#i need to clear out my drafts

[hipsternumbertwo]

Favorite Angela Moments 29/∞: Mamma Mia! But Different (Baby, Baby Version)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Syd and Olivia writing this in one night (and having cameos in the show)

Vic as a mommy influencer and mom to Blakely (Gabe)

Nurse Mariah's recurring "1 in 10 babies are born premature" bit

Mary Lou as Pearl "left in the NICU for 15 months" recurring bit followed by telling the audience to not feel bad for her whenever they go "Awwww"

The babies are divided into two gangs - breastfed and formula fed

The "gangs" only get together to welcome new babies in the NICU and sing Voulez-Vous

People in the chat really concerned with the rope potentially tripping people (extremely valid considering Mariah and Angela moved all over the stage)

Also why are they connected in the first place???

Vic being inside that plastic thing for the majority of the time just vibing - no lines, no singing, only dancing at times and getting trapped by the curtain to the backstage several times LOL

The Romeo and Juliet subplot

Rick Angela closing the NICU to open Mommy Influencer NICU instead

Nurse Mariah (her voice is soooo gooooood) and asshole Rick Kaiser Permanente Angela duet Money, Money, Money

Pearls and Blakely's duet Does Your Mother Know because of their 15 month age gap

When Everest (Romeo) was shot by Skyler (BECAUSE 1 in 3 AMERICANS OWN GUNS????) and the gangs set aside their differences to save him

Pearl performing surgery since she's been watching the doctors all that time (the whole scene playing out over the group singing SOS)

Mariah's name was Baby #2 so that makes Angela Baby #1 and the rope is their umbilical cord for some reason. They don't like each other and belong to rival gangs

Vic's solo song number Thank You for the Music causing donors (Syd and Olivia) to donate and save the NICU

Angela putting that rope (that she had been dragging all over the floor) in her mouth (popcorn PTSD all over again)

Plot Twist! When Nurse Mariah revealed she was Pearl's real mom and that she fucked Rick (Angela) and got money from him so she can finally bring Pearl home

Of course Mamma Mia as closing number

[np-c]

"How did Chuuya not burst out laughing at Dazai's gay ass speeches?" "How did he keep a straight face?" "Why Dazai said all of this in the first place knowing that Chuuya's awake?"

firstly, Dazai probably wasn't 100% sure that Chuuya was actually awake up until Chuuya shot him in the head (I'll give him 80%, he's smart, he knows Chuuya, but still with just enough space to doubt)

and secondly, Dazai Is Just Like That™. Chuuya kept a perfect poker face because he's fucking used to this nonsense. Dazai is the guy who says shit like "this is why I like you" the very first day they meet and also "I spent seven years thinking of ways to kill Chuuya (we haven't seen each other for four of those)". "Whatever sleep or awake, I'm constantly thinking up ways to annoy Chuuya", anyone?

[perfecttenth]

[bobosbillionsknives]

Only REAL trigun fans will get this! (Manga joke)

[aroaceleovaldez]

HoO au where the Argo 2 crew leaves Nico in the jar to save time and he ends up deified and just turns up on the boat anyways and jumpscares everyone

[theangrycomet]

I like to think these two are work friends that research at the same university who have absolutely 0 clue that they live on the opposite ends of the Science Dad moral spectrum.

Utonium isn’t one to judge a book by a cover and is oblivious on the best of days while Venomous just does NOT bother to do research on any of the heroes so has 0 clue that Utonium has anything to do the the Powerpuffs despite them both talking incessantly about their daughters for years.

They both just sort of assumed the other was on their side of the hero/villain spectrum.

[fastcardotmp3]

welcome to dot drops something that's been sitting in her tumblr drafts for 4 months Saturday I hope you enjoy your visit mwah! Steddie; Ballet AU; Dancer!Steve; mentions of cancer treatment; 1.5k words

Dress rehearsal is supposed to be a mess.

That's the point of it, really, to get all the mistakes out of your system and start the actual show run with a clean slate. Or at least, that had been the point of which they'd all convinced themselves when Steve was the one performing.

Bad dress meant good show, or so the old adage went, and so at least there was some ease of worry with the collective understanding that it won't happen on the night within the company.

That was the case when Steve was a student, when he was an apprentice, even during his time in the big leagues at Joffrey, but right now? At the end of a truly abysmal dress in this run-down theater on the edge of a town from which he'd once run away?

Steve is not the performer. He's the guy in charge.

And so he spirals.

He'd never wanted to be a director or an instructor or the head of a studio like this. It had never been in his plans. Steve was a man of action, where the people who do these jobs are the brains behind the operation.

Steve knows how to work hard, how to force his body and even his mind into submission until he gets the steps just right, but this? These past six months back in Hawkins temporarily helping out?

(God, please let it be temporary.)

He's not built for this. He's sitting center stage after everyone has left with only half the house lights to illuminate his misery and he's not. Built. For. This.

Not built for being a mentor or a leader or a role model; not built to handle the strenuous nature of his mother's legacy; not built to carry the name she's made for herself as a teacher and a choreographer and a shaper of young dancers.

Steve's not built for it!

They'd had a shitty fucking dress.

"Hey, uh, you gonna be a while? I kinda need to close up for the night."

The voice echoes across the empty space, bouncing off the high ceiling and straight up to land on the Marley floors at Steve's feet. The stage isn't built for dancers, much like Steve isn't built to be here, so they'd had to pull up the floors from the studio and drag them halfway across town just to roll them out here.

"Hello? Are you, like, alive up there?"

Steve sighs. "Yeah," he calls back, catching sight of the figure talking to him at the back of the theater, the young guy who runs the place and who Steve met a grand total of three days ago. His name is Eddie and he dresses more like he's running a music venue than a local community theater, but he's mostly stayed out of Steve's way so far. "Sorry, I'll get outta your hair."

"Sure," Eddie says, but he's just sort of leaning against the back wall by the window to the sound and lighting booth without an ounce of urgency to him as Steve drags himself to his aching feet and lugs his three separate bags of show stuff onto his shoulders.

There's an energy to an empty theater, one which has held a performance and one which now holds the ghosts of that performance, which tugs at the anxieties sitting buried deep beneath the more immediate ones.

Fears about his mom's health, about what will happen to the studio if she doesn't win this particular battle, about what will happen to him.

There's an energy here in the creak of the steps which lead down off the front of the stage and there's an energy to the plod of Steve's sneakers up the long, racked aisle between the seats.

There's an energy, but it's also not empty, is it.

"Hey, good show, dude," Eddie says, pushing off his wall as Steve grows nearer. "Like, talented kids you've got there."

Steve scoffs before he can help himself and then pinches the bridge of his nose in a grimace for not being able to help himself.

"Uh, yeah, thanks," he grits out, thinking about his bed. Thinking about how he never made time for dinner and he has to be here early again tomorrow.

"Wow, resounding confidence on this one," Eddie snorts, and when Steve opens his eyes it's to genuine amusement, genuine curiosity in the tilt of a head and furrow of a brow.

"No, just," he shakes his head, "you should see 'em when they're really on their game, y'know?"

Eddie hums, and when did Steve come to a stop right in front of him? He's leaving. He has to leave. Go home. Think about all the spacing corrections he needs to fix tomorrow and run through with the girls before show time.

"Bad dress, good show though, right?"

Steve startles. Maybe a little too visibly because Eddie is actively holding back laughter at the sight of him.

"What, I've worked at a theater for four years and I'm not supposed to pick up a thing or two about the ballet?" he snarks good-naturedly. "Caroline, the lady who did your job before you, she was a chatty one, taught me everything I know about Giselle."

It's a knife between the ribs. It's a soothing sort of heat, like from a roaring bonfire.

"You--" he clears his throat, "you know Caroline?"

"Highlight of the job honestly, before she retired," Eddie shrugs.

"She didn't retire."

"Oh. She...?"

"Chemo," Steve doesn't know why he's saying it all so willingly, why after months of trying to run the studio without having to talk about how's your mom doing, sweetheart? he's opening up to this stranger with the curly hair and curious eyes. But he knows her. He's-- Well, he knows her. "I'm just here to-- to fill in until she can come back. So."

Eddie is studying him now. Curious eyes turned intelligent, knowing, sad with the weight of realization.

"You're the wonder boy," he says on a breath like oh, I get it now.

"The what?" Steve balks.

"Her kid," Eddie says like it's simple. He's leaning against the wall again, like he's not planning on getting back to work anymore, "she was-- Shit, man, she loves the hell outta you. Oh, you should see my son, he's in Les Corsaire this season! Oh, my boy, he's just gotten promoted to soloist, he'll be a principal in no time! Oh, the talent on him, the--"

"Okay, okay, Jesus," Steve cuts him off, a half-hysterical laugh bubbling up out of his chest in the process.

"You should tell her I say hi next time you see her," Eddie isn't remotely deterred by having his little, lilting performance derailed. There's a softness to him that deserves a smaller space, walls less prone to echo.

"I will," Steve nods. His bags grow heavy on his shoulders.

"And you should chill out a little bit," he says, this time with the kind of glint to his eye that needs a bigger space, needs to be up on the stage to the point where it has Steve floundering, "y'know, about the the shitty dress that, between you and me," he leans in conspiratorially, close enough to feel the heat of his breath, "wasn't really all that shitty."

Steve sucks in a breath.

It strikes him somewhere old, the reassurance, somewhere young deep inside of him. The comforting from a mother that if he just works hard enough he’ll land that double tour in fifth some day soon, the unbroken promise that she would never give him special treatment as the son of the studio owner, but that she would never hesitate to reward him when he’d earned it on his own.

It strikes him because no one tells you how little reassurance the guy in charge is ever offered and it strikes him because it’s been such a long day and it strikes him because—

“Hey, have you had dinner yet?”

Eddie’s eyebrows lift high on his forehead and Steve sees it, the attitude on this dude that his mother absolutely would have loved in an instant. There’s a performer in there, even just in the brief interaction they’ve shared so far. There’s a spotlight pointing inwards and a show begging to be dragged out.

“No,” Eddie drags out slow and curious, “you offering, ballet boy?”

Steve needs a sounding board and he needs another set of eyes and he needs his mom to be okay and the show tomorrow to prove that he can handle this for her if she’s not, but maybe what he needs most right now, on the other side of a spiral in a dark and echoing theater, is this.

“Meet me at Benny’s in thirty,” he says simply as he makes his way for the door. “Since you’re such an experienced test audience.”

Eddie’s responding laugh is bright and his eyes glitter with curious amusement and maybe this is what Steve needs because maybe all of this is one big rehearsal at a big new life in and old small town.

And maybe this is his chance to make a mess of it. At least until the real show starts.

[anyataylorjoys]

FANTASMAS S01E02 "Valued Customer"

[solivagantingrebel]

OKAY SO GHOSTSOAP AND PET NAME THOUGHTS,,

Ghost who just got in a relationship with Soap and is pretty new to dating and being in a committed relationship, he wants to do couple-y things with Soap, and he knows Soap wants more lovey dovey stuff from him but he's somewhat clueless about the whole thing and ends up being way too serious and intense about it.

He gets in this weird conundrum about names - pet names in particular. He wants to give Soap one, and 'Johnny' can definitely count as something similar since he exclusively uses it for him but it's not exactly that. He also does not want to be awkward about the whole thing. Johnny deserves the world and then some, the least he can do is put an effort and be purposeful about it. So, he ends up researching pet names, reading relationship articles, running himself mad trying to figure out what would be perfect; to the point of whispering different pet names out when he's cuddling with Johnny and thinks he's asleep. (he's not - completely that is- soap dismissed that it was real the first few times but after it kept happening, he secretly relishes how cute ghost is being)

It gets to the point that Soap is already casually dropping all these Gaelic pet names for him and he's still stiffly calling him 'Johnny' and nothing else because for the life of him, he can't figure it out. Then, one day, he's just randomly bantering and cuddling with Soap and Johnny says something stupid and he just goes "fucking hell, love" while shaking his head and he freezes a second after because he realises what he said and Johnny's staring at him all wide eyed and shocked, and he's panicking.

Because out of everything, anything, the most basic of pet names slips out. Hell, 'love' is something you can say to a stranger, something you can say to anyone where he's from and it doesn't even-

Johnny's looking at him, blue eyes murky with the slightest hint of tears and yet there's a smile on his lips that's softer than anything he's ever seen. He doesn't even get to think before he's leaning over to grasp Ghost's face tightly to kiss him until they don't have a breath left in their lungs and when they finally pull away, Johnny looks at him like he's holding everything and more between his hands.

(because soap knows ghost, he knows he doesn't say things he doesn't mean and when he said love casually, as if there wasn't a world where he wasn't his love - he knew he meant it wholeheartedly)

[jesssicaday]

KATY O'BRIAN kristen stewart and katy o'brian speed date each other them

[mangosaurus]

Ben Fitzgerald Pincus + Abandonment S1E05 • "Happy Birthday, Eddie! / S3E07 • "A Shock to the System"

[buccellato]

Fucks me up to think about how Legato's legacy in-universe after his death in Trimax (and presumably Tristamp) is probably gonna be how much he sucked and nothing else....

Like, nobody will like Knives but Vash will be long-lived enough to be able to eventually talk about his good qualities from when he was a child and his quasi-redemption in his last days. But who remembers Legato? Livio and Vash are the only living people with any extended memory of him and neither of them would have anything nice to say (and rightfully so). Neither of them probably knew he was a slave, either—as far as Vash can tell this dude showed up one day and hated his guts, for all he knows he's just another survivor from July! Outside of Knives, Elendira, Legato, and maybe Conrad, I don't think any other character knows his actual life story.

And to add on to that, there's no way of looking up that past either—he had no name or personhood before he was effectively rescued, so who could investigators or reporters or archivists track down for information? The human being that was Legato only existed for as long as he knew Knives, before that he was something to be kept and abused as an object. There's presumably no surviving family they can reliably contact, nobody to really say "yes I knew him, here's what his life was like, here's how we can prevent something like this from happening again".

His entire existence will be reduced down to "a human weapon that was freakishly loyal to public enemy #1" without any reflection on the mechanisms that made him the way he was because there's just no actual knowledge of his life.

[numberonepartyboy]

mostly sora doodle dump

[starmocha]

I appreciate that his go-to move is Netflix & Chill.

[batsplat]

☕️ on marc/dani as teammates? bc so many ppl on here especially have such a simplified and maybe even rose-tinted view of their dynamic imo…..

hm yeah it's a tricky one because I do think there's a lot of genuine interpersonal fondness there that was forged in the aftermath of some equally genuine animosity. for me, it's that development that's particularly interesting... what I personally have always found the most appealing about this rivalry is just how ruthless marc as to someone he genuinely admired and considered one of his heroes or 'references'. like, I think it's a bit different from the dynamic with valentino because it's kind of... vale's the childhood hero vs dani as a rider who's ahead of you who you want to directly emulate in rising through the ranks. with valentino, marc didn't really think they'd ever be competing at the top of the sport because of how big the age gap was, but with dani? different story

which does affect the emotional approach, I reckon - you can admire them and still dream of beating them, you know? like, say you're fourteen years old in 2007 and are getting out your customised casey stoner voodoo doll while he's bitch slapping your two guys, what fantasies are you cooking up in your little brain about meeting your heroes? with valentino, it's probably him grinning at you while handing you your tenth consecutive motogp trophy and telling you how amazing you are... how you're his successor, the one carrying on his legacy... lots of daydreaming of him like, hyping you up after he's retired and calling you god's gift to motorcycle racing, etc etc. who knows, maybe marc was also fantasising about beating valentino in epic duels, but he wasn't really expecting to be fighting valentino, right? whereas with dani? oh yeah, marc might have thought he was great... but in an ideal world, he's ripping the crown off dani's head when dani's a three time defending motogp champion! so crucially marc wasn't blindsided by actually fighting him on-track, and was kinda more prepared for that to get ugly? dani acts as a 'direct' reference, where he's just a few years ahead and marc can see how it's done, basically. but what this still means... he'd admired this guy for years, he had posters of him and all that shit, but the moment they're direct competitors and teammates? all that is just... locked away. no interest no mercy, all he cares about is beating the guy. and marc did still talk about using dani as a reference point, about how much he'd learned from him... but of course that scary fast learning of his was all about beating dani

from dani's side... I'm glad he's gotten to a stage where he's at peace with his career, but. god, it must have been tough. at the end of 2012, he's the in-form rider - more so than jorge. he won six of the last eight races that year. incidentally, this is how jorge is talking before the 2013 season:

obviously, jorge is trying to fuck with dani here, but he's also not really wrong. all four of the aliens have got a lot going on early 2013, but if you had to point at the guy who is dealing with the most pressure? well, it's got to be dani, doesn't it. he was the one who still had something to prove in the premier class, who was now being thrown together with the super hyped rookie. this is how dani spoke about marc at the start of the year:

and here:

and then of course marc beat dani at qatar and then won at cota... granted, dani does a good job of keeping his head and regrouping for the next few races - but it was still an auspicious start, provoking a lot of discourse that wasn't particularly kind to dani. so in that first year, you've got all these different elements - you've got how marc is competing on-track, dani's injury, how marc is already attempting to assert himself within the team, how you've got the behind the scenes warfare between their two teams (again, see this article)... and then dani's issues with marc's actual riding (x, x). now, I think it's worth saying that aragon 2013 is not a case where marc has clearly fucked up. he makes a mistake, yes, but he couldn't have known the slight contact he made with dani would lead to that wire breaking and dani's highside. here's what dani said:

this is a case where different racing philosophies clash, right? what dani's saying is that what happened was a direct consequence of how marc approaches riding - that he's always flirting with contact and this time it finally went wrong. it's the kind of riding dani has consistently disliked, and it's something marc is the poster boy for. in this case, this crash essentially ends dani's title bid. he couldn't walk for three days afterwards. dani criticised race direction for choosing not to give marc a penalty (apart from the penalty points) - this was not something he just brushed off

and, look, you do have to bring it up... dani's experiences with sic will inevitably have influenced how he approached the marc rivalry. I mean, it kind of did for all of them - there's elements of that tragedy that will have bled into how valentino, jorge, dovi and dani reacted to marc. with casey, it's one of the reasons why marc never even had an on-track rivalry with him. now, obviously, dani had big, big issues with sic, a lot of tension including harsh comments in the press and refused handshakes and all of that, as a result of sic's very aggressive approaching to racing. dani was also the one who suffered the most as a direct result, in particular after the broken collarbone at le mans. he's spoken after sic's passing about his regret about how he handled that relationship... how it changed his approach to rivalries, that reminder that there might be things he'd never have the chance to fix

the other sic-related element is that of course, there were easy parallels to be drawn between him and marc, and his shadow did at times loom uncomfortably over debates over hard racing during that period. I think you can feel it most strongly in jorge's response to marc... the echoes of when jorge had gotten in a verbal clash with sic at one of the 2011 pressers and his frustration when his complaints were just laughed off by journalists:

this press conference was from the race before le mans, where sic was responsible for dani's broken collarbone. so if two years later, you've got marc publicly shrugging off jorge's complaints in an only slightly more respectful manner, how can you not be at least a little concerned? yes, marc did have a better feeling of where the limit was, he didn't really push things too far, but... this was still a very recent trauma for everyone and nobody knew how far marc would or wouldn't push it at the time. especially not after the kind of reputation he'd gotten himself in his 125cc/moto2 days. (though of course it's important to note that sic's death wasn't caused by his style of racing, and if anything he'd gotten more sensible in the latter stages of 2011). so the influence goes both ways, right? on the one hand, it all feels a bit too familiar, on the other... well, that's actually a reason why you probably don't want to be too harsh on this kid. because you never know

in the end, the tensest year of their teammate partnership was 2013 - because after that title was sealed marc had won. by the end of the year, it wasn't really dani's team any more. his internal position had already been de facto undermined by casey, but not to the same extent because casey wasn't really interested in playing these games - plus the end stretch of 2012 had definitely cemented dani's role in the team. I've already given most of my thoughts here about how marc takes control of that team, which inevitably touches on some of his nastier behaviour. lying about what parts suited him is the obvious example... he's a ruthless teammate, he openly admits to it. and obviously, dani wasn't always just fine with that. who would be? he's accepted that's part of who marc is as a competitor, and at the end of the day he also had to accept losing. sometimes you just gotta make your peace with a status quo, yeah? it's tricky to strike the balance between not losing the competitive edge and not letting losing to your young teammate year after year drive you insane... dani's always been quite good at focusing on himself, even if a lot of the time 'focusing on himself' involved 'recovering from some horrid injury'

so you know, it's nice that their relationship has gotten warmer since they've no longer been teammates, and for the most part they did keep things civil while they were directly working with each other. also, you do just get over things when you're no longer competing with someone... I've said this before, but there's really only a relatively small number of truly burnt bridges in the paddock ecosystem. thing is, it's quite impressive of dani to seemingly not hold any grudges over what marc did to him... but he easily could have, and it kinda would've been justifiable? it's also primarily down to dani that this teammate dynamic didn't get worse than it was... which, y'know, you can argue if that was the right or the wrong approach, but it also meant he increasingly had to accept a subordinate role within that team - become a non-problematic teammate that honda was happy to sign again. and then you've got marc, who spent years looking up to dani and then spent years being pretty vicious to him and never saw the slightest contradiction between those two things, because of course he didn't! and of course he still has some historical fondness for him as a result of once being his fan... which is an element that has gradually snuck to the foreground again after marc increasingly managed to dismiss dani as a competitive threat. overall, then, as teammates they had their early tensions, then they were 'reasonably friendly coworkers', now they get on quite well. over the course of his career, dani's hardly been immune to drama with other riders, but at the end of the day he's pretty feud-proof on the whole. what kind of a nutter would you have to be to start a feud with dani pedrosa, eh

[theangrycomet]

Trainwreckshipping with immortal Volo is honestly low key hilarious to me because you have this one guy who was/is set on reseting the world and is now just meandering around atm.

But gets sidetracked by this absolute weirdo who happens to look just like that other weirdo warden who fell through the rift from a few centuries ago. All is going well and good and Volo just presumes that this is the descendent of the guy and carry’s on.

Than Ingo comes back.

With Volo’s betrayal to Akari/Rei still fresh in his mind.

Naturally, Ingo’s not going to assume this Volo is the same bastard who stabbed his favorite trainer in the back- that would be insane. People don’t live more than a century, much less two or three. It’s just coincidence.

Emmet has bad taste in men, that’s nothing new. Ingo’s still going to be polite to him, no matter how punchable his face is.

Meanwhile, Volo is just sitting there dieing and trying to think of ways to get out of this situation with out losing a few body parts to his potential in-law.