#i have a lot of feelings apparently

[holdyourbreathfornow]

I know you don't really do much with the Family of Three AU these days (interests come and go!), but I wanted to share this thought that I've had for a while: Bubby's been privately fretting about how despite quickly taking to calling Coomer "Dad", Gordon hasn't asked about calling Bubby "Papa" or whatever else he's comfortable with. When it finally comes up, Gordon's a little bashful as he admits that his brain defaults to "Bubby" because it just feels like something you'd call a parent/family member. Bubby just always felt like home.

Awww I love that! And it definitely sounds like something that would happen in this AU.

While Gordon as a child had something else he called Bubby as a child, I think him calling Bubby by name as a term of endearment shows growth in both of them, Gordon in finding comfort in that term and Bubby reopening himself to the possibility of someone who can be a source of comfort rather than just a source of pain.

[pommegrantaire]

well, heaven knows

that without you is how i disappear

[kazuhiras]

[probablyhuntersmom]

"It's been a year, I feel so heavy... Mama, will this feeling ever stop?"

“Mijo. It hurts. But you have so many people who love you. We can help you carry that feeling and one day it might not feel as heavy.”

(Dialogue by @childlikegoblinqueen, with some smol additions by me)

[angstywildcats]

they're calling 7 year old maprojects classic....................... ( slowly withering into dust) (/LH)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever

[oddly-casual]

Fiona and Cake spoilers seriously

(Something I noticed abt Betty and Simons relationship)

I love Betty and Simon’s relationship, I think their back story is so cute and romantic and all that lovely stuff don’t get me wrong.

But there’s this under tone of Betty constantly giving things up for Simon and we don’t really talk about it a lot???

Like, Betty let Simon have his moment with the artifact and the pubic, she also doesn’t go to her trip in favor of going on an expedition with Simon. Then when she goes to leave again she stays for Simon.

Even Fiona is like “you went with her on the bus?” And Simon just looks all confused like “what? No, why would I do that?” Like- hello???

Then after that she gave up her entire life and mind to get Simon back to the point where she literally says “I don’t know who I am without him anymore.” And that just sucks! Since the beginning Betty has been the one giving up the most, her mind, her own possible career, and it’s a story of love of course and it’s very sweet but it’s also a story of sacrifice.

Their love wasn’t a perfect solution, it was already sort of imbalanced when it started and I lowkey love how we see those cracks even before they’re together.

Again, I love their relationship and I think it’s sweet. I just think we should talk about Betty’s side more, especially when she tells a story of what most women do in relationships, sacrifice.

[freakurodani]

The parallel between Sokka and Tenzin as their fathers' sons.

Sokka, left at 13 as his father and all the other men head off to war. Hakoda tells him "being a man is knowing where he's needed the most" and he needs to protect his sister, his home.

Tenzin is the second airbender. He is also half water tribe, he's a man. When Aang dies, he will be the last airbender. He understands what he needs to do.

Untold amount of pressure and responsibility have been thrust upon them by their fathers. Though, I believe it is not all intentional, but the unfortunate circumstance of being the fathers of sons who take responsibility incredibly seriously.

In Sokka's case, "protect your sister" is a vague instruction. It was meant to give him purpose, to help him feel okay about being left behind, He is too young for war, his father does not want to bring his child to slaughter. But Sokka will die with purpose. He will train the children of his tribe so they will be protected, he will face a fire nation ship until his last breath. He cannot go to war, but Hakoda did not see that war was all around them. In trying to give Sokka purpose, Hakoda put their world on his shoulders.

We do not get to see Aang be a father (in the TV shows), but we know he had hopes for the future. All his children were air nomads, and the air acolytes brought his culture back, but Tenzin could bend. This part of their culture is one ONLY they share. I do not think Aang would hide this, he is joyous that he gets to share his culture. When he feels respected, he always is, he taught the air acolytes after all. Off handedly, he could say, "I'm hopeful for a future where there are lots more air benders," and that, which feels mostly innocuous to him, is the nail in the coffin of Tenzin's fate. He is Avatar Aang's son, and the future of the air benders. It would not matter that Aang meant a future in generations. Tenzin sees the responsibility and it's his. He is his father's only air bending child, he knows what he needs to do.

Being a parent is not understanding the way the things you say harm your children. Even those things that feel innocuous in the moment can be life altering. Especially the more the child respects the parent. Purpose and Hope for those with a broader perspective, can be death sentences to a life that could have been when expressed to those who idolize the former.

[peliginspeaks]

Listen, I'm sorry to the people who draw Veils in torn/bloody robes because of the whole Vake thing but you're simply wrong. Do you think Veils would Ever go out like that. Do you think it doesn't have fifteen changes of clothes ready immediately, with options depending on the day and occasion, to climb into when it comes back from killing things. Of course it does. Veils is getting home, taking a shower in the Bazaar, putting on a new perfectly clean robe with accent panels and silk trim, and then dabbing 1 (one) tasteful bloodstain on the hem of it with a claw because it's arrogant and it thinks it can get away with it. What is a Veils if it's not serving cunt. Of course it is.

[13eyond13]

Something I think fiction does sometimes is make sex represent the end goal for relationships so often that if two characters sleep together it causes readers to automatically see them as truly in love / that it would solve all problems for the pair to be together forever, even when that isn't necessarily what the narrative is trying to say / depict otherwise.

I am thinking about this because of Guts and Casca... to me they sleep together initially almost as an act of friendship? A way of experimenting with each other and learning about sex, perhaps of distracting themselves from the person they're both more actually into, and of course also because they do care about each other and maybe are attracted to one another on some level, and want to see what it would be like to try to get even closer together. But I think the story also makes it pretty clear that Guts is more emotionally invested in his relationship with Griffith than with Casca, in what you might call a narratively romantic sense... and Casca is shown sort of seeing the futility of her feelings for Griffith and eventually growing apart from him that way pre-Eclipse, even though she still cares for him the most out of everyone she knows (though I don't think he ever feels nearly the same way about her). So getting with Griffith isn't end game for Casca (and she herself eventually realizes that), but I also don't read Casca as a character for whom getting with Guts is the end game character arc-wise, either. I'm not sure Miura even had a concrete end-game character arc in mind for her, to be honest. I feel as though unfortunately she was written mostly as something to be used between Griffith and Guts rather than to end up having her own fully realized narrative journey in the same way that Guts (and maybe also Griffith) will. I want to see her and Guts as friends and at peace more than I want to see them live happily ever after together as a couple, because I feel like that's actually more how they really feel for one another than anything else. Granted, there's a bit of an interesting ironic twist in the story that happens during the Eclipse, where Griffith (unintentionally?) drives Guts and Casca closer together than I think they might have been otherwise with the trauma that he causes them both (even though I think their relationship is probably something he'd be jealous of and read as more romantic than it actually might be and wish to destroy, simply due to his own insecurities and his own possessive feelings for Guts). But I also didn't really read Guts' reactions in the Eclipse scene as Guts being jealous and possessive over Casca in a sexual / romantic sense - I read it more as him feeling empathy for her pain and desire to protect her from harm / from the darker side of Griffith he maybe knew about a bit better than anybody else. I DO care about Guts and Casca's relationship a lot, and find it one of the most emotionally compelling things in the story. But I don't think shipping them together for a happily ever after is really what I'd want for them, nor something that the narrative was actually trying to work towards / suggest to be the best ending for anybody involved? I don't know if I think shipping Guts and Griffith necessarily is either, particularly because of how irredeemably awful Griffith behaved during the Eclipse... but I DO think the story intentionally hinges more around the Griffguts relationship and their emotional journeys / character developments than it does about any other pair/relationship in the series, and that both of them have intense unresolved feelings for each other that come off much more suggestive and stronger than ones of just simply wanting to be friends. And I think all of these characters are pretty explicitly aware of that themselves even in the story as well.

Haha I don't even know what I'm trying to even say here except to work out some of my own thoughts about the main 3 that I care about, I suppose!

[bandzboy]

saw this thread earlier and decided to share

[liashinigami]

Was gonna gather my thoughts and write a post tmr on the general mood in the ofts space after the finale bc I feel like a whole bunch of people overthink the amount of editing that was supposedly the result of "promo couple fans complaining too much" but I literally cannot sleep before I get this off my chest so here goes nothing:

Do you guys not understand how tv show productions work....

The script was written, reworked, and then finalized before they even began filming. Yes they might have changed some stuff between the initial scrips draft they had before the mock trailer and the true beginning of production this year but considering that they booked two at the time new but well received promo couples (remember that this show was already in planning at a time when Enchené and The Eclipse were still very very fresh), TopMew and SandRay were always gonna be endgame. It's especially obvious now that the full series is out bc if you go back and watch the mock trailer, all the same storybeats are there. This is how the story was supposed to go from the beginning. They most likely cast two promo couples on purpose because of the added bonus of pre-established compatibility and chemistry needed for endgame couples in such a messy series.

Then they filmed stuff. They finished filming I believe the day that episode 3 aired, so they could not have changed any of the ending based on audience reactions (as I have seen multiple people suggest), since we were barely a few epiaodes into the story. The book based on the series was also already finished and in the last stages of preparing to be released. The only thing they actually did was edit out parts of scenes or full scenes that they found did not add anything at this point in the story (like the sandray garage scene) or would actively harm what we, the audience, are supposed to be understanding and feeling right now (like the Mew smashing shit scene and Top attempting to sleep with someone else, which both were explained to have been cut because audiences were reacting strongly negative to Top even a few episodes into his redemption arc, when we were clearly supposed to start being on his side). They might also have moved some scenes around to aid the story flow but I am unsure of that one (I suspect the scene where Ray and Mew finally solve their shit out was supposed to be directly before the SandRay donut scene bc of obvious clothing reasons, bc they either fucked up hardcore with clothing continuity or moved the first SandRay rehab discussion to after the RayMew talk because it made more sense that way when seeing it played out on screen. If that was the case I am glad for it bc it would have felt a bit weird the other way around idk...).

All of this is however not new. It happens all the time in film and broadcasting production (also in book publishing....this is why editors and alpha/beta readers exist. I mean Brandon Sanderson's books famously go through four (?) stages of feedback before they get published...). Some scenes just get dropped in editing because when you see it on screen it feels redundant or not quite right, so it gets taken out before it changes what they want the audience to take away from other scenes. Movies and tv shows that have months between filming and airing dates usually solve this issue with test screening audiences and several runs of editing. There have been instances of Movies having test screenings at cinemas and then having their release date scrapped because they have to be re-edited completely as a result of unexpected audience feedback. GmmTV series being on smaller budgets and timeframes results in this time window falling away and relying on observing audience reactions to already aired episodes closely and then editing the next episode close to its release is one strategy to still ensure that you bring across what you wanted to (Kdramas also do this very frequently). It might not be ideal but it's not unusual and it certainly does not mean that anything substantial from the story was changed. All the storybeats as well as the character and relationship development remained the same because they already had everything filmed. They did not do reshoots or we'd know it. The story was planned this way. It was in the script. If you did not like it, then you did not like it. But don't accuse the directors of "bending to the will of fans" bc that's just plain wrong.

I too have my issues with some of the writing and some of the characterizations. But let's keep the criticism where it is actually deserved ok?

Edit: I have also seen quite a few people over here and also on Twitter say how disappointed they are in the "editing based on audience reaction" and that they should release a "directors cut" with all the scenes but like....this IS the directors cut. THEY decided how to edit this because the original intent is not always what arrives in the brains of the audience. Storytelling is a two-way street and if a massive chunk of your audience interprets a part of your story so differently to how you intended it to be understood, edits are necessary. Because that means that your intent is not communicated well enough.

[suckishima]

setter..

[the-feral-gremlin]

The first thing that five does after coming back from the apocalypse/working for the commission is make a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich is hilarious and utterly heartbreaking because can you imagine how long it’s been since he’s had one? How long he’s gone without standing in the kitchen and eating a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich while his siblings bicker in the background? How long he’s gone since walking around the crushing halls of the manor? How long it’s been since he’s fought with his siblings?

[teamfortresstwo]

“Peter Lukas gets sent back to the regency era” “Jonathan Sims gets sent back to the regency era” valid points valid points but i raise you

Tim Stoker gets sent back to the regency era