#i knew about the bear thing

[finallyouttathatdress]

Y'all...I need to vent about this to someone...

So, I started out playing BG3 and immediately fell in love with Gale, his nerdy excitement about magic, and, later on, his devotion to my PC, Eli. So, I made all the right choices, etc. to get with him at the expense of other relationships that were also really intriguing and tempting along the way, namely Karlach, Halsin, and to my complete surprise, Astarion.

I got the love confession, love scenes, and everything else that comes from starting a romance with Gale and, to be honest...I'm disappointed. If nothing else--and maybe this is just me--the extreme lack of sexual tension is enough more than enough to disappoint. I chose the non-magic variation of the love scene, but even the astral version was just lackluster. Again, could just be me.

On top of that, though, there is also the issue of him showing that he did not learn his lesson at all from the orb in his chest or the fall of Karsus/Gale. Zero lessons learned. He immediately jumps back on the "let's be gods--but it's okay because I'm a good person" schtick. Does not or cannot see that he is doing exactly what Karsus did. It's infuriating. Thought about ending things with him right there after his reunion with Mystra, probably would have if I didn't hate his sad/hurt puppy dog eyes so much.

In all seriousness though, the chemistry between Eli and literally ALL of the other characters is amazing so it's frustrating to become so disenchanted with Gale in act 3 after rejecting everyone else. I rejected daddy bear Halsin for this shit!

But the last straw that made this rant necessary? There has literally been more sexual tension in the last few minutes of playing than there has been with Gale since Act 1. And do you want to guess what scene I'm at? Just guess because I am still pissed about it....

The scene. With. The. Emperor. A fucking mind flayer has done more to come onto Eli in the first five seconds of this scene than Gale has since the weave sequence. What. the actual. fuck. This is in no way, shape, or form okay.

So, anyway, that's all for my venting. Still haven't decided how to proceed, but I can guarantee I am going to have the song "I Fucked Cthulu" stuck in my head for the next few days.

[elodieunderglass]

Horror isekai where Perceiving the Weird Eldritch Thing gets you catapulted into a nightmare labyrinth of puzzle-solving.

I.e Those Who Perceive The Hunt of the Goblin King Must Partake In The Labyrinth and Can Only Be Freed If They Complete It In One Day and One Night. By Fae Law. For Reasons.

But the definition of “perception” clearly needs to be updated because some normal guy simply films the Hunt of the Goblin King Behind Arby’s, and puts it on Facebook -

No, not instagram or TikTok, it’s important that it be Facebook -

Because the rules are pretty clear, “the rules are the rules” as is carved ominously in elvish runes above the grim gate, and the Contract is Sealed. and so therefore the guy and 25 of their most random real-life acquaintances must run the gauntlet together. It’s Some Guy, their immediate neighbors, their first partner’s mom, their friends from hobby Facebook groups (oh this poor guy and their hobbies; the elderly birdwatchers from Facebook and the young up-and-coming drag king community), their random teen kid niece, college friends, a dog who also watched the video, a couple consisting of a woman who is the guy’s Facebook friend and showed her husband the video, and the husband doesn’t even know Some Guy, so he’s in the labyrinth and absolutely furious about being forced to be involved, and they proceed to break up over the course of the puzzle.

It’s important that the narrative keeps trying to be a sexy dark horror isekai! but within this the comedic reality of Catherine, 52, the guy’s horse-riding instructor, being passionately involved in escape-room-style puzzle solving and grappling with minor goblins. They are in fact speedrunning the gauntlet.

The Goblin King finally has to say: all right, actually, I only really set all this up to fuck with one (1) guy at a time, thanks for your willingness to participate, but I think all 25 of you can consider the gauntlet fully run.

And the group would be quite hurt by that. The rules are the rules. We have a contract, actually. Let Catherine cook.

[cosmic-light-fics]

Before and after watching The Bear Season 3

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[thejasontoddarchives]

52/WW III Part One: A Call to Arms #1 (2007)

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re standing naked in front of a monument meant to honor a dead version of yourself while you’re alive, holding the Nightwing suit in one hand and the pill helmet in the other

[fear-no-mort]

thinkign about how alone and unloved morty was for all his life and rick was the first time anyobdy ever put such an amount of intense attention and dependency onto him . and rick had a whole new family and losing them made him stop seeing the value in other people as a whole and morty was the one and first thing that woke him up

[possamble]

I'm not allowed to be on social media for more than two seconds today but I just wanted to say that Laios will absolutely have his own reaction to all this as someone who would die for Falin but has also imprinted on Marcille as his Emotional Support Comphet White Girl Not-Girlfriend along the way

[poppytuft]

the bear s3 spoilers

below the cut! thinking about claire and stuff we saw this season re: carmy/syd/the restaurant/donna, just finished the season so itll be a mess and also im comin in way too hot on this so my bad

sometimes...... sometimes i believe you guys are all watching different tv. im not sure how this season didnt feel like a direct through line from s2?? and im not sure WHY everyone is SO MAD about claire LITERALLY "haunting" this season. girl. come on. we need to have a sit down talk about how the berzatto generational trauma is the real meat of this show (this will make sense, just trust me). thats the MAIN EMOTIONAL POINT. syd's relationship with her dad, marcus and his mom, richie and evie, even tina and louie are all examples of parental relationships that are tender, sweet, supportive, etc. these are INTENTIONAL!! by creating these relationships we see PLAINLY how fucked donna is and how much she fucked up all of these kids. thats why "ice chips" was such a FANTASTIC episode. there was SO MUCH unpacked, so much revealed, so much worked through with sugar and her but at the end of the day she's still learning how to unlearn all of this horrific narcissistic bullshit. SHES STILL UNLEARNING THOUGH. thats where fucking DONNA of all people sits right now——somehow, she's learning how to heal. EVERYONE IS LEARNING. that's also what is so important about that episode.

now lets look at carmy. in "ice chips" we are LITERALLY told about how each berzatto is born: mikey fighting against the idea of being alive at all, nat into a quiet, soothing room, and CARMY is fucking born into EVERYONE SCREAMING and ARGUING and FIGHTING. we are BLATANTLY told that all carmy has ever known is HELL and all he's ever known how to communicate is through exploding. this is so violently against what we also know about his personality from childhood in "fishes" (anxious growing up, arts-oriented, had a hard time making friends). now, he works a violently stressful job, processing the trauma from both his mother (and chef fields [joel mchale], realistically) through the high-stress environment.

NOW. ENTER CLAIRE.

HOW is she not fascinating to you all. we don't see her whole story (because the bear, duh) but we are given just enough pieces here to put together that her story runs parallel to carmy's. how are you not getting this. walk with me.

claire. glasses, nerdy, quiet, sweet, girl next door. family friend! cute, but considered mid for a long time by everyone at school, but suddenly the berzatto men all badger carm, "oh she got a glow up, oh shes looking for you, she wants to see you," etc etc etc. what happened in between?

she finds herself. she finds the stressful thing she LOVES, which is the hospital. her job is objectively more stressful than carmy's (illustrated by that scene earlier in the season but i forgot the episode, where claire talks about the girl who got her shit wrecked by the glass table), and while we don't have an exact understanding of what her home life was like, we understand that her and carmy both have a level of internal anxiety that thrives on the stress of their careers. HOWEVER, claire does it because she loves it. carmy just doesn't know how to stop.

this is what makes claire feel like "peace" to carmy——because her high-stress job is a choice, an active choice she is making because it fulfills her. it's not to prove her dead brother wrong, or to honor his own legacy, or to prove that dickbag boss wrong, or to leave a mark on the world, or to make her own life worthwhile, or to prove that she doesn't need anyone else. she genuinely enjoys helping people even when the days are stressful, or scary. he's obsessed with this. he wants to know how she does this. every day she leaves that stress at home——and he wants to learn how to do that too.

claire is VITAL to this season and to understanding carmy's stress——and how far back he is in his healing process. it should only become more and more apparent, as we see characters like tina (the beef/the bear became vital to her success/development as a chef AND person, both for the people AND her love of food), marcus (not hiding his grief, but using it to help rationalize how much his mother loved him and wanted to be surrounded by people that love him), and richie (finding a purpose through service/expo and understanding he can start over again) push through their own traumas and struggles to become better people. if donna can be not only present at sugar's bedside during labor, but WELCOMED at this point in the show, it makes carmy's inability to heal all the more present. claire is an important part of this puzzle: she helps us see a window into a world where carmy is balanced emotionally, but unbalanced professionally, because he has no idea how to make the two coexist.

however, the idea that he can be balanced emotionally at all is so fucking enticing——with the help of someone who experiences stress in the same way as him (and who is familiar with his familial trauma), he has the opportunity to grow up and move on from his family trauma and wounds perpetuated by the industry he works in.

on the flip side of this....... his inability to process any of this is starting to impact syd. and frankly, that's some bullshit. his lack of communication, inability to community build/trust ANYONE, and his violent stubbornness is pushing her into the same space that he was in under chef fields, in a much slower, more subtle manner, and for slightly different reasons. her panic attack at the end of the season could read in two directions to me: her stress over the responsibility of changing so many people's lives has boiled over once she remembered that the beef once was truly great (hey five star review on the fridge!), OR, she realizes how much she isn't in it for the food. fuck a Michelin star: she wants to cook with her family. chef terry says at the end of "forever", in the garage with carmy, that she's so grateful she got to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, where she wanted, with the people she wanted to do it with. sydney is so close to having those things at the bear——but carmy's dysfunction is keeping it just out of arms reach. the two of them are now on opposite sides of the approach from last season: syd dying for a star, and carmy dying to cook for the woman he loved. now, carmy is hungy for recognition again, desperate to prove something, and sydney is remembering (thanks to the conversation with other chefs during the ever funeral service) why she loved cooking in the first place. so this leaves us to wonder: should she stick it out? for the people? or make something of herself? is she carmy, or is she terry? i guess we will just have to see.

all this to say: every character is connected. the bear is a show about family, found and blood, and the choices we make for, with, and because of the people we love, for better or for worse. food is only the center of it, because it's the center of all of our lives. you can't hate claire without understanding where she sits in the web of the berzatto family. and really, you can't hate her if you understand what her presence means for carmy, for syd, and the restaurant as a whole.

[soupmanspeaks]

you ever wonder if the Glamrocks's face tracking acts up when they look at Glamrock-Freddy, like they'll look at his face, and the recognition will register as Freddy, but their systems for whatever reason or another think that there is a face overlapped on Freddy's do you think they see two small squares next to him, at his side, roughly child sized, but no one is physically there.... right...?

[waitineedaname]

i love the bingge extra because it's like

the horror of realizing you're the dark universe version of yourself. the injustice of seeing this other version of yourself be happy and loved, seeing him be treated with such gentle tenderness from a person who only ever treated you with cruelty

bad sex.

[decarbry]

a frequent visitor

[sydneys-adamu]

carmy keeps on fucking up the budget numbers for repairs of the restaurant, sydney is right there correcting him every time

carmy enters the office, forgetting completely about his “good idea” that he didn’t write down

sydney enters the office, in the middle of a reassuring sentiment for morale, falls through drywall, carmy is right there when she forgets what she was saying, remembers for her, even finishes her sentence for her

just like that carmy remembers what the good idea was

it’s giving v much you’re the only one who keeps my head on straight, v much I’m not me without you, v much classic married couple, v much I know you I know you I know you I see you I’m here with you

[razberrypuck]

rotating henry emily in my mind

[brzatto]

this vanity fair article will always be the funniest thing in the world to me i don’t think i’ve ever seen a cast whose actors’ personalities line up so fundamentally with the characters they play

[callmewishful]

Woke up thinking about dilfs today. Here’s the results of the days work:

It’s no secret that Lambert’s political ideas were…ambitious. And that’s not a bad thing - I think he really wanted to better Faerghus and that his policies were truly for the good of his people.

However, it is also no secret that the western lords were…hesitant. And it’s also no secret that Rodrigue knew this and worried about it more than Lambert did.

So how much time do y’all think Rodrigue spent chasing after Lambert trying to rein him in?

And thus, how much time do you think Matthias spent holding down eastern Faerghus while Lambert charged towards a new future and Rodrigue tried to temper him? How much time did he spend helping in territories so Rodrigue could spend time in Fhirdiad trying to tell Lambert to ease into things instead of charging into them head first? (And this is absolutely no hate to Papa Roddy - I love him and he’s such a good guy and believe me when I say he was doing the Goddess’s work trying to keep Lambert from charging off a cliff; he had decisions to make for the good of Faerghus too and this was one of them)

Rodrigue and Matthias play those roles in Houses though; Rodrigue goes in search of Dimitri while Matthias holds down the fort. To me it doesn’t seem far off that the same thing was true earlier in life.

In addition to that, we know there were two plagues in Faerghus - one Matthias sent his wife up north for and one that killed Dimitri’s mother. We know they had the large Sreng campaign where Rodrigue saved Lambert, that Matthias had Leif for a while, that Duscur occurred, and that Faerghus was utterly destroyed afterwards….

We know Matthias is a margrave before anything else, for better or worse depending on perspective (mostly worse than better). But how many times do you think duty took Matthias away from the boys? How many times did he look up and yet another day was long gone? How many times did he sacrifice today in hopes for a better tomorrow?

I’ve never said Matthias is winning any awards for his parenting, but I often wonder how things like this played a part in it.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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