hunter's shoulders like he's their personal steed?

[justtuesdays]

moodboard: hamish

“sometimes you have to just slow down and let other people set the pace.”

— hbd @rebelrayne , i hope you have an amazing day!

[lodish]

dan heng, quit daydreaming! give me a smile! another one! say cheese!

[rouwaa143]

trial 2 guilty

day 26 - guilty/punishment

[tinylittlelilac]

sleepover yay yippee yay!!!!!! :3 :3 :D

idk if anyone else goes here but the timing of windboys eos and these 5 guys…

[sanshinexx]

Family portrait with the Dad Bad Batch

[paanzermensch]

I think we need to acknowledge this (Suffering Cute Aggression)

[ilovedthestars]

I am having many many thoughts about Hands of the Emperor, but here is one before I go to sleep:

this sounds very silly, but i am eighty-odd pages into this book and almost nothing has happened, technically. The main characters are going on a vacation. It is a fairly significant part of this that the Emperor has never done so much nothing at once before. Travel arrangements have been made, social interactions had, various vacation activities enjoyed, but on a literal level there is no large plot moving forward.

AND YET. I am up late reading this already, and I want to stay up later. I want to keep reading. Because even if on the surface, not much is going on, the emotional depths that this book has already gone to are incredibly compelling.

The main character is watching the man he serves as emperor and reveres as a god, a man he cares for deeply, slowly remember that despite being an emperor and a god he is also a person, and find enormous joy in getting to be just that. The main character has been overcome with emotion multiple times by seeing his emperor smiling with great pleasure at things like a casual conversation, or watching the rain, or tuning a harp with his own hands. I am overcome with emotion too.

I don’t know if the pace will pick up at some point, but I genuinely think even if it doesn’t, I could read seven hundred pages of this, just on the strength of what it’s making me feel.

[ncfan-1]

I have a few wants for Mae’s story next season, with the hope that she gets her memory back relatively quickly being a pretty important one, but it’s not the only want I have for the way things go for Mae that I consider important. There’s something else that feels even more important: namely, that Mae find people in her life that deeply love and prioritize her.

There’s something very pointed going on in Season 1. “Everyone seems to want you,” Qimir says to Osha, but by comparison, nobody ever seems to want Mae. When they’re children, Sol professes a connection to Osha, and Mae is little more than an afterthought; as an adult, Sol ultimately leaves nothing for her but the worst parts of himself. Qimir is visibly fascinated with Osha from first sight, and ultimately doesn’t seem to have thought much of Mae even before she attempted to desert his side; he seems to brush her off the way you’d brush a speck of dust off of you.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Osha should have chosen to stay with Mae in Episode 8. It doesn’t make sense from a storytelling standpoint, not at this juncture. This is the culmination of Mae’s character arc this season, where she is finally able to stop clinging to Osha, to accept that what she wants more than anything is for Osha to be happy, even if she isn’t with her. For Osha to choose to stay with Mae at that point would feel wrong, for Mae has to prove to the audience that she has reached this kind of peace regarding her relationship with her sister by accepting that Osha doesn’t want to stay with her without bitterness. As for Osha, this is the culmination of her character arc this season, which has been about taking her life and her power into her own hands, and it would be strange for her to stay with Mae when Qimir has offered to help her do what she wants. It wouldn’t feel right from a storytelling standpoint; for things to make sense, they have to part ways at the end of Season 1.

But even if Osha frames it as making sure that Mae is safe from any reprisals on Qimir’s part, and even if it’s what make sense from a storytelling perspective, what it ultimately amounts to is that Osha doesn’t choose Mae, either. Nobody ever chooses Mae.

And it’s so uneven. I’m not saying I want Osha to be this alone, too—I don’t. But it’s wrenching to watch this woman who has nothing and no one at the beginning of the season still have nothing and no one at the end of the season, because even the memory of Osha forgiving her and loving her again has been taken away from her. Even her memory of the one person she had left who actually loved her has been taken away from her. She had nothing then, and she has nothing now.

Like I said, it feels pointed, the way Mae is never chosen, and what I’m hoping is that this means that it won’t be the case anymore in Season 2. Vernestra, you say, and yeah, I have high hopes for that dynamic, but no matter how things shake out between Mae and Vernestra, that is never going to be a relationship of equals, and I don’t think it’s ultimately going to be the kind of relationship where Vernestra would choose Mae, not meaningfully. Not over every other option.

That’s what I want for Mae, really. Someone who will love her deeply and choose her over everyone else, every time. With her memories and without. Knowing what she’s done, the good and the bad, knowing what she’s capable of, the good and the bad, knowing her past, knowing her faults and knowing that those faults aren’t all of who she is. Someone who would choose her without a second thought.

Because I feel like there’s going to be a scene like the one in Episode 8, where this time, it’s Mae who chooses. But Osha had more than one option. Either Qimir or Mae were viable options. Osha had a solid foundation to rely on, whatever she decided to do. But as it stands, Mae only has Osha. Osha is all Mae has. And if we do get a moment like that in Season 2, where this time it’s Osha asking Mae what she wants, if she wants to go with her or not, if Mae’s options are still “Osha” or “be completely alone,” then it's not the meaningful choice that Osha had, is it? My point is, I want Mae, whatever she decides, to have actually had a meaningful choice. To not be completely dependent on Osha for love and acceptance. To have someone else she could turn to if she decided that she didn’t want to go with Osha. To not have her choices be: Osha—or no one.

[ask-sheriffofthewildeast]

Ever consider having kids? The way you took care of Clover came off as real fatherly!

//Happy father’s day!

[pynkhues]

I recently read an article in which Quentin Tarantino stated that fewer movie stars exist as a result of "Marvel movies in Hollywood." I think Jennifer Aniston made a similar argument before saying that there are no longer any movie stars. I'm not sure what that means. I can think of a lot of movie stars right now, such as Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet, and Zoey Deutch etc. what do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and Quentin's comments.

QuillBot's

Months ago, when you sent me this ask, anon, I wrote out a really long reply and as soon as I hit post, my laptop crashed and ate the answer, and I was so annoyed at myself for not saving my reply, that I couldn't bring myself to try and re-write an answer. I'm really sorry for that, especially because I think this is such an interesting ask (or well, two asks, because I think the death of the movie star and the impact Marvel's had on the broader concept of a movie star, are kinda two different things).

I've been thinking about it a bit again recently though, particularly as the Oscar race gears up, and Jacob Elordi and Charles Melton''s respective stars are rising in an industry currently desperate to find the new young Hollywood male 'talent', and I've been thinking about it again because honestly?

I agree with Jennifer Aniston, I think the movie star is dead.

We are a long, long way from Golden Age Hollywood where actors like Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe could captivate a public imagination in a way that translated to big box office effect, after all. Hell, we're even out of New Hollywood, an era dominated by names like Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and Jane Fonda, and the Blockbuster era with Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford.

My original reply went into a lot of the different reasoning as to why this is (like with many things, I don't think there's any one reason for it), in particular how the advent of streaming has changed our relationship with films and TV shows, how the saturation of the market has diluted the staying power of celebrities, how social media and the perceived accessibility of celebrities removes personal mystique which in turn removes intrigue and increases a sense of entitlement, and the fact that so many people having stopped going to the cinema means that the experiential element of seeing a film in a setting larger than life has been diminished.

I think call out culture plays a role too, with any actor on the rise being torn down by tweets they made eight, nine or ten years ago impacting how their star rises, I think the dismantling of the studio system (which is a good thing!) also harmed actors in the long run as studios stopped investing the same resources into making and training stars (they used to be able to sing, dance and act! Now some can barely even act!), and I think, of course, the rise of prestige TV changed the industry substantially (after all, movie stars were movie stars - they traditionally did not, and would not, do TV, which created a clear class structure in terms of screen-based storytelling).

And yeah, I think the language shift from film and TV to content has done irrepairable damage to the artistry of filmmaking and the consideration of a movie star as an actor at the top of their field instead of an actor with the most Insta followers or YouTube subscribers (after all, if everything's content, isn't it the same thing? [no lol]).

Which I guess is kind of where Quentin Tarantino's argument comes in, right? What he's saying is that Marvel's made it so that the IP - the content itself - is the star, not the actor, and I'd say he's probably right with that.

Think of it this way - back in the New Hollywood/Blockbuster era, Harrison Ford was the movie star - he was leading new franchises left-right-and-centre between Star Wars and Indiana Jones, sci fi epics like Blade Runner, leading action thrillers like Patriot Games, The Fugitive and Clear and Present Danger and getting nominated for Oscars for Witness.

He was a movie star in every sense of the word because you could hinge a film - one with a new concept, not just remakes or sequels - on him and be virtually guaranteed a success. He was what sold the tickets, the director just hopefully had to make something good enough people would leave the cinema glad they saw.

Tarantino's argument is the Marvel model - - hell, even the new Star Wars properties, turned the franchise into the star, for better or worse, which means original films can't compete because nobody knows the IP. Back when Harrison Ford was at the top of his game, his name was what helped original films including smaller, standalone works like Witness find an audience, but the studios have changed that. Capitalism has changed that.

Properties with existing audiences and deep pockets for merch were prioritised, only now those franchises are faltering and you've got a generation trained that 'cinematic events' are reserved for blockbusters in established universes, instead of taking a risk on a new film because you know you love an actor who's in it.

Do I think we could go back?

Maybe, but probably not.

I think the place we are now in the history of cinema / TV / 'content' means you can't make a movie star anymore because I think the industry is simply so different that no actor can break through in the same way that even Leonardo DiCaprio could 30 years ago. That industry doesn't exist anymore, actors aren't guaranteed draws (Bones and All proved that for Timothee Chalamet, and Wonka I think could go a similar way), or they have to heavily rely on other industries to become household names which I think dilutes them as a pure 'movie star' (Zendaya's a great example of this - I like her a lot, but how many movies has she even been in? They built her career up in peripheral industries long before they tried to sell her as a movie star, and frankly, I'd question her even as a leading actress yet given she's typically only either been in ensemble casts or clear supporting).

It's a whole new world, and yeah, I think the movie star is dead.

[tmntkiseki]

THE SPLINTER FOREVER ONESHOT...